I appeared earlier today on
MSNBC's excellent though decidedly left-of-left-of-center
Melissa Harris Perry, talking about a range of topics
including the Euro-crisis. We'll have a full tape of the show
eventually up at Reason, but in the meantime, here's a writeup of
the show, which featured among others the Wash Post's Ezra Klein
and The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel, by
Mediaite's Frances Martel:

...in the business of chronicling cable news, a debate on
austerity and inflation is a pretty hard sell. In a world
of Jeremiah
Wrights and Sandra Flukes, the
Euro crisis is rather low on the personal drama scale. This
morning’s Melissa Harris-Perry shattered that
conventional wisdom, with The Washington
Post‘s Ezra
Klein and Reason‘s Nick
Gillespie going head-to-head on the woes of the
Eurozone and whether the nations should continue to spend money,
the sort of crosstalk-laden panel discussion
host Melissa
Harris-Perry had to interrupt to remind them to
keep the audience in the loop....

“Europe is in a bank run,” Klein began explaining, arguing that
the central question in Europe is “if Greece goes down… does it
spread?” Gillespie responded, noting particularly that “inflation
is not a good thing,” a point Klein disputed as not being always
true. Gillespie disagreed, calling the idea an economists’ dream
that “just a little bit of inflation so our money is cheaper” will
fix the economy, concluding “it never works out that way… inflation
always goes out of control.”

The Nation‘s Katrina
Vanden Heuvel jumped in then to declare that
“austerity has failed” in her mind, as the world is “witnessing
Britain which controls its own currency, and faring worse than the
Great Depression; debt is a greater ratio of GDP than it was before
the austerity programs.” This comment prompted some crosstalk on
the matter, as Gillespie argued the problem with the UK was that
they didn’t cut spending, not that they implemented an austerity
program. Harris-Perry then jumped in to remind her guests that not
all their viewers were that well-acquainted with the nuances of
European economics– “we start saying ‘inflationary, margins’ and
people just tune.”

The conversation continued, though, in the same vein: a debate
on whether it was spending or taxing led Europe to the point it is
today. Vanden Heuvel and Klein agreed almost completely that the
problem with Europe is a lack of spending at a crucial time;
Gillespie disagreed. “This is why Europe is in the toilet, because
they have an unrealistic and unsustainable economic model where
they’re going to keep spending and keep taxing,” he argued, a point
Klein called “not quite right,” arguing that more spending– which
European countries had not done to the extent required in his view–
would help. Despite being a fairly heated ten minutes over a topic
that rarely gets a turn at being dramatic on cable news, it ended
on a conciliatory note, with Victoria Defrancesco
Soto concluding, “austerity is needed, but to a
certain extent.”

Here's a link
the MHP site at MSNBC.com, where the show can be viewed in
clips.

Given the
brouhaha over the “born in Kenya” claim in a lit agency’s bio
of Barack Obama and the Arizona Secretary of State
looking for more proof Obama was born in Hawaii, here’s a
reminder that President Obama wasn’t the first president dogged by
rumors of foreign birth, a 2005 (pre-Obama!) blog
post explaining the controversy surrounding Chester Arthur’s
place of birth:

Chester Alan Arthur (he pronounced his middle
name al-AN) was, according to the official account,
born in Fairfield, Vermont, Oct. 5, 1830, the son of Reverend
William and Malvina (Stone) Arthur (his gravestone confirms
this date). One biographer, Thomas C. Reeves, has concluded that he
was born a year earlier—on Oct. 5, 1829— and that Arthur changed
the date "no doubt out of simple vanity."

Changing his year of birth is forgivable (Arthur was well beyond
the age requirement for the presidency); but could he have changed
his place of birth as well? Arthur P. Hinman thought so. Hinman, a
New York lawyer, brought the issue to the attention of
the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in a letter early in
August, 1880, while Arthur was yet a candidate for the
Vice-Presidency. Arthur evidently had flip-flopped on the issue in
the past. One article, dated August 13, quotes a leading Republican
in a way reminiscent of more recent campaigns: "Why in —— don't the
General come out and say where he was born, and put an end to all
this mystery."

Hinman first theorized that General Arthur was born "in Belfast
or Aberdeen," before his parents emigrated to America. Arthur could
easily dismiss this theory, for he had always maintained that his
father emigrated at eighteen years of age—before he married and had
children.

Hinman pushed on. The following story appeared in
the New York Times of Dec. 22, 1880:

MATERIAL FOR A DEMOCRATIC LIE

ST. ALBANS, Vt., Dec. 21.—A stranger arrived here a few days
ago, and registered at the American House as A. P. Hinman, of
New-York. Since then he has been very busy in the adjoining town of
Fairfield, ostensibly collecting materials for a biography of
Vice-President-elect Arthur. He has privately stated to leading
Democratic citizens, however, that he is employed by the Democratic
National Committee to obtain evidence to show that Gen. Arthur is
an unnaturalized foreigner. He claims to have discovered that Gen.
Arthur was born in Canada, instead of Fairfield; that his name is
Chester Allen instead of Chester Abell [sic]; that he was
50 years old in July instead of October, as has been stated, and
generally that he is an alien and ineligible to the office of
Vice-President.

Arthur Hinman would publish a book, How A British
Subject Became President of the United States, the substance
of which was related in a Brooklyn Daily
Eagle article dated June 2, 1884:

The main charge of the book is that William Chester
Alan Arthur was born in Dunham Flats, Canada, on [sic]
March, 1828, and that he represented himself to have been born at
North Fairfield, Vermont, the birthplace of a younger brother,
Chester Abell Arthur, who was born in 1830, and died a year later.
It is stated that in 1834 when another son was born he received the
name of William Arthur, Jr., and then the name William was dropped
by William Chester Alan Arthur, and he was henceforth known as
Chester Alan Arthur. The records, copies of which are given, show
that in 1845 Chester Alan Arthur entered Union College, stating his
age to be 16.

Reeves dismisses Hinman's theory, while admitting that President
Arthur lied about his age. He cites the Arthur family Bible, held
at the Library of Congress, which gives the President's year of
birth as 1829, and makes no mention of a child named "Chester
Abell.

"In the past four years, two and a half million people have left
the Democratic and Republican parties," explains Linda Killian,
author of the new book
The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents.
Not only are these voters sick of the two dominant parties, Killian
believes they are increasingly determining electoral outcomes.
"They voted for Barack Obama, they voted for the Democrats in 2006,
[but] they swung 19 points in voting for the Republicans in
2010."

Killian sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to examine what
makes a swing voter, their growing importance, and if their
socially tolerant and fiscally responsible viewpoints should buoy
libertarians.

Runs about 6.40 minutes

Produced by Meredith Bragg. Camera by Meredith Bragg and Josh
Swain.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to
receive automatic updates when new material goes live.