Author: A.T.

I promise soon to serve lighter fare — I just finished listening to Neil Patrick Harris’s memoir! wait til you hear! — and I have pictures of animals! — but I couldn’t resist handing the mike to two of you, on two different topics, sort of, but each getting at the question, really, of how Mitch McConnell can say “by any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country” when by virtually every standard things are dramatically better . . . and have Republican voters mostly nod in agreement with him.

How can that be?

Two theories:

AYN RAND II

Carl Granados:  “I also read a bunch of Ayn Rand when I was a teenager and I am a liberal.  First of all I was smart enough to realize that her books were fiction.  Then I also knew Ms. Rand came from the corrupt and repressive Soviet Union.  What I took away from her writing was the evils of a government that is too powerful and controlling.  In other words a government that tries to legislate abortion, pushes religion, tries to control sexuality, tortures, and invades countries on false pretexts.  These are all things she was against as a Libertarian but that her GOP faithful like to ignore. . . . People cherry pick from books to find in them what they want to.  (Like the Bible — a book about someone who believes in peace, nonviolence, and taking care of the poor.  The GOP use it to worship the rich, money, and guns.)  . . . The real culprit isn’t Ayn Rand but blind faith over reason, evidence, having an open mind, and inquiry.”

STEVEN II

Mike Martin:  “Your pen pal Steven is not an idiot, that would be too simple.  Understanding Steven is relatively simple if you consider he is merely flotsam in a tidal wave of change occurring in the world.  I find knowing about that change to be exciting but it remains frustrating to see it ignored.  I was at a dinner one time when a pompous historian quoted Santayana: ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’  I rejoined:  ‘Yeah, but those who do learn from history are doomed to repeat it with the agony of knowing the disaster ahead.’

“Webster’s,” Mike continues, “defines Rationalism as ‘a theory that reason is in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions.’  I regularly argue with a nationally known blogger who cites Rationalism as a defense against the Discovery Institute (creationism) and I try to explain to him that creationism and religious belief epitomize Rationalism.  Rationalism in the modern world means to argue logically about things that have no empirical basis in fact.  Consider Supply Side economics and the Bush II administration’s tax cuts.  These are all well argued logical positions that simply are contrary to fact.  BUT that is what the definition of Rationalism is referring to: ‘superior to and independent of sense perceptions.’

“Literally, by definition, Rationalism refers to logically arguing in favor of things that have no basis in reality. This is precisely what Cheney was referring to when he told Ron Suskind ‘that guys like [Ron Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which [Cheney] defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”  [Suskind] nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.  [Cheney] cut [Suskind] off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.  We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

“Webster’s dictionary defines Empiricism as ‘a theory that all knowledge originates in experience.’  Galileo is usually cited as the classic example: the church authorities argued logically from doctrine (Rationalism) but Galileo tried to show them through the telescope the empirical sense perception that proved them wrong. The church authorities refused to look through the telescope because Rationalism is based on ignoring empirical facts because doctrine is considered ‘superior to and independent of sense perception.’  I actually prefer a more recent example: the Brown versus Board of Education decision of the United States Supreme Court. What had been the previous doctrine of the USSC was to argue based purely on reason from the law. What occurred in Brown was that the court allowed the plaintiffs to cite empirical evidence. Separate But Equal was a Rationalist defense that complied with the law even though it had no basis in fact and the Brown decision recognized that empirical facts were, in a sense, ‘superior to and independent of’ reason. This transformation of legal doctrine into an empirical foundation was also reflected in the change to ‘strict liability’ where in prior law a person was liable only if the plaintiff could show the defendant was negligent, whereas under strict liability the plaintiff only had to show that the damage occurred as a consequence of the defendant. In essence, it transferred liability from one of intellectual inputs to one of empirical facts.

“Look around your political world and you see this underlying nearly every controversy. The Republicans always explain things in terms of allegiance to doctrines and they consider physical evidence to be completely irrelevant. Your friend Steven can completely ignore the empirical evidence you cite about President Obama because his doctrinal reasoning is ‘superior to and independent of’ empirical fact.  Like Cheney told Suskind, Democrats are the reality-based community, but Republicans ‘create our own reality’ which to them means merely concocting a rational explanation for their actions for which the empirical reality is irrelevant because their concoction is ‘superior to and independent of’ empirical fact.  The Republicans know this; that is why they specifically create entities that develop and promulgate concocted rational explanations for their actions. Paul Krugman lamented this in his September column on Those Lazy Jobless: ‘My guess, however, is that it’s mainly about the closed information loop of the modern right. In a nation where the Republican base gets what it thinks are facts from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, where the party’s elite gets what it imagines to be policy analysis from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, the right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware of neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless. You might think that personal experience — almost everyone has acquaintances or relatives who can’t find work — would still break through, but apparently not.’

“However, Krugman states this without any apparent recognition that this reflects a standard philosophy described precisely that way in Webster’s dictionary. I’m not trying to convince you of some exotic theory, just read the damn dictionary. It’s not like I’m quoting an obtuse philosopher such as Ayn Rand; these are fundamental garden variety basic philosophies. In fact, one political party says that believing in a fictional doctrine by an obtuse philosopher (Ayn Rand) is ‘superior to and independent of’ reality. They fundamentally establish fiction as superior to fact.

“What I am saying is rather simple: the Republican Party represents the philosophy of Rationalism while the Democratic Party represents the philosophy of Empiricism.

“I see this over and over without those involved recognizing what is occurring. Consider economist Mark Thoma writing during 2012 in the Financial Times: ‘Even when the econometric models do give clear answers, those answers are often ignored in the public debate over these issues. This is due, in large part, to economists who are willing to ignore clear empirical evidence in order to sow confusion and promote ideological goals, and the culture within the profession that does little to penalize such behavior.’ He doesn’t explain that ‘to ignore clear empirical evidence’ is precisely what it means to be a Republican/Rationalist.

“Paul Krugman wrote in 2011 (The War on Demand) about Keynesian theory, ‘It’s kind of shocking if you think about it. Here we have a huge, hard-won intellectual achievement, one that accounts very well for the world we actually see, and yet it’s being thrown away because it doesn’t go along with ideological preconceptions. Once that sort of thing starts, where does it stop? The next thing you know, the theory of evolution will get the same treatment. Oh, wait.’ In other words, Krugman observes knowledge ‘that accounts very well for the world we actually see’ being ignored ‘because it doesn’t go along with ideological preconceptions’ but seems completely baffled by this. It shouldn’t be baffling, it perfectly describes the philosophical difference between the two political parties.

“People regularly seem baffled by the ability of the Republican Tea Party faction to make statements like ‘keep the government out of my Medicare’ and other rhetoric completely divorced from reality, yet the philosophical leader of the Republican party has already publicly stated that theirs is not ‘the reality-based community.’  The Republican ‘closed information loop’ that Krugman describes simply represents the doctrinal distribution of the concocted Rationalist reality and each Republican presidential candidate will solemnly declare allegiance to fictional doctrine as proof of their ability to ignore empirical fact based reality in order to establish their bona fides. Why else do you think it is so important among them to salute Ayn Rand?

“That represents what it means, by definition, to be a Republican/Rationalist: the ability to establish doctrine as ‘superior to and independent of’ reality. Indeed, the more obvious your ability to ignore reality the greater your Republican bona fides. It isn’t ‘misinformation’ to them, as you described it, it is their fundamental philosophical paradigm. The Brown versus Board of Education was considered a radical transformation of the legal paradigm in America and one that is still lamented by Republican judges such as Scalia. But, if you look at the fundamental transformation of particle physics at the beginning of the 20th Century with Quantum Mechanics, even today there is NO rational explanation of how Quantum Mechanics works but physicists explain that it closely matches empirical fact so they use it. In other words, Empiricism means that knowledge which corresponds closely with the real world is ‘superior to and independent of’ any reasoning if it provides a better basis for action than rational thought. As a consequence, even if Obamacare lacks a rational basis it would still be desirable if it provides a better basis for action than any other.

“The entire world is now entering an era of ‘do what works’ rather than fight over doctrines that have no basis in reality. Both Empiricism and Rationalism are fundamentally based on reasoning, but Empiricism says ‘do what works’ even if you don’t completely understand why, while Rationalism means ‘do what doctrinal authority tells you even if it doesn’t correspond with reality.’  Meanwhile, YOU insist on trying to argue facts with Republicans when their entire existence depends on ignoring facts as their philosophical basis.”

☞ Not tomorrow. Tomorrow: Doogie Howser! Or animal pictures! Or how to slice cherry tomatoes 20 at a time!

So yesterday’s column was abusively long — I apologize! — and my early Nielsen research shows that only 2% of you managed to make it to the end:

Misinformation is a dangerous thing.  If people are told often enough that the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is a conspiracy — by, for example, the new Republican Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future — some are going to believe it.  If people are told often enough the President is not a citizen or that Iraq had a hand in attacking us on 9/11 or that (based on intelligence from a guy code-named Curveball whom U.S. intelligence never even interviewed) invading Iraq was absolutely necessary — some are going to believe it.  If people are told often enough that America is the great Satan or that they will be met by 72 virgins if they kill innocent people or that they are the Master Race or that masturbation causes blindness or that Obamacare is bad — but that kynect, which is Obamacare, is good — or that election day is Wednesday — some are going to believe it.

And when Mitch McConnell — who set as his first priority preventing Obama’s reelection — tells people, in prepared, considered remarks that, “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country” – some people, like Steven, are going to believe it.

For all his obvious intelligence and good intentions, which I truly don’t question, Steven — for now, at least — is an idiot.

Today, just a quick follow-up:

Pamela W. in Texas:  “The Stevens of the country really frighten me. I applaud your persistence and continued dialog (?) but wonder if it’s a waste of time. I believe there is something deeper going on with these folks, like religious beliefs. And there’s no getting around that.”

Dave Burgess:  “Stop trying to change Steven. It can’t be done. Focus your efforts on those who can be reasoned with. His head is in the tar sands and will remain there the rest of his life.”

☞ I hear you (and do recognize that calling someone an idiot — even if respectfully — is not necessarily the best way to wedge his mind  open to your point of view) but I don’t believe it’s hopeless.  People evolve.  People grow.  Every once in a while I get an email from a reader who says, in effect, “OK, you’ve worn me down.”  I live for those emails.

Jonathan Chait, argung in this week’s New York Magazine that history will laud President Obama:

He has amassed a record of policy accomplishment far deeper than even many of his supporters give him credit for. He has also survived a dismal, and frequently terrifying, 72 months when at every moment, to go by the day-to-day media, a crisis has threatened to rock his presidency to its core. The episodes have been all-consuming: the BP oil spill, swine flu, the Christmas underwear bomber, the IRS scandal, the healthcare.org launch, the border crisis, Benghazi. Depending on how you count, upwards of 19 events have been described as “Obama’s Katrina.”

Obama’s response to these crises—or, you could say, his method of leadership—has been surprisingly consistent. He has a legendarily, almost fanatically placid temperament. He has now spent eight years, counting from the start of his first presidential campaign, keeping his head while others were losing theirs, and avoiding rhetorical overreach at the risk of underreach. A few months ago, the crisis was the Ebola outbreak, and Obama faced a familiar criticism: He had botched the putatively crucial “performative” aspects of his job. “Six years in,” BusinessWeek reported, “it’s clear that Obama’s presidency is largely about adhering to intellectual rigor—regardless of the public’s emotional needs.”

By year’s end, the death count of those who contracted Ebola in the United States was zero, and the panic appears as unlikely to define Obama’s presidency as most of the other crises that have come and gone. But there have been other times when Obama’s uninterest in engaging in the more public aspects of his job—communicating his reasoning and vision, soothing our anxieties with lofty rhetoric, infusing his administration with the sense of purpose that electrified his supporters during the 2008 campaign—has clearly harmed him. “If there’s one thing that I regret this year,” he admitted in 2010, “it is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are.”

The president’s infuriating serenity, his inclination to play Spock even when the country wants a Captain Kirk, makes him an unusual kind of leader. But it is obvious why Obama behaves this way: He is very confident in his idea of how history works and how, once the dust settles, he will be judged. For Obama, the long run has been a source of comfort from the outset. He has quoted King’s dictum about the arc of the moral universe eventually bending toward justice, and he has said that “at the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.” To his critics, Obama is unable to attend to the theatrical duties of his office because he lacks a bedrock emotional connection with America. It seems more likely that he is simply unwilling to: that he is conducting his presidency on the assumption that his place in historical memory will be defined by a tabulation of his successes minus his failures. And that tomorrow’s historians will be more rational and forgiving than today’s political commentators. . . .

If you’re like me, you’ll want to click here for the rest.  It’s a must-read.

You may have seen that the President proposes to make community college free.  Estimated annual cost: $6 billion, about 1% of our military budget; double what Procter & Gamble spends on advertising.

Satirist Andy Borowitz:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—President Obama’s plan to offer Americans two years of college for free has come under fire from congressional Republicans, who are calling it a blatant plot to make Americans smarter.  The G.O.P., which has benefited from the support of so-called “low-information voters” in recent years, accused Obama of cynically trying to make people smarter as a way of chipping away at the Republican base.  “You take low-information voters and give them information, and pretty soon they’re Democrats,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said. . . .

What the program would actually cost is disputed.  And just how much capacity the nation’s thousand-plus community colleges have to enroll millions more students all of a sudden is not clear — presumably, as with most things, it would ramp up over time.  But if Tennessee can do it, maybe there’s something to this.  And my pal Zac Bissonnette, author of Debt-Free U (whose forthcoming Beanie Babies book is already drawing raves), tells me, “Community college is actually already free or close to free for a ton of students — just through a dumb labyrinth of programs like refundable tax credits, Pell Grants, work study, etc.”  Making it entirely free, he figures, would cost a lot less than Republicans fear — but eliminate a load of paperwork.

And then, of course, there’s the all-but-impossible-to-estimate but presumably real revenue the proposal would generate for decades, if you buy the notion that a better educated work force will be more productive.  More productive workers earn more (and so pay more tax) or else make more profits for their employers (who then pay more tax).  Either way, that’s more revenue.  Plus: more pay and profits stimulate demand, which stimulates the economy, which generates more pay and profits and taxes . . . and so on.  The better-educated a nation’s workforce, the better it should be able to compete globally.

So really, whatever the program cost would not be spending, it would be investing.

Democrats believe in investing in the future, which is why the economy and stock market do so much better under their administrations.  (Invested in the S&P 500 only during Republican administrations since 1929, and excluding dividends, $10,000 would have grown to only about $12,000 . . . versus about $600,000 if invested only during Democratic administrations.  Here’s a different but similarly compelling representation of the contrast.)

And, yes, as Andy Borowitz points out, a better educated populous might make for smarter voters — which brings me, at last, at what was to be the beginning of this morning’s column:

I have thousands of wonderful readers, only one of whom, to my knowledge — though a nice guy, and not stupid — is an idiot.

He emailed me last week:

Happy New Year.  Harry Reid is no longer able to block bills from getting a vote.  Unfortunately, this still leaves the biggest obstructionist in the way of any decent legislation … President Obama.  So we’ll have to suffer another two years before we can hopefully remove that blockage and start getting the country on the right path again.

I emailed him:

Which right path?  The path back toward higher gas prices?  Higher unemployment?  Higher deficits?  Higher health care inflation?  More war?  Fewer people with health care security?  Fewer consumer protections?  Lower home prices?  Lower mileage standards?  Lower stock prices?  Lower corporate profits?  Lower consumer confidence?  (The index is up from 37.7 when Obama took office to 92.6 now.)  Slower economic growth?

If I seemed a little aggressive, it’s because this guy — call him Steven — has been emailing me for years and is certain I’m the idiot.  My inability to get through to him has become a little frustrating.  And scary, if not outright tragic, because we even have millions of bright people believing things that are not true.  And then voting on the basis of their misconceptions.

Steven replied:

Do you really believe what you type?  Or is the smoke and mirrors game the Democrats pull on people really just so ingrained in your daily routine it comes without thinking?  Bottom line is that the agenda of the Democrat party is one that lowers the highs and deepens the lows of the business cycle.

[No:  Democrats believe in investing in the future, especially when the economy is weak.  President Clinton got the economy moving after Bush 41 handed him a slump; President Obama brought us back from the brink of the global Depression that was handed him by Bush 43.  Democrats believe in a stronger, not a weaker, safety net — things like extended unemployment benefits in bad economic times — and that, too, cushions economic downturns.]

Gas prices….They would quite possibly be lower today if we had the pipeline but we’ll never know for sure because the Democrats blocked it from the President on down.

[No:  The Keystone Pipeline would have minimal effect on the giant global oil market, and thus the world price of oil.  There is even the view that it would raise U.S. gasoline prices, “especially in the Midwest . . . because the oil that would be transported is not intended for American consumers. Rather, the Canadian oil currently sent to refineries in Illinois, Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest would end up being diverted to Keystone, chiefly for export to markets overseas.”]

What we do know for sure is that despite the efforts to block new production of oil through drilling and the pipeline, the supply has finally come online in a way to push prices down.  It was going to happen eventually as shale production increased and other countries continue to pump out oil as well.  Couple this with a drop in demand and you get what we have.  NOTHING the President or the Democrats have done has contributed to this other than they slowed it down from happening.

[No:  On the demand side, the Obama administration has done things like double the fuel efficiency targets that had not increased in 20 years.  That’s only begun to take effect, but “Make no mistake about it,” says Popular Mechanics: “The new regulations are hugely important. They will save consumers boatloads of money they would’ve spent on gas, drastically reduce American’s fuel consumption and carbon footprint and change the way cars are made.”  And on the supply side, yes, things like the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill that dumped 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf Of Mexico did lead to heightened scrutiny in permitting — but a lot of people think that we have a collective interest in taking environmental risks into account.  As a practical matter, the Administration has obviously allowed private industry loads of room to grow production: as you note, production has boomed.]

Unemployment….the real rate is so much higher than the reported rate.  So many have stopped looking OR have taken jobs at less pay.  Underemployment is quite high today.

[Perhaps.  But when Mitt Romney told us that if elected he would get unemployment down to 6% by the end of his first term, these were the same Labor Department metrics he was using.  So when the rate falls further — to 5.6% — and in half the time — isn’t that good?]

The overall number of people working today is fewer.

[No:  There were 147,442,000 employed persons in December 2014.  That’s 11.2 million more private sector jobs than in early 2010, when the current record 58-consecutive-month streak began.  Surely you can’t blame Bush’s 2008 job losses on Obama — he hadn’t even taken office; nor for the continuing job loses the first few months of 2009 before anything he did had time to take effect.  Look at the famous chart.  Imagine how it would look if the Republicans had succeeded in blocking the stimulus bill.  (It zero Republican votes in the House; just three in the Senate.)  This past year’s 2.9 million new jobs was the best since 1999 — under Bill Clinton.  Isn’t a major reason today’s employment picture isn’t even better still — which it needs to be! — that the Republicans block the American Jobs Act, which would put so many people to work revitalizing our infrastructure?  And that they’ve insisted on laying off so many teachers and other government employees?]

The number of families on food stamps has grown.  This has everything to do with the policies of the Democrat party which make it more expensive to expand and employ.  We are finally growing again but it won’t be at the rate we should have because of gov’t intrusion on business.  Thanks Obama.

[No: The need for food stamps skyrocketed because Bush’s policies threw the country into a near Depression, creating massive unemployment; Republicans refused to raise the minimum wage, making it impossible for working people to feed their children without food stamps; and Republicans refused to pass the aforementioned Jobs Act — or the immigration reform –that economists agree would have stimulated the economy.  But for all that, the food stamp tide turned in 2013 and should continue to fall.  If Democratic policies are so bad for job creation, why were 8 or 10 times as many jobs created under Clinton and Obama than under Bush and Bush?]

Health Care is another problem.  No matter the system, there will always be those that have and those that don’t.  What Obamacare has done now is to just move the numbers around.  Still the same number of people without insurance but now you have those that do have it paying more into the system.  Overall, it has hurt our nation more than helped at a greater cost and much of the pain is still to come.

[No: Everyone now has access to affordable care, except in states where Republican governors have rejected Medicaid expansion, and no one can be denied coverage if they have, or develop, a pre-existing condition.  The percentage of uninsured Americans has fallen from about 18% to about 13% after just the first enrollment period — with the second enrollment period now underway.  It does not hurt our nation to have health care inflation slow or to have healthier families.  But you’re right: numbers have been moved around.  On each extra $100 million you make in dividends or capital gains this year (above a $250,000 threshold), you’ll have to move around an extra $3.8 million in taxes to help make health care affordable for the least among us.  Democrats — including many wealthy ones — see that as equitable, moving some wealth from the best off to the common man . . . though still at a lower rate than they paid on dividends and capital gains when Ronald Reagan left office.  Republicans have tried 52 times to repeal that redistribution — and, separately, would like to lower the estate tax on billionheirs to zero — because, they mistakenly believe concentrated wealth is a good thing.  (They didn’t used to believe that.  See Eisenhower’s thoughts on this, from Friday.)]

I only laughed at the rest of your assertions.  They are just silly.  All but the stock market and corporate profits.  I think you and I can agree here.  Obama’s policies have been so intrusive on businesses, they have figured out how to increase productivity with fewer people which of course lowers costs and increases profits.  This is certainly something Obama can take credit for!  So he’s good for your money and mine but at the expense of the public which is why so many people now are not earning what they used to or are sitting in the unemployment line.  Well done sir.

Misinformation is a dangerous thing.  If people are told often enough that the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is a conspiracy — by, for example, the new Republican Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future — some are going to believe it.  If people are told often enough the President is not a citizen or that Iraq had a hand in attacking us on 9/11 or that (based on intelligence from a guy code-named Curveball whom U.S. intelligence never even interviewed) invading Iraq was absolutely necessary — some are going to believe it.  If people are told often enough that America is the great Satan or that they will be met by 72 virgins if they kill innocent people or that they are the Master Race or that masturbation causes blindness or that Obamacare is bad — but that kynect, which is Obamacare, is good — or that election day is Wednesday — some are going to believe it.

And when Mitch McConnell — who set as his first priority preventing Obama’s reelection — tells people, in prepared, considered remarks that, “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country”– some people, like Steven, are going to believe it.

For all his obvious intelligence and good intentions, which I truly don’t question, Steven — for now, at least — is an idiot.

EISENHOWER

A war hero with not a single scandal I can recall, Dwight Eisenhower — a Republican — served two terms as President . . . yet you just don’t hear about him from Republicans.  They think he was a socialist.

He stood up to Khrushchev and built our nuclear arsenal; but also famously said . . .

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

. . . a quote that should be engraved above the door to both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.

Even better known: his farewell address, warning of the military-industrial complex.  (Clip.)

Less well-known, yet of perhaps even more interest today: his worry over concentrated wealth.

Ike Understood: Concentrated Wealth Brings Instability 

By CHUCK COLLINS and SAM PIZZIGATI
November 9, 2008
Nearly 50 years ago, a famous American gave a speech that advocated spreading the wealth.

In some countries, this notable stated, “a few families are fabulously wealthy, contribute far less than they should in taxes, and are indifferent to the poverty of the great masses of the people.”

“A country in this situation,” he went on, “is fraught with continual instability.” Just who made this spread-the-wealth declaration against the dangers societies invite when they let wealth concentrate?  The then-president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Ike’s words back in 1960 created no controversy. Americans overwhelmingly shared his spread-the-wealth convictions. Societies that discourage vast accumulations of private wealth, they believed, simply work better.

The U.S. tax code, back then, reflected this consensus. Income more than $400,000 a year — that’s a bit more than today’s $3 million, after adjusting for inflation — faced a 91 percent tax rate.

The rich of Ike’s day, of course, exploited tax loopholes, just like today’s rich. But even after exploiting loopholes, the wealthy of the Eisenhower years still paid a hefty share of their income in taxes.

In 1955, for instance, America’s 400 highest-income taxpayers averaged about $12 million in income, in today’s dollars. They paid, after loopholes, 51.2 percent of that in tax.

Let’s put these numbers in contemporary perspective. In 2005, our 400 richest taxpayers averaged $214 million and paid federal taxes on that princely sum, after exploiting loopholes, at a mere 18.5 percent rate.

In other words, today’s rich are taking home much more in income than Ike’s rich and paying taxes at a much lower rate.

Eisenhower, a Republican himself, would be aghast. Ike would see in our current financial meltdown proof positive that wealth, if left to concentrate, will bring on an “instability” that can endanger an entire nation.

Ike, were he around today, might even chide President-elect Barack Obama for taking too timid a tax-the-rich stance. Obama wants to raise the tax rate on America’s highest income bracket from 35 to 39.6 percent.

In the generation before Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election, Ike might point out, America’s top tax rate on the rich never dropped below 70 percent. The rich grumbled, but they survived.

Average Americans, in the meantime, didn’t just survive those tax-the-rich years. They prospered. In the quarter-century right after World War II, America’s typical family income more than doubled, and that’s after taking inflation into account.

Over the past quarter-century, by contrast, average Americans have progressed nowhere fast. Wages today, after inflation, are actually running less than wages in the early 1970s.

What’s the big difference between the years right after World War II and the last quarter-century? In the first era, we encouraged the spreading of wealth. In the second, we’ve let wealth concentrate.

Ike wouldn’t be happy. We shouldn’t be, either.

• Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. Sam Pizzigati, an Institute associate fellow, edits “Too Much,” an online weekly on excess and inequality. This was distributed by the Progressive Media Project.

NIXON

Today’s Republicans don’t talk much about Ike’s VP, either, former President Richard Nixon, whether because of his resignation or because some of them think he, too, was a socialist.  (And, needless to say, a socialist is a terrible thing to be.  The Europeans are all socialists and look what misery their lives are.  The Germans driving those crappy cars, the French eating that crappy food, the Danes, Norwegians, Swiss, Dutch and Swedes barely all making it into the top 5 happiest countries on earth*.)

But now comes, from HBO (or HBOGO) “Nixon By Nixon” — 70 riveting minutes.  Not that there’s so much you didn’t know . . . but to hear the actual conversations, the actual history, unfiltered (except of course in the choice of which conversations to include) — can you imagine sitting inside the Oval Office?  Or having a tap on the President’s phone?  Listening to these tapes, you are and you do.

Have a great weekend!

*The US ranks #17, but that must surely be a mistake.

BOREF

From WheelTug PR:

AIR TRANSAT PROVIDES AIRCRAFT FOR WHEELTUG DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING

Gibraltar, 7 January 2015 — WheelTug is excited to announce that Air Transat, Canada’s leading holiday travel airline, will be providing WheelTug with access to an aircraft for development and testing purposes. In return, WheelTug will provide Air Transat with a WheelTug® system for that aircraft. WheelTug will have a platform for certification of the innovative WheelTug system while Air Transat will realize between $1 to $4 million in annual savings for their aircraft’s operation. Those savings will be primarily realized through time, wear, fuel and pushback-related costs.

Keith Lawless, Air Transat’s Senior Director of Business Sustainability and Improvement, explains: “The WheelTug system will provide us with phenomenal operational and environmental advantages. This agreement gives us a unique opportunity to get it on one of our aircraft on a preferential basis.”

Isaiah Cox, CEO of WheelTug plc adds, “We are excited to extend our relationship with Air Transat. They provide their 3 million annual customers with a superb holiday travel experience. We are looking forward to enhancing that experience.”

WheelTug will be meeting with airlines, airports, ground operators and other interested parties at the IATA Taxiing Systems Conference in Miami, 3-4 February.

We inch forward.  And by the way?  Few seem to doubt by now that Borealis, through its subsidiaries, has an electric motor so powerful you can put it inside the nose wheel of a fully loaded commercial jet and drive it around the tarmac like a golf cart.  What is a technological breakthrough like that worth?  Could a tiny version find application in much smaller vehicles like, say, actual golf carts?  Or cars?  And if this impossible technological claim they’ve made has proven real (watch it working, here), is there a chance the claimed technological breakthroughs of its other subsidiaries, like Cool Chips and Power Chips, could one day prove real?

Maybe not, which is why BOREF remains a speculative investment to be made only with money you can truly afford to lose.  (And placing “limit orders” if you buy, because even a very small “market” order can move the price significantly.)

But I believe even more strongly now than I did before 20 airlines were signed up as potential customers and airline-industry legend Bob Crandall had blessed the endeavor that this gamble is worth many times the $45 million at which the market currently values it ($9 times 5 million shares).  Or the $85 million it was valued at a year ago, when the stock was $16.50 (as I argued at the time).

AYN

A.C. Dorrance III:  “You didn’t include the Dick Cavett quote.”

☞ Well, if you insist:

CAVETT: … You can piss away valuable hours of your life reading Ayn Rand—her wretched appeal to the young, her wretched writing, her wretched person.

She was supposed to be on my show; I was kind of sorry she wasn’t, because I was kind of laying for her. I did not succumb, as a kid, to being enthused by Ayn Rand, and that sense of power, as every kid was at one time until they outgrew it. The old bag sent over a list of fifteen conditions for appearing with me, or for appearing with anyone, I guess. One of them was, ‘There will be no disagreeing with Ms. Rand’s philosophy.’

GREEN: You’re kidding.

CAVETT: No! I wrote at the bottom of the list, to be sent back to her, “There will be no Ms. Rand, either.”

THAT HOMELESS MAN

Bob Fyfe:  “You wrote yesterday:  ‘If you do find time to watch the video, let me know what you think.’  It turns out the the video is most likely a hoax.”

☞ Hmm.  Well, if Joe was right yesterday, that’s what a real homeless man would have done with $100.  Now I’m not so sure.  Or maybe the story was true but they added the liquor store scene thinking — wrongly, in this situation — they should be allowed dramatic licence.

So the Republicans control both houses of Congress, many of them buying into the George W. Bush notion that slashing taxes for the wealthy creates jobs.  (An eight-year experiment proved that not to work.)  And that raising taxes on the wealthy kills jobs.  (A fourteen-year experiment — eight under Clinton, six now under Obama — dramatically proved that untrue, also.)

Actually, it’s the middle class, not the wealthy, who create the jobs, as Nick Hanauer explains here; and it is the middle class that’s been squeezed ever harder since Reagan, Bush and Bush — and perhaps now Bush again — have set the agenda.  (In Florida, Jeb Bush eliminated the one tax that applied only to the wealthy while slashing the state’s drug treatment program — even as he paid for his own child’s drug treatment privately because he could afford it.)

A good deal of the right-wing underpinning for all this comes from a tough five-foot-two Soviet emigre named Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum), who arrived in 1926.  It’s hard to overstate how much of a perverse impact she’s had and continues to have even now, thirty-plus years after her death.

And yet she never appeared on the Dick Cavett Show.

Here’s the story.  It’s a quick read — how she came not to be on the Dick Cavett show — and includes this little bit:

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” — [Kung Fu Monkey — Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009] ― John Rogers

AND IN RELATED NEWS

Joe D.:  “I didn’t watch the video you linked to Friday (about giving the homeless man $100) because it had one of those click-bait headlines: ‘You’ll never guess what he did next!’ or something similar. And because I’m sure I can guess. He either gave some of the money to other people, or bought them gifts. It’s what poor people do.  Many years ago I read an article in Scientific American about research into this aspect of class. If a poor person receives a windfall — tax refund, lottery win, whatever — he is likely to share it with others. Poor people generally have friends or relatives who are also hurting for money. Having been a low-income person for good chunks of my life, I understand this response. If God or good fortune gives you a gift, it seems wrong to keep it all to yourself if your sister is having trouble paying her rent or your friend lost his job.  One of the points of the article was that this attitude of helping one’s fellows is one thing that keeps poor people poor. It would be prudent to put such a windfall to work improving one’s own financial situation — following advice from your book, perhaps. But to many people at the low end of the economic spectrum, that would seem selfish.”

☞ Joe’s right:  Rather than spend the $100 on booze or drugs, he helped others.  But he also told his story.  And what I took from it was not that he should take the $100, start a business, and pull himself up by his bootstraps like Ayn Rand’s hero John Galt (be a maker, not a taker).  What I took from it was that, yikes, this guy could be you or me, if one of us had encountered a spate of health and family setbacks.  For me, it suggested our social safety net is not all it needs to be, and that repeated attempts to repeal access to Affordable Care, and the refusal by Republican governors to accept Medicaid expansion, is, well, deeply unChristian . . . just as allowing our national infrastructure to crumble is deeply unpatriotic . . . and erecting obstacles to voting is deeply unAmerican.  (Say what you will: these guys are deep.)  Obviously, not everyone agrees with me.

If you do find time to watch the video, let me know what you think.  [EXCEPT THAT — UPDATE — IT NOW APPEARS THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE REAL.  YIKES.]

Photus!

Well, photos.  But it almost rhymes.

And they’re really, really great.  Enjoy!

So this is just a little subset of hope.  (Friday’s post — TONS Of Hope For The New Year! — was broader.)  But for maybe 5% of the world’s population plus our friends and relatives . . . and in the general interest of everyone’s getting along more cheerfully . . . it’s not nothing.  In fact, it’s a pretty big deal:  Namely, the progress toward acceptance of gender identity differences.  Letting people be who they want to be, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else.

We have a long way to go, witness the recent death of 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn, killed by her parents’ nonacceptance.  (Blame the parents’ ignorance more than the parents themselves.)  But look at this!  Civil marriage has become available to 71% of the U.S. population, a victory for love, shared responsibility, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I’ve previously recorded how I got to visit China — nearly a fifth of the world’s population — and cheer for their progress.  Here’s a recent data point to suggest that progress continues: “Chinese Court Rules ‘Gay Conversion’ Clinic Must Pay Victim.”

Even in China, if not yet wide swaths of Mississippi, people are coming to recognize it’s neither “a choice” nor evil.

In Russia, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s coming out may have led to removal of St. Petersburg’s iPhone statue.  And in several countries homosexuality may be punishable by death.  And even here, you can still be fired in 29 states just for being gay.  But more and more, people are becoming comfortable just laughing at the whole thing — God’s little joke.  The human comedy.  Something to keep Her amused.

In which vein I am pleased to offer:

TOP GUN: THE FORBIDDEN VERSION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1l6wdC1lPs

Lord knows what the Church of Scientology would think of this, but it’s only meant in fun.

BOREF

I bought yet more at $7.50 Friday.  My theory is that the bargain price is attributable to a few thousand shares of year-end tax-loss selling coupled with general discouragement that it’s all taking so long.  But I think e-taxi will happen, and that next month’s IATA conference will be just one more inch toward fruition.  The good thing about my plan to live forever is that, if I do, there is the real possibility I will live to see the day.

I met Rupert Murdoch in 1974 or so, when NEW YORK MAGAZINE editor Clay Felker sent me over to his office to say hello.  Clay was filled with enthusiasm for this brash, brilliant young Australian newspaperman.  A year or two later, Rupert famously bought NEW YORK and kicked Clay out.  Now, 40 years later, he owns more or less everything.  Including, of course, FOX.

Here — free — in celebration of its 10th anniversary — is Brave New Films’ documentary, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.

“Our job,” they write, “is to continue to build other media to counter Fox, and to continue to educate others on how illegitimate they are as a ‘news’ source!  So gather Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Bob around the TV and watch the groundbreaking full documentary film here!”

Have a great weekend.

Catherine H. from Oregon:  “I appreciate your optimism in spite of the recent spending bill.  I personally have given up because as I’ve gotten older it seems that things don’t actually get better.  My opinion is that the public are no longer represented in Washington DC, our politicians are bought by and work exclusively for Big Business — yes they throw the American public a bone, but reflective of Noam Chomsky’s ideas only enough to keep us sated and non-revolutionary. . . . The American public doesn’t really have the vote, the electoral college does; our police are more and more militarized and truly work for big business, have since the industrial revolution; unions have been decimated; banks have more rights to our tax dollars than we do; I see nothing but disaster for the public.  Along with reduced funding for education, which keeps us dumbed down and cheaper to hire; reduced benefits — raping of pensions/401k’s……we, as a middle class, are going absolutely no where.  I don’t really have a point other than to say there is no hope anymore.  Thanks for letting me vent.”

☞ Catherine!  I’d be first to agree the middle class has been ill served and our political process subverted — you know which party I mainly blame — but there is so much hope!

To begin with . . .

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

As noted here:

Everything Is Awesome
Well, not everything.  But America’s looking much better than you think.
By Michael Grunwald

Good news! The U.S. economy grew at a rollicking 5 percent rate in the third quarter. Oh, and it added 320,000 jobs in November, the best of its unprecedented 57 straight months of private-sector employment growth. Just in time for Christmas, the Dow just hit an all-time high and the uninsured rate is approaching an all-time low. Consumer confidence is soaring, inflation is low, gas prices are plunging, and the budget deficit is shrinking. You no longer hear much about the Ebola crisis that dominated the headlines in the fall, much less the border crisis that dominated the headlines over the summer. As Fox News host Andrea Tantaros proclaimed earlier this month: “The United States is awesome! We are awesome!”

OK, she was talking about the Senate torture report, not the state of the union, but things in the U.S. do look rather awesome. Mitt Romney promised to bring unemployment down to 6 percent in his first term; it’s already down to 5.8 percent, half the struggling eurozone’s rate. Newt Gingrich promised $2.50 gas; it’s down to $2.38. Crime, abortion, teen pregnancy and oil imports are also way down, while renewable power is way up and the American auto industry is booming again. You don’t have to give credit to President Barack Obama for “America’s resurgence,” as he has started calling it, but there’s overwhelming evidence the resurgence is real. The Chicken Littles who predicted a double-dip recession, runaway interest rates, Zimbabwe-style inflation, a Greece-style debt crisis, skyrocketing energy prices, health insurance “death spirals” and other horrors have been reliably wrong.

Come to think of it, the 62 percent of Americans who described the economy as “poor” in a CNN poll a week before the Republican landslide in the midterm elections were also wrong. I guess that sounds elitist. Second-guessing the wisdom of the public may be the last bastion of political correctness; if ordinary people don’t feel good about the economy, then the recovery isn’t supposed to be real. But aren’t the 11 million Americans who have landed new jobs since 2010 and the 10 million Americans who have gotten health insurance since 2013 ordinary Americans? It’s true that wage growth has remained slow, but the overall economic trends don’t jibe with the public’s lousy mood. And the public definitely does get stuff wrong. A Bloomberg poll this month found that 73 percent of Americans think the deficit is getting bigger, while 21 percent think it’s getting smaller and 6 percent aren’t sure. In fact, the deficit has dwindled from about $1.2 trillion in 2009 to less than $500 billion in 2014. My favorite part is the mere 6 percent who admitted ignorance; 73 percent are definitely sure the shrinking deficit is actually growing.

The point isn’t that the midterm election’s discontent was illegitimate. The point is that Americans should cheer up! Six years ago, the economy was contracting at an 8 percent annual rate and shedding 800,000 jobs a month. Those were Great Depression-type numbers. The government was pouring billions of dollars into busted banks, and experts like MIT’s Simon Johnson were predicting that the bailouts would cost taxpayers as much as $2 trillion. In reality, the bailouts not only quelled the worst financial panic since the Depression, they made money for taxpayers. Nevertheless, last week, after the government sold its stake in Ally Bank, its last major holding in a financial institution, Johnson complained to The New York Times about the “unfortunate and inappropriate message” being sent by people pointing out the bailouts were actually profitable. In this holiday season, can’t we be a little bit happy we didn’t have to waste the $2 trillion he thought we were going to waste?

This bah-humbug brand of moral superiority has flourished since the crisis: How dare you celebrate this or that piece of economic data when so many Americans are still hurting? It’s awkward to argue with that view, since many Americans are indeed still hurting. But the economic data keep showing that fewer Americans are hurting every month. No one is satisfied with 5.8 percent unemployment, but it’s way better than the 10 percent we had in 2010 or the 11 percent Europe has today. Declining child poverty and household debt and personal bankruptcies are also worth celebrating. Better is better than worse. Whether or not you think Obamacare had anything to do with the slowdown in medical cost growth, it’s a good thing that Medicare’s finances have improved dramatically, extending the solvency of its trust fund by an estimated 13 years. It’s a good thing that U.S. wind power has tripled and solar power has increased tenfold in five years. And while it’s true that the meteoric rise of the stock market since 2009 has produced windfalls for Wall Street, it has also replenished state pension funds and 401(k) retirement plans and labor union coffers. It definitely beats the alternative.

Let’s face it: The press has a problem reporting good news. Two Americans died of Ebola and cable TV flipped out; now we’re Ebola-free and no one seems to care. The same thing happened with the flood of migrant children across the Mexican border, which was a horrific crisis until it suddenly wasn’t. Nobody’s going to win a Pulitzer Prize for recognizing that we’re smoking less, driving less, wasting less electricity and committing less crime. Police are killing fewer civilians, and fewer police are getting killed, but understandably, after the tragedies in Ferguson and Brooklyn, nobody’s thinking about that these days. The media keep us in a perpetual state of panic about spectacular threats to our safety — Ebola, sharks, terrorism — but we’re much likelier to die in a car accident. Although, it ought to be said, much less likely than we used to be; highway fatalities are down 25 percent in a decade.

The other problem in acknowledging good news, not just for the press but for the public, is that it has come to feel partisan, like an endorsement of whoever occupies the White House. Republican leaders have exacerbated this problem by describing everything Obama has done — his 2009 stimulus package, his 2010 Wall Street reforms, his 2013 tax hikes on high earners, his various anti-pollution regulations aimed at coal-fired power plants, and most of all Obamacare — as “job-killing” catastrophes that would obliterate the economy. It’s hard to point out that the economy is humming along nicely without making those doom-and-gloom predictions sound ill-advised and over-the-top. Because they were. Liberals who predicted disaster when Obama refused to nationalize the banking system during the financial crisis and when Republicans insisted on the harsh budget cuts in the 2013 “sequester” were wrong, too. Disaster hasn’t happened.

As ideologically inconvenient as that may be for chronic complainers on the left and right — and for pundit types invested in their bad-year-for-Obama narrative — it’s wonderful for the country. You don’t have to endorse Obama’s economic philosophy to realize that it hasn’t wreaked short-term havoc, just as you don’t have to endorse the Obama or George W. Bush anti-terror philosophies to acknowledge that America hasn’t endured a rash of terror attacks since 2001. Last week, polls finally found a majority of Americans recognizing that the economy is improving, which is to say a majority of Americans are recognizing reality. It’s probably time for politicians to discover a new Ebola to scream about.

There is no shortage of candidates in this less-than-perfect union. The U.S. is still plagued by inadequate public schools, crumbling infrastructure, soaring college tuition costs, stark inequality. Many Americans want accountability for reckless bankers, torturers and fatal choke-holders. Washington is still almost as dysfunctional as everyone says it is. Congress this session really was the second least productive ever. And even though Obama is winding down the U.S. involvement in overseas wars, the world remains a scary place. There’s still plenty to worry about.

But for now be merry! And may the new year be as awesome as this year.

So there’s a start.

And there’s more.

Even with stagnant real wages, these past 25 years, I’d argue that most of us are meaningfully better off.  We likely have a smart phone, which means we have immense power in our pockets not even billionaires had 25 years ago — “never lost” (GPS) and never bored (Words With Friends).

Crime is down; auto safety is up.  Safer on the road, safer on the street.  And now secure in the knowledge that affordable health care is available no matter what befalls us.

How do you measure all that in terms of per capita income?  Yes, the middle class has gotten clobbered, relatively speaking — nearly all the gains have gone to corporate profits, up from a typical 6% or so of GDP to 10% or so, and to the “top 1%” — and there are structural problems we need to fix to swing the pendulum back into balance.  (Had we just turned out to vote in November, we could have.)  But in so many ways, “the 99%” have seen life improve.

And how about Google?  Amazon?  eBay?  Uber?  How do you factor in the convenience of all that?  Or the availability of so many more entertainment choices?

Or of Khan Academy or TED talks?  Free!

Dentistry has become better and less painful . . . bank deposits can be made by smartphone . . . there is credit card reform and a Consumer Bill of Rights and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Oh, and by the way?  Middle-class, middle-aged Americans are expected to live three or four years longer than in 1980 — with hope for yet longer, healthier lives on the way — no matter what happens with the Electoral College.  (But even there, there’s hope:  We’re 30.7% of the way toward the solution, with a further 6.7% actively pending.  Check it out!)

There’s hope that a consensus is forming to decriminalize drug possession and reform our criminal justice sentencing and prison systems.  Boy, is that ever overdue.  (I again offer the American Justice Summit videos for your consideration.)

I don’t mean to be a broken record (at least for long-time readers), but Ray Kurzweil tells us the next 50 years of technological progress will be 32 times as dazzling as the last 50 years’ progress — which was already awfully darn dazzling, if you ask me.  So while there’s loads of reason to worry that we’ll hurtle off the rails . . . or that our political system will become completely captured by a very wealthy few (if we don’t vote) . . . there is so much progress to hope for — and, indeed, to expect.

Here are two examples almost at random:

New Super-Efficient Affordable Solar Panels Could Trump fossil fuels

Striking another blow to the oil and gas industries, an American solar company has developed technology that can produce super-efficient solar power that’s cheaper than fossil fuels. Rayton Solar’s new solar panel manufacturing technology uses 50 to 100 times less silicon than other technologies, cutting out large amounts of the most costly component of solar panels. The company says its patent-pending process uses just four microns worth of silicon, leaving no waste – while boosting efficiency to 24 percent. That’s 25 percent higher than industry standard efficiency, according to the company

Can you imagine?  And how about this one?

All It Takes For The Desolenator To Make Clean Drinking Water Is A Little Sunlight

Turning saltwater into clean drinking water is usually an expensive and energy-intensive process—a new desalination plant under construction in San Diego has a price tag of $1 billion, and smaller devices can cost as much as $30,000. But a new solar-powered device could make the process affordable for the millions of people around the world who don’t have running water.. . .

I have no idea which technologies, let alone which companies, will actually succeed; but clearly, many will.

There’s no free lunch, but there’s free sunlight, at least for the next several zillion years — and we seem to be growing ever smarter about harnessing it.

And now for the schmaltz.

#

At the end of the day, the reason to be hopeful is that — for all our demons, sloth, and stupidity — we humans have some good qualities, too.  Will they be enough to get us through this climactic next few decades, where we either learn to live together sustainably on our little spaceship — or not?  No one knows.  But given the ingenuity and innate goodness so many have along with their demons, sloth, and stupidity, there are ample reasons for hope.

One example (which says a bit about our social policy as well):  What a Homeless Man Does With $100. (John Leeds:  “Spoiler alert: It is a video about a prankster giving $100 to a homeless man and secretly following him on video, expecting the man will buy alcohol or waste the money.”)

And as if that weren’t schmaltz enough, here are not one but three awesome renditions of Auld Lang Syne (thanks, Mel).

DOUGIE MACLEAN

SUSAN BOYLE

ROD STEWART

Thanks for your readership!  Don’t agonize, Catherine — organize!

Happy New Year!