Basically, Dean Baker implies that a stance of defending Social Security lowers your campaign contributions and labels you as “unserious” in major media. You can see this in the Washington Post’s endorsement of President Obama, mainly because he “understands the urgency of the (deficit) problems as well as anyone in the country and is committed to solving them in a balanced way.” They almost entirely based their endorsement on the likelihood of Obama reaching a deficit deal over Romney. And the Post ed board describes that “balanced way” as a combination of “entitlement reform and revenue increases.” There’s really no greater avatar of the DC elite mindset than Fred Hiatt’s scribbling crew.

I’ve tried really hard to avoid this brouhaha over Conor Friedersdorf’s article on why he refuses to vote for Barack Obama. It’s probably generated far more discussion than it merited, since it amounted to an unsurprising statement of support for a libertarian candidate from a right-leaning civil libertarian. That liberals pounced on it as an example of Naderite perfidy, though the circumstances are quite different, is something that I found revealing of liberals, and this post can stand in for my thoughts there.

It turns out that the myth of high-stress positions of power is unfounded. Our lords of industry, our masters of the universe get along just fine. And if you had the benefits of a golden parachute to fall back on with none of the threats of accountability for your performance, you would too.

1st RULE: You do not talk about FISCAL CLIFF.

The Niall Ferguson Newsweek saga has moved swiftly from tragedy to farce. After getting called out for numerous factual errors in his cover story on his opposition to Barack Obama’s re-election, Ferguson has now struck back with a broadside against the messenger, specifically “liberal bloggers,” who had the temerity to point out his mistakes.

The New York Times allowed Matthew Bishop to write its review of Paul Krugman’s new book, End This Depression Now! Mr. Bishop is The US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of the Economist, a very serious paper. Mr. Bishop himself is a Very Serious Person, although he doesn’t seem to understand the point of that term, and he takes umbrage

Tyler Cowen, a conservative economist who’s very good when it comes to finding a good restaurant, is further off base in this editorial, where he attributes the lack of expansionary fiscal policy to “broken trust.” You could write a book about the loss of faith in institutions and particularly the government; actually, Chris Hayes has (which allows me to plug the FDL Book Salon I’m moderating with Chris on Wednesday afternoon!). But Cowen misses the point.

It is America and NOT China that has been embracing tyranny, lawlessness and injustice. And how China has embraced the economic benefits of most to the majority of it’s citizens, where as we here have only been making life better for the elites.

One might note that the high point of American power (absolute as opposed to relative, after the collapse of the USSR) coincides with peak of oil production in the US, and that the sudden rise in American pathologies coincides fairly closely with the oil crises of the 70s and early 80s, for example. Hustling, eternal growth, works when cheap energy is readily available, when more, more, more is possible, and when growth is choked, the hustlers, rather than growing the pie, turn on each other in a vicious “war of all against all”.

The Penn State scandal comes on top of a total breakdown in ethics and accountability in government and beyond. A Penn State grad and member of Sandusky’s foundation discusses his generation’s loss of faith in his parents’ generation.