Saturday, March 19, 2011
Naked Capitalism Link of the Day
Today's link: An Advocate Who Scares Republicans, by Joe Nocera:
Actually, there are also a couple of good Japan links at NC, but I was impressed by how forceful Joe Nocera was in taking on the banks in this story.
To listen to the House Republicans, you’d think the financial crisis of 2008 was like that infamous season of the long-running soap opera “Dallas,” the one that turned out to be a season-long dream. Subprime mortgages? Too-big-to-fail banks? Unregulated derivatives? No problem! With the exception of their bête noire, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Republicans act as if nothing needs to be done to prevent another crisis. Indeed, they act as if the crisis never happened.Amen. How on earth can Republicans feel bad for the banks for getting what's coming to them? It's kind of like Joe Barton apoligizing to BP. It's like the Republicans watch the Simpsons version of the Republican Party and try to be more evil than that.
The home page on the House Financial Services Committee’s Web site has been turned into a screed against Dodd-Frank. Clearly, the committee is going to spend this session trying to minimize the effect of the legislation, starving agencies of the funds needed to enact the regulations mandated by the new law, for instance. In fact, that effort has already begun.
It’s not just the House Republicans either. Already the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has reverted to form, becoming once again a captive of the banks it is supposed to regulate. (It has strenuously opposed the efforts of the A.G.’s to penalize the banks and reform the mortgage modification process, for instance.) The banks themselves act as if they have a God-given right to the profit they made precrisis, and owe the country nothing for the trouble they’ve put us all through. The Justice Department has essentially given up trying to make anyone accountable for the crisis.
Actually, there are also a couple of good Japan links at NC, but I was impressed by how forceful Joe Nocera was in taking on the banks in this story.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Off to Fry Fish
One thing that makes Wisconsin great:
Fish fries are very common in the Midwestern and Northeastern regions of the United States. This is especially true for predominantly Roman Catholic communities on Fridays during Lent, when regulations calling for abstaining from most meat products are in effect. In Wisconsin, a fish fry is offered at almost all non-chain restaurants, taverns that serve food and some chain restaurants on Friday nights throughout the entire year. Going out for a Friday night fish fry is a popular year round tradition in Wisconsin, where it is common among people of any religious background. A typical Wisconsin fish fry consists of beer batter fried cod, perch, walleye, or in areas along the Mississippi River, catfish. A typical fish fry usually comes with tarter sauce, french fries, coleslaw, and bread; though baked beans are not uncommon.It made me laugh that Wendy's featured Friday Night Fish Fry on their sign in some town in Wisconsin. I also thought it was interesting that many places there featured more than one type of fish. Here it's typically just one type, generally pollock.
Ezra Klein on the Koch Brothers
They aren't puppet-masters:
The fixation on the Koch brothers is undoubtedly good for organizing — there’s a leadership vacuum in the Republican Party, which means organizers need to create foils. It’s also arguably healthy for rich guys who want to buy up the political system to face some risk of public backlash. And insofar as the Koch brothers are a symbol of the way that self-interested corporate money drives and distorts the Republican Party’s views on markets, that’s a useful dynamic to point out. But when it gets taken too far — when the Koch brothers and other players become overly causal in the way people view politics — that sort of analysis can lead to consequential errors.I agree. Sometimes it is easy to blame certain individuals, and conspiracy theories sometimes feel right. I wonder why Governor Walker and Governor Kasich seem to be playing out of the exact same playbook, and it seems odd, but I doubt that there is one guy or group behind everything. The Koch brothers have been involved in all kinds of groups, but they still won't carry the day, at least not every day.
On the left, for instance, the theory that Republicans were extremely responsive to the health-care industry was part of what led to the Obama administration’s effort to secure the support or neutrality of every major health-related interest group. Similarly, their sense that the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups could drive Republicans was important while they were constructing the stimulus. As it happened, they largely succeeded on winning industry neutrality both times, but that meant they ended up giving away a lot of good policy away in return for corporate support that led to approximately no Republican votes.
If they’d had a more realistic understanding of the Republican Party as an organization that was driven by a desire to win the next election and would thus oppose whatever Democrats offered, the policy might have ended up being better and the political strategy might have been more effective. In general, the Koch brothers are in a similar category: Influential political players court them for their money, work with them when it suits their purposes and ignore them otherwise. That makes them a lot more powerful than you or me, and certainly worthy of attention. But it doesn’t make them into a grand unified theory of conservative politics,and people should be skeptical when they’re presented as such.
Interesting Chart
Over at the Big Picture:
Also, this:
Also, this:
The first chart illustrates how QE2 flushed domestics out of Treasuries and effectively funded 63 percent of the budget deficit in Q4. The Treasury is prohibited from directly selling bonds to the central bank, but effectively finances the government through POMO.Take a look at that chart. You can pinpoint the Bush Tax Cuts. The impact of the Great Recession is amazing. The actual difference between it and the Great Depression is fiat money versus the Gold Standard. Now, will we find the limits of paper money before things pick up?
Given that a large portion of the Rest of World category are central banks recycling BOP surpluses, it’s likely that 90 percent of the U.S. budget deficit in Q4 was funded by central banks. You think this may have anything to do with what’s happening in the commodity markets? That is, the central banks’ printing presses providing the fuel for speculators?
The Economy of Japan
This is pretty thought-provoking:
Over the past week, everything seemed to converge on energy. The unrest in the Persian Gulf raised the specter of the disruption of oil supplies to the rest of the world, and an earthquake in Japan knocked out a string of nuclear reactors with potentially devastating effect. Japan depends on nuclear energy and it depends on the Persian Gulf, which is where it gets most of its oil. It was, therefore, a profoundly bad week for Japan, not only because of the extensive damage and human suffering but also because Japan was being shown that it can’t readily escape the realities of geography.The article features a lot of modern Japanese history, but this piece explains why Japanese companies manufacture almost all of their cars and parts which are sold in the US here. This is also interesting:
Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, a bit behind China now. It is also the third-largest industrial economy, behind only the United States and China. Japan’s problem is that its enormous industrial plant is built in a country almost totally devoid of mineral resources. It must import virtually all of the metals and energy that it uses to manufacture industrial products. It maintains stockpiles, but should those stockpiles be depleted and no new imports arrive, Japan stops being an industrial power.
The safety net was psychological as much as anything. The destruction of a series of nuclear reactors not only creates energy shortages and fear of radiation; it also drives home the profound and very real vulnerability underlying all of Japan’s success. Japan does not control the source of its oil, it does not control the sea lanes over which coal and other minerals travel, and it cannot be certain that its nuclear reactors will not suddenly be destroyed. To the extent that economics and politics are psychological, this is a huge blow. Japan lives in constant danger, both from nature and from geopolitics. What the earthquake drove home was just how profound and how dangerous Japan’s world is. It is difficult to imagine another industrial economy as inherently insecure as Japan’s. The earthquake will impose many economic constraints on Japan that will significantly complicate its emergence from its post-boom economy, but one important question is the impact on the political system. Since World War II, Japan has coped with its vulnerability by avoiding international entanglements and relying on its relationship with the United States. It sometimes wondered whether the United States, with its sometimes-unpredictable military operations, was more of a danger than a guarantor, but its policy remained intact.
Soybeans-the wonder beans
From the Buckeye blog:
Soybean oil is slippery stuff. Far more lubricious than petroleum oil or so says Cathy Horton, the official Ag Day entrepreneur for Director Jim Zehringer’s first official Ag Day, which was held Mar. 7 -- just a few days before the state legislature passed H.B. 89 making the following week Mar. 13-19 the state’s official Agriculture Week. Coincidentally perhaps, Gov. Kasich was giving his state of the state address May 8. Somewhere in that speech he mentioned agriculture leading the state out of the economic mire with high tech products. “This is not your father’s agriculture,” he told the group. And he said “entrepreneur” three times. I’m thinkin’ it may have been convenient for the director to celebrate Ag Day a little early. But you can never have too many Ag Days as far as I’m concerned.
Cathy Horton is well recognized by Ohio soybean groups for her work developing a soy-based lubricant to challenge WD-40 and doing it very well. Her line of 15 retail products and 45 industrial items includes both lubricants and cleaners. They are presented in recyclable aluminum containers that look like they should hold hair spray. They are sleek and professional. Most important, she says, “They are green.” Her company NuTek Green has found a real niche.
Economic growth driver: opera house?
According to this:
Modern Germans may still be harvesting significant economic benefits from extravagant opera houses built by spendthrift Baroque princes, according to a study published this month by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich.Not quite what would attract this guy.
The economists behind the study, Oliver Falck, Michael Fritsch and Stephan Heblich, argued that Baroque opera houses attract well-educated workers who prefer to live near cultural amenities. Proximity to an opera house can increase regional growth by as much as 2 percentage points, they wrote.
They concluded that political leaders should think twice before reducing culture spending.
The study by Mr. Falck and the other economists examined 29 opera houses built before 1800 or just afterward. By limiting themselves to venues constructed before the advent of the industrial revolution, the authors sought to eliminate the possibility that opera houses were a result, rather than a cause, of regional economic growth.
A Southern Accent
Tim Pawlenty is trying to fit in to the idiot wing (ok, the whole) Republican party:
On a trip to Iowa last week, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty attracted attention not for his policy positions, but for the way he was speaking. Many people thought they heard him using a southern accent. Back in Pawlenty's home state of Minnesota, an MPR News listener said when he heard a report on the Pawlenty speech on the radio, he couldn't believe who it was.It is stereotyping, but Southern accents make me think the speaker is dumb.
"I didn't understand where the accent came from," said Mike Supina, a St. Paul architect. "He sounded like he was from Arkansas."
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Happy Evacuation Day, too
From Wikipedia:
March 17 is Evacuation Day, a holiday observed in Suffolk County (which includes the city of Boston) and also by the public schools in Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. The holiday commemorates the evacuation of British forces from the city of Boston following the Siege of Boston, early in the American Revolutionary War. Schools and government offices (including some[4] Massachusetts state government offices located in Suffolk County) are closed. If March 17 falls on a weekend, schools and government offices are closed on the following Monday in observance. It is the same day as Saint Patrick's Day, a coincidence that played a role in the establishment of the holiday.
The 11-month siege of Boston ended when the Continental Army, under the command of George Washington, fortified Dorchester Heights in early March 1776 with cannons captured at Ticonderoga. British General William Howe, whose garrison and navy were threatened by these positions, was forced to decide between attack and retreat. To prevent what could have been a repeat of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Howe decided to retreat, withdrawing from Boston to Nova Scotia on March 17.For Michele Bachmann's benefit, it wasn't the evacuation of British forces from Boston, New Hampshire.
The British evacuation was Washington's first victory of the war. It was also a huge morale boost for the Thirteen Colonies, as the city where the rebellion began was the first to be liberated.
St. Patrick's Day 1988
Ronald Reagan celebrated his final St. Patrick's Day as President in Alexandria, Virginia:
Mr. Reagan spoke off the top of his head. He graciously thanked Mr. Troy for having him for lunch. He said it was his great surprise - that his advance men set it up, and he was thankful. He talked about his father, an Irishman.The Great Communicator could tell a joke.
"When I was a little boy, my father proudly told me that the Irish built the jails in this country," he said, pausing expertly, "then proceeded to fill them."
The crowd laughed heartily.
"You have to understand that for a man in my position, I'm a little leery about ethnic jokes," he said. The crowd roared. "The only ones I can tell are Irish."
He told a story about his visit to Ireland. He went to Castle Rock, the place where St. Patrick erected the first cross in Ireland.
"A young Irish guide took me to the cemetery and showed me an ancient tombstone there," he said.
"The inscription read: 'Remember me as you pass by, for as are you are so once was I, and as I am you too will be, so be content to follow me."
As Mr. Reagan paused, the crowd eagerly awaited his follow up.
"Then I looked below the inscription," he said, "where someone scratched in these words: 'To follow you I am content, I wish I knew which way you went.'"
Naked Capitalism Link of the Day
Today's link: Ron Paul's Next Committee Hearing on Inflation and Commodity Prices is 100% Gold Bug, at Rortybomb:
When it comes down to returning to the gold standard, who benefits? The answer would be gold bugs. They are the ones with gold purchased in "overvalued" dollars, so when the dollar is pegged to gold, either the dollar is devalued or gold multiplies in price by 100 fold. No wonder they think we ought to return to the gold standard.
PBR cans at the bar across the street from where I live just went from $2 to $2.50. So now would be a great time for a government panel to gather experts to discuss the relevant issues surrounding commodity inflation; what is important and not important in understanding how inflation is calculated, the ways it can bias, the relevant experiences of unorthodox monetary policies in other countries, how China and other emerging markets’ demand for commodities are effecting prices, whether we need a higher inflation target, the disinflationary impact of the foreclosure crisis, etc. etc. etc.I can still find cans of PBR for $1, so I am living in deflationary paradise. I like the idea that we need to go on the gold standard to protect the long term value of middle income savings. What middle income savings? About the only middle income savings would be home equity, and inflation increases the equity by making the amount owed smaller. Inflationary environment favors debtors, which most of America is. Deflationary environments forestall economic activity, as prices continue to fall, and wages fall too.
Now I wonder who is in charge of the committee that would hold a hearing on this? Oh I know. Ron Paul.
As part of Obama’s post-politics era, Ron Paul kicked off his first hearing into monetary policy by putting someone whose recent research was “unmasking” President Lincoln as modernity’s first dictator. That guy did not like the Federal Reserve.
So tomorrow, March 17th, 10:00am, Ron Paul is chairing “The Relationship of Monetary Policy and Rising Prices.” That page now has links to the testimony of the three witnesses and oh. my. god. This is not me cherry-picking, these are the main arguments of the panelists. All of them are gold bugs.
First up, Mr. Lewis E. Lehrman, Senior Partner, L.E. Lehrman & Co:
If the defect is inflation and an unstable dollar, what is the remedy?
A dollar convertible to gold would provide the necessary Federal Reserve discipline to secure the
long term value of middle income savings, to backstop the drive for a balanced budget. The gold
standard would terminate the world dollar standard, by prohibiting official dollar reserves, and the
special access of the government and the financial class to limitless cheap Fed and foreign credit.
When it comes down to returning to the gold standard, who benefits? The answer would be gold bugs. They are the ones with gold purchased in "overvalued" dollars, so when the dollar is pegged to gold, either the dollar is devalued or gold multiplies in price by 100 fold. No wonder they think we ought to return to the gold standard.
Wearing of the Green
Throughout Florida and Arizona, baseball goes green today, and it has nothing to do with recycling or carbon footprints. Green caps, green bases, maybe an occasional green bat donut -- and sure and begorrah to all.Update: 14 days until Opening Day
But long before St. Patrick's Day became sort of the unofficial holiday of Spring Training, even long before the Majors had their own snakes to cope with -- the Diamondbacks, of course -- there was only a former Ice Capades honcho with an eye for hoopla.
Back in 1978, March 17 around Spring Training camps was known simply as ... Friday.
Maybe Cincinnati Reds general manager Dick Wagner was bored after tooling the Big Red Machine into back-to-back World Series winners in 1975 and 1976. Maybe he grew nostalgic for the days when his gimmicks popularized the Ice Capades. Or maybe he just liked pulling a fast one.
Whatever it was, months before the Reds departed for their Spring Training camp in Tampa, Wagner had this brilliant thought. Most people struck by ingenuity would be eager to call others and share their idea, but Wagner went the other way: He kept it to himself.
The sole exception was Koch's Sporting Goods, the Reds' longtime outfitter. Wagner had the team's equipment manager, Bernie Stowe, order a roster's worth of green uniforms, with specific instructions of where and when to deliver them, under a veil of airtight secrecy.
Happy St. Patrick's Day
The Breastplate
- I arise today
- Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
- Through the belief in the threeness,
- Through confession of the oneness
- Of the Creator of Creation.
- I arise today
- Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
- Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
- Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
- Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
- I arise today
- Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
- In obedience of angels,
- In the service of archangels,
- In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
- In prayers of patriarchs,
- In predictions of prophets,
- In preaching of apostles,
- In faith of confessors,
- In innocence of holy virgins,
- In deeds of righteous men.
- I arise today
- Through the strength of heaven:
- Light of sun,
- Radiance of moon,
- Splendor of fire,
- Speed of lightning,
- Swiftness of wind,
- Depth of sea,
- Stability of earth,
- Firmness of rock.
- I arise today
- Through God's strength to pilot me:
- God's might to uphold me,
- God's wisdom to guide me,
- God's eye to look before me,
- God's ear to hear me,
- God's word to speak for me,
- God's hand to guard me,
- God's way to lie before me,
- God's shield to protect me,
- God's host to save me
- From snares of devils,
- From temptations of vices,
- From everyone who shall wish me ill,
- Afar and anear,
- Alone and in multitude.
- I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
- Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
- Against incantations of false prophets,
- Against black laws of pagandom
- Against false laws of heretics,
- Against craft of idolatry,
- Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
- Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
- Christ to shield me today
- Against poison, against burning,
- Against drowning, against wounding,
- So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
- Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
- Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
- Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
- Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
- Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
- Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
- Christ in every eye that sees me,
- Christ in every ear that hears me.
- I arise today
- Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
- Through belief in the threeness,
- Through confession of the oneness,
- Of the Creator of Creation.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
NCAA Bracket
In the East, 1st round- Ohio State, Villanova, West Virginia, Kentucky, Xavier, Syracuse, Washington, UNC
2nd round- Ohio State, Kentucky,Xavier, UNC
Regional Final- Kentucky, UNC -- Final Four Kentucky
West, 1st round- Duke, Michigan, Arizona,Oakland, Cincinnati, UConn, Penn State, San Diego St.
2nd round- Duke, Arizona, UConn, San Diego St.
Regional Final- Arizona, UConn -- Final Four UConn
Southwest, 1st round- Kansas,UNLV, Richmond, Louisville, Georgetown, St. Peters, Texas A&M, Notre Dame
2nd Round- Kansas, Louisville, Georgetown, Notre Dame
Regional final- Kansas,Georgetown--Final Four Kansas
Southeast, 1st round- Pitt, Butler,Utah St., Wisconsin, St. Johns, BYU, Michigan State, Florida
2nd round- Butler, Wisconsin,St. Johns, Florida
Regional final-Wisconsin, Florida Final Four-- Florida
Final Four-- UConn over Kentucky andKansas over Florida.
Champion- UConn
That's why I never win the pool.
2nd round- Ohio State, Kentucky,
Regional Final- Kentucky, UNC -- Final Four Kentucky
West, 1st round- Duke, Michigan, Arizona,
2nd round- Duke, Arizona, UConn, San Diego St.
Regional Final- Arizona, UConn -- Final Four UConn
Southwest, 1st round- Kansas,
2nd Round- Kansas,
Regional final- Kansas,
Southeast, 1st round- Pitt, Butler,
2nd round- Butler, Wisconsin,
Regional final-
Final Four-- UConn over Kentucky and
Champion- UConn
That's why I never win the pool.
Perverse Incentives for Republican politicians
Jonathon Bernstein on the anti-Democrat fervor in the Republican base (via the Dish):
Yes, but there's a point here. As I look around the American political system, the thing that really worries me the most isn't money in politics after Citizens United, or the dysfunctional Senate, or partisan jockeying over redistricting. No, the thing that really worries me is that I believe that the Republican Party now has stumbled into a situation in which there are strong incentives to lose elections. When Democrats win, as they did in 1992 and 2008, apparently the first reaction of a lot of people is to become very, very easy marks for "conservative" scam artists. So ratings for talk shows skyrocket, and the best-seller lists fill up with anti-Obama and anti-Clinton and anti-liberal books. There's a lot of money to be made! At least, there's a lot of money to be made if you're willing to traffic in wild rumors, apocalyptic comparisons, and extremism of all varieties. But extremism (yes, including in 1994 and 2010) doesn't help politicians get elected.I was amazed at how quickly people became obsessed with the idea of Obama as a Socialist, even before the election, but also immediately after. I love the "I want my country back" idea also. Guess what, you don't always get to run it, deal with it. After 8 years of Bush, we needed to punish the GOP. On the other hand, I would not try to recall the senators in Wisconsin, or Governor Walker. They seem to be making a lot of enemies as it is. The Republicans won in 2010, but not by a really wide margin, and with much of the Democratic base sitting at home. If they continue to side with big business in the class war against the middle class, they will be told to hit the road, and we might actually be able to begin to reverse over 30 years of policy favoring rich people and big business.
The problem, of course, is that to the extent that politicians are self-interested, they face a major incentive to join in the gravy train and cash in by appealing to those easy marks rather than try to appeal to a majority of the electorate. That breaks, or at least threatens to break, the fundamental logic that makes representative democracy work: politicians try hard to govern well because their careers depend on election. When, instead, the road to career success involves making a lot of noise, pleasing the fringe, and retiring to a comfortable gig on Fox News, then financial self-interest is going to work against satisfying constituents.
The Republican Party of Ideas
Daniel Larison responds to Pete Wehner on Larison's criticism of the current Republican party:
The Politico story on Palin quoted Pete Wehner invoking the GOP as the “party of ideas.” I argued that the modern GOP can’t seriously claim to be the “party of ideas” anymore, because it relies so heavily on slogans and talking points in lieu of policy arguments. That was my main criticism of Wehner and the others quoted in the article. My objection to Wehner’s remarks was that he was pretending that there was some great intellectual vitality in the mainstream right that Palin put in jeopardy. Naturally, he skips past all of this and notes that he started criticizing Palin in mid-2009. Fair enough. Wehner isn’t one of the latecomers to criticizing Palin to which I was referring, and I’m happy to acknowledge it. I should have been more careful before claiming that his criticism was belated. I wrote, “Their concern would be interesting if it weren’t so belated and narrowly focused on Palin.” Wehner has demonstrated that I was wrong that his concern was belated, but it does still seem to be narrowly focused on Palin. If Wehner is critiquing the intellectual weakness of the right beyond Palin, that’s welcome news, but I haven’t seen that.In short, not anytime soon. Anyone who watched a Republican debate in 2010 knows that a candidate radiating intellectual depth and competence doesn't stand a chance in a Republican primary. Michele Bachmann's otherwise inexplicable national support is the perfect example. Nobody provides a more stark contrast to intellectual depth and competence than she does.
In the criticism he made in 2009, Wehner frames his argument against Palin explicitly in terms of her effect on the Republican Party’s future political fortunes. One of his main criticisms of Palin’s lack of intellectual depth was that it would doom the GOP to minority status if she became the public face of the party. That might be right, but it doesn’t take into account that the intellectual weakness of the mainstream right is a significant problem that goes beyond the influence of Palin and her enthusiasts. Wehner wrote in 2009 that the GOP’s revival depends on “emerging public figures who are conservative and principled, who radiate intellectual depth and calmness of purpose, who come across as irenic rather than agitated, competent and reliable rather than erratic and uneven.” Does Wehner believe that such figures exist in the modern GOP? More to the point, does he believe that such figures have a reasonable chance of leading the party? (emphasis mine)
The Art and Skill of Governing
Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point:
I got a chance to talk to some Arizona state legislators from both parties yesterday afternoon and one thing even a very cursory chat drives home is the fairly disastrous consequences of some populist conceits about how a legislature should be organized. Specifically, the Arizona legislature combines low salary for members, short legislative sessions, term limits, and very limited staff (one secretary for every two state reps). This is all somehow supposed to keep representatives close to the people or prevent them from entrenching power, but in practice it amounts to a kind of government by lobbyistHe finishes by saying this is why it is better to handle a lot of policy issues at the federal level, because many state legislatures don't have the resources to get a hold of the issue and see the sides that aren't being pushed by the best funded lobby.
After all, some of these issues are hard. And legislative procedure is hard. If at any given time a huge proportion of members are freshmen just learning the ropes of the institution and nobody has any time to consider the issues or staff to do research for them, who else are you going to turn to. Pondering the situation really drives home the “Lobbying As Legislative Subsidy” (PDF) model of what the industry is really about. Members need to take positions on the issues and speak about them to the press and to constituents. And without adequate staff or experience, they naturally end up outsourcing a lot of this work to other people—the dread special interests. And since “raise my salary and give me a bigger staff budget and repeal my term limits” is just about the most toxic political proposal I can imagine, there doesn’t seem to be any way out of it.
Seattle's Vulnerability
Via the Dish, here and here.
As the second post says:
As the second post says:
A reader writes:In much the same way that wars teach Americans geography, disasters teach Americans of their vulnerability to the same threats. After Katrina, I remembered being puzzled at why New Orleans sits below sea level behind levies, then I learned that one of the fastest growing areas in the US, the Sacramento River delta also faces the threat of levee failure and flooding:
Another headline you won't see: "Millions saved in Seattle by good engineering and government building codes". California is thought to be safe from >8.0 earthquakes (but even 6.x quakes do quite a bit of damage). The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand:
A magnitude 9.0 or above quake in the Pacific Northwest is expected. Those quakes, which are the product of vast and deep faults, are characterized by their severity and the duration of shaking when they strike. ... A quake in the 9.0 range occurs in the Pacific Northwest region every 300 - 500 years. The last one was in 1700, which scientists know because of a tsunami that was recorded in Japan at the time.
Current Seattle building codes are probably pretty good, but older buildings - and there are more than in Japan because the city hasn't ever been hit by a devastating quake or war - are at heavy risk
It is easy to be complacent, and expensive to try to protect ourselves.The 700,000-acre Sacramento-San Joaquin delta receives more than 40% of California's rainfall. It is the main source of water for about 23 million people. But most of the land is below sea level and is protected by more than 1,000 miles of levees.
The Crushing Fist of The Regulatory State
Notre Dame's fine in practice filming death:
The details were released as IOSHA fined Notre Dame $77,500 for six safety violations tied to Sullivan's death, including knowingly putting its employees in an unsafe situation. The junior from Long Grove, Ill., was killed when the hydraulic lift toppled in gusts of up to 53 mph while he was filming football practice.A kid died, working for chump change, in dangerous conditions, videotaping practice by one group of college students preparing to play another group of college students in a game. The OSHA fine adds up to a few t-shirt sales at the bookstore on game day. All around, a very sad story that shows the Alma Mater in an awful, but richly deserved light. As March Madness intensifies, it is a reminder of the perverse emphasis we put on sports, and the out-of-whack economics of entertainment. This said, I'm part of the problem.
The Rev. John Jenkins, university president, said the school would study the IOSHA report and take necessary actions to protect students and staff. The school announced last week it was replacing the lifts with remote-controlled cameras.
"None of these findings can do anything to replace the loss of a young man with boundless energy and creativity. As I said last fall, we failed to keep him safe, and for that we remain profoundly sorry," Jenkins said in a prepared statement.
The school is conducting its own investigation.
The report includes dozens of pages, including interviews with other student videographers and Notre Dame officials. One document, written by a state investigator, describes the film Sullivan shot that day.
"[T]he pants, shirts and jackets of the coaches are blowing and whipping in the wind," it says. "The goal posts in front of the camera are moving and the one red flag [on top] is extending straight outward."
The state said Notre Dame failed to maintain safe working conditions or heed National Weather Service warnings.
"The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrated that the university made a decision to utilize its scissor lifts in known adverse weather conditions," agency commissioner Lori Torres said at a news conference in Indianapolis.
Point 2012 Black Ale
Point Brewery's 2012 Black Ale hits the spot. It is very good with a nice roast taste. I recommend a connoisseur should try it.
Terrible Spending Cuts
Ezra Klein on Republican Spending Cuts:
Let’s begin with the costs of cutting inspection — for example, the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department. Together, the agencies are charged with ensuring that the nation’s food is safe. That’s increasingly crucial as our interconnected, industrialized system makes contaminated food a national crisis rather than a local problem. In recent years, we’ve seen massive recalls stemming from E. coli in spinach, salmonella in peanut butter and melamine in pet food. Each required the recall of thousands of tons of food and alerts to consumers who, in many cases, were screened or treated.The Republicans want to cut $100 billion in discretionary spending, while just eliminating the dividend and capital gains tax cuts would raise approximately $30 billion. Returning these taxes to year 2002 tax levels would not hurt the economy, because the people who would be required to pay them have a lot of money. Instead, they try to make the government less effective. There is also $170 billion a year or so being wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan (part of that cost would be spent anyway). I think there are plenty of other places to save money, Republicans just hate certain things (Muslims, government that works, poor people, cities, public transit, etc.).
The problem was bad enough — and the people and pets sick enough— that Congress passed a bipartisan food-safety bill during last year’s lame-duck session. But now Republicans want big cuts in the agencies’ budgets, meaning fewer inspectors and a higher chance of outbreaks and food-borne illness. And those don’t come cheap. They show up in our health-care costs, disability insurance and tax revenue, not to mention in the pain and suffering and even death they cause.
Next up: enforcement. As any budget wonk will tell you, cracking down on “waste, fraud and abuse” won’t cure all our fiscal ills. But waste, fraud and abuse do happen, particularly in Medicare and Medicaid, where they can be costly. Republicans are looking for big reductions in the Department of Health and Human Services, meaning fewer agents to conduct due diligence on health-care transactions. Costs will go up, not down.
Then there’s deferred maintenance. In 2009, the Society of Civil Engineers gave America’s existing infrastructure a grade of D. They estimated that simply maintaining America’s existing stock would require up to $2.2 trillion in investment. But Republicans have been cool to Obama’s calls to increase infrastructure investment. Just “another tax-and-spend proposal,” Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said when the initiative was announced. But a dollar in maintenance delayed — or cut — isn’t a dollar saved. It’s a dollar that needs to be spent later. And waiting can be costly. It’s cheaper to strengthen a bridge that’s standing than repair one that’s fallen down.
And there are plenty of examples beyond that. Republicans have proposed massive cuts to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which would make another financial crisis that much likelier. They’ve proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts tsunami monitoring. In their zeal to cut spending, they’re also cutting the spending that’s there to prevent overspending. Just as you have to spend money to make money, you also have to spend money to save money — at least sometimes.
Naked Capitalism Link of the Day
Today's link: Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured with Radioactive Release, at NYT:
Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified dramatically on Wednesday after the authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam. The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.
Such were the radiation levels above the plant, moreover, that the Japanese military put off a highly unusual plan to dump water from helicopters — a tactic normally employed to combat forest fires — to lower temperatures in a pool containing spent fuel rods that was overheating dangerously..
In a race against time, the reactor’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said it had been able to double the number of workers at the plant to 100 from 50 as a result of falling radiations levels. It was not immediately clear when the additional workers returned to the plant. The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be. The implications of overheating in the fuel rod pool, which is also at the at the s No. 3 reactor, seemed equally dire.
Reactor Design
Robert Reich via Economist's View:
Can we please agree that in the real world corporations exist for one purpose, and one purpose only — to make as much money as possible, which means cutting costs as much as possible?That is interesting. It is another example of how we have a hard time estimating what might actually happen when designing for worst case scenarios. He goes on to criticize BP and Halliburton on the oil spill, and Massie Energy for their mine explosion. These stories, the Hyatt walkway collapse, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, the Quebec Bridge failure and other mistakes or disasters are good to review to help avoid the same mistakes and remind designers that they are human. His point is money causes people to cut corners. I would say a lot of human factors figure in too, including hubris, laziness, sickness and carelessness.
The New York Times reports that G.E. marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors, used in TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.
Yet American safety officials have long thought the smaller design more vulnerable to explosion and rupture in emergencies than competing designs. (By the way, the same design is used in 23 American nuclear reactors at 16 plants.)
In the mid-1980s, Harold Denton, then an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Mark 1 reactors had a 90 percent probability of bursting should the fuel rods overheat and melt in an accident. A follow-up report from a study group convened by the Commission concluded that “Mark 1 failure within the first few hours following core melt would appear rather likely."
More on Detroit
TNC again:
I blogged about this while I was reporting, but given that Detroit story is now up, I wanted to give another shout out to two books which really helped me find my way. The first is Thomas Sugrue's The Origins Of The Urban Crisis. If you have any interest in the history of cities, this book is required reading. Someone asked the other day why I consider the term "White Flight" erroneous. I noted that the phrasetends to conjure images of scared and bigoted whites fleeing the encroaching onyx horde.The problems with center sities have been a long time in the making. Fixing them will also take a long time, and there will be many pitfalls along the way.
The truth is both more elegant and more monstrous. Sugrue shows that "White Flight" began long before blacks began moving in significant numbers into white neighborhoods. It's been some time, but I want to say the outmigration, in Detroit, began as early as the 1940s--a period that most people conveniently consider a golden age. Moreover, Origins (along with Kenneth Jackson's stellar Crabgrass Frontier) shows that the outmigration didn't simply result from rank and individual color prejudice, but from something more systemic--racist federal, state and local public policy. The FHA, conspiring to devalue property as soon as one black family moved in, block busting realtors, and urban renewal advocates effectively colluded to create white flight. My point here is that "White Flight" wasn't a product of pure capitalism, market forces and culture. It was the result of social engineering. The terms "White Flight" evinces an ignorance of the policies which shaped the future of Detroit and cities around the country.
Ignoring Reality
From Katrina vanden Heuvel:
One thing about the current generation of conservatives: Getting mugged by reality hasn't changed the way they look at the world. We've just come through a calamitous financial collapse - caused by reckless Wall Street gambling and toothless watchdogs - that triggered a Great Recession and doubled the U.S. national debt. The collapse is the greatest cause of large deficits, but conservatives act as if the deficits caused the collapse.She goes on to criticize Obama, and finishes with this critique:
A recent stop in London revealed that this isn't just a Tea Party phenomenon. There, the new Tory-dominated coalition led by David Cameron looks and sounds like a sprightlier offshoot of House Speaker John Boehner's troops. Cameron has set out on a forced march for fiscal retrenchment, imposing deep and immediate spending cuts (and tax increases) to bring deficits down in Britain. This plan is sold with a jaunty recital of conservative gospel: The economy has begun to recover, and action on deficit reduction will boost the confidence of business and consumers. The resulting revival, it is argued, will generate more than enough private-sector jobs to make up for those lost in the public sector.
Yet the 2010 fourth-quarter economic numbers revealed that the British economy was declining, not growing. The government went from adding jobs to shedding them. And consumer confidence has collapsed since Cameron and his troops started chanting that the country "was broke." Cameron dismissed the results, declared "war on the enemies of enterprise" and insisted that he would carry on. The magic of what Paul Krugman calls the "confidence fairy" and private-sector growth would overcome all.
In Washington, Boehner's caucus exhibits the same zealotry. "The American people want us to cut spending," the GOP Speaker repeats, ignoring the vast majority of polls that show Americans care far more about jobs and the economy. We will "cut and grow," is the new conservative message. Get government out of the way and the economy will blossom.
Yet Goldman Sachs projected this month that the deep cuts in domestic programs in the 2010 budget passed by the House could cut our growth rate in half. John McCain's former economic adviser, Mark Zandi, projected a loss of 700,000 jobs. If the budget cuts cost federal jobs, said Boehner, sounding like a latter-day Marie Antoinette, "so be it." He believes the private sector will more than make up for the loss of such jobs.
Greenspan didn't mention that the pre-crisis decade featured declining wages and benefits for most American families, Gilded Age inequality, the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs, unsustainable trade deficits and ruinous financial speculation. But neither Greenspan nor conservatives nor, tragically, Obama are about to let reality get in the way of ideology.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The Tiger's Wife
Téa Obreht is just 25, and “The Tiger’s Wife” is her first book. It is also the first book ever sold by her agent, Seth Fishman, who is 30, and the second book bought by her editor, Noah Eaker, who was 26 when he acquired it and, strictly speaking, still an editorial assistant.I saw a book review and author interview in the Dayton Daily News on Sunday which pretty much said the exact same thing. It is pretty amazing that so many reviewers like the book. The story itself sounds interesting to me, but I probably won't rush out and buy it anytime soon.
“We were all very new,” Ms. Obreht said recently, “and we were excited to find each other.” They might want to consider retirement, quitting while they’re ahead, because the kind of good fortune they are enjoying right now may never come their way again.
Ms. Obreht was included in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list of young fiction authors last summer and “The Tiger’s Wife” was subsequently excerpted in the magazine. On Sunday, the book made the cover of The New York Times Book Review. Just about everywhere, it has received the sort of reviews that many writers wait an entire career for. In The Times on Friday, Michiko Kakutani called it ‘“hugely ambitious, audaciously written.”
The Kasich Budget
From the Dispatch:
Update: The actual budget document is here.
Local governments would see a cut of 25 percent per year and state colleges and universities would be limited to 3.5 percent tuition increases under Gov. John Kasich's new two-year budget.also:
That move would cost counties, municipalities and townships $167.1 million the first year including an estimated $5 million for Columbus and $388.2 million starting in the second year, when the full 50 percent reduction would take effect.
About 400 school districts are expected to see increases in state-generated funding. Kasich said aid to both K-12 and higher education "slightly increases" in his budget. The increases in state aid amount to $170 million for K-12 schools, $62 million for higher education, said Budget Director Tim Keen.At least we got that final 4% tax cut, and in privatization:
However, it doesn't appear that schools will see an overall funding increase because of the loss of $875 million in federal stimulus money they got for operations that is built into the current two-year budget.
Taking into consideration all funds for K-12, funding in 2012 would decrease 11.5 percent and go down 4.9 percent in 2013. Basic aid would drop by about $1.3 billion over two years: 12.2 percent the first year, 7.6 percent in the second.
The budget includes $1.4 billion in Medicaid reductions, health care provider cuts, a lease of the state's liquor sales operation and the selling of five prisons, which will be privately operated.This will be interesting.
The prison sale would bring in an estimated $200 million for the state, plus a biennial savings calculated at $27 million in operating costs because two state-operated institutions will be turned over to private operators.
Update: The actual budget document is here.
Japanese Nuclear Situation
From the Dish:
In fact, the current radiation crisis was not caused by the quake itself:This brings up more questions about redundancy in plant design, and how to prevent the loss of power for cooling systems. It is very interesting in disasters like this or Katrina, to listen to the discussion of the planning process prior to disasters, and how the disasters undercut those efforts. One of the problems in New Orleans was that after levies failed, the pumps couldn't be turned on to pump away the water by running normal generators, because the pumps were 12 hZ or something like that, and the on-site generators which produced 12 hZ electric for the pumps had been flooded out. That is an issue I hadn't realized would be there. Others knew about it, but they didn't anticipate the failure of the levies. Too bad these teaching moments come at such terrible times.
Critics of nuclear energy have long questioned the viability of nuclear power in earthquake-prone regions like Japan. Reactors have been designed with such concerns in mind, but preliminary assessments of the Fukushima Daiichi accidents suggested that too little attention was paid to the threat of tsunami. It appeared that the reactors withstood the powerful earthquake, but the ocean waves damaged generators and backup systems, harming the ability to cool the reactors.
A Lesson on Moral Hazard
Ritholtz:
But during some errands Sunday, we ended up near a Verizon store. We each got the iPhone 4, which I am happy to report actually allows you to make telephone calls. I took the bigger data plan, and the insurance, covering “lost, broken, stolen, cracked, wet” damage to the glass beauty.
Insurance is something I almost never buy, but the replacement price of the iPhone, combined with the number of cracked screens I have already seen made it imperative.
The missus found a case the exact same shade as her purple Moto-Razor. I didn’t see anything I liked, and knew I would find something fun online. That is when one of the sales people told me I should really get a case “to protect the phone.”
I tossed the phone up and caught it, then (half-jokingly) said: “I don’t need a case, I have insurance.”
She was absolutely aghast.
I smiled and said to her: “Now you understand Moral hazard.”
I don’t think she got it . . .
Kasich's Budget Years in the Works
Via Plunderbund, the Columbus Dispatch:
Three years ago, John Kasich and his team of advisers began planning to rid Ohio of its income tax.What a tool. During the campaign, he wouldn't go into budget specifics, even though they had been planning these budget cuts for years. So the budget shortfall just made him keep the income tax, he already knew what he was cutting, he just didn't want to tell voters. Now that is a Profile in Courage. I sure wish you would have moved to Texas, governor.
The plan was to be a part of Kasich's first biennial state budget, assuming that he unseated Democrat Ted Strickland as governor last fall.
Kasich, who talked repeatedly on the campaign trail about eventually eliminating the income tax, succeeded at the ballot box and on Tuesday is to unveil his budget: 800 pages of spending cuts and government revamps.
But there is no plan to eliminate the income tax in this budget; it's one of the few goals that Kasich and company felt they couldn't pursue now because of the difficulty in filling a projected $8 billion shortfall.
Kasich, his budget director, Tim Keen, and other advisers first met with him to discuss gubernatorial budget policies in January 2008, when Strickland had been in office barely a year. In interviews, it's clear that most of what they crafted back then will be a part of the governor's budget today.
Administration officials declined to discuss budget specifics for this story, but the budget is expected to include changes to lower home-health-care and hospitalization costs and expand school-choice programs, plus cuts in local-government funding and efforts to privatize other state agencies.
Kasich, Keen and longtime Kasich aides Wayne Struble and Ben Kanzeg identified core principles for government reform in early 2008. The only original principles not in this budget - eliminating the income tax and reorganizing the Bureau of Workers' Compensation - remain on the governor's radar screen.
Kasich also is expected to pursue an increase in the cost threshold at which prevailing wages must be paid on public construction projects, from $78,000 to $5 million, according to business advocates.
"I don't remember a course correction," said Struble, who is Kasich's policy adviser. "The things we were looking at pursuing haven't changed much over time. Even if there weren't an $8 billion deficit, we'd probably be proposing many of the same things."
The GOP and Facts
Daniel Larison takes a look at the Republican elite cooling on the idea of a Palin candidacy:
Note, the Republicans were the party of ideas in 1980. Amongst the ideas were that tax cuts for the wealthy would trickle down and help out the middle class, that banks would work better with less regulations, and that federal deficits are a good thing. Today, the Republicans still push the same ideas, even though they have all been proven to be false. But don't tell that to a Republican, because they don't like facts which get in the way of a good narrative. According to them, tax cuts always increase revenues, even though they don't. They claim the government is solely at fault for the economic crisis in 2008, even though the private sector garners most of the blame. Now they are opposed to deficits, even though the largest causes of those deficits are the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Great Recession, all of which found their home in the Bush Administration. Not to worry though, besides Palin, all the other candidates for the GOP will parrot those same points or lose prodigiously. Republicans are the party of ideas, but it is the party of previously tried, failed ideas.This year, the conservative intelligentsia doesn’t just tend to dislike Palin — many fear that her rise would represent the triumph of an intellectually empty brand of populism and the death of ideas as an engine of the right. ~PoliticoThis wouldn’t be much of a change from the intellectually empty brand of pseudo-populism that prevails right now. What makes some of the new movement conservative anxiety about Palin so amusing is that the people cited in the article continue to perpetuate the fiction that there are well-formulated ideas rather than slogans and talking points that inform movement conservative arguments. Here is a quote from Pete Wehner:
Wehner, now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, cited the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1980 declaration that the GOP had become “a party of ideas.”It’s true that Palin relies on shallow talking points, but where do these come from? They come from the institutions and leaders of the movement that is supposedly so concerned with ideas. Palin is disinterested in ideas, and she has flourished in the conservative media for years. She does rely on shallow talking points, and legions of conservative pundits have repeatedly defended her against charges that she is ignorant and incurious. Everything about her public persona since she received the VP nomination has been built up around tapping into resentment, grievance, and identity politics, all of which are in one way or another antithetical to critical thinking and substantive discussion of policy, and for a while most of her new detractors said nothing or gushed about how wonderful she was.
“Conservatives are very proud of that,” Wehner said. “But she seems at best disinterested in ideas or least lacks the ability to articulate any philosophical justification for them. She relies instead on shallow talking points.”
More on Youngstown
Planet Money follows up on Youngstown's decision to try to rationally shrink the city, which it undertook in 2006:
The problem with shrinking cities is that they don't shrink in a smart, organized way. It's chaotic. Thousands of people will leave one neighborhood, and maybe a dozen people will stay behind.
So Youngstown has been offering financial help for those people left behind, offering to move them to a place with more neighbors.
"The theory is streets could be closed," D'Avignon says. "Trash wouldn't have to be picked up in that area."
That would save the city a lot of money. But nearly everyone responded to the offer to move the way Dolores Marie did:
I said I had six kids I raised here. And I said another thing, I got grandkids that's coming up. I been here. I don't feel right moving in any other neighborhood. I want to be here.
So the plan is moving a little slower than expected. D'Avignon says eventually, the people left in these neighborhoods will move or they'll pass away. And no one will come to take over their houses. Then, the city will close entire neighborhoodsI have to say that I am not surprised by this. Detroit, Dayton and other cities have taken a look at this approach, and in the real world, it will be hard to implement.
NRA catching heat from members?
From the NYT:
The effort follows Mr. Obama’s call, in a column on Sunday in a Tucson newspaper, to put aside “stale policy debates” and begin “a new discussion” on ways to better enforce and strengthen existing laws to keep mentally unstable, violent and criminal people from getting guns.A lobbying group not wanting to get involved in meetings which may affect their area of interest? Or a group criticized for not being partisan enough by its members after it went ahead and endorsed some pro-gun Democrats in the 2010 elections? I'm guessing it is number 2. The NRA has said in the past that they thought existing gun laws should be better enforced, and that crazy people shouldn't be able to buy them. Oh well, their members don't want them to work with Obama, no matter what the issue is.
But the National Rifle Association, for decades the most formidable force against proposals to limit gun sales or ownership, is refusing to join the discussion — possibly dooming it from the start, given the lobby’s clout with both parties in Congress. Administration officials had indicated they expected that the group would be represented at a meeting, perhaps on Friday.
“Why should I or the N.R.A. go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?” said Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive of the National Rifle Association.
Quite the List
Ritholtz:
We can anticipate disruptive events, as they come along all too frequently in history. Consider the following list, via Doug Kass of those 100-year flood/once in a lifetime events. These occur far more regularly than most people believe: >This is something very important to remember. Also remember that because a rare event occurs, it doesn't mean that it won't reoccur soon.
Black Swan events over the past decadeDo you have an emergency plan ready for when things get dicey . . . ?
• Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon;
• 78% decline in the Nasdaq;
• 2003 European heat wave (40,000 deaths);
• 2004 Tsunami in Sumatra, Indonesia (230,000 deaths);
• 2005 Kashmir, Pakistan, earthquake (80,000 deaths)
• 2008 Myanmar cyclone (140,000 deaths);
• 2008 Sichuan, China, earthquake ( 68,000 deaths);
• Derivatives roil the world’s banking system and financial markets;
• Failure of Lehman Brothers and the sale/liquidation of Bear Stearns;
• 30% drop in U.S. home prices;
• 2010 Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, earthquake (315,000 deaths);
• 2010 Russian heat wave (56,000 deaths);
• 2010 BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill;
• 2010 market flash crash (a 1,000-point drop in the DJIA);
• Surge of unrest in the Middle East; and
• Thursday’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Why not?
Naked Capitalism Link of the Day
Today's link: The clarifying Manning/Crowley controversy, by Glenn Greenwald. This is a good look at another sorry human rights abuse by our government, this time under Obama, and how the security state is out of control. The fact that Crowley was forced out for speaking what any decent person should acknowledge is pretty terrible. The worst part is that the right is so much worse. Here's Glenn:
Time's Swampland, Mark Benjamin identifies the real crux of the controversy:The scariest thing in the world is not Islamic terrorists, it is the US government and its lack of human rights in pursuing its war on these terrorists. Torture, secret rendition, captivity without any likelihood of charges being brought, the list goes on and on. Obama banned the torture, but has expanded other aspects of this assault on human decency, and the treatment of Manning by the military is a disgrace to the government, the armed services and the American people in general.
Free speech advocates are shocked, and, as I wrote last week on TIME.com, concerned over Obama's record as the most aggressive prosecutor of suspected government leakers in U.S. history.
Those advocates have wondered whether the penchant for secrecy in the Obama administration comes from the President, or those around him. Obama's statement on Manning, followed by Crowley's resignation, seem to suggest some of this comes from the President himself.
It's long been obvious that the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers "comes from the President himself," notwithstanding his campaign decree -- under the inspiring title "Protect Whistleblowers" -- that "such acts of courage and patriotism should be encouraged rather than stifled." The inhumane treatment of Manning plainly has two principal effects: it intimidates future would-be whistleblowers into knowing that they, too, will be abused without recourse, and it will break him psychologically (as prolonged solitary confinement and degrading treatment inevitably do) to render him incapable of a defense and to ensure he provides whatever statements they want about WikiLeaks. Other than Obama's tolerance for the same detainee abuse against which he campaigned and his ongoing subservience to the military that he supposedly "commands," it is the way in which this Manning/Crowley behavior bolsters the regime of secrecy and the President's obsessive attempts to destroy whistleblowing that makes this episode so important and so telling.
Kasich Sought to Limit Reporting on Budget
From here:
Ohio Gov. John Kasich's office Monday afternoon reversed its plan to prohibit journalists from broadcasting sound and images gathered during a Tuesday media briefing on the state budget.I just think the governor noticed how big of a jerk he sounds like when you can hear him talk. It doesn't sound as bad on paper, plus people aren't likely to read it.Spokeswoman Connie Wehrkamp says the reversal was prompted by concerns raised by Statehouse journalists and media outlets on Monday.Reporters objected to rules announced earlier limiting them to notepads, pens, and tape recorders, which were to be used only to check accuracy. Video and photos also were to be prohibited.In a letter to Kasich press secretary Rob Nichols, Associated Press Ohio bureau chief Eva Parziale objected strongly to the prohibition.She quoted Edward L. Esposito, Vice President/ Information Media at WAKR in Akron, who said in an e-mail protesting the move:''To deny electronic journalists the ability to use the very tools of electronic journalism in coverage of the most important budget issue in Ohio's recent history is to deny the citizens of Ohio the ability to weigh the observations and positions of Governor Kasich as precisely the time when they need to see and hear him the most. It is unconscionable to insist broadcast and Internet members of the statehouse news gathering process operate as they did fifty years ago.''The media briefing precedes Kasich's public budget rollout at 6 p.m.
Will the Tea Party benefit cities?
Edward Glaeser makes an interesting point:
Big cities are not typically Tea Party territory, but if the new Republican members of Congress apply their libertarian principles assiduously to a few key federal policies, they could do much for urban America.These are good points. However, any help the Tea Party gives to cities will be accidental. They are under the mistaken impression that their hard-earned dollars are being taken and spent in the cities, when in reality, the progressive tax system hits high-earners in the cities much more than lower-earners in the rural areas. Therefore, the Bush tax cuts benefit those city residents much more than they benefit the Tea Party members in the boondocks. We'll see what happens, but my guess would be that the Tea Party will play the role of the evangelicals in the Republican Party (these groups overlap significantly), they'll turn out and vote for the Republicans, then be ignored by the business interests, meanwhile growing that much more angry.
Residents of dense downtowns should urge Tea Partiers to take up the fight against socially engineered suburbia through federal homeownership subsidies and sprawl-inducing federal highway spending.
A strong Tea Party push for choice and charter schools could help city children. Even keeping marginal tax rates low is – in effect, if not in intent – pro-urban, because metropolitan workers typically earn more.
Monday, March 14, 2011
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