Cogitamus

Thursday Quick Hits and Open Thread

 

"Street Hassle" - Lou Reed (with a cameo appearance by Bruce Springsteen at around the 9 minute mark).  A suite containing multitudes from the perpetual, pansexual pagan party.

- As Michael Kinsley long ago observed, in Washington a gaffe is saying what you really think -- I am much more bemused than outraged about Mark Halperin accusing Obama of acting like a "dick" at his press conference.  I am overjoyed that this charlatan has revealed himself to be the right wing cheerleader you always knew he was.  I don't give a shit if MSNBC fires him or gives him a promotion -- just as long as we can stop pretending that this asshole is some sort of wise, neutral observer.  Halperin has always been a mouthpiece for Republican talking points and received Broderesque wisdom.  The fact that he is treated as a proverbial Very Serious Person in Washington (and believe me he is) is indicative of the sickness of the Village.  (A journalist friend of mine was astonished that I described him as an idiot -- she insisted "he's very smart" -- I was equally insistent that there was simply no objective evidence to actually suggest that this was true.)  And you see Joe Scarborough, another right wing extremist who gets to masquerade as a moderate in the kabuki theater of Washington, direct his outrage to the proper person, i.e. the producer who failed to bleep out Halperin's heartfelt sentiment.  "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain . . . ."  [I think if I had to pick the five people in DC I would most like to smack in a bar room, Halperin would make my list -- he's just so manifestly irritating.]

- This made me laugh.  Crazy birthers at the Wing Nut Daily and Jerome Corsi (Clifford Irving without the chops or the integrity) are suing Esquire for a satirical article they wrote about Corsi's ridiculous birther tome being pulled upon the release of Obama's birth certificate. (Naturally the book had not been pulled -- WND and Corsi doubled down and claimed Obama had foisted a forgery upon the public.)  The complaint has been filed by publicity hound Larry Klayman in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (not the first venue I would have chosen) and is pending before Judge Rosemary Collyer, a pretty well-respected Republican appointee.  If I were Esquire I would most certainly ask for a jury trial -- I am pretty sure that birthers are going to have a tough time with a DC jury.  Not that I expect Collyer to let it go that far.  I would imagine a rather quick grant of summary judgment will be the outcome here.

- All at sea -- This article gives you a pretty good sense of the ideological incoherence at the heart of populist right wingers, exemplified here by Mike Huckabee, during a cruise of evangelical right wingers up to Alaska.  Huckabee expresses sympathy with the plight of those left behind in the current economy, but what are his policy prescriptions -- abolishing the 16th Amendment and with it, the federal income tax, eliminate the gift, estate, and capital gains taxes, privatize Medicare and replace it with a voucher system, and rely for all federal revenue on a 23% consumption tax.  It boggles the mind just how regressive the Huckabee program is and what an unmitigated disaster it would prove to be for his adherents, people who strike me as sad exemplars of small-mindedness, romantic nostalgia, religious fanaticism, and just a little bit of racism.  As with the Ryan Medicare Plan, I long for the day where a GOP nominee actually runs on this platform.  Even with 9% unemployment Obama would win by 15-20%.    

Who have you called a dick today?

Wednesday Open Thread

 

"The Money Song" - Monty Python (featuring Eric Idle)

- Extremely good piece by Eric Alterman regarding Governor Cuomo, who has now, in the wake of the gay marriage triumph in New York, become the beau ideal of liberalism for many -- often by way of negative comparison with President Obama.   Alterman notes that one of the great advantages of say, pushing marriage equality, is that it doesn't actually cost anyone any money - indeed, it is probably an economic winner across the board in a place like New York.  In other respects, however, Cuomo is far from being the fierce fighting liberal that some would like to think and that his policies in office, at this early point, have been extremely solicitous of New York's ultra-wealthy (many of whom are also big supporters of marriage equality).  As we have discussed here on innumerable occasions, I am a huge supporter of marriage equality as well, but still remain convinced that being a person of the left means being a proponent of economic justice, workers' rights, a more robust social safety net, and a vibrant public sector, in addition to being a supporter of fundamental freedoms embodied in things like marriage equality and reproductive rights.   

- Sarah Palin pops by Iowa.   One wonders how long the grifter can continue this political striptease.  I get the sense that the entry by Bachmann into the race has got to be a bit annoying for her -- she really is used to being the belle of the lunatic ball and I think enjoys making starbursts appear in the eyes of the faithful.  Essentially she faces a kind of business decision -- is the grifting helped or hurt by a presidential run.  I have always thought that she would run because of the need to cash in while she still can.  There has to be a limit (I think) on how long a former half-term governor can continue to get the absurd amount of press attention that she does if she is not ever going to hold office again.  (Although there is the Gingrich example to counter my thinking -- that asshat hasn't held office in twelve years and managed to command a great deal of attention until such time as he declared, whereupon he crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.)

- Neil helpfully linked to this article regarding a full-on wingnut screed against the marriage equality law just passed in New York, which announces that the law will lead to a "perpetual pansexual pagan party," which, if true, may in fact make Andrew Cuomo the next president of the United States -- possibly by acclimation.  The aforementioned screed, bearing the name "Entitlement Sex" (also a winning platform me thinks) is worth a look to give you a sense of where marriage eqquality opponents are coming from -- it's not a pretty place.

- Really good news from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit today upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate provision, a 2-1 decision that included a concurrence by former Scalia law clerk Jeffrey Sutton. 

- Things I did not know category -- I'm reading a new history on World War II called The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts.  He notes in the book that in 1943 the United States was producing 83% of the world's oil.  That's kind of hard to imagine now. although it provides an insight into they way the U.S. developed in the post-war period. 

- Oh, and one last thing, here's Bruce Springsteen's eulogy for Clarence Clemons, which is just perfect. From its description it leads me to believe that the Big Man would have been at home at the perpetual pansexual pagan party.     

Leave a comment if you can break away from your own perpetual pansexual pagan party.

 

Today's GOP in a Nutshell

From Good Morning America (h/t Benen):

Stephanopoulos: In your announcement you said 'my voice is part of a movement to take back our country.' From whom?

Bachmann: Well, from the people all across the nation.

Who was it who defined a gaffe as saying the truth that you weren't supposed to say?

Shorter John Roberts -- It's Money that Matters

 

"It's Money that Matters" - Randy Newman

Newman provides a pithy, musical summing up of Chief Justice John Roberts' overarching judicial philosophy as exemplified in his latest travesty, a decision that an Arizona law providing for public campaign financing in elections to candidates who agree to certain limitations of their contributions -- these public funds, however, may be increased in proportion to the amount of expenditures of privately financed candidates.  The Roberts Court, by a familiar 5-4 vote, found that this violates the First Amendment, because -- well, just because you smarty pantses.  Because it undercuts the right of rich people and corporations to spend money without rebuttal in campaigns.   Well, the Court phrased it as "substantially burden[ing] protected free speech" -- that is to say allowing a rebuttal to speech procured the proper way, i.e. by begging from your economic betters, or best yet, being one of the betters to begin with -- something the Court finds serves "no compelling state interest."  Because moderating the influence of the rich could never really be a compelling interest of the state.

It's an amazing read.  And, of course, all four Democratic appointees to the Court joined in Justice Kagan's well written dissent, which notes, among other things, that the statute doesn't prohibit speech at all, it merely subsidizes additional speech.  (At this point I will once again remind everyone that 1) it really matters if the next person to be picking Supreme Court justices is Barack Obama or Mitt Romney -- let me repeat, it really, really matters in the actually existing world; and 2) Glenn Greenwald absolutely trashed Kagan, who, it turns out, is really quite a good, solid, liberal justice as I had predicted -- my point -- don't listen to the FDL and Greenwald types about these things -- it's high fucking stakes poker and these guys don't have a clue.)

This Supreme Court is really threatening to become on a par with its 1890s and 1930s predecessors (featuring the fabled "Four Horsemen of Reaction" whom I believe would be in a battle for the throne when faced with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito).

And yes, I repeat the point about the Supreme Court and elections a lot.  I don't expect that this will change over the next 18 months    

Sunday Open Thread

 

"Armagideon Time" - The Clash

Working on a piece about labor militancy, but am more in the mood to go out and enjoy the weather and possibly catch a movie or read the Sunday Times for a while.

Will get it done by tonight though. 

How goes it with you?

Great News from New York (and Open Thread)

 

"William, It Was Really Nothing" -  The Smiths

Exciting news from New York.  I am sorry I didn't hear the news until later -- I was actually having dinner with friends in Union Square and would have been thrilled to join the crowd over at the Stonewall Inn.

The momentum for marriage equality continues to gain strength.  I am disappointed that there is not a move to put the matter on the ballot again in California in 2012.  I think it would pass, something I believe would be better than winning a court fight.  Not that I care about the path to equality -- we should take whatever roads will get us there.  But there would be something deeply satisfying about winning a referendum in the Country's most populous state.  I'd like to see another attempt in Maine as well.  Hopefully, the matter will be taken up again in Maryland during the next legislative session.

What I can envision within the next couple of years is marriage equality becoming the law in a contiguous area from Maine all the way down the east cost to Maryland.  We should then focus on making it a reality on the west coast, while also trying to establish a toehold in the Great Lakes region -- I think Illinois would be the logical target, followed perhaps by Minnesota and Wisconsin.  If this happens and the court's reject DOMA, you will have effectively nationalized gay marriage without the need to fight it out in all fifty states. 

At some point not too far into the future, I think the opponents of gay marriage will be seen generally as the embarrassing figures that they really are.  They lack any coherent argument against equality, falling back over and over again on this completely nonsensical claim that it will somehow hurt heterosexual marriage.  But what this is really about is a last ditch effort by the opponents of marriage equality (and Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal) to maintain a broad-based cultural condemnation against homosexuality.  And in this they are doomed to fail.

Their efforts should also be seen as part of a broader assault on sexual freedom.  In this way, the current attacks on abortion and reproductive right and the attacks on gay rights are strangely of a piece.  These are assaults on human freedom generally, on the right of every person to attain happiness and autonomy in the sexual sphere.   

What are you doing to destroy the culture today?

Friday Evening Open Thread

Here's some very mellow Dylan to start you into your weekend:

 

 

I was looking for an example to use in a specification I was writing - a state that, for the purposes of my rather abstruse work, would have enough complications to highlight the assorted procedures I'd laid out, but not so many complications as to make the example too much of a pain in the neck to follow along with.

Mississippi turned out to be particularly good, so I've had this song going through my head all day, and I thought you all wouldn't mind if I shared it.

Taking the kid to the local Farmer's Market tonight, then a family get-together tomorrow evening - my niece turns 21!  Hard to believe that little kid I remember from what seems like not that long ago is now all grown up.

What's on tap for your weekend?

Yglesias Wrong, Quick Hits and Open Thread

 

"The Boy in the Bubble" - Paul Simon

- I haven't picked on Yglesias in a while -- days at least -- so it's time.  Sometimes being a Harvard-educated philosophy major can evidently be an impediment to understanding simple concepts. Matt wonders what the American Federation of Teachers and the Washington Teachers Union have to show for playing a major role in defeating Adrian Fenty's reelection effort, and in the process sending Michelle Rhee packing.  Here's what they did Matt -- they beat Adrian Fenty and they sent Michelle Rhee packing.  Seriously, Yglesias argues that policy continuity between Fenty's successor, Vincent Gray, and Rhee's successor, Kaya Henderson, essentially render the defeat and departure of Fenty and Rhee moot.  This is so wrong on so many levels.  First, the unions showed their raw power in dealing with adversaries.  Fenty was, in the eyes of many, a rising star and a model to emulate.  Now he's a one term memory.  Rhee was even more of a national star, hyped endlessly by large swaths of the mainstream media -- she is left to make her millions and become another right wing grifter -- but she isn't going to be bothering WTU members anymore.  If he thinks this lesson has been lost on Gray and Henderson he really doesn't understand very basic political realities.  Moreover, he disregards the importance of personalities in these matters.  Fenty was impossibly arrogant and autocratic -- he listened to almost no one and had little regard for the opinion of those who he viewed as impediments to his goals. He's gone.   Rhee was worse.  The contract to which Matt refers to positively was largely negotiated by Henderson, not Rhee, who (reliable sources advise me) sat off by herself while the real deal was cut -- ever convinced of her own rectitude and the fact that she was the only one "looking out for the children."  She was an insufferable adversary,  She's gone.  Mission accomplished, case closed.

- The other day, I charitably described Dan Choi as a political novice.  This tweet makes me think that perhaps political idiot would have been a better choice of words. 

- I liked this piece by Tom Geoghegan in the Times the other day, arguing not just to preserve Social Security but to improve it.  I think this kind of bolder approach, in an era in which retirement savings look to be ever more inadequate, is the right one. 

- Broder parody alert - Yes, Thomas Friedman is back with the "what we really need is a third party of the radical center" to cure what ails us.  And what ails us is not that one of our parties is composed of vicious and stupid people who want to impose a vicious and stupid agenda upon us -- no, it is the stubborn refusal of the Democrats to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Jesus.   The money quote:

Maybe it is just my friends, but I find more and more people completely disgusted by this situation and looking for a serious Third Party candidate who could run in 2012 and deliver the shock therapy to the corrupt, encrusted, two-party duopoly now running the show in America

Yes, Tom, it is just you and your friends.  And you've written this exact column before.  Many times.  And you were wrong -- just like always.

Who are you making fun of today?

A Win for the Good Guys

I wanted to add my voice to those expressing pleasure at Chris Hayes being given a chance to host his own show on MSNBC.  Not only am I pleased, but a bit astonished -- Chris is just far smarter and far more to the left than just about anyone I could ever imagine being given such a chance.  The only comparable figure I can think of is Rachel Maddow, who shares with Chris a combination of intellect, charm, civility, and clarity of thought and expression, that is generally absent from cable news blathering.

I met Chris and had a chance to talk to him extensively at a fund raiser for Tom Geoghegan when Geoghegan made his somewhat Quixotic run to fill Rahm Emanuel's congressional seat.  Since then I've run into him a few times and have always come away impressed with both his very quick mind and his immense affableness.  You get the sense of someone who is really well grounded despite having had a pretty meteoric rise. 

When he began doing guest hosting duties on MSNBC I was really struck by how comfortable he seemed on camera -- not necessarily a skill I would expect from a guy who has basically been a pretty serious print journalist from a young age.  But it turns out that the focus of his college experience was really in the theater -- writing, directing, and acting in plays.  This seems to have given him a kind of polish that one wouldn't necessarily expect from a novice. 

I think the theater experience has stood him in good stead in another way too and that is his ability to describe political and economic matters in the form of compelling narratives.  I watched him make a presentation at Netroots last year and was really struck at his abilities at communicating with the audience, his skill at weaving cogent political stories, and at encouraging people to think of things slightly differently. 

In fact, in reading the linked interview with him, I was very impressed with his description of the conventions of political reporting in Washington, something that is a bit of a recurring theme on this blog, and one which invites a great deal of analysis and despair in lefty blog circles, often of the economic conspiracy variety, i.e. journalists write and say that which their corporate masters permit.  This latter point of view has always struck me as reductive and simplistic, even if it is undeniable that the economic and political reporting in the U.S. is reflexively uncritical of most aspects of later day capitalism.  In the linked interview with Hayes, he posits an insight about the nature of this reporting that is at once pithy and deadly accurate:

There are certain genre constraints of the murder mystery, of the detective novel, of the romance novel, of the sitcom.  Everything around covering politics of Washington has heavy genre restraints.  It has its own version of the laugh track, of the two sets, of the wacky neighbor . . . one of the most radical acts that you can do as a journalist right now -- the most important act you can do as a journalist -- is the simple act of explanation.  And you can see this on a micro scale in financial regulation on the Hill, where its like the complexity and the arcane details are friends of the entrenched powers.

These insights -- regarding the genre-constrained nature of most political reporting, the failure of reporters to take on the job of explaining things to the public, and the role of complexity in preserving power -- represent a kind of clarity of thinking that Hayes brings to his task.  That, and a willingness to go after received wisdom in his polite but determined fashion.

I think his addition to the airwaves will be an enormously positive thing.  And I'd just like to add, that if he needs a guy to speak to the issues of working people, I'm available.    

 

Summer Reading List and First Day of Summer Open Thread

 

"Summer Song" - YACHT

Happy first day of summer.

I feel like I've said enough on matters political for a day or so -- and I feel like I've seen a lot of these ten greatest novels, ten greatest non-fiction books types of things and thought I'd take a stab.  Except I can't imagine being preumptious enough to proclaim a list the ten best anything -- and I didn't want to limit myself to just ten -- I would have to be a lot better read and be more convinced of the catholic nature of my tastes before I'd go that far.  I probably can't even go so far as to say these are my fifteen favorite novels -- more likely that they are my fifteen favorite novels sitting here tonight and trying to remember, from afar, everything that I've read.

I have noticed a bit of an evolution of taste over time -- my earlier favorites tend to be "novel of ideas" kind of books, rarely American in origin (which raises the whole issue of translations, which I am going to ignore, because it's midnight and I really don't have the strength).  In my latter years, I've grown to appreciate the old white men of American letters and their writings about more down to earth concerns. I have a huge bias towards modernity.  I am very impatient with the pre-Twentieth Century use of language.  

There is an embarrassing absence of female writers on the list.  I never think of myself as the least bit sexist, but the guy who reads the novels for me is suspect.   

1.  "The Fall" - Albert Camus. 

2.  "The Stranger" - Albert Camus.  

3.  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" - Milan Kundera

4.  "Midnight's Children" - Salman Rushdie

5.  "Conversations in the Cathedral" - Mario Vargas Llosa

6.  "American Pastoral" - Phillip Roth

7.  "Rabbit Run" - John Updike

8.  "Independence Day" - Richard Ford

9.  "Infinite Jest" - David Foster Wallace

10."Atomized" (a/k/a "The Elementary Particles") - Michel Houellbecq

11.  "The World as I Found It" - Bruce Duffy  

12.  "The Man Without Qualities" - Robert Musil

13.  "The Trial" - Franz Kafka

14.  "The Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck

15.  "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" - Milan Kundera

16.  "2666" - Roberto Bolano

I was going to try and write something about each of the books, but grew tired and lazy.  But feel free to give your own lists and the reasons for them if you feel like it.  Or to call me a big sexist wanker.  Or anything else that's on your minds.

Update:  Doing this from memory is a bit perilous -- I left out 2666 by Roberto Bolano, which is one of the greatest novels I have ever read. 

Enjoy your solstice.

Happy Father's Day Open Thread

 

"Adam Raised a Cain" - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Keeping in Springsteen mode here as he is the poet laureate of father/son angst.  Something that, fortunately, I have not experienced on either end of the father and son divide, but have seen enough of it over the years with others.

I'm up in NYC, but hoping to seem my own lad in an hour or two when his train gets in.  He's then heading off to see his girlfriend -- they grow up very fast I'm afraid.

What's going on with all of you?  

Clarence Clemons R.I.P.

 

"Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Very sorry to hear about the death of Clarence Clemons, the long-time saxophone player for the E Street Band.  Although you would occasionally run into musical snobs who would disparage his playing, those of us who love Springsteen found his sound and his presence perfect.  One of the things that set the E Street Band apart when it emerged on the scene in the mid-70s was the expansiveness of its sound -- with sax, piano, organ, occasional accordions and mandolins -- it had a very different feel then the overwhelmingly guitar driven bands of the time, reflecting Springsteen's ecumenical tastes and love of old soul music.

The Clemons/Springsteen brotherhood -- played out in sweaty, marathon shows before the faithful -- also had great symbolic resonance in a very racially troubled time.  The mid to late 70s was a time of enormous disappointment for many people of good faith -- the white backlash against affirmative action and forced busing engendered an era of political ugliness and retrenchment that could not help but provoke deep doubt in people who felt that the civil rights movement was going to usher in a very different world.

Watching Springsteen and Clemons together gave you a feeling of hope in those difficult days.  This iconic album cover said more about that feeling than mere words can convey:

 

Their friendship and partnership endured for forty years and gave a whole lot of happiness to a huge number of people. 

We're sorry to see him go.

Clowns to the Left of Me (and Open Thread)

 

"Stuck in the Middle with You" - Stealers Wheel

Articles like this make me happy that I missed Netroots this year.  It's a description of a panel consisting of Jane Hamsher, John Aravosis, Dan Choi, and Felipe Matos denouncing the Obama Administration for being insufficiently zealous in its support for gay rights and immigration reform.  In light of what has gone on since the 2010 elections -- a plethora of anti-immigrant and anti-gay initiatives in places where the Republicans have gained control of state governments -- I find this a bit astonishing.  Not to mention the fact that Republicans stand in the way of gay marriage legalization in New York, Maryland, and New Jersey, as well as DOMA repeal.  It also seems more than likely that the Republican Platform and any successful presidential nominee will call for restoration of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  But heaven forbid that practical concerns should stand in the way of our righteous panel members. 

Now Choi and Matos can be excused for this foolishness I suppose, given the fact they are both political novices and deeply personally affected by these issues.  Hamsher and Aravosis, on the other hand, should know better, but that would require them to possess intellects larger than their egos.  Aravosis is quoted as saying "I would probably vote for the president in the end, but I'd also do everything I can to shame him" and that "we always say we simply expected what he promised - the White House would rather not engage at all, at least with the big stuff.  We were told that he would be a fierce advocate, and he's not been fierce at all, and not much of an advocate."

So the President who systematically laid the ground work to get the military brass to endorse Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal and helped steer it thorough a Senate filibuster, who had his Administration withdraw from legal defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (signed into law by Jane's good friend Bill Clinton) in courts across America, and who has undertaken a variety of other gay-friendly initiatives is not worthy of support.  The excuse now seems to be Obama's failure to embrace gay marriage -- now I think the time has come for this step -- but the fact is Obama never promised any such thing and he has more than followed through on the things that he promised.  Both Obama and Hillary Clinton made a tactical error in the way they positioned themselves on gay marriage in 2008 -- neither wanted to embrace something that they saw as a political loser, after the issue was viewed as being instrumental in helping George Bush beat John Kerry in Ohio.  But rather than stake out the position that "marriage is between a man and woman" they would have been better off characterizing it as an issue to be determined by the states.  I know, not exactly profiles in courage stuff, but a dodge with a whole lot more wiggle room to adjust to changed circumstances.  And circumstances have changed, with lightning speed really.

It seems pretty clear to me that Obama is moving toward a pro-marriage equality stance.  In the meantime, though, he has done more than enough to earn the spirited support of the gay rights community.  However, even if you don't agree, a quick look at where the Republicans are on these issues and it seems to me that this should generate a sense of compelling urgency. Instead, you have someone like Aravosis pretending that there is some realistic tactical alternative to going all in for Obama and the Democrats.  It's as if in 1964, the leaders of the civil rights movement were disappointed because LBJ had delivered only the Civil Rights Act and not the Voting Rights Act, and so, even in the face of Goldwater, decided to grudgingly and half-heartedly back Johnson, all the while diminishing the enthusiasm to vote of their followers.

As for immigration reform, I think a similar analysis follows.  As I have written before, I believe that the Obama Administration made a major tactical mistake in not trying to get immigration reform through early in his term.  But there were a whole lot of competing priorities at the time and, sadly, a lot of overconfidence in the ability to get things done in a methodical fashion.  Again, however, one simply has to look at the agenda of the other side -- see, e.g. Arizona and Alabama, among others -- to know that there is no choice here but to back the President and the Democrats to the fullest, because there is literally no alternative.

Most importantly, Hispanics, unlike gays, have sheer numbers in strategically located states that if they will get out and vote in proportion to their numbers in the population, they can, in the end, force the Republicans to change their positions or face annihilation.  If Hispanic voters turned out to vote in huge numbers in 2012 in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina -- and they voted 70-80% Democratic, they would deliver a landslide to Obama and serve notice to the Republican Party that they bash immigrants at their peril.  If they do so to the point where Texas appears to be in imminent future play, a state that the Republicans simply cannot win the presidency without, then some fairly prompt reassessment of Hispanic-bashing (it may take a couple of election cycles) by Republicans will have to happen. 

In other words, with enough patience and a strategic campaign aimed at a huge and concentrated vote for the Democrats, immigration-reform advocates hold the cards to bring about what they want.  

Pro marriage equality advocates are on the cusp of a similar demographic wave -- in this case, in the person of younger voters, who overwhelmingly favor their position.  If these young people can be motivated to go out and vote in large numbers and to support pro-gay rights Democrats in force, marriage equality will sooner, rather than later, be the law in a large number of states.

If, however, people like our holier than thou panelists, convince Hispanics and young people and other progressives that there is no real point in backing Obama and other Democrats, then we can revel in our purity while watching a repeat of what is going on in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, et al. on a national scale.   

Update: One of the FDLers does a parody of what I am talking about.  And the comments -- Sweet Jesus are these people stupid.  Jane should be very proud of the fucking loony bin she's created over there. 

 

Our Stunted Punditry and Open Thread

 

"Cry Me a River" - Joe Cocker (with Leon Russell on piano)

I was reflecting a little more on my exchange with Glenn Kessler, which made me want to explain a bit more why I become so intensely angry with these folks, to the point where I wish bad things upon them, which is not really a lofty emotion.

I think what triggers this sort of thing in me is the feeling that so many members of the elite journalism crew have no sense of empathy with those less fortunate than them.  The members of Krugman's "pain caucus" live in a world of vicious abstraction, where a bit of "sacrifice" -- by which they mean the loss of social support for retirement and the payment of medical bills -- is somehow ennobling and character building.

Now people with this world view generally have an inability to actually imagine what it is like to be the people who can't pay their medical bills or are looking at an old age (or childhood) mired in poverty.  Why this is so I don't really understand -- but it seems to me to be undeniably true.  And this means that they can view something like the Ryan Plan as though it were like the country joining one of those hard core exercise programs where they whip you into shape in six weeks.  It's an incredibly juvenile world view, but it is one that persists in much of the centrist and right wing media.  

Sometimes the cure for this affliction is to actually endure the experience of ill health or economic insecurity -- a kind of learned empathy via harsh experience.  Otherwise, these people remain smug and comfortable, inured to the pain that their advocacy, including perpetuating false equivalencies, brings about.

And so, in my crude  way, I was hoping Mr. Kessler and others similarly situated would have an experience where they can contemplate what it means to be in ill health and lack the means to be cured, to know the indignity of one's body betraying you, and to grapple with what that means while also having to worry about keeping a roof over one's head.  I am an incredibly privileged person and, as a result, have had the luxury of my family having access to the finest medical care around -- but I try never to forget that privilege and that, but for it, my life and the lives of those I hold dear could be markedly different,   

It would be nice if our opinion shapers could try the same exercise.

     

Fact Checking the Fact Checkers

So I see that TPM, too, has called Glenn Kessler on his shoddy "fact checking" as well -- albeit with less invective and far fewer obscenities. 

Kessler and I had a little exchange via email in which he chided me for my incivility, while steadfastly failing to address the issue that I raised, seeking instead to validate his work because he 1) criticizes Republicans too; and 2) other "fact checkers" have reached similar conclusions to him.  It's almost a parody of Village responses -- hurt feelings and validation via "plague on both your houses" bipartisanship:

Kessler to me:

You know, the world would be a better place if people didn't feel free to send such invective to people they have never met. I don't wish you ill and always am interested to hear the opinions of others.  I am skeptical of all claims made by Republicans and Democrats, so if you are looking for a partisan viewpoint you will have to go someplace else.  I simply don't take BS from either side.

I have been equally tough on Republicans regarding Medicare and the Ryan plan. I did not view this as a debate over semantics but whether the DSCC was misleading people, which it was.

Some examples of my critiques of Republicans on this issue: (omitted by me - I don't care.)

SC to Kessler:

I wished you ill because I am incredibly angry about what I see as your own untruthfulness here and the fact that you 1) obviously have not had the painful experience that would be necessary for you to derive suitable wisdom about the health care system and private insurance versus a single payer system; and 2) because you, and people in your position, are responsible for allowing the kind of harmful misinformation about the Ryan Plan -- claiming that it is not ending Medicare as we know it -- to be given the veneer of respectability.  What you say, sadly, will influence many people's notions of what is true here even though you don't seem to have the least bit of an idea what you are talking about. 
 
I am not interested in a partisan viewpoint -- I am interested in an accurate characterization of what Ryan proposes and why it is, in fact, the elimination of Medicare in any meaningful sense.
 
I am not interested in what you have said about the Republicans distortions of what the Affordable Care Act does to Medicare.  You are operating from the typical false equivalency position that is characteristic of many Post writers -- the notion that the truth always lies in between and that by splitting the middle and declaring a plague on both houses, you somehow arrive at a greater truth.  But that just isn't the case -- what it allows is for debate to be continually dragged rightward as there is really no limit to what the Republican Party will proffer as the truth.
 
So again, how can you claim that Ryan's Plan does not eliminate Medicare?  You can keep the name, but so fundamentally alter the program as to render it unrecognizable.  A single payer, universal program providing health care coverage is simply not the same thing -- by a long shot -- of a needs based voucher program that requires individuals to purchase private insurance from for-profit companies.  It just isn't.  And this is what Ryan proposes.  
 
I believe that what you are doing here is reflecting the Washington Post's multiple institutional biases on this issue.  Those are: 1) that Medicare is unsustainable and needs to be fundamentally changed; 2) that the voting public will generally not like such changes because they are hopelessly unrealistic about what can be afforded; 3) that the Ryan Plan is a courageous and admirable approach to resolving the problems that the Post sees; and 4) therefore, completely accurate, but populist oriented critiques of the Ryan Plan must be attacked as demagoguery because if they prove politically successful, attempts at reform will be off the table.  
 
You are certainly free to make that case.  I don't agree, but at least it would be accurate. 
 
But instead you chose to give credibility to the defenders of the Ryan Plan by mischaracterizing the Democratic attacks on the Plan as lies.  Your "four Pinocchios" rating will most assuredly be used for partisan purposes -- surely, something you understand.  And your rating doesn't withstand any kind of reasonable scrutiny.
 
Again, all rancor aside, explain to me how it is that the Ryan Plan is not really the end of Medicare for those of us under age 55.  Because I don't think you can do it.

Kessler to SC:

I tried to be civil and engage in a conversation but you clearly have made presumptions about what kind of life experiences I have had, of which you have no knowledge, and also have a mistaken impression about how The Washington Post institutionally operates. I am sure it makes no difference to you, but the conclusion I reached is similar to the conclusions reached by the fact checkers at PolitiFact and factcheck.org. I frankly only care about the facts and have no interest in how partisans might or might not use the material in my column. I have had a hope that my column might elevate the conversation in Washington but sadly your unwarranted and extreme invective suggests that is not the case.

SC to Kessler:

People politer than I am have reached the same conclusion without invective.
 
Perhaps you will see fit to respond to them.(Citing above TPM article).

Kessler to SC:

if you actually read that article, you will see they had the decency to contact me, politely, and my response is in there.

SC to Kessler:

I read the article and didn't think your response was adequate -- the issue is not whether the Ryan Plan would end all health care support for seniors -- it will, in the future, supply inadequate and ever diminishing support for some senior citizens to purchase insurance on the open market.

This is not the same thing as Medicare and, indeed, represents the effective end of Medicare. 

And that is not even getting into what happens to support for Medicare by those of us who, like me, have paid huge sums of money into the program and are being told we will never receive its benefits.  How long do you think an entitlement program can retain necessary political support when it has been effectively limited to those lucky enough to have reached a certain age?  

But putting that aside, you are really not answering the question of how it is "a lie" -- a pretty strong statement -- to characterize the Ryan Plan as ending Medicare. 

And no more was heard from him.

 

Now truth be told, I probably should have been more civil in my approach, but am in the midst of a couple of different family medical emergencies that have lessened my patience with respect to this kind of claptrap.  But Mr. Kessler's all important feelings aside, he is absolutely and completely wrong and demonstrates that fact with his defensive and evasive responses. 

 

I feel like this all gets back to where I started with blogging -- this overwhelming sense that we so need a better media than we have and the people in these positions are virtually incapable of thinking critically or courageously about these problems.  Instead, they feel a desperate need to engage in the equivalence game and to be able to argue from authority when called on it.  They are worse than useless.

 

Tuesday Open Thread

 

"Now It's On" - Grandaddy

- Well the Wisconsin Supreme Court, on the strength of the one vote margin they maintained followng the recent election, upheld Scott Walker's union busting travesty.  So now it's on kids.  This summer's recall elections for state senators in America's Dairyland loom as part of a life or death struggle for public employees unions in Wisconsin.  Any of you who can spare a few bucks should think about donating to Act Blue to support the recall efforts. 

- When the fact checkers lie - I find it incredibly frustrating when the individuals designated by major media outlets to be fact checkers turn out themselves to be partisan apologists and distorters of truth.  Not shockingly, Glen Kessler, the man to whom the Washington Post turns to for such determinations does not like Democrats claiming that the Ryan Plan is the end of Medicare.  He gives such claims "four Pinocchios" meaning that they are big and blatant lies.  Which, when you think about it, is a bit astonishing.  Medicare is a single payer system that guarantees the payment of a certain percentage of health claims incurred by those over 65 or disabled and covers everyone eligible regardless of income.  The Ryan Plan, on the other hand, ends the government paying health claims for those who would otherwise have been eligible for Medicare in the future, requires future senior citizens to go out and purchase private insurance, offers premium support to some of those future senior citizens, but ties that premium support not to medical inflation but rather to general increases in CPI.  In other words, the Ryan Plan may be called Medicare, but is utterly unrecognizable when compared to Medicare as it exists today.  The tell with Kessler is that he embraces the use of the term "Mediscare" to describe Democratic attacks on the Ryan plan.  And this reflects more on the nature of Mr. Kessler's ideological view and his employer's policy preferences rather than the veracity of the Democratic claims, which, it seems to me, are unassailable.

Naturally, I had to send Mr. Kessler one of my always temperate emails -- I just can't help myself:

Dear Mr. Kessler:

So you are doubling down and giving four Pinocchios to claims that -- characterized by you as "Mediscare" tactics -- the Ryan Plan ends Medicare.  How in God's name can you make this preposterous claim?  Medicare is a single payer system that guarantees senior citizens payment of their health care claims.  The Ryan plan requires future seniors to go out in the private market and obtain personal health insurance with ever diminishing premium support -- on an income-based basis.  You can call this whatever the f*ck you want, but it is not Medicare and it is not even close to being Medicare. 

You are an utter and shameless whore -- or criminally ignorant -- or, given that you work for America's foremost rag, you could well be both.

 

At any rate, it is you who lacks fundamental honesty here -- not the Democrats.

 

I hope you spend your golden years ill and uninsured and suffering, you smug, grotesque piece of crap.  And that your family suffers illness that breaks you financially and spiritually.

 

You deserve that fate in spades for giving cover to these lying bastards in the Republican party.

 

Yours in Christ.

Sir Charles 

 

What say ye?

 

  

Monday Culture War Musings (Old and New) and Open Thread

 

"Chrystalised" - The XX

- Art and the Censorious (Part 1) - I was reading short excerpts that the Atlantic has posted of reviews of historically important books dating back to the 1860s.  It is pretty amazing to see the kind of bourgeois priggishness that, for instance, dismissed Victor Hugo's Les Miserables as a book of likely "pernicious influence" that will "weaken the abhorrence of crime" and thereby "do infinitely more harm than good."  The reviewer, the improbably named Edwin Percy Whipple, goes on to note that "[t]he bigotries of virtue are better than the charities of vice."  It's really a tour de force of Zhdanovism, art as reviewed by a small town banker - I've linked to the full review to make sure that the context is fair and believe me, it is.  But the Les Miserables excerpt is a model of artistic broad-mindedness compared to the review of Leaves of Grass, which is filled with a kind of venemous loathing one rarely sees in a book review.  It is worth quoting at length:

But multitudinousness cannot make the spectacle of his morbidness any more acceptable. It cannot palliate the gross impropriety of which he is guilty, in publishing what is unfit for repetition; an impropriety doubled by the retention of this disgusting stuff in a new edition issued after many years, during which the author has had ample opportunity to free himself from his youthful crudities. Every one imbued with the "primal sanities" must be revolted by this offense, and protest against it. Fortunately, however, the chief damage done will be to the author himself, who thus dishonors his own physical nature; for imperfect though the race is, it still remains so much purer than the stained and distorted reflection of its animalism in Leaves of Grass, that the book cannot attain to any very wide influence.

It's pretty amazing stuff.  In fairness, the full review is at least willing to concede that Whitman has some merit as an artist, but the almost physical sense of revulsion conveyed in the review is really something to behold from this historic distance.  

- Art and the Censorious (Part 2) - Roy Edroso, who really is the master of lampooning the Zhdanovism of the right in this country, has an amusing bit about Ben Shapiro's disappointment that Ferris Bueller's Day Off missed the chance to be John Hughes's "Road to Serfdom."  Really, one shakes one's head -- what kind of pod people are these and in what Potemkin village were they raised?  It's a goddamned John Hughes high school comedy -- I'm embarrassed even describing it as art.  But these folks, who have all the cool of Richard Nixon walking down a beach in black shoes and socks, just can't get past the fact that they will never understand rebelliousness of even the white bread Hughes variety because they have the souls of slaves and slave masters -- not free people.

- Bring back the 50s, man - And then, just when you think our right wing culture warriors couldn't be more deluded, we have the announcement today by Catholic University President John Garvey, in the Wall Street Journal no less, that CUA will be returning to single sex dormitories.  Garvey advocates for the idea that colleges must promote virtue and that the "two most serious ethical challenges college students face are binge drinking and the culture of hooking up."  Shocking really that college students are drinking and having sex.  And really, once the sexes are separated, these two things will cease to happen.  There is something so pathetic about this misguided attempt to roll back the clock -- I don't expect any first rate universities to follow suit, but I guess CUA may be able to attract a certain self-selected group of uncomfortable kids to this vision.  I am imagining boys (and I do mean boys) dorms with the likes of Ross Douthat and Ben Shapiro and girl dorms loaded with little (metaphorically speaking) Katherine Jean Lopezes and Maggie Gallaghers. 

How are you protecting your virtue today?

  

The Banality of Friedman and Sunday Open Thread

 

"Should be Gone" - The Feelies

New Feelies, sounding just like themselves.  And that's a good thing.

I don't think I've trashed Thomas Friedman for weeks, but he's back again with a combination of his keen grasp of the obvious style, coupled with his annoying predilection to blame unemployment on a skills mismatch in the current workforce -- that is to say unemployment is the fault of the unemployed -- with a side of regulatory uncertainty -- unemployment is a little bit the fault of partisan rancor.  Unemployment could not possibly be the fault of a precipitous decline in demand brought about by the business class that created the international economy of Friedman's technocratic dreams.

I am somewhat in awe of the way that Friedman can take a perfectly obvious point -- hey, you know what?  There's a lot of mortgages underwater in this country and that creates some problems in the economy -- and lay it out there like he just split the fucking atom or cured cancer: 

If you want to understand why the unemployment rate has been stubbornly lodged around 9 percent, a good place to start is with the eye-popping mortgage statistics released last week by the economic analysis firm CoreLogic: 38 percent of homeowners with second mortgages are underwater. They borrowed against the value of their homes, and they now owe more than their houses are worth. The total number of underwater homeowners in America, with first and second mortgages, is a stunning 22.7 percent. In Nevada alone, 63 percent of all mortgaged properties are worth less than the owners paid; in Arizona 50 percent, Florida 46 percent, Michigan 36 percent and California 31 percent.

When people are so underwater, they find it hard to move to take new jobs, they find it hard to borrow or raise cash for education or start-ups, and banks become even more cautious about lending. Until we as a country figure out how to divvy up these losses on housing and let these markets clear and move on, they will be a serious drag on employment.

No shit Tom.  Have you ever read another columnist at your paper named Paul Krugman?  A pretty smart fellow.  He's only been writing about this problem for the last four years.  Friedman then skips to his next hobby horse -- skills shortages --without addressing solutions to the mortgage crisis.  And for this, this asshole gets paid stupendous sums of money.  No discussion of mortgage reformation through bankruptcy, or the possible use of eminent domain to leverage loan modifications, or anything else that actually directly deals with this cancer on the economy.  Nada.

No, the real problem in the flat and hot world that is "Friedonia" is that workers don't have the skills that employers need, hence they remain jobless.  I've got to say, as someone who works for electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, elevator constructors, brick and stone masons, tile setters, carpenters, welders of almost every kind, iron worker, sheet metal workers, etc., all skilled crafts experiencing somewhere between 20 and 50% unemployment right now, I find this sort of thing preposterous and offensive.  My guys don't have work because no one is building a fucking thing.  They have all graduated from multi-year apprenticeship programs -- most have additional journeymen training on top of this -- and they perform work which is technically, mentally, and physically challenging -- indeed a great deal more challenging than sitting at a keyboard and banging out bullshit for large sums of money.  Sadly the market for bullshit is, appropriately enough, always a bull market, but the skills of building tradesmen are dependent on an economy in which real shit, rather than bullshit, is being built.

Americans need jobs first and foremost -- new skills are great and all that -- but absent an economy in which there is a commitment to full employment policies, new skills will be just as ephemeral as the old.

And to really make it a first class Friedman column, i.e. worthless in its own mushy, inoffensive (to most) way, he concludes with a little bit of high Broderism.  The economy will be fine just as soon as bi-partisan leadership can remove uncertainty by behaving, well, bipartisanly.  The notion that businesses are gearing their hiring decisions around how well Barack Obama and John Boehner get along on the golf course is just classically stupid.  Businesses want to know if people will buy what they produce and whether demand for their products will grow -- a fact that tends to be contingent upon consumers having jobs and feeling secure in them.  The Friedmanesque world of unfettered free trade and endlessly rapacious capital is actually not that kind of world, but don't expect him to notice.

Jump in with anything else that's on your minds.          

Friday Musings and Open Thread

 

"Pigs on the Wing" - Pink Floyd

- On the Villagers and our surreal discourse - Eric Alterman has an extremely good piece in the Nation about the extraordinary distance between the problems actually plaguing our nation and the issues that the dominant news media choose to opine upon, focusing in particular of aspects of the Washington Post Op-Ed page, that are laughably characterized on the Post web site as "left-leaning."  It's pretty devastating:

[o]ur democracy’s leadership is paralyzed, either unable or unwilling to confront what are the most pressing problems of the day. A kind of cognitive dissonance has fallen over Washington, one where the widely recognized crises of ongoing high unemployment and a corroded (if not wholly corrupted) mortgage market are now considered acceptable to ignore. Instead, ephemeral and long-term issues like the latest sex scandal and the federal budget deficit soak up all the attention. 

Aiding and abetting this political negligence is a Washington press corps obsessed with covering meaningless personal dalliances and punitive long-term entitlement cuts. But to really ask ourselves how we got here, to a point where the political debate has shifted so far away from what needs to be done now, there is perhaps no better place to start than to take a brief travelogue through the Washington Post’s supposedly left-leaning op-ed columns. 

He then proceeds to dismantle the wishful thinking of Ruth Marcus, the non-thinking of Robert Samuelson and Richard Cohen, and the shallow thinking of Dana Milbank.  It's well worth a read.  To Alterman's further credit, he recently received a 2011 Mirror Award for his "Think Again" on line pieces and while accepting the award made a plea to others in the media to stop treating Fox as a legitimate news operation.  Of course, it sounds like it fell on deaf and hostile ears, but I do think it is important to try.  Anyway, it's well worth a read.

- Krugman has a good piece dealing with the political power/interest group politics that are the complement to the Alterman piece.  Economic policy in this country remains stubbornly in the hands of the "rentier" class and its sympathizers in the media, what Krugman dubs the "Pain Caucus."  At least I understand why the rentiers want to inflict pain on the masses -- it puts money in their pockets.  Why the likes of David Brooks and Ruth Marcus think that such pain is good policy remains a mystery to me. 

- Krugman also has a piece on his blog describing the bounce back in the fortunes of state pension plans.  He echos what I have been saying in previous posts that the crisis in state pension plans is almost wholly a product of the incredibly bad equity markets during the Bush years and that, as those markets recover, the plans will be in much better shape.  One thing I don't agree with in the article to which Krugman cites is the notion that a plan being 80% funded is the equivalent to being fully funded.  This seems inarguable -- a pension plan is fully funded when it is 100% funded.  And it must be remembered that funding is an annual snap shot of a plan's health -- there can be other demographic and employment factors that can have bearing on how healthy a plan is.  Two pension plans can both be 80% funded and have radically different prospects depending on these other factors.  Despite the improved picture in public plans, I tend to believe that changes along the lines of those proposed by Andrew Cuomo (although not the twelve year vesting) make sense even though public employees unions won't like them.  I am opposed to gutting pensions, and am a huge supporter of keeping defined benefit plans for employees -- but I think it is unreasonable in light of these funding issues to have no changes to future benefits.

- David Brooks inexplicably devotes an entire column to letting us know that he is familiar with the novels of Anthony Trollope and has access to the CliffsNotes.  Oh, and a final sentence that lets us know he doesn't approve of Anthony Weiner.

- The New York Post, on the other hand, knows how to handle a wiener -- their headline today: "Weiner to Stick it Out."  Of course the Post has a lot of experience these matters.  Its founder Alexander Hamilton was the subject of the original sex scandal in American politics, when he sent a quill pen drawing of his junk to a married admirer.   (Okay, that's not exactly what happened -- but someone should remind David Brooks over on his fainting couch that the father of the Constitution and the architect of the modern American economy fell prey to the charms of a married 23-year old in 1791 and yet the Republic still lives.)

What else is happening out there?

   

Thursday Open Thread

 

"A New Deal" - Tim Larson and the Owner/Operators

- Bread and Circuses - E.J. Dionne notes today that our politics (and the coverage of it) has reached a certain level of decadence that he finds disturbing.  I am wondering where the fuck he has been for the last fifteen years or so -- dating back roughly to the Republican "revolution" and the rise of talk radio and then cable blather.  The ship hit the iceberg long, long ago -- somehow folks like E.J. (who always seems a very decent fellow) didn't seem to notice up in the first class cabins that we were taking on water.  We remain in the midst of what has been a truly devastating economic meltdown for vast swaths of the American populace, we are involved in three separate wars, and the world's most turbulent region is in the midst of unprecedented upheaval -- and a narcissistic little exercise by a Democratic House backbencher is all that cable news wants to cover.  Predictable and depressing.

What's bugging you?    

Doubling Down - The Only Thing They Know How to Do

 

"Tumbling Dice" - Rolling Stones

(Alright it's a dice song, not a card song, but you get the idea.  And a chance to play something I love.)

Because of the overwhelming electoral support that the Ryan bill to abolish Medicare has generated, some Republicans are looking to privatize Social Security, no doubt a likely crowd-pleaser as well.  Congressman Pete Sessions is proposing that Americans be allowed to opt out of Social Security and put their FICA payroll deductions instead into a "S.A.F.E Account" -- that's "Savings Account For Every American."  Sessions has stated that

"Our nation's Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate, and failure to implement immediate reforms endangers the ability of Americans to plan for their retirement with the options and certainty they deserve," Sessions said of the plan, according to The Hill. "To simply maintain the status quo would weaken American competitiveness by adding more unsustainable debt and insolvent entitlements to our economy when we can least afford it."

There seems to be an unlimited amount of bullshit being shoveled out these days by Republicans and their tools in the media.  Social Security is not insolvent, it is not adding to the country's debt, it will be decades before the trust fund is depleted, and with minor tweaks, it never will be.  Even if nothing were done to change any aspect of Social Security and the pessimistic projections of its critics came to pass, it would still be able to pay 75 to 80% of promised, wage-adjusted benefits -- benefits that would be far better than those that will be realized through some sort of half-assed individual account model.  More importantly, if people begin diverting contributions from Social Security it will actually create the crisis that Sessions claims to be trying to avoid, since Social Security is essentially an income transfer program.  The dollars I put in today are paying the benefits that my parents are receiving.  If working people start putting their money into individual accounts, what is going to be the income source for paying current amounts due.

This is a way to create a problem where none exists. 

But I say go for it Congressman Sessions -- by all means, get this bill put to a vote in the House as quickly as possible.  Given the meager 70 to 75% approval rating that Social Security enjoys, a move to abolish it will really appeal to that well-honed, hard core 25% for which the Republican Party is aiming.  And your fellow Republican congressmen who have recorded votes to abolish Medicare and Social Security -- well I am sure that they can count on the enthusiastic support of that 25% of the electorate.  And really, intensity of support is better than quantity of support any day of the week.   

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

- David Brooks has one of those infuriatingly, superficially reasonable, columns that is premised on an outlandish lie -- something of a trademark for him.  Brooks starts with the premise that Medicare as we know it is doomed, describes the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to it -- Democrats will rely on centralized groups of experts to rationally allocate care, while Republicans will allow a thousand flowers to bloom via the miracle of the private insurance market, and asserts that the latter approach is far more likely to produce savings, because as we all know the market is miraculous and centralized economies of scale have never been achieved in health care -- well, except in every other industrialized nation that provides national health care to its citizens without a for-profit insurance sector.  See e.g.  Sweet fucking Jesus.  But here is what Brooks claims:  "The fact is, there is no dispositive empirical proof about which method is best — the centralized technocratic one or the decentralized market-based one."  So the fact that every country with a national health care system spends substantially less of its GDP on health care while providing universal coverage is not empirical proof.  Brooks also claims that "Medicare has tried to control costs centrally for decades with terrible results."  But again, this is untrue -- Medicare, despite insuring the highest cost population in the U.S. has seen its costs increase at lower rates than health care costs in the private sector, which has failed terribly in controlling costs for the past three decades.  Why do Republicans suppose that it will be any more effective going forward?  Where is the empirical evidence for that proposition?

Update:  Here is more recent, more comprehensive empirical proof courtesy of the Kaiser Foundation (h/t to Ezra) that David Brooks is utterly full of crap. 

- USA Today, in the meantime, gets into the inside the Beltway deficit hysteria, throwing out a slew of out of context and underexplained statistics designed to make ordinary Americans think that the country is bankrupt and that they will all be on the hook for some $500,000 in national debt.  It's really a shameful, economically illiterate, and hysterical piece -- one that spreads disinformation rather than enlightenment. I particularly enjoy any article that refers to United States government bonds as I.O.U.s, like it is a slip of paper slid into the petty cash drawer as opposed to obligations that the U.S. has been meeting to investors since the Republic was founded. 

Monday Open Thread

 

"Feel Good, Inc." - Gorillaz 

A little change of pace.

In honor of the lad graduating from high school yesterday.  My more melacholy choice could not be embedded (I hate that).  So I opted for a different direction.

What's going on out there? 

So Much Betrayal and Buffoonery

 

"The Ghost of Tom Joad" - Bruce Springsteen with Tom Morello

A killer version of a song that has been much on my mind the past couple of days.

I think it is hard to overstate the degree to which the vast majority of the American public has been betrayed by its ruling elite, by which I mean not only the political powers that be -- basically all Republicans and too many Democrats -- but also the business and media elites, all of whom have failed to fulfill their obligations to the society writ large -- none of them have done their jobs with even the most basic competence or with much integrity.  I watch in despair as the hoped for recovery seems to be fizzling, while the basic problem of too little demand and the dislocations associated with deleveraging and the real estate bubble drag on for a third year. 

But, of course, in many ways the public has earned this betrayal through its own ignorance and apathy -- its own greed and misguided sense of the world. 

At some point the President has to decide if he is going to continue to passively hope for luck -- that the May jobs figures were just an aberration and that the recovery will continue slowly but steadily.  I think the better bet though is to take stock of the present situation -- especially if it persists with next month's numbers and consider a plan to tackle joblessness, even a plan that is rejected, as it surely will be by the Republican House.  It is time to further explore drawing lines in the sand -- first Medicare and now jobs.  I would propose a very straightforward WPA type program to put people to work and dare the Republicans to reject it.  I actually don't think that it is that difficult a call to make.

Embracing austerity, possibly defaulting on the debt, and threatening to cut social programs at this time, as the GOP is doing, is the course of callous madmen -- it is as good a time as any to highlight the madness and the meanness and to just say no.   

Be prepared to pin this on the Republicans if they move ahead and try and blow up the economy, which they likely will.  Our opponents do not care about the consequences of their actions -- but we've got to make sure that the public understands the game that they are playing.  

Weekend Open Thread: I've Got the Horse Right Here

Celebrating Sarah Palin's alternative history of Paul Revere's ride with:

a) "I've got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere"

 

and b) the Harpo Marx version of Paul Revere's ride from Duck Soup (starting at about the 6:30 mark- embedding disabled, alas):

This is an open thread.  Have a great weekend!