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EFTA01187713 | EFTA01187714 Arianna Huffington: The names of the towns and the tally of the victims change but the horrific mass shooting cycle of shock, unimaginable grief, callsfor reform, followed by a return to the nothing-to-be-done status quo is all toofamiliar. The nightmare in Newtown, Connecticut — made all the more sickening by the presence of 20 dead children -- is the third mass shooting since July and thefifth since President Obama took office. In the hours after the shooting, the president made a moving, emotional speech. Just as he did in the wake of Tucson. And Aurora. But callsfor "meaningful action" and the lowering of to half-staff are no longer enough. What we need, in the words of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is "immediate action." Gun violence, turbo-charged by easy and legal access to deadly weapons, is a cancer eating away at the soul of America. We need emergency surgery. Just last summer, Obama went to Aurora, Colorado, to visit victims and families after a shooting spree at a movie theater in the Denver suburb left 12 dead. He went to Tucson, Ariz., in January of last year after six people were killed and 13 wounded, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, outside a grocery store. And in November 2009, Obama traveled to Fort Hood, Texas, to speak at the memorial service for 13 service members who were killed on the post by another soldier. How young do the victims have to be and how many children need to die before we stop the proliferation of guns in our nation and the killing of innocents? In every country, some people are disturbed, broken-hearted or angry enough to murder. What is special about this country is the extent of the damage that such people are able to inflict when the urge comes. How's this for a stat from ®ABCNewsRadio: since 1999, 31 school shootings hi the US. Rest of the world, 14. This week on Moyers & Company — Fiscal Cliffs and Fiscal Realities — Bill Moyers speaks with independent political and economic analysts Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith join Bill in a discussion about why Washington insiders are talking about the deficit crisis instead of the jobs crisis. (or — Why thefiscal cliff-is merely a phantom menace — and what we should be talking about instead?) http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-fiscal-cliffs-and-fiscal-realities/ When it comes to America's economic health, all anyone seems to talk about is the "fiscal cliff," and the perils of our inevitable plunge. But media's favorite metaphor is distracting us from actual and crucial fiscal realities. Bartlett, former advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, got into hot water with fellow conservatives when he aired concerns about the direction of their ideology and wrote critically of the second George Bush. His most recent book is The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform — Why We Need it, and What It Will Take. Yves Smith, who spent more than 25 years in the financial services industry, is the founder and editor of the popular blog Naked Capitalism, and runs a successful management consulting firm. The show starts with Bill asking Yves and Bruce, "if the Fiscal Cliff is just a metaphor or real " To which Yves suggests that it more accurately describes an gradual impact that can be reversed. For example; if, you know, payroll tax increases would take place. But if a deal were arrived at on Febrtuiry 15 or March 3rd, you could even put the rates, the old rates in back retroactively and have everybody get a credit. So the notion that we have to have a deal by December 31 or there'll be a disaster is really overstated. With Bruce suggesting that like Y2K, which many people were worried that all the computers would cease working and the planes wouldfall out of the sky. And, of course, none of that happened. But, of course, one of the reasons it didn't happen is because everybody fl aredfor it ahead of time. And that's essentially what's happening right now. Both Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith believe that President Obama compromising is not worthwhile because austerity doesn't work. They point to Europe where they've implemented austerity in a number of countries with the idea of reducing government spending in order to reduce deficits to get the ratio of debt to G.D.P. to the size of the economy down. But what happened — shrinking the numerical value of the debt caused the economies contracted so much more that the debt to G.D.P., — ratios got worse — making the problems worse. As such austerity that many conservatives propose is the medicine that will make today's bad situation worse. More importantly, they say that Republicans don't want to compromise with President Obama. They view him as illegitimate, incompetent, weak and a danger to America. As conservative columnist Marc Thiessen wrote this week in The Washington Post, Republicans in this fiscal showdown should stand and fight. He says that they EFTA01187714
May 12, 2026 at 9:51 PM