OK, OK, I Guess it's not Technically Lying

I think I've been inexact in my criticisms of Paul Ryan's mendacious speech at the Republican convention, and realized the tactics that he and the Romney campaign are using to try to maintain plausible deniability while they run the most dishonest campaign in history.  For example:

• Ryan slams Obama for cutting $716 Billion from Medicare in order to fund health care in the Affordable Care Act.  That's not technically a lie- ObamaCare really does extract savings from Medicare that it will put toward the expenses in the law.  But Ryan's budget proposals also cut that same $716 Billion, and use the money to fund upper income tax cuts.  So he can say: "that's not a lie!", but it's not honest either.
• Ryan claims that the Obama administration is giving waivers to states that will allow them to end the work requirement for welfare.  OK, this actually is a lie.  Well, a half-lie- the administration is indeed giving waivers, but the purpose is not to end work requirements.
• Ryan slams Obama for presiding over a huge increase in the deficit. Again, not a lie, in that the deficit is pretty big.  But his plan of tax cuts along with unspecified spending cuts would undoubtedly make the deficit even bigger. 
• Ryan's plans for Medicare would change the program in a major way, eventually forcing Seniors to pay much more out of pocket for health care.  Ryan bizarrely claims that he will be saving Medicare, which Obama will destroy by taking that $716 Billion.  So that's a lie- except that the plan doesn't kick in until later, and no current Seniors will have to suffer this plan.  So I guess it's not technically a lie- only us middle aged suckers are going to lose Medicare, not the current elderly.  But there's a bait and switch- the reason Seniors will be totally fine is because the plan doesn't apply to them, while those of us it will apply to are screwed.
• Ryan told a story about Obama promising an auto plant in his hometown that government support would be able to keep it open.... but it closed.  This was the biggest whopper all night, because that plant closed before Obama's inauguration.  But again, I guess a Clintonian prevaricator could say that it's not technically a lie- just totally misleading.

There's more- Jon Cohn has a lot here.  The Republicans have really figured out how to run the Post-Truth campaign- yes, all pols have always spun and misled, but this is really a new level.  I wonder if the press can catch up and call them on it- that's the only way to make it stop.

Conversations with the Media

I met a woman who works for CNN yesterday and briefly talked with her about politics and CNN's mission to play it down the middle between the polarized parties.  I told her that I respect that goal, but I think it's hard because Republicans have learned so well how to manipulate the media's emphasis on "even-handedness".  She agreed with me, but took it in another direction, noting that Republicans are much better than Democrats at staying on message and providing people to go on camera when requested.

When I tried to move the conversation onto the Romney "post-truth" campaign (she had never heard the term), I didn't get agreement- she kept insisting that "both sides do it", and proudly pointed out that CNN is careful to take on both sides.  Our conversation was brief, and I did a poor job laying out my side so I thought I'd make one point here that I wish I had said yesterday:

I keep trying to point out that, although liberals certainly obfuscate and mislead at times (the SuperPac ad blaming Romney for killing a man's wife by taking away his health insurance was certainly unfair), conservatives are running a campaign based on baldfaced dishonesty and lies (like the Romney campaign repeating that the Obama administration is ending the work requirement for welfare).  I don't think those two examples above are equivalent- the Democratic one is unfair, while the Republican one is just a flat-out lie.  And the Democratic one is put out by a SuperPac, while the Republican one is repeated regularly by the Romney campaign.

But CNN would call out "both sides" on campaign dishonesty.  So I wish I had asked the following question yesterday:
How far would one of the parties have to go in order for you to concede that it is qualitatively more dishonest than the other?  Can you imagine a scenario in which you would not evenly call out both sides, but would rather say "that party is being really dishonest, way more than the other one"?
My problem with CNN and other centrist media is that I think the answer is that there is no scenario in which they'd call out just one side- "playing it down the middle" means finding fault with both sides, by defnition.

And this is the tough dilemna for media outlets like CNN.  If they call out the Republican campaign for its mendaciousness, they'll no longer be seen as neutral, as if the Truth is now a partisan argument.  It's diabolical.

Hedge Funds Stink

Interesting piece here from Matt Taibbi about Hedge Funds.  It notes that only 11% of hedge funds are outperforming the S & P 500.  I've seen Matt Yglesias make the point before as well, that hedge fund managers are better at making gobs of money for themselves than they are at making money for their investors.

Now I don't know much at all about investing or financial services.  But it does stand to reason that people can't really outperform the market as a whole over time- if they're really successful for a while then everyone starts copying them and the market catches up.  There are tons of really smart people working on Wall Street, and it feels unlikely that many people are really much smarter than the average professional there.

It reminds me again that investing is a game, and a game that's rigged for insiders.  Reading Taibbi regularly makes one realize how the Goldman-Sachs's of the world make a lot of their money by finding suckers to screw over.  They rely on lots of little guys who think they're smarter than everyone else and have a little money to lose.

At base I guess I have to admit that I feel this way because I'm not at heart a risk-taker.  Slow and steady in the market appeals to me.  But the whole scam reminds me of the old line from War Games

"The only way to win is not to play".

But the best sum up comes from Taibbi:

Someday we'll get back to the time when the really smart guys from the best schools went to work for companies that built actual products, engineered more efficient cars, cured diseases, etc. Because it seems like our best minds kind of suck at investing.

Republican Means Never Having to Address Your Cognitive Dissonance

I wasn thinking today about a Facebook blurb posted by a friend:

... and what a great example it is of what should lead to cognitive dissonance in the GOP.  Paul Ryan talks about how his worldview was shaped by Rand, even as he is seen as a practicing Catholic.  Now many people take some things and leave others from a comprehensive philosophy like the Objectivism of Ayn Rand.  But Rand wasn't just "not religious"- she was Anti-Religion, with a vengeance.  She saw Christian virtues as fundamentally immoral, as they encouraged things like charity, which just encourages the "takers" and discourages work.  You really can't believe in Rand and also believe in the teachings of Jesus.

Simliarly, I keep hearing Republicans talk now about the evils of the enormous deficit, how it's going to stick our children with a huge, unpayable bill that will destroy our economy and lead us to ruin.  And then in the next breath they'talk about how our historically low tax rates are still too high, and we have to lower taxes to spur growth.  I guess it should be obvious that these goals (deficit reduction and tax cuts) are in contradiction to each other- it's pretty tough to balance any budget while cutting your revenue at the same time.  But this is never acknowledged by anyone in the party.

I've got to run now, but I may keep trying to think of other obvious contradictions- these two are pretty bald, though.

Paul Ryan for VP

Now that Mitt Romney has chosen his running mate, I know my loyal readers will want to know what I think.  First of all, I'd say that the internet is great on big news times like these- there's just no end to the opinions and facts you can get with a little surfing.  I'm going to skip the links I usually put in my posts, but believe me I've been all over the web and here's what I think:

Liberals are generally thrilled with the pick, because now Romney has to run specifically on Ryan's economic plan and can't try to make this a "referendum" election about only Obama and the weak economy.  The details of the Ryan plan are not very popular (Medicare turns into a voucher plan, more tax cuts for the rich), and liberals believe we can get that message out.

I hope that's right.  Of course conservatives are thrilled too, as they believe these "hard truths" are what Americans are ready to hear.  Certainly Ryan is a skilled politician who is good at selling himself as a serious wonk.  He's able to project that "happy warrior" thing well too, and seems like a nice guy.  That's helpful for Romney, who projects more like the CEO who laid you off than the guy who understands your pain.

One thing I really like about Ryan is that he has put on the table what he really wants- that might have been a strategic blunder, because what he really wants isn't actually what Americans want.  But it's great that we have a plan to debate and therefore a true "choice election".

But let's not forget what the choice is.  Ryan's plan includes:

• Instead of the current fee for service guarantee for Medicare, it would be turned in to a voucher program and seniors would have to make up the difference between the voucher and whatever Medicare would cost.  Costs would increase less than the current medical inflation rate, so over time this would become unaffordable to many seniors.  Many would have to spend down their money and go on Medicaid.  Except....
• Medicaid would be slashed- turned into block grants to states, and many poor people would no longer be covered. 
• Tax rates on the wealthy would go down.  He claims he would also close loopholes, but hasn't specified what those loopholes would be.  Budget wonks say that there aren't enough loopholes to close to make this work, even if he includes the big ones like the mortgage interest deduction- and fat chance closing that one.
• Capital gains rates would go down even more
• The non discretionary spending of the federal budget would go down to levels that have never been seen.  Following the logic through, it would gut the FDA, FBI, state and local aid, education spending, drug abuse prevention, EPA, highway funding, etc (insert favorite federal department here).  As with Romney's tax proposal that's gotten a lot of ink lately, Ryan tries to deny that he would gut this or that program, complaining that his budget doesn't say it- but of course it doesn't give any details.  We have to use the parameters to figure this out- if he wants to let us know what he wants to actually cut, he's welcome to do so.
• The numbers don't really add up- when we look at history, we can see what the Republicans will do: the tax cuts will sail right through, but the budget cuts won't happen, and the deficit will explode.  I don't know how many times we have to go through that dance before Americans will learn it.

Great stuff from Krugman on the merits of the proposal.

Government Employment- Welcome to the Conservative Recovery

Interesting piece here from Ezra Klein:

Government employment is at historic lows, largely due to draconian budget cuts at the state and local levels throughout the recession. The sector has now lost more jobs than any other major industry over the past three years

Now maybe this is a good thing- government is getting smaller at all levels.  If you're unhappy with the Recovery you should certainly blame Democrats and the President to a great degree.  But we should also look carefully at the actual policies that are being used- in this case there was a significant stimulus (though smaller than liberal economists wanted) at the start of the crisis, and since then there's been a pivot to cutting spending.  Democrats pivoted too- this isn't just a Republican thing.  In Europe there was an even more pronounced shift to austerity.

And the results are in- it's not working.  The graphs above show what's happened in terms of employment by the governments in the US- this is what conservatives have been calling for, and they've got it.  So what will a more Republican congress and president do that's different from this?  Seems to me that they'll double down, and it will be a disaster.

...And the Democrats don't get off the hook either.  They've somehow managed to respond to the economic crisis with conservative policies, which don't work, all while being seen by Americans as left wing nutcases.  It's political malpractice.  How did these guys ever win a high school student council election?

Fake Voter Fraud

My favorite wingnut correspondent sent me a long email today, chock full of examples of voter fraud which he sees as proof of the crying need in the US for strong voter ID laws that just happen to disenfranchise lots of people who are more likely to vote Democrat.

But the examples are all bogus.  Here are his first few examples, followed by my comments in green:

8/7/12: MASSACHUSETTS: voter registration fraud
The Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Office is looking into possible voter registration fraud in east Longmeadow. The problem came to light when some voters in town say their party affiliations were changed without permission. Secretary of State Galvin Investigates Possible Voter Registration Fraud in East Longmeadow, WGGB ABC40, Aug. 7, 2012. Being investigated- no definite voter fraud- I read the article, and it sounds like an administrative computer glitch or something. Nothing proven. 8/6/12: OHIO: voter registration fraud
"The Montgomery County Board of Elections is investigating a large case of possible voter registration fraud, after receiving more than 100 “suspicious” registration cards from a single organization, many that appeared to have false or nonexistent addresses." Jeremy Kelly, Montgomery Co. probes possible voter fraud, Dayton Daily News, Aug. 6, 2012. Again, "investigating". Usually when these get investigated they turn out to be administrative errors. 8/3/12: CALIFORNIA: nonresident voting
"A Record investigation found McNerney registered and voted in the primary election in Stockton, though his main residence appears to be in Pleasanton." GOP officials file complaint of voter fraud against McNerney, The Record, August 3, 2012. I googled this quote, and found that McNerney was a Democrat running for office, in the middle of moving from one house to another. He didn't vote twice. The filing was basically a dirty trick by the Republican opponent in the race. Here's the link http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120803/A_NEWS/208030318 8/2/12: TEXAS: nonresident voting "Upshur County GOP Chairman Ken Ambrose has filed a new complaint with the Texas attorney general regarding potential voter fraud in the county’s primary election....Ambrose said at least six people participated in early voting for the May 29 Republican Primary with “questionable” addresses." Christina Lane, Upshur County GOP chairman alleges voter fraud, News Journal, August 2, 2012. Again, unproven allegation, "suspicious" according to the GOP chairman- nothing proven. 8/2/12: FLORIDA: Deisy Penton de Cabrera: absentee ballot fraud
"Deisy Penton de Cabrera, 56, was charged with absentee-ballot fraud, a third-degree felony, and two misdemeanor counts of violating a county ordinance that makes it illegal for anyone to possess more than two ballots belonging to other voters. Investigators say Cabrera illegally collected at least 31 absentee ballots for the Aug. 14 primary election." Patricia Mazzei, Daniel Chang, Charles Rabin and Christina Veiga, Florida woman is charged with absentee-ballot fraud, McClatchy Newspapers, August 2, 2012. So the "fraud" was that she was collecting the ballots of other people. By the way, Voter ID laws have nothing to do with absentee ballots. 8/2/12: TEXAS: vote fraud "Political activist Armando Gonzales says in his letter to Kennedy that there was suspect activity both during the early vote and on election day. He claims voters were unduly influenced on their way to the polls and at the voting booth." Complaint Filed Claiming Voter Fraud, Fox, August 2, 2012. Voter Intimidation, again has nothing to do with Voter ID laws. 7/30/12: TEXAS: voter intimidation
"Esiquiel Silva joined the Citizens Against Voter Abuse because he said his father was almost victimized. He claims the elderly man was almost forced into a van headed to the polls to vote for a certain candidate. Silva said it all happened while his father was at an adult day care in Brownsville." Daisy Martinez, Keeping a Close Eye on Voter Fraud, Valley Central, July 30, 2012. Ditto 7/30/12: FLORIDA: vote fraud
"Authorities are investigating a case of potential voter fraud, right before the August primary. A 71-year-old Hialeah woman said she trusted a woman to fill out her absentee ballot. However, the woman took off with the ballot, and the elderly woman said she has no clue for whom she voted." Alleged voter fraud incident under investigation, WSVN, July 30, 2012. Absentee balloting again- Voter ID law wouldn't do anything about this. 7/29/12: TEXAS: vote fraud
"According to the amended petition, more than 30 people cast a ballot who were not registered to vote at least 30 days before the election. The petition states the voters registered between May 14-19. The primary was May 29. It also lists several voters who submitted mail-in ballots stating they are disabled. Barrera's petition asks for those ballots to be declared void because those people are not disabled. Others, the petition states, have permanent addresses in Alice but actually live in Corpus Christi." Julie Silva, Jim Wells Election Contest Goes to Court, Caller, July 29, 2012. So they registered too late, meaning they wouldn't be on a voter list. Don't need an ID law to stop this- they weren't trying to lie about who they were. 7/29/12: FLORIDA: Daisy Cabrera: absentee ballot fraud
"Matilde Galindo, who is 75 and illiterate, has no clue who she voted for last week. She said that late in June, Daisy Cabrera, an acquaintance of a distant relative, offered to help her register as a Miami-Dade County voter... Authorities are investigating Cabrera, 56, after finding her in possession of dozens of absentee ballots last week in Hialeah. It is the first case of its kind since a new county ordinance took effect this month that makes it a misdemeanor to possess two or more ballots belonging to someone else." Melissa Sanchez and Enrique Flor, As Hialeah absentee-ballot probe continues, voter regrets accepting help, Miami Herald, July 29, 2012. Absentee again- not relevant. 7/28/12: HAWAII: absentee ballot fraud
"The FBI has gotten involved in an investigation into allegations of voter fraud on the Big Island, sources told Hawaii News Now Friday...About one week ago, state officials received reports about possible voter fraud on the Big Island, allegations that someone was doctoring absentee ballots, sources said." Keoki Kerr, Sources: State Taps FBI for Help in Voter Fraud Probe, Hawaii News Now, July 28, 2012. Ditto 7/27/12: MISSISSIPPI: vote fraud
"A Hinds County jury ordered Tuesday's election after finding the first runoff between Cooper-Stokes and Jackson was tainted by voter fraud." Report: Some votes not certified in Ward 3 City Council election, MSNBC, July 27, 2012. This is a story about a polling place that messed up and didn't count all the votes that were cast http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48360858/ns/local_news-jackson_ms/t/report-some-votes-not-certified-ward-city-council-election/

There were many more examples, and I didn't keep going down the whole list, but as you can see, this is all just crap.  I'll say it again: Voter Identification laws are being initiated by Republicans purely for partisan reasons, to stop poor people (who are overwhelmingly the ones who don't have IDs or who will have the most trouble getting them) from voting.  It's sickening.

Harry Reid Isn't Being Fair to Romney- But I Don't Mind

Big story the last few days is Harry Reid's continuing carping about Mitt Romney's tax returns.  Reid has said that he has a source (whom he won't name) who tells him that Romney won't release his tax returns because he doesn't want people to know that he actually paid no taxes for a number of years.  Romney is livid about this, responding with a classic line “I have paid taxes every year, and a lot of taxes, so Harry is wrong,” Romney said at a news conference. “Harry Reid has to put up or shut up. Harry, who are your sources?”
I can't imagine this will work- after all, the one who could shut Harry Reid up really quickly is Mitt Romney; all he has to do is release the returns himself and prove Reid wrong.  He doesn't want to do so, and it must be because there's something in there that will be bad politically for him.  Maybe Reid is even right, and Romney has used paper losses to avoid paying taxes- legal but not very good optics.

Of course, this is all speculation- we don't know anything about what's in there, and Reid might not know either.  Even if his source is legitimate, he's repeating rumors without any backing, not at all a fair thing to do.

The Politico article linked to above notes that Reid doesn't care at all if polite society critcizes him (led by liberal Jon Stewart).  But Republicans have been using dirty stuff like this without any apparent shame.  Mitt Romney is the biggest liar in campaign history.  Republicans in Congress refuse to denounce the crackpot Birthers in their party.  Michelle Bachman accuses an apparently blameless woman of being a Muslim Brotherhood operative and is backed up by Newt Gingrich.  There doesn't seem to be much in the way of scruples on the right side of the political spectrum.

So I'm not saying Reid is right and justified in his attacks; I'm just saying that Democrats can't unilaterally disarm.  Reid is the right person to lodge these types of attacks, since he's not running for anything and is not formally connected to the Obama campaign.  It's kind of scummy, but this is the Big Leagues, and the Democrats need to stop bringing knives to gunfights.

Republican Economic Plans: Will They Follow Through?

Mitt Romney has some interesting ideas for the economy.  He proposes to cut spending severely, while also cutting taxes on high income Americans and on corporations.  Somehow this is supposed to get get the US out of the economic doldrums, while balancing the budget.  The other day I pointed out that Romney's tax plan isn't going to work, since the numbers clearly don't add up, which will leave Republicans with a choice: raise taxes on the middle class and the poor, or just increase the deficit.  As I predicted before, my money is on blowing up the deficit- that's what Republicans have always done after all.

But these plans have another dimension: sane economists generally agree that if the federal government were to suddenly pull back on spending while the economy is still suffering from insufficient demand, a recession would almost surely follow.  Will Romney really do this?  He saying in the campaign that he would.

How do we know it won't work?  Well, we have the European experience over the past few years; The United Kingdom, for example, slashed spending over the past few years (though they didn't cut taxes) and are now in recession again.  Greece, Spain, and Ireland were forced to slash spending in light of their budget problems, and have seen their economies crushed.

But I think Romney is smarter than his campaign rhetoric; I don't think he's really going to slash government spending all of a sudden.  For one thing, Americans like the spending that goes on, even if they dislike "spending" philosophically, so it will be really hard to get Congress to agree to all these little cuts.  And besides, Romeny isn't an idiot- if the economy tanks on his watch, everything will be for naught.

So that leaves Mitt and the Republican Congress with few good choices if elected.  The best one they have is to keep spending up until the economy is humming again.  Since tax cuts will be essential, this means deficits as far as the eye can see.

So for Liberals, the tough part is that we're in favor of deficits right now, with borrowing costs so low and the economy still so bad.  The aggravating thing will be that we'll kind of be in favor of this sort of policy (I say "kind of" because it would be much better to keep taxes where they are and spend more on public works or hiring teachers and cops and the like, but tax cuts are still better stimulus than no stimulus at all).

There is one other possible way out of this, though: the Federal Reserve.  Liberal economists are apoplectic about the Fed's refusal to do more quantitative easing or other creative things to get the economy going.  Each meeting of the Fed governors they seem to put out a statement that says "the economy sucks, inflation is non-existent, and so we've decided to keep watching and do nothing".  Of course the European Central Bank is of the same mindset- it seems like central bankers are so terrified of inflation that they see it lurking around every corner, even when they're constantly proven wrong.

My nightmare scenario is that the Fed will finally decide to do something right at the beginning of the Romney administration, and it will work great, and Romney will get all the credit.  Of course that would mean that monetary policy is all that we really need in any of these situations. 

Is Anyone Going to Pay Attention to Mitt Romney's Actual Proposals?

Look, I know that Americans (and probably everyone else too) tend to vote for politicians based on optics, style, empty rhetoric, etc.  Most people just don't have the time or inclination to dive deep into policy substance.

But there's usually some level of substance.  We understand that Republicans want lower taxes and Democrats want more services for the poor, for example.  But when it comes to actual tax policy, Mitt Romney does have a plan.  This is from his official campaign website:

Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates

Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains

Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains

Eliminate the Death Tax

Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

He also writes about the need to close loopholes and simplify the tax code, and on the campaign trail he stresses that he'll make his plan revenue neutral.  Remember, Republicans also hate deficits now that they're in the minority, and obviously if they cut tax revenues that will increase the deficit.

But now a study has come out that analyzes the Romney plan, and finds that his numbers don't add up.  Basically, if you cut marginal rates by 20%, and cut corporate taxes too (which is also part of his platform), then it's impossible to make up the difference by closing loopholes, even if you close every possible deduction there is.  So this plan will lead to tax hikes somewhere else (perhaps on the poor and middle class- after all Republicans have been protesting about the 45% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax- they want everyone to have "skin in the game"), or it will lead to even higher deficits.  Based on recent history, my money is on deficits.

The thing is, polling on these topics reveals that Americans don't support plans like this- people want taxes on the rich to go up, not down.  But it doesn't seem to matter- lots of them are voting for Romney anyway.  I think that if the Republicans win in November, they're going to pass some version of their plans, and lots of people are going to wish they had paid more attention to the details.

Kevin Drum, on this subject, has this to say:

At this point, President Obama's problem is trying to get people to believe that Romney actually supports a plan that's so outlandishly friendly to the rich. When the Priorities USA Super PAC tried to inform voters about Paul Ryan's similar plan, Robert Draper reports that "the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing." And Romney, of course, will hide behind the fact that he himself hasn't endorsed any particular basket of tax increases to make up for his rate cuts, so the Brookings analysis is just guesswork.
Still, it's the most sympathetic analysis possible. Any other basket of credits and deductions would make things even better for the wealthy and even worse for the non-wealthy. It might be, in Jon Chait's words, cartoonishly evil to think that any politician would actually propose such a plan, but Romney has done exactly that. The only question is whether anyone can make the voters believe it.