Cogitamus

There's a Simple Solution For That, Reince. But You Aren't Interested.

"They don't want this [unemployment insurance extension] to pass. What they want to do is ... a campaign issue, this sort of rich versus poor, the same old thing they can do, and avoid Obamacare," said Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Reince.  Dude.

You say the Dems don't want this UI extension to pass?  You don't want them to be able to play this 'rich versus poor' card?

I've got an idea.  Why doesn't your party just vote for the UI extension?  If the Dems don't want it to pass, because they'd rather have the campaign issue than to pass the extension, then that'll call their bluff.  They'll be pretty much forced to go along with it.  Issue gone.  Poof!

And if you really want to undercut them on the whole rich v. poor thing, your party could follow that up by voting to restore food stamp funding levels to what they were last summer, and maybe even pass a minimum wage hike as icing on the cake. 

After that, it would be next to impossible for the Dems to frame the next election as being about rich versus poor.  Nothing to it - the easiest slam dunk in the world!

Of course, the real problem is that pretty much the entire GOP would almost rather pour gasoline over themselves and light a match than to lift a finger to help people who are struggling to get by.  So there's zero likelihood that they'll take advantage of this easy opportunity to deny this issue to the Dems.  Which is unfortunate, because the world would be a much better place if they'd do so.

Open thread.

Billionaire Home Depot Founder Says Jesus Is Alienating The Rich

(A too-easy parody of this news item.  All I can figure is they must read the Bible in Latin at this guy's parish, assuming he actually goes to church.)

Billionaire Home Depot founder Ken Langone has a warning for Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Christian Trinity.

A major Republican donor, Langone told CNBC in a story published online Monday that wealthy people such as himself might stop giving to charity if Jesus continues to make statements criticizing rich people and income inequality.

Langone described the Lord's comments about rich people being unlikely to enter the Kingdom of God as "exclusionary" statements that may make some of the rich "incapable of feeling compassion for the poor."

Langone, who is leading an effort to raise money for the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan said he relayed these concerns to Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York. Specifically, Langone said he told the church leader he spoke to a donor who could give millions of dollars to the cathedral project but was worried about Jesus' "exclusionary" remarks.

"I've told the cardinal, 'Your Eminence, this is one more hurdle I hope we don't have to deal with. Jesus needs to be careful about generalities. Rich people in one country don't act the same as rich people in another country,'" said Langone.  "Maybe over in Palestine, the rich people there would have a harder time entering the kingdom of God than a camel would have to try to get through the eye of a needle.  But applying that to rich people everywhere...Jesus needs to watch what he says."

CNBC also spoke to Dolan, who said he told Langone the unnamed donor's concerns seemed based on "a misunderstanding of the Lord's message."

"Jesus loves poor people. He also loves rich people.' ... So I said, 'Ken, thanks for bringing it to my attention. We've gotta correct to make sure this gentleman understands the Gospel message properly.' And then I think he's gonna say, 'Oh, OK. If that's the case, count me in for St. Patrick's Cathedral,'" Dolan said.

New Year's Day Open Thread

Happy New Year, everyone!  Sorry for my absence in December; it was a bear of a month, both at work and at home.  But with any luck, 2014 should be better.  

We stayed up until about 10:30 with the 6 year old, eating snack food and watching episodes of Gilligan's Island on DVD, then called it a night.  How did you spend your evening?

I am going to do my best to resurrect this blog this month.  It's been hard lately because of the aforementioned work and home demands.  Plus the net-nanny at work still keeps blocking this blog (and only this blog), which makes it hard to keep track of what's going on.  But I'm gonna try, if any of you all are still around and paying attention.  I expect to do a mix of mostly short quick-reaction Atrios-y sort of posts, with some longer ones mixed in.  We'll see if that actually happens.

Anyhow, this is an open thread.  What's up with you folks?

Thanksgiving

As always, I've got much to be thankful for at this time of year.  My wife and I are healthy, we have good jobs that pay well and keep us challenged, and we've got family, friends, and a great kid who we love more than we can say.

But there's a reason it's called Thanksgiving.  My wife and I know we aren't solely responsible for our good fortune.  We didn't build this life all by ourselves.  We've had the usual mix of good and bad decisions, good and bad luck.  We've benefited from good public schools and subsidized higher education, not to mention fortuitous choices of parents.  The live we have didn't have to be anywhere near as good, or as prosperous, as it's turned out to be.  We know how lucky we are, and we're thankful.

And once you appreciate that your good fortune wasn't simply a natural result of your sterling character, wise choices, and responsible actions, the natural consequence is some compassion for those whose lives haven't turned out so well.  To me, that's the message of the words that Stephen Foster wrote, an even century before I was born.

So the near-complete absence of compassion on the part of the Republican Party these days - the "if you don't work, you don't eat" logic behind devastating cuts to food stamps, either oblivious to or uncaring that there simply aren't enough jobs out there, and that too many of those jobs don't pay enough to feed one's family, is morally incomprehensible - and appalling - to me.  The vast majority of these people consider themselves to be Christians.  I don't know how that works, because if there was one sin Jesus condemned repeatedly, it wasn't homosexuality or abortion or any of those.  It was hardness of heart.  And these people have that quality in abundance.

 I don't really think there's anything that can be done for people like that.  The only answer for our nation is to demonstrate that we're a better country than that by defeating them politically, by marginalizing these alleged human beings so that they can never again deny things like food and medical care to people on the basis of a morally and intellectually warped ideology.

Well, time for something a bit more cheerful for the day.  Like they say on the classic rock stations, there are lots of Christmas songs, but only one Thanksgiving song.  I'm not tired of it yet.

 

Sunday Night Open Thread

So on a wretchedly cold night here, I am sitting watching in dismay as the Patriots are getting destroyed in even more wretched weather up in Massachusetts.  They are supposed to thrive in this weather -- not fumble the ball five times in less than twenty minutes.  Ugly.

Update: Well thank God for having to play the full sixty minutes.  It's a nice looking comeback at this point.  Still a lot of time left, but at least it's not going to be a humiliating loss. 

- I was struck once again by the reflexively negative mainstream media reaction to the Democrats having the temerity to thwart the abuse of the filibuster by the Republicans.  It's become virtually a kind of self-parody -- they concede that the Republicans have engaged in unprecedented obdurate behavior, but any sort of tough response to that -- as during the debt ceiling fight -- is painted as equally, if not more, unreasonable.  Republican extemism must be tolerated and Republican threats of retaliation must be seen as both reasonable and potent.  Democrats, on the other hand, must be willing victims and never resort to punching the bully in the nose.  That's so uncivil.

- This is incredibly disappointing behavior by Chuck Shumer.  The idea that the standoff with Iran may be resolved peacefully and successfully should be a feather in the cap of both President Obama and Secretary Kerry.  You would think that they could count on the loyalty of one of the top Democrats in the Senate to support their efforts.  You'd also think loyalty to the U.S. would trump loyalty to another country.  Yeah, I said that and I mean it.  The misguided allegiance to Israel's right wing government by its dupes in the U.S. is really troubling. 

- Who's missed John Derbyshire?  He's back and better than ever.

Open thread.

  

50 Years Plus One Day: Time To Move On

Like a number of you, I was old enough to remember where I was and what I was doing when the news came that President Kennedy was assassinated.  I was in my fifth-grade class at Hollin Hills Elementary School, and they turned on the TV that they normally only used for educational TV and Mercury missions.  I remember that it was a grey Friday here in the DC area, very much like yesterday, actually.

The memory of JFK has taken on an outsized role in American current events during the half-century since.  Candidates are compared to him, especially those capable of inspiring rhetoric (not naming any names), conspiracy theorists won't ever let drop their theories about his death, and the anniversary of his death is noted in the media each year, not just on the round-number anniversaries.

But it's time to move on.  JFK, for all the inspiration he gave many Americans, was not a particularly consequential President, especially when compared to his successor.  And if he hadn't been shot, he'd probably be dead anyway: he'd be 96 if he lived. Most of the country doesn't know where they were when JFK was shot, because most Americans are younger than 52 or so, which is about the youngest you could be and still remember any of that.  Only those of us of a certain age remember, and maybe it's time for us to stop bothering everyone else with our recollections.

Rest in peace, JFK.  And so long.

Open thread.

He Emerges From Hiding

So, yes I'm still alive.  Sorry for being so inconstant.

I've been grappling with being incredibly uninspired by the political environment and bored with pretty much everyting I have to say. 

I started blogging six years ago and was filled with ideas, energy, and anger, potent fuels for writing.  I loved every minute of it -- the chance to vent, the satisfaction of expressing something aptly, and the solidarity and camaraderie of the community.  I was obsessive about writing, posting as much as I could, checking in all the time, reading every comment, responding to as many as I could, especially points I liked or with which I disagreed, trying to facilitate dialogue.  It completely captivated me for a good long while.

Since the 2012 election ended the state  of politics has been pretty obvious and not much likely to change in any fundamental way for a really long time.  At the same time, I've picked up a new client that has me traveling almost every week, I am assuming responsibility for another one (on top of my existing load), and undertaking more business and management tasks at my law firm.  It's required a ton of energy, a commodity I find to be a bit scarcer than I'd like it to be. I've also been trying to take care of myself a bit -- two hospitalizations for chest pains in three and a half years was a little scary -- so I finally decided in the spring to get back in the gym and shed a few pounds.  I've been very faithful for the last six months but that again too depletes the reserves of time and energy.  (Okay, that's a lot of excuses.)

I've been contemplating going on formal hiatus for a period of time, but I hate like hell to desert this community.  I kicked this around with a couple of you offline and decided that I am going to shoot to post at least once a week -- probably on Sunday.  I appreciate your patience and hope you hang in there with me.

Oh, and consider this, and all subsequent posts, an open thread.

 

Lou Reed R.I.P.

 

"Dime Store Mystery" - Lou Reed

I was strangely shocked to awake this morning to hear that Lou Reed was dead at the age of 71.  It seems more shocking in a way that he lived so long I suppose.  But nonetheless, he seemed like a guy who likely still had more life and art left in him.

Like a lot of people in my age cohort, I first became aware of him through the Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Transformer albums, neither of which was necessarily representative of his most compelling work.  From there, though, I learned of the Velvets and what seemed to a suburban teenager to be a strange and dark world.  I remember hearing Sister Ray for the first time and being struck by its audaciousness.  In the wasteland of mid-70s rock, this was revelatory stuff.

I didn't see Reed perform until 1989 on the New York tour and that performance was a bit of a mixed bag.  The venue -- the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore -- was not conducive to the kind of gritty music that he made and there was a sense of distance in the performance.  Many years later -- and I'm so old I can't tell you when it was -- I had the pleasure of seeing him at the 9:30 Club in DC where he featured a lot of the V.U. songs, including a deeply moving "Pale Blue Eyes," performing with a really tight band featuring Fernando Saunders on bass.  He seemed -- dare I say it -- rather happy, reveling in the crowd's affection, playing brilliant guitar riffs, enjoying his band mates, and, one got the sense, rather proud of the songs.  It was a good night for everyone.

The last time I saw him was a couple of years ago, not in concert, but amusingly enough, walking out of the terrier exhibition at the Westminster Dog Show.  I think I gave him a slightly wide eyed glance as he walked toward me and he looked vaguely uncomfortable.  I said, "hey, how are you" and he nodded and walked on.  (If I had real poise, I would have said, "what did you think of the Kerry Blue Terrier -- I think he got robbed.") 

Reed was an uneven songwriter, a limited singer, but when he was on he was about as good as it gets.  Oh, and, to my ear anyway, he was a really compelling guitarist with great rhythmic riffs and stinging leads.  As Roy notes in his appreciation, much of what is admirable in Reed as an artist is his willingness -- which I think he shares with Bob Dylan and Neil Young -- to make a fool of himself, to take risks, and the way that he wielded his persona to his advantage, rather than be dragged down by it.  Sorry to see him go.   

A friend of mine just speculated that Lou's last words were: "Keith Richards lives."

 

Disaster Averted -- for Three Months -- and Open Thread

I am happy to report that my predictions of disaster have proven to be wrong.  Mitch McConnell -- who seemed to actually grasp the impending doom -- worked out something with Harry Reid that managed to garner 80 votes in the Senate -- but not the votes of Cruz, Rubio, and Paul.  Boehner folded completely and threw the Hastert Rule out the window.  Pelosi delivered her caucus unanimously, while 144 Republicans voted against it and just 87 supported it.  Paul Ryan voted against.

We get to do it again in three months.

I am pretty pleased at how the President and the Democratic leadership in the Congress conducted themselves.  They really did stand firm and did not deliver any face-saving compromise to get the Republicans back off the ledge.  Hopefully this will make the process a bit less fraught when they do it again in 90 days.

It will be interesting to see if any lessons have been learned by Republicans in this process.  I am now cautiously optimistic that we will not see a repeat in January.  The Democrats should feel pretty good about how they played their cards and should be able to do so again with greater confidence next time should the need arise.

Question: Why do the Republicans not view the huge jump in the stock market as a result of the resolution of this stale mate as indicative of the wisdom of markets in these matters?  

In other news, Corey Booker won a solid if not overwhelming victory tonight in the New Jersey special election for Senate. 

What else is happening out there?

Dangling by a Slender Thread

Yeah, I predicted that these crazy bastards in the House would do this.  And yet, somehow I can't quite believe it.  It will be interesting to see if Boehner relents at the last minute and lets the House consider whatever it is that the Senate passes.  Of course that presupposes that crazy Ted Cruz lets the Senate consider a bill under unanimous consent.  Otherwise, the Senate too will be paralyzed while the debt ceiling is breached.

As I have said many times -- and no doubt will again -- the Republican Party of today is unprecedented in post-Civil War American politics.  It is a Leninist party, with no concern for empiricism or pragmatism, but devoted instead to abstract ideology and a vicious will to power.  It is a party controlled in large part by people who hate a good chunk of American society and are utterly unmoved by its suffering.

It is going to be an interesting couple of days. 

What do you all think?   

 

 

Really Important People Saying Really Stupid Things With Real Consequences

Let's lead off with a hearty fuck-you to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy:

"Any society that relies on nine unelected judges to resolve the most serious issues of the day is not a functioning democracy," Kennedy said Thursday at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I just don't think that a democracy is responsible if it doesn't have a political, rational, respectful, decent discourse so it can solve these problems before they come to the court."

Then maybe you shouldn't go out of your way to fish for cases to grant cert. to cases that would enable you and your buddies to overturn the resolutions that the elected branches of government have already arrived at, from campaign finance and voting rights to gun control.

Kevin Drum put it nicely: "Anthony Kennedy Denounces Anthony Kennedy's Supreme Court Jurisprudence."

Second up, House Speaker John Boehner:

"I don't want the United States to default on its debt," he said. "But I'm not going to raise the debt limit without a serious conversation about dealing with problems that are driving the debt up.  It would be irresponsible of me to do this."

OK, so it would be irresponsible to raise the debt limit without having this 'serious conversation.'  And it would be irresponsible to make the U.S. default on its debt.  

Which one would be more irresponsible?  In our world, making the U.S. default on its debt would be far more irresponsible.  But in the world where Boehner and his Tea Party friends reside, apparently that choice is the less irresponsible of the two.  Even though this hostage negotiation wasn't even about our (diminishing!) budgetary problems until just a few days ago.  (Remember when it was all about Obamacare?  That's so last week.)

So John Boehner is willing to blow up the country for...whatever he thinks he can get this week.

Can't we just give each House Republican a suitcase with $10 million and a plane ticket to some country without an extradition treaty with the U.S.?

Finally, the Obama Administration.  No quotes, but they've been routinely ridiculing the notion that they have options to dispense with the debt ceiling crisis.

With the shutdown, the Administration really doesn't have much in the way of options.  If Congress doesn't appropriate money, the Administration can't spend it.  There may be some minor choices they could have made differently (I'd still like a coherent explanation of why they decided to basically shut down the Mall) but that's the level of discretion they had.

The debt ceiling is different, though.  Multiple options have been proposed that at least arguably resolve the matter.  There's the Fourteenth Amendment argument (though that may be limited to paying interest on government debt and paying off the instruments of the debt as they mature), there's the conflict-of-laws argument (that the debt ceiling will force Obama into breaking a law, and the only question is which one, so he gets to choose, so he might as well choose to violate the debt ceiling), and of course there's the trillion-dollar platinum coin, whose main problem seems to be that it sounds silly.  (Well, it does.  But if seriousness puts us in a crisis, and silliness extricates us from it, I'm all for silliness.)  

Treasury keeps saying that the Fed won't accept such a coin, though the Fed itself has been silent on the topic.  But maybe rather than heaping ridicule on all the possible options, the Administration should be making the case for all of them.  

Because the debt ceiling crisis is one that should be avoided by any legitimate means.  If you have an opportunity to rescue the hostages in a hostage situation without anyone getting killed, then you do it.  It's not about whether the Administration should throw John Boehner a lifeline; it's about the full faith and credit of the United States of America, and about the not fully known but probably severe consequences of hitting the debt limit.

And if the Administration has an 'out' in its back pocket, there's no reason to keep that fact hidden.  There's no reason to be part of threatening the nation with a major crisis if there's really not going to be one.  Just make arguments for all the Administration options, and then if Congress fails to raise the debt limit in time, the only question would be which method or rationale the President would use to dispense with the debt ceiling.  

[And just for the record, I'm not equating both sides here.  The GOP is the hostage taker.  This situation is entirely of their making.  They are the bad guys, trying to achieve a bad purpose - trying to deny to tens of millions of Americans the opportunity to buy affordable health insurance.  The Administration, by comparison, is merely failing to take advantage of its options to rescue the hostages.  It makes me bang my head against the wall, but the main thing is there shouldn't be any hostage-taking in the first place.]

Triumph of the Will

The government shutdown and possible debt limit fiasco -- I think it more likely than not that Republicans will precipitate a default -- just reinforce the difficulty I am having with grappling with the day to day of politics at this point.  I have a difficult time even going online these days and have retreated to old-fashioned things like reading books and going to movies instead.  The problem is, at least as it looks to me from here, is that there is not going to be any end to this madness any time soon.  In short, I do not see Republicans moving in meaningful ways on these kinds of issues any time soon.  Indeed, the complete and utter triumph of the nihilistic right within the GOP means that those elements within the Party who are still contesting the New Deal are going to be in the driver's seat for the foreseeable future.

Despite the fact that in the aggregate the positions they are taking are unpopular with the public, it is doubtful that there will be meaningful electoral consequences to the right for quite some time.  Nothing suggests that the Republicans will face a serious threat to their House majority in 2014 and it is quite plausible that they may take back the Senate.  I suspect that they will fall short, but gain seats, the kind of outcome that will continue to reinforce this obdurate behavior.  Should the Democrats win the presidency in 2016 -- always an uphill fight after two presidential terms -- it may prompt some sobriety in GOP circles, but I suspect that in the House that no great change will occur, even if they lose their majority, which I think remains unlikely.  The sorting of Americans into like-minded political enclaves and the increasing correlation between cultural and political identity in this country suggest to me that white rural and exurban Americans will continue to overwhelmingly back Republicans in the near term.

As a result, I don't think that we will see a truly meaningful shift in the electoral balance of power until demographic changes really take hold and new congressional districts drawn after 2020.  In the meantime, look to the right wing to try and grind down progressive opposition by using obstructionist tactics and voter suppression in an attempt to discourage political participation and the belief that politics can be a meaningful path to better the lives of ordinary people. 

In other words, I think that today just marks one in a series of likely governing crises that will become the norm over the next several years, particularly if the Democrats continue to hold the presidency.  A gutless and mentally flabby mainstream media will continue to engage in Chuck Todd-esque neutrality -- both sides are to blame -- and the disciplined minority -- however objectively crazy -- will continue to leverage the many veto points in the constitutional system to prevent effective governance, in the process proving its point about the lack of efficacy of government action.

I wish I saw some other scenario playing out, but I truly don't.  I am afraid the disaster of the 2010 mid-terms is going to live on in a way that is almost unprecedented for such a politically ephemeral and aberrant event.  

Your thoughts?  Consider this an open thread as well.  

Update: This New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza has details on the demographic data of the congresman driving the government shutdown.  To say that this is not a very representative group of reppresentatives is an understatement.

More Gun Madness and Open Thread

Sorry to be AWOL all day.  I am actually down in the Mayan Riviera in Mexico -- no hurricane here, but a pretty considerable amount of rain -- on a quick six-day vacation, so was not fully aware of the massacre at the DC Navy Yard.

It is disheartening to realize that a certain segment of the American population is simply going to prevent the enactment of any kind of meaningful control over guns and gun violence.  These people have made some sort of mad calculation that these mass casualty events are somehow acceptable.  Or at least, acceptable enough that no meaningful attempt can be made to limit access to guns.  Witness the recent recall elections in Colorado, which will no doubt further inhibit such efforts.

I am not sure where this leaves us.  I think we have to keep fighting the fight, but I have no sense of optimism about anything meaningful getting done.

Our condolences to those who lost family and friends and our best to those who were wounded. 

 

 

Monday Open Thread

- The view from my window -- well, it was last weekend while staying in NYC as part of the long way around trip to take the kid back to New Jersey for college.  I paid for the upgrade in rooms and in this instance it was well worth it.   As was going over to the U.S. Open and getting a chance to see Rafael Nadal -- newly crowned as the champion after a Monday evening final -- play in person.  What an amazing talent and competitor.  Got to see the Williams sisters play doubles as well, which was a treat.  Anyone who likes the game of tennis should try to do an early weekend pilgrimage to the Open, when there are multiple matches going on throughout the huge facility and you can leave the cavernous Ashe Stadium and find some of the world's best operating on side courts with just a few hundred people watching. 

- Syria intervention watch: So it is a little difficult for me to get a handle on the Obama Administration's strategy here.  It seems to me if the President was truly committed to a military strike he probably should have proceeded immediately without consulting Congress -- as they say, it is easier to apologize then ask permission.  But having committed -- seemingly -- to a congressional vote, what does the President do if he cannot prevail or if he loses in the House?  How does one really justify seeking congressional approval and then ignoring it?  I do not think historical precedent suggests that Obama needed congressional autorization for taking action, but a big part of me feels like it would be a positive development for the President to lose such a vote, even if the Republicans who will oppose him are acting from their own bad faith motives.   Especially when I read this kind of bullshit argument in favor of intervention.  (These WWII analogies to the Syria situation really should be against the law -- and Bill Keller is just a dim bulb.)   I think that the DC elite simply view these issues in a fashion completely differently from a war weary and skeptical (suitably) public.  Who knows, maybe Putin will save the Administration from embarrassment with his most recent diplomatic gambit. 

- This article in the Sunday Times Magazine on Rwandan ruler Paul Kagame, a man at once deeply troubling and in ways admirable, is a fascinating read. 

- And Erik Loomis has an interesting post on the 1919 Boston Police strike and the breaking of the police union by then-Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge.

What's going on with all of you? 

A Few Day-After-Labor-Day Thoughts (and Open Thread)

A few Labor Day thoughts, a day late and a dollar short:

1) It would be nice to have a party that consistently paid attention to and fought for the interests of working people, and didn't lose sight of those interests in the crush of other business.

Didn't Obama say something in his inaugural speech about increasing the minimum wage? I'm not seeing any legislation. I'm not seeing any attempt at a push for it. Instead, we're putzing around with Syria. Excuse me, but what's more important to the American people, Syria or a minimum wage increase? It needs to go up to $12 in a series of steps between now and the end of 2016.

2) It's time to widen the issues around work. While I'm not comfortable with the idea of a guarantee of full employment, I think there should be a fairly low limit on how bad it can get without an automatic response kicking in.

The Federal government should have a list of infrastructure projects, rank them by urgency and usefulness and identify them by region, and when unemployment gets as high as 7%, it should automatically borrow enough money to spend sufficiently on infrastructure projects, particularly in the high-unemployment areas of the country, until we got unemployment back down below 6%.

3) With defined-benefit pension funds getting raided everywhere you can see, and 401k's having proved largely useless, it's time to expand Social Security, not trim it. And the Social Security retirement age should be brought back down to 65; it should never have gone up.

4) Simplify and expand the 40-hour week: Everyone below 2x the median male full-time, year-round income, rounded up to the next thousand, gets time and a half for overtime. Doesn't matter if they're supervisors, professionals, or what have you. And if you make above 2x the median, and below 4x the median, you get paid for overtime at the 2x rate.

Right now, that median is $48,202, so you'd get time and a half for overtime if you made less than $97,000, and you'd get paid for overtime as if you were making $97K a year if your base salary was between $97K and $194K.

5) And make that double time after 60 hours. The more scarce your time off is, the more valuable it is to you, and the more your employer should have to pay to take it away.

6) Paid vacation and sick time: a worker should earn one day of vacation and a half-day of sick leave for every 4 weeks on the job. And just to keep it immune from full-time/part-time games, it should be calculated in terms of hours: every 40 hours worked gets you 2 hours of vacation and 1 hour of sick leave.

7) Regular schedules: this game of jerking low-wage employees' schedules around so that their hours may vary all over the place from one day to the next, and not knowing what their schedule is from one week to the next, has got to go. If the average number of hours a day an employee works is N hours, then his or her hours must fit in the same (N+2)-hour window every day, and s/he must get time and a half for any hours outside that window.

For instance, if an employee works six days a week and averages five hours a day, then the hours must fit inside the same 7-hour time period every day, e.g. from 8am to 3pm. That gives the employee some predictability, to be able to arrange for child care or take on a second job.

It upsets me that such thing don't seem to be even remotely on the Democratic Party's radar, let alone something it'll keep coming back to and fighting for until it wins them. I don't know what to do about that, but we've certainly got to do something.

Open thread.

The U.S.A. Is Our Name, Overseas Kaboom Is Our Game

Forget Syria on its own dubious merits for a moment.  The really disturbing part of our what is soon to be our latest military adventure is that we just never stop doing this.  We seem to look at the world with the attitude that we can militarily intervene anywhere and anywhen we damned well feel like it.

A short history:

During the Reagan Administration, we stationed troops in Lebanon, invaded Grenada, mined the harbors of Nicaragua, supported 'freedom fighters' such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and launched air strikes on Libya.

Bush the Elder invaded Panama and deposed Noriega, attacked Iraq to kick them out of Kuwait, and sent our troops to Somalia.

Clinton launched air strikes on Iraq in 1993, 1996, and 1998, continued Bush's Somalia mission, deployed peacekeepers to Haiti, intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo, and launched air strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Bush the Lesser invaded Iraq, where we spent a half-dozen years, and Afghanistan, where we are to this day.

Obama continued and expanded Bush's Afghanistan intervention, intervened in Libya, killed bin Laden in Pakistan, and launched drone strikes on numerous targets in Pakistan and Yemen.  And is now poised to launch air strikes on Syria.

There were good arguments for many of these interventions, and pretty lousy arguments for many of them.  We had the support of various international bodies (UN Security Council, NATO, OAS) for some of them, and for others we just went ahead without.  For some, the President got Congress' okay; for others, he didn't.

But there sure are a shitload of them, aren't there?  It's past time we started thinking about how to use troops and bombs in other countries more rarely and more wisely.  Now would be an excellent time to start.

Open thread.

50th Anniversary of March on Washington and Open Thread

 

"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" - The Roots

(Thanks to big bad wolf for pointing this clip out to me -- what a great performance.)

So tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which is typically shortened to the March on Washington.  I like the official name because it highlights the economic aspects of the civil rights struggle, and the leftward vision of those behind the March -- Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin and their great ally and benefactor, Walter Reuther, the then president of the United Auto Workers and the most powerful and visionary American labor leader of the era.  I am pleased to see that Reuther's role in the March seems to be getting more attention this year than it normally garners.     All Things Considered had two stories related to the labor movement's role in the March this evening -- one from the perspective of three Detroit natives who attended the March and one detailing the historical relationship between the civil rights and labor movements. 

The attempts to co-opt King's vision and to try and make him something other than a man of the left -- and the March as anything other than a left-liberal event -- despite how much this irritates the right wing brethren -- are ahistorical and a false narrative.  MLK was not some libertarian, but rather a social democrat, one closely allied with Reuther, the greatest American social democrat of his day.  Alas, they both left us far too soon.  One hopes that their broader vision of not only equality and opportunity, but also economic dignity and security, will experience a rebirth in the years to come. 

Update:  Harold Meyerson has an outstanding column about the motivations for the March and the emphasis on economic justice that lay at its heart.   It is well worth reading.  He stresses that the event going on today that is most evocative of the March is the one-day strike being engaged in by fast food workers in 35 cities.  (It is always worth remembering as well that Martin Luther King Jr.'s final act was in support of striking sanitation workers.  King viewed the freedom to organize as an indispensable aspect of achieving freedom and justice.)   

 

Dana Milbank Demonstrates His Worthlessness, and Open Thread

Dana Milbank is bummed because there was no defining cause for his generation, like Vietnam and civil rights were for his parents, and presumably World War II was for his grandparents.  He's "afraid that my generation will someday be called the weakest."

One, two, three: awwwwwwwwwww.

There were causes to be found.  Milbank was born in 1968.  That means for practically his entire adult life, the threat of global warming has been visibly looming.  How big a cause do you need?

It's only been in the past year or so that the tide has clearly turned in the battle for gay rights.  That one's been there his entire life, too.

Rising economic inequality.  The increasing imbalance of power between employers and workers, as union membership has cratered and legal protections of union organizing have proved worthless.  More recently, massive unemployment, the enormous expansion of the surveillance state, and the apparent ability of rich corporations to basically write their own laws and be subject to none of the legal limitations that apply to the rest of us as they dump oil in our waters and kick people out of their homes.

Causes are there in abundance.  And you, Mr. Milbank, have had a terrific platform to promote a cause or three of your choosing.

I won't speak of your generation.  But you, sir, are weak because you have chosen weakness.  So kindly STFU.

Open thread.

Why I Disagree With Paul Krugman About the Causes of Bubbles

First of all, let's get the obvious part out of the way: Krugman's a Nobel economist, and I'm just this guy, you know?  There's an awfully good chance that he's right and I'm wrong.

But if I'm wrong, I want the hole in my reasoning pointed out, because I'm not seeing one.  And one of the things you learn en route to being a mathematician (which I am) is how to go over your reasoning for holes in it, because nothing's more professionally embarrassing than claiming you've proved something when you haven't.  Not to mention, for once his reasoning's kind of weak: his argument's more "everybody says X, but here's why X is wrong.  The only other thing I can see is Y, so I think it must be Y."  But if there's Z out there also, that argument falls apart.  So here goes.

Krugman asks, "why have we been having so many bubbles" over the past 3 decades?  The answer he frequently hears is: low interest rates.  But a simple chart of interest rates over the past several decades causes that explanation to fall apart immediately: it's only been in the past few years that interest rates became significantly lower than those of the 1950s and early to mid 1960s.  If it was interest rates, where were all the bubbles back then?

Krugman says, "So what was different [about the past three decades]? The answer seems obvious: financial deregulation, including capital account liberalization. Banks were set free — and went wild, again and again."

I think there's a case for deregulation being part of the story, but not the driver of it. 

Here's what I think: it's a simple matter of supply and demand, the result of what I call TALOMSAATT - "There's A Lot Of Money Sloshing Around At The Top" - an acronym that, in my opinion, explains a hell of a lot more these days than Heinlein's TANSTAAFL ever did.

You have a lot of spare money in the hands of rich people, who want a good return on investment - ROI - on their money.

And you have less money than you should in the hands of everyone else - the people who would spend most of the money they get on goods and services, creating demand - and thereby creating investment opportunities that would have a payoff supported by that demand.

What should we expect when the money in rich peoples' bank accounts substantially outstrips opportunities to invest in new businesses (and expansions of existing ones) that consumer demand will support? 

Rich people are still going to want to find some sort of investment vehicle that will produce a decent ROI, and such vehicles will be created because there is demand for them.  But because rich people's demand for investment vehicles way overshoots demand that the rest of us are capable of generating for goods and services, a bunch of these vehicles are going to be without foundation.  There's your bubbles.  Supply and demand.  End of story.

The role played by deregulation is more one of keeping some of the bubbles from being created.  But some, like the dot-com bubble, were going to happen anyway, even if we had the regulations of 50 years ago in place.  And we'd have probably had more bubbles along the lines of stock-market bubbles under those regs, rather than bubbles based on complex financial instruments.

And the means of preventing such bubbles is simple (technically, if not politically): make sure the 99% get enough of the pie so that the 1% will have a sufficient supply of investment opportunities that can be supported by consumer demand.

Now, if an economist will stop in and explain why my simple and clear theory is clear, simple, and wrong, I'd genuinely appreciate it.  Because I don't want to convince myself of the truth of wrong things.

And who knows - maybe I'm right.

Egypt - No Good Answers

The recent coup -- yes, I boldly think it can be declared as such -- and subsequent eruption of horrifiic repressive violence by the Egyptian military strikes me as an extraordinarily destabilizing event.  The Egyptian military appears to be staking all on the destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood, a strategy that at best will lead to the kind of violence that characterized 1990s Algeria, at worst to a Syrian-style civil war played out on a stage four times larger in the epicenter of the Arab world.   Carnage and chaos seem a certainty.

Much of the discussion domestically centers on whether the U.S. should cut off aid to Egypt.  It seems to me that we must -- as a minimal gesture to decency if nothing else.  But I don't think it will make any difference or prove to be meaningful leverage in terms of promoting a peaceful end to this conflict.  Although I am sure that the Egyptian military enjoys siphoning off its billions in U.S. taxpayer-funded bribery, I suspect that in the end the money pales in comparison to the institutional imperative of re-seizing and holding power in the wake of the Morsi interregnum.  The question is how much blood will be spilled in this quest and whether this violence will spread elsewhere in a region already beset with sectarian strife. 

To top off all of this misery, the battered Egyptian economy is likely to tank further as tourism virtually ceases in response to this unrest.

As for the U.S. role in things, I remain pressimistic.  I think both the coup and the violent repression should be denounced and that aid should be cut off, but these are largely gestures -- necessary but ultimately empty.  They will not change the facts on the ground because, in the end, the United States, for all its power, is simply not central to this struggle.  It seems almost impossible to get American commentators to comprehend this fact -- that all events in the world are neither about us nor controllable by us.       

Monday Miscellany and Open Thread

 

"Bus Stop" - Fountains of Wayne"

Eerily accurate Hollies cover by FOW.  These guys are amzing mimics -- in every show I've seen they usually break out a medley of cheesy 70s hits -- Steve Miller, ELO, you name it -- and do it with uncanny note-for-note precision.

So I finally get something halfway done and Internet Explorer decides to shut down -- very aggravating.  For once I don't think I can play Typepad for my woes.

Well finally settled back in at home and work after several days on the road took me to Oakland, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Philadelphia. Bethlehem PA, Woodbridge, NJ, and back to DC.  Two coast to coast flights, about 500 miles of driving, and a train ride for good measure.  My goal this week is to not leave the DC city limits.   

- Raacists?!! We all know that is liberals who are the real racists.  Really.   (Conservatives seem to think that we liberals are actually never around living, breathing right wingers, that we are never privvy to the casual racism of the family get-together or the business meeting where these attitudes are manifested matter of factly and without the faux decorum generally demonstrated at places like NRO.) 

- Speaking of racism, I am really happy to hear that NYC's incredibly offensive stop-and-frisk policy has been held unconstitutional by a federal district judge in what sounds like an appropriately scathing ruling.  As the linked article notes, what is in many ways the most amazing thing about the policy was the unabashed ways in which Mayor Bloomberg and Chief Ray Kelly admitted to the profiling and insisted it was perfectly fine.  Bloomberg's reaction to the decision strikes me as hysterical.

- Fuck Dylan Matthews.  Erik Loomis takes the little neo-liberal turd to task.  Yeah, unions don't have a great track record on matters of policy, Dylan.  The 40 hour week, the FLSA, Social Security, pensions, health insurance, OSHA, mine safety, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid -- not a decent idea in the bunch.  Not like those well meaning geniuses at AEI.  (Were I commisar for a day, I would sentence young Matthews to a 60-hour week of laying cinder block in the DC heat at a sub-minimum wage -- he'd last about four hours.  I'm pretty confident I could outlast him even at my advanced age.)

-  I often find the New York Times treatment of women as reflected through the lives of an impossibly small elite to be deeply annoying and misleading -- you know, the old "trends" that exist in a handful of U.S. zip codes only.  Still, I thought yesterday's magazine piece looking at the lives of a small group of women who a decade ago were said to be part of a trend of accomplished women opting out of the work force and who were now trying to return to work to be worthwhile in a cautionary tale kind of fashion.  The thing that struck me was that even with all of the advantages that most of these women had in terms of education, credentials, and connections, most of them found a return to professional life to be extraordinarily difficult and characterized by much lower levels of economic attainment than once would have been possible for them.  To me, the article suggested the folly of ceasing to be an economic actor for an extended period in a society in which this is the only truly valued activity.  These women sacrificed untold career earnings, became utterly dependent on their husbands -- which was destructive to them and their marriages in a variety of ways -- and made their families more vulnerable to the vaguaries of today's economy, all the while trying to live up to some strange oppressive notion of perfect motherhood that is in many ways more stultifying and self-defeating than anything that 1950s ideal ever dished up.  There is something so disturbing about hyper-achievers reducing their talents to planning the best birthday parties, school auctions, and home renovations. 

What is going on with all of you?  Hopefully Typepad will allow you to tell me.    

 

Sunday Open Thread

 

"Places That Are Gone" - Tommy Keene

- This piece by "Bowling Alone" professor, Robert Putnam, about the marked contrast between the small Ohio town of his youth versus today, and the distinct lack of economic hope for most of its current citizens is worth a read.  Nothing revelatory I guess, but this is a case where anecdotes actually do start adding up to data.

- Speaking of which, when it comes to economics, the Washington elite, never really needs to master data or techincal knowledge.  Conventional wisdom, however, unwise, will suffice. 

- Sullivan linked to this New York times article about a commencement address by writer George Saunders emphasizing the importance of kindness -- it's a lovely speech.  I would say that if I tended to regret things in life it has less to do with failing to be kind -- although I have certainly had those moments -- and more to do with losing my temper.  As I observed to a client recently, I've never regretted not losing my temper.

Alright, need to walk Stan, pick the kid up at the airport, and collapse on the couch.

Let us all pray to the internet gods that typepad restores the comments soon.    

 

In Which I Wax Pessimistic and Open Thread

I wasn't exactly shocked by Monday's headline that four of five Americans will face economic insecurity -- defined as "a year or more of periodic unemployment, relying on government assistance such as food stamps, or making an income below 150 percent of the poverty line" -- during their lives.  But it's pretty damned depressing.

It all fits in pretty well with what has been keeping me so damned busy the last couple of weeks -- trying to help clients scramble to maintain decent wages and benefits in badly shattered labor markets while also trying to help salvage pension plans that were crushed by the market crashes of 200-02 and 2008 and the subsequent collapse of the commercial construction market.  The markets have recovered somewhat, but the wreckage remains.  I have my doubts about whether vast swaths of the construction labor market will again be capable of sustaining the kind of secure middle-class lifestyle that building trades unions were once able to assure their members.

And that is of a piece with these broader economic statistics.  There was once a multitude of paths to middle class status and security in the United States -- work in manufacturing, construction, and government service, among others, all sustained decent wages, pensions, and medical benefits.  Now, economic insecurity is a feature not a bug of American capitalism.  

All of this has been a long time in coming.  The policies of the Reagan Administration -- the promotion of unfettered markets, the tacit encouragement of union busting, and the undermining of the social safety net and the industrial economy have all been leading to this point.  The Clinton Administration did little to arrest these trends, while the second Bush Administration embraced them with a vengance. 

Still, it took a long time for the bottom to completely fall out --for social mobility to grind to a halt and for grotesque inequality to become a way of life.  I attribute that to a few things that cushioned the middle class from the stagnating or declining wages that have characterized much of the economy for the last thirty years: one, the widespread growth of two-earner families; two, a lengthy period of declining interest rates coupled with constantly expanding forms of credit; three, the rapidly rising residential real estate markets in much of the country during the 1980s and 2000s; and four, the wealth affect associated with the tremendous bull market in stocks from 1985-99.  (There was also the cold war Keynesianism of the 1980s, which was actually a saving grace for some industrial unions that would have otherwise been completely eviscerated.)   

The Great Recession exposed the degree to which this new economy was built on an illusory foundation.  Now, as the anemic recovery drags on, we get a glimpse of what the future looks like and it just isn't pretty: a capitalism committed to paying the lowest possible wages while extracing maximum profits for CEOs and shareholders, a country in which the poor stay poor, where private sector unions are all but eradicated, and where those who aren't well to do face the constant threat of poverty, where careers are extraordinarily difficult to nurture, and where part time and low wage work become a way of life for all too many.  I see few paths out of this box in the current political environment and I see little hope for meaningful change in that enviroment for many years -- probably at least until redistricting occurs in 2022.     

As the parent of a 20-year old, I wish I felt more hopeful about the economic future.  At the moment though I see nothing to suggest that good times are looming.

(Now you probably all wish I had continued to refrain from posting.)

Share your thoughts, tell me why I'm wrong.  Please. 

 

Hey sorry about comments -- not sure what is happening.  I am trying to figure out a solution.  Cursed Typepad.

 

The Joys of the New Gilded Age and Open Thread

I don't know about all of you, but I am getting sick to fucking death of the continued devaluation of labor in our society and the absurd elevation of capital.  It's really become an elite sickness in the society.  Every day it seems a new assault occurs.  If it isn't a piece on "Marketplace" bemoaning the court ruling finding abuse of unpaid internships illegal -- "but the companies are giving people so much opportunity in return for their free labor" -- it's the McDonald's budget and the twisted fucks who view it as a public service.  (Yeah I'm looking at you Jane Galt, you elongated dumbass.)

I am generally opposed to violence as a means of political expression, but Jesus there are days when I think this country would be a better a place if a few bankers were hanged on lamp posts and a couple of members of their libertarian cheeering section disemboweled in the public square.

Metaphorically of course.

Ah, I'm off on a magical mystery tour of the Old Dominion for the next three days.  It's making me cranky.  That and the eighteen hours of work this weekend -- for which, I should add gratefully, I am handsomely paid, even though I'm not a member of Big Law. 

What's up with all of you.  Sorry for the scarcity, but it's been work and house work ad nauseum.  (Time to go retrieve the laundry.)

 

Cute Dog, Horrible People, and Open Thread

Stanley claims my leg as his own. 

Way too busy to be doing this, but today's David Brooks' column was too rich not to comment.  One of my work pals lives not far from our Mr. Brooks and had told me yesterday that he saw him walking around on Sunday looking all pink and sweaty.  Anyway, he too read today's travesty and sent me the following email:

I should have punched him.  If John Ford was around, he
would have directed me to punch him. . . . right in middle of 36^th
Street, NW, right in front of my aghast wife, right in front of my awestruck
two young sons.

And then later, as he sat down in his over-air conditioned
home office and contemplated this morning’s column, an icy cold minute steak
placed strategically over the purplish lump just below his right eye (I nailed
him with a left hook you see. . . one that would have made Jack Dempsey proud),
our Grey Lady’s squat middle-aged bald social commentator may have come upon a
different conclusion:  some men have no problem crossing the threshold
after kicking the ass of the great American dweeb!

 

Really, doesn't this man have an editor?  Or a spouse he reads his column to?  Is there no thought so half-baked, so ill-conceived, that it can't make it into his column? 

- Regarding Trayvon Martin and the extraordinary ugliness shown on the right toward an unarmed teenager killed by a gun-wielding asshole, I suggest you take a look at Roy's column in the Village Voice.

- Jesus, it's like racist bonus day.   This kind of thing reads like a parody of the suspicious nature of driving, walking, breathing while black.  Richard Cohen has long been a piss-in-his-pants, fraidy cat, kind of racist -- but this is spectacular even by his dubious standards.

I have to get back to work because if I keep reading this stuff I will be drinking my lunch. 

What say you?