Ed Kilgore discussed The 35-Year GOP Budget Dilemma. He claimed that the Republicans have been struggling with four ideological goals: “lowering top-end tax rates; boosting defense spending; going after New Deal/Great Society spending; and reducing budget deficits.” But I think this is giving Republican rhetoric rather too much credit. Just because Republicans claim that they care about budget deficits doesn’t mean that they do. And I just haven’t seen any evidence that Republicans have ever cared about the deficit — except as a rhetorical stick that they can use to call for the policies that they really want.

Let us return briefly to Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president in 1980. A big part of his pitch was that the national debt was out of control and he was going to get rid of it! Also: he was going to cut taxes, increase military spending, and get those welfare queens. So there are Kilgore’s four Republican ideological goals. Now, Reagan was lying about government debt. The truth is that we had been reducing debt (as a percentage of GDP) pretty much from the end of World War II onward. The debt went down under the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. And it has gone up during every Republican presidency since then — most of all under Reagan:

So Reagan did not balance the budget as he said he would. He did, however, manage to make the poorer classes pay a lot more for their New Deal programs. He did manage to greatly increase military spending (and wrongly get credit for destroying the Soviet Union). And most of all, he did manage to lower the top tax rate from 70% all the way down to 28%. Since him, Bush the Elder did raise the top tax rate to a whopping 31%. But he was widely criticized for it and is now used by Republicans as an example of why no one can ever raise taxes on the rich (even though that wasn’t why Bush lost his re-election bid). Bush the Younger also lowered taxes. None of these men cared much about the deficit.

For more recent history, we need to return to the heady days of the 2012 presidential election. Romney — like all Republicans when a Democrat is in the White House — claimed to care a great deal about the deficit and debt. That’s why he put out a budget. And that budget: gave massive tax cuts to the rich; increased military spending; cut benefits to the poorer classes; and made the budget deficit much, much worse. So clearly, Romney wasn’t interested in the deficit. And remember: he was supposedly a “reasonable Republican” — not a firebrand who would destroy the country.

For the last year, Jonathan Chait has been making arguments like, I Have Seen the Future of the Republican Party, and It Is George W Bush. He claims that the only way forward for the Republicans is for them to forget about all this nonsense about balanced budgets and just do what Bush did: lower taxes, make war, and most of all, stop worrying and love the debt. It isn’t exactly a shockingly insightful point. But it is one that most political writers don’t want to accept. It seems to be rude to accuse the Republicans of not really believing what they claim. But we have 35 years of history that shows that Republicans only care about the deficit when they aren’t in power. And that means they don’t ever care about deficits.

So I see Ed Kilgore and lower him an ideology. The Republicans have three ideological goals: lowering top-end tax rates; boosting defense spending; going after New Deal/Great Society spending; and…” nothing.

I’m getting to this a bit late, since it was resolved back in December. But I’m pleased to report that all charges against Debra Milke have been dropped. I’ll list all the articles I’ve written about her below. But the basic story is that 26 years ago, two guys murdered her son. Those two guys are on death row in Arizona right now. But the officer running the investigation was convinced that she was in on it. And based only on the fact that he said she confessed, she was put on death row and spent 23 years in prison. This is, all you death penalty advocates, the way it works; perhaps it is time to stop assuming the justice system works the way you think it ought to and deal with the system the way it actually is. But I digress.

Even after the Court of Appeals demanded a retrial, the state refused to give up. The officer who claimed that she had confessed had a long history of lying on the stand and pressuring people into false confessions. You can well imagine how a mother who’s child was just murdered might feel guilty about it. And any kind of statement of that guilt would easily be used to claim that she had “confessed.” There was no recording and not even written notes. The whole thing is an outrage.

For the two years since she was released from prison on bail, the main question has been whether the state could force the officer to testify. Although he claims that he absolutely did nothing wrong and that he knows Milke is guilty, he’s been pleading the Fifth. Finally, the court decided that he had a right not to get up on the stand and commit perjury. (Eventually, the Court of Appeals decided he didn’t have such a right.) But still the county continued in its efforts to get Milke. But on 11 December 2014, the Court of Appeals decided that the county couldn’t even try Milke again — that it would effectively be double jeopardy.

The county, of course, is determined to take the case to a higher level. County Attorney Bill Montgomery said, “This office today bears the burden for trying to get justice for Christopher Milke.” So let’s see. They have two men on death row, who have been there for decades. And Debra Milke herself spent 23 years in prison. I’m kind of thinking that in the context of justice as people like Montgomery see it, the boy has received justice. And let’s just assume for a moment that Debra Milke was not responsible: does it increase Christopher’s justice to wrongly jail and even kill his mother? And what about justice for Debra Milke?

Sad to say, Debra Milke is lucky. I know, it seems ridiculous: she spent 23 years in prison. But there are so many people who simply think she should have been killed long ago. And lest you think she will now be able to sue to the state of Arizona, think again. She hasn’t been proven not guilty. The Court of Appeals only decided that the behavior of the prosecutors was so bad that the state does not have a right to retrial. It’s a usual thing: the state totally abuses its power and the remedy is to stop the state from abusing its power any more in that one particular case. The original prosecutor will not be held accountable. The lying police officer will not be held accountable. And perhaps most telling of all, the media who pretty much found her guilty before she ever went to trial, will not be held accountable. But one active injustice has been reversed. That’s not nearly good enough, but it is something.

See Also

Debra Milke and the Injustice System
Attorney General to Appeal Milke Case
More Background on Debra Milke
Media Bias and 22 Years on Death Row
Debra Milke Released on Bond
Second Guessing the Falsely Accused

If the TPP gets approved, it will not really change the way that I think about the state of my country. After five decades, I have far too much data indicating that we live in a faux democracy where the rich get whatever policies they want. But it will still be a blow. And I find it curious that we are starting to get liberal-ish commentators coming to defend the trade deal. The first person I saw was Larry Summers, A Trade Deal Must Work for America’s Middle Class. Don’t let the title fool you, he argued that the TPP will work for the middle class. Dean Baker gave him too much credit, even while destroying him, Larry Summers Gets It Largely Right on Trade.

And wherever Larry Summers goes, Brad DeLong is sure to follow, The Debate Over the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Focus. It started, “It is foolish to debate whether a trade agreement that has not yet been negotiated is a good idea and should be ratified.” That’s an interesting bit of apologetics. If we are really supposed to look closely at this deal, why is it so critical that it get fast-track authority? I understand that the Congressional Republicans are crazy, but they will mostly be for this deal. I don’t think fast-track is about slipping this one past the conservatives.

Regardless, Dean Baker shot back at him, Fun With Brad DeLong on TPP. (Have I mentioned recently that Dean Baker Is Must Reading?) DeLong asked to see evidence from detractors that the trade deal would hurt American workers more than it would benefit them. Baker accepted the challenge and, I think, showed very clearly that it would. But notice how ridiculous DeLong’s challenge is. Why is it up to detractors to show that the deal isn’t good? Isn’t the onus on proponents to show that it is good?

Now Ezra Klein has entered the fray in his usual “just asking questions” manner, Why the Obama Administration Is Fighting for a Trade Deal Its Liberal Allies Hate. In all, he presents eight reasons that the administration wants to do this based upon talking to “officials intimately involved in crafting the deal.” And guess what? Seven of them are just nonsense. Let’s see: (1) it’s a good deal because we say so; (2) people only think its bad because we’ve been doing this in the dark; (3) it’s not a perfect deal, just better than some other possible deal; (4) this deal is better than past deals; (5) if we don’t agree to this deal we will somehow be forced into a terrible deal of China’s; (6) It’s a trade deal and a dessert topping foreign policy; (7) we have to prove that we can push around the rest of the world with this deal that is so great for America that it has to be negotiated in private and passed before it can be seriously analyzed.

Note that most of these are duplicates. Numbers one through five are pretty much the same things, even though they also contradict each other: trust us! Six and seven are the same things: America must lead! So basically, the administration is saying that it wants the TPP because it is really good and people like me just don’t realize it, and because it gives the administration more tools to manipulate other countries. What’s shocking here is that none of these reasons has anything to do with the deal itself. Nowhere does anyone say something like, “This is a good deal because it will stop China from suppressing the value of its currency and make American exports more competitive.” For anything like that, we have to turn to the eighth reason, which I believe is 90% of the reason the administration wants to do this deal.

Dean Baker wrote about this canard over the weekend, Getting It Wrong on Trade: TPP Is Not Good for Workers. This isn’t going to improve trade. It will just allow film and pharmaceutical companies to charge more money overseas for their products. Thus, the people overseas will not have as much money to buy other things we export. In other words, this is a way to take even more money away from workers and give it to owners. I discussed this problem last week, No Trade Deals Until Our Economy Is Fixed. To me, it is simple: I don’t care how much “trade” will be increased by a deal when I know all the gains will go to the top of the income chain.

But another thing that Baker noted is that it is ridiculous to think of corporations are “American”:

Ezra Klein claims, “I’m currently in the undecided camp — until there’s a final text I can run by experts, it’s hard to say anything definitive…” But he must know that the whole idea with this agreement is to ram it through Congress before anyone can consider it rationally. The debate really hasn’t been about the agreement itself. It has all been about fast-track authority. He’s right that at this point, we don’t know. But the burden of proof should be on those who claim it is a great deal. And proponents don’t seem keen to make that argument. It’s very much like NAFTA before it, “Trust us!” That hasn’t worked out too well.