In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased spending on certain domestic programs.

“As violent deaths from war and terrorism decline,” wrote McElwee in a Sunday piece for Salon, “the greater threat to Americans is their failing infrastructure, costly healthcare system and incoherent environmental policy…In addition, [America’s] ability to lead by example is threatened by poverty, homeless[ness] and rampant inequality.”

McElwee concluded that “Americans need to realize that today, the larger threat they face is their own fear leading them to underinvest in vital services. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously warned, ‘the only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.’”

On Tuesday, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger celebrated the federal government's large April budget surplus, caused by "a flood of tax payments (which) pushed government receipts to an all-time high." He didn't mention that the tax payments were higher largely because of tax increases passed in 2013. It certainly didn't occur because of an improving economy — because it's not meaningfully improving.

Crutsinger also noted that the April 2015 result of $156.7 billion "was the largest surplus since April 2008," without telling us that the previous surplus was achieved despite (better argument: "because of") the Bush 43 tax cuts.

It was enough to make a blogger in mom's basement spit out his Cheetos in surprise.  On today's Morning Joe income redistributionist and global climate kvetcher Prof. Jeffrey Sachs praised the UK Conservatives for creating jobs via an austerity budget. In a second surprise, Sachs criticized fellow lefty traveler Paul Krugman.

Said Sachs of the Conservatives: "they governed well . . . they got the economy going again. They got it stabilized, they got the debt crisis Britain was facing under control and they created a lot of jobs and they got rewarded last night." And a bit later, the normally reserved Sachs permitted himself a petite smile when Joe Scarborough asked if Paul Krugman, who had criticized the Conservatives' austerity budget, thinks he "knows what is better for the British people than the British people?"

So when is a recession not a genuine recession? Apparently when it's "technical."

Unfortunately, the term "technical recession" appears to be well on the way to devolving into what has long been considered the real definition of a recession for the purpose of discounting its validity.

Late Monday afternoon, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger produced a typically dodgy dispatch on the government's Monthly Treasury Statement. The Treasury Department released the March version of that report covering the first six months of the current fiscal year early Monday afternoon.

The odd thing is, while it has been published elsewhere at the web sites of certain of its subscribers, a search on "budget deficit" (not in quotes) at the wire service's national site indicates that it's not present there at all. The national site's only mention of March's deficit is in the sixth of 13 listings at a "Business Highlights" summary. It reads as follows (bolds are mine throughout this post):