Cogitamus

This and That and Weekend Open Thread

 

"Upstarts" - Johnny Marr

Happy Memorial Day weekend to you all.  In DC it is starting off by reminding me of Memorial Days past in Massachusetts -- cold and dreary.  But I think we will see 70s this weekend as opposed to 50s today, so not too bad. 

Spent the last few days up in the City of Brotherly Love, including about six straight hours on Wednesday of doing nothing but flipping through checks, bank statements, and receipts for a client who is being audited by the Department of Labor.  (Yes, folks -- non-tea party groups, yea, even groups that enthusiastically supported the President are nonetheless subject to fairly invasive government scrutiny.)  I was noting to the clients that lawyer shows on TV simply never show the kind of tedious work that is a staple of law practice.  I propose a kind of Warholian verite, a half an hour of just watching a lawyer sit at a conference table reading bank statements.  Multiply by sixteen and you have a realistic day in the life.  It will drop law school enrollment faster than Paul Campos could ever hope to.   Incidentally, as I noted in comments below, I have also had extensive dealings with the Cincinnati IRS office regarding the continued confirmation of tax exempt status for pension plans.  I found the office to be fine to deal with but rather slow.  Most applications took about two years to process.  Again, these were constituencies allegedly favored by the Administration.  The slowness seemed to stem from chronic understaffing, something that is usually viewed as a virtue by the tea party types.

- i have generally considered Michael Kinsley to be one of the brighter lights in "this town" over the last couple of decades.  Oh sure, he's got the annoying contrarian thing going and he was knee deep in neo-liberalism, but he has quite often shown a great deal of skill in cutting to the heart of things and he has an admirable writing style.  As a result, I was surprised -- his old Slate gig notwithstanding -- to see him peddle absolute idiocy with respect to the issue of austerity and then, when brutally called on it, to double down on his position with the weakest of arguments -- roughly, I'm a good liberal and a smart person, so when I say this sort of thing it deserves respect.  Although humilitating for Kinsley -- at least it should be -- the two pieces did have the virtue of revealing the kind of thinking -- or non-thinking really -- that prevails around a journalistic set of people who are simply not very deep or analytical thinkers.  Deficit spending to stimulate the economy violates Kinsley's sensibilities for reasons that amount to a feeling -- that it is somehow just not right, a sin of sorts for which there needs to be atonement.  Kinsley doesn't really explain so many things, but chief among them is why those who have sinned -- Wall Street, the banks, and their enablers -- don't have to do the atoning.

- I have not read all of President Obama's speech from the other day on the various aspects of the "war on terror" that need to be addressed from GITMO to drone strikes to winding down involvement in Afghanistan.  What I have seen struck me as thoughtful and frank in a way that such speeches by presidents seldom are.  It seems to me that Obama has come to the conclusion that he has fully established all of the "toughness" bona fides that he needs and that it is time to try and walk back so much of what became normalized in the post-9-11 environment.  I know that progress on this front has been entirely too slow for the tastes of many on the left and to a degree I sympathize.  But I think that Obama's sense of timing is pretty good.  If he can by the end of his secod term end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, close Guantanamo, curb the militarization of anti-terrorism efforts in favor of law enforcement, and establish a generally anti-interventionist enviroment, while still being able to boast of having taken out bin Laden and crippled al Qaeda, I think he will have accomplished much.  If he can do this and also get the American people to accept that random acts of terrorism, especially of the Jihadi variety, may continue but will not succeed in turning the world upside down in the U.S., then he will have rendered a great service to the country and the world.

- Why is TPM reporting Ed Markey's tax deductions like they were a scandal?  It looks like he basically had large deductions for mortgage interest payments and property taxes.  Is there something wrong with this?  Oh, he also got $11,600 in Social Security benefits -- well, he's 66 for Christ's sake.  Is he supposed to forego the benefits that he has earned?  Really stupid stuff and very disappointing given the source.

What's up with all of you?    

Maybe There Is No Sixth-Year Jinx

One of the enduring memes in politics is that the Presidential party really takes it on the chin in the midterms in Year 6 of a Presidency.  People get tired of the incumbent, scandals inevitably reach critical mass, and the President's party pays the price.

The main objection raised against this alleged truth is: what about 1998?  The answer is always: it was a special case, what with the Republicans impeaching a President that the public supported.

But I just don't think there's actually a pattern, just the illusion of one.  Here's my argument:

I'll be 60 when the 2014 midterms roll around.  (I hardly feel that age, I'm glad to say.  Moving on...)  During my lifetime, all nearly 60 years of it, there has been only one Democratic President to reach Year 6 of his Presidency.  That President, of course, was William Jefferson Clinton, and his party lost no ground in the 1998 midterms, despite a major scandal that was the culmination of six solid years of the hunting of that President.

If one wants to bend a rule and treat Kennedy-Johnson as a single Presidency, you could point to 1966 as well.  I don't buy that: I remember 1966, first of all, and it just doesn't fit the mold.  LBJ had been President for only 3 years (and had been practically invisible as Veep), so people weren't tired of him.  There wasn't a critical mass of scandals: sure, Bobby Baker, Billy Sol Estes, but no sense that they were more than peripheral.  And the 1966 midterms were more a reversion to the mean after the GOP's Goldwater debacle in 1964, than a public upset with the President.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, what do we have in sixth-year Presidencies?

When it comes to scandals, we have the real thing: Watergate in 1974, Iran-Contra in 1986, and pretty much everything in 2006.  And in the last case, a public that had thoroughly had enough of George W. Bush.

You've got to go back to Eisenhower to get a 'typical' sixth year.  Minor scandals by today's standards (Sherman Adams), a mild recession, a sense (that Kennedy would soon take advantage of) that perhaps the old general had lost his energy with age...if there's a genuine year-six jinx that's independent of truuly major scandals and Presidential fuckups, this is your only data point in the past six decades to back it up.

And (a) one data point isn't a pattern, and (b) 1958 was a long time ago.  The world has changed a bit since.

Not to mention: if there's a pattern emerging in recent Democratic administrations, it's to screw the pooch electorally in Year 2, and to only gain minimal ground back in Year 4 while holding onto the Presidency. 

IMHO, the real reason why the GOP didn't and couldn't blow it open in 1998 was that there was little room for them to have another blowout, after having just had one in 1994.  I suspect the same is true for Obama in 2014: the GOP picked up most of the marginal seats there were to win in 2010, and just don't have a target-rich environment in the House in 2014.  (They do in the Senate, but potential quality challengers are shying away in droves from running for Senate in 2014.)

But I don't think there's any clear pattern that says a President's party has to get its ass kicked in Year 6.  The immediate circumstances will tell, not any overarching pattern.  What the Dems have to worry about in 2014 is getting their base to show up, given that midterm voters tend to be older and whiter than the electorate in Presidential years, not scandal and sixth-year public fatigue with the President.

Can We Kick Rahm Emanuel Out of the Democratic Party?

Dave Zirin, in The Nation:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel [who is] overseeing the closing of fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new basketball arena.

That's pretty loathsome, even for a Republican.  But if you can do stuff like this and you're still a Democrat in good standing, then what exactly is the point of being a Democrat?  We really only need one pro-oligarch party.  I'm all for a big tent, but not one big enough to encompass the very things a party that's on the side of the people is supposed to be fighting against.

We should kick this worthless scum out of the party, the way we kicked Lieberman out.  As far as I'm concerned, he's already self-deported.

Open thread.

The Suckitude of the Liberal Media and Open Thread

 

"Winter Windows" - Sea Wolf

This is the world, this is the world we live in
It's not the one I choose but it's the one we're given

I find this one a bit haunting.

Okay, so I have to admit that the combination of the schedule and what is happening politically is just killing both the time for and the desire to write. 

I think political blogging on the left side of the aisle was largely inspired by a sense of frustration with way in which the mainstream media trivialized politics and policy all the while viewing the world through a right wing lens.  For a while, lefty blogging seemed largely therapeutic, a place of respite and solidarity from Bush apologetics and war fever.  By 2008, however, it seemed that left bloggers had actually had some impact on the world of media and that of politics.  It was a heady time and one could actually envision that journalism was altered by it as bloggers attained toeholds in places where DFHs had been treated with scorn.  But having watched the Obama "scandals" coverage of the last couple of weeks, it has become apparent that no real change has taken place.  Indeed, I read something like this and wonder if the last decade really registered with any of these mainstream clowns. 

I used to think that I would like the New York Times to survive while the Washington Post perished.  Now I wonder if there is any reason other than Krugman to want the Times to endure. 

What's on your minds?

The Freedoms You Think Are Precious, I Just Don't Understand

Bobby Jindal, who wants the GOP to stop being the stupid party, apparently things the problem with that is that it doesn't go far enough.  He wants the GOP to be the stupid and mean party.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Saturday will call for jail time for Internal Revenue Service officials who engaged in improper targeting of conservative organizations.

“You cannot take the freedom of law-abiding Americans, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom,” Jindal will say in a speech at the Virginia Republican convention, according to Politico. “When you do that, you go to jail."

Whose freedom, and what freedom, was taken? At worst, someone's new nonprofit got classified as a 527 rather than a 501(c)(4).  Which means someone else didn't get to claim a tax deduction for their contributions to that group.

That's the dastardly offense that Jindal thinks someone ought to go to prison over.  We don't even know any laws were violated, but someone didn't get to claim a tax deduction on account of some bureaucrat's fuckup. 

Yep, that's the sort of thing that deserves a prison sentence in GOP-world.

I wonder how outraged Jindal got over the robo-signing scandal. where illegal acts were unquestionably committed, nobody went to jail, and the resulting loss of freedom was that ordinary Americans got kicked out of their freaking houses. Foreclosed on. Put out on the street.

No, that's not the truth.  I don't wonder that. I'm really quite sure I know.

Fuck you, you amoral little cretin.

And he's not the only one - apparently Orange John has gone there too:

His remarks echo those made earlier this week by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

"My question isn't about who is going to resign," Boehner told reporters. "My question is who's going to jail over this scandal?"

That's our modern GOP.

ETA: And it seems that some of them - big surprise! - were partisan political groups after all.

A Whole Bunch of Things Matt Yglesias Is Wrong About

Sorry for the prolonged absence.  Not only has work been insanely busy, but for some reason my office's net nanny software has been blocking CogBlog, so I can't participate here even in those few moments that I can sneak from work.  And at home, we've had a run of weekends where neither of our two excellent and usually quite available babysitters has been available to spell us for a few hours, so there's been no free time on the home front either.  (Yeah, I know how lucky we are to have two reliable babysitters on tap most of the time.  Trust me.)

As you know, I've got a higher opinion of Matt than most of you do.  He's got his blind spots, but I've also picked up a number of powerful insights from him over the years.  And when someone moves my own thinking forward, I appreciate it.

But this week has been Matt's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, the sort that really ought to have him considering a move to Australia.  He's been bad every which way, without much to put on the positive side of the ledger, either.

Consider his squib on the state of the media:

As I've said before, when you take off the nostalgia-tinted lenses these are the glory days of American journalism. There is more and better stuff to read than ever before.

As Matt says in the piece at his own link, "This viewpoint is not wrong, exactly, but it is mistaken."  Matt confuses what's available with what's influential, and with the news that most people actually receive. 
 
Not to mention, it misses the whole point of journalism, which is to inform. 
 
Sure, the relative handful of us that are discriminating consumers of information who are willing to reach beyond the standard sources to find out about the world have a banquet of news sources that we couldn't have dreamed of 20 years ago.  
 
But most people aren't like that. They're still getting news from the networks or their websites, and that news is of pretty crappy quality. Even worse, a substantial segment of America is getting its news from Fox and from Rush Limbaugh; they would probably be better off if they didn't get any news at all. 
 
And finally, there's the question of what news sources drive the policy debates.  Given the nature of Village conventional wisdom on most issues, it's clear that bad, slanted, dishonest news sources rule in Washington. 
 
The electorate in general, and our policymakers in particular, are extremely poorly informed, and the latter group as well as much of the former believes many things that are factually wrong in ways that cause harm.
 
The very idea that these are the glory days of American journalism is, in short, ludicrous.  Matt's said something quite true about the tallest tree in the forest, but completely missed the fact that the forest as a whole is in shitty shape in ways that have consequences for those that depend on it.

Or take his sanguine take on how most people will fare in a world where robots have taken over most of our jobs:

Which means that I think the right thing to ask is what scarcities remain in robotopia. Drum speaks of "capital-biased technological change" which could lead one to believe that the returns will go to the owners of the robots. But I don't think that's right. Robots themselves will be plentiful and not all that valuable. But all the robots in the world won't change the fact that some parcels of land front onto lovely beaches. In the richer world of tomorrow, more people than ever will want a nice vacation at the beach but beachfront land will be as scarce as ever. You want to be the guy who owns that beachfront.

The problem is, the ability to create widespread abundance doesn't mean abundance will actually be widespread.  Right now, in the U.S.A. of 2013, we could have an economy where everybody's working, and where we're producing a lot more stuff than we are now.  But we're not in that alternate reality, because many see the economy as a morality play where we've got to suffer for our previous (and largely imagined) excesses, and other movers and shakers are simply dead set against a world where people have better choices than to do their bidding.  Many of the people who run our world are quite happy for our economy to run at well under peak efficiency, so long as it puts them and their interests in the driver's seat.

Robots aren't going to change that.  They're just going to increase the number of people who don't have an income of their own, and those people aren't going to be much better off in robotopia than they are now.  Maybe they can get a cheap taxi ride in an autonomous car, but they still need a place to live, and they can still get foreclosed on.  They still will need food, and while maybe robot-grown food will be slightly cheaper than migrant-grown food, the reality is that labor is a pretty small share of the cost of the food you buy in the grocery store.  Robots won't help much there, either.  And robot-produced clothes probably won't be much cheaper than those produced by Bangladeshis in deathtrap sweatshops.

Unless we change things politically, Robotopia is likely to leave a lot of people on the outside of abundance, looking in, and new morality plays will be spun to explain why we shouldn't help them.  Matt just kind of assumes the political change, but such change is always extremely hard when the interests of the people are on one side, but the interests of big corporations and the moneyed classes are united on the other side.

And finally, there's his post, "Seasonal Guest Workers Don't Create Low Pay, Low Pay Creates Seasonal Guest Workers."

I did want to respond to this cranky email received by Kevin Drum:

Farm laborers in Australia make much more than American ones. And yet they still have a functional agricultural sector. It turns out that allowing companies to import an unlimited number of foreign workers desperate to work at a wage of epsilon will create shitty working conditions and low wages!

I of course know what Drum's correspond means here, but he's dead wrong. It's not the foreign workers who create shitty working conditions and low wages, it's the shitty working conditions and low wages that make people willing to serve as imported labor. Prohibiting workers from working in the United States keeps them stuck in even worse working conditions for even worse pay.

OK, so low pay elsewhere creates seasonal guest workers here.  No doubt about it.  But they still pull down wages here.  If you paid people $20 an hour to work in the fields, I guarantee you that plenty of Americans would be working in the fields.  And it is the availability of people who are much more desperate than American workers are yet, and who are willing to work for much less than American workers will work for, that results in a system where farm labor pays well under what even poor Americans are willing to do it for.

Matt adds:

Now, again, many people appear to take the view that immigration policy should be made without reference to the interests of actual or potential migrants. That's an interesting debate to be had. But people shouldn't talk about the economic consequences of immigration without so much as mentioning the consequences for the migrants. The impact of keeping seasonal farm workers out of the United States will be to take a very poor slice of the world's population and make them even poorer. I think it reflects something of an impoverished imagination if one can't think of any smarter strategies for benefitting low-skilled Americans than ones that involve simultaneously harming the economic interests of the global poor and the interests of America's food-eating middle class.

Actually, I do think aiding immigrants or guest workers in a way that undermines the well-being of Americans is ultimately self-destructive, even for the immigrants.  There will always be far more people who want to come to the U.S. than we can help by allowing them in.

Since I don't have an impoverished imagination, here's my proposal: we allow immigration and guest workers at times of full or nearly full employment, when low-skilled Americans have no trouble finding better jobs than working in the fields.  Then when we bring them in, everybody benefits.  And the rest of the time, American farmers will have to pay what it takes to hire those workers who are already here, which will reduce unemployment, minimize the impact of recessions, and get us back to full employment faster, so that we can bring immigrants in to participate in a vibrant economy, rather than make a sick economy even sicker and increase the leverage that employers have over workers.

There were more ways that Matt was wrong this week, but these three suffice too well.

ETA: I just remembered that this is Matt's birthday.  He can consider this his present. :-)

And on a more friendly note, happy anniversary, Kevin and Marian Drum!

Monday Miscellany and Open Thread

 

"Love is the Law" - The Suburbs

Hey, time to check in.  Sorry for no Mother's Day shout out -- I was pledged and duty bound to tend to chores around the homestead and then it was off to dinner.  (The son, sadly, was up to his eyeballs in finals preparation, so it was Mother's Day sans child.) 

- As expected, the Minnesota Senate passed marriage equality today and Governor Mark Dayton is expected to sign the bill into law tomorrow.  It's one of the few political things that is making me happy these days, what with all the Benghazi and IRS bullshit permeating the airwaves.

- Jamelle Bouie has a chilling piece about the possibility of the Republicans trying to impeach Obama on the strength of these bogus scandals.  It would be madness of course, but  madness is exactly what I expect from these assholes.

- Jamelle also has a succinct piece on racist researcher Jason Richwine.  See also TNC, who puts Richwine's work in its ugly historical context. 

- Also at the Prospect, a good take on the "upside down economy" by Harold Meyerson. 

- But in the interest of always leaving 'em laughing, I have to say there has been a treasure trove of fun with Thomas Friedman in the past few days.  First, the great Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone seeking the best Friedman porn title.  I then discovered the Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Generator, which is inspired. And then for dessert, Tom Tomorrow does "Thomas Friedman, Private Eye."  An embarrassment of riches. 

What's on your minds?

 

And Now Minnesota Joins the Parade

 

"Jungle Love" - Morris Day and the Time (Minneapolis Natives)

So the Minnesota House just passed a marriage equality bill, two days after Delaware recognized same sex marriage.  The Minnesota Senate is expected to the pass the same bill on Monday and Governor Mark Dayton has pledged to sign it into law.  It's just part of an amazing manifestation of legislative support for the love that once did not dare speak its name.  It's a fantastic development.

A couple of thoughts.  Having just spent Monday at a memorial service for a member of a longtime gay union -- one where the couple had recently taken advantage of marriage equality in DC -- it heartens me to see the love and commitment that many of my friends have enjoyed being recognized as fully the equal of heterosexual unions, because it is.  Quite simply it is.  The bonds -- and the burdens -- of a lifetime are actually pretty much indistinguishable, regardless of sexual preference. 

Second, I wonder if these dramatic democratic developments leave the Supreme Court more inclined to render a narrow verdict in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases? 

And finally, although my emotions associated with this progress are by and large joyful and without malice, there is a small part of me that is also reveling in the crushing of our enemies -- I'd say 90% large-minded happiness, 10% spite-driven euphoria.  This small part of me relishes the marginalization of those on the other side, savors the alienation they must be feeling, finds happiness in their spittle-flecked rage as it dawns on them it truly isn't their country anymore.  Slowly -- and then not so slowly -- they are consigned to the ghettoes of reaction, the disreputable neighborhoods of ignorance and prejudice, offering a world view that has come to be seen as an embarrassment in polite company.  I revel in their exile.

There is still work to be done and the likelihood that the marriage equality movement will hit a temporary wall at a certain point, once the blue states are converted.  But the wall will be temporary -- the generational momentum will ultimately overwhelm even the most reactionary bastions.

I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it during my lifetime.  The triumphs of the civil rights movement, remarkable as they were, never fully eradicated the racial animus that to this day remains a feature of much of American life.  One senses a sea change here that is truly transformational, with a younger generation coming to maturity that is truly lacking in homophobia.  It's a great thing. 

Thomas Friedman's Dystopia and Open Thread

 

"Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" - Magnetic Fields

As you know, Thomas Friedman irritates me more than just about any human being alive.  Oh not because he writes the stupidest or most dishonest stuff that is featured in the Times -- Douthat, Brooks, and Dowd all top him in that category.  It's because he writes the stupidest shit that more moderate people mistake for wisdom.  And really, the man is a monumental dumbass, a clueless enabler of our rapacious corporate culture and the inside the Beltway ideology that sustains it.

Last week, Friedman issued another magnum opus extolling the virtues of individual choice that technology and the free market are providing to us, which he titled "It's a 401(k) World" as if that were a good thing.  In it, Friedman suggests that the economy of the day requires us all to pass a bar exam of sorts and that if we do, presumably pennies will rain from heaven into our 401(k)s.

Now just so any Randist types reading this don't get any false ideas, I've passed two bar exams (2 for 2 and retired undefeated) and have a pretty healthy balance in my own 401(k) -- I have not been buried by Friedman's economy, for which I feel rather fortunate.  But I don't mistake this for virtue on my part.  I see a lot of luck, the good fortune to have had enough disposable income to fund a retirement in the most horrible of investment eras, and enough professional knowledge because of what I do for a living to have avoided horrible mistakes after initially being crushed in the 2008 onslaught.  (I have 100% of my retirement money in stocks, as I have had through my entire career -- I lost 41% in 2008 alone and probably from the height of the market in 2007 through its low point on March 9, 2009, I was down about 60%.  Fortunately I hung in there and recouped my losses -- but if the market hadn't bounced back I would have been screwed as so many people were.)

Friedman glibly assumes that we are in some golden age of opportunity:

What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you.       

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone.

Seriously -- "the boundaries are all gone."  Try telling that to twenty-somethings all throughout the developed world as they struggle to find work.  Try telling it to the 600 or so poor souls crushed to death in Bangla Desh as a result of their societal wager in favor of wealth versus worker safety -- talk about the world being flat.*  Basically the world that so excites the husband of the billionaire heiress -- Tommy is much more a traditionalist than you might imagine -- is one in which there is zero job security, zero retirement security, and a smaller social safety net as a result of grand bargains that Friedman and his ilk long to see struck.  What does this world offer to the vast majority of people -- not just the average person, but pretty much anyone who has to work for a living?  Here is how Friedman describes it (seemingly with approval):

Last week, The Economist quoted one labor expert, Peter Cappelli of the Wharton business school, as saying that companies now regard filling a job as being “like buying a spare part: you expect it to fit.”

People, by and large, do not want to have a life filled with economic adventure, much less being treated as spare parts.  Most people crave some sort of stability and security in their work lives, the oppornity to have a career, to settle down somewhere, to not be an eternal and ever-disposable free agent.  The economy is not some capricious creature of nature, but rather a man-made construct that should, ideally, serve to make our lives better.  The notion that we should embrace a world in which all of us are going to have to continuously reinvent ourselves and claw our way from job to job as careers disappear and free agency becomes the norm is a nightmare. 

As someone who has spent the last 28 years working with defined benefit pension plans, I can assure you that whatever their flaws, they have proven vastly superior to the 401(k) in terms of fulfilling their intended purposes, i.e. the retirement security of millions of workers, while 401(k) plans have by and large been an abject failure.  It is a mark of just how out of touch he is that Friedman views the 401(k) as any kind of societal model.  (And the idea that it is a great thing for the average person to be the investment manager for his or her own retirement is just nuts.)

The "flat, hyperconnected" world that Friedman imagines as some sort of golden age of opportunity is far more likely to prove to be a Hobbesian nightmare.  My suggestion to all of you is do as Tom did -- marry rich.  It beats the hell out of enhancing your brand every day. 

*Sarcasm.   

Weekend Open Thread

With a little Friday Frank for you.

 

 

I'm about to go be a chaperone on my son's class field trip, which is just a walk along the Chesapeake Bay, a stone's throw from the kid's school.  What's up with you guys?

Open thread.

Lazy Sunday Open Thread

It looks like another sunny, perfect day in the DC area.  We've had banana pancakes and bacon, and later on, we're taking the kid to the playground to meet up with some of his friends.  He lost his first tooth last night, and is looking forward to showing off his gap-toothed grin to his buddies.

Finally got some tomato plants in the ground yesterday afternoon, and the kid helped with that, too.

What's up with you?

More Thoughts About the Freedom to Work in a Collapsing Building

Note: what I originally intended as a comment on SC's post turned into something that I thought was worth front-paging.  But I've turned comments off for this post, so that the discussion can be all in one thread, the one that SC's already started.

Matt:

what happened in Bangladesh is a tragedy and a human disaster, and to the best of my knowledge it's also quite literally a criminal disaster under the existing laws of Bangladesh. The perpetrators ought to be punished. More broadly: Bangladesh ought to enforce its laws. Even more broadly than that: Bangladesh's citizens deserve honest and uncorrupt government rather than government that's excessively under the sway of the interests of apparel factory owners.

Which is the long way of saying: things over there ought to be better than they are, and that ought to just magically happen.  We've got no role in making it happen, and if it doesn't happen, it's not our fault.

To which I say: bull.shit. 

U.S. corporations are outsourcing this work to places like Bangladesh because they don't want to pay U.S. (or even Chinese, fercryinoutloud) wages, nor do they want to abide by U.S. (or even Chinese) safety standards.

They do this so they can make big piles of money even in the middle of the worst world recession in the past 70 years, and still not have to put people back to work here in America, and in exchange for going along with this, we get to pay a few bucks less for our sneakers and toaster ovens.

It has everything to do with us, and if we let ourselves be bought off that easy, then shame on us.

No, of course we can't tell the government of Bangladesh what to do.  And saying it ought to have a government that's not excessively under the sway of its monied interests (when we can't even seem to manage that trick ourselves, alas) is saying that things ought to fix themselves.

But we Americans are, in theory, responsible for the behavior of American corporations.  I would hardly expect them to impose, say, the standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act on a Third World factory that their goods are produced at.  But they can damned sure make sure that those factories aren't deathtraps.

And here's how I'd propose to enforce it:

If a workplace in Country Y that helps produce goods for Corporation X has a disaster resulting in multiple deaths from one incident, then Corporation X loses its rights to import goods produced in Country Y, in whole or in part, for three years.

If, during those three years, it's found that they have been having stuff worked on in Country Y, then having it further worked on in Country Z and having it imported from there, then they lose their importation rights from Country Z for three years, and the clock is reset back to zero on their three-year import moratorium from Country Y.

I know it's a pipe dream, since we can't even seem to make life difficult for companies like the one that owned that facility in West, Texas that blew up last week, since monied interests have corrupted our government almost as surely as they've done that of Bangladesh, with a big hand from our bought-and-paid-for press (h/t Charles Pierce).

But it's the sort of thing we could and should be doing.  Because the Bangladeshi factory worker values his life just as much as Matt Yglesias values his own, but as SC has already said, he's forced by desperation into choices that Matt never will have to face.

There are some choices that no one should ever have to face.  And maybe we can't fix that for everyone in the world, but at least we don't have to have a hand in perpetuating that reality, for nothing more than saving a few bucks on sneakers.  People, even people on the other side of the world, shouldn't be dying to preserve the American standard of living.

The Freedom to Work in a Collapsing Building and Open Thread

 

"He Stopped Loving Her Today" - George Jones

I was in transit yesterday, flying back from Nashville -- evidently my 50 minute delay spurred Congress to act immediately -- and nearly choked when reading this piece by Yglesias on the collapse of the building in Bangla Desh that killed 161 people and injured hundreds more.  The take away line from the piece: "in a free society it's good that different people are able to make different choices on the risk–reward spectrum."

Oh, fuck yeah, there is nothing like the freedom to choose to go to work in an unsafe building for $38 a month as opposed to exercising the freedom to be fired when you balk at going into a place on the verge of collapse.  It's all just "different choices on the risk-reward spectrum."  That might be the Slatiest sentence ever written.  Somewhere Michael Kinsley and Will Saletan are green with envy.

I am going to subcontract the work of destroying Yglesias to the folks working at "Et tu, Mr. Destructo" -- hopefully working in a hovel somewhere -- and Corey Rubin.  Mr. Destructo (h/t to Roy) sums it up in succinct fashion:

Writing off the death of 161 people with 370 words of vacuous unconcern requires the machine-like efficiency we've come to expect from places where pre-teens assemble Air Jordans. Yglesias' thesis, what little exists, is that the Bangladeshis are a people squalid enough that death is an acceptable randomly applied career path, and that dead Bangladeshis are what keep flat-front chinos at $29.99 at the outlet store. Our pants are cheap because their lives are, and cheaper things are innately good. Just think how much Upton Sinclair saved on hamburger as a young man. What an ingrate.

It's really hard to top that, but this was pretty close:

The bodies hadn't cooled. The facts couldn't be bothered with—not the reported death count at the time, nor that it was a collapse and not a fire. It didn't matter. It was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, and Slate's blue-sky megathinker was ready. When Matt Yglesias chimes in with his take on the day's events, it's adorable in its ineptitude—like when a seven-year-old attempts his first magic trick. But no child ever pulled a Bangladeshi corpse from his hat and called it a rabbit.

Yglesias engages in an incoherent non-apology, apology today with this gem.  And the trust fund scumbag is pretty irritated with us for not understanding his big-brained thoughts:  "And I have to say that my overwhelming personal response, as a writer and as a human being, is to be annoyed by the responses that I'm getting."

Fuck you Matt.  Fuck you.  I have a suggestion -- stop reading so many libertarian gob shites, quit your job at Slate, and go out into the world for a while and fucking learn something about the value of peoples' lives.  People don't engage in some free-thinking calculus nor bargain to put their lives and limbs at risk -- they act out of desperation, not freedom. 

Addendum:  Thanks to l-t c for expanding on this post and noting that the notion that Americans should take no responsbility for working conditions in places like Bangla Desh is nonsense.

I realize the above is heavy on the ad hominem and lighter on the analysis -- but really sometimes it seems to me that this is appropriate.  Nonetheless, let me spell out in a few strokes why Yglesias is wrong not just in having a reflexively inhumane response to a tragedy, but as a broader matter.  First, the notion that there is some sort of social consensus or legitimate process whereby workers in Bangla Desh decide that it is necessary to put life and limb at risk in order to make more money is simply preposterous.  Making these kinds of blithe economic statements without any analysis of power relations in a society is hopelessly sophomoric.  Especially when discussing a society where people still starve to death -- they are not "food insecure;" malnutrition literally kills them.  Notwithstanding that, workers in Bangla Desh do seem pretty goddamn angry about those who view their lives as worthless.   Hopefully they don't know the way to Logan Circle.  The second point, for those who need to reduce the entire world to a cost-benefit analysis, is that killing and maiming your workers is not a good economic strategy.  Society is really not enriched by having young, productive people exit the work force prematurely -- dead people make lousy consumers, spouses, and parents, and maimed workers tend to be a cost to society, even one with minimal social benefits like Bangla Desh. 

Anything to add?

Tuesday Trivia and Open Thread

Grabbing a few moments of non-billable time here.

- As many have already noted, yesterday's Maureen Dowd column was a particularly toxic brew of Dowd's own psychological pathologies -- really, her daddy issues are just embarrassing -- and the worst of Washington's Green Lantern theory of presidential leadership.  I heard a lot of the same crap on Morning Joe, albeit without the Electra Complex shining through.  Any discussion of the fate of the background check bill that does not begin wth the grotesque abuse of the filibuster that the Senate Republicans have now made a norm or that focuses in on the structure of the Senate itself, which vastly inflates the power of rural votes, is fundamentally dishonest.  Moreover, theories of presidential power that do not examine the electoral dynamics of the states that individual senators represent, i.e. how does Obama, who lost North Dakota by a landslide, threaten Heidi Heitkamp?  And to what end?  Electing another Republican?  The intellectual laziness of Dowd and others is hardly news at this point, but it really does such an amazing disservice to the public.    I will not link to her column directly as I don't want to encourage this kind of bullshit.

- Did anyone else listen to the audio of the initial court proceeding in the Tsarnaev case?  I found it strangely moving -- to hear the Magistrate Judge conduct the proceedings in total calm, just going by the book as if it were any other case before him.  I think that this is the best possible response to this sort of crime -- to not be hysterical or alarmist, but to show the confidence that we should have in our system of justice, which, for whatever its flaws, is still a pretty remarkable thing. 

- The reality is, whatever lessons we learn from Boston, there is little if anything that can be done to stop lone wolf acts of terrorism in a free and mobile society.  The public, at least, seems to understand this at some level.

- Ah, Max Baucus is retiring.  Not really a huge fan, but it makes life even more difficult for the Dems in 2014.  At least we have a good likely candidate in Governor Brian Schweitzer. 

What's going on with all of you?

An End to the Boston Drama and Your Tax Dollars at Work

Very pleased to see that the Boston Marathon bombing drama has been brought to a close without further loss of life.  One thing that had to strike you as you watched this scene unfold was the tremendous amount of resources a place like Massachusetts -- God Save It! as some are wont to say --was able to bring to bear on behalf of the public safety.  This professionalism and expertise was courtesy of the all too frequently scorned public employees, who, according to our right wing brethren, don't have "real" jobs.  (I am guessing that few of those who take that view have ever faced a moment of danger in their professional lives.)

I was also pleased to see illustrated how police work should differ from the kind of thing that the military does.  This sad episode was brought to a conclusion with patient and precise work, not sheer deadly force.  It was very impressive work.

It will be interesting to see what kind of insight into the crime we can achieve from the young perpetrator.  I suspect that he will have a very, very long time behind bars to contemplate the enormity of his incredibly vile acts.   

Boston on Lockdown

Along with Watertown, Cambridge, Waltham, Newton, Belmont, and the entire MBTA system.  They're telling everyone in these towns to stay inside with the doors locked, and only open for properly identified law enforcement officers.  Nobody on the road, nobody on the street.

I guess you know the news, unless this is the first place you clicked when you woke up: two brothers from Chechnya are the bombing suspects, and one of them, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout in Watertown last night; the other is still at large somewhere nearby.  They shot and killed a policeman at MIT, and shot and seriously wounded an MBTA policeman.  The suspect at large is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19 years old.  Last night, they still had and were using explosives.

Scary situation.

A Shout Out to Boston and Open Thread

 

"Roadrunner (Once)" - Jonathan Richman

Sorry for my absence during this particular moment.  I've been dealing with all my manner of things professional and personal -- got to have dinner with bbw on Thursday night, which was delightful, had the boy in town for the weekend before he heads off for finals, had my crappy but beloved laptop die on me on Sunday (hard drive utterly fried), and then had an arbitration today for a client that I desperately want to impress.  So I was prepping part of Sunday, all day yesterday, and left the house at 5:00 AM this morning to get a jump on things.  

As a result I feel like I am the one person on earth who has only seen about ten minutes of television coverage on the Boston bombing.  (I spent a lot of time exchanging texts last night with a host of people I know in and from the area -- no casualties in my circle to date.  Glad to see our very dear friend oddjob is unscathed.)

Although I left the area over thirty years ago, I still feel a powerful connection to the city and state.  The rest of my family has remained firmly rooted on the North Shore and a lot of my Brandeis buddies stayed in the area after graduation.  I love the whole Patriots' Day, Marathon, and early Red Sox game ritual -- I once experienced snow at a game against the Yankees on Patriot's Day.  Reggie Jackson looked mighty unhappy near us in right field.

I have no words of wisdom on this, no hunches worth a damn, and no sense what might have motivated it.  I assume that in the world of cameras both official and private likely to have been in operation in that part of the world that there is a decent chance that the perp was captured by someone.  I also assume that there is some pretty good forensic evidence available from the explosive devices.  I hope they find the prick who did it.  In the meantime, I hope people in Boston just go about their business unfazed.  I have a feeling that they will.  There's a toughness to the place that I always liked, even if it could be unpleasant.

What's happening with all of you?  I am totally out of it.   

"What Does Cheating Under a Testing and Accountability System Prove?"

 

Matt Yglesias asks this question about the series of revelations that jumps in test scores that occurred under the supervision of Rod Paige, Michelle Rhee, Beverly Hall, and other big-name education 'reformers' were based on cheating.

The weird thing is, we both reach the same answer: nothing.

The unsurprising thing, I guess, is that our meanings are 180° apart.

Matt's implicit assumption is that high-stakes testing regimes are a Good Thing, and if there were a few bad apples, that's insufficient evidence to justify upsetting the testing applecart.

My question is, where's the evidence these high-stakes testing regimes were ever shown to be a Good Thing to begin with?  We've known for a decade that the "Texas Miracle" that got Rod Paige the Secretary of Education job under GWB was all about cooking the books.  If the other major 'successes' touted by the 'reformers' - Rhee, Hall, and whoever else - are also based on cheating, then you have nothing.  You have no reason to prefer this program over the status quo ante.  None. 

So Matt, that's what cheating proves: nothing.  Anytime you conduct an experiment and lie about the results, the experiment proves nothing. 

Now maybe someone, somewhere has conducted an experiment in high-stakes testing and it's produced evidence that high-stakes testing works.  But if a whole bunch of well-known experimenters trying to prove the same result have all claimed success, and have all been later shown to have achieved their results by cheating, then you really might start wondering why they're having such a hard time demonstrating success without cheating. 

Maybe the claimed result isn't even true.  And whether it is or isn't, there's no reason to believe it's true, there's no reason to act in ways that assume its truth.

And anyone interested in what's going on with education 'reform' should be reading Kay at Balloon Juice.

Now We Know What A Death Panel Looks Like

 

Republicans in the Ohio Legislature, take your bow.  (Via the always excellent Kay at Balloon Juice.)

COLUMBUS: Susan Bennett can’t get treatment for her skin cancer because she’s uninsured, unemployed and no doctor will see her.

Standing in the rain on the steps of the Ohio Statehouse, she asked state lawmakers on Thursday to extend Medicaid coverage, so more low-income Ohioans like herself could get the medical care they need.

“I want them to think about the lives they could save, and I would like for them to choose us — the people — over politics,” said the 52-year-old Bennett, of Columbus.

Bennett’s words were greeted with cheers from an estimated 2,500 demonstrators who gripped umbrellas and signs in support of Medicaid expansion at Thursday’s rally on the Capitol lawn. The event follows a decision by Ohio House Republicans to strip the expansion plan from the budget.

I bet they're proud of how they set her free.

Tuesday Open Thread

The warm weather has finally arrived and Stanley has been transformed from the world's smallest sheep dog to looking like a brand new pup.

I did not get to weigh in in the Thatcher fest of yesterday.  I think all of the songs that I might have posted were posted -- I was leaning towards "Stand Down Margaret" as opposed to the more acerbic "Tramp the Dirt Down."

Not suprisingly, I was not a huge Thatcher fan -- I thought her a cruel, hard ideologue.  I do, however, have some sympathy with the idea that the England of 1979 had really achieved a level of economic sclerosis that probably called for some shift toward a more free market direction -- the economics of nationalized industries were pretty lousy.  I feel like I don't have the kind of day-to-day expertise to really fully assess her legacy, although my reflexive response is that a less extreme avenue would have been preferable.

By contrast, I am confident that Ronald Reagan was a serious net negative to the American body politic, a malign influence who helped empower America's know nothing caucus of god botherers and Randites.  The election of Reagan was the voters retreating into fantasy instead of facing up to the challenges of an economy in transition.  We continue to struggle to this day with the legacy of promiscuous deregulation and magical tax cutting that Reagan's election ushered in.

What's on your minds?

 

Hopes for the Next Generation and Open Thread

"High School Lover" - Cayucas

Ah, sitting sipping a Johnny Walker with the world's cutest dog -- freshly bathed and shorn (the dog, not me) -- by my side.  (i have to post a before and after shot at some point -- it looks like he lost about ten pounds.)   We finally had a spring day here after a long stretch of cold and windy weather.  I had dinner al fresco and reveled in the 70 plus sunshine.

- I read this piece by Charles Blow in the Times yesterday with a sense of impatience for the day when the younger generation assumes real political power.  I think much of our focus on the younger generation of voters has focused on the fact that they tend to be very socially liberal on issues such as marriage equality, marijuana legalization, and (seemingly) gun control and that they by and large can't stand the Republican Party.  These are good things, of course, and could really portend an enormous sea change in American electoral mathematics.  But I think it could be even more profound than that.  I think -- and please let me be clear that this is by no means inevitable as per my post below -- that we could experience another genuinely liberal epoch comparable to the New Deal and Great Society when this generation really takes its place at the grown-up's table.  As I noted in comments below, this generation of twenty somethings has come of age in a truly crappy economy, has experienced horrible unemployment or jobs that have paid low wages, has accumulated enormous amounts of debt in pursuit of educations that have not produced promised results, see little promise of any kind of economic security even in areas like the law or prestige journalism that were once magnets for bright young people.  I think that this is a generation that is likely to be not only socially liberal, but economically liberal as well.  They have truly witnessed the free market as "the God that sucked."

What could that mean?  Well, first and foremost, it might finally mean the day would arrive where true universal health insurance would be available -- where you would see the Obamacare exchange model broaden to include a public option that will eventually sever the link between employment and health insurance.  I also think that it could lead to the kind of European social democracy benefits that to date have eluded the American worker -- paid maternity and paternity leave, government subsidized day care, and mandatory paid sick and vacation leave.  These will be the kinds of things that government will be asked to mandate because the collective bargaining system will most likely not cover the work places of 90% of this generation.  I also think that you will see a rededication of tax dollars to public universities and colleges, an attempt to remedy the kind of debt burden with which so many of this generation have been saddled.  Finally, I also see an environment in which urban mass transit systems may cease to be an afterthought when the tax dollars are being dished out.  

Again, I don't think any of this is inevitable.  But when I look at the opinion polls reflecting the attitudes of this group -- and when I talk to my own twenty-year old and his friends -- I think there is amazing potential to achieve things that have been completely out of reach since I have been an adult.  

I hope that this proves true and that I live long enough to see it.

What do you all think?

Beware Inevitability Arguments

 

"Don't Play with Guns" - The Black Angels

Love this one too -- has a bit of a Jesus and Mary Chain vibe.

I am getting a little nervous about the sense of triumphalism from some quarters in the liberal camp.  The talk of the inevitability of marriage equality or Republican decline make me cringe a bit -- even if I sometimes feel that way myself.

I think the likely demise of gun control in the coming weeks, the Republican victory on sequester, the likelihood of another showdown on the debt ceiling, the ongoing evisceration of abortion rights in much of the country all speak to the fact that even a wounded Republican Party can do a whole lot of damage and stymie things even though they command massive public support, like background checks. 

The Republicans have a couple of things going for them that make them a potent and ongoing threat despite the fact that they get seemingly craziier by the day, as post-election introspection quickly gives way to ideological zeal.  The Republicans 1) are wiling to wield the filibuster power more destructively (and yet effectively) than has ever been done before; 2) maintain strong party discipline despite a crack or two in the early part of the year; 3) are likely to continue to control the House through at least the next four years; 4) benefit to some extent by continued softness in the economy; 5) continue to have a turn out advantage in mid-term and off year elections; 6) continue to control 30 governorships; and 7) continue to maintain a strong geographic base of support.

It is this latter point that may be most important of all.  Republican positions may be unpopular overall, but they continue to command strong support among the Party's rural, white, revanchist constituency.  The structure of the Senate gives disproportionate power to this electorate as does the fact that the Democratic vote is remarkably concentrated, making gerrymandering a very easy thing to do.  All of this works incredibly well with America's difuse power structure to prevent progressive legislation from happening, notiwthstanding claims that the culture war has been won by the left. 

Thus, on marriage equality, if the Supreme Court is unwilling to endorse a constitutional right to equal protection for marriage, as I suspect it will, the battle is going to be fought out in the states.  I believe that progress will be made in another ten to twelve states in the near future, but then will likely hit a wall that will be difficult to move for a fairly lengthy time.  Abortion rights are likely to become extraordinarily constrained in a large number of jurisdictions and the Supreme Court remains a threat to repeal Roe.   Gun control is going to also be subject to state by state battles -- a really poor way to deal with something as easily transported as firearms.  Progressive economic legislations is simply not in the cards if and until the Democrats can regain control of the House -- the filibuster problem will continue unabated, and the Republicans still have a pretty decent shot at capturing the Senate in 2014.

I think the Republicans are going to continue having problems winning the presidency.  But there are plenty of ways to do damage without controlling the highest office in the land.

As a result, we are going to continue to have to fight for every victory -- and none of those victories will prove to be inevitable.   

Duty Now for the Future (and Open Thread)

"Gay Thoughts" - Growler

Every day lately I seem to read a post or an article that reminds me of an old Doonesbury cartoon in which Mr. Slackmeyer, quintessential late 60s businessman, exclaims exasperatedly to his hippy son: "Life isn't to be enjoyed son, it's to be gotten on with." Scolds like Megan McArdle, Ross Douthat, and David Brooks seem to be everywhere -- urging heterosexual women to marry young and taking solace -- well Brooks and McArdle at least (Cardinal Douthat is bitter and inconsolable) -- that marriage equality means the end of sexytimes for gay people.  (Mark Steyn, on the other hand, believes it is merely the end of the family.)

So Princeton women are urged to marry young.  And McArdle amens.  And then some other numbnuts in Slate chimes in on the glories of early marriage.  And the fuckin' Washington Post has to reprise the "hook up culture" is evil meme. (Laura Sessions Stepp should sue.)  

One just has to laugh really.  So many of these folks claim to be apostles of freedom.  But the only freedom they really believe in is for rich people to have the right to pay lower taxes while not having to pay the minimum wage.  That's it.  The freedom to exploit, may it be forever enshrined in America.  Otherwise, keep your pants on. 

It's really shocking that Republicans seem to be having a problem with young voters.

What's on your dirty minds?

Open Thread, a Chart, and a Crazy Idea: Force a Senate Vote on Repealing DOMA

Number of Senators That Have Endorsed Marriage Equality	Have	Haven't
Democrats	48	7
Republicans	2	43

Just a wee bit of a difference there.  (Note: I've updated the chart to take into account that Sen. Carper of Delaware has now endorsed marriage equality.  And now a Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk.  Hey, I'm willing to keep updating this chart as the day goes on.  Keep it coming, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate.  How about you, Sen. Heitkamp?  By the time you're up for re-election in 2018, this won't be controversial even in North Dakota, you know.)

What's on your minds?  Open thread.

Update: for some reason, it took your favorite math geek a few hours to realize that the numbers in the left-hand column add up to 50.  That means that, with VP Biden's help, there's presumably a Senate majority for repealing DOMA.  So why not force a vote on it?

Sure, the actual vote would be a cloture vote on a motion to proceed, which would fail, but it would still get everyone's votes on record.  And it would signal that the Dems aren't waiting on the Supreme Court, they're trying to move the ball forward on their own - and the GOP, excepting Kirk and Portman, is still standing in the way.  Losing well is an important part of politics, and this is a great opportunity to lose well.

Update 4/5/13: Thanks to Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson (FL), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), and Joe Donnelly (IN), the table is now updated below:

Number of Senators That Have Endorsed Marriage Equality	Have	Haven't
Democrats	51	4
Republicans	2	43

Happy Easter! And Open Thread

The Lord had risen, for those of us who are into that.  And whether you are or aren't, I wish you a happy day full of family get-togethers and the like.

Here at the LTC household, the five year old has checked out his Easter basket and found all of the Easter eggs hidden around the living room.  We've breakfasted on bacon, banana pancakes, and hard-boiled eggs, and in a couple of hours we'll be headed over to my little sister's for Easter brunch.  (Probably won't sit down to eat there until 1pm or so, so the meals aren't as back-to-back as that may have sounded.)  The little rascal will have cousins to play with there, so the grownups may actually be able to talk with one another.

I'll leave politics alone for the day, except to celebrate NYC workers winning paid sick leave.  Why the national Democratic Party isn't making an issue of an entitlement to paid annual and sick leave, I have no frickin' idea.  But it seems like exactly the sort of 'wedge issue' that would put the Dems and the vast majority of Americans on one side, and the GOP, along with big corporations and rich people, on the other.  And we'd win this one if we pushed on it for a few years, and actually do something good for most Americans.

So what's everyone else up to, on this Easter Sunday?

McMegan Predicts the Future of Marriage for Your Entertainment Pleasure

"Be Good" - Waxahatchee

Really like this song and sound.  A woman named Katie Crutchfield recorded in her bedroom. 

- And you know who's telling us to be good -- that font of life wisdom Megan McArdle.  Actually, McMegan is confidently predicting that we will be good -- because the gays are getting married and that means no one will be having sex ever again.  Except for the kind of boring married sex of which Megan approves.  Now, it's true that Roy dispatched of this glib fatuous fuck in the kind of throw away manner that she deserves.  But a perverse part of me -- or maybe that is one of the many perverse parts of me -- wants to delve a little deeper, hold this gem up to the light, and join in the raucous laughter that it merits. 

It's an incredibly incoherent mess.  For example:

I know, it feels like we're riding an exciting wave away from the moral dark ages and into the bright, judgement free future.  But moral history is not a long road down which we're all marching; it's more like a track.  Maybe you change lanes a bit, but you generally end up back where you started.  Sometimes you're on the licentious, "anything goes" portion near the bleachers, and sometimes you're on the straight-and-narrow prudish bit in front of the press box.  Most of the time you're in between.  But you're still going in circles.

So what is the evidence that we are rounding the track and heading back to olden days when a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking? Beats the fuck out of me.  Well, I guess Newt Gingrich and John McCain, exemplars par excellence of Seventies decadence -- oh the days we danced at Studio 54 together, coke spoon a-dangling between Newt's man-boobs -- got divorced, while Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio are all still on wife number one.  And?

McArdle then goes on to bemoan that the lesser sort of folk aren't getting married, are having children willy-nilly with every underemployed Tom, Dick, and Harry that they meet, and that people like her are getting married late in life -- although the latter trend will likely stop because she has now tied the knot at a still youthful -- measured in wisdom -- 37.  But all of this is going to change, because, well because she thinks it should:

If I had to guess, I'd also put late marriage on the endangered list.  I married at 37 myself, so I'm not judging, here.  But if we want childbearing to take place inside marriage (and I think we do), then the average age of first marriage can't get higher; it probably shouldn't even stay so high.  As that average age rises, you get two unwanted phenomenon on the tails of the distribution: babies born to unmarried parents at the low end, and couples who want children but can't have them on the high side.  So the current upper-middle-class tendency to push marriage later and later while people finish their educations and get settled doesn't seem very stable to me--even before we consider the difficulty of finding a mate to match your settled life, which Keith Humphreys has dubbed The Problem of Grandma's Lamp.

Of course, predictions are hard, especially about the future.  Nonetheless, here is mine: whatever the Supreme Court decides, gay marriage will soon be legal throughout the land. But this will not mean that we drive ever onwards towards greater sexual freedom--rather, it will mean quite the reverse.  The sexual revolution is over.  And the revolutionaries lost.

Does Megan really think that people will return to a (largely exaggerated) practice of having sex [and children] only within marriage or that people will return to marrying in their late teens or early twenties (an aberration of the 1950s)?   Does the fact that well-educated, urban blue staters are staying married -- after spending their twenties getting educated and enjoying sexual freedom -- really mean that the "sexual revolutionaries" lost and we are heading toward neo-Victorianism? 

Needless to say there is no evidence presented for these assertions. Indeed, Megan spends most of the piece decryng this and that and then suggesting things must change because she thinks they should.  It is funny that right wingers like McArdle have an abiding faith in market decisions that people make, but have a difficult time accepting people voting with their feet -- well not really their feet for most people -- for their most personal preferences.  Since bold prediction seems to be the name of the game here, my bet is that most young people will continue to find ludicrous the notion that sex should only take place within marriage and will scoff at those who try to scare them into marrying young.  

Wednesday Open Thread

"Song for Zula" - Phosphorescent

Just when I thought I was getting back in the writing groove a whole host of things professional and personal have popped up and brought me to a halt.

Hopefully will get back in the swing momentarily.  In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Prop 8 and DOMA Supreme Court arguments.  

 

Ten Years After - Iraq War Open Thread

I would imagine that many of you are finding a lot to be infuriated by in the current retrospectives regarding the Iraq War -- the non-apology apologies, the sheer pretense in some instances that the war was redeeemed by "the surge," and, of course, the "well I was wrong for the right reasons and you were right for the wrong reasons" rationalizations.  It's always impressive to see a complete and utter debacle treated as though it was really some sort of split-decision.

I was not blogging during the glorious war era, so I do not really have a track record to defend.  I was a war skeptic, mainly because I viewed it as an outrageous diversion from the fight against Al Qaeda.  I was also troubled by the idea of preemptive war as an explicit doctrine of American foreign policy.  But I have to say, my opposition to the war was far too muted and completely lacking in the sense of just how disastrous this adventure would prove to be.  I completely underestimated the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush Administration in both making the case for and pursuing the war.  It simply never occurred to me -- my intense dislike of the Administration notwithstanding -- that people with as much experience as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, et al. could be so completely cavalier about planning for something as grave as a war.  I didn't imagine them to be the sociopathic incompetents they would prove to be. 

I find that the losses of this war -- in lives both American and Iraqi lost or shattered, in money -- staggering, staggering sums that could have been used for so much good -- and in national reputation -- still make my blood boil.  It's a feeling that really hasn't diminished much -- maybe because there has never been a proper calling out of those responsible and those who cheered them on, maybe because as we battle over fiscal and budget issues, I cannot help but think of the trillion or so dollars completely squandered in this benighted effort. 

Many people have written things worth reading on this tenth anniversary.  Fallows had an excellent piece, grimly titled "Why We Won't Learn from Iraq." Charles Pierce in a series of can't miss posts cuts several people a new, three-bedroom, two bath, double wide asshole, including Ezra Klein, (who had the excuse of youth in 2003, but really should avoid the Ken Pollack defense in 2013), Jonathan Chait ("ouch"), and the unspeakably loathsome David Ignatius. 

And then there is this open letter to Paul Wolfowitz by Andrew Bacevich, which is in a league by itself.  It is really a must read in terms of the broader foreign policy issues it raises.  Bacevich dryly observes that   "taken as a whole, the cost-benefit ratio [of the Iraq War] is cause for weeping."  Left unsaid is the fact that Bacevich has far greater reasons to weep over this horrible war.

Honesty is a condition precedent to learning.  One cannot learn lessons about events shrouded in bad faith.  The American people will remain war weary and war wary for a time until their collective memories fade.  But I see little to suggest that the movers and shakers in foreign policy or those who shape the public debate about such matters in the media have the capacity for honesty or self reflection, that would result in genuine painful wisdom having been obtained through this debacle -- certainly not on the basis of the lame mea culpas I have seen to date.  And that might be the most infuriating thing of all about this godforsaken war.  

The Personal is Political and Open Thread

Interesting conversations have been ongoing about Rob Portman seeing the light on marriage equality as a result of his son being gay.  Many on the liberal side of the equation have noted that this seems to be a common Republican affliction -- one can only identify with a problem when a member of one's own tribe is affected.  I share that general view.  Naturally, Will Saletan takes the contrary position --it's what they do over there -- arguing that this is just human nature and that we on the left are no different in this regard. Saletan points to Barak Obama's conversion on the gay marriage issue as proof of this. 

Let's be clear -- Barak Obama's stated opposition to marriage equality (and Hillary Clinton's and many others) was the product of a craven political calculation.  The President, along with many other liberal Democrats, feared the marriage equality issue and felt that it was a bridge too far in national electoral politics.  It turns out he was wrong -- public opinion has moved incredibly swiftly on this issue.  This sort of thing is not admirable, but it's not unusual.  Polticians are rarely opinion leaders.  Having said that, Barak Obama was quite progressive on gay rights issues for a mainstream politician even before he announced support for marriage equality -- as seen by his administration's handling of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and DOMA.    Rob Portman has shown no such disposition until this moment.  He has basically toed the Republican Party line on thes issues for his entire political career, albeit he has not been an affirmative hater a la James Inhoffe.  In short, there is no true comparison between Obama and Portman, notwithstanding any drivel Glenn Greenwald might write in this regard. 

Saletan refuses to accept that liberals are any more empathetic then conservatives -- in his view they arrive at their positions simply through "inertia" -- i.e. they just believe what all of their liberal friends believe:

When I try to understand their misperceptions of Portman, my best guess (which, to take my own point, could be wrong) is that they haven’t experienced what Portman is going through. When your parents and peers are liberal, reaching liberal conclusions is no sweat. You don’t support SNAP benefits because you know malnourished kids, any more than you support climate-change legislation because you know peasant farmers. It isn’t empathy that leads you to these conclusions. It’s inertia.

This is nonsense.  I have been a liberal for a long time as have many of the people I've known.  And let me assure you, it wasn't because back in 1980 or 1984 or 1988 all of the cool kids were doing the liberal thing and supporting food stamps.  It was because I -- like most people who hung in there during the Reagan years -- had the moral imagination to consider what life might have been like if I lost the lottery and was born poor.  It was because a study of history led me to understand how tenuous the climb to middle class status had been for so many people and how much the government giving people a hand up had meant to vast swaths of society.  I was a white male middle class kid, but I understood that the world was bigger than my tribe, a spirit that continues to animate most people on the left.  I did not grow up in an ideological household.  When I was a kid, my father voted Democratic for the most part and my mother Republican for the most part -- but they were both very devoted to overall notions of fairness.  (Neither has voted for a Republican since 1976 -- I take some of the credit.)  I took that overall spirit of fairness and constructed a political view that struck me as consistent with it -- a kind of Rawlsian view of the world long before I ever heard of John Rawls.  It wasn't inertia or any other reflexive or tribal behavior.  

I think Saletan misses the fundamental divide between right and left in considering this question.  It goes to the very heart of the world view that makes someone choose either poltical direction. 

I am glad Rob Portman came around on this issue.  I am hardly going to beat him up for doing so.  But this "personal" type politics has grave limitations -- particularly in a world in which politicians are increasingly drawn from the ranks of the well to do.  It does, however, speak to the power of individuals "coming out," a phenomenon that has truly been world changing for people who need their politics personalized. 

 

 

Happy St. Paddy's Day and Open Thread

"James Connolly" - Black 47

(I think everyone celebrated last night -- okay I went to the movies -- but this is officially the day -- well for another 21 minutes.) 

- Ross Douthat is under the impression that the scorn that many feel for the Catholic Church and its hierarchy in light of the multi-decade, world wide child molestation scandal is simply a bit of schadenfreude, people feeling good about the hypocrisy of the order of the red beanie.  This take on one of the world's great criminal conspiracies shows just how much Douthat, despite being an incessantly moralizing douche bag in all matters sexual, has no sense of the enormity of the crimes committed here.  Schadenfreude is what we heathens might feel about Jimmy Swaggart or David Vitter or Larry Craig, etc., etc.  Folly among consenting hypocrites is, in the end, amusing.  But what has gone on in the Catholic Church is a horrific abuse of power, the use of the sacred for the most profane ends, followed by a cover up on a cosmic scale.  These are serious crimes against the very vulnerable, not some sort of faux pas that exposes the church to ridicule.  People should go to jail for this shit, many more than have to date.  Guys like Cardinal Mahoney and Cardinal Law belong in prison cells for what they have done and what they have allowed to happen.  This is not a PR problem Ross.  It's not even just a sin.  It's a series of serious felonies, the likes of which would have brought massive prosecutorial and police effort if perpetuated by anyone but the privileged princes of the church.  Fuck 'em.

Join in the fray my friends.