a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists.
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Arthur Silber - ONCE UPON A TIME...

More rif at work, this time hitting my team. Strikes me that so far in this job I've perhaps shown the type of flashy pseudo-smarts useful for saving my own skin, but not the kind of real smarts which would actually help anyone.

Partners In Health - AN URGENT MESSAGE FROM DR. PAUL FARMER (Feb. 23, 2012)

. . .We need to get the word out, and you can help. Share the news and encourage your friends and family to help us slow -- and someday stop -- the spread of cholera in Haiti.

Fred Kaplan (Slate) - American troops no longer serve a purpose in Afghanistan. It is time to get out. Now.

IMO, it is wrong to punish US personnel for mistakenly burning Korans. They did nothing wrong, and they should not be punished just as a sort of irrational appeasement ritual.

Jon Hemming and Jonathon Burch (Reuters) - Turkey considers Syria buffer zone; Annan seeks unity

Meghashyam Mali (The Hill) - Sen. Reid blasts Republican lawmakers for ‘obstructionism on steroids’

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blasted Republicans for what he called “obstructionism on steroids” on Sunday and said he hoped that GOP lawmakers would return to Washington willing to compromise with Democrats. . .

(Via Susie Madrak (I think)) Phil Weiss and Scott Roth - The radicalization of Yossi Gurvitz

Yossi Gurvitz - Friends of George

KRISHNARAJ IYENGAR (Hindu) - Bun maska at Kyani (Mumbai Iranian restaurants)

Thulasi Kakkat (Hindu) - The last Jews of Kochi

Pankaj Mishra - Iran-Israel History Suggests a Different Future

Up w/ Chris Hayes - Sunday's Show (March 11)

This morning's show focused exclusively on the intricate relationship between Israel, America, and the Palestinians. We discussed nuclear tensions between Israel and Iran, the United States' alignment with Israel, Israel's complicated internal politics, the Palestinian non-violence movement, America's role in diplomacy, and Chris' panel provided their thoughts on what "You Should Know" about the Israel/Palestinian conflict. Joining Chris were:
Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal), contributing writer at Newsweek.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder & president of The Israel Project.

Leila Hilal, Middle East analyst at the New America Foundation.

Jeremy Ben-Ami (@jeremybenami), founder & president of J Street.

Zev Chafets, founding managing editor at The Jerusalem Report and contributor at New York Times Magazine.

Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Schlomo Gazit, former Israel Defense Forces intelligence head, from Tel Aviv.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees and co-founder of Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People and Palestinian National Initiative, joining us from Ramallah, Palestine.

Watch the whole show here.

Nick Kristof (NYT) - Viral Video, Vicious Warlord

Dorothy L Sayers - Envy

. . . artists were debunked by disclosures of their private weaknesses; great statesmen, by attributing to them mercenary and petty motives, or by alleging that all their work was meaningless, or done for them by other people. Religion was debunked, and shown to consist of a mixture of craven superstition and greed. Courage was debunked, patriotism was debunked, learning and art were debunked, love was debunked, and with it family affection and the virtues of obedience, veneration and solidarity. Age was debunked by youth and youth by age. Psychologists stripped bare the pretensions of reason and conscience and self-control, saying that these were only the respectable disguises of unmentionable unconscious impulses. Honour was de-bunked with peculiar virulence, and good faith, and unselfishness. Everything that could possibly be held to constitute an essential superiority had the garments of honour torn from its back and was cast out into the darkness of derision. Civilisation was finally debunked till it had not a rag left to cover its nakedness.

It is well that the hypocrisies which breed like mushrooms in the shadow of great virtues should be discovered and removed; but Envy is not the right instrument for that purpose; for it tears down the whole fabric to get at the parasitic growths. Its enemy, in fact, is the virtues themselves. Envy cannot bear to admire or respect; it cannot bear to be grateful. But it is [always] very plausible . . .

Glenn Greenwald comment to Kevin Drum's post: "Is Barack Obama a Murderous Sociopath?"

Kevin Drum writes here: ". . .I really have a hard time understanding progressives who are disappointed in [The Obama Presidency]". I have a hard time understanding his hard time. Let me try to explain.

Here is what I think of as the paradigmatic Kevin Drum Post and the paradigmatic Kevin Drum Chart, at least in the pre-Obama era:

Kevin Drum - REPUBLICANS vs. DEMOCRATS ON THE ECONOMY (2005)

Did you know that Democratic presidents are better for the economy than Republicans? Sure you did. I pointed this out two years ago, back when my readership numbered in the dozens, and more recently Michael Kinsley ran the numbers in the LA Times and came to the same conclusion.

The results are simple: Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There's just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations. . .

But Kevin Drum doesn't write posts like that anymore, and he possibly never will. Why? Because, as it turns out, the President with the worst record on creating jobs since Herbert Hoover is . . .Barack Obama.

Here is another Kevin Drum article, written just before Obama's election, which suggested to American voters what they should expect if Obama was elected:

Kevin Drum - Your Salary in 2016 (2008)

. . .There are more twists and turns to the story, but this is the gist: Democrats really are better for the economy than Republicans, and it really does seem to be related to differences in their economic programs. Given that, then, I’ll make this prediction: If Barack Obama is elected president, the economy over the next eight years will be better than if John McCain is elected. In fact, I’ll go further and put some hard numbers to that prediction. Here they are:

If Obama wins, unemployment will average about 5 percent. If McCain wins it will average about 6 percent. . .

I don't have a strong personal animus toward Obama, (though I am finding curious similarities between him and Bush - neither of them is willing to admit error, both of them are not willing to give Paul Krugman a careful hearing, and a reasoned response), and don't hold him soley responsible for the disappointments of his years in office. But so what? Am I disappointed in the Obama Presidency? Yes.

Susie Madrak - Intel working toward conflict-free chip

Violet Socks - War on Women: a treasury!

Melissa Mckewan - Today in Your Feminist Backlash

(Via Digby) MARK VANHOENACKER (NYT) - How Not to Attract Tourists

(Via everyone) Carolyn Jones (Texas Observer) - 'We Have No Choice': One Woman's Ordeal with Texas' New Sonogram Law

(Via everyone) Adam Gopnik (New Yorker) - THE CAGING OF AMERICA: Why do we lock up so many people?

Next post: 3/22/2012

posted by roublen at 4:47 PM

 
Arthur Silber - Help Needed

What Obama said at AIPAC

What I sometimes wish somebody says at AIPAC

RONEN BERGMAN - Will Israel Attack Iran?

C. Attucks New York:

Throughout the course of human history, innocent people are always the group that suffers the ravages of military conflict. Does anyone in the moral mind want Persian families to die because of disagreements between governments? I don't. Stop it, stop the talk of war, now.

BEHZAD YAGHMAIAN - Iran in the Shadow of War

These sanctions are very much attacks on the Iranian people, not the Iranian government. The nuclear program is broadly supported by the Iranian people, by Iranian reformists as well as Iranian conservatives.

Michael Kinsley? After writing a column about how sanctions against Rush Limbaugh are ineffective, counterproductive, and hypocritical, perhaps you could write a column on the subject of sanctions against Iran?

Juan Cole - Syria

The New York Review of Books - articles by Jeffrey Gettleman, Katherine Boo, Diane Ravitch, among others

LINDSAY BEYERSTEIN - Review: “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo

Dana Goldstein - review of Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's "Random Family"

"America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great" - Ben Carson M.D. with Candy Carson

Krugman's "Economics in Crisis" lecture is must-reading, IMO. I think economists have 2 primary social roles:

1) To remind us that "Socialism Is Bad, m'Kay" (And it is!).

2) To remind us that recessions and depressions are unnecessary and pointless, and can be cured by persuading a variety of agents, in a variety of ingenious ways, to consume and/or invest Now, instead of waiting for Later. Agents always have a variety of very good reasons to Wait For Later instead Act Now, but in recession or depression conditions, it's the agents who take the plunge and Act Now who are needed, and who should be encouraged and rewarded. The only good reason to abstain from present consumption is to increase present investment, but the perversity of recession & depression is that lower present consumption leads to *lower* present investment, not higher.

The dispute between Krugman and more conservative economics is that conservatives believe the *only* social role of economists should be to remind us that "Socialism Is Bad, m'Kay". They deeply resent the idea that economists should have a liberal social role, as well as a conservative one.

Krugman's article on financing adult education is worth reading too, though I don't think there was anything really wrong in what Romney said. In fact, I think Romney's statement provided some needed push back against the cultural practice of mindlessly applying & choosing where to go to college based on rankings and prestige, instead of cost and other meaningful considerations. There were, however, 2 things missing from Romney's statement: 1) an acknowledgement that he didn't have to face the choices this student faces, because his family paid for his education. 2) more importantly, an acknowledgement that his advice, "go to a cheaper school, and take on less debt" might be right, and might be wrong.

For some students, stretching themselves financially to go to a more prestigious, more expensive school might be the right choice. The contacts & connections they made there, as well as other benefits, might make going to Elite U the best decision they ever made. OTOH, for someone else, the right choice may be to go to College-6 in exchange for being free, or freer, from debt.

Parents and elders, when giving advice, may want what's best for kids, but they don't know what's best, and they should not pretend that they do.

The only strong opinion I have on financing adult education is that everyone with non-dischargeable student loan debt should have the option of paying off that non-dischargeable loan with either debt (fixed payments) or equity (percentage of income). It's fine for students paying with equity to pay a premium, perhaps even a large premium (I think 20-50% would be about right). But I think the option to pay with equity would have a large positive impact on some student's lives.

Ezra Klein's post on political failure is worth reading, but there's one super-important word missing, an omission that spoils the post, for me. The word? "Filibuster". If the Obama administration, as Klein claims, is "liberal, but they also place[d] a very high premium on getting something done", they why didn't they abolish the filibuster? In the 2008 election, the American people gave the Democratic party an almost ungodly amount of power, an overwhelming mandate to do whatever they needed to do in order to produce substantial improvements in the lives of the American people. They failed. They didn't get it done. We can argue about why, but we can't argue about the fact of failure. Maybe in 2015, they can get some retroactive credit for health-care tax credits, but that's in 2015, not now, and not back in November 2010. And, entirely understandably and perhaps appropriately, they were punished by the American people for their failure. Badly.

The story of late 2008-January 2011 is not in any way a story of GOP failure, IMO. The American people removed that excuse from the Democrats, by giving them such an overwhelming majority. The story of late 2008-early 2011 is simply of a party and a president that was given an overwhelming mandate, and failed to deliver. We can argue about the causes for the failure, and remedies for the failure, but not the fact of it. IMO.

UPDATE: more broadly, Obama's main political task in the first 2 years was to persuade the GOP that he was willing to allow them to share in success, but he was not willing to allow them to veto success. In this, he failed, IMO. Even given the failure of the first 2 years, Democrats could have partially atoned for it by abolishing the filibuster. This would have shown a positive intent, signaling that incumbent Democrats were mad at the GOP obstructionism, they did not accept it, and they were not going to let it happen again. Instead, when they refused to abolish the filibuster, incumbent Democrats, including Obama, validated and legitimised every questionable GOP tactic during the 111th Congress, indicated through their actions that they rather agreed and approved of GOP obstructionism, and fully intended to let it happen again. Not abolishing the filibuster was somewhat unforgivable in my book, a final and egregious screw you from incumbent elected Democrats to their base.

I think Jeremy Lin's nickname should be "Hercules". Why? Because how happy has he made us by reminding that we do, after all, live in a rich & strange world, filled with possibilities that cut against stereotype? This happy.

next post: 3/15/12

posted by roublen at 10:21 PM

 
Arthur Silber - Help Needed

I need some help in two areas. Once again, now that I've paid the March rent and a couple of other first of the month bills, I'm almost flat broke. And this time, I mean flat broke. In a little while, I'll go to the corner convenience store, to pick up a few staples (milk, eggs, bread, etc.). I'm posting this now because that errand will exhaust me for most of the rest of the day. Over the last several years, even that brief trip has become harder and harder for me to make. I have to rest two or three times in the course of walking a single block. That's what a worsening heart condition will do to you -- a rotten heart which steadily worsens in the complete absence of medical care, when I can't even afford basic heart medication (as I haven't been able to afford it for the last nine months, after the prescription from my last emergency hospital stay ran out). I remarked to a couple of friends earlier today that I have a particular reason for hating Andrew Breitbart: that bastard stole my heart attack. I sometimes fall into very black moods -- gee whiz, I simply can't imagine why, what with my superlative health and tens of thousands of readers eager for my every stray thought (hahaha) -- and a quick end to this extended misery seems enormously attractive. But I'm assured by mysterious powers that there is an unlimited supply of fatal heart attacks. Hope springs eternal, even for bloggers whose "significance" shades into invisibility.

After I buy those staples, I'll have about 50 bucks left. That's it. Since I'll need that 50 bucks to avoid starvation week after next, I won't be able to pay the internet bill that's due in nine days. Then, this exhilarating experience will be over. And to think I've been working on some complicated articles dealing with resistance movements, the particular factors that motivate the resister, the loss of perceived legitimacy in our government and the effects of that loss, and many related issues. I've been thinking about some of these articles for the last several years, and I briefly had been looking forward to publishing them at long last. Oh, well; sorry to disappoint the 30 of you who give half a crap. In any event, if a few of you care to make a donation, however small, perhaps my wondrous existence can be extended a bit longer. And I do offer my sincere thanks for your kindness, despite my current bleak mood. I suppose it will lift somewhat, as it has before. Or perhaps I'll be dead. Choices, choices. . .

. . .To hell with all that. Let's try to do it ourselves, or at least start the process. If this particular project fails, so what? It's not as if we're headed toward Paradise in the absence of even trying to effect desperately needed change, on however small a scale. If we do nothing, it's more than likely that events will continue to get worse, possibly much, much worse. Trying to alter that course is not a cause for condemnation or ridicule (although critics will assuredly offer both reactions). Besides, I thought that trying to change events in this way was what some of you wanted to do. Maybe I was wrong about that, too.

Okay. There are two main ways in which I need some help. Over to you. Thanks for your time.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - Battling Sudan’s Bombs With Videos

The region has no electricity or cellphone service, so Boyette charges his laptop and satellite phone with a solar charger. So far The Associated Press, CNN, Fox News and Al Jazeera have used his videos or photographs, and he plans to post more on a Web site, EyesAndEarsNuba.org.

To pay for operations, Boyette is hoping for foundation grants, or public donations on an account he will be setting up on Kickstarter.com. . .

. . .To its credit, the Obama administration is intensively working diplomatic channels to try to end the food blockade in the Nuba Mountains. On a visit to Washington in October, Boyette spent an hour briefing White House officials on the situation. But he’s skeptical — as am I — that the measures under consideration will be enough to avert starvation. . .

. . .Any humanitarian intervention, even the provision of food, could be seen as an act of war with uncertain consequences, and right now there’s no appetite in the United States or abroad for such a use of force. There are reasonable arguments against such steps. But the alternative may be the starvation of tens of thousands of people. If Boyette has anything to do with it, images of suffering will make it into American living rooms to soften hearts and build political will for action if famine arrives.

I’m hoping that Boyette stays safe and deluges us with images to prod our consciences.

Hamara Abate - Remember Darfur

Lindsey Hilsum (FT)- The bravest war journalist of her generation

Up with Chris Hayes - Syria

Up with Chris Hayes - Iran

Up with Chris Hayes - Whistle blowers

Violet Socks - So, are men whose Viagra is covered by insurance also prostitutes?

Susie Madrak - Mac McClelland at Mother Jones has another great piece

Juan Cole - At Oscars, Director of “A Separation” Slams War Talk

Robert Wright - The Arab Spring Comes to Israel

Robert Wright - Israel Meets the Arab Spring (Cont'd)

Robert Wright - Fadi Quran Is Freed

Robert Wright - Best Iran Idea Yet?

Megan McCardle - Home Health Care

Megan McCardle - sympathy for the rich

The Max Abelson article reminded me of Soledad O' Brien's "Almighty Debt" show, and specifically one family, realizing they were going to lose their house, but desperately trying to hang on to it until their daughter went off to college. Parents, in the appropriate circumstances, will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths not to puncture their children's dreams. Whether this is appropriate or not depends, perhaps, in part, on the nature of the dream.

RIF at work, I was perhaps foolishly surprised that some of the best, most experienced, most company-defining people were the ones let go. The sometimes-semi-vampiric corporate urge to chase after the new young thing makes me wonder, yet again, why exactly cutting Social Security is supposed to be a good idea. Also makes me wonder how many people Lieberman negatively affected when he scuttled the Medicare buy-in.

Arthur Silber - ONCE UPON A TIME...

. . .Gary and I had never had much to do with each other; that day, for some reason, he decided that he had some business to conduct with me.

"Where have you been?," he asked, in a manner suggesting I'd answer if I knew what was good for me. I told him I'd been at my piano lesson. He looked at me with a puzzled expression and thought about it for a moment or two. "I don't want you going to piano lessons any more." Gary said it as a simple declaration of fact: this is what he wanted, and it would happen. I looked puzzled in my turn; I wondered what on earth he meant. Gary noted my expression, and he took a step closer to me, his face tightening with distaste and disapproval. "You aren't going to any more piano lessons. If I catch you going to one, I'm going to beat the crap out of you." . . .

. . .I loved my piano lessons. I wasn't about to give them up, but I also knew that, if he chose, Gary could definitely beat the crap out of me. So I devised a few different routes to my piano teacher's house, routes where I thought it very unlikely that Gary's path and mine would cross.

I avoided my old route to piano lessons for several weeks, and I never met Gary. Then I grew annoyed, even angry, but my anger was primarily directed at myself and at the fact that I'd made even that much of a concession. I also concluded that Gary didn't actually care a great deal whether I went to my piano lessons. I saw him at school and in other places; he never mentioned it again. . .

One of the things Swami Dayananda says, which to my surprise I'm finding to be true, is that the human heart cannot bear to live in ignorance. If you see someone poking about purposefully with a stick, you have to know what that poking is about. Or throw rocks to catch their attention, perhaps in hope they'll explain the mystery.

Perhaps a long-winded way for me to say it's long past time for me to start poking some sticks, and at least try to explain what it's all about.

Mike Nesmith post on death of David Jones

Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman - Good Omens

. . .if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot, no, imagine a sneaker, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human. . .slouching hopefully towards Tadfield . . . .forever.

next post: 3/9/2012

posted by roublen at 7:39 PM

 
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - In Sudan, Seeing Echoes of Darfur

ROD NORDLAND and ALAN COWELL (NYT) - Two Western Journalists Killed in Syria Shelling

ROGER COHEN - Anthony Shadid’s Story

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER - Halting the killing in Syria

. . .The key condition for all such assistance, inside or outside Syria, is that it be used defensively — only to stop attacks by the Syrian military or to clear out government forces that dare to attack the no-kill zones. Although keeping intervention limited is always hard, international assistance could be curtailed if the Free Syrian Army took the offensive. The absolute priority within no-kill zones would be public safety and humanitarian aid; revenge attacks would not be tolerated. . .

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI - Peaceful Protest Can Free Palestine

Violet Socks - Reclusive Leftist

Susie Madrak - Timoney in Bahrain

Laura Rozen - UN should weigh in on legality of Iran strike, Brazil’s foreign minister tells Yahoo News

Arthur Silber - When "Antiwar" Means "Start the Bombing!"

Peter Beinart - The Crazy Rush to Attack Iran

Diane - A Little Slice of Good News

Honestly, I'm grateful to Beinart for writing against war with Iran. But Silber's critique of Beinart is worth reading. I do think, Beinart's piece has a hidden assumption that whether to go to war in Iran is based on long chains of deductive logic, and if any of those chains break down, then war becomes an acceptable choice. I suspect the opposite is true, human use of logic and reason is sufficiently faulty that you can rationalize anything you have a mind to, even unnecessary, insane war.

I have no animus against Catholic Bishops and employers, and don't wish to aggrieve them or force them to violate their conscience. But do they believe employers who support population control should be able to take away maternity benefits from their employees? If not, how can they defend their right to take away contraceptive benefits from their employees? What the Catholic Bishops are asking us to accept is unacceptable for liberals: they are asking us to accept a society where workers have to live in fear that if their employer wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, their health benefits could be taken away from them.

Dorothy L Sayers - THE LOVE OF THE CREATURE (1941)

The resistance to creation which the writer encounters in his creature is sufficiently evident, both to himself and to others-particularly to those others who have the misfortune to live with him during the period when his Energy is engaged on a job of work. The human maker is, indeed, almost excessively vocal about the perplexities and agonies of creation and the intractability of his material. Almost equally evident, however, though perhaps less readily explained or described, is the creature's violent urge to be created. To the outsider, the spectacle of a writer "taken ill with an idea" usually presents itself as a subject for unseemly mirth; the "Spring poet" is the perennial butt of the plain man, just as, on the stage, any reference to child-birth is a signal for hoots of merriment, especially from the male members of the audience. In both cases, the ridicule is largely defensive-the nervous protest of the negative and chaotic against the mysterious and terrible energy of the creative. But that a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying.

Often, the demand may impose itself in defiance of the author's considered interests and at the most inconvenient moments. Publisher, bank-balance, and even the conscious intellect may argue that the writer should pursue some fruitful and established undertaking; but they will argue in vain against the passionate vitality of a work that insists on manifestation. The strength of the insistence will vary from something that looks like direct inspiration to something that resembles a mere whim of the wandering mind; but whenever the creature's desire of existence is dominant, everything else will have to give way to it; the writer will push all other calls aside and get down to his task in a spirit of mingled delight and exasperation. Because of this, the artist ought, above all men, to be chary of basing his philosophy of life on the assumption that "we are brought into this world by no choice of our own". That may be so, but he has no means of proving it, and the analogy of his own creative experience offers evidence to the contrary. He knows very well that he, in his work, is for ever ground between the upper and nether millstones of the universal paradox. His creature simultaneously demands manifestation in space-time and stubbornly opposes it; the will . of his universe is to life as implacably as it is to chaos. (It is, of course, irrelevant to object that this "creature" struggling towards manifestation is "really" only a part of the maker's own ego. All creatures are a part of the Maker's mind, and have no independent existence till they attain partial independence by manifestation.)

next post: 3/2/12

posted by roublen at 9:09 AM

 
The Politic - More on Syria from Karam Nachar

Juan Cole - General Assembly Condemns Syria as Regime Bombards Homs Again

Arthur Silber - On Behalf of Life: Occupy, Authority, and The Obedient Dissenter

Susie Madrak - Child Hunger

Susie Madrak - Mark Perry on Israel & Iran

Violet Socks - My letter to Governor Bob McDonnell on the state-mandated object rape bill

Violet Socks - Through the looking glass and down that slippery slope

Huffington Post:

. . .“[I]t’s unbelievably broad,” said Judy Waxman, vice president for health and reproductive rights for the National Women’s Law Center. “I hear some people framing this about religious freedom, but I think it’s really about undermining health insurance in an extremely dramatic way and letting individual people decide what is moral for everybody they employ or insure.” . . .

No one is preventing anybody from following their conscience on birth control. All people are being prevented from doing is forcing their views on others via economic coercion. And everybody is forced, everyday, to pay all kinds of taxes & fees for things they'd rather not pay for.

Let me just state the obvious: the recent attacks and attempted attacks on Israeli citizens and non-Israeli bystanders in Georgia, India, Thailand, as well as older attacks in Argentina, were evil. I hope the people who planned, ordered and carried out these attempted murders are caught, and held to account for their crimes.

Al Gore - May 26, 2004 speech against torture

. . .Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength.". . .

Juan Cole - Santorum Hypes Iran ‘Threat’

. . .The medical reactor was given to Iran by the United States and was inaugurated in 1967. The reactor is being regularly inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure it is being used only for civilian purposes, and the IAEA was present Thursday to watch the insertion of the fuel rod.

The reactor actually has no conceivable military purpose, and its fuel, uranium enriched to 19.75 percent, is used up when run through the reactor, so it cannot be used to make a nuclear warhead. Nuclear bombs need the uranium to be enriched to 95 percent, typically. Iran is not yet able to achieve that level of enrichment, and says it is not trying to. . .

Juan Cole - Indian Investigators do not Suspect Iran in Israel Embassy Blast

Re: "Islamist resurgence"

The article “Prospects of Pakistan's Islamist resurgence” (Feb. 16) by Praveen Swami follows the predictable pattern of detailing the horrifying speeches and deeds of a few extremist leaders and portraying them as powerful forces which, if we are not careful, may at any time start a major jihad that will swallow all of us, ordinary folks. . .

. . .The use of terms like “toxic Islamism” is deeply offensive. The world is full of Muslims who are kind and compassionate, and Islamic political movements that have given the poor and dispossessed a voice.

S. Goga,

Chennai

Hindu letters: Iran & US

JOHN MUELLER - False nuclear fears cloud judgment on Iran

Hindu editorial - Encounter at mid-sea

I do not think the Italians personnel who killed the Indian fishermen should be treated like criminals. It was an accident, and while they have been negligent, while they may have shown tragically poor judgment, while they may have been inexcusably trigger-happy, it was an accident, not a crime.

next post: 2/24/2012

posted by roublen at 4:29 PM

 
Juan Cole - Informed Comment

Juan Cole - The Dilemma over Syria

Peter Van Buren, In Washington, Fear the Silence, Not the Noise

Juan Cole - Syria: Crimes Against Humanity in Homs

Juan Cole - How an Israeli Strike on Iran could radically weaken Israel

Arthur Silber - Preventing war with Iran

Gene Lyons - Why Stupid Wars Happen To A Smart People

After being elected in large part because he’d opposed a “dumb” war in Iraq, President Obama finds himself confronting an even dumber one in Iran. Exponentially dumber, actually.. . .You’d think the Israelis, of all people, would recognize that threatening a people with death and destruction hardens their resolve. . .

Violet Socks - religious freedom does not equal the right to violate employees’ civil rights

Doctor Science - The Value of Planned Parenthood

In the last abortion discussion we had around here, a number of people said

Contraception is easily available in the United States.

This is not actually true, if we're talking about *effective* contraception. [1] The most effective contraception methods will always be ones that don't have to be deployed every time you have sex, but only checked up or re-deployed occasionally -- injections, IUDs, patches, etc. Such methods are not going to be over-the-counter, they will always require seeing a doctor and getting a prescription. For women who are poor, uninsured, or transient, this is not at *all* easy, and in many areas it would be almost impossible without PP. . .

Susie Madrak - The ‘peace police’

David Graeber:

. . .Gandhi was part of a very broad anti-colonial movement that included elements that actually were using firearms, in fact, elements engaged in outright terrorism. He first began to frame his own strategy of mass non-violent civil resistance in response to a debate over the act of an Indian nationalist who walked into the office of a British official and shot him five times in the face, killing him instantly. Gandhi made it clear that while he was opposed to murder under any circumstances, he also refused to denounce the murderer. This was a man who was trying to do the right thing, to act against an historical injustice, but did it in the wrong way because he was “drunk with a mad idea.”. . .

next post: 2/17/2012

posted by roublen at 4:57 PM

 
Arthur Silber - Seeming Madness: The Suffocating Unreality that Kills

Sasha Said - Homelessness Averted

Susie Madrak - Komen

. . .Several years ago, when I was out of work and scraped together the money to see a doctor for the flu, she urged me to go have a mammogram through a program for the poor.

“And then what?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“So suppose I have a mammogram, and it turns out I have breast cancer. I have no way of paying for treatment, and no one’s offering to do it for free, so what’s the point?” I said. I was angry.

She didn’t have an answer. . .

Violet Socks - Komen

I guess my main opinion on the controversy is that PP, despite being run and staffed by imperfect human beings, is nonetheless a valuable institution, worthy of support.

Juan Cole - Syria's Crisis Deepens

Kevin Drum - Public Money and Public Policy

I guess my other view of these kinds of disputes, is that the government can give vouchers to people, and if people decide they want to go to PP or the CC, I don't think government should prohibit that choice. But that's the kind of non-interference policy conservatives messed with when they adopted their "health-care vouchers cannot buy insurance policies which offer abortion services" position. When they took that position, they insured decades of government interference in people's freedom to choose.

Juan Cole - The Generals try to stop an Iran War

Ali Gharib - Experts Urge Caution About Attacking Iran

RONEN BERGMAN (NYT) - Will Israel Attack Iran?

Roane Carey (Mother Jones) - Will Israel Attack Iran?

I think the controversy over "Israeli-First" and "dual loyalties" really misses the point. In what sense can people who support the indescribably insane policy of initiating an eternal war with the Iranian people (evil, too, but let's start with insanity) be considered to be "putting Israel first" or being "loyal to Israel"? Putting Haim Saban first is not the same as putting Israel first, being loyal to the cause of eternal Israeli occupation and dominance is not the same as being loyal to Israel. Some Israeli hardliners are manifestly more committed to the cause of dominance and supremacy, than they are to the cause of Israel per se.

went to the Hindu website, admittedly looking for editorials condemning Israeli murders of Iranian scientists, instead found this:

K. PRADEEP - He made deserts bloom (Eliahu Bezalel, who migrated to Israel in the fifties, is a pioneer in fertigation)

. . .Bezalel soon became part of David Ben Gurion's, (Israel's founder and first prime minister) dream of turning huge tracts of desert land into fertile farms. He was allotted land in a village in Negev Desert, south of Israel. And here he proved that roses bloom even in these arid deserts. . .

. . .Among the many visitors to his farm Bezalel was the Nobel Laureate and French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. “Sartre came with his girlfriend Simone de Beauvoir. He wanted to know if there was discrimination in Israel; discrimination of race, colour or prejudices of being European or Asian. I told him that this was not there but another kind of discrimination was obvious. It was very difficult for a farmer to get a loan in Israel. He had to go through so much formality. But for a European, in his silk suit and tie, doors would open very fast. Of course, things have changed now.” . . .

Also found this:

VATSALA VEDANTAM - 'I don't have cancer'

next post: 2/10/2012

posted by roublen at 4:25 PM

 
Sasha Said - Help! Facing Homelessness with 4 Dogs

Arthur Silber - Helping Each Other

Susie Madrak - Fun with fundraising

Digby - Help out a pal

(William) Burton's back, baby.

Oliver Willis - C.K.: November 22, 1999 – January 7, 2012

I sort of agree with conservatives that the range of human problems that can be solved with "more money" is quite narrow. But to me this just makes it more imperative to see what problems are so trivially easy to solve with more money and. . .solve them.

[3F22] Summer of 4 Ft. 2

Lisa: In the beginning of the school year, each of you received a colored ticket. I hope everyone still has theirs.
Crowd: Not me. Uh uh. I don't have it...
Nelson: Who died and made you boss?
Lisa: Mr. Estes, the publications advisor. I edited the whole thing.
Nelson: If you hadn't done it, some other loser would have. So quit milking it!

Fed statement is a positive step, 2 questions: 1) On what basis was the 2% target chosen? 2) (Quoting Atrios) What is the unemployment target?

I guess to me the fundamental principle of macroeconomics is that people should not have to make drastic negative changes in their lives, unless those changes increase productivity, or welfare, or both. UPDATE: It seems to me that the fundamental fact of a recession is that people are forced to make major negative changes in their lives, and the changes they are forced to make neither improve productivity, nor welfare.

Juan Cole - Petition against the Murder of Iranian Scientists

If Israel is asking for active policy not only to keep Israel, strong, smart & rich, but for active policy to keep Israel's neighbors poor, weak & stupid, then Israel is asking for too (damn) much. Frankly, poor, weak & stupid is something all too easy for countries to achieve, even without Israeli murders of Iranian scientists.

next post: Feb. 3rd.

posted by roublen at 9:29 AM

 
Arthur Silber - Ordinary Evil

David Plotz - The Bulldozer rolls on.

. . .The tough-Jews philosophy was coupled with scorn for Arabs. In his autobiography, Warrior, Sharon depicts Arabs as infantile, timorous, and untrustworthy. As one former U.S. official who knows him puts it, Sharon has the same condescending disregard for Arabs that Southern plantation-owners had for blacks. . .

. . .Some old soldiers want to fade away: Sharon would rather spend his dotage stifling the intifada that he helped create. He believes there has never been a normal day in Israel. And if he has his way, there will never be one.

The only update to Plotz's piece is that there's no longer any "if". After these recent murders of Iranian scientists, Israel has plumbed new depths, doing things the Americans & Russians chose not to do the Nazi scientists, the Americans & Russians, the Indians & Chinese, the South & North Koreans, the Pakistanis & Indians, chose not to do to each other, no matter how much they may have hated and feared one another. If India had tried to murder Pakistani scientists, it would not have stopped Pakistan, obviously, from pursuing their nuclear program, and these murders of Iranian scientists are not going to stop Iran, also obviously.

And if the logic of these murders is accepted and endorsed, there are many, many, more murders coming on the way. There are thousands of Iranian teenagers with the talent and desire to improve their country's military capability. Is Israel going to murder all of them too?

If the logic behind these murders is accepted, the Israeli vision of the future is of a white-skinned boot stomping on a brown-skinned face, forever.

I believe redemption is possible for everyone and everything, even these recent murders. But not unless you want it.

next blog post: Jan. 27

posted by roublen at 5:30 PM

 
Andrew Sullivan (Daily Dish) - Today In Syria: Another Bombing

ADAM NOSSITER (NYT) - For Congo Children, Food Today Means None Tomorrow

Arthur Silber - Still Here, Very Sick

I'm in very bad shape at the moment. Kind of scary times here. I'm sorry to say that's about all I'm capable of saying right now. The articles I'm working on and want to publish next are complicated. When I run through the arguments my subjects require, I heave a deep sigh and think: "Dear lord, I can't possibly explain all that when I feel this terrible.". . .

. . .So I'm stuck in this remarkably unfriendly and barren territory. I hope a path out of here will reveal itself soon. For the duration, I ask for your understanding and indulgence.

UPDATE: Lots of talk about Iran these days. A reader reminded me of this article of mine, from almost five years ago: "So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?" Change just a few specifics, and it could have been written this morning. As for what is likely to happen in the wake of an attack on Iran, and concerning the meaning and significance of such a monstrous act, see: "Morality, Humanity and Civilization: 'Nothing remains ... but memories.'"

Those articles are good. . .

It is important to remember that we've been told for well over 5 years that Iran's nuclear program was, not "undesirable", or "scary", but "unacceptable", "inconceivable", "unimaginable", red-alert urgent urgent urgent, requiring large amounts of war and near-war ASAP. I wonder if those whose claims on Iran's nuclear program have turned out to be false are willing to go back and examine why?

Violet Socks - Life

Gary Farber - Tenth Blogiversary

Susie Madrak - ADD nightmare

Seriously, how frustrating (and silly) is this, that the DEA is keeping people from getting needed medication?
GARDINER HARRIS (NYT):

Medicines to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are in such short supply that hundreds of patients complain daily to the Food and Drug Administration that they are unable to find a pharmacy with enough pills to fill their prescriptions.

The shortages are a result of a troubled partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration . . .

letsgetitdone (corrente) - The Job Guarantee and the MMT Core: Part Three, A Reply to John Carney

Why leaks are essential, and why too much secrecy and reverence for top-secret, classified information can damage national security:
ADAM ENTOUS and JULIAN E. BARNES in Washington and MARGARET COKER in Abu Dhabi (WSJ) - U.S. Doubts Intelligence That Led to Yemen Strike

Top U.S. military leaders who oversaw missile strikes last year against al Qaeda targets in Yemen suspect they were fed misleading intelligence by the country's government and were duped into killing a local political leader whose relationship with the president's family had soured. . .

making a similar point, a very good Bill James article in Slate, published in 2010, which I just read:
Bill James - Life, Liberty, and Breaking the Rules: In defense of Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, jaywalkers, and all the other scofflaws that make America great.

There is no real difference between sending Babe Ruth to jail and sending Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to jail. The only relevant difference is the difference between America in 2010 and America in 1940 . . .

. . .The answer is. . .tolerance and vigilance, and it is a sense of perspective. The people who sent Martha Stewart to jail were the people who were supposed to be watching Wall Street. They went after Martha Stewart because she was an easy target. . .

. . .So now it is Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds in the cross hairs of the prosecutors, and the question I would urge you to think about is not only "Are these people guilty?" It is also, "Is this prosecution necessary and appropriate?"

Who is it that these people are not watching? We know now, in retrospect, who the people who sent Martha to jail should have been watching. In 10 years, we will know who is robbing the candy store while the feds are chasing Roger. . .

Question: What do Saez and other public finance economists think of wealth taxes versus income taxes, and treatment of capital income versus wage income?

Julian Pecquet (The Hill) - Health care execs top list of highest-paid CEOs

. . .John Hammergen, CEO of the pharmaceutical distributor and technology firm McKesson, made $145 million, according to GMI. Joel Gemunder, CEO of Omnicare — the nation's leading provider of medicines for seniors — made a reported $98 million. . .

Nasty, low, suspicious mind that I have, can't help wondering whether the hospitals being so extraordinarily generous to Hammergen & Gemunder are being bribed to be so.

Markets work very well for long, repeated games, not so much for one-shot and limited shot games. And the higher executive pay becomes, the more the CEO's relationship with their company, and with the broader economy, becomes one-shot or limited-shot, instead of repeated. i.e. "make your pile by hook or crook, and then after that they can't touch you". A nation dreaming of accumulating their fuck-you money, instead of defeating the desire to say fuck-you.

Water-Cooler Wisdom: "These CEOs man, they have no sense of ownership, no sense of loyalty, they swoop in, make drastic changes, swoop out with a big severance, leave a big mess to clean up. I think they take their inspiration from George W. Bush".

Dean Baker - Hiding Upward Redistribution Policies as Market Outcomes

Congrats to Romney. The first Mormon 2-party nominee is a milestone worth celebrating. But did Santorum win Iowa?

Next blog post: Jan. 20

posted by roublen at 1:13 PM

 
Arthur Silber - ONCE UPON A TIME...

Gary Farber - TENTH BLOGIVERSARY

Susie Madrak - Happy new year!

Juan Cole - Top 5 Foreign Policy Challenges for US, 2012

Martin Gascoigne - Syria, the Invisible Massacre

Andrew Sullivan - Today In Syria: Assad's Terrible New Year

Glenn Greenwald - Good Chris Hayes segment, with Spencer @Attackerman, on Obama's secret drone wars: http://is.gd/kWvoT0

Charlie Rose - Ali Soufan on "The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda" (12/23/2011)

Yes, Minister - The Whiskey Priest

Jim Hacker: "Remember Churchill, the wilderness years. He found out about our military inadequacy and Hitler's war machine from army officers. So all the time he was in the wilderness, he was able to leak stories to the press and embarrass the government. I could do that."
Annie Hacker: "But you're in the government."
Jim Hacker: "Oh, yes..."

Question for Bradley Manning prosecution: Was Winston Churchill guilty of "aiding the enemy" when he leaked top-secret information of British military inadequacy to the Germans (and the British public)?

Obsidian Wings (russell) - what about huntsman?

I asked a conservative friend about Huntsman, his answer: "Why not Huntsman? Because he's NOT a conservative! . . . .He is NOT A CONSERVATIVE!".

So I guess Huntsman, if he still has hopes, should sink money into 2 ads: 1. Jon Huntsman - I'm A Conservative! 2. Jon Huntsman - I'M A CONSERVATIVE!!

possibly followed by 3. JON HUNTSMAN - HE'S A CONSERVATIVE!!!

Kevin Drum - America's 20-Year Investment Drought

Matthew Yglesias - America's Infrastructure Failure

Michael Mandel - My chart of the year: The investment drought continues

Matt Stoller - Who Wants Keep the War on Drugs Going AND Put You in Debtor’s Prison? (June 2011)

Rortybomb (Mike Konczal) - Please Consider Supporting the Roosevelt Institute

Josh Marshall - What’s the Deal with Romney’s Taxes?

Paul Krugman - when economists stop being polite

[John Cochrane] defines Ricardian equivalence as

the theorem that stimulus does not work in a well-functioning economy

But how do you determine when an economy is well-functioning?

Daniel Dennett blurb to Douglas Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language" (1997)

"What Douglas Hofstadter is, quite simply, is a phenomenologist, a practicing phenomenologist, and he does it better than anyone else. Ever. For years he has been studying the processes of his own consciousness, relentlessly, unflinchingly, imaginatively, but undeludedly — he watches his own mind work the way a stage magician watches another stage magician's show, not in slack-jawed awe at the 'magic' of it all, but full of intense and informed curiosity about how on earth the effects might be achieved." - Daniel Dennett

Probably unfair, but "slack-jawed awe at the 'magic' of it all" describes my reaction to certain overly worshipful attitudes to capitalism, the free market, and the invisible hand. One example I have in mind is Milton Friedman's pencil story, which is a great story, but ignores the fact that they had pencils in the USSR, and the fact that pencil-making was invented, copied and improved under a wide variety of regimes, none of them completely laissez-faire.

David Atkins - The "No True Libertarianism" fallacy

. . .The modern welfare state didn't arise by accident or conspiracy: it evolved as a means of avoiding the failures of other models. . .

Karl Smith - John Taylor and ARRA (July 2011)

. . .I actually think Taylor is making an important substantive point here. It’s that in practice fiscal stimulus doesn’t raise GDP because in practice fiscal stimulus amounts to giving money to people, who then save it – just as Lucas, Sargent etc, said they would. . .

comments:
rjs:

Bill Gross, CEO of the worlds largest bond fund PIMCO, seems to have had an epiphany about proper counter cyclical fiscal policy last week; in his monthly letter to investors, he said concern about deficits can wait for a stronger economy, and called for a new stimulus program similar the FDR’s WPA…quoting economist Hyman Minsky, he opined that “government should become the “employer of last resort” in a crisis, offering a job to anyone who wants one – for health care, street cleaning, or slum renovation” and repeated David Rosenberg’s “I’d have a shovel in the hands of the long-term unemployed from 8am to noon, and from 1pm to 5pm I’d have them studying algebra, physics, and geometry.”

roublen:

Rational expectations is not crazy for saying that that if you give people money they might save it rather than spend it. It’s crazy for saying that people will save based on estimating their increased future tax liabilities because of the increased new spending (as if any self-respecting conservative would not be dreaming up clever schemes of tax avoidance instead of meekly estimating their future taxes!). The Chinese save a large fraction of their income, not because of future tax liabilities, but because they don’t have health insurance. With high unemployment, and the most unpredictable medical costs of any rich nation, it’s not hard to explain why people are saving as much as they possibly can.

Karl Smith - Health Care: Unfixable on the Demand Side (Sep. 2011)

. . .This slips under my definition of Liberalization Failure. You can point to all the things that are wrong with government controlled health care but when you leave cost control to the private markets the populist backlash is so severe that governments can’t help but make the problem even worse.

Thus you end up with the most costly health care system on the planet.

comments:

roublen

I think you’re overlooking the consolidation and recovery of pricing power on the part of providers, which seems to me a more important political force than a consumer backlash. (How politically effective have consumer backlashes against banking and higher education been?)

All the softie hospitals which would give away charity care without charging the uninsured usurious rates or going after them with bill collectors have been bought out/ shut down, leaving private hospitals administered by a bunch of hard-boiled eggs willing to be ruthless in treating uninsured/emergency patients as an opportunity to rack up billable hours, and then aggressively pursuing those claims through collection agencies.

wlm:

I agree with roublen about the power of providers relative to consumers.

I also think that incentives for providers are often perverse in health care. For many severe conditions (cancer, COPD, kidney failure, etc) treatment is expensive, but failure to treat is cheaper, both in the short and long term.

I don’t think we will come up with an HMO model that will address this market failure.

I forgot to mention that, in theory, the right organization structure for private health insurance seems to be of a mutual insurer, so that successfully holding down costs leads to premium refunds. Does not deal with the problem of adverse selection, or bad relationships with providers, though.

To elaborate on my earlier assertion that that there was a gold "bubble", here's what I meant by that: By 2020, the price of gold will be closer to its 2005 price than its 2010 price. i.e. by 2020, the nominal price of gold will be less than a thousand dollars an ounce. Also, it will have turned out that during the bubble years, one or more of the major gold brokers will have done something unsavory/unethical/fraudulent. My guess is that they will have subcontracted with someone who claimed to have gold they did not actually have, or that they will interpret contracts in a way that gives investors rights to less gold than they thought they were buying.

Matt Phillips (WSJ) - Charlie Munger on gold (Jan. 2011)

Wikimedia foundation - Thank you from Executive Director Sue Gardner

Brad Delong - AN UNREALISTIC, IMPRACTICAL, UTOPIAN PLAN FOR DEALING WITH THE HEALTH CARE OPPORTUNITY (2007)

Ezra Klein - Presenting the first-annual Wonky awards

. . .Central bank dissenter of the year: Charles Evans. While some on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors are worried that the central bank is doing too much and risking inflation, Evans has argued that the Fed isn’t doing enough to boost the economy. The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Evans is one of the few bankers who seems to recognize that 9 percent unemployment should, as he put it, set policymakers’ hair on fire as much as a slight uptick in inflation usually does. . .

posted by roublen at 3:35 PM

 
Arthur Silber - ONCE UPON A TIME...

. . .Besides, I'm very sick right now. My major concern is trying to avoid having to call 911. For the third time. I don't want to do that. . .

Susie Madrak - Syria

There are 2 questions re: Manning. One, did he do a good or bad thing? On this, reasonable people can disagree. Second, if it was bad, how bad was it? This is the question on which the US government has lost its mind, its bearings, its morality. It has whipped itself into a hysteria, and allowed itself to become evil. Ali Soufan's recent interview with Charlie Rose exemplifies what good national security work looks like, as opposed to the chilling control-freak excesses of the Manning (and Aaron Swartz) prosecutions.

Glenn Greenwald - must-read piece comparing Manning and Ellsberg

KEVIN GOSZTOLA - Manning is charged with aiding terrorists

[Fein] Manning “knowingly gave intelligence through WikiLeaks to the enemy.” He “wantonly caused the release of this information.” It was “not just good for declared enemies” but also accessible to “all other enemies with Internet access.” . .

. . .Now, it is clear: the effect of Manning’s prosecution has the potential to criminalize national security journalism. . .

If you accept the prosecution's argument, is there any difference between "informing the enemy" and "informing the American people"?

Kevin Jon Heller - Did Bradley Manning “Aid the Enemy”? Did The New York Times? (Updated)

Paul Krugman - Springtime for Toxics

. . .mercury is nasty stuff. It’s a potent neurotoxicant: the expression “mad as a hatter” emerged in the 19th century because hat makers of the time treated fur with mercury compounds, and often suffered nerve and mental damage as a result.

. . .a lot of mercury gets into the atmosphere from old coal-burning power plants that lack modern pollution controls. From there it gets into the water, where microbes turn it into methylmercury, which builds up in fish. And what happens then? The E.P.A. explains: “Methylmercury exposure is a particular concern for women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, because studies have linked high levels of methylmercury to damage to the developing nervous system, which can impair children’s ability to think and learn.”

The new rules would also have the effect of reducing fine particle pollution, which is a known source of many health problems, from asthma to heart attacks. In fact, the benefits of reduced fine particle pollution account for most of the quantifiable gains from the new rules. The key word here is “quantifiable”: E.P.A.’s cost-benefit analysis only considers one benefit of mercury regulation, the reduced loss in future wages for children whose I.Q.’s are damaged by eating fish caught by freshwater anglers. There are without doubt many other benefits to cutting mercury emissions, but at this point the agency doesn’t know how to put a dollar figure on those benefits.

Even so, the payoff to the new rules is huge: up to $90 billion a year in benefits compared with around $10 billion a year of costs in the form of slightly higher electricity prices. This is, as David Roberts of Grist says, a very big deal. . .

Diane - A Sign Of Hope

(Via Hannah Mae) I.A.R. Wylie - "The Little Woman" (November 1945)

THOMAS B. EDSALL - The Anti-Entitlement Strategy

THOMAS B. EDSALL - The Trouble With That Revolving Door

I think it was Michael Barone who called Edsall a "gloomy Irishman", a political pessimist who, because he was liberal, kept writing articles about the problems with or obstacles to liberalism. Anyway, a very good political journalist.

Matthew Yglesias - Central Banking & Humility

Scott Sumner - Central Banking & Ego

Modeled Behavior (Karl Smith) - Why Not Plutocracy: Apathy Runs Deep Edition

. . twitter was ablaze a few weeks back over the fact that Jamie Dimon objected to his taxes being raised, but thought that he was already paying what Obama proposed raising his tax rate to.

This makes perfect sense if you note that Jamie doesn’t care about his tax rate. He cares about his taxes being raised. . .

. . .Here at the state level I can safely say that virtually no one has any idea what they are doing. That is, for the most part the lobbyist do not know and indeed are not particularly interested in what is in the best interest of their clients.

Further, this seems to stem from the fact that the clients are not particularly interested in what is in their best interests.

What they are very interested in is whether legislation is pro them or anti them. However, if you begin to talk about the economy as a complex system full of unintended consequences where anti legislation could be in their best interests their eyes glaze over. . .

One example my Dad gives is when a regulated monopoly was forced to lower their rates, to their surprise, profits increased. You would have assumed they would already be maximizing profits, but you would have assumed wrong.

Noahpinion - The liberty of local bullies

posted by roublen at 6:12 PM