Advice Unasked

Croak of the Day

2012-01-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

Is this really my first post of 2012? So it is. Well, I've been busy. And it's just a "what he said."

Anyhow, today's Croak of the Day goes to Robert Reich.

The Republican right thinks Paul’s views on the economy are responsible for this fire among the young. I just now squared off with Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore on Larry’s CNBC program, both of whom are convinced young people are attracted by Paul’s strict adherence to the views of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, and Paul’s desire to move America back to the gold standard.
Wrong. The young are flocking to Ron Paul because he wants to slice military spending, bring our troops home, stop government spying on American citizens for the purpose of homeland security, and legalize pot.--link

Occupy the Ballot Box?

2011-12-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, in Balloon Juice comments, I wrote:

There are factions of Occupy that are quite radical; it is an anarchist movement, after all. Rather like a US political party internally, come to think of it. Link

Could it be? Could Occupy be the seed of the next major US political party? Let's see: young people, check. Women, check. Libertarian left, check.

Maybe...

On Occupy and Violence

2011-11-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

In answer to Ian Welsh, advocating that Occupy tolerate violent anarchism.

Occupy is an anarchist movement with or without the violence. I do not see how inviting a crackdown is going to help Occupy as a political movement: when it comes to violence, Occupy is not a patch on the government, or even private security forces. Occupy's great strength lies in its widespread popular support, and in the real grievances it gives voice to. If it turns into a factionalized violent movement, it will lose that support and much of its power.

[Later thought: violence is inherently authoritarian. Can anarchism ever be violent?]

Political Spectrum, 1931 vs. 2011

2011-10-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

[In response to Jay Ackroyd at Balloon Juice, comment, Eschaton, post, and DougJ at Balloon Juice, post. Originally posted in response to DougJ, lightly edited.]

A generation ago what Jay and Stuart are calling “centrism” and what you are calling “centrist corporatism” would have been simply called “conservatism.” Two generations ago, what you are calling “the outright insanity of conservatism” would have been called fascism.

In FDR’s time, the far right of the political spectrum was fascist and the far left was communist; the center was what FDR called liberal. Now the political spectrum is between the Tea Party Republicans—fascist in all but name—and the liberals. Unsurprisingly, then, the center of debate in Congress is what Doug has called “centrist corporatism.”

We had, until recently, lost the far left of the political spectrum, and the moderate had been marginalized. The how and why of this are not entirely clear. The anti-union activism of Reagan and his successors was part of the story, as was the fall of the Soviet Union. Probably the imperial Presidency; the intense militarism of the Cold War period, which continues to this day; and the consolidation and politicization of the national news media that was enabled by Reagan-era policies also contributed

So a big part of the story was a successful reactionary movement that has emerged into politics as “centrism.”

And now Occupy, enabled by new technology, ideology, and vaguely Gandhian tactics, brings back left anarchism. It’s an astonishing development, and one which I only dimly foresaw. In stated policy Occupy is liberal: at the popular center. But in practice it is pure left anarchist. How this will play out in electoral politics—or if it will play out, or if it will be silenced for years to come—remains to be seen.

Thinking it over, I think I see the short-term triumph of centrism. Occupy has already shifted the terms of debate far enough that the radical right looks less credible and I think this will tell in the 2012 elections. But I do not see actual liberal, or even a bit further left, policies being adopted at the Federal level for some years to come. I've been predicting 2020 as the watershed year and this still seems plausible: it will take time to raise a new generation of liberal politicians and bring the Supreme Court back to the true center. But just possibly it will be faster: if the Obama administration, like that of LBJ, decides that it is best to side with the reformers. On the other hand, it could also be slower: the reactionaries are deeply entrenched and very wealthy.

How do we shift the balance? Can we?

"Important Ideas Have Been Discovered—or, Rather, Rediscovered"

2011-10-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

Mark Thoma commenting on John Cassidy's article on Keynes, link.

Paul Krugman commenting on Thoma and Cassidy in The Amnesiac Economy.

And then I read Andrew Sullivan writing about how he learned to love the "hippies" of Occupy, link. Sully says some sensible things:

The theme that connects them all is disenfranchisement, the sense that the world is shifting deeply and inexorably beyond our ability to control it through our democratic institutions. You can call this many things, but a “democratic deficit” gets to the nub of it. Democracy means rule by the people—however rough-edged, however blunted by representative government, however imperfect. But everywhere, the people feel as if someone else is now ruling them—and see no way to regain control.

This could have been written in 1931. It isn't only economists who have forgotten. Activists, commentators, and political scientists have forgotten, too.

I wonder if Occupy remembers?

Iraqi Veteran Critically Injured by Police at Occupy Oakland

2011-10-27T02:23:00.000-07:00

The Oakland Tribune has the story.

Trying to feed the corvids, are we?

What's striking is that the decision of police to undertake action against OWS seems to bear no relationship to the conduct of the protesters. OWS seems to be a kind of Rorschach blot for local governments: they see what they want in it, and act accordingly.

Afterthought: OWS and the Overton Window

2011-10-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

Cole, missing the point,

Now if we can just focus this energy into primary challenges and swing the Democratic members of the money party to the left

Not going to be the Democrats, John. May not be any party like we recognize. I don't see how any major US political party can win on liberalism in the current media and rhetorical environment.

I am starting to believe that electronic media has broken the forms of the US government. It is hard to escape the sense that any Presidential candidate now must act a bit like Ronald Reagan: that looking Presidential has overwhelmed executive competence as the requirement for gaining office. In the system, top to bottom, we have a triumph of symbol over substance. And so people hold liberal beliefs, but make conservative votes.

There's a lot to be thought out here, and I have only the time for occasional croaks. But what would a government for a mediated world look like?

Hoocoodanode: OWS and the Overton Window

2011-10-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

John Cole, editor and publisher of Balloon Juice, magnificently missing the point:

I have to admit to being kind of shocked that we are a month into #OWS and no one has pointed out that THIS is how you move the Overton window. Not by writing whiny blog posts about how Obama let you down. Now if we can just focus this energy into primary challenges and swing the Democratic members of the money party to the left…, post

Phoenix Woman, at Firedoglake, about a week previous:

The greatest value so far (and possibly in the long run as well) of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been not so much in the shaping of electoral politics — though it’s already starting to influence that somewhat — but in its shoving the Overton Window away from the far right end of the spectrum, far enough away to make talk of meaningful solutions possible, which is the first step towards making them politically viable, post

Editorial FAIL!

John missed it because he hates FDL so much. But there's another point: I am not sure that Occupy could have made a difference earlier. We had to get to the point where the consensus on austerity had emerged, which it did in the 10-year deficit-reduction deal, before an opposition could form. It all sounds very Hegelian.

Croak!

[2011.10.20 Weasel-sentence removed.]

Feeding Corvids: the Death Penalty

2011-10-04T04:39:00.000-07:00

On Troy Davis:

I am struck by the way all of the highest authorities of the USA found reasons not to intervene. The Supreme Court, Congress, the President, all found reasons not to act, and now a man who is likely innocent has been killed by the state of Georgia. No citizen is safe from a corrupt state government, it appears. Why is there not more concern for your own lives and freedoms, if not compassion for Troy Davis?

On Awlaki:

And what is to prevent any future administration from declaring any of you “enemies of the state” and ordering you killed without a trial?

On Amanda Knox:

Released, Guardian article, link.
"If Amanda Knox had been in Georgia’s legal system, she would probably be dead instead of on an airplane home."--Juan Cole, link.
But Juan, you forget that Knox is white.

Obama and Blacks

2011-09-20T22:58:00.000-07:00

I am surprised at how bitter I have become about the Obama administration's failings and its continued popularity, especially among people who it is harming more than most. Ah, well. More food for corvids.

A slightly different version of this got me banned from Ta-Nehisi Coates comments. I will therefore say here that anyone who uses these remarks in support of racism, to claim that Obama is racist, or to claim that I believe Obama is racist is twisting my words, and doing so without my support. The final question is not to me rhetorical.

The fact of Obama's blackness is an enormous boon to black people everywhere in the world. It is such an enormous symbolic victory, to have a black President of the United States of America. And yet Obama's economic and immigration policies fall hard on US blacks. Statistics show that blacks were among the groups hardest hit by the mortgage crisis and that the current high rate of unemployment is also hitting blacks very hard. The Obama administration has done very little about either problem. Obama's intensification of immigration enforcement has granted legitimacy to anti-Muslim bigots and anti-Latino racists, and this, in turn, supports all racism.
I am reminded of Ronald Reagan, who Obama admires. Reagan played the "man of the people" for the white working class, all the while supporting policies that impoverished that class. And now we have Obama, standing as the voice of US blacks and all the while supporting policies that are continuing to impoverish and harm US blacks.
Does the content of Obama's character matter more than the color of his skin?

Update, the following morning: I find the above incredibly sad. It is only one betrayal in a global pattern of betrayals: so many democratically elected leaders are acting against the interests and, often, the expressed will of their publics, but Obama was elected with so much hope and with so much love and--this?

There's more, I think, to say about the betrayals of democracy of the past 30 years, but right now I am too sick at heart.

Two Letters to My Senator, Who Is On the Super-Committee

2011-09-17T00:34:00.000-07:00

These were written in response to a letter which began:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the recent passage of an increase in the United States' debt ceiling. It is good to hear from you.
I share your concerns about our nation's growing national debt and deficit, and I believe that we must to work together to bring down the debt responsibly. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to not burden them with unsustainable debt.

One I sent, one I didn't. The first version was titled, "The Cuts Have Your Name on Them." The second one was titled, "Raise your Voice!"

They both had the same beginning:

The short-term deficit is not a problem. The head of the Congress own Budget Office has told you so. If you don't want to listen to him, you might try the IMF. If even that is too much trouble, look up Hoover in 1930, FDR in 1937, or Ireland and the UK right now.
Austerity doesn't work in this kind of depression. This is well documented.

"The Cuts Have Your Name on Them" went on:

And there have been riots in London.
And I hold you accountable for any deaths that come from the cuts that are planned. If my family members die from Medicare cuts, or Medicaid cuts, I will remember that those cuts have your name on them.
And I do not think I am alone.

"Raise your Voice" ended:

Maybe the Democrats are as weak as their apologists claim. Maybe there is nothing you, or your party leadership, can do but accede to the demands of the radical right. But even the weakest politician has a voice. Use yours!

Capitalism 2.0

2011-09-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Or perhaps "New Capitalism."

This was the name we came up with at the end of Thursday night's Virtually Speaking. Jay and Stuart we arguing for rehabilitating capitalism with regulation and some direct governmental programs like health care. I suspect we are past trying that trick again, but maybe if we start in that direction, we will end up with something worthwhile. Anything has to be better than continuing as we have.

So what is Capitalism 2.0? Well, Jay and Stuart didn't say. So I'm going to croak something out.

First, comprehensive regulation of banking on Keynesian lines, by which is meant regulation of "any institution that borrows short-term and uses the funds to make longer-term, illiquid investments" (Krugman, "The Profession and the Crisis," link.) This is not quite, as Keynes suggested, "euthanasia of the rentier" (Keynes, The General Theory, link), but it is the domestication of the rentier.

Second, comprehensive national regulation of limited-liability business organizations, corporations. The legal recognition that legal artificial persons are different from natural persons, and have only the rights granted by law and charter.

Third, creation of new social institutions:

A highly-regulated comprehensive health care system.
Unions, not as an adjunct to commercial corporations, but as full partners in corporate operations.
Environmental protection organizations at all levels of government.

Now, this is a very broad-brush program, and a very radical one. Every element is subject to rethinking, and I would very much like input from Jay and Stuart, as well as experts in the fields covered.

Croak!

[minor changes made the day after and the day after that]

More Messaging

2011-09-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

That's my reaction to the speech yesterday.

There's at most 10% of the needed stimulus, and plans for five times as many cuts. But, hey, Obama said "jobs, jobs, jobs." It will help him get re-elected and, as far as I can tell, in Obama's mind, getting re-elected is more important than 15% unemployment.

That was a more bitter croak than I expected to write. But it seems that Obama, like his model Reagan, is much more concerned with his public image than anything that is good for the USA. Are we to take him, then, as a man dominated by the kind of all-consuming vanity which usually afflicts actors? Perhaps yes. He seems to want to look presidential rather than be President.

The Keynesian Story

2011-08-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how much of a future the Tea Party Republicans have; their approval ratings are incredibly low. It may be they will just slink back to their corners after the next election.

But the Wall Street Republican/conservative Democratic coalition will go on and on. That, I think, is the long-term enemy.

We need to make the case for Keynesian economic policies. The right has all the good stories, but they're propaganda for policies that fail, just as the communists had good stories, but couldn't actually create and run a government that delivered freedom and equality.

Keynesian policies work, but we don't have stories to tell, so we can't persuade people to vote for them.

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, link.

Comparing Barack Obama and James Buchanan

2011-08-12T12:16:00.001-07:00

Prof. Tim Burke of Swarthmore draws really interesting comparisons between Barack Obama and James Buchanan, the US President just before Lincoln, post:

The basic error was that Buchanan approached American politics in procedural or legal terms at a moment when the reigning political conflicts in American life were no longer in any sense shaped or resolved by procedural or legal processes. He waited passively for legal decisions to determine his course of action, and when the Dred Scott decision dropped in his lap, he regarded that as the end of the matter. Open conflict in Kansas baffled him, and again he turned to a safely procedural answer (advocating that Kansas enter the Union as a slave state).

Dead Cats, Bouncing Down the Stairs

2011-08-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

We've had an extraordinary sell-off in the global securities markets. Everyone is down. As I wrote over on Jared Bernstein's blog, I think the deal dashed all hopes for a recovery in the short term. Before, there was still some hope that matters might get better, and that at least the programs currently in place would stay in place. Now both of those are gone. I suppose one could view this as a correction. Perhaps the big investors have gone back to their models, factored in a lost decade, and are shifting their bets, going from stock to bonds. If this is so, I suppose this would become a trend, and some of the slack in interest rates would be taken up. I wonder if, ultimately, bond prices would rise.

(And, in fact, investors are buying up Treasuries like they are going out of style.)

On the other hand, it is interesting that the big fund managers are apparently now mostly Keynesians--otherwise we'd expect to see a jump in stocks, in the belief that deficit cutting would lead to growth. In another generation, this may penetrate the marble halls and marble heads of the world's capitals.

Croak!

Scourging Themselves

2011-08-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that the apparently hedonistic US culture is no such thing. Most USers trust pain much more than joy. And that is why, though there is much complaining, the United States has embraced austerity as a solution to its economic problems.

Who needs slavemasters, when the citizens are willing to scourge themselves?

Croak!

The Greater Depression

2011-08-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

As usual where Obama is one of the lead negotiators, the deal is worse than it need be.

Paul Krugman has been calling this the Lesser Depression. But if the austerity budget holds in Congress, it will become the Greater Depression. There will be no WPA, no new government programs to help people in bad times. The austerity budget commits the government cutting what programs there are. Education funding will be cut, as will research. There will be nothing to keep cyclical unemployment from becoming structural unemployment.

I wonder how long it will take to get there? Is there any hope that Congress or the President will see sense before 2020?

(First sentence added the following day. Two weasel words removed a month after initial publication.)

Google+, Pseudonyms, and Sexism

2011-08-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

Google+'s "real" names policy is sexist, and an expression of privilege.

The largest group of internet users who use pseudonyms on the internet is probably women, and they do it because anyone with a woman's name on the internet is subject to harassment and stalking, and also because writing is often taken more seriously if it comes under a male name. So forbidding pseudonyms, whatever the intention, is sexist. Google's policy protects the abuses of privilege.

Google does not go to the expense of actually authenticating its users. They end up with names that their software accepts: not real names, but plausible names. Do not trust a Google+ name, regardless of Google's policies: such names are in no way trustworthy.

It is not just women who are harmed by this policy: it's everyone who is put at risk by speaking their minds under an easily-traceable name, or who is marginalized because of the use of their name. Police officers. Radio or television personalities. Closeted gay people. People with a violent exes. People who don't want their bosses snooping on them. Union organizers. Political activists at risk of their lives and freedoms.

Without pseudonyms, Salaam Pax could not have posted from Baghdad. George Eliot might not have published, and might have vanished without a trace if she had. Mark Twain would have had a different career.

The 800-pound gorillas in the room which everyone is ignoring is abuses on the part of US government security agencies, the data miners, the banking system, and the employment system. It's likely that government security agencies played a significant role in devising this policy, and the data miners that are both major Google customers and themselves sellers to the security agencies.

"Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice."

Croak!

Feeding Corvids

2011-07-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

The outlines of a deal are emerging in Congress. It looks very very bad. Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler has a summary, article.

Commentary:

Jane Hamsher in a spitting-mad post:

Few [of the liberal Congresspeople who will vote for this deal] will admit they were willing to cast old people into poverty and deny them medical treatment for the sake of Barack Obama’s 2012 election hopes. Post.

Digby,

That isn't "shared sacrifice," it's asking the poorest, oldest and sickest among us to give up a piece of their meager security in exchange for the wealthy giving up some tip money and the defense industry giving up a couple of points of profit. Post.

"We are the sacrifice."

I think default might actually be better than this deal.

Croak!

Can we call them "fascists" yet, mommy?

2011-07-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now interview with Eva Larsson, wife of the late novelist Steig Larsson, whose life work was largely anti-fascist activism. The recent Norwegian terrorist is discussed. See also Searchlight Magazine.

"We Are the Sacrifice"

2011-07-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

If enacted, [the Boehner budget-cutting proposal] could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history. Statement.

The Reid and Obama proposals are little better.

Let the children of the wealthy and powerful go fight on the front lines in one of their many wars, and then we will listen when the leaders they sell us talk about "shared sacrifice."

Meantime, as one son of Ulster said while marching to the Somme, "We're not making a sacrifice. Jesus, you've seen this war. We are the sacrifice."

Croak!

Even the Mainstream Types Are Talking About a New Party

2011-07-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

[This was written for comments on this post over at Economists View. It didn't run, for whatever reason. So here it is.]

I think a new party could move in on the Democrats from the left, and reduce the Republicans to third party status. The Democratic Party has managed to alienate both women and young people so a new party would have a natural constituency.

Progressives could also pursue electoral and legislative reforms that would make third parties possible: instant runoff or range voting and proportional representation.

I've been writing about this for years, search link 1, search link 2.

Was Murdoch Involved in Climate E-mail Break-in?

2011-07-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

It is speculated that Murdoch's Neil Wallis, participated in the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit breakin, and sabotaged the PR job afterwards, much like an arsonist firefighter.

It is known that Wallis, the News International Executive Editor who was in charge of their electronic break-ins was reporting back to News International at the same time he was ostensibly working for Scotland Yard on those break-ins. He was also the person hired by the University of East Anglia to handle PR in their e-mail break-in. Did he do it twice?

Olbermann video: http://current.com/entertainment/movies/93351109_countdown-with-keith-olbermann-07-20-2011-1a-murdoch-and-climate-gate.htm (the Wallis coverage starts at 5:57.)

Olbermann transcript: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/20/996814/-When-MurdochGate-Met-ClimateGate

Discussion by Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/19/272361/news-corp-hacked-climategate-emails-time-for-an-independent-investigation/ Croak!

Obama employment crisis croak

2011-07-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

In response to Ta-Nehisi Coates post.

This is Obama's employment crisis. He's working really hard for it. Maybe he wants to lose--it makes about as much sense as any other explanation of Administration policy.
Croak!
But, really, I don't think he will. Look at the Republican clown car, er, field.

In Response to Krugman: should Democrats in Congress vote for it?

2011-07-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Krugman, via Economists View post:

Anyway, I don’t believe that it’s all political calculation. Watching Mr. Obama and listening to his recent statements, it’s hard not to get the impression that he is now turning for advice to people who really believe that the deficit, not unemployment, is the top issue facing America..., and who also believe that the great bulk of deficit reduction should come from spending cuts. It’s worth noting that even Republicans weren’t suggesting cuts to Social Security; this is something Mr. Obama and those he listens to apparently want for its own sake.
Which raises the big question: If a debt deal does emerge, and it overwhelmingly reflects conservative priorities and ideology, should Democrats in Congress vote for it?

This birds take is, the House Democrats would be best opposing; let the Senate Democrats do as they wish.

The House Democrats are largely progressive and quickly subject to public outrage. There's no victory for them--let the Republicans take the hit.

The Senate Democrats, on the other hand, are largely conservative. The conservatives won't hurt in the short term from this; let the liberals refuse to participate, and the conservatives form a coalition with the Republicans.

New party, still in the works.

Bipartisanship or, "What Digby Said"

2011-07-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

So the stage is set. The conservative Democrats, led by Obama and Reid, will cut a compromise with the Wall Street Republicans, led by Boehner and McConnell. This will include substantial austerity for the lower class and continued support and amnesty for the upper class. Going to be a rocky decade; think 1950s politics combined with 1930s economics. As progressives, we need to turn to the question of how to deal with such a decade with very little support from national elected officials.

The Combined Corvids of North America thank the government of the United States for this rich gift of food.

The Content of His Character

2011-06-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

Jack Balkin, on the Obama administration arguing that the USA isn't really at war in Libya, post.

If one is disturbed by Bush's misuse of the process for vetting legal questions, one should be equally disturbed by Obama's irregular procedures. [...] The fact that Obama is a former professor of constitutional law does not justify his scuttling practices that are designed, over long periods of time, to improve legal deliberations and help ensure that presidents conform to the law.

Progressives had hoped that Obama was going to be one of the great and rare presidents, who, like Washington and Juarez, have been able to renounce power for the greater good. With this action, he shows clearly he is not. Yet that is what is needed to end this burst of authoritarianism in the USA and the Western world.

Croak!

Fascism Express

2011-06-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

News of the past few days has brought:

A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the state legislature is exempt from open meeting laws, and its questionably-passed law stripping the state's public empolyye unions of most of their bargaining rights therefore stands. Report. The ruling is, at its base, an abrogation of law.
Darrell Issa, Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, interfering with the testimony of Democratic witnesses. Report & analysis.
An amazingly racist and sexist campaign ad. Report.

If the courts have been corrupted, and the legislature is dominated by the radical right, what is to stop the legislature, or the shadowy powers behind it, from dismantling the rule of law completely? Totalitarian states have the forms of democracy. They have legislatures, courts, unions. But none of them are free to act: the power is centralized in a small group. This is how legislation is created in a totalitarian state. The rulers say what the legislation is, distribute it to their tame legislature, silence or stifle all opposition, and then use their captive courts to interpret the law in their favor.

The legislation here comes from the State Policy Network, funded by a few wealthy right-wing radicals. We only know some of their names. The content of the legislative program is anti-union, anti-environmentalist, sexist, racist, corporatist, classist: in a word, fascist.

Now what? Do we step off the train?

Postscript, 2011.06.16: Today brings the news that the CIA was asked to attack the reputation of Juan Cole, one of the most informed public critics of the Iraq war. Report.

Weinergate croak

2011-06-08T05:59:00.001-07:00

It has become way too easy to find and publish someone's steamy love letters.

Short Labor Croak

2011-06-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

Jared Bernstein wrote:

Strengthening of labor laws is important. Most objective observers judge the playing field for union organizing to be seriously tilted against forming a union. Union-busting—mostly by making sure elections to recognize a union fail—has become a huge business; I’ve heard there are law firms that offer money-back guarantees. A functional NLRB is very important in this space and as you can imagine, they were not exactly loaded for bear during the Bush years. But they’re back now and have some good ideas (and they can make rule changes, as opposed to legislative ones, which are a much heavier lift). I’ll try to write about them soon.

My response, in comments:

The hell with “strengthening” labor laws. Repeal Taft-Hartley, and then we’ll talk. As a start, Obama could appoint pro-labor NRLB members as he gets the chance. Heck, I’d settle for neutral members.
(And you know, and I know, that there isn’t a chance of either of those before 2012, and probably not before 2020. The fight continues.)

Coulds, Part II

2011-06-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

I realized that I'd written, in the context of a reply to John Cole, a not-bad list of coulds. I've updated them slightly, but I think they stand up pretty well.

Get out there & start talking up Keynsianism. Remind people of Hoover’s failure in 1930, and FDR’s budget balancing in 1937. Criticize the investment banks for gross malfeasance, the mortgage banks for fraud, and the health insurance companies for price-gouging.
Get out there & start talking environmentalism. Start talking science. Start talking jobs. Start talking union. Start talking women’s rights. Start talking freedom and equality—remember those?
Investigate the Koch brothers and the De Vos family. Investigate ALEC. Investigate the State Policy Network.
Stop lying to the public. Stop telling people it’s really OK when no way it is. Stop making deals with the devil.

DougJ at Balloon Juice Sees Fascists

2011-06-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

DougJ:

I think that politically, it might be smart for Republicans to force a default this summer and blow up the economy. [...] I would not have said this before they all voted for Vouchercare. [...] If the economy goes into true free fall, they’ve got a very good shot to unseat Obama. [...] Once they’re in, they should find some pretext to abolish labor unions as much as possible and then try to disenfranchise as many younger and non-white people as they can, after extended DOJ “investigation”/Congressional hearings/Breitbart circuses about teh voter fraud.

He is, of course, describing a fascist revolution, and this is made the stronger by his not recognizing what he is describing.

So what do I think?

Well...

There are two factions in the Republicans: the Wall Street faction (Pete Peterson, et al) and the nationalism-values-and-racism aka Tea Party faction (DeVos, Prince, Koch brothers, et al.) The Wall Streeters obviously don’t want a default. The Tea Partiers don’t care; I've met some who are convinced that it would make no difference at all. It is possible that some of the Tea Party leaders are using actual fascist history as a model.

There's a historical precedent in the rise of the Nazis: the German equivalent of the Wall Street faction invited the Tea Party faction in and, in hard times, found the Tea Party faction was popular. A split on the left, between Stalinists and democratic socialists, prevented an effective unified opposition.

The US situation is considerably different. There is no effective left. I suppose the current governing coalition of Wall Street Republicans and conservative Democrats might successfully oppose the Tea Party Republicans, but it would be the ruin of both parties, and the end of the Democratic progressive faction.

My guess is no revolution, but also no substantial change. Continued conservative governance, with the Tea Party Republicans become increasingly shrill until the next election, after which they will probably lose power. As I wrote previously, I see nothing that will lead the USA out of its current political deadlock and economic depression. Which means...

More food for corvids. Croak!

[2011.06.08: minor copy errors (capitalization and verb tense) corrected]

To Jared Berstein, on shoulds and coulds

2011-05-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

Jared Bernstein writes:

Especially re the WPA-idea, this got me thinking about the relative value of important voices like Paul’s promoting what we should do right now as opposed to what, given political constraints, we could do. And I think now is a good time to emphasize the latter.

My reply in comments, slightly edited, which I record here, since I doubt this will clear moderation.

What coulds?

You did all you could, or at least you say you did. It wasn't anything near enough. Maybe the administration did do all that it could. The administration and the Democrats now own the new depression and as far as I can tell, it's going to last for ten years.

A 30-year propaganda campaign created the Tea Party Republicans. They were not born from one mortgage modification. They started as a tiny group of radicals given a megaphone by the Koch Brothers and the DeVos family, and perhaps a few other wealthy family groups. That opposition network, ALEC, the State Policy Network, and perhaps other radical right organizations that I don't yet know the names of, will oppose anything that will bring a real improvement. Their Supreme Court judges--which your party allowed to be confirmed--have allowed them even greater influence in the Citizens United decision.

So there's no sense appeasing them: they will try to shoot down anything that might make a real difference.

In the long term the demographics are changing. In the long term most of the financial fallen angels of the conservative movement will die, and their children will find other things to do with their vast ill-gotten wealth. About all that I can see to do now is to teach the truth and begin reforms that will lay the groundwork for new politics in the future. So Paul Krugman is on target: he is teaching. I do not know how he does it, how he keeps on going, day after day, as the developed world slides deeper and deeper into its self-imposed misery.

I am not a young bird. You and Paul Krugman are about my age. I expect we will all be old before we see any substantive positive changes.

Postscript: when a very young Paul Krugman dreamed of being Hari Seldon, I doubt that he considered that Seldon's vision of a falling empire, and of mitigating the fall, was one of centuries of heartbreak, though one with an ultimately positive outcome. Asimov, who created Seldon, never fully engaged the emotional impact of Seldon's vision. But heartbreak it was, and all Seldon could do was lessen the harm. There is perhaps some relevance to the current situation, here.

Losing, LOSING, and Losing BAD: US Electoral Croak

2011-05-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

Losing is getting a corporate-insurance health care system. LOSING is having Medicare dismantled. Losing BAD is what voting for third parties gets you in the current system--it actually works in favor of your enemies. (Exception: if the Republicans turn into a regional party, as seems likely, voting for a third party might work.)

Paul Ryan: Outdoing the Left

2011-05-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

It appears that Paul Ryan has succeeded in doing what the combined might (hah!) of the leftist media (hah!) could not: make a single-payer health care system popular in the USA.

Croak!

Overlords of Our Democracy

2011-05-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

[This comes from a series of comment responses I wrote over on Balloon Juice, where I realized that everyone in a discussion was more interested in rebutting a sharp criticism of Obama than engaging a policy issue. Which led to these remarks.]

Is not it possible to believe that Obama is wrong and doing a bad job in some policy areas, yet doing a good job in others, without hating America? Must all criticism of a sitting President be treated as lèse majesté? Following on that, this thought: if one treats all criticism of a ruler as a result of personal animosity, there is no need to engage the substance of any criticisms. This has been a feature of US political discourse since Nixon at least. I find it profoundly undemocratic, and wonder why it gets so little notice.

Apparently this is the political discourse of empire. We welcome the new overlords of our democracy! Oh, wait...

I wonder if Schlesinger wrote about this in The Imperial Presidency?

[edited 2010.05.28. Punctuation changed and a paragraph break removed.]

Messaging

2011-05-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

Doug, over at Balloon Juice, on the Republican backing away from their Medicare proposal:

What we’ve got here is more than failure to communicate […] Doug Mataconis thinks that convincing the public to gut Medicare may be as simple as putting together a Draper-worthy PR blitz [...] It isn’t being done because it can’t be done. The Ryan plan wasn’t ineptitude with insufficient cover, it was a spectacularly slick roll out of a product that no one wants to buy. […]

But it’s not just Teh R’s—it’s a disease of US politics. Me, last November:

Faced with an election that is the crystallized result of essence of policy failure, Obama decides that he…sent the wrong message.

To win the first election you have to “message.” To win the next election you have to deliver. Obama didn’t deliver on jobs, housing, and banking, and it’s pretty hard to message that away. Now the Republicans are offering poison and calling it medicine, and it’s pretty hard to message that away, too.

(This, by the way, is part of why Krugman is so successful at prediction: he looks at things which can reliably be measured and relies on models measured against actual history—on scientific knowledge, in other words—and this takes him past the messaging.)

The overall disease is probably a result of Really Really Badly not wanting to face reality, on the part of the leadership of both parties. Neither party wants to alienate the wealthy and powerful, neither party wants to bell the Dragon (Chinese currency policy), neither party wants to take a strong environmentalist stance, neither party wants to tell the public they were wrong about economics for the past 30 years. So we get “messaging” instead.

On Keynes and Marx

2011-05-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

Brad Delong is complaining about Marx, and defending Keynes from charges of being a central planning advocate again. I wrote two comments, and these seem to have merged into one thing. So far, Delong has not run them, and I don't know that he will--he only runs a few of my comments. So here they are.

"A somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment" (as Keynes advocated, in his own words) is pretty damn socialist, really. It strikes right to the heart of wealth and power, in arguing for democratic governance of the financial system. But Keynes was not an advocate of minutely-detailed planning, no. Is this unfair to the rich? I suppose so. But Keynes goes on to explore the alternatives and finds them wanting.

A Marxist might say that Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" would use Keynsianism. Indeed, what else could it use? But for Marxists a Keynsian system would be only a step on the way to a fully Communist system, which did not use money at all.

Delong: "[Marx] believes there's something wrong about credit."

He believed there was something wrong about money, at least if he held to the viewpoint expressed "The Power of Money" (1844.) In TPOM Marx objected that money falsifies human relations, a point still worth attending to, but one difficult to erect an economics on. To some extent it seems to me that, in that essay, Marx was objecting to the constraints of physicality and embodiment.

I think Delong was objecting that Marx had not read, or was not, Keynes. But Keynes read Marx, not the other way around, and I do not see how it could have been otherwise. Is it not possible to regard Marx as an important and useful historical theorist or philosopher, without insisting that he was entirely right or entirely wrong? A forerunner of a still-emerging social science, in the way that, perhaps, Copernicus was a forerunner of what has since become physics? The Copernican system still used perfect circles and epicycles; it was not particularly useful for computation. But by putting the Sun at the center, Copernicus made it possible for Kepler and then Newton to do their work. Marx put system at the center of economics, rather than the wealthy or powerful, and paved the way for thinking about economics without defining economics in terms of central figures or groups. Which might put Keynes in the position of Kepler or Newton. And, as with physics, economics advances, one tombstone at a time. It is only 65 years since Keynes death; only a few more years since his major works were published. That is not so very long for a revolution in thought.

Counting the votes, seeing the forest

2011-04-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

There is much rejoicing that not all of the House Republicans voted for the budget measure. But this isn't a proof that Boehner didn't have the votes; after all some House Democrats voted for it.

Let us look at the forest—the political consensus—rather than the trees—individual politicians. The vote shows that a bipartisan coalition of conservative Democrats and non-Tea Party Republicans is the governing consensus of the USA. Which was already pretty obvious.

Now…will this coalition address unemployment? Nope? The housing crisis? Only on technical issues. The banking disaster? Nope.

...and global climate change and other international environmental issues?

Houston, we have a problem.

Croak!

On the Deficit Speech

2011-04-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

Obama is campaigning, at least that's my take on it. And, as with all of Obama's campaign speeches, it's important to listen to what is not there. I like Thoma's remarks on the speech; he quotes Krugman and Delong and adds "this proposal turns its back on those who are still unemployed." And also the people who are being thrown out of their homes and the people who want a trustworthy banking system.

This will become the leftmost marker of Congressional debate, with the rightmost being very far right: the Ryan plan. So what we get will likely be worse than this in significant ways. Obama may be hoping that, like Reagan, he can use his popularity to pressure Congress. With high unemployment and people losing their homes every day, I don't see how. Half the public, maybe, is convinced that cutting social programs will somehow magically restore their jobs, and none of our elected leaders have even tried to kill that zombie idea: maybe it has eaten their brains.

Hard times, no leadership.

A Brief Note on Uncritical Support of Obama

2011-04-13T08:48:00.001-07:00

Personal loyalty to rulers is not a democratic virtue.

"Serious People"

2011-04-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

When I hear people talking about how a plan is "serious" about the US budget, when I hear talk of "necessary" pain, I know that that the pain is unnecessary and the plan is junk. A person who has made bad mistakes, and who needs to do hard things in their life to set them as right as possible, may talk like this. But that's not where this is at. This about making the elderly and poor suffer, and further impoverishing the majority of the USA.

And that is what it takes to be "serious" in the politics of these times: making your "inferiors" suffer. Because, if the Serious People couldn't do this, they might have to undertake some austerity in their own lives.

What the Democrats Might Do

2011-04-10T10:52:00.001-07:00

John Cole, complaining about criticism of Obama and the Democratic Party leadership.

I honestly don’t know what exactly the Dems are supposed to do.

He goes on to say “raise more money, volunteer more time, and walk more precincts in 2012”—to work even harder for a party and a leadership that has consistently failed and often betrayed him. I don't agree, so instead I offer this answer, slightly edited from comments.

Get out there & start talking up Keynsianism. Remind people how of Hoover’s failure in 1930, and FDR’s budget balancing in 1937. Criticize the investment banks for gross malfeasance, the mortgage banks for fraud, and the health insurance companies for price-gouging.
Get out there & start talking environmentalism. Start talking science. Start talking jobs. Start talking union. Start talking women’s rights. Start talking freedom and equality—remember those?
Investigate the Koch Brothers. Investigate ALEC.
Stop lying to the public. Stop telling people it’s really OK when no way it is. Stop making deals with the devil.

Without these things—without some positive program and the will to advocate it—“raise more money, volunteer more time, and walk more precincts in 2012” will at best keep matters as they are, and matters as they are are pretty grim. I don’t believe the Tea Party Republicans can sustain their fever pitch of madness, even with ALEC/Koch funding. They are losing credibility with the public, and they will not regain it. But without some realistic, compassionate alternative there will be no change, except from the currents of history.

On Intervention in the Middle East

2011-03-31T00:17:00.000-07:00

Comment from an FDL discussion of the ethics of the military intervention in Libya (Jane Hamsher is against it):

But I’m wondering what the smart folks here think the U.S. response to all these rebellious and seemingly democratic movements in the M.E. and Africa ought to be? (RFShunt, ***)

My general take on this is that peaceful support of freedom and democracy is always both ethical and, in the long term, most likely to produce the best results for the USA and the world, in many different ways.

Violence is a much harder question. I do not think it wise for the world to sit by while mass murder is done, but the why and how of military intervention troubles me. In theory, the United Nations exists partly to prevent exactly what the UN has so far prevented Qaddafi from doing. For this to end well though, military intervention has to be undertaken in the right way, and it is probably best it is undertaken for the right reasons. Right reasons we can fairly say we don’t have here: none of the leaders of this intervention have clean hands, though it is possible that Obama and Clinton are motivated by a genuine desire to see justice done. Obama does have his moments, and this may be one of them. Based on her history, I think Hilary Clinton is also motivated by humanitarian concerns. However, they can only get support for this because the US hawks are also interested in intervention, and their reasons are far less savory. As to the right way, the UN would have to provide disinterested support for freedom and democracy in Libya, and the support would have to be enough and last long enough for the rebels to win. Disinterested support for freedom and democracy isn’t in the picture, and enough support for enough time also may not be–wars are expensive.

So it’s going to depend. This is not badly begun, but I do not, personally, have much hope that it will end well.

Well, what do you expect from a raven?

Croak!

When you stare into ALEC, ALEC stares back into you

2011-03-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

University of Wisconsin professor of history William Cronon, staring into ALEC:

After watching the sudden and impressively well-organized wave of legislation being introduced into state legislatures that all seem to be pursuing parallel goals only tangentially related to current fiscal challenges–ending collective bargaining rights for public employees, requiring photo IDs at the ballot box, rolling back environmental protections, privileging property rights over civil rights, and so on–I’ve found myself wondering where all of this legislation is coming from.

And ALEC staring back.

Here’s the headline: the Wisconsin Republican Party has issued an Open Records Law request for access to my emails since January 1 in response to a blog entry I posted on March 15 concerning the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in influencing recent legislation in this state and across the country. I find this a disturbing development, and hope readers will bear with me as I explain the strange circumstances in which I find myself as a result.

Via Josh Marshall at TPM. Personally, I think ALEC could do with some attention from the police, or at least Anonymous and Wikileaks.

A further reaction

2011-03-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

President Obama spent many years associated with the University of Chicago. To what extent did the arrogance and elitism of the Chicago-school economists influence his thinking, and to what extent does their current despair, denial, and anger influence his governing?

Saltwater, Freshwater, and Economic Policy: a reaction to a Brad Delong interview

2011-03-25T04:10:00.000-07:00

The interview was conducted by Jay Ackroyd of Virtually Speaking, you can listen to it here (audio at link) or download it from iTunes as a podcast, and I hope you will do one or the other--in my opinion it is the best discussion I've heard of the personalities and politics involved in the recent and on-going economic meltdown.

My understanding of part of what was said was that Prof Delong and the other saltwater economists for a long time believed that they were engaged in an intellectual dispute with the moderate conservatives. The freshwater economists, however, believed that they had The Truth, and that Keynsianism would fall as surely as the Soviet Union did; that analogy may even have figured in their thinking. They believed that they were wise adults willing to face hard truths, the saltwater economists were foolish, weak children, and events would prove them right. Delong's description of what what Prof. Robert Lucas thought of Prof. Christine Romer's support of the stimulus was chilling in its contempt for Romer: by Delong's account Lucas believed Romer was lying when she supported the stimulus.

I wonder if the thought processes of the freshwater school were not an elevated version of those the hardcore tea partiers: a threatened sense of privilege and contempt for the weakness of their opponents. It is hard for me not to see this as fitting into a pattern of threatened male privilege, though in some cases sexism was not the core of the belief.

The freshwater economists are now faced with incontrovertible proof that they were wrong and the saltwater school was right. Their reactions, it seems to me, are no different than what anyone wedded to an inflated idea of their self-worth. Not only were they wrong, they have lost the argument to people they feel are their intellectual inferiors and to women. They are angry and denying, denying, denying.

The saltwater school, on the other hand, is having to reevaluate a great many of their ideas, not the least about collegiality and scientific epistemology. The recognition of the contempt in which their colleagues held them has to be a shock to many; I think I detect traces of it in Delong's writing, and in Prof. Krugman's. Likewise, the recognition that many freshwater economists were not thinking scientifically at all, but rather bound by prejudice and intellectual rigidity seems to have come as a shock. It is very much to Prof. Delong's credit that he is willing to consider these realities.

There is also a practical problem, if economics as a discipline is to survive. There is a huge amount of junk in the peer-reviewed economics literature--the reviewing process is no protection when the reviewers themselves are prejudiced. A comparison that comes to mind is the collapse of "scientific" eugenics. There were vast amounts of that written, and now it is only read as an object example of the capture of a social science by prejudice and authoritarianism. For economists, meantime, there is a huge task ahead: the garbage must be taken out; removed from the field's teaching, textbooks, and policy advice. It will be a generation at least before this is set right, if indeed it can be set right at all.

Croak of the Day: Mark Thoma, "Revealed Preference"

2011-03-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday, anyway. "We have enough money to pay for military action in Libya, but not for job creation?"--from Mark Thoma's excellent economics blog.

Bought Men? A Brief Note on the Fascist Revolution

2011-03-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

In every state where the Tea Party Republicans have come to power, they have attempted to put the same program into practice: breaking the public employee unions, mass firings, weird anti-abortion laws. Apparently, this is a coordinated program from the Koch Party's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC.) Very dirty money. And since when does private industry make policy? But I wonder...just how many of the Tea Party Republicans are directly or indirectly in the pay of the groups that support ALEC? It would explain their remarkable solidarity. These people are in the state legislatures, making enemies of their neighbors. If this was simple crazy ideology they would be concerned about their changes for re-election, and work after they leave public office. Yet they do not seem to be, and I wonder if this is because they are paid, and expect to be well-paid in the future.

On Alternative Energy: Hard Choices for Hominids

2011-03-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

You hominids have a deadlock in the politics of power generation. In the USA, at least, activism has stopped nuclear plant construction. This turns out to have been the energy equivalent of Norquist's "starve the beast," and it has worked about as well. You have ended up relying heavily on coal for electric power generation and oil for transportation, which, in the amounts used, are as or more harmful as nuclear power.

There is much talk about sustainable energy production, and there have been some substantial successes in those technologies, but you are not ready to convert your whole economy to sustainable energy production. Partly, this is because sustainable energy has to be gathered, whereas fossil fuel and nuclear fuel contain energy which need only be released: without a "carbon tax" or some similar regulation, sustainable energy sources will always be more expensive. Partly, though, the conservatives in Congress have been successful in preventing the research necessary to widespread deployment of sustainable energy production. Your economic models do not, yet, embrace sustainability.

So you are faced with hard choices. To stop using coal, oil, or nuclear power immediately would mean great hardship. Without international agreements to prevent further development of such systems, action in an single country might in any event be futile except perhaps as an example. And yet if human civilization is to survive, this must be undertaken in the long term.

One thing that could be done in the short term in the United States would be to abandon the tax subsidies for resource extraction. They started as World War I production subsidies, and ever since, conservatives have been defending them. This might be an excellent time to attack these. They could be attacked on libertarian grounds as government subsidies. It might just work.

A Mercantilist World?

2011-01-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

(An earlier version of this was posted as a Firedoglake diary, where so far it has not been noticed. This is my copy here, for a record and perhaps discussion. Minor changes on day of publication.)

Over at Project Syndicate Brad Delong writes:

But there are two dangers in America’s forthcoming debate. The first concerns the term likely to be used to frame the debate: competitiveness. “Productivity” would be much better. “Competitiveness” carries the implication of a zero-sum game, in which America can win only if its trading partners lose.
[...]
The second danger is that “competitiveness” implies that what is good for companies located in America – good, that is, for their investors, executives, and financiers – is good for America as a whole. Back when President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s cabinet nominee Charlie Wilson claimed that what was “good for America was good for General Motors – and vice versa,” GM included not just shareholders, executives, and financiers, but also suppliers and members of the United Auto Workers union. By contrast, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, recently appointed by Obama to lead the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, runs a company that has long since narrowed to executives, investors, and financiers.

In other words, a focus on “competitiveness” could lead to a neo-mercantilist class society. It is hard to imagine a world in which all major economic powers are neo-mercantilist, but that seems to be a real possibility. China and Germany already pursue mercantilism through their currency polices, and if the USA does also, mercantilism is that much closer to becoming the global economic order. A mercantilist economic order is not likely to be an economic order in which anyone except the very wealthy would be happy: part of the push to increase trade profits would involve a push to lower labor prices.

It would also be an economic order where conflict would be endemic. Between the great mercantile powers, trade conflict. Within the great mercantile powers, class conflict. Between the successful mercantilist powers and their less-successful trading partners, international conflict. There is a cost, paid in security measures and hatred, to maintaining a class society: to being the filthy rich minority in impoverished world. Nor can I see how such a world could be environmentally sustainable: there would always be the temptation to gain a competitive edge by damaging the environment by extensively using fossil-fuel energy, overfishing, polluting. A neo-mercantilist world would institutionalize the tragedy of the commons.

This could be the way the world ends.

Short Croak: The Red Menace

2011-01-26T10:53:00.001-08:00

The United States is going through a new red scare. Only now we are all reds.

This produces very odd rhetoric.

SOTUMeh

2011-01-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

To this old bird, this sounds like one of those official speeches one hears from a defeated leader. Rah-rah-rah. Only…there’s nothing to rah about.

Obama has at least found a way to defend infrastructure spending. We seem to have come full circle: much of the expansion of the Federal government in the 1950s and 1960s was justified by nationalism. The Interstate Highway System started as a “defense” project, and much of the expansion in education and research similarly. So now we have Obama defending these things as appropriate for “competitiveness.” At the same time, though, he plans to cap a great deal of spending. The states are cash-strapped, and Obama has committed to a course where the Federal government will not help them. So just where is the funding for all this education and research going to come from?

SOTU croaks I approve of:

Digby:

But I think it sounded oddly discordant, as if the economic crisis is a best forgotten nightmare even though we still have 9.5% official unemployment and a housing sector in deep distress. It's not as if GDP is growing at some jaw dropping pace. So, to my ears it was oddly out of touch. “Winning the future” would be a lot more inspiring if we were all sure we were going to survive the present.

KrugMeh:

Overall, however, I have no idea what the vision here was. We care about the future! But we don’t want to spend!

Mark Thoma (Economists View):

[...] How do we help those who need a job right now? Solving the more immediate job problem needs to be first and foremost on our national agenda, but this was not addressed in the speech. [...] it wasn't lack of innovation or lack of competitiveness that got us into this mess, it was an out of control financial sector. [...] We need to get our deficit under control, but not before the economy is ready for it. [...] there needed to be more emphasis on the fact that eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts will not solve our budget problem by themselves. [...] a spending freeze while population is growing amounts to a cut in per capita spending. While this sounds courageous, it's actually the easy way out since it avoids tough choices on which programs to cut and which programs to preserve.

Hominds.

What Eskow Said, on Martin Luther King and Economic Justice

2011-01-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

Richard Eskow:

This weekend Dr. King's name will be spoken by politicians and business leaders who would probably despise what he would have had to say about 21st Century America. They'll try to appropriate his name and memory to ensure their own well-being. They hope to domesticate his moral challenge in order to protect their own ambition.

Fortunately, Martin Luther King left his words behind. In his honor, here are ten quotes from Dr. King, illustrated with images from today's events to show their continued meaning. If they don't manage to comfort the afflicted on this national holiday - and at least unsettle the comfortable - they're followed by a slide show with even more quotes.

Wow. Read the rest.

Talking moral sense about hate rhetoric

2011-01-16T06:18:00.000-08:00

"Slacktivist" on Conor Friedersdorf on the hypocrisy of the haters:

Violent language and violent rhetoric can be a problem, but I do not think it is the main problem afflicting our diseased political discourse. The main problem, rather, is disingenuous rhetoric that coolly and calmly demands a violent response from anyone who believes it or takes it seriously. This talk may have nothing to do with guns or crosshairs or "reloading," but it is the logic of life and death. That logic doesn't just raise the possibility that some unhinged person on the fringes might take it wrong. It suggests and requires violent action as an unavoidable moral obligation.

A point worth keeping in mind. Slacktivist goes on to point out that the haters don't actually believe: if they did they would be out fighting their revolution.

Changes after the shooting of Giffords

2011-01-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

I think the most likely short-term outcome of this is a crackdown: more investigations, more policing, more censorship. Possibly deployment of porn scanners outside of airports. While Sheriff Dupnik blamed his local people, who he knows very well, FBI director Mueller has blamed the internet—us. It is difficult for me to see anything that is likely to lead to a reduction of hate speech or the pathological obsession with violence our right wing displays. The Tea Party leadership shows no shame; I do not expect Murdoch to reign in Fox News or the Kochs to reign in the radical-right groups they fund.

Nothing to see here, move along.

In the long term, it's hard to say. When weak people have no arguments left, they resort to violence. Jared Laughner seems to be a psychologically disabled man. He seems to have targeted Rep. Giffords because she was the nearest authority figure in reach and, probably, because of all the hate speech he had already heard directed at her. He was able to buy a semi-automatic pistol with an extended clip because we do not take seriously the need for checks on the mental health of firearms purchasers. In the long term, it is likely that the violence will collapse the credibility of the radical right, but it could be decades before that long term arrives.

Well-fed corvids.

Meantime, Politics as Usual: Simon Johnson on the Daley Appointment

2011-01-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

It's too early to declare a croak of the day, but I think this might be a pretty good candidate.

If the country’s most distinguished nuclear scientists told you, clearly and very publicly, that they now realize a leading reactor design is very dangerous, would you and your politicians stop to listen? Yet our political leadership brush aside concerns about the way big banks operate. Why?

Read the whole damn thing.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves, II

2011-01-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Back in August of 2009 I wrote:

I think I know the bottom line: someone is going to die. Too much crazy has been unleashed, too much negativity. Mobs at town halls. Death threats. And they're going to keep stirring the pot, until some dramatic act of violence happens, until the House caves, or until the House is back in session.

And now we have the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.

Obama, Inequity, and Democracy

2011-01-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Obama does seem to care about income inequity: the appointment of Sotomayor, a strong critic of corporatism, to the Supreme Court indicates that. Likewise, his environmental and energy appointments indicate a liberal sensibility. But he is not willing to challenge the bankers, health insurance companies, or militarists directly. This suggests that Obama has adopted an incrementalist approach. His health care plan is also suggestive of this. If it stands as written, it will be a failure; the hope is that it will be changed later.

"Hope and change." I remember those words.

Can it work? Obama's supporters point at improvements to Social Security to argue that it can. Yet the improvements to Social Security were made against the background of a strong left, especially a strong union movement. The groundwork for the incremental gains of labor in the period 1950-70 was laid by the labor radicalism of the 1930s. In 1953-4 Social Security was extended, the authoritarian wealthy of that period were also afraid of a communist revolution, and so, it seems, were willing to make more concessions The Glass-Stegall banking law probably could only have been passed in a mood of public outrage. I croak: sometimes the times call for radical approaches, other times incremental approaches. Obama came to power in a time when radical approaches were appropriate and instead adopted incremental approaches, discarding a great opportunity.

An incremental strategy can only be maintained in a time of relative prosperity and peace: when people are terrified of attack, losing their jobs, and being thrown out of their homes they demand action. Obama delivered small steps and concessions to the people who made the problem instead. So now the Republicans control the House, and the Tea Party (or is that the Koch Party?) controls the Republicans.

Beyond that the administration's incremental strategy ignores the present pain, which seems to me a deeply undemocratic course of action. Surely the "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is to respond to the people in their great need? Yet it is not responding, and the Obama administration is part of that failure. People are losing their homes by the millions. People are going from well-off to poor by the millions. In response to this, so far the Obama administration has offered only small and inadequate steps. The Obama administration, even, is part of the problem. Ancient rights of property and person are routinely abrogated by financiers and local officials. And what does the Obama administration do? Take small and inadequate steps. The oppressive polices of Guantanamo Bay and Homeland Security set an example for local policing. People who helped lay the financial system open to looting are in charge of the President's economic policy. The Obama administration looks ready to bargain away Social Security, one of the United States's great bulwarks against poverty, and for what? No-one seems to know.

I believe that the US is now in for a decade of misery which might have been avoided if Obama was more willing to confront the enemies of freedom and democracy. The next two years, as the radical right attempts to implement its program of domestic reforms, promise to be be especially hard. Obama's hero Gandhi never shrank from confrontation, though he pursued his political goals without violence. Obama seems not to grasp this, and I can only wonder at his rigidity and lack of empathy. Gandhi was willing to sacrifice his life for his goals; Obama seems not willing to sacrifice one iota of his beliefs.

And that is enough about Obama's failings. Let us now turn to what we may do.

Croak!

[Minor copy errors corrected 2010.01.04-5]

Obama and the Left

2010-12-29T09:04:00.000-08:00

(The last version of this, mostly written for comments in Balloon Juice. I think it is clearer and more concise than the three posts that have gone before.)

Obama progressive hopes for real positive change, did not pursue what seem to progressives obvious opportunities to do so, and we will be living with the consequences of his failures for years. Obama's failure to adequately address unemployment and the mortgage crisis have cost the Democratic Party and the Progressive movement, such as it is, hugely. These failures (and others) in turn spring from two central failures:

A failure to respond in any effective way—or even to show an interest in responding—to the huge expansion of the power of wealth and the expansion of the gap between rich & poor. Two of Obama’s much-touted successes—health care reform and the extension of unemployment benefits—came at the cost of huge concessions to very wealthy businesses and individuals.
A failure to use the “bully pulpit” of the Presidency to change public discourse. The President is the only elected public official who the national media consistently pay attention to. Obama could have said: “Social Security is not in major trouble.” He could have said “Austerity budgets don’t improve the economy.” He could have said, “Government is not the problem.” Instead, he allowed the Republicans to set the agenda, and now that they have come to cut Social Security and put the USA on an austerity budget during a depression, he has no way to make his case with the public.

Obama had a great opportunity, has fallen far short of it, and most progressives believe that those who are not rich and powerful are going to pay a huge price. Many progressives who supported Obama during his campaign also feel betrayed. Of course they are critical of him!

Croak!

(Edited slightly on day of publication.)

Short Notes

2010-12-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

I think Dancing Anarchist Party would be a cool name for a political party...or perhaps a dance club. (Thank you Emma Goldman.)
The Islamic use of the word "jihad" is perhaps more understandable if we consider the US use of the phrase "drug war."
Obama's pattern of first trying to get the left on his side and then have other administration officials badmouth the left very much resembles that of a manipulative suitor sending flowers after jilting his fiancé and then, when she demurs, badmouthing her. Keep it classy, O.

Obama and the Bully Pulpit

2010-12-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

The President is the only elected official which commands national media attention. Had Obama wanted to, he could have told the public:

That the main cause of unemployment was the corruption (or business practices, if he preferred less inflammatory language) of the major banks and that this could be addressed by government.
The disaster in residential real estate is also a result of banking practices which could be addressed by government.
That Social Security is not in financial trouble and that minor tweaks could maintain the system's solvency indefinitely.
That medical cost growth is a huge and real budget problem, and could be addressed by policy.

Had he done so, he would be a much better position to fight off the program of austerity and bigotry that the Republicans are going to try to implement in the next two years. He would also have told the truth, but that doesn't seem to rank very high with hominid leaders.

Obama Didn't...

2010-12-26T22:06:00.000-08:00

Continuing in the explication of objections to Obama on the left:

Adequately address unemployment. Considering that the Obama administration asked for an inadequate stimulus to begin with, rather than let Congress bargain them down, Obama can hardly say this is a result of Republican obstruction.
Address the corruption and exploitation (dday, passim.) of the residential real estate market.
Failure to adequately address banking reform. The problems which led us into this new depression are still there, and it will be all to do again when the system fails again, which it will.
Failure to adequately address health care costs. (Sorry--no link today. Maybe link tomorrow.)

These are all, at bottom, a single failure: a failure to respond in any effective way—or even to show an interest in responding—to the huge expansion of the power of wealth and the expansion of the gap between rich & poor. The failures to adequately address unemployment and the residential real estate market are probably the two most significant reasons which the Democratic Party did so poorly in the 2010 elections.

"Obama accomplished a lot"

2010-12-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

I've been hearing this a lot and, since I don't want to spend the time writing some real posts, I'll post this bit of cranky fluff.

Did he close Gitmo? Um, no. Get the US out of Iraq? Only if you don't count "contractors." Pass the DREAM act? Um, no. Fix the banking system? Um... Well, he did pass a health care bill. And get unemployment extended again. And pass the beginning of DADT repeal. Which three things sound really impressive until one looks a little closer and realize that the first two of them were done by giving huge amounts of money to very wealthy businesses and individuals, and the third is financially neutral and seems to have mostly come from the Senate, anyway. See, you can get a health care bill through the Senate if you give the health insurance companies a mandate and weak regulation. And giving the very rich a huge tax cut and the ability to set up dynasties also gets the Senators of the very rich to vote with you. The problem with this approach is, sooner or later, and later is sooner, there's nothing left to give to the rich.

I wonder if Obama realizes. His supporters don't seem to.

Policy Deafness and Converse

2010-12-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

About a month back, I wrote: "[Obama] does not seem capable of recognizing a policy failure, imagining a policy success, or understanding why policy success might lead to political success." & this is still the case with his horrific huge-tax-cuts-for-small-stimulus deal. It represents, I think, growth for Obama: it has at last dawned on him that policy affects elections. He still hasn't gotten important points: as Krugman points out, this proposal sets his administration up for hard times in the 2012 campaign.

The work of the Presidency, surely, is not educating the President?

If Obama is, perhaps, learning to listen, many of his supporters are still deaf. I've read a lot of this over at Balloon Juice, which is a home for Obama supporters who still love the man regardless of the consequences of his policies. It's as I said previously: if the Democrats keep making large concessions to the rich, while only getting small concessions for the rest of the public, the end result is an impoverished nation. Yet many of Obama's supporters do not see this. I'm struck by the attitude of one strident black woman who sees all policy criticism of Obama as rooted in racism. That is only the most extreme version of the attitude, though: Obama has plenty of other supporters, white and black, who take any criticism of the man's policies as disloyalty to be opposed, regardless of the consequences of those policies in their lives. It is not, really, any different from the "working-class" supporters of Republicans or the Tea Partiers, voting against their own interests. And then it dawned on me: like Obama, these supporters do not see policy as the result of politics. For these people, to a greater or lesser extent, politics is about fighting for the team, and there is little attention to what the team captain is fighting for, or how well the team's goals are being achieved.

This is, of course, nothing new. It is implicit in Converse's results. A substantial faction of participants in a democracy are making their political decisions based on personal loyalties, or dislike of persons. If candidates for public office were as they presented themselves, this would not be a problem, but of course they are not. Many politicians only pretend to represent their constituencies, represent at most a faction of their constituencies, or lack sufficient policy insight to pursue political goals with any success. How, then, is democracy to be ordered so as to result in, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people?" Because that is not what it is producing now, not in most of the world. How are leaders to be worthy of the loyalty of their supporters to be found?

[2010.12.18: one awkward word removed.]

A brief note on the proposed tax-and-unemployment deal

2010-12-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

Lots has already been said about it, for instance Krugman. I'd just like to add that if Obama keeps making large concessions to the rich, and while extracting only small concessions for everyone else, the time is going to come when there will be no more to trade, and all but the rich will be impoverished.

Assange

2010-12-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

(Everyone's writing about it, so why not me?)

I have little doubt that this has been turned into a public matter because Assange has embarrassed powerful people--people whose own lives and affairs do not bear close scrutiny. Whatever Assange and his sexual partners did, they did. It is for them and the courts to deal with, not a planet-full of busybodies.

The published stories change day by day. I wonder if even Assange and his partners know what happened any more: memory is sometimes malleable, and never moreso when a story is told over and over, in many different versions. Another account, from Reuters

Much of the discussion I have seen says more about the participants than about Assange. To those excusing rape: "no" means "no" and "stop" means "stop." To those who want to pursue assassination: that's illegal, and for good reason.

Croak!

WtF, Obama? Part 2

2010-11-08T23:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess we know now. Faced with an election that is the crystallized result of essence of policy failure, Obama decides that he...sent the wrong message. Has this man ever passed a math class? Or done any physical craft? Done anything where failure is not the result of failing to be persuasive? Perhaps not.

Now, Obama is not a narcissist like Sarah Palin. I don't think he is even a "soulless technocrat," as Digby says. He seems a decent enough person with decent impulses. But he does not seem capable of recognizing a policy failure, imagining a policy success, or understanding why policy success might lead to political success. You hominids are so screwed. And if there's an actual military conflict, I cannot imagine how Obama could be an effective Commander-in-Chief.

Croak!

[Afterthought of a few minutes: is it possible that the only people who can now be elected to the Presidency are acting the role? That seems depressingly likely.]

[Minor change the day after posting.]

The Split Between Liberals and Conservatives in the Democratic Party

2010-11-06T18:34:00.000-07:00

I've written about this before. Now, the recent election has swept most of the liberal Democrats out of the Senate, including their leader, Paul Wellstone, and most of the conservative Democrats out of the House. The Obama administration and the Senate Democratic leadership are making plans to move to the right. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is making a bid to become House Minority Leader, squeezing out the conservative Steeny Hoyer, who has almost no supporters left in the House. I don't know that she'll succeed. On the one hand, Pelosi is notorious for betting on sure things. On the other, her own party's dominant faction opposes her. I have no idea how the Democrats will govern with a conservative majority in the Senate and a liberal minority in the House. If she does make it, though, it seems likely to me to be another step on the way to the emergence of a new liberal party.

Punching Hippies for Fun and Profit

2010-09-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

Jane Hamsher writes at length about the Obama administration's defensiveness, and attacks on the left. Digby with a shorter remark, and a reminder to vote anyway. Reports are that the Obama administration is genuinely disappointed with lack of support from the left, and does not understand it. (Commentator Peter Daou writes on this, also on the impact of the liberal blogosphere. I think he overestimates our influence.) But I wonder. I remember the Obama campaign's "inch to the right of Hilary Clinton" electoral strategy. I wonder if the administration isn’t stirring up conflict in the hope of getting media attention and getting turnout. I think that makes sense, and may even be a workable strategy. It also moves the Democratic Party further to the right.

Perhaps, perhaps. The Obama administration has proven surprisingly politically inept. It appears that they do not understand the motivations of the people who elected them, nor their party's own activists. The administration is skillful at persuading a broad public that they are what the public wants, but they seem to lack of the complementary skill of finding out what the public wants and satisfying those desires. To win an elected office, one has to build a constituency, but to last in politics, one has to satisfy a constituency. This seems so basic that I'm surprised to find a need to state it. So it's hard for me to believe that the hippie-punching is conscious strategy. Still, conscious strategy or not, it might work. Most of the public does not vote on policy, after all.

Revolution: Reagan, Bush, Obama

2010-09-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

A very long time ago, in 1987, I wrote an article on social change comparing the Reagan Revolution with the Russian Revolution. At the time, I commented that the real disaster of that revolution was that it paved the way for Stalin. The phrase I remember using was, "Stalin was waiting in the wings," and I wondered then if the Reagan Revolution would have its Stalin. Now, over 20 years later, I believe I can say that the answer was yes: it was Bush II and Cheney.

Lenin was not the brutal mass-murderer that Stalin was. The Soviet Union under Lenin had some liberal tendencies. it was Stalin who turned the Soviet Union into a brutal hell. Stalin's death did not end the hell. Instead, after a period of conflict, Molotov, Stalin's old political ally, came to power. He implemented some liberalizations but generally maintained the Stalinist model. It was left to Khrushchev to finally abandon Stalinism. And, in like manner, it appears to me that Obama, an admirer of Reagan, is maintaining the Reagan/Bush/Cheney political model. He is not going to bring about the great restoration of liberty and justice many on the left had hoped for, and even this cynical bird has been surprised at the Obama administration's defense of some of the worst civil rights policies of Bush II. At the same time, as I've written before, he has undertaken some genuine liberalizations in less-public corners of the government.

What, therefore, are liberals to do in these times? It seems to me that, if anything, we must look towards a future when younger people, who are more liberal by inclination, begin to take power. We must also recognize that we will not "win" in any final sense. Too much of the United States will adopt progressive policies only grudgingly and the USA will continue to have a faction of wealthy reactionaries. But matters can be improved, and I believe our heirs will do so. I like to speculate about the nature of the new radicalism. For it will be radical: the United States has never been moderate in its politics. I think the broad outlines are clear enough: intense regulation of wealth and the wealthy, environmentalism, social libertarianism. In ten years new production technologies based on information technology will be making themselves felt, giving rise to new economic possibilities.

It all promises to be very interesting!

"Hope and Change" or "What Brung Them, Part IV."

2010-09-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

I was drinking with Darryl of Hominid Views two nights ago when Darryl asked why there was so much complaining about the Obama administration. He pointed out that the administration had made good on all that Obama had promised.

I think it's buyer's remorse. The public had seen their own hopes for change in Obama's "hope and change" campaign rhetoric. Obama does not seem to realize that the public would see Obama as embodying their own hopes for change. This, Obama has not delivered. Hasn't even tried to find out how the public interpreted the message, as far as I can tell. Once Obama was in power, it was same-old same-old, even as the economy tanked, the USA lost in Afghanistan, oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, and torture became a norm of policing practice.

I am reminded of Clark Clifford's account of the Truman administration (Clifford was Truman's solicitor general), when authoritarian policies became the rule for the next decade. The liberals were right, but they were silenced for 10 years, as the USA went through one of its authoritarian periods and--unprecedented in US history--the military did not stand down. 70 years later, the military has not stood down, though a huge standing army tempts our militarists into expensive, pointless wars, and the concentration on military production hollows out our civilian economy, just as it did in the Soviet Union.

The Democrats may or may not do well in the next election. Midterm elections are usually bad for the party in power and right now the Democrats are polling abysmally. Darryl (a demographer) and I suspect that the Dems will pick up quite a few votes before the elections: despite huge infusions of cash from the far right, the Tea Party Republicans aren't very popular. But whether or not they do, remember: whatever hope and change comes from the Democrats will come from their despised and marginalized left.

Croak of the Day: Brad Delong on Labor and Labor Day

2010-09-06T23:15:00.003-07:00

Here.

WtF, Obama?

2010-09-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

As a result of Ian Welsh's discussion of Obama's failings on Virtually Speaking (you can hear it here, and read the article it was based on here) and further discussions with an SL friend, I ended up wondering how it is that Obama can make excellent cabinet and judicial appointments like Stephen Chu and Sonia Sotomayor, and yet make such awful decisions on the economy, civil rights, and war and peace. I came to a couple of tentative conclusions. First, is that Obama is better at picking people than he is at understanding policy. At some level it is as if he thinks that the jaw-jaw of politics is more real than the tangible results in the lives of the public. Second, It seems that he cares more about the Supreme Court and the Department of Energy than he does about the economy, the military, and whether or not people who want jobs can get them, and what those jobs consist of. I have rather the impression that Obama is paying his best attention to things he cares the most about, and letting the Democratic Party's conservative leadership make the rest of the decisions.

I don't think this is a effective way to be President. It is much more typical of successful Senators. Whether or not November is going to be a disaster for the Democrats, as some polling says (for instance, here), it is a deeply unpopular and undemocratic way to govern.

Obama: Reviving Conservatism

2010-07-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

I think that Obama is working to revive moderate conservatism. But conservatism was intellectually bankrupt by the time of the Reagan administration. Even its economics, formerly its intellectually strongest area, has been discredited. There is no way to do to revive conservatism--it is dead. Obama has brought something to life, but it is a zombie. As the moderate conservative policies have failed, which they have consistently done, the Democrats prove unable to abandon the failed policies, and align themselves more and more with the radical reactionaries, and cause more and more pain.

Barack H.H. Obama. Who knew?

[Revised for clarity 2010.09.07]

"The hope that I saw is a prince of Hed?"

2010-06-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

One source of hope seems to me likely to be the South. In ten years time, the BP oil disaster, and perhaps other environmental failures, will probably radicalize the South. A green South? How surreal!

Deadlock

2010-06-16T18:12:00.000-07:00

[based on my comment on Brad Delong's journal]

I think US national policy has returned to its habitual deadlock. It's not clear to me that this deadlock will be broken in less than a decade. Obama is not likely to be succeeded by someone more liberal, after all, and, while there are some promising new liberal Senators, it will take years before they develop real power.

I am trying to imagine a ten-year depression. It is hard even to think about it. And yet--what will prevent it?

Blogging has been sparse lately. I have started a new job and have far less time to spend on amateur political science. I have several longer pieces I am interested in writing, but I have little heart for it. If we are, as seems to me likely, entering a ten-year period of political deadlock and economic stagnation, then I am writing for the long-term, and it seems to me I can make more difference doing other things.

Croak on the New Aristocrats

2010-06-16T18:05:00.000-07:00

It is not enough, seemingly, to be rich and powerful beyond the wildest dreams of any wealthy class in previous history: the new aristocrats must reduce all who are not members of their class to abject poverty.

Fast cars, tequila, and nukes

2010-05-29T20:32:00.000-07:00

Over on Charlie Stross's blog I croaked, "I've decided that nuclear power has the same effect on hominid male thinking as fast cars, tequila, and firearms." And someone replied, "I see nothing wrong with fast cars, tequila, and firearms. Sorry, what was that about?" So this is my answer.

These things all seem to be magnets for obsessions in men. Obsessed men pursue them regardless of how much damage they do. I am struck by the way the mostly men who love these things are convinced that their love is an expression of maturity. The W. Bush administration policy-makers, in love with violence, believed they were "the grown ups," and they seem to have been in fact teenage boys who never got over it. Sitting in the wreckage they have made, they still proclaim that they know better.

It is not adult behavior to implement risky technologies to sustain a too-large population. It is not adult behavior to pretend that, no matter what stresses hominids put on their planetary ecology and their planet's chemical and energy systems, they are immune to the consequences.

Croak!

Progressive Echo Chamber: Paul Krugman

2010-05-23T21:58:00.001-07:00

On Republican electoral strategy:

If this sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same formula the right has been using for a generation. Use identity politics to whip up the base; then, when the election is over, give priority to the concerns of your corporate donors. Run as the candidate of “real Americans,” not those soft-on-terror East coast liberals; then, once you’ve won, declare that you have a mandate to privatize Social Security. It comes as no surprise to learn that American Crossroads, a new organization whose goal is to deploy large amounts of corporate cash on behalf of Republican candidates, is the brainchild of none other than Karl Rove. ***

Croak of the Day: bmaz on the BP Oil Disaster

2010-05-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

But you know what hasn’t worked? The big top hat, the little top hat, the giant sippy straw, the blow out preventer, toxic dispersant sold by a BP subsidiary and the top kill and junk shot BP blathers about are laughable on their face. The solution ideas to date have been straight out of the Wile E. Coyote Acme School of BP Profitology.--bmaz, Dr. Sludgelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Junk Shotting And Love Teh Bomb

Croak of the Day: John Stewart, "A Perfect Storm"

2010-05-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, "Why is it that whenever something happens," he asked, "that the people who should have seen it coming, didn't see coming, it's blamed on one of these rare, once in a century perfect storms that for some reason take place every f*cking two weeks? I'm beginning to think these are regular storms and we have a sh*tty boat."

Sail on, ship of state!

Video.

Via TPM Livewire.

UK Elections: a Vote Against

2010-05-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Libertarians have been talking about the possibility of leaving offices empty for a long time. I think the UK public has achieved some version of that. It was a vote against. Against the Iraq war. Against the financial disaster. Against market fundamentalism. The UK system is more democratic than the US. May the next election quickly bring forth something to vote for.

Going Green

2010-05-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, a friend sent me a copy of Jared Diamond's Collapse. A few days ago, I came across a note about the book to my friend in my files recently, and decided that some of it bears reprinting. Since that time, Diamond has been sued for inaccurate reporting. The suit has yet to be decided, and I don't yet know if Diamond's research is questionable in other matters. In any event, my general reaction to Collapse, a book about social failures through environmental disasters is, "well, yes." Diamond spells it out, dots the 'i's and crosses the 't's, but I've been aware of the basic risks of ecological collapse for many years. I quoted this in 1991 from a 1970 Gregory Bateson lecture. (Regular readers will recognize the repetition—sorry, folks.)

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that your are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be your and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables.

If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of overpopulation and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite.

If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. …

Bateson nailed it, on purely theoretical considerations of philosophy, back in 1970: humans are part of an ecological system and to survive we must understand that and respect it. Bateson was not, of course, the first philosopher to make such an observation, but it is a more urgent one now than ever. If we are to survive, we must change our thinking. The need for ethics, laws, and customs that protect the planetary ecology and control the human population is crying.

I do have a few thoughts on the matter, but it must be stressed that putting any ideas into effect will involve wrenching economic and political change. We need, I suppose, a spiritual transformation that will make the necessary changes acceptable and how to achieve that I have no idea; globally we are in such a horrible state of paralysis that it is hard to get many of us to accept even minor change. That said, here's a very short list of steps we might take, if we could agree to undertake them:

Take powerful symbolic steps. Reforest Easter Island and Iceland, to start with.
Start a well-funded crash research program to find out what we need. How many people can live on the earth at the standard of living we seem to desire? How much of the wild must we preserve or restore?
Educate women worldwide; distribute contraceptive technology widely. Quite apart from the ethical considerations that demand this, it will reduce the growth in population; it may even be all that is required to reduce human population to more reasonable levels.
Phase out all ecologically destructive subsidies as quickly as possible; where there are no major hardships likely, abandon them immediately.
Financially, treat forested land--and all wild ecosystems--as what it in fact is: valuable. Set up "ecosystem trusts" as keepers of valuable land and if someone wants to turn the land to some other purpose, charge. If the other use of the land is less valuable than its developed use, the fund can repurchase and restore the land.
In a related step, implement emissions trading schemes and keep working on them until all the major chemical cycles of air and water are balanced.
Use as much solar energy for heating and cooling as possible; it is technically feasible to do without most of our active climate control systems and it is time to start.

I have tried in these recommendations to hew to market and vote; they are still going to be terribly difficult to implement, amounting to the sudden imposition of a great many new taxes and regulations and establishing a whole new class of rights. Still, considering that the alternatives are the collapse of human civilization or globe-spanning tyranny, it is time to start.

Notes on Term Limits

2010-05-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote this up for Baseline Scenario comments, and decided it was useful enough to repost here despite its roughness.

Links:
   Democracy and accountability: The perverse effects of term limits
   The Effects of Legislative Term Limits (PDF)
   How Have Term Limits Affected the California Legislature? (PDF)

Books:
The Political and Institutional Effects of Term Limits, Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, Lyke Thompson, Charles D. Elder, Richard Elling, John Strate.
Institutional change in American politics: the case of term limits, Karl T. Kurtz, Bruce E. Cain, Richard G. Niemi.

I have only read fragments of the books on Google.

The effects are not as dramatic as I had thought. Pols still stay pols, though their career paths now include planned job changes. Deep information on particular topics is less common. The executive sometimes becomes more powerful.

Bottom line: term limits are not the transformative reform that term limit advocates hope for. Term limits don't do what their proponents hope, and do do some of what their opponents fear. In my view, pursuing term limits distracts from more effective changes. [Minor spelling error corrected on 2010.05.20]

Second Croak: Patrick Nielsen Hayden On the Kent State Killings

2010-05-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

Your Government Will Kill You.

Croak of the Day: Ian Welsh's "What is Obama?"

2010-05-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Ian Welsh's scathing bitter compilation of the Obama administration's worst policies.

Evolution Croak

2010-04-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

John Cole, who this bird mostly thinks well of, writes:

It is a shame that most Americans can’t make the connection that if this is happening to the animals, think about what the effects on humans will be.

So, what are humans, robots? But it put me in mind of a Gregory Bateson quote:

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that your are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be your and your folks or conspecifics [members of your species] against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables.
If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of overpopulation and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite.—Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind

I want to start writing more about religion and philosophy. There are issues coming up that I want to address & this is one of them.

Licensing Econometricians?

2010-04-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

Further thoughts on economics as a discipline.

Most engineering is based, not on novel applications of science, but on re-application of existing practice. Engineering applies pure science in ways that avoid unpredictability; science itself engages unpredictability, as in meteorology and geology. Part of what engineers do that scientists don’t is know where the areas of unpredictability are, and avoid them. Novel engineering is applied science research in itself, always a bit unpredictable, and the best of us can get caught by it. For instance, this from Arup, a well-respected architectural engineering firm:

The bridge opened to the public on 10 June 2000 when an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people crossed it. As with all bridge structures, the Millennium Bridge is subject to a degree of movement. However, when large groups of people were crossing, greater than expected sideways movements occurred. The maximum sway of the deck was approximately 70mm. In order to fully investigate and resolve this phenomenon the decision was taken to close the bridge on 12 June. The movement and its effect on the crowds can be seen from the video footage.–http://info.arup.com/millenniumbridge/challenge/index.html

Note also the plea for publication of novel research at the end of the short essay–apparently the phenomenon had been noted before and not written up.

This leads to the following thought: perhaps one of the problems of having a weak distinction between pure and applied economics is that there is no disciplinary body of practice on the applied side: untested theories are put into practice on a grand scale, and when they fail, huge areas of the economy fail with them. This is rare in more mature disciplines; professional discipline makes large-scale failures unlikely. I find it interesting that I do not even have a name for the type of disciplines that are based on pure economics; neither “engineering” nor “design” seems to capture them.

Would there perhaps be some value in modeling an econometrics professional license on engineering or architectural licenses? Milton Friedman would be spinning in his grave if he could see this–he regarded professional licensing as a protection racket, pure and simple. But in fact licensing engineers and architects has worked out fairly well from the viewpoint of public safety, even when very large amounts of money are involved. Could that success perhaps be duplicated in econometrics?

Economics as a Science & Paul Krugman as a Scientist

2010-04-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

(This is in response to Ian Welsh's evaluation of Paul Krugman's strengths and weaknesses as an expert. It is slightly revised from my remarks in comments.)

K-k-k. There is in science and engineering a distinction between pure science, which is descriptive in character, and applied science and engineering, which use the descriptions of pure science to some goal. In economics, this distinction is often lost. There is a descriptive social science which might be called pure economics and an applied practice of economic policy making which doesn’t have a separate name. I think, as a matter of scientific practice and ethics, it is important to clarify the distinction.

Equally important, and widely overlooked, are the scientific basics of explicitly stating the assumptions of theory and checking theory against experimental data. In the area of stating assumptions, economics fares poorly: economic behavior occurs in a social context, and it is part of the assumptions of any economic theory (= model.) Without stating the social context of an economic result, one can get remarkably boneheaded results: as Galbraith points out, one can end up assuming that people negotiate for jobs in the same way they haggle over fish.

Which brings us back to Krugman. Points in Krugman’s favor which I don’t think you’ve covered: he is aware of the distinction between pure and applied economics, he is willing, after a struggle to be sure, but willing, to check his theories against experimental data, and he accepts that people behave differently in different markets.

On the other hand, he himself has acknowledged a theoretician’s weakness for elegant general theories and he is not a strong applied economist. Since his time with the Reagan administration, he has refused policy-making positions, and I think this may be why.

Croak of the Day: Brad Delong's "After Copenhagen, What?"

2010-04-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Brad Delong's proposals on climate change. I don't know how much he believes these, as opposed to putting them out for discussion, but it's probably the strongest macro-policy summary on climate change I have seen. It is also, by any reasonable construction of the word, a green socialist plan. When this is what the moderates are saying, I think it may be time for moderate capitalists to just surrender and start waving a red flag with a green theta.

Pour money like water into research into closed-carbon and non-carbon energy technologies in order to maximize the chance that we will get lucky—on energy technologies at least, if not on climate sensitivity.
Beg the rulers of China and India to properly understand their long-term interests
Nationalize the energy industry in the United States.
Restrict future climate negotiations to a group of seven—the U.S., the E.U., Japan, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil—and enforce their agreement by substantial and painful trade sanctions on countries that do not accept their place in the resulting negotiated system.

The House in the 2010 elections

2010-04-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

In many places now, liberals are noticing that the Republicans are polling very well for 2010. There are a number of reasons for this: there's a huge amount of money being pumped into the system to swing the Republicans to the radical right. The post-health-care-reform media blitz has given the teabaggers wide, if inch-deep, popularity. The lackluster performance of the Democrats on financial services regulation (including health insurance), women's rights, civil rights and torture, and (likely) the environment does not energize either the mass of Democratic voters, or the party's activists, who are largely liberal. The Democrats are reduced to tossing their liberals sops as a strategy: things of real value, like bike lanes and LGBT hospital visitation rights, but much less than was promised and hinted at during the 2010 elections. To survive, I think the Democrats will have to rebuild their activist base from moderate conservatives, and I do not see how that can be done in six months.

Personally, I do not have the heart to work for a conservative party, though I have and will vote Democratic until a plausible liberal opposition comes along.

Croak!

Political Spectrum

2010-04-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

(Offered in the interests of clarity.)

Far Right
Grover Norquist

Moderate Right
Eugene Volokh

Center
Josh Marshall

Moderate Left
Jane Hamsher

Far Left
Noam Chomsky

Obama: Teflon President II?

2010-04-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

So now Obama has taken conservative positions on civil rights, women's rights, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care, and now offshore drilling and greenhouse gas regulation. I am struck by a consistent pattern in these: there is just enough movement to the left from Republican positions to separate the Democratic position from the Republican. At the same time, wealth and power are left secure. This is similar to Obama's campaign position: just far enough to the left to win votes, no further, and never concessions to the moderate left or the actual US center. Through all this Obama remains popular.

Reagan was the "Teflon President." No matter how horrible his position was, no matter who was hurt, no matter if his administration connived at treason (younger people look up Iran-Contra), he kept popular support, often from the people who his politics harmed. Possibly his most destructive policies were the gutting of the securities regulatory system and the abandonment of the FCC's fairness policy: those have come to haunt us in the last decade. Many of his supporters, aging, have become the Teabaggers. Obama seems to be Teflon President II. As with Reagan, too, his worst policy failures will make themselves felt after he is out of office: the poorly-designed health care system and the apparent sellout to the coal and oil industry on greenhouse gases now beginning. I wonder if, in 25 years, there will not be an aging group of Obama supporters defending his policies against their failings, even as the seas rise.

Sore Losers in the Authoritarian Interregnum

2010-04-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

(This is a meditation on our metahistorical situation. It started as a response to Jim Macdonald's comparison of the recent violence in response to the passage of health care with Kristallnacht over at Making Light.)

I have a different take on the current situation. I think the violence we are seeing is from sore losers. With the passage of health care "reform," the radical right has suffered a crushing defeat, and all they can do now is flail.

That's the good part. The bad part is: this is the authoritarian interregnum. The violence began in the 1990s, reached a peak with the Oklahoma City bombing, retreated. A questionably-decided election in 2000 put a radical-right administration (Bush II) in power, and the fear generated by an act of terror (9/11), gave the Bush II administration the mandate to do as it wished. There were numerous abuses and acts of violence perpetrated by the Bush II administration. The greatest, undoubtedly, was the Iraq war.

The Republicans were roundly defeated in 2008, and a Democratic Senate, House, and President moved in. And what have the Democrats done with their new power? Continued the Bush II torture agenda, resisted bringing the perpetrators of the crimes of the Bush II administration to justice, let the health insurance companies reform health care to their benefit, dealt women's rights the biggest blow in decades, failed to restrain the abuses of the banking system. The Democrats have become a ruling conservative party, though with a liberal wing, and they have no effective opposition. Meanwhile the Republicans have shuffled off to gamma quadrant.

We desperately need a revived left, and I think one is in the works. But it is going to take time, and another decade of corporatist government is going to be hard indeed.

To a Friend, On Supporting Democrats and Not

2010-04-04T20:15:00.000-07:00

(A post that started as a reply on a friend's blog, about third-party votes and progressive activism.)

I decided years ago that I would vote for the less crazy candidates which have a chance to win, and for a long time those have been the Democratic candidates. But I did not have the heart to work for the conservative Obama, and I do not have the heart to work for a conservative party. This is not the Democratic party of our youth: all the great liberal Democratic Senators of that time are gone and the Democrats are dominated by their conservatives. On a personal level, I think you will find supporting a party which compromises with the anti-abortion right very hard. (And the opening of new coasts to offshore drilling, as well, which hadn't occurred when I wrote the original letter.) I don't see the Democrats as moving to the left in this decade. Maybe if there are more major environmental disasters they will improve their environmental policies.

The Greens were grandstanding in 2000. I hope we never see that again. Any third party has to start at the state and local level, and in the House. On the other hand, the Republicans are a rump party. Their policies are enormously unpopular and, without the arcane rules of the Senate, and its undemocratic electoral structure, they would be very weak. Yet on major environmental issues the conservative Democrats are so far only a little better than the Republicans. At least the Democrats are willing to accept and support science. I like Dr. Stephen Chu--besides, he may fund a job for me. But I don't see the Democratic leadership challenging the oil (called that one!), coal, automobile, or road-building industries, any more than they have challenged the financial services industry or its health insurance branch. Matters are going to have to get much worse before the Senate will act, and I think a challenge is more likely to come from outside the Democrats than within.

Meantime: more women in the House, more women in the Senate, more women on the Federal bench. Electoral reform. Separation of church and state. Health care for everyone. Jobs. It's the environment, stupid!

Healthcare: The Defeat of a Common Enemy

2010-03-24T03:44:00.000-07:00

(Revised from a reply on Ian Welsh's blog. Ian Welsh is a prominent progressive blogger who objects to progressives rejoicing at the passage of a deeply-flawed health care plan.)

I think the progressive blogosphere and congresspeople are rejoicing in the defeat of an enemy

Yet that defeat is also a defeat of progressives. Fighting among ourselves will only make the defeat worse. One thing that wasn’t clear to any of us last August is just how bad a defeat for the Democrats would have been: it very likely would have put the radical right back in power. So I think standing on principle is both ill-mannered and poor tactics. Sure, we can blast the Congressional progressives for not keeping their promises. We might even be able to get some of them replaced. But would this strengthen our position? It would not. Long term, I think, conditions have rarely been better for major reforms and perhaps the formation of a new major party in the USA, and that is where we need to focus our efforts.

Croak of the Day: We Have An Early Winner

2010-03-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

John Holbo, satirizing Jonah Goldberg:

The Liberal Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the superconducting super collider of culture-war melting pot calling the kettle black!

Croak of the Day: Brad Delong

2010-03-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

To Brad Delong, on Mitt Romney repudiating a national health care plan very similar to the one he supported in Massachusetts:

I did not know that you could have a circular firing squad made up of only one person.

Honorable mention to Michael Bérubé's satire of the radical-right response to the health care plan, "The Night the Country Died:"

In the deep of a Sunday night
In the land of the health care bill
When the free republic died
And they talk about it still