Feeling Lucky? August 31, 2010March 18, 2017 KOREA, NOT CHINA Daniel (and Jonathan): “Those are actually photos of Haeundae Beach in Busan, Korea you posted yesterday. Check out google maps street view to get a view on a day when the beach is fairly empty.” ☞ Oops. Corrected for late risers. IS IT ELITIST TO BE CONCERNED THAT PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THE FACTS? On-line commentary from the New York Times: Building a Nation of Know-Nothings By Timothy Egan August 25, 2010, 8:30 pm Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president. Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.” McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.” That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush. Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate. Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies. The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie. In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies. So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans. A few quick examples of the Limbaugh method: “Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday — not that we’ve seen any proof of that,” he said on Aug. 3. “They tell us Aug. 4 is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that.” Of course, there is proof as clear as that baseball box score. Look here, www.factcheck.org, for starters, one of many places posting Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate. On the Muslim deception, Limbaugh has sprinkled lie dust all over the place. “Obama says he’s a Christian, but where’s the evidence?” he said on Aug. 19. He has repeatedly called the president “imam Obama,” and said, “I’m just throwing things out there, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity.” You see how he works. He drops in suggestions, hints, notes that “people are questioning” things. The design is to make Obama un-American. Then he says it’s a tweak, a provocation. He says this as a preemptive way to keep the press from calling him out. And it works; long profiles of Limbaugh have largely gone easy on him. Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders. It’s curious, also, that any felon, drug addict, or recovering hedonist can loudly proclaim a sudden embrace of Jesus and be welcomed without doubt by leaders of the religious right. But a thoughtful Christian like Obama is still distrusted. “I am a devout Christian,” Obama told Christianity Today in 2008. “I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” That’s not enough, apparently, for Rev. Franklin Graham, the partisan son of the great evangelical leader, who said last week that Obama was “born a Muslim because of the religious seed passed on from his father.” Actually, he was born from two non-practicing parents, and his Kenyan father was absent for all of his upbringing. Obama came to his Christianity like millions of people, through searching and questioning. Finally, there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another nonpartisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck. Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.” The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them. Climate-change denial is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from Limbaugh and Fox. It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence? But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier. It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present? FEELING LUCKY? Two and a half minutes – here. Don’t miss the last one. (Thanks, George.)
Dog Day Afternoon August 30, 2010March 18, 2017 A DAY AT THE BEACH IN CHINA These photos from a couple of years ago suggest a whole bunch of things, beginning with population density. THE TIDE IS TURNING “A growing number of Republicans are breaking with the party’s traditional stance [on gay marriage],” the Washington Post reported Saturday, “a shift strategists say stems as much from demographics as from the renewed focus on economics and the ‘tea party’ movement. . . .” Won’t it be nice when we have this behind us? MARRIAGE EQUALITY PROTEST SIGNS And while we’re at it, here’s a short video of marriage equality protest signs. A movement with a sense of humor. GLENN BECK’S RALLY If you missed it, here is an account. (“You can’t profit from fear and division [on TV] all week and then denounce them one Saturday on the National Mall in Washington and hope nobody notices. But Beck sure tried…”)
Swarthmore? Really? August 27, 2010March 18, 2017 MOCK-U Nick Lerman: “I wanted to give you a heads up about the plastic bag mockumentary you linked to yesterday. It’s a ripoff of this real short film. I’ve been interning with its maker, Ramin Bahrani, for almost a year and he isn’t happy about it. Perhaps you could link to his film, too, to show where the mockumentary came from (and to show how much better the narrative film is)?” ☞ I like them both! MEHLMAN So former RNC chair and Bush reelection committee chief Ken Mehlman is now open about being gay, and squarely in favor of marriage equality (along with Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, and Cindy McCain). There are those who find it hard to forgive Mehlman for his active role in his party’s beating up on gay people – on this very issue – to get cash and votes from the religious right. Some say his actions directly led to teenage suicides and to the increase in gay bashings observed in the 21 states that put “marriage initiatives” on the ballot. Blogger Mike Rogers writes that “Ken Mehlman’s new-found support is welcome” but suggests that, to make amends, he: Record a 60-second YouTube apology for what he has done, including using marriage as a wedge issue and the use of veto threats on ENDA and Hate Crimes bills. Spend time with the family of a young person who was murdered or committed suicide after the 2004 election. Spend time with the partner of someone who died while they were denied hospital access because of the lack of recognition of their relationship. Sell the $3.77 million condo he bought because of his horrible work and give it to gay organizations fighting the fight against the war he waged on his own people. Texan Eugene Sepulveda goes a bit easier on him. “Once you have a convert,” he writes, “you don’t make him beg to join you.” Going on to say: Not only do I remember what it was like being young and struggling, I remember having a suicide plan for when I was outed. I was a banker. By 29, I’d risen to the position of head of lending for a regional set of banks. I always assumed someone would try to blackmail me for a bank loan. I’d planned to gather enough evidence, forward it to the FBI, then commit suicide before facing the loss of love and respect from my family, friends and colleagues. In fact, someone did try blackmailing me. But, instead of asking for a $1,000,000+ loan, they asked for $500. The ridiculousness of it, allowed me to laugh in their face and deal with the perception of demons. Moral of the story, sometimes we create our own stories about the closet, about the enemies we face. I blame society for much of our closeted behavior – less today than yesterday, but still a bunch. I’m not saying that Ken doesn’t owe apologies. But since he’s now come out and is trying to help, I’m welcoming him. I’ll leave it to divine beings to judge him and set the standards of his penance. Whatever your view, it’s pretty stunning to have George W. Bush’s campaign manager, George W. Bush’s Vice President, and George W. Bush’s wife – not to mention Ted Olsen, the attorney in Bush v. Gore without whom George W. Bush would not have been President in the first place, and Cindy and Meghan McCain, the wife and daughter of the Republican nominated to succeed George W. Bush – now all advocating for marriage equality. How the world has changed. Let alone since Dr. Bertram Schaffner’s day. To wit: HE GOT INTO HARVARD AT 15, BUT LEFT FOR SWARTHMORE IN HOPE OF BECOMING HETEROSEXUAL It didn’t work. But what an interesting perspective on the way life used to be – an interview with a psychiatrist who passed away at 97 earlier this year.
There – I Fixed It August 26, 2010March 18, 2017 HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? It is the wondrous adventure of the plastic bag. A highly polished four-minute mockumentary. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. THERE – I FIXED IT That’s the name of a website – thereifixedit.com – that testifies to the sometimes scary ingenuity of the American public. I couldn’t find a way to highlight favorites, but here’s one (imported to a different site) to give you an idea. And here’s someone’s top ten. RACHEL MADDOW . . . . . . had hit after hit Monday. First this piece on “scaring white people”; then this one on a Tea Party guide for avoiding black neighborhoods if you attend Glenn Beck’s odd civil rights march this weekend; this one on the alleged year of the anti-incumbent (except the incumbent seems to keep winning); and this one on the credit card reforms that have just kicked in (you can no longer be charged $29 for exceeding your credit limit by $5 or have the interest jacked up on stuff you’ve already purchased). Enjoy!
Surpluses As Far As The Eye Can See August 25, 2010March 18, 2017 Tony Spina: “From my perspective neither Party gets it. The national debt of the United States has gone up every year since 1957. No exceptions. No ‘surpluses as far as the eye can see’ – in fact not one single surplus from any President since 1956! Republicans and Democrats are of course both well represented in those 50+ years. My conclusion: the two major Parties are not ‘good Party or bad Party’ for this Country, lately both are bad. Each spending Bill that passed since 1957 had to have been judged as essential at the time, or (I would like to think, anyway) would not have passed. Crises do occur, but can it be that in over 50 years there was not a single year without a critical need for spending more than the government took in? Prior to 1957 the national debt got paid down occasionally. A great many people will listen to an old or new political party that convincingly addresses this, I believe.” ☞ I share your frustration and know it comes from a good place, but it may be a bit offbase. In the first place, all that matters is the size of the debt relative to the economy as a whole. If the debt is relatively small – like a $175,000 mortgage on a $2 million home owned by a billionaire – it’s not a big concern. If it’s large – like the same $175,000 mortgage on a $160,000 home owned by short-order cook – it can be devastating. So imagine we ran a $200 billion deficit each of the next 100 years, while our economy grew at 5% a year – half from real growth, half from inflation. Terrible, no? A century of $200 billion deficits! Actually, that scenario would be wonderful. A century from now, the debt would have grown by another $20 trillion and be closing in on $35 trillion. But the GDP would have grown to $1.9 quadrillion. So the debt would have shrunk from today’s ratio of nearly 100% of GDP to less than 2% of GDP. All this is fanciful, to be sure, but illustrates the point. Deficits are okay, so long as the overall debt is – at least in most years – growing slower than the economy. Another piece of this is the way the accounting is done. The government does its accounting on a cash basis. All would agree that when we borrow to issue unemployment checks that’s money we are spending; but most would agree that when we borrow to build the Interstate Highway System, that’s investing. It’s not terrible to borrow money to make a productive investment. Well-managed business do it all the time. Sometimes, a crisis comes along that requires not just relatively minor deficits, but enormous ones – like winning World War II. What choice did we have? We had to do whatever it took to win. And in so doing, we took the National Debt – which had been roughly 30% of GDP at the start of the Depression and had risen to roughly 40% by the time we entered the war – all the way up to 121% by 1946. And then, over 35 years that ended with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, we gradually shrank it back down to 30%. Not, as you correctly note, by paying it down; just by having it grow a lot more slowly than the economy. Reagan/Bush shot the debt ratio skyward. Clinton inherited a stalled economy but put the brakes on spending. (At least one prominent liberal resigned in protest that bond-holder interests had been put ahead of poverty programs.*) And he worked with a Democratic Congress that in 1990 had established a system called “PAYGO” that required new budget items be paid for with commensurate cuts elsewhere or new tax revenue. When the Republicans took back control of Congress, they ditched PAYGO. This year, the Democrats reinstated it, over unanimous opposition from Senate Republicans (who also filibustered to kill legislation that would have created the Bipartisan Deficit Reduction Commission that President Obama went on to establish anyway, by executive order). When Democrats are in power, Republicans call loudly for passage of the “Balanced Budget Amendment” to the Constitution. (A bad idea.) Then they take power, go silent on the issue, and run up trillions in debt. Once they lose power, they start calling for it again, as they have begun to now. There is a pattern here. I would never argue that Democrats are uniformly and always perfect on this issue (or any other), or that Republicans are uniformly and always wrong. But to suggest there are not huge differences between the parties – to tar them both with the same brush – is to miss some very deeply ingrained themes. As to the “surpluses as far as the eye can see,” a couple more points. First, even though I have myself railed against doing it this way, the budget is generally expressed by both parties as if the Social Security surplus is “revenue.” Miscounting it this way did indeed give us surpluses in each of Clinton’s last two years. (But because it was not really revenue – rather, money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund – the debt did go up even when there was reportedly a significant surplus.) Indeed, recognizing this, Clinton left office urging his successor (and anyone else who would listen) to “save Social Security first.” It was his way of saying, “don’t blow this reported surplus on tax cuts – we need it to shore up the national balance sheet.” Bush, by contrast, told anyone who would listen that the surpluses were large and real. Indeed, there were prominent Republicans who publicly worried that the surpluses Clinton was handing them were so large that they threatened to pay off the entire National Debt, which would kill the important global market for U.S. Treasury securities – a worrisome prospect. Bush said, the surplus is your money, not the government’s. Elect me, and I’ll give it back to you. But what he really did was borrow the Social Security surplus – paid in by average working stiffs – and pay it out in the form of tax cuts that most benefited millionaires and billionaires. There is a lot to be angry about in our current economic straits. Only a small share of that anger should be directed at Democrats. Where Reagan slashed taxes for the wealthy and raised them for Joe the Plumber, Obama has done the reverse. He has cut taxes for 95% of working families, including Joe, but plans to raise them for the best off. Even though I’m in the fortunate 5% or so who will pay more, I think it’s the right approach for our current circumstance. That it’s made Joe so angry is a testament to the skills and resources of the folks who hope to misinform and manipulate him into supporting Republicans who will put corporate interests and the interests of the wealthy ahead of his own. It worked in 2000 and 2004. We’ll know in 70 days whether it worked again in 2010. * A budget that got not a single Republican vote, and became the subject of Bob Woodward’s book, The Agenda.
Raise Your Vote August 24, 2010March 18, 2017 THE REPUBLICAN MESS Ralph Sierra: “You may already have seen this.” ☞ It’s not the most nuanced 46 seconds – it’s shrill. But there’s a lot to be shrill about! The Republicans really did drive the country into the ditch! It may be unseemly to point that out, or hopelessly clichéd to underscore it with melodramatic music. But the choice we have to make 70 days from now could hardly be more stark. ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE? RaiseYourVote.com makes it as easy as possible. Each state’s early-voting rules and all the rest. THE WAY OUT Dan Stone, MD: “I agree with you that infrastructure spending is the way to address the anemic economy. It’s interesting to me that in the run up to the stimulus package, the Republicans criticized public spending as a way to address the recession, commenting that the Depression had been solved not by New Deal spending but by World War II. But they never seemed willing to take the next step and ask, what was it about World War II that addressed the economic ills of the Depression? It was sustained government spending [that dwarfed the deficit spending of] the New Deal! And, there’s nothing curative in building bombs and tanks. Infrastructure spending would have the same stimulating effect on the economy as war spending, but would improve our future efficiency as well. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration [forced to compromise with the Republicans] repeated the New Deal error of underspending. Like the New Deal, the stimulus improved a dire outlook but did not lead to a full recovery. Republicans want to address this by reducing taxes. But, as you suggest, why would reducing taxes on a profitable employer stimulate him to hire workers he doesn’t need?* And how will it help to go deeper into National Debt to cut personal taxes? Most of the lower taxes will go to paying down debt, building up saving, and buying Chinese-made goods. Admittedly, the problem of the budget deficit, cited by Republicans opposing more stimulus, is a real one. If only they would have realized the problem back when the Bush administration was cutting taxes for the wealthiest and taking us ever deeper into debt. But restoring the economy, the engine of national prosperity, is worth incurring debt.” ☞ Indeed, what other rational choice do we have? *Cutting taxes wouldn’t help struggling unprofitable employers hire – those employers pay no tax. And if you’re small business owner who does pay a lot in taxes, cutting the rate actually makes it more expensive for you to hire. (Think about it. If you’re earning $700,000 a year, taxed on the margin at 35%, the after-tax cost to you of adding $100,000 to your payroll is $65,000. Right? If the effective rate went back to the Clinton/Gore 39.6%, then the after-tax cost to you of adding $100,000 to your payroll would be $60,400.) Instead, President Obama proposed a $5,000 tax credit for each new worker hired (up to a total of $500,000 per business). That would bring down the cost of hiring new workers – even for struggling businesses. What actually passed was an exemption from the employer’s side of the Social Security payroll tax that cut the cost of a new hire by 6.2% – $3,000 on a $48,000 hire – plus $1,000). TARGET THE TAX CUTS What the Republicans want is an extension of cuts for those at the top. But they can’t come right out and say it. (“In these extremely difficult economic times, we want to keep borrowing from China in order to keep the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy that helped turn Clinton’s ‘surpluses as far as the eye can see’ into horrific deficits.”) So instead, they justify “making the tax cuts permanent” by pretending to champion small business and job creation. But that’s bull. Here is White House view: Extending High-Income Tax Cuts is the Wrong Answer for the Recovery Posted by Christina Romer on July 28, 2010 at 03:20 PM EDT President Obama has made it clear that he favors extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for middle-income families, but letting those for high-income earners expire as called for in current law. Recently, some have argued that extending the high-income cuts is necessary for the economy. This is simply wrong. . . . The Congressional Budget Office lists a tax cut for high-income earners as a particularly ineffective job creation measure. Private sector forecasters have reached the same judgment.1 The vast majority of economic research shows that higher-income earners spend less of a tax cut and so tax cuts to those earners create fewer jobs throughout the economy.2 That doesn’t mean that all tax cuts are ineffective in creating growth. In fact, tax cuts designed in the right way can be highly effective. That is why the President supported numerous tax cuts in the Recovery Act and why continuing the middle-class tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 is so important. . . . If lawmakers are truly concerned about job creation, as they should be given the painfully high rate of unemployment, many approaches would be more cost effective than extending the Bush tax cuts for high-income earners. For example, a private sector study recently concluded that a third year of the Making Work Pay tax credit would be far more stimulative.1 Likewise, estimates by the Council of Economic Advisers suggest that spending $10 billion to prevent the layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police would lead to nearly twice as many jobs as the estimated $30 billion of high-income tax cuts—that’s twice as many jobs for one-third the cost. The small business jobs bill currently before the Senate, which contains both targeted tax cuts for small businesses and measures to improve their access to credit, would also be a far more powerful and cost-effective way to stimulate economic growth and job creation. It is ironic that many who are now arguing that the high-income tax cuts must be extended on stimulus grounds opposed the Making Work Pay tax credit [that] went to 95% of working families . . . ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE? I repeat: RaiseYourVote.com makes it as easy as possible.
When An LED Investment Can Pay Off August 23, 2010March 18, 2017 PIEZOELECTRICITY – MAYBE NOT When you walk or drive, your weight, or your vehicle’s weight, would press down on a little gizmo (piezmo?) that generates electricity. The concept is to have such generating pads at high traffic locations like subway entrances – or to embed such systems as we repave roads. “Utterly ridiculous,” responds one skeptical commenter. “The amount of energy that can be harvested is tiny compared with the investment required.” LED LIGHTING – MAYBE! The linked post above is short on numbers, possibly because the math just doesn’t work out. This post, by contrast, is all about the numbers, as you consider whether to go LED; and makes the case that the quality of available LEDs varies dramatically. It includes a buying guide. ONE DEGREE OF SEPARATION . . . Well, it seems my pal Brad Gooch actually knows the Ground Zero imam – who apparently is no more threatening than, say, Dr. Phil. (The imam’s wife’s name is Daisy. The imam went to Columbia. The imam is exactly the kind of peace-preaching Muslim leader we’ve been saying we want speaking out – so we’ve been sending him around the world to speak out). So I went to read Brad’s piece and discovered that one of the imam’s principal patrons is a woman I dated in high school. Kevin Bacon is likely to appear at any moment.
Fox August 20, 2010March 18, 2017 MITT Here’s a surprise. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wants to cut corporate taxes and protect the wealthy. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich responds: “For Romney, the key to America’s recovery is to cut taxes on businesses and on people who invest in them. … But anyone looking closely at the American economy today would see this is nonsense. American corporations have an unprecedented $1.8 trillion of cash. …In other words, businesses have all the capital they need … It’s pushing on a wet noodle. Businesses create jobs only if consumers are pulling the noodle from the other end.” Exactly – though I don’t agree with Reich’s solution, either. Professor Reich would borrow hundreds of billions to cut the payroll tax on those already with jobs. Not me. I would borrow hundreds of billions to make our economy more efficient, and in ways that would create new jobs – renewing our failing infrastructure, for example, and providing big incentives to weatherize tens of millions of homes and commercial buildings to cut their energy consumption. FOX Fred Campbell: “Uh…Andy…NBC’s parent corporation (GE) donated money to democrats in the 2008 election cycle. ABC’s parent corporation (Disney) did the same. Don’t know how this is different than Fox News’ parent donating to republicans.” ☞ I think most people see News Corp’s primary business being “news.” Very few people would say that of GE or Disney. Under current law, News Corp has every right to make this contribution to advance its corporate interests. But it’s nonetheless a pretty large and clear statement of whom they’re rooting for. And if you work at Fox News, and hope to advance, my guess is that knowing who the boss is rooting for has an influence on your work product. And listen, the same is true of me. My views are obviously slanted to the left. The difference is that – while I actually do try hard to be scrupulously honest and reasonably fair and balanced – I do not purport to be an unbiased news source, constantly proclaiming to you that “I report, you decide” or that I’m fair and balanced. Another difference is that News Corp is in it for the money. That’s fine, but it doesn’t always lead to the most thoughtful reporting. (“Thoughtful” doesn’t sell as many papers or get the same ratings as “sensational.”) And a lower corporate tax rate and fewer restrictions on cigarette advertising, and so on – while good for News Corp’s shareholders – aren’t necessarily good for society as a whole. Steve Nevarez: “You write: ‘Imagine CBS giving the Democrats $1 million. Or Super Bowl referees betting on the game. Well, Fox News parent News Corp just gave the Republican Governor’s Association $1 million. Fox News: always looking for a way to give the wealthy and powerful an edge.’ Are your readers really so blind that they believe your slanted writings? Imagine the New York Times saying after an election that they helped Barack Obama win. Imagine the LA Times killing a story before the election because they didn’t want to influence the election. The New York Times admitted it and the LA Times killed an anti-Obama story. Stuff like this is happening in our media today as they are blatantly campaigning for the democrat candidates. You aren’t interested in truth. You are interested in leading the flock to your side and truth is not to stand in the way. Shame on you. When I read the news about the donation I was disappointed. But I guess since journalism is no longer about unbiased reporting, all gloves are off. In that respect, the Republicans are still way outgunned since most of the media is liberal. You’re a smart man. Give your readers some credit and don’t act like this stuff isn’t going on. The liberal press started it and has a huge advantage in this game. There just aren’t many News Corp type outlets.” ☞ I think almost anyone comparing the journalistic standards of the New York Times or CBS News with those of the News-Corp-owned New York Post or Fox News (or comparing the Wall Street Journal before and after its transfer to News Corp ownership) would conclude that the former make more of an effort to fulfill their roles as unbiased news sources, independent of the views of their editorial pages. That you were disappointed to learn of that $1 million contribution suggests that on some level we must have points of agreement. One disagreement: I would dispute that “there just aren’t many News Corp type outlets.” There are, for starters, all the News Corp properties. But then you also have virtually all of talk radio – so anyone who drives anywhere is constantly exposed to the “echo chamber.” And you have hundreds of millions of dollars fueling that echo chamber, and hundreds of visible Republicans in Congress and elsewhere, and Tea Party folks, with easy access to the media and unlimited access to the Internet. Somehow, 70% of the folks who voted to reelect George W. Bush believed Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Somehow, 18% of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. I don’t think they’re getting this from CBS or the New York Times. A further 43% don’t know what religion he is. (He’s a Christian.) I don’t have comparable statistics for John Kennedy (where, again, the candidate’s religion was an issue in the campaign), but didn’t the whole country simply know Kennedy was Catholic? Is it the New York Times and CBS that have contributed to our relative ignorance these days? Or might it possibly be the Karl Rove echo chamber (to shorthand it), of which Fox News is a linchpin? IRAQ Just in case you missed the news, U.S. combat troops are now entirely out of Iraq. It’s more complicated than this when you read the whole story; but it’s still something to note and feel good about. Have a great weekend!
YERT Anyone? Bueller? August 19, 2010March 18, 2017 Last Wednesday’s exciting solar-pavement video was one of 50 from “YERT” – Your Environmental Road Trip. I thought you might enjoy watching some more. For example, I’m headed to St. Louis this week – and now have something special to see while I’m there – this art museum of recycled junk. Basically, I’m taking the day off.
Wing Nuts DCTH August 18, 2010March 18, 2017 MITCH McCONNELL IS AMUSED “I am amused with their comments about obstructionism,” [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell told the New York Times. “I wish we had been able to obstruct more. They were able to get the health care bill through. They were able to get the stimulus through. They were able to get the financial reform through. These were all major pieces of legislation, and if I would have had enough votes to stop them, I would have.” ☞ If only we could go back to the Bush years. That’s the direction we need to go – backwards! And boosting that agenda . . . FOX Imagine CBS giving the Democrats $1 million. Or Super Bowl referees betting on the game. Well, Fox News parent News Corp just gave the Republican Governor’s Association $1 million. Fox News: always looking for a way to give the wealthy and powerful an edge. WING NUTS Wayne Seibert: “I live just north of Congressman Inglis’ district, in the same media market, and I watched his campaign with interest. Much of what you and Mother Jones say is true: this district is one of the ten most conservative in the country, and they are not happy. I don’t think a few anecdotes Inglis peddles in this article really discredit the entire Republican Party; I’m positive I could get ten times as many wacky quotes from Maxine Waters’ district, not to mention Barack Obama’s pastor. Inglis blames the yahoos, blames the establishment Repubs, blames everyone but himself, but he would not have had a credible challenge except for one thing – he voted for the bank bailout, without including safeguards against bonuses or perks being siphoned off. I still don’t think you folks in the elite know how grievous a wound that was to Obama’s Presidency, and I really don’t think it’s a right-wing issue. I think it’s more a populist thing, and it really opened a lot of people’s eyes to the fundamental crony-capitalist nature of our political economy that needs radical, hot-headed opposition. When Ronald Reagan was confronted by a similar crisis in the first few months of his administration, he showed what leadership looked like by firing the air traffic controllers who thought they were indispensable. If Obama had forced the AIG and Wall Street greedhogs to put their bonus money in escrow until the bailout funds were repaid he would be on track to being a transformative president. But you don’t get a Ronald Reagan very often.” ☞ I agree with only some of this. First, it’s worth noting that the bank bail-out was a creature of the Bush Administration. The vote was cast in 2008 during the Bush term, at Bush’s request. Though I, too, would have liked to see the legislation be tougher on bonuses and perks, how exactly that gets hung on Obama’s presidency is unclear. (Perhaps the Fox News bias helps explain it?) Second, the push to protect the wealthy is supported almost unanimously by the Republican Party, which has long had as a top priority making permanent its tax cuts for the rich. Third, look what happened when the President got BP to agree to set aside $20 billion for the little guys hurt by Gulf damage claims. Quite a few on the right – but no one I know on the left – attacked this as big government bludgeoning private enterprise. You’d think most of America would long since have been outraged at the way the Republicans have so successfully skewed the game in favor of the rich and powerful – and that a populist movement would have emerged back when the Administration in power was not on the side of the middle class, as it is now. And speaking of Ronald Reagan . . . OUR ECONOMIC QUAGMIRE One of the founding executives of Cisco offers this economic analysis at the Huffington Post: The Jobs Crisis: What Hit Us? Bob Burnett Posted: August 13, 2010 09:20 AM The US is stuck in an economic quagmire featuring near ten percent unemployment. As politicians argue about the solution — massive tax cuts or increases in Federal spending — what’s missing is a succinct analysis of the problem. Why has America lost 8 million jobs? The roots of the jobs crisis stretch back to the Ronald Reagan presidency when conservative economic ideology began to dominate American political discourse. At the forefront of this philosophy were three malignant notions: helping the rich get richer will inevitably help everyone else, “a rising tide lifts all boats;” markets are inherently self correcting and therefore there’s no need for government regulation; and the US does not need an economic strategy because that’s a natural consequence of the free market. What followed was a thirty-year period where America’s working families were abandoned in favor of the rich. Inequality rose as middle class income and wealth declined. As corporate power increased, unions were systematically undermined. As CEO salaries soared, fewer families earned living wages. Conservative ideology produced a warped and brittle US economy, where more than two-thirds of our GDP was housing related: building, buying, and furnishing new homes or borrowing against existing homes in order to maintain a decent standard of living. When the credit bubble burst, the debt-based consumption model failed, taking down first the housing sector and then the entire economy, resulting in catastrophic job losses. In order to be sustainable, the US economy has to generate 125,000 jobs each month. (To bring unemployment down to acceptable levels — below 7 percent — the US economy needs to generate 300,000 jobs each month for the next three years.) For this to happen, there have to be three positive conditions. First, consumers have to be willing to spend money. Regardless of the conservative ideology, the US economy depends upon steady consumption by working Americans. The Reagan Republican theory incorrectly assumes that rich folks buying yachts and vacation homes catalyzes the consumer economy. Nonetheless, wealthy Americans have as much income as they have ever had but their purchases of Ferraris or diamonds has not been sufficient to boost the economy. Average Americans aren’t consuming because they either don’t have the money or are saving it because they are fearful. Second, businesses have to be willing to hire. At the moment, many businesses — outside of construction and commercial real estate — have the funds available to hire but they either aren’t hiring or are filling what should be full-time permanent positions with part-time temporary workers. Third, the new jobs have to be decent jobs paying a living wage. Unfortunately, the Associated Press reported that of the 630,000 jobs created in 2010, 81 percent are low-paying service-sector positions. That’s the sad backdrop to terrible unemployment data. Since the Reagan presidency the number of decent jobs has steadily eroded. When a worker retires from a GM assembly line, and a job that pays good wages, he isn’t replaced by his son or daughter; they go to work at McDonalds. There was an under-acknowledged “structural adjustment” that meant the US consumer economy could not function unless average Americans went deeply in debt: borrowed up to the limit on their credit cards or used up their home equity. It’s necessary to understand what went wrong with the US economy because fundamental changes are required to deal with the jobs crisis. So far the political rhetoric has been underwhelming. Republicans blame unemployment on the policies of the Obama Administration and argue the solution is to cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy. Democrats blame unemployment on the policies of the Bush Administration and argue the solution is to increase Federal spending. The New York Times correctly condemned both approaches noting that Republican policies produced the current economic decline and the “cut taxes to solve all problems” clearly does not work. The Times also described the Democratic approach as timid, failing to attack the systemic nature of the problem. America has economic cancer and radical surgery is required. First, there has to be a massive redistribution of income by increasing taxes on both the wealthy and financial institutions (particularly those that were at the heart of 2008’s economic meltdown). Second, there has to be a second stimulus package that not only supports America’s teachers and public safety workers but also strengthens the US infrastructure, in general. It’s not logical to propose that American businesses provide better jobs without also ensuring that our schools produce workers who can meet employers’ needs. Third, the Federal government has to be involved in economic policy. The last thirty years has demonstrated that it’s insane to assume the free market will do this. What we’ve learned is that the market follows the path of least resistance and dictates economic policy solely based on greed. Creating wealth for a handful of CEOs isn’t consistent with the national interest. What are needed now are economic policies that produce decent jobs for average Americans. The Federal government has to intervene and create the jobs that the greedy, shortsighted private sector hasn’t provided. ☞ I don’t like the word greedy. It conjures up images of fat little boys taking more than their share of Jujyfruits. I don’t think CEOs are motivated by greed, I think they’re motivated by a competitive need to excel – to rack up a high score. But because that score is expressed in terms of their own wealth and perks, you can see how some critics might mistake it for greed. Whatever their motivation, CEO pay packages do not take fully into account the “externalities” – costs their actions impose on the rest of us – and thus fail to keep their interests from being adequately aligned with the greater good. So either we have to “price those in” somehow, or impose regulation, or both. DCTH Guru: “So the good news is that DCTH, after this sale of new shares, will have the cash it needs to get through the approval and early launch of its product. The bad news is that, the way the company was talking a couple of weeks ago, the idea was to generate enough cash from an Asian deal not to have to raise equity cash immediately. It must be taking longer than they thought a couple of weeks ago. No reason to assume it won’t happen – they already have a deal in Taiwan, so this would be for other countries. Still, would have been nice for an Asian partnership to be the next news item.” ☞ Hang on.