The Argument for Keynes and Deficit Spending (posted by DT)

I had some exciting email correspondence with my conservative group on the topic of Keynes and whether recent events have proved him wrong or right. Here's an edited version of my argument. I'm not very good with the layout on this site, so the graphs are at the top instead of where I want them- sorry!

I keep hearing how Keynesian economics is dead from those who don't seem to understand it. But the history of the last 80 years is great evidence that Keynes was right, that governments should run deficits during recessions and stimulate the economy. Let's start with the Great Depression. See the second graph above, with GDP charted during the period.

As you can see, FDR took office in 1933 when the Depression was at its nadir. He started Keynesian deficit spending and voila!, the economy started recovering. But there was a second recession in 1937-38; did government overspending cause it? Let's look at the federal deficit during the depression- see the top chart for when the feds were using deficit spending.

Notice that the deficit goes way up starting in 1932 (I guess Hoover gets some credit too! I didn't know that), and then dips severely starting in 1936, just in time for the next recession. Then it goes through the roof for WW II (in fact that peak is WAY higher than the current deficit), and yet the economy came roaring back.

So the Depression is a perfect example of how deficit spending helps an economy in recession.

How about since then? Well, recessions after 1945 have been much shorter in duration (on average) than recessions were before that time- recessions starting in 1900 lasted 23, 13, 24, 23, 7, 18, 14, 13, and 43 months. The recessions after 1945 lasted 8, 11, 10, 8, 10, 11, 16, 6, 16, and 8 months (the last listed here is the early 1990s one). Why is that? Because of Keynesian spending- we learned how to deal with deficits, and so now we spend our way out of them.

I've yet to hear any other convincing explanation for these numbers. Can we please stop arguing about whether Keynes was right?

Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts (posted by DT)

I've been having and listening to a lot of arguments about the extension of the Bush tax cuts lately, and it occurs to me that to a great extent we're arguing around each other. Last night, for example, I was talking with some family members, and the argument went something like this:

Liberal: These lower tax rates for the rich are unnecessary- they
don't need it and will hardly notice an increase
Conservative: The way to create jobs is to make sure the Rich have
money, since they're the ones who create jobs.

I strikes me that these arguments could theoretically both be correct. It could be that, while the Rich don't really need a tax break, having lower taxes would still create jobs and it would therefore be worth it to keep taxes low. In fact, if both these arguments are right, then the conservative wins the argument because the goal is to get the economy moving. If both arguments are wrong, then the liberal wins, because while the Rich might be unhappy and harmed by the increase, the economy as a whole would be benefiting (or at least not be harmed) and the federal deficit would be reduced.

So let's look at the facts. What's going on now in the economy? It seems that what's happening now is that the Rich (including rich corporations and banks) have mountains of capital in hand. Corporate profits have been stratospheric this year, and companies are sitting on large amounts of cash that they're not investing. Why not? Because there's not enough demand for products, and companies are not confident that this will change soon so they don't want to risk their cash.

So would a 4% tax hike on high earners change this dynamic? I don't really see how. If the argument is that the Rich need to take home more of their money to create jobs, then that assumes that some don't have quite enough cash in hand to create them now, or that they'd invest less money if more taxes were taken. But they're not investing right now, with these historically low rates! We've now gone through nearly a decade of these lower tax rates, which coincidentally has seen the least growth of any decade in modern history.

I think that if conservatives want to make the argument that the Bush tax rates create jobs, they should at least be required to point out some evidence showing that they've done so in the past.

So what are we left with? Everyone wants his/her own taxes lowered. Conservatives are left with a moral argument that this is "my money", not "the government's", and that the government doesn't know how to spend this money as well as the magic of the Invisible Hand. Except the Invisible Hand just created a huge recession, which would have been a second Depression but for federal government spending and policies.

So I know this isn't much of a shock to read on this blog, but liberals are right and conservatives are wrong. Marginal tax rates on high earners should go back up at least to Clinton-era levels. If conservatives want to make the case for lower taxes than that, they need to show it working, and the last 10 years have proven just the opposite.

Massachusetts Question 3

On my state's ballot this Tuesday is a ballot question that would roll back the state sales tax from 6.25% to 3%. http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepip10/pip103.htm I guess recent polling indicates the question will probably lose, but it's still close. I just have to throw out a little "what are they thinking" note to proponents.

It's estimated (by both sides) that this change would decrease state revenues by $2.5 billion in FY 2012. Where do proponents think this money is going to come from? OK, people are angry about government, but do they seriously think we can wipe out this much cash from state programs without serious consequences?

Massachusetts has been laying off state workers throughout many departments. There's no fat to cut. If you're angry about high pensions for state workers, this law isn't going to change that one bit- we'll still owe pensions and retirement benefits to those workers, only we'll have to cut aid to cities and towns to pay for them, and now property taxes are going up instead. Or towns will be laying off more police, fire, and teaching staff.

These kinds of votes seem more like tantrums than thoughtful dissection of policy. Government has to be funded from somewhere. I would love to see anti-tax types propose ballot initiatives that cut programs and local aid- then we'd be voting like legislators have to when they're formulating a budget, considering the consequences of our tax cutting. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Department of Election Pre-Analysis (posted by DT)

I'm coming around to the point of view that the electoral deck is just stacked against the Democrats this year:

-The party in power always loses seats in off-year elections
-The party in power always loses seats when the economy is bad
-2006 and 2008 produced lots of democrats in conservative districts, which are bound to swing back
-The economy was such a wreck in '08 that no realistic fix would have been enough to reverse it enough to matter politically. Even if liberals had gotten their $1.5 trillion stimulus, unemployment would still be 8%, which though better than 9.6% still isn't good enough to satisfy the public.

Just looking for excuses for the coming electoral destruction? Fair enough, maybe so. But when you look historically at the previous times that a single party has controlled both houses and the presidency, you see that it never lasts long. The only exception was 2002, and clearly 9/11 had a lot to do with that.

Not that I saw this coming or anything. I was swept up, and figured the GOP had screwed up the economy so badly that it would be years before they'd be back. Color me wrong about that!

Of course the implications of this are that Democrats only had a short window, and needed to pass as much important stuff as possible while they could. The administration would argue that they've done just that- health care reform and financial reform being the big things. I would have liked to see more. If the Democrats somehow do hold on to the House and Senate, they absolutely have to end the filibuster and keep plugging away at their agenda, because they probably won't hold both houses for long after that- no matter what happens. See, I've learned my lesson.

Israel and a "One State Solution" (posted by DT)

Here's an opinion piece in the New York Times that is so many kinds of wrong that it's hard to know where to start:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/a-one-to-two-state-solution/

So for your reading pleasure, here's my fisking of this idiotic piece: (My comments in Blue)

This week’s bad news from the West Bank — the resumption of settlement construction after a 10-month moratorium, just as a new round of peace talks had gotten underway — didn’t much dampen optimism among seasoned Middle East watchers.

That’s because there wasn’t much optimism to dampen. For the past few years, more and more people who follow these things have been saying that the perennial goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — a two-state solution — will never be reached in any event.

These experts fall into two camps.

The more upbeat, while pessimistic about a two-state solution, hold out hope for a “one-state solution”: Israel gains uncontested possession of the West Bank and Gaza but gives Palestinians who live there the vote, and Israel evolves from a Jewish state into a stable and peaceful secular state.
A One State Solution means the end of the Jewish state, which is the whole point of Israel. The only experts in favor of a One State Solution are those who are opposed to the existence of Israel. To imagine that Jews would be safe in an Arab-dominated state, given the recent history of the Middle East, is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
People in the other camp — the pure, 100-percent pessimists — say that even if such a thing could work, even if a democracy with about as many Arabs as Jews could function, it isn’t going to happen; most Israelis would never admit a large and growing Arab population to the electorate.
Agreed!
For a peace deal to happen, Israel’s centrists need to get jarred out of their indifference.
But there’s a third possibility that nobody ever talks about. Pursuing a one-state solution could actually lead to a two-state solution. Instead of following the current road map to a Palestinian state, maybe we can get there by detour.
This seems to be implying that the impediment to peace in Israel/Palestine is "Israel's centrists".
One key to working up enthusiasm for this detour is to get clear on the nature of the roadblock.

It’s common to say that Israel’s intransigence on the settlements issue reflects the growing strength of the right, especially the religious fundamentalists who do much of the settling. But at least as big a problem as the zeal of the radicals is the apathy of the moderates.
Now here's where things start to get crazy. Look, I'm dead-set against settlements deep in the West Bank, and I think they're antithetical to peace; an unnecessary barrier. But settlements are not the primary obstacle to peace. The primary obstacle is that Palestinians continue to reject the legitimacy of the Jewish state, and continue to act and speak as if they intend to do nothing less than kill every Jew in Israel.
A recent Time magazine cover story — “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” — explained why many Israelis just don’t think a peace deal is all that important: they’ve already got peace. Ever since Israel built its security wall, they’ve been safe from suicide bombers, and homemade rockets from Gaza can’t reach them. They’re prosperous to boot. What’s not to like?
A more accurate description of this phenomenon is that Israelis have decided that Palestinians are not a legitimate partner for peace at this time, so they're trying to make the best of it while waiting and hoping that something changes.
So long as this attitude prevails, the far right will have veto power over policy in the occupied territory. For a peace deal to happen, Israel’s centrists need to get jarred out of their indifference. Someone needs to scare these people.

There’s a way for Palestinians to do that — and not the usual way, with bombs and rockets. Quite the opposite.

If Palestinians want to strike fear into the hearts of Israelis they should (a) give up on violence as a tool of persuasion; (b) give up on the current round of negotiations; and (c) start holding demonstrations in which they ask for only one thing: the right to vote. Their argument would be simple: They live under Israeli rule, and Israel is a democracy, so why aren’t they part of it?
Let's put aside that this prescription is utterly unrealistic. The Palestinians have shown no signs of any willingness to give up on violence-ever. But if they ever did follow this plan they wouldn't "strike fear into the hearts of Israelis"- the Jews would be thrilled! It would take lots of stops and starts, and yes, lots of internal struggles with the Messianic Right in Israel, but Palestinians would indeed get their state this way- and they'd deserve it! The continuing violence is the whole reason that the Israeli center has turned away from the peace process- if you stop the violence, you get them on board again- you don't need any subtle byzantine plan to do it, it's pretty straightforward!
A truly peaceful movement with such elemental aspirations — think of Martin Luther King or Gandhi — would gain immediate international support. In Europe and the United States, leftists would agitate in growing numbers for economic and political pressure on Israel.
They wouldn't have to, because Israelis would negotiate very happily. Again, Palestinian violence and rejectionism is the main impediment to peace, not settlements.
In 2002, some Harvard students urged the university to purge investments in Israel from its portfolio, and the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, suggested that the disinvestment movement was anti-Semitic. This time there would be a lot more students, and no university president would call them anti-Semitic. All they’d be saying is that if Israel isn’t going to give up the occupied territories — and, let’s face it, the current government isn’t exactly in headlong pursuit of that goal — it should give Arabs living there the same rights it gives Jews living there.
Past Israeli governments have been willing to give up the West Bank in exchange for peace, and there's no reason future ones wouldn't do the same, if conditions warranted it. The Right is in control in Israel now, but it's a democracy and leadership will change again.
As momentum grew — more Palestinians marching, more international support for them, thus more Palestinians marching, and so on — the complacent Israeli center would get way less complacent. Suddenly facing a choice between a one-state solution and international ostracism, reasonable Israelis would develop a burning attraction to a two-state solution — and a sudden intolerance for religious zealots who stood in the way of it. Before long Israel would be pondering two-state deals more generous than anything that’s been seriously discussed to date.

Obviously, neutralizing Israeli extremists wouldn’t get rid of all obstacles to peace. For one thing, there are the Palestinian extremists. They could sabotage peaceful progress with attention-grabbing violence, and Hamas, in particular, has shown as much. But that problem, which looms large on the current road to peace, would loom smaller on the detour.
You probably get the point by now, but of course this paragraph, a throwaway in the article, really gets at the heart of the matter. It's the main issue.
For starters, if a peaceful suffrage movement gave Palestinians the vigorous international support they’ve long sought, it would be hard for Hamas to conspicuously oppose it.

Besides, given the Arab birth rate, for Arabs to get the vote would theoretically put them on the path toward effective control of Israel, which is exactly what Hamas says it wants. It would be kind of awkward for Hamas to stand in the way of that.

Of course, once Israel started talking seriously about a two-state deal, Hamas could revert to fierce opposition. But if indeed the deal being discussed was more generous than those discussed in the past, the success of the Palestinian peace movement would be undeniable. Hamas might persist in its obstructionism, but it would have less support than it has now. That’s progress.
Aaaahhhh, if only I could agree. I wish Hamas could be so easily marginalized. I'm still an optimist that someday there will be peace; but it's not coming that fast, and Hamas isn't going away that easily.
Given the ongoing damage done to America’s national security by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s in America’s interest for Israelis to feel intensely eager for a two-state deal. And some do.

As for the others: if they really grasped their predicament, they’d be intensely eager as well. The menu of futures for Israel features only three items: (1) two-state solution; (2) one-state solution; (3) something really, really horrible. There’s just no way that the situation will simmer indefinitely without boiling over, whether via nuclear bomb (purchased by terrorists from cash-hungry North Korea, say), or via a tit-for-tat exchange with Hamas or Hezbollah that spins out of control, bringing a devastating regional war, or via some other path to catastrophe.
Israelis would love to see a 2-state solution. It's been the policy of the Israeli government since 1947. What I find most obscene about this article is that this (kind of important) detail is completely left out.
Sooner or later, something will alert Israel’s unfortunately silent majority to the high price of leaving the Palestinian issue unresolved. The only question is whether by then the price will have already been paid.

Postscript: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has in the past mentioned the one-state prospect in a way that shows he understands its potential to strengthen Israel’s incentive to negotiate. But regional experts tell me that in general officials on the Palestinian side don’t welcome a one-state solution because that would deprive them of the power they have now, whereas they would remain prominent during the implementation of a two-state solution. So don’t expect Palestinian officials to initiate give-us-the-vote marches; even if they saw that such marches could wind up leading to a two-state solution, they’d probably fear any potentially strong movement that they don’t control. If a peaceful suffrage movement takes shape, it will be a grass-roots movement, perhaps supported by international nongovernmental organizations.
I think the Palestinian polity has made it pretty clear that it wants a one state solution, with all the Jews pushed into the Mediterranean. Not my favorite solution to the problem.

Whose fault is the Deficit? (posted by DT)

In my debates on budget matters with conservatives, I am always trying to remind them that the reason we have a huge budget deficit is because we have lowered taxes to an unsustainable level. I should probably also mention more that the 2000s also saw huge spending increases on the military in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which were completely unfunded (mind you, I don't oppose all that spending, but it's sort of outrageous that the same people who wouldn't consider paying for spending in good times are now arguing for budget austerity now).

The reply from conservatives keeps coming back: What about Obama's deficit explosion? Well, let's just keep things in perspective:



Stimulus spending, the light blue area, is indeed a huge contributor to the deficit this year. But it's projected to decrease to very little by 2012. The Bush tax cuts (orange), however, continue forever if they are made permanent. And they're a way bigger factor. Also of note, the economic downturn (dark blue) is a really big piece of the puzzle too.

I don't know any more ways to say it: the Republican/ Tea Party position at this time is not about balancing the budget- it's about tax cuts for the wealthy. If taxes don't go up, we'll stay in the red, even in good times.

Income Inequality (posted by DT)

This graph says a lot about what happens to income when Democrats are in charge and when Republicans are in charge (from: http://www.slate.com/id/2266174/slideshow/2266174/fs/0//entry/2266218/ )



Notice that, while the poor do much better under Democrats, the rich do better too! It's just better all around when people with lower incomes are allowed to increase their quality of life- because they buy stuff, which benefits the rich too.

Summing up the 2000s (posted by DT)

From Ezra Klein's blog at the Washington Post. (sorry it's tough to read- the graph shows the decline (!) in real wages from 2000 to 2007-that end point is before the Crash, mind you). I wish more people would think about this before restoring the wage-deadening GOP to power.

More on the Cordoba Center (posted by DT)

I want to post my fisking of an article sent to me recently about the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. My comments are in blue.

The Ground Zero Mosque - Lessons from Israel

A Jerusalem Post Column by Daniel Gordis

September 3, 2010
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



The Jerusalem Post
September 3, 2010
In its basic form, the Ground Zero mosque debate boils down to a conflict between two competing values - American freedom of religion versus the sensitivities of the families of the victims of 9/11.

Right off the bat he's wrong. Some families of 9/11 victims have come out in favor of the center. Many victims of 9/11 were Muslim themselves.

The freedom-of-religion argument suggests that if Jews sought to build a synagogue at Ground Zero (or anywhere else, for that matter), they would be within their rights. That's the American way. The opposing view suggests that while not every Catholic was guilty in the Holocaust, and not every Muslim perpetrated the crimes of 9/11, sensitivities still matter. Pope John Paul II had the decency to force the Carmelite nuns out of Auschwitz, and Muslim leaders, too, ought to relocate their project.

Similarly, the mutual accusations are parallel: If you are opposed to
the mosque, you are an Islamophobic racist. And if you're in favor of it, you're
simply insensitive to the pain of those who lost loved ones in the attack.

But we Israelis have learned from our experience that matters are more
complicated. One need not be racist or Islamophobic to be concerned about the
mosque. For life in our region has taught us that the first necessary step to
defending yourself is acknowledging that someone else is out to destroy you. This really ticks me off. It's a straw man argument used constantly by the Right. Everyone knows and understands that Al Qaeda is out to get us. The organization developing the Cordoba Center is not out to destroy us.

In the suburban, well-educated, politically and Jewishly liberal America in which I grew up, we didn't use the label "enemy." "Enemy" was a dirty word, because it implied the immutability of conflict.

Yes, there were people who fought us, but only because we hadn't yet arrived at a fair resolution of our conflict. We needed to understand them, so we could then
resolve the conflicts that divided us.

I still recall being jarred, when we made aliya, by the matter-of-factness with which Israelis use the word "enemy." But it wasn't a judgment or an accusation. It was simply a fact: There are people out to destroy our state, who seek to kill us and our children. And as the intifada later amply demonstrated, they did not yearn for our
understanding or our friendship. They wanted our demise. Making this point here implies that all Muslims are our enemies. That may be true in Israel (though I don't think so), but it's certainly not been shown to be true here.

YEARS AGO, we took our then teenage daughter to an evening sponsored by the army, at which religious parents could ask questions about what the army would be like for their daughters. Some of the parents were downright hostile, clearly opposed to the prospect of their daughters joining the IDF. At one point, an obviously angry father stood up, turned to the base commander and asked (or more accurately hissed), "Do you make the girls work on Shabbat?" The room was perfectly silent, for everyone knew the answer. No one moved. Even the base rabbi said nothing. He stood at the podium, leaned into the mike and, lost in thought, played with his beard.

Suddenly, one of the three soldiers who'd been brought to address the parents, a young woman with her uniform shirt buttoned up to her chin, her sleeves extending to her wrists and her armyissued skirt down to her ankles, looked the father right in the eye, and without being called on, said to him, "Of course we work on Shabbat." And then, after a second's pause, she added, "Gam ha'oyev oved beshabbat" - the enemy also works on Shabbat.

It was a game changer. "What?" she essentially asked. "You think we do this for fun?
There are people out there trying to destroy us. Either we're as serious about
this conflict as they are, or they're going to win." Nice story (really- I do like it), but again it has nothing to do with the Cordoba Center.

I hadn't thought of that young woman in years, but ever since the Cordoba Initiative controversy erupted, I've remembered her repeatedly. For Israelis do have something to teach Americans, and it's very similar to what she said to that father.

It goes something like this: It's fine to say that "America is not at war with Islam," to point out that most Muslims are not terrorists and that many American Muslims are moderates. That's true, as far as it goes. Obviously the author doesn't think
it is true. But in fact the vast majority of Muslims in the US, including most especially the Muslims building the Cordoba Center, are not jihadists.

But it only goes so far. Because America is at war and its enemies are Muslims. Politically correct hairsplitting runs the risk of Americans blinding themselves to that simple but critical fact. I think it's time to point out how stupid this argument is. Does he really think that we're going to forget the 9/11 terrorists are Muslim, or that Osama Bin Laden is Muslim? When we were at war with Japan, the US government locked up Japanese-Americans in concentration camps- after all, we were at war and our enemies were Japanese! That's not seen as a very cogent policy now. It makes no difference what percentage of the world's Muslims wants to destroy America. So if 0.000000000001% is the number it's the same as if it's 50%? By that reasoning, there's no ethnic group that can be trusted. There are enough of them that US air travel is now abominably unpleasant and, more importantly, enough of them that more strikes on America appear inevitable. So what do the attacks by Tim McVeigh and subsequent terror incidents by White Americans mean? What are we
supposed to do about those?

The US got lucky on Christmas Day when the bomber headed to Detroit failed to detonate his explosives, and was lucky again in Times Square in May, but less fortunate at Fort Hood. Yet those may be but the beginning. We could, heaven forbid, come to see 9/11 as child's play. 9/11 as child's play? Building off 2 incompetent
attacks by lone people or small groups and one successful attack by a member of
the US armed forces working alone? Where's the trend?

THE UNITED States' future is under attack, but Americans resist admitting it. President Barack Obama has sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but he has also said that he intends to pull them out by July. Can we imagine FDR declaring war on Germany, but then adding that the war had to be over in a year, or in two? It
would have been laughable. And America would have lost. The US has to decide - is it committed to destroying those who wish it ill, or is it willing to be destroyed bythem? Those, sadly, are its only two alternatives. Not really. In Iraq and Afghanistan we need a mission that is attainable. Creating a peaceful democracy that likes us is not realistic. Unlike in WW II, we can bring our army anywhere we want, even to the heart of Afghanistan, but we'll just see the enemy melt away and reform elsewhere. The proper analogy is to Vietnam, not Germany.

When my parents were teenagers, they watched as evil took hold of Europe. But then they saw America turn itself into an unprecedented, enormous military machine. For America's leaders understood that if the Nazis won, the world as we knew it would be over; we could either destroy Nazism, or have no reason to go on.

But when my children were teenagers, a different evil took root across their eastern
horizon. This time, though, the world has feigned impotence.

Iran is at the nuclear threshold. Iraq was at best a "non-failure." The battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida may take years, or decades, and may require many lives
sacrificed if we are to win. But how do we win? We can conquer territory, but that's not winning. I haven't seen a realistic definition of what it means to "win" in Iraq or in Afghanistan. But America has grown war-weary. Americans see the pointlessness of
continuing an occupation that by its very nature sustains the resistance. Obama is already planning to bring the troops home Why wouldn't he? What is to be accomplished in the next few years that hasn't already been accomplished? What's the next goal?; the word "terrorist" is increasingly off-limits in the US because it is considered "politically loaded." That's just BS. The word "terrorist" is used constantly.

Americans simply want the conflict to be over.

Its tendency to gentility is part of what has made America great. But an unwillingness to call an "enemy" an enemy could lead to America's demise. Again, nobody disputes that Al Qaeda is our enemy. For Islam's radical leaders tell us clearly what they seek: a world united under Islam, with America's sacred freedoms eradicated as a new "morality" replaces them. Yes, and I seek ten million dollars. I'm not going to get it and neither are they. Islamic fundamentalism is not an existential threat. What is much less clear is whether Americans are willing to fight - to die and to kill - to protect those freedoms. I think it's been clearly shown that
America is quite willing to kill to protect those freedoms- tens of thousands of
Iraqis have had the good fortune to be examples. The question is whether
doing so is effective.

Whether or not the Ground Zero mosque ultimately gets built may not matter nearly as much as whether or not Americans are willing to gird themselves for the battles that sadly lie ahead. Now here's some truth- the "Ground Zero mosque" doesn't
matter in this war- it's a red herring. We Israelis understand the fatigue that comes with war. We, like Americans, would much prefer a world in which we did not have mortal enemies.

We, like Americans, would much prefer that our children went to college at 18, and not to years of military service. But we've learned that anything short of absolute clear-sightedness and honesty - coupled with extraordinary sacrifice - could destroy us.

The same is true for America. The truly important question that the "Islamophobia"
accusation raises is not what will transpire with a proposed building, but what
will happen with a worldview. Exactly! Is our worldview that the US is dedicated to diversity and religious freedom? Or are we just a mirror image of Islamic fundamentalists, engaged in a holy war, Judeo-Christianity vs. Islam?

It still remains to be seen if America will do what it must if it is to guarantee the survival of the very values it is now debating. America can remain the "land of the free," but only if it is also the "home of the brave." WOW what a twisted view of American values! American values are first and foremost entrenched in our constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nothing is more antithetical to our values than opposing a religious center being built on private property and dedicated to peace with other religions.

Oh, one more thing: "The Ground Zero Mosque" is neither a mosque nor is it located at Ground Zero. It's two city blocks away, with numerous large buildings in between, and is a cultural center with a prayer space- no minaret.

Stimulus one year later (posted by DT)

Here's some correspondence with a conservative email buddy. I asked him what he thought of stimulus spending, now that the CBO has declared that it worked to keep us out of a much deeper hole. He is unconvinced:

This is classic economics, in that it is impossible to know definitively what the null hypothesis result is. What would the state be if everything else were held constant? What if a different policy were followed? I personally can't answer these questions. I have generally found that economists that supported the stimulus think that it worked, while those who did not support it think that it failed.

I remember asking you a long while back what you would take as proof that the stimulus did not work. You said that probably you would look at a country who followed a different policy to compare results. So, I think you should take a look at Germany, or at Canada. Both of these countries followed policies that involved controlling government spending - they are doing much better than we are. There are of course lots of variables that are different, so if you want to believe the stimulus worked, you'll discount these examples.

I think you should also look at what the President and his economists were saying prior to the stimulus. Without the stimulus, unemployment would rise to 9%, with the stimulus, unemployment would stay at 8% and then drop. Obama established he exact criteria by which he should be measured.

Me? I think that the overall policies following by the current administration - massive government spending, anti-business rhetoric, tax increases or the threat of tax increases, increased regulation, etc. have created a climate that is damaging the economy in a big way. This is the worst recovery from a recession ever. Unemployment is the highest in our lifetimes, with no sign that it will go down in a meaningful way for a long time. Obama owns these results, even if the recession started before he took office.

Oviously I disagree:

Of course counterfactuals are impossible in economics; but we have to go on the data we have. I've read some commentators who say that because we can't scientifically measure the effects, we should therefore not do stimulus, but of course that's absurd since any course of action can be criticized on that count, including inaction.

I think there are a few stances one could take on the stimulus:
It was a complete failure, the "multiplier" effect is 1, and we've gotten nothing from it except debt
Stimulus worked to boost production and increased GDP, but the effect wasn't enough to justify the debt incurred (i.e. it accepts Keynes theoretically but still isn't convinced). This argument could also encapsulate the Moral Hazard issue- moral hazard problem is too big to justify the temporary economic benefit.
Stimulus was a success, and without it things would have been much worse. It was worth the debt incurred.
Germany is an interesting comparison, but I don't think it can be looked at without seeing it as a part of the larger European Union, which makes economic decisions as a whole. I would see Germany as analogous to the Northeast Corridor, as the most educated and advanced part of the European economy. Like us here in the northeast, Germany has lower unemployment than southern Europe, which also didn't do much stimulus (as part of the same EU). Like the less developed parts of the US, southern Europe was hurt badly by this recession and isn't recovering well at all.

But I accept your point that we're all set in our preconceptions.

The President's economic team blundered badly in predicting an 8% top unemployment rate, but that speaks to their poor crystal-ball reading, and doesn't say anything about effects of stimulus. After all, unemployment went past 8% long before significant stimulus was in place.

As for your final point, it's true that the Democrats own the recovery (though not the Crash). I think they blundered in not doing enough stimulus (many on the economic team argued for stimulus well north of $1 trillion, and it ended up being $700 billion), but of course now we're into more counterfactuals.

The continued poor economy will hurt Dems at the polls, as it should. You think it's because they're pursuing the wrong policies, and I think it's because they didn't have the courage of their convictions. Either way it's their fault though.

The nice thing about an undivided government (like 2009-2010, and of course 2001-2007) is that we can hold the majority responsible for their record. If the GOP takes one or both houses of congress, things get much murkier.

More Explication on the ADL (posted by DT)

I've had some discussions with friends recently about the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy, and find myself quite firmly in the minority among my liberal and Jewish cohort. I want to explain a bit about what really gets me ginned up here:

The Anti Defamation League statement (read it here- it's short: http://www.adl.org/PresRele/CvlRt_32/5820_32.htm) is not a racist diatribe. It gives respect to the US Constitution and accepts that Muslims can build their community center wherever they wish. But it concludes that the building of the center is "not right" because it "will cause some victims more pain". OK, so the statement has some balance.

But here's the thing: the ADL is not a disinterested observer. This isn't like talking at a cocktail party about your opinion. The ADL's mission is to combat prejudice. At the top of their website is a line that says, in full: "To Stop the defamation of the Jewish people... to secure justice and fair treatment to all". Now if the American Psychological Association released a statement talking about the damage to victims of trauma, that would be one thing- their mission is about healing people. The ADL's mission is about justice ...for all. It's an organization dedicated to this one thing. When the ADL stands against Muslim Americans in this kind of matter, the organization forfeits its credibility in advocating for Jews. It becomes just another interest group advocating for Jews. It has to base its arguments on what's fair to Jews, but can't speak with credibility about universal themes of freedom and justice. If Abe Foxman wants to give money as a private citizen to an organization that opposes the Park51 project, he can do so, but as Director of the ADL such a stance just doesn't fit the mission.

I'm still seething about this. Why aren't more of us?

Worship of the Captains of Industry (posted by DT)

I'm a social worker, and proud of the work I do with people who are in psychiatric distress. I've worked a great deal with people at the bottom of the food chain during my career. Now when I used to tell people what I did, the most common response from those not in the field was something like "Oh, that's so noble!". It can feel a bit patronizing, actually, but it feels good too that people appreciate and value the work I do.

But in the past few years I think something has changed in America. It used to be that social workers, teachers, and police were, if not high-status in most ways, at least seen as people who sacrificed something of themselves for the good of society. Meanwhile, those in the business world were seen as people more out for themselves- not greedy bastards or anything, but also not noble do-gooders.

But now, as the works of Ayn Rand have swept the Right, the new Heroes are the captains of industry. They provide the jobs for the rest of us. They pay the taxes that support society (at least for now, until the Right gets its way on tax reform). They take the rest of us, the meek and helpless proletarians, on their shoulders and bequeath in their magnanimity the jobs that will allow us to maintain our bare existence.

Now I always thought that the executives and the successful enterpreneurs were pretty well compensated for their hard work and risk-taking. Our capitalist system rewards these winners with mountains of money; in fact the mountains have grown considerably over the past 10 years in comparison to the rest of us. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that "two-thirds of the nation's total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928..."

So I don't think one can argue that the winners are being disrespected by the market. But on top of the fact that the rules of the game are continuing to tilt further and further in the direction of the Haves, I also have to endure pundits telling me that I should be thanking the Captains on bended knee for allowing me to eat their scraps. And this after 2007-2008, when the creme de la creme of the Overclass at Goldman Sachs and AIG destroyed the economy along with five million jobs that look like they're not coming back for many years. I'm supposed to thank these thieves?

Look, I believe in capitalism. To paraphrase Churchill, capitalism is a terrible way to run an economy, and the only thing worse is Everything Else. We do need the Captains of Industry. But they need us too. And they're not sacrificing themselves for us- they're just doing what they've always done, which is try to make as much money as they can, however they can.

You don't get brownie points for that in my book. Your bank statement will just have to be enough.

UPDATE: Here's a Youtube of Sarah Pailin talking with a woman who is criticizing her for quitting the governorship of Alaska. The part that strikes me and many others is the look she gives her daughter when the woman they are talking with tells them that she is a teacher:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKflKzmfRCw&feature=player_embedded

Maybe my faithful readers think I'm reading too much into a look, but look for yourselves and decide (at the 1:10 mark)

UPDATE 2: My friend the Gun Toting Liberal has a related post up here: http://guntotingliberal.blogspot.com/2010/08/capitalism-say-it-soft-and-its-almost.html with which I totally agree. I thought I'd bring my massive traffic his way.

The ADL & Mosques near Ground Zero (posted by DT)

I have to second what Peter Beinert says here http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-02/the-anti-defamation-leagues-ground-zero-mosque-hypocrisy/full/ about the controversy over the Muslim organization looking to build a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site. Today the mosque plans cleared a hurdle when the New York Landmarks Commission refused to designate the building a landmark http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gieR_gNwrCUCH2jR03xjTCoEp4qgD9HC9S7G0

Now I would expect Sarah Pailin, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and the neandrathal Right to blow their stacks with outrage over the placement of the mosque, and sure enough they have. But this week I find it shocking that the Anti-Defamation League has lent its considerable weight to the cause of religious bigotry. The ADL is a Jewish organization, but it has always fought for religious freedom and racial equality for all throughout its history. Joining forces with bigots is a true shande, and a sick perversion of its mission.

As usual, Jon Stewart hits the absurdity of this issue perfectly http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-7-2010/wish-you-weren-t-here

The Auto Industry Bailout Revisited (posted by DT)

I see that President Obama was in Michigan recently touting the bailout of the automotive industry that was so controversial last year. In fact many pundits thought it was crazy for the US government to bail out an industry that was still going down and could not be saved. I can't brag about any prescience here either- I worried that the US taxpayer would take a huge bath on this particular policy (whereas the financial industry bailout always looked more solid, as the Fed changed policies and basically made it impossible for big banks not to make gobs of money so they could recapitalize).

Well now Obama is bragging about how the auto industry has managed to right itself. The big automakers are now making a profit. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/can_obama_make_success_popular.html
This isn't getting any play at all in the news, but this is a major success story. Without federal intervention, the Big 3 automakers (or at least two of them) were about to go under, destroying the economy of the midwest.

It would be nice to see Democrats use these sorts of success stories to move the public narrative about stimulus and bailouts. The US government, using our tax dollars that are gained through taxes and borrowing, managed to save the auto industry, ultimately at little to no cost. I wonder if we'll see that point made on Fox News?

Meta-Thoughts on Taxes (posted by DT)

I'm going Meta in this post, so beware!

One thing that interests me about questions around taxation is the basis for beliefs of liberals and conservatives. We're not talking to each other at all.

• Conservatives argue for lower taxes saying "we should be able to keep our money- the government should stay out because freedom means no government should do any more than absolutely necessary so that individual citizens can have maximum choice".
• Liberals tend to argue that taxes should be higher, returned to at least Clinton-era levels, and argue that economic history shows pretty clearly that those tax rates coincided with strong growth for the economy and increasing wages for the median American. Increasing prosperity for middle class and poor people is the main goal of society.

Both statements might be right! The Right really has no leg to stand on when they argue that a return to 1990s tax rates will slow the economy- all the historical evidence points the other way. But that doesn't invalidate the main argument of Low-Taxes people, that morally in a free society the government shouldn't be taking our money.

I'm often disappointed that political arguments aren't made honestly in the public sphere. It would be refreshing to hear a conservative say something like "I know higher taxes won't wreck the economy or even hurt it, but the fact is that lower taxes are a moral good in and of themselves, and if the Middle Class has to sacrifice some prosperity in exchange for freedom from government intervention, it's a small price to pay".

Well, on second thought, I guess I can see why they don't say that much; might not play too well with Joe Sixpack.

The Shirley Sherrod Fiasco (posted by DT)

My outrage of the day is reserved for Andrew Breitbart, the notorious right wing media mogul, who launched the recent attack on Shirley Sherrod, an obscure functionary at the Department of Agriculture. But my outrage isn't limited to Breitbart alone- the Obama administration needs to start learning something if it wants to compete with the Big Boys.

For those of you who are unaware, Breitbart put out a video that shows Ms. Sherrod, an African American, saying to an NAACP crowd that she didn't do everything she could to help a white farmer in her role in the Department of Agriculture many years ago. This was purported to be an example of the racism inherent in the NAACP and among liberals in general. There followed an uproar (stoked by Fox News of course) in which the NAACP condemned her, the Agriculture Department demanded her resignation, and the Obama administration backed the firing.

Then someone decided to go back and look at the whole tape, which reveals that the speech was really about Sherrod's redemption story, how she learned that poor white people have the same troubles as poor black people, and that her calling is to help them all- as she did in this particular case (the white farmer came out in strong support of her- "she saved my farm"). Now the administration is backpeddling, offering her the job back, and the NAACP is apologizing as well. I just checked Biggovernment.com and breitbart.com, and neither has offered an apology. Fox news also doesn't apologize.

Here's the story on Politico:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39990.html

So to recap: conservatives lie, liberals run around scared and apologize, and now the lie has come out. Breitbart should never be taken seriously again- remember this isn't an error on his part- it was a deliberate smear, but of course he'll never feel the pain because the Right Wing Echo Chamber will keep supporting him. But what about the liberals? How often do we have to get kicked in the groin by these guys before we start fighting back?

Please please please, the next time the Echo Chamber pushes some non-issue to the top of the news, I would love to hear some powerful liberals tell them to shove it- "we'll act when the facts are in". And I should hope the Obama administration and their compatriots will go after those who use baldfaced lies to support their cynical agendas.

Unemployment, Tax Cuts, and Deficit Peacocks (posted by DT)

This week we're getting a wonderful window into the priorities of liberals and conservatives. We have virtually every Republican in congress opposed to the extension of unemployment insurance, ostensibly because they don't want to further increase the deficit. Why do I write "ostensibly"?

Well every last one of those same Republicans is in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts for wealthy Americans. This would make the deficit much worse, costing many times what unemployment extension (which is temporary, while tax cuts are permanent) would cost. They apparently see no contradiction here.

Someone in the Blogosphere coined a perfect term for such conservatives: Deficit Peacocks. They talk about the horrible deficit that is passing costs onto our grandchildren, but they are completely unserious about actually solving the problem in the long term.

The current Republican party is genuinely in favor of lower taxes- that's not fake. But you can't seriously propose lowering the deficit and cutting taxes. This just isn't that hard to figure out.

One other thing. If you believe in the claptrap that lower tax rates actually lead to increased revenue through massive economic growth, this post: http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/07/13/ezra-klein-is-dismayed-that-some-people-think-the-bush-tax-cuts-raised-revenue/ pretty much demolishes that argument. You can't get something for nothing, nice as that would be.

Torture and the Media Conspiracy (posted by DT)

I know "conspiracy" is a strong word, but I don't see how one can argue it any other way when it comes to the US media and its response to the US torture policies of recent years.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com writes

On Monday, I noted that this Associated Press article twice used the word "torture" to describe what the Chinese Government did to Xue Feng, an American geologist now convicted of obtaining China's "state secrets." AP used the word "torture" despite the fact that (a) the treatment to which the Chinese subjected him (a few cigarette burns on his arms) clearly does not meet the Bush/Cheney/John-Yoo definition of "torture," and (b) the Chinese Government vehemently denies that its treatment of prisoners rises to the level of "torture." I very satirically demanded that AP apologize to China and cease using the word "torture" to describe what it did in light of the prevailing American media standard as articulated by the NYT's Bill Keller, The Washington Post, and NPR: namely, that the word "torture" must not be used by Good Journalists (at least when it comes to the U.S. Government) if the abuse falls short of the Government's official definition and/or if the Government denies that what it does is "torture." That, explained our leading media mavens, would be "taking sides," and only Bad Journalists do that.

Now Greenwald's post goes on to talk about media transparency, but I'm interested in how it portrays torture (Greenwald is too of course). I've had lots of arguments with liberal as well as conservative friends and relatives about whether waterboarding is torture. I am shocked that it has now become the consensus in the US that pretty much anything goes when it comes to treatment of terrorism suspects, and I predict it won't be long before the same logic applies to plain old violent crime suspects too (I mean, hey, they're trying to kill Americans too, right?).

The next time you see a story about mistreatment of prisoners by other countries, just try this thought experiment: change the country from North Korea or Cuba or whatever to "United States". Would that change the tone of the story? Why? Do we get to brutally treat prisoners because we're "the good guys"? If Jack Bauer were doing his work for Iran, would we still be cheering him on?

What has happened to President Obama? (posted by DT)

As I noted last post, it's getting kind of demoralizing over here in LiberalLand.

Now there are of course lots of reasons why, but one that isn't really being noted much is the style of the President.

This is the guy with the oratorical skills to inspire Americans? The one who made such a splash at the 2004 Democratic convention? He's completely unrecognizable now- he could be the Most Boring President in history. It's like he's had a lobotomy.

Now I find this sober style comforting, and it works to make Obama seem like he's going to govern based on careful reasoning, and that's all to the good. But it's not such a hot style when his policies are being hammered, mostly through lies and distortions, by the same unrepentant Right that's responsible for the Iraq War, the deficit, and the destruction of our economy. Basically we have one side throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the fight, while the leader of the Left responds with carefully worded tropes.

I think Obama believed his own hype about "changing the tone" in Washington. The more unreasonable the opposition gets, the more he thinks he can find a way to work with them if he just stays cool. Well, it's not working.

I know Obama will get hammered by the Right and their lapdogs in the media if he starts acting like an angry politician ("What about his promises of a new tone in Washington!?"), but he's getting hammered for it anyway- I keep reading disingenuous rants from the Right about how Obama hasn't followed through on his promise to work with Republicans, when their clear strategy has been to block everything they can.

At some point the stick has to come out; not because it will change the GOP- they've found that obstruction works just fine, thank you- but because it will energize Liberals and get them to the polls. The demoralization I'm feeling must be shared by others, and lots of us need to know that our leader is going to fight for what we believe in.

The Whacked Out Right (posted by DT)

It's a tough time to be a liberal right now- demoralizing. Trying to step back though, we've learned something amazing about radicalism in the 21st century.

After Democrats won the 2008 election, the Republican party moved way to the Right. This was a surprise to some, and many predicted they would have years in the wilderness, as it seemed so clear that they had lost because they had already moved too far right for the electorate.

But a funny thing happened. They've just pulled the whole conversation and the country rightward right along with them! Yes, there's still plenty of great political debate, but now the Right has set its positions so far out there that the center keeps moving in their direction.

So here in 2010 we're debating seriously:

• Is Keynesian economics viable, or did Herbert Hoover have it right after all?
• Should we should hold BP accountable for spilling oil or is that a "government shakedown"?
• Are federal economic policies based on improving lives of the middle class, or should the total focus be on getting easy money to the Rich so we can hope they'll create jobs?
• Why should America take care of its vulnerable people?
• Torture of suspected terrorists (this debate seems over, actually, and I'm on the losing side- Americans are totally fine with a limitless police state when it comes to defending the country from Arabs)

In my email correspondence with my Nut Case Righties, the latest thing is one of them sent around an article from the "Globe" supermarket tabloid about Obama being born in Kenya. Nothing is too far out for these guys, and I'm supposed to have a debate about where the President was born. I'd like to debate about how to eventually balance the budget or what to do about Global Warming, but I can't because we're still stuck on a religious belief in no taxes and a refusal to believe scientists who say Global Warming is real!

If I've learned one thing the last year and a half, it's that nothing lasts long, and I guess liberals will be back. But it's demoralizing right now.

Beware 2012 (posted by DT)

I was watching "Morning Joe" on MSNBC this morning, and there was speculation about whether Sarah Pailin was a legitimate candidate for president in 2012. The pundits were talking about what sort of strategy she would need to win the primary, etc. Finally, Mike Barnicle (not one of my favorite people, but that's a topic for another day) opined that she would get crushed in the general election if she won the primary.

Unfortunately, I'm not so sure. I've come around to the belief (well stated by one of my favorite bloggers Matt Yglesias) that general elections are decided by the Fundamentals. If the economy is in the toilet, the incumbent loses. If things are great, the incumbent wins. So while part of me would root for a Pailin victory over a more electable Mitt Romney, the other part of me worries that if things are bad, Obama goes down regardless and I should probably hope for a less crazy Republican candidate. Romney turns my stomach and is an opportunistic liar with no real beliefs, but I think he has better judgment than Sarah Pailin and her ilk.

Blogging from Socialized Health Care Utopia (posted by DT)

Just finishing a great long weekend in Montreal, home of socialized medicine and lots of French culture. (By the way, this is my first time here, and it's a great city).

I continue to correspond with my right wing nut job e-friends, and this weekend's topic has been the Stimulus. Basically, there is no stomach in Congress for more stimulus spending, even unemployment extensions (I read somewhere that this is the first time ever that unemployment benefits were allowed to expire when unemployment was over 7%- EVER!).

Anyway, my correspondent insists that the stimulus has been a failure because unemployment is still bad (which it certainly is), and argues along with the Right Wing Noise Machine for austerity. I tried to helpfully link to this Ezra Klein post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/two_stimulus_talking_points_th.html, which I think is a pretty rock-solid argument that Stimulus has been important in keeping things from being worse. The response from my correspondent was :

There is so much evidence that Government spending is doing very little stimulating and just adding to our childrens debt that the case is closed.
Except,,,for a few die-hard far-left Socialist types who have tunnel vision when it comes to Government spending.
They ignore California, they ignore Greece, they ignore Europe, they ignore our deficit, they ignore our debt. It's sort of like the the guy who catches his wife in bed with another guy
and tries to convince himself she's not cheating on him.
People who want the Government to keep spending money it has to borrow, are either blinded to the danger by Liberal Ideology or they have a sinister agenda. They're not
stupid,,they must know it's hurting us, our children and our
grandchildren.
The evidence is there for all to see. It's all over America
and Europe,,they just choose to ignore it.

This guy essentially accuses liberals of Treason. I throw facts and charts at him, and he responds with this. Anyway, how about this analogy: a patient goes to the Emergency Room, close to death due to a major stroke. The doctor in the ER saves the patient. One month later, the patient is alive, but bed-ridden and requiring years of rehab. The patient complains that his treatment didn't work, because look, he's sicker than he's ever been before. The doctor points out that if he hadn't had the treatment he'd be dead.
That's stimulus- the treatment that saved us from a Second Great Depression. Unfortunately, the crash of 2007-2008 was so severe that no immediate treatment was going to bring us back to full health in just a year or two.

It continues to boggle my mind that the economy was completely ruined by conservative policies over the past 8 years, and now they're blaming the liberals who've had 18 months to clean it up. And people are buying it!

Father's Day Blogging (posted by DT)

Well I figure that on Father's Day I should be allowed to spend time ignoring my children briefly so that I can blog on all the things rattling around in my head lately. Here goes the roundup:

• The Gulf Oil Spill: Fascinating turn of events last week when Republican congressman Joe Barton of Texas decided to switch up the tone of the congressional hearing with BP's president and actually apologized for the White House "shakedown" of the oil giant in pressuring them into putting up $20 Billion for future reimbursements of those hurt by the spill. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_bp_s_ally Barton was quickly pressured into an apology of his own, but this kind of thing reminds me of someone's definition of a gaffe that I heard a while back: a gaffe is when a politician accidently says what he really thinks. Exactly. There are significant numbers of politicians who may say they believe in "taking responsibility" and "free markets", but they really seem to just want what Business wants. Corporate Welfare is no problem as long as the money is going to wealthy corporations and not diverted to poor people or immigrants. And now I see that congress is debating a measure that would raise the liability cap on oil spills from $75 million to $10 billion. Wait a minute: why is there a liability cap on oil spills at all??? If we believe that corporations, like people, should take responsibility for their errors, why shouldn't BP pay back every dime that is lost by every fisherman in the Gulf? How could anyone be in favor of capping their liability after they destroyed a huge swath of US coastline? What has BP done to deserve our protection?
• Gun Nut Nonsense: Jeff Jacoby's op-eds in the Boston Globe are usually a good bet to get me roiled up. This one www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/20/the_instrument_of_crime_remains_only_an_instrument/ is no exception. Jacoby writes that guns are merely the instrument of crime, not the cause, and makes analogies to crimes committed using camcorders (to illegally record women in a bathroom) and cars so ask why we would limit guns when we don't limit cars or camcorders. Well, for starters, how about because handguns have no purpose other than to kill people? Cars, knives, and camcorders have many legitimate and socially useful purposes- we have to put up with horrible vehicular homicides and drunk driving in order to make use of all the good things that cars provide. But what are guns doing for us? Not much. And furthermore, society does put restrictions on car use- we license drivers, take away their driving privileges if they drive badly, and have laws prohibiting driving while drunk. These seem somewhat equivalent to laws limiting use of handguns. Now I have no illusions that significant gun control is coming- in spite of what the NRA and the Right Wing Nut Machine would have you believe, there is no secret Democratic plan to take away guns because the votes aren't there- but that doesn't mean I concede the point on the merits. The lack of gun control laws in our country is crazy and unjustifiable, but it's not going to change any time soon.
• In my correspondence with some rabid right wingers, we've continued to go over the old ground around stimulus spending and its usefulness. One data point I hadn't considered much is the fact that federal stimulus spending isn't really injecting lots of extra money into the economy as much as it's replacing state cutbacks. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-13/economy-in-u-s-slows-as-states-lose-federal-stimulus-funds.html States have to balance their budgets, but the recession has decreased tax revenues, causing massive budget cutbacks. Much of this was ameliorated this fiscal year by federal stimulus, but as that winds down and the economy hasn't really returned to health, state cuts are expected to be bigger than ever for next fiscal year. This doesn't bode well for the recovery at all, and is a good reason for additional stimulus. Unfortunately, that won't happen because the Tea Party types won't let Republicans vote for more deficits, and Democrats are too spineless to do it on their own. If we have another "double dip recession" this year, though, Democrats will have only themselves to blame for their pathetic display. Meanwhile, I'm still left debating whether stimulus was a good idea at all, when most legitimate economists say it kept us from another Great Depression.

Lessons from Recent Disasters (posted by DT)

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, on the heels of the coal mine disaster in West Virginia, makes me think about government regulations. I think this also applies to Wall Street regulation to some degree.

Businesses hate government "red tape". Workers hate red tape. I work in a (state) government-regulated facility, and I hate the government's red tape. It is incredibly inefficient, forcing businesses everywhere to jump through often silly hoops to show the regulators that they're safe in some way.

Of course, we all feel we work for organizations that are fully incentivized without government help to avoid a major catastrophe. If someone dies in my facility because of our negligence, we would be in huge trouble, and we don't need government regulations to show us that. Similarly, mine owners and oil well owners probably argue that they don't need so many regulations to keep their facilities from killing workers or destroying a region because they care about quality too.

But then we get these two disasters, and we need to step back and remember that this is why governments throw up so much red tape. How many mine workers are alive and well thanks to "red tape" that forces them to have safe rooms and fans and gas detectors? How many oil spills have been avoided thanks to governments forcing drillers to put in redundant safety features that stop wells from blowing out?

This Gulf spill is a complete catastrophe for the region. 1000 miles of coastline may be destroyed for years to come. The fishing industry may be completely wiped out. So the next time an oil company complains about too much bureaucracy making it too hard to create jobs, we have to remember this- all that bureaucracy protects us, and we cut corners at our collective peril.

A few thoughts for a long weekend (posted by DT)

Some things rattling around in my brain:

Illegal Immigration
One thing I don't see mentioned in the debates about the Arizona illegal immigration law is the role of resources and money. I hear supporters of the crackdown on illegals constantly say that "the federal government won't do anything, so we have to step in". But what exactly do they want the feds to do?

It seems to me that they're demanding better enforcement of our porous Mexico border, but these are the same people screaming about high taxes and big deficits. How do they expect to pay for increased border patrols?

It seems kind of simple to me. If we wanted to, we could probably put into place an Israeli-type patroling system that would lock up the border really well, as Israel does around the Gaza Strip and West Bank and its international borders. But the cost would be astronomical! It's a really long, really remote border. You can't just put up a fence and go away, because central Americans aren't stupid and know how to cut through or climb over a fence. If you want the feds to "do something" you have to be prepared to spend billions of dollars every year to patrol the border much more intensively with boots on the ground. Is that worth it if you also want to lower deficits and lower taxes? To stop unskilled laborers to come to the states? Over a border that has never been shown to be the entry point for a single terrorist?


Gulf Oil Spill
I really hope that BP pays for every dollar of economic destruction that this spill is causing. That includes not just cleanup, but beach cleanup and reimbursement of shrimping and tourism industries, etc. Now I'm not sure this is going to happen- they probably have pretty good lawyers- but if we believe in capitalism, and we believe that companies will regulate themselves because they don't want to risk such catastrophes, then we should want BP to pay dearly, if only to scare them and others into improving their safety standards.

This brings home to me that disconnect between conservative bromides about tort reform at the same time they push for lowering regulations and red tape on industry. If you don't regulate carefully, you have to at least make sure that a company that destroys something is forced to pay for what it's done, even if it is bankrupted in the process. If you oppose holding companies responsible, and at the same time oppose regulating them to force responsible behavior, then you're not really concerned with keeping government out of our lives so much as concerned about protecting corporate profits at the expense of everyone else.

The same argument applies to financial reform. We have to regulate strongly, or we have to find ways to hold these companies responsible for their bets. If we do neither, we're just stuck in an endless cycle of bailouts.


Don't Ask Don't Tell
So now the military is fine with ending DADT, an overwhelming majority of Americans are comfortable with it, we have a liberal congress and president, and it's still going to be a battle in Congress. The Republican party looks likely to attempt to filibuster repeal of the law, even though all of their justifications have gone up in smoke.

The list of civil rights issues opposed by conservatives is long and storied: conservatives opposed integration of the military, voting rights for Blacks in the South, integration of schools throughout the country, and now gay marriage and integration of gays into the military. In 20 years they'll be running away from these positions too. Luckily the Good Guys keep winning these fights.

I think Memorial Day would be a great time to repeal DADT. Lots of veterans served as closeted gays, and it's a scandal.

Election Day Takeaways (posted by DT)

This week there were a number of interesting elections around the country. What do they all mean?
Different things in different elections. To run them down:

• Pennsylvania Senate primary: Arlen Specter lost to Joe Sestak, a more traditional liberal winning the Democratic primary against the party-switching moderate. This is being spun in Republican circles as a setback for Obama, but I don't see it. The President accepted Specter's party switch as a vote he needed at the time, and Obama followed through on a promise by endorsing Specter for re-election as a Democrat. That doesn't mean he needs Specter to win re-election. If Sestak wins in November we end up with a more reliable vote for the Democratic agenda. And Sestak probably has a better shot than Specter, as he doesn't have the party switching baggage. Specter is the big loser here- the guy is 80 years old and should have retired with some dignity. How ridiculous does it look when he votes for virtually every filibuster when he's a Republican, but then switches parties and votes against every single filibuster. The guy appears to have no conscience at all and deserves to be finished.
• Pennsylvania special congressional election: replacing the recently deceased John Murtha, Mark Critz, a Democrat, won a very competitive district that went for John McCain in 2008. This is great news for Democrats, a glimmer of hope for November.
• Rand Paul, a true Tea Party guy, won the Republican primary in Kentucky against a more "establishment" candidate. Tough call on what to think for this liberal. Kentucky should be an easy Republican win anyway, but elected a pretty nutty guy makes it possible for Dems to win. On the other hand, Paul is a nut and it's not good to have nuts in the Senate. On the other other hand, even mainstream Republicans have been completely obstructionist lately (hello John McCain), walking back from any moderate positions they ever held, so maybe it doesn't matter. With all the Tea Party types, I'm left wondering whether they're really crazy like many of their minions, or whether they're just cynically exploiting them. Seeing how the act in office is sort of a scary way to find out.
• In Arkansas Blanche Lincoln has to go through another runoff and may not win the Democratic primary. She is a centrist being challenged from the Left. I generally root for the Left as my readers know. There's room for centrist Dems, but if they don't vote for anything on the Democratic agenda than I'd just as soon have them go down- they're not doing us any good. Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman are in this category for me. Blanche Lincoln isn't quite in that category, so I hope that electing someone friendlier to labor doesn't swing a winnable election to the Republicans.

So hope is blooming for me all in all. Jobs mean everything heading into November.

Torture and the NYC Car Bomb Attempt (posted by DT)

It's amazing to hear, after the successful capture of the New York City car bomber from Pakistan and now this week's capture of accomplices, pro-torture people claim that this shows why we need to keep treating terrorists like we're in the Middle Ages.



Yes it's true that these guys are potentially dangerous and want to kill us, and I get tired of hearing people preach that as if I don't understand it. It's just that this incident and outcome are evidence of the positive efficacy of old fashioned law enforcement techniques for terror cases. Without apparently torturing this suspect and even when reading him his Miranda rights, it appears that authorities have gleaned lots of good information from him. As an added bonus, we can actually prosecute him in a court of law! Where's the downside?



People have to stop watching "24" and start looking at evidence of what works. I like vigilante movies too, but grownups should be setting policies in these areas.

Elena Kagan & the Supremes (posted by DT)

President Obama has announced his nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy, and we get another demonstration of the idiocy that grips Washington and the beltway press.

The Supreme Court wars have gotten so contentious that presidents have discovered the best way to get their nominees through is to nominate "stealth candidates", lawyers with little paper trail to dissect. Because the other side is guaranteed to raise a loud cry about "judicial activism" or some such, no matter who the candidate is, the goal is to give them as little ammo as possible. So Kagan, who has never been a judge, never written a controversial legal article, and apparently never talked politics with any of her friends, is now the nominee... and the Right will start tearing apart every off-hand comment she made in a law school lecture to prove she's a radical.

Now that part is completely symmetrical; the Left tried to do the same with Roberts and Alito, who were so un-forthcoming in their hearings that it was impossible to know how they would act on the court. What's not symmetrical is the Obama administration's strategy: they've nominated a woman who is (as far as we can tell) a moderate. No fire-breathing liberal to balance out Thomas, Scalia, and Roberts.

So the Republicans seem to understand the game: since your opposition is going to paint your nominee as a wild-eyed radical no matter whom you nominate, you might as well nominate a wild-eyed radical! Thus we have a conservative block on the court that is as straight down the line on the right as you could possibly imagine. I'd like to see Democrats nominate a Larry Tribe or similar thinker- liberals are fighting anyway, why not fight for someone we can get excited about?

But of course there is one explanation for Obama's nomination of the moderate Elena Kagan: Obama just isn't that liberal. In spite of his portrayal, he campaigned as a moderate and he's acting like a moderate. And to this liberal the most frustrating part is that the common wisdom in the media is that the Democrats "need to move to the center", when that's where Obama has always been. I wish he'd started on the Left so he could really move there.

Stimulus and Jobs (posted by DT)

Really good report on job gains in the economy yesterday:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/07/private-sector-jobs/

A few points about job growth and the Democratic Stimulus package from last year

• Conservatives blasted the stimulus at the time, saying that it would destroy the economy and would only lead to government jobs. Clearly there has been growth in private sector jobs; according to the report over 500,000 new private sector jobs have been created this year. I guess maybe Keynes was right, though that's not a surprise to most economists- just to the nut-jobs employed by the right-wing echo-chamber.
• In my correspondence a while back with a conservative friend, he asked me "what would it take to prove to you that deficit spending and economic stimulus does not work?" It was a fair question, since we both agreed that the economy was going to come back one way or another from the bottom, making it tough to prove the effectiveness of stimulus spending. My response at the time was that in Europe there was relatively less stimulus spending, so if Europe recovered more effectively than the US that would be a (bad) data point for me. Well, it seems that Europe isn't doing too well. Now obviously there are lots of factors in this, but it's pretty clear that US stimulus spending has helped the recovery.

Unfortunately, the economy isn't recovering as quickly as the Democrats need it to, and it looks like the Democrats are going to lose tons of seats in November. I'm still struggling with what this means. The economy still stinks overall and the incumbent party is always punished when that happens. Also, Democrats won pretty much everything in 2008, and now hold lots of traditional Republican seats, so with the disaster of Republican rule fading in peoples' memories one would expect to lose some seats. Still, it looks like lots of seats are at risk, and one wonders if more aggressive stimulus measures in 2008 might have yielded a faster recovery and saved the House for the Democrats. While part of me wants to whine about the unfairness of holding the Democrats accountable for an economy wrecked by their opponents, another part of me feels that Democrats would be doing better if they had better party discipline and displayed the courage of their convictions.

Cape Wind (posted by DT)

Thank goodness the feds have finally approved Cape Wind, allowing a complex of windmills in Nantucket Sound even while allegedly despoiling the view from Nantucket and Hyannisport.

If liberals/ environmentalists really want to be taken seriously, we have to support renewable energy in our backyards. Ted Kennedy's work to block Cape Wind was an outrageous shande, and here's to hoping it's really the end of the delays.

Immigration Reform & Conservative Hypocricy (posted by DT)

The Wingnuts who have taken over the Republican party are really in the ascendency in Arizona I guess, where they've passed a law that requires police to enforce federal immigration laws and allows them to demand identification from anyone they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe is an illegal alien.

So what's hypocritical? Well, all I hear from the far Right is how government under the Democrats is anti-freedom. They want to do things like mandate health insurance and transfer money through the tax system, which makes America less free.

So here it is now: do these same people support this law in Arizona? Now we're talking about people being stopped on the street because they look Mexican and presumably being hauled off to the station if they can't prove their legal status. So I guess authoritarian government power has virtually no limits when it comes to people with dark skin, while increasing taxes on "real Americans" is a horrible usurpation of freedom.

Sickening. I'm in on the Arizona boycott. Too bad, I always wanted to check it out down there...

Wingnut lies (posted by DT)

Sorry to my legion of fans to go so long without posting. It's tough to drag myself away from the NHL and NBA playoffs- good stuff!

Anyway, in my latest email correspondence with some new-found Right Wingnut friends, I've been particularly struck by the power of the Right wing noise machine. It blows my mind how the Right can, through sheer repetition in their closed system, create a reality in the Common Wisdom that is the exact opposite of the truth

For example, there's financial reform. We have Democratic senators working on a bill to regulate Wall Street. Republican politicians are criticizing this as a "permanent bailout of Wall Street". Now this is so beyond the pale that I have to believe it won't work and will be abandoned, but I've learned that almost anything is possible. These guys are masters at what they do. Our current system is set for automatic bailouts of the financial industry in times of crisis, as happened in 2008. The proposed legislation offers an orderly way to prop up and then break up failing financial companies. It is opposed by Wall Street, which would of course love to continue the current system in which they make piles of money in good times gambling with excessive leverage, and then gets the rest of us to pay for the bailout when it hits the fan. It's a win-win! I think it's pretty clear which party is more in line with Wall Street thinking, but their rhetoric is that Democrats are bailing them out.

Maybe we're not stupid enough to buy it this time. Sometimes I think that the Right has become so good at this ("Obama is a fascist!" "The deficit is the Democrats' fault!"), that they sit around in a smoke filled room drinking scotch and saying "hey, check this out, I think we can make America believe that Democrats are the party of Wall Street!" "No way, that's going too far!" "What the F---, let's try it and see!".

Goldman Sachs (posted by DT)

I'm not in the financial services field and don't pretend to understand things too well there, but I'll admit to lots of populist-style rage at the Wall Street Masters of the Universe who had so much to do with the most recent financial crisis. So naturally I was thrilled to see the SEC pursuing civil charges against Goldman Sachs for defrauding investors by betting heavily against securities that they were themselves marketing to investors. I'd get lots of pleasure in seeing someone go to jail too, though I'm not at all sure anyone did anything criminal in all this.

Still, what boggles my mind in reading stuff about Goldman Sachs (this here is my favorite, long but really readable and anger-producing: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=[3351,11459];jsessionid=2049A274F095F3011DE8362091478785), is that anyone still invests with these guys. Is Goldman really the only game in town? Why would anyone in their right mind enter into business with a company that has a long and storied history of ripping people off and taking all their money?

My Big Business-favoring conservative friends are always waxing on about how the smart guys in the financial industry have produced so much great innovation that benefits us all. I should mention that I buy this argument in the abstract: capitalism requires greedy people to innovate and increase efficiency, which should lift all the boats with its rising tide. But in practice in the 2000s it's pretty clear to me that all the innovation on Wall Street has produced is enormous profits for a small group and absolutely nothing for the rest of us.

Anyway, my prescription is this: I think everyone should stop doing business with Goldman Sachs and drive them into bankruptcy. Not because they're immoral, greedy, or evil exactly- this isn't really a moral crusade- rather because doing business with them isn't very healthy for their partners.

Historical Tax Rates (posted by DT)

I was at a social work symposium the other day and heard a talk by Mimi Abromovitz, a well known social work professor at Hunter College in New York. Her talk focused on something I hadn't though much about, federal taxing and spending over time in the US. So much of the debate we hear now is about how the government "keeps taking more and more of my money", but there's little perspective anywhere regarding whether or not that's actually true.

I tried to keep up with Dr. Abromovitz's sources, but I'm not very good at refined searches on wonkish tax policy websites so I'm having trouble digging them up. But a little of what I jotted down:

• The percentage of revenue collected by the federal government compared to GDP has declined significantly since 1945. Of course it was very high then due to WW II, but the percentage has continued to fall consistently since then.
• Federal spending was 21% of GDP in 1976, and now it's 15%
• AFDC/TANF (commonly referred to as "welfare") was paid to more than 10 million recipients in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2009 4 million people received it. As a percentage of the US population, 5% were receiving these benefits 30 years ago, and now it's 1.5%.

Now there are a few ways to look at this data, but here's one way for those Americans who constantly carp about how the government is taking all their money and giving it to lazy, shiftless, poor people: You've already gotten what you want. The Feds are doing way less redistribution of income to the poor than it used to. So why are you angrier than ever?

On a related note, from the Tax Policy Center:

In 2007, federal, state and local taxes claimed about $3.8 trillion, or 27
percent of U.S. gross domestic product. That's nearly $13,000 for every
American. Two-thirds of tax revenues went to the federal government.
It may sound like a lot, but other developed countries collect even more. In
2006, taxes in 30 of the world's richest countries averaged 36 percent of GDP; only
Mexico, Turkey, South Korea and Japan had tax rates lower than ours. And
taxes in many European countries exceeded 40 percent of GDP because these
nations offer more extensive government services than the United States
does. Americans do pay far more in individual income taxes than residents of
other wealthy nations. Nearly 37 percent of U.S. tax revenue came from
personal income taxes in 2006, about 10 percentage points more, on average,
than in other industrialized countries. But we pay much less in sales taxes;
17 percent of 2006 U.S. tax receipts were from taxes on goods and services,
or about half the 32 percent average for rich countries.

Bottom line: We may hate our taxes, but we pay far less than people in other wealthy countries

Guantanamo & Our (lack of) Shame (posted by DT)

One of the arguments I hear most from people when I try to convince them that it's bad that the US has tortured people during the recent War on Terror is "hey, these guys are terrorists, who cares what happens to them!" Well, maybe not...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of
innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared
that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on
Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations
were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former
Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit
filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have
been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson,
who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was
most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former
Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742
detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was
“politically impossible to release them”.

Now let's make it clear what our country has done: we have tortured and killed and incarcerated for years a significant number of people who were completely innocent. How can that be justified in the name of national security? Because we were attacked, does that give us the right to torture anyone who may possibly be a Bad Guy, even if we don't have any evidence?

Sickening.

Banking Reform (posted by DT)

Well, I find myself still sporting a hangover from the Health Care Reform battle. Now that it's over and we're all just waiting to see whether the US health care system falls apart or not, we have to move on to other things.

The Next Big Thing in Washington is going to be banking regulation. I (and I'm sure lots of Americans) have a lot to learn about the system of banking regs at this time, and what's needed- I don't really get the ins and outs of it at this point.

So here's what is clear to me even if details aren't: some sort of big change is needed. I know, it's not exactly an earth-shattering statement. But keep in mind that there has thus far been no systemic change whatsoever in the rules that govern the financial industry. A year ago everyone agreed that the system had let us down due to "too big to fail" banks, excessive leveraging of risky investments, conflicts of interest by ratings agencies, the Moral Hazard problem, and a culture on Wall Street that encouraged short-term gain at the expense of long-term stability. But now that we're a bit removed from the crisis I hear Wall Street corporations and their congressional allies complain that regulations on the table will stifle innovation and weigh the industry down with excessive bureaucracy.

But I haven't seen a conservative solution to the problem proposed by the industry. What's their solution? They're essentially saying "the system has now corrected itself, no need to worry", which means to me "nothing has changed, and when this happens again you're going to have to pony up a bailout again".

So I hope Democrats fight hard for serious reform, and if it stifles some innovation on Wall Street but also forestalls the next enormous failure, I can live with that.