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" Longtime friends of the blog are familiar with the blog&amp;#039;s First Law Of Economics -- Fck The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money. -- and are also familiar with its many applications to daily living. Among these are the fact that anyone who talks about &amp;quot;entitlement reform&amp;quot; in the context of The Deficit is really talking about privatizing entitlements, either all at once, or in slow motion. Also among these is the fact that most of the talk about The Deficit is really a proxy fight between dishonest -- or ignorant -- people over Things The Government Does That I Don&amp;#039;t Like, including Be The Government. And, finally, among these is the fact that all the weird wrangling over the federal budget, and all the even weirder jerry-rigged arrangements that all are coming a&amp;#039;cropper in March -- the SuperCommittee, which both Newt Gingrich and I thought was a terrible idea, the Great God Simpson-Bowles, the Sequester -- are all laboratory experiments conducted by deficit hysterics that have absolutely nothing to do with the way most people live their lives. All of those facts proceed from an inexcusable inattention to the blog&amp;#039;s First Law Of Politics. No good can come of that. In any event, thanks to Ezra Klein&amp;#039;s invaluable House Of Wonks, we discover that all the howling about The Deficit has obscured the fact that, whatever real problems with the deficit are, they&amp;#039;re actually being slowly solved. This is a good thing to remember since it&amp;#039;s better than 6-5 that almost all the commentary after the president&amp;#039;s speech tonight is going to carry the theme that he didn&amp;#039;t do enough to address The Deficit. Here is something else to remember -- given that chart, anyone who still argues for austerity in any form -- and this means you, Dancin&amp;#039; Dave -- is doing so because they want government to hurt people, or they don&amp;#039;t give a damn whether it does or not. There&amp;#039;s no third alternative. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17466/the-first-law-of-politics-reviewed/>