Friday punditry.
Paul Krugman:
Republicans are feeling good about the midterms — so good that they’ve started saying what they really think. This week the party’s Senate leadership stopped pretending that it cares about deficits, stating explicitly that while we can’t afford to aid the unemployed or prevent mass layoffs of schoolteachers, cost is literally no object when it comes to tax cuts for the affluent.
There's nothing scarier than Republicans saying what they really think. See Sharron Angle.
Steven Pearlstein:
The big complaint from the business lobby these days concerns a "lack of clarity" about federal regulation that prevents companies from using all that cash piling up on balance sheets to hire workers and make major investments.
Then, without missing a beat, those very same business groups declare themselves unalterably opposed to any climate-change legislation that sets plant-specific targets for carbon reductions, puts a floor and a ceiling on the price of carbon, tells utilities exactly how much of their power should come from low-carbon sources or sets specific standards for the energy efficiency of cars and appliances.
Apparently the Chamber of Commerce types think Americans are so gullible that we won't notice their blatant and self-serving hypocrisy. In reality, it's only a certain kind of regulatory clarity they seek -- the clarity of knowing that old regulations won't be enforced and new ones will be dictated by industry lobbyists.
Doyle McManus:
But here's something more surprising: As the recession deepens, participation in civic activities — community organizations, volunteer groups, even church attendance and social clubs — is likely to drop. Sociologists once assumed that during hard times people would naturally band together, if only to protest their plight or to give each other solace. It turns out that the opposite is true: Economic distress causes people to withdraw.
Linda Greenhouse:
A report in The Daily News last week that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has no plans to retire left me shaking my head.
Would the next report be that the sun rose in the east this morning? It never even occurred to me to wonder whether Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 next Friday, might be thinking about retiring, because the answer is so clearly no. The man obviously still loves his job after 22 years, and has no reason to leave it.
But thinking about Anthony Kennedy led me to look back over the Supreme Court term that ended last month, and what I found surprised me. A plausible case can be made that it is no longer the "Kennedy court."
Well, duh. Elections have consequences.
There's a pertussis epidemic in California. The answer? Vaccine. From Medscape:
The pertussis epidemic in California is taking its heaviest toll among infants, so state health authorities are trying to boost immunization in a population group thought to pass along the disease — adults.
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is shipping free pertussis vaccine to all birthing hospitals in the state, as well as county and municipal health departments, said CDPH spokesperson Mike Sicilia. The department is encouraging not only new mothers and fathers to get immunized but also other family members, healthcare workers, child care workers, and anyone else who might have contact with infants.
"We believe infants get this disease mainly from adults," Sicilia told Medscape Medical News.
More from CNN:
A 2009 study in Pediatrics found that parental refusal of whooping cough vaccination was associated with children's risk of pertussis infection. Previous research had shown a steady increase of parents who refuse immunization in the last decade.
Clusters of unvaccinated people contribute to outbreaks, but in the case of whooping cough, the cycles will continue until a much greater number of people of all ages are immunized, Cherry said.
I'll be talking about immunization at the Supporting Science, Benefiting Society panel Thursday morning at Netroots Nation next week.
Eugene Robinson:
The thing is, we already know that the Republicans' prescription for the economy doesn't work. We gave their approach an eight-year trial under George W. Bush -- basically, squeeze money out of the middle class and transfer it to the upper class, which theoretically then shows its gratitude by creating jobs for what BP's chairman would call "the small people." The result of the experiment has been the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.
That should settle the question of what happens this fall. Democrats ought to be looking at the prospect of only modest losses, consistent with the historical pattern of midterm elections. Instead, they are going to have to fight tooth and nail to keep their congressional majorities, especially in the House.