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. email

 
Anyway, concerning Israel, I was struck by a recent
Jonathan Chait piece in which he asserted that the
current Palestinian conventional wisdom goes something
like "it may take a long time, but eventually if we
hang tough the Israelis will cry Uncle and give us
everything we want."

Currently, the only idea the Israeli left has is to
build a wall, unilaterally withdraw from 75% of the
West Bank, stop the suicide bombings as much as
possible, and wait till the Palestinians are ready to
negotiate. This is not a terrible approach, though
the major caveat is that no one knows if a wall would
really stop terrorism (especially if Israeli Arabs get
radicalized.)

Anyway, here's my possible suggestion:

The key point of the current crisis is both sides are
determined to outlast the other guy.

Here is how the Israelis can tip the stalemate in
their favor: Suppose an Israeli Labour leader were to
propose a very generous peace plan (lets call it
"Taba plus") as the *maximum* the Palestinians were
*ever* going to get , though some details/parameters
were amenable to negotiation. And suppose this Labor
leader were to give the Palestinian leadership a
certain amount of time (three months?) to agree to
call off the intifada, and began negotiations for a
final status agreement within the general framework
of "Taba plus".

What happened if the deadline passed and the
Palestinians had not budged? Then the generous "Taba
plus" plan would be made somewhat less generous, with
this "modified Taba plus" plan being announced as the
*new* maximum the Palestinians would *ever* get. In
other words, by dithering/making war for past three
months, they had sacrificed something (however small
that "something" might be) *permanently*.

A new deadline could be issued on the basis of
"modified Taba plus", and if that deadline passed,
then the maximum the Palestinians would *ever* get
would be ratcheted down still further, and a new
deadline would be issued, and so on. . .

I hope I have been clear enough so that you can see
what I'm getting at. Right now the Palestinians are
thinking "if we wait for a long time, we can get
everything." If an Israeli labor leader were to
adopt this "permanent deadline" policy, however, then
the Plaestinian thinking might change to: "if we act
quickly, we can get (almost) everything. If we wait,
we will get much much less." I.e. it adds an urgency
to Palestinian desire for peace, plus it gives
Israelis an incentive to wait it out.

posted by roublen at 9:08 PM

 
From Paul Krugman, "Peddling Prosperity"

"A trade war is a conflict where both sides use most of their ammunition to shoot themselves in the foot"

posted by roublen at 9:45 PM

 
what needs to be done: a suggested platform for idealistic liberals

three phrases, six words that will make the Democrats the majority party:
"Middle Class, Common Sense, Golden Rule"

Middle Class (unavoidably polarizing) issues: progressive taxation, refundable tax credits for health care and education, eliminating many special interest tax credits and subsidies, supporting private-sector unions, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.

Common Sense (unifying middle ground, reforming) issues: Gun Control, Abortion, War on Drugs, National Defense, Education, Public sector unions, Environment, Special interests, Death Penalty, Tort and Regulatory reform, Judicial reform, Immigration

Golden Rule (spiritual, moralizing) issues: "Employer of last resort", Foreign aid, Nation-building, Education & Equal-Opportunity programs for the poor/disadvantaged, No State lotteries, Voluntary humanitarian military missions


Middle Class issues:

guiding idea: "Everyone who is willing to work for it should be able to afford the essentials of a decent, middle-class life"

These should be the "bread and butter" issues for Democrats, which distinguish them from Republicans, and convince the average worker that their lives will be better under Democrats than Republicans.

The key polarizing idea is "progressive taxation" (the liberal word), or "coercive income redistribution" (the conservative/libertarian word). Liberals may think that it is unwise to redistribute income through the tax code (for incentive, efficiency and technical reasons), but it is not immoral. Conservatives believe such redistribution is immoral, and/or very very unwise, and thus any social safety net and the consequent redistribution should be kept to a bare minimum.

A good exposition of the liberal point of view is an article by Paul Krugman, in a review of Dick Armey's book "The Freedom Revolution":

http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/TopHeavy.html

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid: Blessed be the Trinity. No privatization, some reforms (like means-testing) may be considered. Bottom line: the safety-net must be preserved.

Progressive taxation: (unrepentant class warriors . . .wheee! just kidding)

Private Sector Unions: We should not idealize unions: Sometimes they are corrupt, and sometimes they seek special favors at the expense of the broader public. But unions are almost the only political counterweight to big money, and the loss of that counterweight is clearly bad for society. Unions help keep us a middle class society, and we should give them all principled support.

Health care tax credits: Universal Health insurance through refundable tax credits: We choose tax credits instead of Single Payer because 1)tax credits are simple to implement 2)they have some bipartisan support 3) less risky politically. If tax credits don't work, we can move on to Single Payer.

Education tax credits: Daycare, preschool. For School Vouchers(!?), see below.

Taking on special interests in favor of public interest: examples: Cracking Down on Tax Havens, making corporations count stock options as an expense, ending the strange practice of giving broadcasters public airwaves licenses for free, instead of auctioning them off on behalf of the public.


Common Sense issues:

"Common Sense" issues are either non-ideological issues, or issues that we wish to make non-ideological, by uniting people over a broad middle ground. Especially, we attempt to take the sting out of polarizing “culture war” issues, and try to form a broad consensus which can heal the polarizing wounds. This might require taking on people on the right and left. Also, “common sense” issues refers to reforming programs that have failed (eg. the War On Drugs), and taking on certain powerful special interests.

War on drugs: The War On Drugs is the most important race-relations issue in America today. End the war on drugs, and use the freed up resources for the war on terrorism and violent crime. Money for drug treatment, selling to children remains a federal crime, no selling drugs and no using drugs in public areas

Abortion: A moderate position on abortion (safe, legal and rare) No state funding for abortion, incentives to "choose life" and for adoption, funding for birth control and sex ed (subject to its being effective)

Education: Three broad principles 1) A voluntary national test, spelling out what kids should know and giving parents/teachers the tools to teach them. 2) Equalizing funding between rich and poor school districts (a good compromise: more state/federal money for poor school districts) 3) School vouchers, in order to put power in the hands of parents, and not district bureaucrats, teachers unions, and politicians (a good compromise: more charter schools)

national defense: Anti-Star Wars, pro-everything else. But defense should not have an unlimited budget: In any well-run organization there are uncomfortable trade-offs and competition for resources. Inefficient, marginally useful programs must be reformed or shut down. Difficult decisions must be made, and the Military brass + defense contractors must not be able to bully politicians from making them.

Gun control: Sensible efforts to keep guns out of the hands of children, criminals and the mentally unstable, while protecting the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to own guns for hunting, sport, and to protect their family and property

Public sector unions: Good compensation, but greater accountability. In particular, Public sector managers (who are accountable to Politicians, who are accountable to the Public) must be given greater flexibility to fire workers they don't think are up to snuff

Environment: Pro-ANWR drilling , anti-letting mining companies mine on federal land for free, tradable emission permits, BTU tax. etc.

special interests : “no fault” auto insurance reform (taking on the trial lawyers), free trade (taking on the protectionists), etc.

death penalty: supporting the death penalty, making sure we get the right guy (ie. no testimony from "jailhouse snitches", videotaped interrogations, money for good defense lawyers, etc.)

tort and regulatory reform: sticking it to both trial lawyers and fanatically anti-regulation corporations

judicial reform: reforming affirmative action so that it 1) helps disadvantaged minorities 2) does not antagonize whites. Perhaps using the military as a model.

immigration is the big unresolved issue in American politics. Being the son of an immigrant, I don’t know how native Americans viscerally feel about this issue, so I’m going to defer to others. I would suggest however, that if native Americans completely shut the door on future immigration, America will be losing a part of its soul.

Golden rule:

“Golden Rule” issues are those that require us to make sacrifices for the good of others. Americans are very generous people: They just don’t think government is an effective vehicle for their generosity. But there are some things that can only be done by Governments. We can give a homeless person a meal: we can’t get him a job. Similarly, if we are serious about helping Africa / South America/ Asia, the federal government must play a large role. Private charities tend to be inefficient and piecemeal. Liberals should support “Golden Rule” programs because they are the right thing to do, and also because it will raise their standing with Evangelicals and the religious.


"employer of last resort": guaranteed, sub-minimum wage, above the poverty line, 50 hr a week job;

foreign aid, nation-building, One percent of GDP: Extensive supporting quotes from "the Sermon on the Mount")

education, equal-opportunity programs in general for the poor

opportunity for US servicemen & women to volunteer for humanitarian military interventions (e.g. Rwanda) Right now there is no such volunteer program in place because the military feels it might hurt cohesion.

No state lotteries: gambling is a sin, and government should not be encouraging (or outlawing) sin, even if gambling is a relatively harmless vice in small doses. Our children should go to school on clean tax dollars, not gambling money.


afterthoughts:

Using conventional labels:

liberal on the war on drugs, fiscal policy, health care, private sector unions, non-violent crime

maverick on welfare, education, tort reform, death penalty, regulatory reform, campaign finance reform

conservative on violent crime


posted by roublen at 10:53 PM

 
more elegant baseball prose from "The Bill James Baseball Encyclopedia"

“In the army, or in any fascist or totalitarian state, they have laws against most everything, laws that are never enforced so long as you behave yourself. Then you make somebody mad, or the captain wakes up on the wrong side of the cot, and whammo. You just broke fifteen laws. Having laws on the books that are not enforced puts every policeman in the robes of a judge, empowered to decide who the guilty are today. In a free society, since the law cannot be arbitrarily or capriciously enforced, a statue that is not enforced is not enforceable. "

". . .Cobb was a five-time American League batting champion, with more or less seven seasons under his belt-and yet he was also a twenty-four-year old hick from Nowehere, Georgia, a little in awe of Matty, of the photographers, of the crowd. He had no weapons, at that moment, to defend himself against his inadequacies-no spikes, no bat, no glove. He was so crude and unpolished that he must have felt that whenever they took those things away from him, he became nothing, his shortcomings glowed like a hot piece of iron in the dark. And whenever he saw them glowing, he got angry. You can see it in his face, I think, that if he could just put on a uniform and go out on the field it would be such a relief to him, out where manners and taste and style were all defined by bases gained and lost. And everyone else, for a change, would have to apologize to him.

from The Simpsons

"Why should the race be only to the swift and the prize to the quick-witted? Why should the more fortunate forge ahead with the gifts God gave them? Well I say cheating is a gift that man gives himself!"



posted by roublen at 8:29 PM

 
Neal Stephenson Command

". . .it was possible to glean certain patterns, and one that recurred as regularly as an urban legend was the one about how someone would move into a commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children, and eventually discover that, underneath this facade, the guys who ran it were actually control freaks; and that, as living in a commune, where much lip service was paid to ideals of peace, love and harmony, had deprived them of normal, socially approved outlets for their control-freakdom, it tended to come out in other, invariably more sinister, ways."

posted by roublen at 8:27 PM

 
stick a fork in these turkeys:

what we have now:
infotainment journalism
dramatic upper-class journalism
bon-bon journalism



what will replace it:
framework or context or public journalism
the irredeemable punditocracy and how to do better.
david wayne spence. Two innocent men and and probably three have almost certainly been executed. In each case the reason they have been executed because prosecutors and police offices have been unwilling
it was around this time, that Bush's Texas administration did something, which, in retrospect, can only be described as evil. They ordered a test when it was completely unnecessary. He did it to make it appear that he looked over at these cases and only went forward with the execution if he was 100% sure. From then on, whenever Bush was asked if he was sure he hadn't executed an innocent man, pointed to those two
to admit they have made a mistake that might have resulted in an innocent man dying.
It is absolutely obscene. Just imagine all that palling around going on the Panchito and the Dolce , and all these people lacking the competence or the backbone to ask a brutally tough, but vitally important question.
It's just sickening to think about, and it makes it hard to look at these people with any respect again. I'm still furious about it.
oj simpson
david brock and anita hill
both sides do it: democrats asserted time and time again that Republicans opposed the Airline security bill because they opposed federal unions. That was not what they were doing. What they accused the democrats of doing was pushing for federalization because they were for federal unions.

proves how excruciatingly difficult it can be to get at the truth


tax cuts
the environment
the social security system


tilting at windmills and reinventing the wheel: a friendly critique of the alternative left

a small biographical note.
the way that michel lasseter was treated wa a microcosm of what I find annoying
also the entire way Columbine was handled
trampling on the weak and pandering to the strong. the apotheosis of mediocrity.
all scape-goating all the time. like children. just following through on whatever their impulse is.

posted by roublen at 8:26 PM

 
Gore in Four or Something More?: an analysis of the Democratic party candidates.

Gore
Lieberman
Bradley
Bayh
Kerry
Kerrey
Edwards
Gephardt
Feinstein
Biden
Daschle
Ed Rendell
there are many excellent politicians in the CBC but none of the them have the necessary level of fame and glamorous achievement to make any one of them noticeable.
the next viable Democratic African-American candidate will be harold ford jr. and he will have to make his bones first by winning statewide office in Tenessee.

rage of a liberal class.
Many partisan Democrats believe they have been treated unfairly by the mainstream culture, mostly because partisan Republicans seem to have become enormously successful at pushing non-partisan buttons. and are therefore angry and disillusioned. the unfairness is all the more galling because the mainstream perpatrators genuinely do not believe they are doing anything wrong.
this article asserts:
1)partisan Democrats are right. They have been done wrong. (bulk of the article)

people use choice theory/ contingency analysis. and it makes a difference whether the choices are morally neutral or not.

Small changes are negligible, there is a threshold effect, and there is a small framing effect.

1a) to some extent this is due to the insanity of our age, which Republicans have been very good at manipulating.


intellectual pathologies of our age:

pointy-headed abstractions

silly correlations
the canonical silly correlation. beer and smoking versus marijuana, opium, cocaine.

post-modern disequilibrium (moral relativism) “who are we to judge?” arguably a special case of pointy-headed abstraction

physical pathologies:
a softer, potentially richer life, therefore a greater premium on delayed gratification or continence

says something significant about my education that I only learned the meaning of the word incontinence in my twenties.

a more complicated world leads to 1)anxiety & stress 2)gullibility 3) greater opportunities for rationalization. The essence of debate: keep going back and forth until someone can’t respond or going in circles. But now, when you are intellectually bested, simply assume that you could win if you tries hard enough, or that you’re opponent is missing the forest for the trees, i.e. not putting whatever point he successfully made in the proper context

intellectual pathologies

good media would look to set firm anchor, avoid 50-100 problem:
two broad impeachment groups: upset, apathetic

upset, left, right, center

apathetic was faintly pro-Clinton
center was moderately Anti-Clinon
After a wile, trying to convert the apathetic and centrist to their side.

complex world:
insecurity
gullibility
increased desire to pigeonhole people

very very important statement: just as a wise man can say something foolish, a fool can say something wise. Then how are we to judge ideas and the endless claims/counter-claims? bottom line. there are no shortcuts.

Oh Florida:

Reagan and Clinton: two peas in a pod. It is utterly insane to hate Clinton because he's dishonest and then extol the virtues of Reagan. Reagan was a very sweet man, and merely to hear him lisp out the simplest phrases produced all sorts of warm, fuzzy feelings, but honesy was not one of his virtues.


the partisan outlook: when confronted with an unpleasant fact, argument, or assertion glide past it, and present the other side with an unpleasant argument, fact, or assertion. Pile up a long list of grievances/proofs of the other sides wrongness, and remain wilfully ignorant of the pile of evidence the other side is accumulating. Then, when you are challenged on any one argument, you can wave it away in good conscience. All right, the opposition may have scored one minor point, a few branches on a tree, but is there any doubt about who the forest belongs too?

you can have a civil conversation when you are debating about parameters and not principles. When your core principles are different, then there may not be much point arguing, and it may even be counter-productive.


2) the mainstream and many conservatives are not acting out of malice, or indeed out of any conscious intention of different treatment, and therefore will not realize the error of their ways, nor will history correct current wrongs. Nor, for those who believe in the afterlife, will the perpatrators pay grievously for their sins.

Rorschasch test: If you are conservative and do not understand the diference between Frank Keating and John Ascroft , and do not understand why Frank Keating would have sailed through confirmation while John Ashcroft did not, then congratulations: you are not part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

The Politics of Personal Destruction is a descriptive phrase, but too heavy-handed for routine use: Her is a lighter, more witty British synonym: Playing the Man, and Not the Ball.
3) democrats will have to conquer their anger with the knowledge that justice for past wrongs will never occur. They must overcome their anger and self-pity and console themselves with the belief that: 1) this world was never meant to be fair, and you only have the responsibility to do your best. 2) to keep sanity and perspective, make a careful note of where your opinions differ from the mainstream, without expecting that the mainstream will eventually come round to your way of thinking when the scales somehow fall from their eyes. Precision helps to diffuse anger. You are more likely to become angry and disilusioned when you vehemently disagree with the mainstream, you suspect their disagreement is based on disingenousness or failure to think things through or some kind of error or disingenousness, but you cannot quite prove this is the case.

posted by roublen at 8:21 PM

 
when I was eight I was an enthusiastic republican

by the time I was ten, however, democrat for life

prop 187 was the key. never forget the courage of the Democratic party, or the Cowardice of the Republicans

learnt that the head has never beaten the gut in a political, and that political campaigns are not won by reason and evidence they are won by catchy sound-bites. to put it indelicately, by stroking the voters erogenous zones. some common zones: strong military, education, protecting Social Security, welfare cheat, illegal immigrant, soft on crime,

however, I also learned that if the people make a big mistake, they almost always reverse it The system does not work efficiently, perfectly, or quickly, but the system does work. I learned to trust the people, not always in the short run, but almost always in the long run.

the core values of the deomcratic party: fairness, the conviction that everyone deserves a fair shake, an opportunity to make the most of their potential. An open mind, a willingness to hear new ideas and to seek progress instead of always sticking with the familiar. That’s why we’re called progressive. Democrats believe tomorrow can be better than today, and we have a responsibility to work towards that goal. Lastly and most importantly, to stick up for the people who need sticking up for, to fight the fights that need fighting, to choose the hard right over the easy wrong, to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. The golden rule is one of the central values of every great religious tradition, the source of compassion, And compassion and empathy, above all, are the defining values of the Democratic Party. It can all be summed up in six words: middle class, common sense, golden rule. These are the core values of the Democratic party, and these are my core values, and that is why I expect to be a Democrat for as long as I live.

ten deadly sins: wrath, malice, envy, avarice, pride, gluttony, lust, sloth. add dishonesty and cowardice. Republicans have written avarice, pride, malice and wrath out of the seven deadly sins. schadenfreude
they have a complex relationship with dishonesty that I will analyze in more detail.

Republicans have no problem going after terry macauliffe. Why did the democrats have such a hard time going after jim nicholson. Being a decorated veteran absolves you of any past and future sin. There's a reason that liberals go after gingrich, bennet, limbaugh , and even Delay instead of people who really deserve it, like nicholson, and north and (occasionally) shartzkopf. Nothing scary about newt or limbaugh. going after them is really cowardly.

articles that need to be written:

1. Gore campaign critique, with an eye to the elections of 2000 and 2004

2.
the only painful, self-flagellating Gore campaign critique you'll ever need.
he doesn't know who he is, which really means I don't know who he is
Russert interrogations
he's a liar, and more to the point, a braggart
I can't trust him.
He doesn't like normal, average people. he's uncomfortable around normal people. Since he doesn't understand people like me, how can he work for people like me?
He makes all these grandiose claims and plans because he's not comfortable in his own skin.
he's like the high school or college teacher's pet type smart aleck who thought he was smarter and better than everyone else.
He might come up with all these fancy-pants smart-alecky ways to change the world without any understanding or flexibility: a self-righteous inflexible, comtrol freak.
he said he invented the internet:
he'll say and do anything to win
he's knee-deep in the whole Washington culture, and he doesn't understand how normal people think and feel.
he’s not comfortable in his own skin, and that makes him painful to watch.
he's a phony
I don't like him. I don't understand what makes him tick. I don't feel comfortable watching him on television
.He went to a Buddhist temple to raise money -> he's willing to break he rules
the money must have been funnelled in from somewhere
He'll push his conduct to the very edge of legality and then defend his conduct with a lot of weaselly, Washington-speak, never mind simple decency and morality.
Bush was the same in all three debates. Gore was a different person each time, and that bothers me.

Russ
anyone with half a brain would realize that a better way to attack Bush in the debates was fuzy math and Insurance, that's a Washington term. What did they choose? hate crimes.

George Bush is telling you can have a porterhouse steak, mashed potatoes with the good kind of gravy, a triple fudge sundae, and still make you lose weight.

the people versus the powerful

lets fix our roof while the sun is shining.

posted by roublen at 8:18 PM

 
when I was eight I was an enthusiastic republican

by the time I was ten, however, democrat for life

prop 187 was the key. never forget the courage of the Democratic party, or the Cowardice of the Republicans

learnt that the head has never beaten the gut in a political, and that political campaigns are not won by reason and evidence they are won by catchy sound-bites. to put it indelicately, by stroking the voters erogenous zones. some common zones: strong military, education, protecting Social Security, welfare cheat, illegal immigrant, soft on crime,

however, I also learned that if the people make a big mistake, they almost always reverse it The system does not work efficiently, perfectly, or quickly, but the system does work. I learned to trust the people, not always in the short run, but almost always in the long run.

the core values of the deomcratic party: fairness, the conviction that everyone deserves a fair shake, an opportunity to make the most of their potential. An open mind, a willingness to hear new ideas and to seek progress instead of always sticking with the familiar. That’s why we’re called progressive. Democrats believe tomorrow can be better than today, and we have a responsibility to work towards that goal. Lastly and most importantly, to stick up for the people who need sticking up for, to fight the fights that need fighting, to choose the hard right over the easy wrong, to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. The golden rule is one of the central values of every great religious tradition, the source of compassion, And compassion and empathy, above all, are the defining values of the Democratic Party. It can all be summed up in six words: middle class, common sense, golden rule. These are the core values of the Democratic party, and these are my core values, and that is why I expect to be a Democrat for as long as I live.

ten deadly sins: wrath, malice, envy, avarice, pride, gluttony, lust, sloth. add dishonesty and cowardice. Republicans have written avarice, pride, malice and wrath out of the seven deadly sins. schadenfreude
they have a complex relationship with dishonesty that I will analyze in more detail.

Republicans have no problem going after terry macauliffe. Why did the democrats have such a hard time going after jim nicholson? Being a decorated veteran absolves you of any past and future sin. There's a reason that liberals go after gingrich, bennet, limbaugh , and even Delay instead of people who really deserve it, like nicholson, and north and (occasionally) shartzkopf. Nothing scary about newt or limbaugh. going after them is really cowardly.

articles that need to be written:

1. Gore campaign critique, with an eye to the elections of 2000 and 2004

2.
the only painful, self-flagellating Gore campaign critique you'll ever need.
he doesn't know who he is, which really means I don't know who he is
Russert interrogations
he's a liar, and more to the point, a braggart
I can't trust him.
He doesn't like normal, average people. he's uncomfortable around normal people. Since he doesn't understand people like me, how can he work for people like me?
He makes all these grandiose claims and plans because he's not comfortable in his own skin.
he's like the high school or college teacher's pet type smart aleck who thought he was smarter and better than everyone else.
He might come up with all these fancy-pants smart-alecky ways to change the world without any understanding or flexibility: a self-righteous inflexible, comtrol freak.
he said he invented the internet:
he'll say and do anything to win
he's knee-deep in the whole Washington culture, and he doesn't understand how normal people think and feel.
he’s not comfortable in his own skin, and that makes him painful to watch.
he's a phony
I don't like him. I don't understand what makes him tick. I don't feel comfortable watching him on television
.He went to a Buddhist temple to raise money -> he's willing to break he rules
the money must have been funnelled in from somewhere
He'll push his conduct to the very edge of legality and then defend his conduct with a lot of weaselly, Washington-speak, never mind simple decency and morality.
Bush was the same in all three debates. Gore was a different person each time, and that bothers me.

Russ
anyone with half a brain would realize that a better way to attack Bush in the debates was fuzy math and Insurance, that's a Washington term. What did they choose? hate crimes.

George Bush is telling you can have a porterhouse steak, mashed potatoes with the good kind of gravy, a triple fudge sundae, and still make you lose weight.

the people versus the powerful

lets fix our roof while the sun is shining.

posted by roublen at 8:18 PM

 
I transcribed a passage from an old book by Douglas Hofstader (a Computer Scientist and the author of Godel, Escher, and Bach) which I thought you might enjoy. He describes exactly the feeling I have when I’m trying to argue something I feel is passionately true, yet counter to Conventional Wisdom (e.g. Price controls were the right solution to California’s energy crisis, Whitewater was a fraud, Kenneth Starr abused his powers for partisan reasons, Clinton is not more corrupt than Bush I or II, etc. etc.) And he argues eloquently about the need for political activism.

Enjoy, and keep up the good work,
RV

From MetaMagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter

Chapter 5, pages 109-14

It is always refreshing to see how magazines, in their letter columns, willingly publish letters highly critical of them. I say “seems”, because often those letters are printed in pairs, both raking the magazine over the coals but from opposite directions. For example, a right wing critic and a left-wing critic both chastise the magazine for leaning too far the wrong way. The upshot is of course that the magazine doesn’t even have to say a thing in its own defense, for it is a kind of cliche that if you manage to offend both parties in a disagreement, you certainly must be essentially right! That is, the truth is supposedly always in the middle – a dangerous fallacy.
Raymond Smullyan in his book This Book Needs No Title, provides a perfect example of the kind of thing I’m talking about. It is a story about two boys fighting over a piece of cake. Billy says he wants it all. Sammy says they should divide it equally. An adult comes along and asks what’s wrong. The boys explain, and the adult says , “You should compromise-Billy gets three quarters, Sammy one quarter.” This kind of story sounds ridiculous, yet it is repeated over and over in the world, with loudmouths and bullies pushing around meeker and fairer and kinder people. The “middle position” is calculated by averaging all claims together, outrageous ones as well as sensible ones, and the louder any claim, the more it will count. Politically savvy people learn this early and make it their credo; idealists learn it late and refuse to accept it. The idealists are like Sammy, and they always get the short end of the stick.
. . .A particularly salient example of this sort of thing is provided by the behavior of the Nixon “team” during the Watergate affair. There, they had the ability to manipulate the press and public simply because they were in power. What no private individual would ever have been able to get away with for a second was done with the greatest of ease by the Nixon people. They shamelessly changed the rules as they wished and for a long time they got away with it.
. . .Amidst all the tumult and the shouting, where does the truth lie? What voices should one listen to? How can one tell which are credible and which are not? . . .I maintain that susceptibility to bad arguments in one domain opens the door to being manipulated in another domain. A critical mind is critical on all fronts simultaneously. and it is vital to train people to be critical at an early stage.

I have nothing against [The Zetetic Scholar] in principle, except that I find its open-mindedness so open that it gets boring, long-winded, and wishy-washy. Sometimes it reminds me of the senators and representatives who, during Watergate, seemed endlessly dense, and either unable or unwilling to get the simple point: that Nixon was guilty, on many counts. And that was it. It was very simple. And yet Nixon and company did manage to obscure the obvious for many months, thanks to fuzzy-minded people who somehow couldn’t `snap’ into something that was very black-and-white. They insisted on seeing it in endless shades of gray.
. . .My view is that there is such a thing as being too open-minded. I am not open-minded about the earth being flat, about whether Hitler is alive today, about claims by people to have squared the circle, or to have proven special relativity wrong. . . And I think it is wrong to be open-minded with respect to such things, just as I think it is wrong to be open minded about whether or not the Nazis killed six million Jews in World War II.
I feel that the Skeptical Inquirer is playing the role of chief prosecutor, in some sense, of the paranormal, and Zetetic Scholar is a member of the jury who refuses, absolutely refuses, to make a decision until more evidence is in. And after more, more, more , more, more, more evidence is in and this character still refuses to go one way or another, the none gets impatient.
. . .What bothers me is that the vexing problems that one attempts to be neutral on have their counterparts one level up, on the “meta-level”, so to speak. That is, for every debate in science itself, there is an isomorphic debate in the methodology of science and one could go on up the ladder of “meta’s”, running and yet never advancing, like a hamster on a treadmill. Nixon exploited this principle very astutely in the Watergate days, smoking up the sir with so many technical procedural and meta-procedural questions that the main issues were completely forgotten about for a long time while people tried to sort out the mess that his smokescreen had created This kind of technique need not be conscious on the part of politicians or scientists – it can emerge as an unconscious consequence of simple emotional commitment to an idea or hope.

Chapter 31: page 757

. . .When there are large numbers of people involved, people don’t realize that their own seemingly highly idiosyncratic decisions are likely to be quite typical and are likely to be recreated many times over, on a grand scale; . . .individual decisions about the futility of working actively toward the good of humanity amount to a giant trend of apathy, and this multiplied apathy translates into insanity at the group level. In a word, Apathy at the individual level translates into insanity at the mass level.

posted by roublen at 9:56 PM

 
Things that average First World citizens have, and average Third World citizens don’t (or alternatively, things that Third World countries need to develop)

food/nutrition:
staples (cheap)
proteins (expensive)
fats (expensive)
fruits & vegetables (ranging)
vitamins and supplements (ranging, expensive)
luxury foods (expensive)

drinking water
clean drinking water
home water purifying system (cheap)
municipal water purifying system (ranging, expensive)

clothing / shoes (ranging, cheap)

sanitation
toilets/septic tank (cheap)
plumbing (expensive)
municipal sewers / sewage treatment plants (very expensive)


civil infrastructure:
irrigation networks, reservoirs, dams, water pipelines, oil pipelines, power grids, energy plants, fuel extraction & refining facilities, materials extraction & refining facilties
(very expensive)

agriculture:
machinery (ranging, expensive)
fertilizers, (ranging, expensive)
scientific/technical knowledge & engineering (ranging)
irrigation (expensive)

telecommunications:
books / periodicals / newspapers (cheap)
phone/telegraph (expensive)
internet/ fax (expensive)
radio (cheap)
television (expensive)
movie theatres (ranging)

shelter:
running water (expensive)
sinks/drains (ranging)
artificial light: candles, kerosene lamps, electric light (ranging)
home energy/electricity/fuel
air conditioning/ heating (ranging, very expensive)
electric light (expensive)
refrigerators / freezers (very expensive)
stereos (expensive)
washing machines / dryers / dishwashers (very expensive)
stoves/ ovens/ microwaves (ranging, expensive)
hot water (expensive)


transportation
transportation infrastructure: roads/highways, rail, airports, ports, fuel/energy (very expensive)
private transport:
foot, bicycle, bullock cart/ rickshaw, (cheap)
motor vehicles: bikes, cars, trucks, vans, RV’s, boats, houseboats, yachts, small planes, helicopters (ranging, expensive)
public transport: buses/rigs, trains, planes, metro, subways, ships, streetcars, ferries. postal service/ parcel delivery (ranging)


protection from crime (ranging, expensive)
protection from war, invasion, conquest and expropriation. (very expensive)
protection from natural disasters and emergencies: fire, floods, earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, tornados, bus/plane/train/ship crashes, etc. (ranging, expensive)

health care:
drugs / antibiotics/ vaccines (ranging, cheap)
nurses/doctors (ranging, expensive)
surgeons + their equipment / high-tech tools for diagnosis & treatment (very expensive)
eyeglasses / contact lenses/ laser eye surgery (ranging, cheap)
dentistry (ranging, expensive)
mental health counseling & treatment (expensive)

Education
adult literacy (cheap)
vocational education (ranging, cheap)
preschool / primary (ranging, expensive)
secondary (expensive)
undergraduate (expensive)
graduate/professional (very expensive)

recreation
swimming pools / lakes / beaches (ranging)
parks / wildlife refuges (ranging)
libraries / books (cheap)
fitness / sports equipment & clubs (ranging)
movie theatres (ranging)


Opportunity to become Prosperous, Rich, Famous, and Powerful, where:
Prosperous means having the income necessary to obtain almost everything you need/want, without any real sense of deprivation
Rich means being wealthy enough to live a prosperous life without needing to work
Famous means being well-known and respected in relation to any given social circle.
Powerful means being able to order other people around (power is often granted conditionally, subject to its being used wisely, or at least effectively)
(ranging)

Guilt , regret and unhappiness over not achieving prosperity, riches, fame or power, despite having the opportunity to do so. (expensive)

Access to Psychoanalysis / Therapy / Clinical Psychology to relieve said guilt, regret & unhappiness. (very expensive)

Vacations to “get away from it all” and “rough it” at simpler, more exotic locales (priceless)

posted by roublen at 9:11 PM

 


"20 years ago, the Republicans gave us a good-looking
man with a nice voice, pushing a big tax cut mainly
for the wealthy and a plan that didn't add up. Reagan
was elected, and his big tax cut passed, and
immediately the government went deep into debt and the
problem just kept getting worse and worse throughout
the 80's and early 90's. Future generations will
suffer a long time to pay off the interest and
principal on the debt accumulated during the 80's.
After a very difficult time cutting spending and
raising taxes, mostly on the wealthy, we were finally
able to bring the deficit under control and begin
paying off our huge national debt.

Now its the year 2000, and the Republicans are giving
us a good-looking man with a nice voice pushing a big
tax cut mainly for the wealthy and a plan that doesn't
add up. As I will show during this debate, Gov. Bush's
proposals don't add up. He doesn't say how he's going
to pay for his Social Security proposal, he doesn't
save enough for the future costs of Social Security
and Medicare. He raids the Medicare trust fund to pay
for his big tax cut, and he doesn't budget enough
money for paying down our national debt, because he's
promised too much to all his wealthy campaign
contributors.

*America, don't let them do this to you again*.

During the time the Republicans were in power, from
1980-1992, middle class take home pay went up [insert
figure]. Earnings for the wealthy went up[insert
figure] Under Reaganomics, the rich got richer and the
middle class got screwed.

Under new Democrat policies, the poor have done
better, the middle class has done better, and rich
have, you know, gone into the stratosphere. Now is the
time to use our prosperity mostly to pay off our
debts, and partly to invest in health, education and
the military, to keep building a better, fairer,
stronger America, not squander all our money for a big
tax cut mainly for the wealthy, and a risky Social
Security scheme, where Gov. Bush has mysteriously
chosen not to give any details. Under my Social
Security plan I tell you where every penny is going
for the next fifty years, based on bi-partisan
numbers. There's a multi-trillion dollar hole in
Governor Bush's plan, which, just like Reagan, he has
refused to give any details about.

There was a business cycle recovery during the 80's
too, but over the long term, from 1980-1992,
Reaganomics was not good for working people. The
question of this election is, are we going to continue
to push for broad-based growth that benefits all
people, from the lowest to the highest, or are we
going to go back to the failed politics of the past,
where the wealthy rigged the system for their benefit.

*America, don't let them do this to you again*

If I am elected, My job will be to be President of all
people, President of the business class, President of
the middle and working class, and President of the
poorest of us as well. Gov. Bush's job will be to be a
front-man for the Republican establishment, basically
to smile and look happy a lot, and to sell any
legislation which the special interests and the
powerful want, and to prevent any legislation the
special interests and powerful don't want. The
powerful already have all the senators and congressman
they need. They don't need a President as well.

Good example: mccain and firestone tires.

If Bush says he's on McCain's side, respond "Well,
that's what he says now, but character is what you do
when nobody is looking, and when nobody was looking in
Texas, Bush was always on the side of the corporations
and the wealthy. [Bring up a good example of this,
perhaps SCI funeral fraud?]"

a good fact to use: 15%[check the exact number!] of
your tax dollar goes to paying the interest on debt
accumulated when Ronald Reagan and George Bush were in
office. Running big deficits *felt* good during the
80's and early 90's, but we put a big burden on
ourselves and our children.

if Bush says Gore is trying to scare people into being
afraid of reform, Gore could say "I'd have respect for
a serious, honest reform proposal, but you're not
proposing reform. You're proposing a gigantic,
trillion dollar party at the Social Security Trust
Fund's expense. And you're telling people "Don't
worry, everything will be fine for the next fifteen
years", and don't think about what will happen after
that. I have no respect for that kind of politics. A
President has to prepare people for the future, and
you're telling people "Don't bother about the future,
just enjoy these goodies in the present""

also: "There is no crisis in the Social Security
system, if we do the right thing. If we save enough
money and pay down enough of the national debt instead
of squandering it in a big tax cut, then based on
bipartisan projections the Social Security system is
paid for for the next fifty years."

In sum,
you have to attack your opponent and defend yourself,
but you have to do it in the right kind of way, over
the right issues, and using the right arguments.
posted by roublen at 9:38 PM

 
I was with you until I read these assinine sentences.
You probably wrote them because you needed to
rationalize to yourself that you have intellectual
integrity. One of Reagan's chief lies was a mythical
welfare queen who had 5 addresses and had bilked the
taxpayers for a 150k. How this promotes America's
greatness can be left to your fertile imagination. And
Gore didn't *blame* the father. He explained what
happened. And the father is on Gore's side on this. If
it had been Bush you all would have no problem
smearing the school principal as an incompetent
bureaucrat. And your argument that Reagan was too
stupid to know better is silly. It makes little
difference whether a person can't think, won't think,
or merely feigns the credulity of a child.

"Gore's defenders bring up Ronald Reagan's fibs as a
counter-argument. And, yes, Ronald Reagan made up some
nice stories about America which turned out to be
factually untrue. But most of Reagan's sometimes
mythical parables got to the heart of America's
greatness. And, not insignificantly, Ronald Reagan by
all accounts believed these stories were true. Al
Gore, first of all, either knows his stories are lies
or simply doesn't care. Secondly, his stories do not
celebrate the virtues of a self-reliant America, they
foment paranoia about run-amok corporations and demand
an expansion in an overweening Federal bureaucracy.

Getting back to the jerk factor, what happened when
Gore was criticized for something that he does all the
time? He blamed others. He said it was the fault of
the girl's father that he got the facts wrong about
the Sarasota high school. "
posted by roublen at 9:37 PM

 

George W Bush said he supported the mission in
Lebanon. But Lebanon was the biggest fiasco in recent
American history, which even the Reagan administration
admitted was a mistake. W said he supported obviously
because he didn't know what the hell he was talking
about. Forget the Byrd murders. Lebanon is the key to
the second debate.
posted by roublen at 9:37 PM

 
if you ask Republicans why they're voting for W,
they'll say "we need to restore character to the white
house". If you ask Democrats, they'll say "Supreme
Court, prescription drugs, Social Security" The
evidence is that Republicans, much more than
Democrats, have a need to cast their opponents as
evil.

Gore's invoking of "3/5 of a person" was
cringe-inducing, but the EITC and McCain-Feingold
"lies" are false propaganda peddled by the National
Review. The Gulf war story is a vile slander that is
also untrue. David Maraniss looked at the allegation
and wrote "the charge evaporates under scrutiny".
Senators Simpson and Dole stand revealed as
contemptible liars willing to falsely accuse the
opposing candidate of treasonous behavior in order to
win an election. Moral corruption doesn't get more
clear-cut than that.
posted by roublen at 9:37 PM

 
hi, thanks for the previous reply about absentee ballots. When I first heard about Duvall county, I was so mad I couldn't think straight. I literally thought it could be worse than Watergate. If you have time, please read this post about why its so fishy, and if you agree, please look into it! On Tuesday or Wednesday, the Gore campaign official overseeing Northeast county claims he was told by the Duvall County Supervisor that there were at most 200-300 disqualified ballots in Duvall county. On Friday night/Saturday morning, the Duvall County Chairman said that 26,000 ballots, an astounding 10% of votes cast in the county, were disqualified. When asked about the Gore official's account of his previous conversation with the Chairman, the Duvall county spokesman blandly said that the Gore official had "misunderstood what the Chairman said." The circumstantial evidence strongly supports the Gore officials claim. Palm Beach County had a wildly anamolous 5% error rate. Are we supposed to believe there was a simply unheard of 10% error rate in another county which somehow nobody noticed? And this impossibly high error rate occurred on a straight-forward ballot, unlike Palm Beach county? Wouldn't the Bush campaign have brought up Duvall county before, to support the argument that what happened in Palm Beach was acceptable because it happened to Republicans in Duvall county too? Equally puzzling is how could the Duvall county chairmen have suddenly discovered missing votes equal to 10% of the county? Surely its a simple calculation: (# of voters who go to the polls + absentee ballots) - (# of votes for all Pres. candidates). Due to absentee ballots, mistakes, etc. this formula could be off by a small number, but not 10% (most absentee ballots are in by election day). And why would he declare this fact on friday night/saturday morning, *just* after the deadline to call for a hand recount had passed (deadline is Friday 8 EDT)? The circumstantial evidence thus shows it was highly likely the Duvall county chairman deliberately lied to the Gore campaign official about the number of rejected ballots. Either he was lying when he said there were 300, or he is lying now when he says there are 26000. This leads to the first key question, which is, what could be his motive to do something so drastic? scenario 1) He lied initially. In this case, he would have kept the news from the Gore team to avoid there being a manual recount. But this makes no sense. Since the Duvall county ballot is straightforward, ballot errors would be random and support the Bush campaign, since its a Republican county. The only explanation in this scenario is that the rejected ballots were somehow unintentionally biased against Gore (very unlikely), or that Gore ballots were deliberately sabotaged (possible, but hard to contemplate). scenario 2) He's lying now, and these 26000 new ballots have been manufactured. In this case, his intention is to eventually call for a manual recount and give Bush an advantage, if that should be necessary. How could he do this? He would have to list registered voters who did not vote as having voted, and then mark up their ballots for Bush. This sounds far out, but what would stop him? Did any news organisation calculate the discrepancy between ballots cast and Presidential votes for every Florida county early on in the process, say Tuesday night or Wednesday? Did they ever calculate those discrepancies? If not, they simply cannot ferret out this possible fraud. The only way to find it out is to poll people and ask if they voted, which is cumbersome, and once people get wind of the poll, in a heavily Bush county they have incentive to lie. I realize this sounds out there, but can you think of any inncocent explanation why the Duvall county Chairman would lie, and why there would be an astounding 10% of disqualified ballots? The second key question is, if any of these scenarios are true, the Republicans will have stolen an election from under our nose. How were they able to get away with it? The answer is that the media fell down on the job. There has simply been no independent investigative reporting on the possibility of fraud in this election (allegations of fraud in Wisconsin came from Republican oppo research). Everything the pundidtocracy knows comes from one AP reporter in each county, who gets all his information from the official sources, with no ability to challenge those sources. I've cooled down a bit, and I can't quite believe that the Duvall County Republicans have engaged in a criminal conspiracy worse than Watergate. But if they have, then despite the snazzy studios and fancy salaries, the shoe-leather capacity of the media has degraded so much that they are simply incapable of finding out about it. And that should chill us all. Do any of you agree with this at all? Or does it seem somehow implausible or absurd? Duvall county really bothers me, and besides the perfunctory AP article, no one in the national media has talked about it at all
posted by roublen at 9:36 PM

 
Remember how the Republicans rather pompously
declared a 5 `o' clock deadline the Wednesday or
Thursday after the election as the final word, and
then, as the deadline approached, suddenly pushed it
back a day? I just read on Salon's Table talk page
that the manual recount had Gore ahead by a 100 votes,
whence seven Republican counties conducted voluntary
hand recounts to get Bush another 400 votes. Is there
any truth to this rumor? (not as sexy as other Rumors,
but still pretty juicy)
posted by roublen at 9:35 PM

 

Given that some Republican counties conducted
voluntary hand recounts of rejected ballots very early
on, doesn't this completeley refute Ms. Harris's
stated position that the only valid reason to do a
manual recount is machine error?

The fact that hand recounts are more reliable under
opti-scan systems does not matter *unless* hand counts
are done in opti-scan counties as a matter of routine,
which I doubt. If she accepted opti-scan hand recounts
from Democratic counties, that also weakens the
hypocrisy, somewhat.

But in any case, isn't this a very strong argument
that the Secretary of State was acting in bad faith,
using two different standards based on how it would
help Bush, blatantly dissembling and abusing her
discretion? Can't the Gore team call the appropriate
witnesses and use this in court, somehow?

Am I missing something here? If you think this is an
important point, please spread this around
posted by roublen at 9:35 PM

 
Kurtz's article is on the whole very good, and clearly
shows that Fabiani and Lehane, though good guys, tried
to endlessly manipulate the news in ways large and
small, and kind of had political tin ears, often
missing the forest for the trees.

Just a small example is the "football game", which was
painfully hokey and weird. Somehow Fabiani thought the
public, on tenterhooks with anticipation (my stomache
was in bad shape at that particular point) would find
watching the Gores' play touch football without
speaking appealing, and Gore for some reason bought
into that.

On a somewhat larger point, they thought that the
phrase "Is he ready to be President?" would be
politically effective, when it was definitely not. As
a line it does not resonate or persuade at all while
making the Gore team look bad for attacking Bush
personally

But Kurtz also overlooks some important facts and
questions, questions I would have like to have seen
addressed, if not answered.

First of all, he says the Bush team followed a "more
straight-forward approach", which proved more
effective.

However, he overlooks the dedicated staff at RNC
headquarters who thoroughly investigated and
formulated quite manipulative attacks on Gore (can you
say "inventing the internet" or "Love Story" or "I was
the one that started it all"?) and relenlessly
disseminated such "research" to the media. He also
overlooks that the Bush team may have been trying just
as hard to spin the media but may simply have been
better, and more discreet, about it.

One example is the the negative Bush ad soon after the
convention, which the Bush campaign was supposedly on
the verge of running when Bush himself was said to
have stopped it, due to his great nobility, because he
didn't want to go negative. (A similar ad ran later in
the campaign, which somehow did not put Bush in a
similar ethical quandary). However, all the media had
for some reason gotten a copy of the ad, and it was
run and discussed incessantly on the free media, yet
the media still gave Bush credit for "pulling the ad"
and Doing the Right Thing.

Another example was the Confidential Rove Internals in
the days just before the election, when Rove shared
(just between you and him) internal polls which showed
Bush within striking distance in Illinois, California,
etc. In hindsight, it should be obvious that when Rove
was purportedly "sharing internal polls" with
reporters, he was actually lying to them.

Gore won those states by double-digits. The
conventional polls also underestimated Gore's lead,
but internal polls are supposed to be more accurate,
and any accurate poll would have showed that Gore had
those states locked up. Once again, reporters
credulously believed the Bush campaign, when in fact
they were being deceived.

Another place where Kurz doesn't perhaps ask the right
questions is when he asserts that despite the best
efforts of Fabiani & Lehane, the public "simply
doesn't like Gore". But that ignores that Gore's most
effective public speeches- His father's eulogy, his
convention speech, his concession speech- were
speeches he largely wrote, and where Fabiani & Lehane
in particular did not get anywhere near it.

Significantly, Kurtz's article largely ignores Gore's
convention bounce, making no attempt to explain it
except a perfunctory reference to "Gore's fiery
populism" But Gore's recent concession speech was not
populist, yet the public for some reason found him
appealing there as well.

Kurz doesn't examine this, nor does he ask Fabiani &
Lehane to reflect on why Gore's convention speech was
so effective, while their careful months of leaking
and massaging the news cycle had either no effect or a
negative effect.

Lastly, Kurz treats the media in the passive voice,
frequently writing "but the story lasted only one news
cycle" or "the story disappeared into the ether", as
if God kills stories or promotes others. But stories
are killed or promoted every day by the media as a
whole, presumably for their own reasons. What are
they?

Just one example I would like to know more about:
There were numerous lies & exaggerations told during
the first debate, but I will name only two: Gore's
assertion that he had accompanied James Lee Witt to a
Texas fire, when he had not, and Bush's assertion that
a particular senior would get benefits under his
prescription drug plan, when he would not. Both were
clearly false statements. There was little ambiguity
in either case. Surely its a very important question
as to why the media focused on one clear, unambigous
lie and not the other?

Its important not to be too harsh. I agree with
Fabiani and Lehane that Gore should been more
available to the press, and I definitely agree with
Kurz that Fabiani and Lehane should have been less
obsessed with winning news cycles and been more
straight-forward and more concerned with the big
picture of giving voters persuasive, simple reasons to
vote for their candidate. Kudos to Kurz for once again
giving us important facts and an insight to how
campaigns are run.
posted by roublen at 9:31 PM

 
President Edwards

Was that a joke?

Isn't he a former trial lawyer with a smarmy persona
and a habit of saying things like "the children are
our future. In this coming age of ours, nothing is
more important than a good education."?

And isn't it one of the neoliberal's more dogmatic
canons that trial lawyers are evil?

Must be something there that I don't see. . .no,
really, there isn't.

What's up?
posted by roublen at 9:30 PM

 
I'm a bit disappointed in your latest column. Fairness
suggests you should have mentioned that O'Neill
refused to join a segregated club and has advocated a
revenue-neutral fossil-fuel tax in the past.

This shows he is a principled, conscientous man and
has intellectual courage, qualities which will likely
be very rare virtues in the coming administration.

I remember seeing Donald Marron on a talk show and
seeing him defend Shrub's Social Security plan with
the most banal, Dick Armey-ish arguments possible. He
seems like a real drip and has not done anything
brilliant at Paine-Webber, as far as I know. Is that
the man you would rather see as Treasury Secretary?

Frankly, I think that events in the past few years
being a nice person counts for more than competence.
If Summers and Fisher had been better people, don't
you think they would have refrained from screwing up
Brazil?
posted by roublen at 9:30 PM

 
I heartily agree that Ashcroft deserves to be fought.
And I would go one step further, and think we must
make it clear that Dems will pay a price if they
support Ashcroft's nomination.

As far as I can see, the only reason Ashcroft opposed
Lee was that he was against affirmative action. Well,
Colin Powell supports affirmative action, so isn't it
but a step to say: "Do you think supporting
affirmative action is a reasonable position?" Either
way he's screwed. If he says yes, then he has to
answer why he blocked Lee's nomination.

If he says no, then he has to face the question "But
your own Secretary of State agrees with us. What does
it say about your extreme partisanship that you
blocked the nomination of someone for holding a
position that even Colin Powell agrees with! Would you
have voted against the nomination of Colin Powell as
well? Why should we trust you to enforce the laws
fairly, given this record of zealous extremism and
intolerance in the Senate?"


Also, I think the Southern Partisan is a dead-end,
insofar as I think people should be held responsible
only for what they themselves say. If, for example, a
liberal Democrat were to give an interview to the
Progressive, and the Progressive's next issue was an
expose "proving" the CIA was full of genocidal
maniacs, I would not want the Democrat held
responsible. Hold Ashcroft responsible for his own
nutty statements, but not those of others.

In general, I think we could make better headway by
attacking his intolerance, lack of intellectual
integrity, double standards, and flip-flops rather
than his conservative positions per se.

Here's my favorite sound-bite type line:

"There is a minimum threshold of intellectual
integrity and non-partisan judgement required for an
Attorney General of the United States. Many qualified
conservatives would meet and far exceed that
threshold: John Danforth, Robert Fiske, Fred Thompson
(there must be others! musn't there?) Former senator
Ashcroft does not. He is an unacceptably partisan
choice for Attorney General, and has given Democrats
and moderates many reasons not to trust him to render
impartial judgements."
posted by roublen at 9:29 PM

 

what we need is to analyze our situation in the world
with great clarity, so that we act and respond appropriately
posted by roublen at 9:29 PM

 
I don't know if you've read a decidedly mediocre novel
by Aurthur Haley called "Overload", that predicted an
energy crisis in California because naive
environmentalists with political clout kept preventing
necessary power plants from being built. The same book
also predicted a return to the gold standard, but hey,
that is neither here nor there.

In any case, the talking points from conservatives now
is that the power crisis is not the fault of the
utilities, or indeed profit-seeking businessmen
anywhere, but is the fault of all those eco-freaks
from California who prevent plants from being built
and who pass other needlessly strict pollution and
fuel standards. You've written two columns about the
energy crisis, but haven't addressed this argument.
How much truth is there to it?

Also, you wrote that the assets the utilities were
forced to sell to power generation companies fetched
much more than expected. Shouldn't the utilities be
dipping into this windfall sales money instead of
asking for a huge rate-increase bailout?

No need to answer me personally. A future column or a
note on your website will be fine. I just want these
questions addressed, and it seems like your column is
one of the few places where questions like this get
answered. For eexample, I really iked your column, a
fairly long time ago, explaining the cause of the gas
price hike in the midwest.
posted by roublen at 9:28 PM

 
Gore was conspicous by his absence from your list of
presidential candidates. Why so? I actually assumed
Gore was running in four years, and looked forward to
volunteering for him.

These are analysises & predictions I posted on a
Salon thread:

"1. McCain really wanted Gore to win, not only
strategically but substantively. Right now he's in his
own private hell.

2. HRC will definitely not run for Prez in 2004, Gore
definitely will, the Dem field will be crowded, and
Gore has a better than even shot at winning the
nomination.

3. The main question vis a vis Gore is what platform
he will run on. Will he run on his core convictions of
what is to be done on the most important issues facing
the nation, or will he run on a focus-grouped platform
with all the naughty, controversial bits censored out
to avoid offending people? I don't know, and I suspect
Gore doesn't know either.

4. There will be a serious centrist third party
ticket, either McCain-Kerrey or Ventura-Somebody. They
will be competitive in the Democratic states and in
the lukewarm Pug states.

If I had to bet, I would say the third party wins, and
in particular I do not see how Gore wins in this
three-way contest :(

But hey, if Bill Clinton is his Shadow Campaign
Manager, anything may be possible. . "

Besides vengeance, I honestly think Gore would be a
better president than anyone on your list.

so I was disappointed, with your "inches close"
sources, to see you dismissing Gore in four. On a
lighter note. . .this is a snippet from the SF
Chronicle:

"Bush's mood was markedly changed yesterday from his
upbeat manner at earlier Cabinet announcements. A pool
report by a Washington Times reporter described the
scene this way:

"Mr. Bush appeared weary, looking ashen and stumbling
over his words often. He began by accidentally wishing
the assembled press 'Good afternoon' and hastily
corrected himself. He spoke slowly and without his
usual joshing with the press.

"Mr. Bush left without taking any questions, leaving
his four new Cabinet picks to fend for themselves
before an annoyed press corps. As Mr. Bush left the
room, a Fox News reporter shouted out, 'Why in such a
rush to leave?' This prompted Mr. Bush to turn around,
hesitate a step and cast a look of such utter disgust
that even seasoned Bush watchers were taken aback. Mr.
Bush stalked out of the room with a very sour
expression."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/30/MN15623.DTL

Should this report should be titled:

"Gettin' snippy with it"

or

"This job is *hard*!" ?
posted by roublen at 9:28 PM

 
If it's so obvious that Linda Chavez shouldn't be
prosecuted for harboring an illegal alien and lying to
the FBI, why was it so damn proper, necessary and
noble to prosecute Henry Cisneros & Archie Schaeffer?
And why won't the mainstream press see this obvious
double standard?

When Ashcroft piously says he will enforce the law,
blithely refusing to acknowledge the *enormous*,
ineradicable, discretion an attorney general has,
doesn't he further demonstrate the smarmy dishonesty
which makes him unsuitable for the job in the first
place?

Why doesn't anyone call him on this bullshit? And why
doesn't anyone make a simple point: Under an Ashcroft
reign, Democrats will be relentlessly persecuted and
subpoenad while Dan Burton, James Trafficant and Haley
Barbour will be left free to do anything they please.
And the tapegate probe will be conveniently iced.

This stuff is really bothering me, and I'm losing
faith in the system.

on a lighter note, reading your "just when I'm out,
they pull me back in!" quote reminded me I wasn't the
only one to waste a perfectly good day watching "The
Godfather Saga".

Another good one is "All my life I've tried to go
legitimate. But the higher up I went, the crookeder it
got"

Also "Just don't tell me you're innocent, Carlo.
Because it insults my intelligence. And makes me
angry. Was it Barzini, or Tattaglia?"

I've had my intelligence insulted plenty by the
Republicans (also the paglia/sullivan types). and it
sure is making me angry.
posted by roublen at 9:27 PM

 
the following passage was not written by me.
the handle of the guy who wrote it is tedzep, and his
email is tedzep98@excite.com

Its an analogy of what Iran-Contra would have been
like if it had happened in the Clinton administration,
which thus brings home very effectively how bad
Iran-Contra really was, and how penny-ante the stuff
the Clinton Administration is being charged with is in
comparison.

I think its worthy of publication, but at the very
least it should strengthen your desire not to join the
lynch mob currently tarring and feathering the
Clintons as uniquely brazen, corrupt and "feloniously
gauche":

"You know, it's really hard nowadays to understand
what Iran-Contra meant, just on the basis of the
charges before Congress and Walsh(if we don't
consider, as Walsh could not, the allegations of the
Cocaine trafficking, the US subsidized atrocities by
Contras, the Propaganda apparatus "Project Truth",
possibly using hostages as bargaining chips, links to
the October Surprise (did it start the deal?)--and
then later hostages in Iran-Contra had their releases
planned to impact elections).

But I think I can understand it's magnitude by doing
an hypothetical by substituting present day figures,
and nations in a somewhat similar position relative to
the US.

Imagine if our guy and his VP sold arms(for hostages
or just hard cash) to Saddam Hussein.

Now imagine if they used swiss bank accounts, the CIA,
ad hoc agencies, think tanks, private funding, funding
from foreign sources to finance these operations.

That one of the Iraqi(not a US citizen even) middlemen
in the arms deal was allowed to represent the US solo
like a "Secretary of the State for a day" in a meeting
with the highest leaders of the Iraq government.

And now imagine if this Administration turned around,
allowed the middlemen and others to pocket some of the
profits from their huge mark-ups, and diverted the
rest to fund a private war in Kosovo that the current
Congress expressly forbade(including the sale of arms
to Iraq).

Then imagine that once the Iraq-KLA scheme was
exposed, their Attorney General didn't immediately
seal the offices of the principals and gave everybody
lots of time to shred documents, cover their tracks
and coordinate their lies.

Then imagine that everyone, damn near everyone of the
players called before Congress blatantly lied and
dissembled about the whole "Iraq-KLA Affair".

And that the President would continue to lie on TV
about it's intent and his knowledge. And the VP and
Pres. candidate obstinately proclaimed to his last
breath that he was "out of the loop". Despite future
disclosures of hard evidence to the contrary proved
that to be perhaps the biggest public lie ever
committed by an eventual President. Then, after he
lost his re-election bid, he pardoned all of the
remaining conspirators
in a last ditch effort in the cover-up.

Do you think that the GOP would have been so
considerate as the Dems were back then about not
wanting to impeach and scandalize a popular sitting
President? Would they have allowed a rush to judgement
by the Congressional hearings with the goal of not
impeaching, and thus tainted the later criminal
prosecution.

Would the Media have looked the other way, and the
WH/CIA propaganda machine allowed to paint it all
white.

Jesus y Maria--now I really get how heinous
Iran-Contra really was!

And that's even without considering the trafficking in
Crack under North and the CIA's watch to finance the
Contras' operations, the state subsidized atrocities,
and all of the activities I withheld at the beginning
of this illustration!"
posted by roublen at 9:25 PM

 
two funny posts on Salon's Table Talk from people
named ad jameson and monchie of nyc on your tv
performance. monchie's in particular is quite funny.

the weblink to the

their emails are ad_jameson@hotmail.com and
monchum@nyc.rr.net

AD JAMESON
KURTZ: Well, joining us now, Joshua Marshall,
Washington Editor of The American Prospect and a write
for Slate.com, and Chris Caldwell, senior writer for
The Weekly Standard.

Josh Marshall, you don't know the extent of damage or
vandalism by departing Clinton White House aides, and
neither do I. So, in writing in Slate Magazine that
the press wildly overplayed this story, it kind of
sounds like you're acting as a knee-jerk Clinton
defender. . .

KURTZ: Chris Caldwell, the fact that the Bush White
House won't itemize thedamage, perhaps to keep the
spotlight off Bill Clinton, doesn't mean it didn't
happen.

This is clear insanity. Can you imagine if this was
the prevailing standard in this country? That you
would constantly have to defend yourself against any
allegation no matter how unfounded? "Hey did you pay
for those shoes you're wearing?"

MONCHIE OF NYC
I wonder how Kurtz would react to an interview like
this:

MONCHIE: Well, joining us now, Lefty Sinister,
Washington Editor of the Vegan Weekly, and Chris
Caldwell, senior writer for The Weekly Standard.
Lefty Sinister, you don't know the extent of Howie
Kurtz's diddling of barnyard animals and even
household pets, and neither do I. So, in writing in
Vegan Weekly that the press wildly overplayed this
story, it kind of sounds like you're acting as a
knee-jerk Kurtz defender.

And maybe followed by a hard-hitting question like
this:

MONCHIE: Chris Caldwell, the fact that the pet owners
won't come forward publicly, perhaps to keep the
spotlight off Howard Kurtz, doesn't mean it didn't
happen.

the weblike to Table Talk is liike so:
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?14@203.e8mSaHZObPf^14@.eeaf2ca/2982

cheers
posted by roublen at 9:24 PM

 
have you read (or read and forgotten) this great
Krugman compare/contrast essay between Edward Wolff's
book "Top-Heavy" and Armey's book "The Freedom
Revolution"?

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Economists/favorite_krugman.html

Along with a piece he published in Mother Jones in
1996 on income inequality, its the best thing I've
read on how, well, top-heavy our economy and politics
is becoming. And the intellectual dishonesty of those
who would deny that fact.

Less high-minded, but more fun, is picking apart Dick
Armey's "Charlie" story, in which he fabricated the
tale of a sweet, mildly retarded janitor who was
tragically laid off when some
pinko-commie-egghead-liberals raised the minimum wage.
As James Carville wrote, "if a man would lie about a
retarded janitor, what on earth would he tell the
truth about?"
posted by roublen at 9:24 PM

 
the seminal "Charlie" source is apparently an article
by David Maraniss, Washington Post, Feb 21, 1995, not
available for free.

James Carville and Al Franken both mentioned it in
their books "We're right, they're wrong" and "Rush
Limbaugh Is a big fat idiot", neither of which I have
on hand at the moment. Franken had other made-up
stories by Pubs too.

here is the mother jones article on income inequality.
It provoked a response from Jude Wanninski, and a
counter-response from Krugman. Wanninski is not a
serious opponent, but it is nevertheless wicked fun to
see Krugman, "squash Wanninski like a bloated bug".

http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/ND96/krugman.html

and here (ahem) is another Krugman income inequality
article in some other left-leaning magazine

http://www.prospect.org/archives/11/11krug.html

What's the deal between Krugman and Bob Kuttner,
anyway? Have they kissed and made up?
posted by roublen at 9:23 PM

 
I remember emailing you that O'Neill was a good
appointment since he had intellectual integrity. .
.Heh, heh heh. Looks like the supply-side ayatollahs
are trying to break the man's spirit by making him
point man for defending the indefensible. But maybe
O'Neill is subtly paying them back by doing a really
bad job of it. I never thought I would see a Treasury
Secretary basically say "numbers, schmumbers" when
challenged on his fuzzy math.

But in any case, I'm emailing because I have a
suggestion and a question.

The suggestion is that, in your next series of
domestic policy columns, why not go high-minded and
postive? For example: 1) what a responsible fiscal and
tax policy would look like 2) how far the current
debate is from that ideal, and how hard will it be to
fix. 3) Assuming there were a principled and competent
Republican and Democratic party, what would be the
real trade-offs and choices facing us? In other words
what we should be doing, why we're not doing it, what
the consequences might be.

The question I have is, when you took the NYT op-ed
post, you said "it was the most influential
publication in the world." After one year, how
influential do you think you have been? Now that
you're part of both the media and academia, what do
you think is the nature of the influence these
institutions have on policy, policy-makers and public
perception?
posted by roublen at 9:23 PM

 
Concerning the military ballots, I'd like the story
not to be true, but if it is true, I don't want them
to get away with it.

I believe that at a minimum, a bunch of servicepeople
more or less spontaneously decided to send ballots to
Florida after the deadline. I would find that to be
irritating and annoying, but not really evil.

In any case, it seems to me that a reasonable way to
find out if all those ballots were mailed after the
deadline is to mail some letters from the appropriate
bases to Florida addresses and see how long they take
to get there, and then compare that with the date the
ballots arrived, etc.

Have you considered doing this?

Also, I read somewhere that McCain was conspicous for
not attacking Gore over the military ballots. Is this
true?
posted by roublen at 9:22 PM

 
the insight came from a Robert Novak interview, where
he casually mentioned that Frank Keating would have
been his choice for Attorney General.

I found this surprising, as I assumed that any
informed insider would recognize the difference
between a reasonably principled conservative like
Keating and a disingenous partisan like Ashcroft.
Basically, it was proof for me that Novak is an honest
man.

so here is my insight:

if you are conservative, and do not understand the
differences between Frank Keating and John Ashcroft,
and do not understand why Keating would have sailed
through confirmation while Ashcroft did not, then
congratulations: you are not part of the Vast
Right-Wing Conspiracy.

I call it the VRWC Rorschasch test

as for the nice phrase, "The Politics of Personal
Destruction" is an apt description, but too histrionic
and heavy-handed for everyday use. I came across a
lighter and more witty substitute while re-reading
"Yes, Prime Minister" It seems that when the Civil
Service wanted to block a proposal made by some
unwelcome innovator, and lacked good arguments against
it, they would find some subtle and devious way of
rubbishing his qualifications, reputation, loyalty,
soundness, etc. They called this technique, like in
soccer, "Playing the Man and Not the Ball"

Isn't it obvious that since 1988 the Republicans have
been "Playing the Man and Not the Ball" to a fare thee
well?

Not particularly relevant to our politics, but still
funny is how they would impugn their opponents in the
most subtle and offhand way, not getting their hands
dirty at all.

key phrase: "You have to get behind someone before you
can stab them in the back"
posted by roublen at 9:21 PM

 
david wayne spence, in texas, in 1998
thomas thompson, in california, in 1997

somewhat ironically, for the endless compaints about
the disproportionate execution of minorities, both
were white men.

The basic reason they were executed was that the
criminal justice system in both counties was not
willing to admit they made a mistake, that in this
particular case, they had done wrong, they were the
bad guys.

the evidence for spence's innocence is stronger than
thompson, but the case against thompson was also very
weak and I have a strong gut feeling, based on an
assesment of thompson's character, that he was
innocent.

I have some respect for you and sincerely hope you
take me up on this and look into these cases. Though
from what I have observed ofhe intellectual decay of
contemporary conservatism, I strongly expect this
email to disappear into the ether.
posted by roublen at 9:21 PM

 
So far you seem to have criticized the Bushies for
selling a 2.5 trillion tax cut as if its 1.6 (to fool
moderates). I wonder if you're a bit behind the curve,
and what they're actually doing is selling a 1.6
trillion as if its 2.5 (to fool the right wing).

i.e. promise cutting the top rate to 33, eliminating
the "death" tax, etc. all sorts of goodies that would
add up to 2.5 if they were passed. But what actually
passes is a 1.6 trillion tax cut with honest numbers.
This means that the actual tax cut people get will be
considerably smaller than they have been promised, but
not many people really know what was in the Bush
proposal anyway, and the pro tax cut people who might
have been offended by this bait and switch will never
call their hero on it.

He promised a (dishonest) 1.6 trillion tax cut, he
passed an (honest) 1.6 trillion cut, ergo, he
delivered on his promise. Of course the main way he
holds down the cost is an even slower phase in, which
will wreak fiscal havoc down the road, but that will
be President George P. Bush's problem.

at bottom, my point is that Larry Lindsey/Karl Rove
are not fools, and realize that the presence of
near-term deficits/trust-fund raids/severe program
cuts will be political suicide. I had thought they
would run into political problems when they had to
present their budget, and was frankly expecting a
fire-cracker column from you explaining all the budget
cuts necessary to make the numbers add up, but their
budget seems to have left no low-hanging fruit for
their opponents to attack.

What this means, I think, is that Lindsey/Rove will
not allow Bushonomics to collapse, ala Reaganomics, of
its own weight (or lies about said weight), and that
the ideologically neutral attacks you have been making
of dishonest projections and sheer fiscal madness will
no longer be available. I believe that the Bushies are
smart enough(or perhaps cynical enough, unlike the
Reaganite true believers) such that they must be
attacked on ideological arguments of different
priorities, and not pragmatic arguments of arithmetic
and eating the nation's seed corn.
posted by roublen at 9:20 PM

 
Bob Herbert wrote a series of columns about David
Wayne Spence and Rolling Stone had a detailed story
sometime in the summer of 2000. The best available
online source is this Salon article by Alan Berlow:




I believe CBS did a story on it and I believe Jacob
Weisberg referred to it in Slate.

Bush's basic reply to the case was "he had a fair
trial and full access to the courts and that's good
enough for me"

I haven't been able to find much about Thomas Thompson
online. I'll do a nexis search in the morning.
posted by roublen at 9:20 PM

 
I have just finished reading your marvelous special
report, "How Californians Got Burned". The first
newspaper article I have read which gives, a sensible,
detailed analysis of what happened.

My main previous source of information were Paul
Krugman's op-eds in the NYT, but you can't give all
the gory details in an op-ed.

I think what's best about your article is that you
clearly, and mostly fairly, lay out non-obvious heroes
and villains (maybe you were a little tough on
Wilson). "On the one hand, on the other hand. .
."-type reporting may allow a journalist to cover
their you-know-what, but it does nothing to clear up
a citizen's confusion.

The thing is, though you're article was great
journalism, it isn't necessarily that useful, because
it doesn't analyze events after the summer of 1998,
and most importantly, it doesn't give the citizens a
sensible, detailed analysis of the choices they face
at this time. In other words, you need to write
another article which brings the story to the present
day. Much as your stellar analysis of what caused the
crisis, you must analyze what are the best solutions
at this point to salvage the best of a bad situation.

I've perused other writers at the SacBee, but none of
them seem to be as good as you. And my home paper (the
San Francisco Chronicle) is basically useless.

In any case, I intend to spread your piece around, and
inform the talk shows in my area about it.

cheers,
rv

PS:
I noticed the SacBee is part of the same chain as the
Minnesota Star-Tribune, another paper whose reporting
I respect. Is it a coincidence that none of the big
conglomerate chains have provided well-written,
comprehensible accounts of the power crisis (as far as
I know)? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect
it's because they are not allowed to identify heroes
and villains in their story. In other words, they have
to write the "On the one hand, on the other hand"
balanced crap which supposedly proves their
objectivity but which really shows that they're either
too timid to find and report uncomfortable truths or
they can't be bothered to find out what the truth is.
posted by roublen at 9:19 PM

 
You've made the case that the FERC should cap power
prices, that sensible analysis makes price caps not
only defensible but practically mandatory.

And you've made the two key (I think) points that this
isn't really so much a power crisis as it is a
financial crisis, and that if the President isn't
offering short-term help, then he isn't offering help,
period, because there is no real long-term problem.

However, FERC doesn't seem like it wants to do
anything about it, nor does it seem like a public
groundswell will force them (I find it astonishing
that the California Republicans are sacrificing the
vital interests of their state because of sheer
partisan hatred).

Therefore, the tough question, which
I've been dutifully looking for an answer to through
the vast wasteland of energy crisis coverage, is what
should California do assuming no significant help from
the Federal Government?

You've mentioned the idea of a buyer' cartel in one of
your columns, but that idea seems to have disappeared
in the ether. It could be there are no good answers,
but it is hard for me to believe that our leaders in
California are following optimal policies now, and I
think your analysis could a great boon.
posted by roublen at 9:19 PM

 
I just finished reading your article, "The Spectrum
Lords". I believe you have showed me the most clear,
outright, buck-naked example of legalized theft
possible. Apart from strolling over to the Treasury
and helping themselves to the till, it's hard to see
how they could be any more explicit.

And of course, since it involves the broadcasters, I
imagine the issue is positively radioactive to any
ambitious pol (and, perhaps, to any ambitious pundit?)
. But I would be very interested in what the ConIntern
(Jacob Weisberg's memorable phrase for the
Conservative media elite) thinks. If you can support
just handing the spectrum rights to private parties,
instead of auctioning off the rights on behalf of
taxpayers - well, it's hard to imagine what you
wouldn't support.

It strikes me that this spectrum issue would be a good
way of separating the wheat from the chaff, i.e. the
politicians who are well-meaning and honest,
regardless of ideology, versus those who are more
loyal to the influence-peddling establishment than
they are to the people. And it would be a useful to
see which conservative intellectuals are genuinely for
a free market, and which ones are just for the rich.

In any case, great article. I'll look for an
opportunity to call and plug it on C-Span. However,
what happened to your much-anticipated comments on
Edwards and ' 04? Did it just slip your mind? In
thinking about '04, I vaccilate between thinking that
Gore is probably the best of the lot , while knowing
that Gore is probably the only mainstream candidate
who could possibly lose to Bush.
posted by roublen at 9:18 PM

 
As a long-time admirer of your work (I've read THOTP,
Fools for Scandal, and the Higher Illiteracy, but not,
alas, Widow's Web), I'd like to suggest writing on two
topics I think would suit you:

1. A short piece comparing the uproar over the missing
documents in Tim Mcveigh's case with the silence over
the deliberate suppression of Jim Watt's documents by
the OIC. In the Mcveigh case, all the king's pundits
couldn't get to a camera fast enough to condemn the
FBI and apologize for it, despite the fact that the
documents were more or less junk; yet couldn't care
less about Jim Watt. I believe a good article could be
written about why the two cases were treated
differently, in regards to the decadence, political
correctness and obtuseness of the national press
corps. possible title: "The Missing McVeigh Documents.
What's the Big Deal?"

2. a long form, perhaps more substantive, sweeping
piece on the state of the federal judiciary and the
fight over the upcoming Bush appointments. I believe
what most frightens smart liberals is the prospect of
a judiciary filled with people like Pasco Bowman. We
consider it a fight for the very soul of the country,
yet we have been unable to get the mainstream to pay
attention or even to understand our point of view,
eg.. large numbers of people apparently think
Democrats opposed John Ashcroft because he was
exceptionally devout (ha!), or Ted Olson because he
argued Bush vs Gore successfully. And Hillary Clinton
was the only Democratic Senator to vote against
Michael Chertoff. The others apparently thought he was
just fine.

The kind of piece I have in mind might categorize
judges as 1) ideologically conservative, but
honorable, trustworthy people (i.e. Danforth, Fiske,
Michael McConnell, Lawrence Walsh, George Mackinnon)
2) not quite as trustworthy, but not actually
frightening (Joe Digenova, Fred Thompson, Arlen
Specter) 3) threats to fundamental American values,
(Starr, Bowman, Laurence Silberman, Sentelle, etc.)


or perhaps another way to categorize them:
1) judges who may disagree on a ruling like Roe v Wade
or who may have a broader view of the 10th amendment,
but who are basically decent people with basic
intellectual integrity, and would never knowingly use
their judicial position for partisan purposes.

2) judges who are troubling not necessarily for their
judicial philosophy, but their lack of intellectual
integrity and their record of imposing one set of
rules for Democrats, another for Republicans.

3) Judges who probably fit in category (2), but over
and above that would be conservative "judicial
activists", i.e. using their position not just to
throw the book at Democrats while letting Republicans
off the hook, but also to strike down vast swathes of
federal laws and to game the system appropriately on
redistricting, census counting, non-voting felons,
etc.

I have in mind your articles "Politics In the Woods",
"Natural Regulation", "Why Teacher's Can't Teach", The
Poison Gas story, etc.

I believe this is a very important story, and perhaps
no one is better qualified to write about it than you.


Apologies for this email being longer than I planned
it, but let me just ask two quick questions:

1. One of the most odious things about Starr's OIC was
they would insert a clause into a plea agreement
prohibiting the defendant from talking to the press
and criticizing the OIC. Are you aware of *any* other
prosecutors, anywhere, who have done this? And did any
of the mainstream journalists who carried water for
Starr find this troubling?

2. You said you might write a book with Julie
Hiatt-Steele. Are you? In general, do you have any
interesting articles/books in the pipeline?
posted by roublen at 9:18 PM

 


I just wanted to bring to your attention two
*fantastic* articles I read recently which I think
could make two good topics for your show.

One is a Sacbee special report on the California Power
Crisis called "How Californians Got Burned" (May 6),
written by Sam Stanton. It is hands down the best
reporting on the causes of the power crisis. I've
trawled through the vast wasteland of California power
crisis reporting, mostly unable to get past cliches
like "botched deregulation", etc. The Stanton article
explains how it all happened, and who was responsible
(practically everybody), and most importantly, Stanton
finds the precious few people who foresaw what would
happen and tried to stop it. You *must* read the
article, and I'm hoping you can invite Stanton and
some of the people featured in his article on your
show.

here is the URL:

http://www.sacbee.com/news/special/power/050601california.html

The other article is called "The Spectrum Lords", by
Josh Marshall, and is about the fact that the spectrum
bandwidth for Channels 60-69 is worth billions of
dollars, and there is an intense lobbying effort for
Congress to give the spectrum rights to private
interests instead of auctioning it off on behalf of
the taxpayers. It is the closest thing to legalized
theft that I can think of, and I think it could be a
good bipartisan cause

http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/10/marshall-j.html
posted by roublen at 9:16 PM

 
I basically agree with your comments that Democrats
can only envy Blair, but in one respect I think they
can, or at least could've. I was struck how Blair kept
urging the electorate to reject Hague in order to
douse the last embers of Thatcherism. He did it so
much I felt a bit put off by his beating up on an old
woman.

I wonder if Gore could have done the same thing, i.e.
portraying Bush as a warmed over Ronald Reagan pushing
the same big tax cut that didn't work twenty years
ago, i.e.:

*America*, don't let them do this to you again*.

During the time the Republicans were in power, from
1980-1992, middle class take home pay went up [insert
figure]. Earnings for the wealthy went up[insert
figure] Under Reaganomics, the rich got richer and the
middle class got screwed.

Under new Democrat policies, the poor have done
better, the middle class has done better, and rich
have, you know, gone into the stratosphere.

There was a business cycle recovery during the 80's
too, but over the long term, from 1980-1992,
Reaganomics was not good for working people. The
question of this election is, are we going to continue
to push for broad-based growth that benefits all
people, from the lowest to the highest, or are we
going to go back to the failed politics of the past,
where the wealthy rigged the system for their benefit.

*America, don't let them do this to you again*

(excerpt of an email I sent the Gore campaign. sigh)

Anyway, I was reading this

excellent explanation of the health-care debacle in
93-94, which among other things, showed what a jerk
Ira Magaziner was. The conventional wisdom is that
Magaziner has redeemed himself by chairing some
Internet commission, where he basically endorsed
standard free-market bromides and did everything that
Republican Tom Davis asked him too. If it turns out
that the work of the commission is flawed in some way
because of its uncritical endorsement of free markets,
then I think a pretty good article could be written
skewering Magaziner's arrogance-turned-cowardice and
the conventional wisdom which is willing to vouch for
anyone who praises free markets and deregulation
posted by roublen at 9:15 PM

 
You've debunked one clear social security
misconception, which is that you can't just give the
money in the Social Security Trust Fund to younger
workers, because that money is earmarked for baby
boomers.

But there's one other more opaque misconception (in
fact, I'm not quite sure its a misconception) which I
believe gets to the very heart of the matter, namely,
the belief that it is *always* superior to invest a
surplus in stocks rather than Treasury Bonds (or
paying down the federal debt, which amounts to the
same thing) because stocks *always* have a higher
return.

I suspect this belief is what allows conservatives to
wave away your columns with bromides about "transition
costs": what they seem to implicitly believe is that
the trust fund can be given to investors to achieve a
7% real return, and that the resulting trust fund
shortfall can be made up by borrowing bonds at a 2 or
3% real return, using the "magic of the market" and
the "magic of compound interest". (and perhaps a
little voodoo as well)

Some people like Dean Baker have pointed out that this
belief is identical to believing that the Federal
government can create wealth by floating bonds and
investing the proceeds in stocks, but still, one has
the feeling this isn't the last word. This column by
Andrew Tobias

is one of the clearer explanations of privatization.
On the issue of shifting money from stocks to bonds,
Tobias writes:

"But whether the money were invested in stocks
efficiently, without appreciable fees, commissions or
paperwork . . . or inefficiently, with 150 million
amateur managers . . . the larger question is: would
shifting this 2% of the Social Security tax into
stocks really make us collectively richer?

If so, it would presumably be because the current
capital structure in the U.S. suffers from a lack of
equity capital.  Starved for equity, we do not start
or
expand businesses as we might, and thus stunt our
future prosperity."

I'm not sure what Tobias means here, and I suspect
that the best explantion will depend on parameters as
well
as principles. Some of the very early columns you
wrote about PE's being abnormally high I have a hunch
are relevant, but it needs to be put all together in a
coherent way, in the context of the privatization
debate. In other words, it needs to be spelt out for
the economically unsophisticated, myself included.(I
have a good economic intuition, which alas, currently
does not include much precise knowledge)

In any case, I think this is a subject you could write
some very good and much needed columns on.

another minor column suggestion:

this very good report on the beginnings of the
California power crisis



shows that the PUC and lawmakers deregulated in part
because they were mucho impressed by a March 1994 tour
of the UK's National Grid. I remember you writing in
Peddling Prosperity that Britain had lots of excess
capacity at the time because of their previous
deregulation. I think an interesting column could be
written on why the Grid system worked in the UK in '94
but not in California in 2000, and in general
examining what makes for a successful electricity
regime.
posted by roublen at 9:15 PM

 

glenn loury wrote a vey fine oped on reparations in
the NYT a while back. You should read it on Nexis.

also, this interesting report by Dan Kennedy

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/00882880.htm
posted by roublen at 9:14 PM

 

two more links I forgot about:

1. one of the best short essays I have read on racial
inequality:

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/loury.html

2. a semi-archive of glenn loury papers and short
essays. A good place to go when you are feeling a
little dull

http://www.bu.edu/irsd/articles.htm
posted by roublen at 9:14 PM

 
http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow072701.shtml

Kudlow's july 27th column asserting the vital
importance of a strong dollar:

"Various short-sighted Wall Streeteconomists — along
with a bunch of whining U.S. manufacturing companies
and a flock of European Union central planners whose
sole desire is to take America down a peg — want to
see the American currency devalued. It's a terrible
vision, one that must be devoutly opposed.
Fortunately, the Bush administration has thus far
stayed with a strong-dollar policy."

http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow072701.shtml

Kudlow's July 24th column imploring Greenspan to
increase the money supply.

"But Greenspan's responsibility — whether or not he
admits it — remains a scarcity of true Fed liquidity
(i.e. currency and bank reserves, controlled only by
the Fed). If the central bank were really stimulative,
then commodity indexes would be rising, not
falling.The dollar-exchange rate would be falling, not
rising, and various treasury bond-rate spreads would
be widening, not narrowing (e.g. federal funds vs.
two-year Treasury notes). Tech stocks would be
rallying, not sinking. But none of what should be
happening is happening."


I remember reading an NY Times editorial similarly
full of howlers alongside your Sunday column.
(something like, "Greenspan shouldn't lower rates, as
that might result in a liquidity trap") Have you
basically given up critiquing journalists commenting
on the business cycle?

Concerning Social Security, Michael Kinsley largely
wrote the column I asked you to write, though his
column was only qualitative, with no numbers. The
essential question, which I have not really seen
addressed, is that if an individual were saving for
retirement with Treasury bonds, they would likely be
advised they were being too conservative. Why is what
is true for an individual untrue for a nation?

or to put it another way, putting aside the issue of
individual accounts, what is the appropriate model for
thinking about the optimal asset-allocation of the
Soc. Sec. Trust Fund?
posted by roublen at 9:13 PM

 


"On October 8, 1992, [Attorney General] Barr sent one
of his assistants to a top-level meeting attended by
Robert Mueller, the head of the Justice Department's
Criminal Division, FBI assistant director Larry Potts,
and several senior FBI officials. At that point, the
[Jean L. Lewis] Madison Guaranty referral was
definitely a matter of active interest at Justice. The
next day, FBI Headquarters sent a telex to its Little
Rock field office, ordering agents there to review
Jean Lewis's criminal referral and report in writing
by October 16--less than three weeks before the 1992
presidential election."


reread that portion of THOTP. It concerns the attempts
of the Bushies to bully the Little Rock FBI to
investigate Whitewater.

Don't you think the Senate should ask Mueller about
his involvement in Whitewate, if any, and his
involvement in this meeting?

I was willing to give Mueller the benefit of the
doubt. But hey, he was highly recommended by
*Ashcroft*. Mueller still might be a basically good
guy, but these questions should be asked.
posted by roublen at 9:12 PM

 


I like Clinton and Gore too, though I like Gore more.
BTW, Gore is also a last-minute person, strange for
someone reputed to be so disciplined.

I think another important factor in 2000 was that the
media was in the tank for Bush, especially on the
character non-issues of "Buddhist Temple" and Gore's a
liar" . Of course you could argue this media bias was
caused by the media's contempt for Clinton, but its
kind of convoluted to hold Clinton responsible for the
media's whorishness.

Bottom-line: If Gore had run a better campaign he
could have won, but if conditions had been so
favorable for Democrats then they should have regained
the House. And (have you noticed?) they didn't.

Re: 2004, it strikes me that Bush simply could not
beat Gephardt. flat impossible. So I was surprised
when you dissed his chances.
posted by roublen at 9:11 PM

 
here's an excerpt of a press release from Zell Miller:

"It was and is a responsible tax cut. If anything, it
should have been larger and kicked in sooner. The tax
cut does not get into the Medicare and Social Security
trust funds, as some protest. What would eat into them
is hog-wild spending on other items. That's where a
problem could arise. Let's pass the defense and
education appropriations bills as well as the $300
million prescription drug benefit as soon as possible,
and then let's go on a fast the likes of which have
not been seen since [Gandhi]."

suppose we do as Zell Miller suggests:  pass the
popular sound-bites (defense, education, prescription
drugs); baseline spending for potential sound bites
(e.g. school lunches, air-traffic controllers);
elimination of "fraud, waste and abuse"; and that
hoary conservative favorite, an "across-the-board"
cut in "everything else". What would be the scope of
such spending cuts, and what would be the
consequences?

Also, In case you missed it, a new attack on you from
the National Review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/daily/nr082701.shtml

"It's when he gets to Social Security "privatization"
that Krugman breaks new ground. Privatizing Social
Security, he says, "would increase, not reduce, the
implicit debt. If the payroll taxes of younger workers
are diverted into private accounts, the benefits
promised to current retirees and older workers will
have to be paid out of other revenue."

Krugman's claim is simply, unequivocally, false. No
private-account plan increases the implicit debt,
because no such plan makes any new promises to current
or future retirees. The most a private-account plan
would do is bring forward in time the burden of
financing some of those promises-converting implicit
debt into explicit debt.

If this were a Krugman screed, at this point we would
start questioning his honesty. But maybe he's made an
honest mistake. We'll know the answer if he repeats it
next Sunday."

Lastly, I think you've assumed that Republicans
basically agree on the necessity of reforming the AMT.
I don't think that's true. They seem to be laying the
groundwork for making AMT reform a Democrat issue, so
they can blame the Democrats for this "new" assault on
the trust funds.
posted by roublen at 9:11 PM

 
I'm from the Lyons-Conason school of loyal
pro-Clinton/Gore Democrat, so naturally I often
disagree vehemently with much of what you write. And
I'm not the only liberal mildly annoyed that a Tory
has the lead column for the flagship liberal American
opinion journal.

That said, your Condit analysis was the best I've seen
on the subject. You asked the two important questions,
and answered them persuasively (though I think its
pretty clear that Condit stonewalled between the
second and third interview. Since the police seem to
have sought the third interview mainly for PR reasons,
however, it can be argued that the stonewalling didn't
really impede the investigation.) Your analysis of why
everyone is jumping on Condit was very good too
(except for Josh Marshall. I suspect he just needs the
money;).

So well done. I may have to *gulp* give your opinion
more respect when I disagree with you now. Though as a
way to return the favor, I should point out that Lyons
& Conason have been critical of the Condit mediathon
as well.
posted by roublen at 9:10 PM

 
the Democrats have been criticizing Bush for
squandering the surplus with his tax cut, but the
Republicans have got the better of the exchange,
pointing out 1) so what do you want to do, run a large
surplus in a slowing economy? 2) oho, we've squandered
the surplus have we? Then I guess no prescription
drugs, or other desirable spending, for you.

But isn't there a pretty simple way out of the
Democrats bind? Namely to dip into the trust fund this
year and possibly the next with a clear conscience,
with a promise written into law to make up the
difference once the economy has sufficiently
recovered? Delaying the trust fund fights a year or
two will also mean the Democrats can fight against the
relatively unpopular marginal rate cuts and estate tax
reductions, as opposed to just the relatively popular
rebate checks and child tax credits.
posted by roublen at 9:09 PM

 
The pro-prosecutors / pro-civil liberties crowds have
been duking it out pretty vehemently, and it seems to
me, almost entirely needlessly.

Isn't there a pretty obvious solution? Namely when it
comes to crimes like terrorism let the FBI / Justice /
CIA do pretty much anything they damn well please, but
their expanded powers to fight terrorism cannot then
be subsequently used to collect information to
prosecute drug-dealing, tax evasion, purely technical
(i.e. careless, unintentional) violations of
anti-terrorism laws (e.g. Wen-Ho-Lee), and other less
serious crimes.

The whole debate seems to be about how far to ratchet
down the standard of probable cause, and no one seems
to be arguing that the appropriate standard of
probable cause depends on the potential seriousness of
the crime. You probably know the history better than
I do, but it seems relevant that the Bill of Rights
was formulated at a time when petty crimes like
smuggling were rampant.

Or to put it another way, I couldn't care less if the
gummint listens to everyone of my conversations from
now until judgement day as long as the only subject
they were concerned about was whether I was seriously
plotting a terrorist attack or not, as opposed to my
consumption habits of the finer Jamaican weeds

Or at least that's how it looks from the cheap seats.

Maybe the debate's actually more nuanced than I give
it credit for.

It seems petty to even go there, but is there any
doubt now about the truth of the White House Vandalism
stories?

Also I think that Andrew Sullivan attacks on Clinton
require a more comprehensive, probably article-length
rather than TPM post, response. Probably something
that goes beyond the attacks on Clinton and examines
the general habit of blaming your opponents for
whatever's going wrong.
posted by roublen at 9:09 PM

 

Alan Blinder wrote a characteristically smart and
sensible op-ed on Friday (I read and learned alot from
his textbook), yet it seems to have been largely
ignored by the people who matter (politicians and
their aides), and even the people who even
peripherally matter (pundits, etc.). Maybe you could
evangelize for the sales-tax rebate in your future
columns.

better still, rate all the various stimulus programs
under some sensible framework.
posted by roublen at 9:08 PM

 
a liberal rumor is making the rounds via some guy
named David Podvin's web site:

http://makethemaccountable.com/topic_DavidPodvin.htm

that the media is "covering-up the clear Gore victory
in Florida". Here are some excerpts:



"According to a source whose previous information has
proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news
organizations that recounted the presidential votes in
the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that
former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the
state, and it is now concealing the news of Gore’s
victory from the American people.

The source is a former media executive who previously
revealed information that the Bush administration was
lying about Clinton staffers having vandalized the
White House. That information led me to accuse Karl
Rove of manufacturing the “crime”. My accusation
appeared in an article that was posted by
Buzzflash.com on January 28, 2001, and it was
confirmed by a General Accounting Office investigative
report several months later. . ."

". . .The Consortium was stunned to discover that the
recount revealed Gore won a clear victory. Even after
casting aside the controversial butterfly ballots and
discarding ballots that were “iffy”, Gore decisively
won the recount. While the precise numbers are still
unavailable, a New York Times journalist who was
involved in the project told one of his former
companions that Gore won by a sufficient margin to
create “major trouble for the Bush presidency if this
ever gets out”."

The story of Gore’s victory has been spiked at the
highest levels of the media conglomerates that are
involved, rather than at the cosmetic steering
committee level of the recount project. The Consortium
reportedly has received intense pressure from members
of the Bush inner circle both in and out of
government, but has not been lobbied by
representatives of Gore. . .

“It was the old baseball manager’s trick of crying
about every call in order to pressure the umpire to
give you more than your fair share,” said the
executive. “And it worked in Florida. However, in the
relative calm of the Consortium recount - absent the
pressure tactics - the Bush total remained basically
consistent with the original count, while the Gore
total shot way up.”

As for what will happen next, the executive said,
“Once the dominant pro-Gore trend became apparent, the
Consortium was never going to release the results; the
pressure from the big money boys was too great.
Terrorism just provided a better excuse for
withholding the information than the ‘technical
difficulties’ stalling tactic that was otherwise going
to be used. The Consortium is determined to make sure
that the original results of their recount will never
see the light of day.”



Having become a sadder but wiser liberal from the
Election 2000/Florida mess, I recognize what Jacob
Weisberg calls "journalistic gumbo". And I remember
you commenting on the NORC results that "they're a
mess!" , hardly an indisputable Gore victory.

So I beg of you, please debunk this rumor before it
takes life and ends up driving some over-zealous but
well-meaning liberals round the bend.
posted by roublen at 9:07 PM

 
just read the very good lelyved piece. one question I
wish he'd asked is "if the US hates muslims, why did
they fight for them in Kosovo?"

I can't help thinking the rampant Clinton-contempt in
the elite media is one reason this powerful propaganda
point is not made more ofte
posted by roublen at 9:06 PM

 
I've always thought one your finest pieces was "A
Country Is Not A Company", though it doesn't seem to
be very famous, perhaps because it seemed too abstract
and esoteric on first glance. (I actually think it
should be required reading for prospective undergrad
majors in economics.)

In any case, I think you could write a fascinating
column along those lines about the Green-Bloomberg
race, since a primary campaign issue was that someone
with a business background would be better for New
York than a "career politician" in these economically
troubled times.

BTW, I respect Green's career, though his one-note
stridency on police brutality in the Giuliani years
disturbed me. However, I think he ran a cynical,
surly, visionless campaign, and deserved to lose.
Hopefully, he'll come back in four years a wiser man.
posted by roublen at 9:06 PM

 
I don't know if you have seen Michael Moore's "Roger
and Me", but whatever you think of Moore's other work
or ideas, its a very funny, moving documentary of the
economic pain the people of Flint, Michigan went
through after GM moved its Flint plants to Mexico.

For me, the most interesting part of the movie was
watching Flint's politicians try to get the city's
economy moving again. Their attempted, and disastrous,
solution was to attract tourist dollars (A common
response of local officials everywhere, I think).
Then they more or less gave up, content with
attracting celebrities to give pep talks (Ronald
Reagan's (not bad) advice: "Move to the Sun Belt,
where jobs are plentiful")

So here are my questions: What should Flint have done
after losing so much of its economic base? And what
branch of economics, if any, do questions like these
fall under?

I once asked an economist (Gavin Wright, an economic
historian from Stanford, a nice man) the Flint
question, and his reply was along the lines of "That's
more a question for an MBA rather than an economist.
Basically, the City Fathers have to get together and
ask: What Are we good at? What can we do?"

When I suggested that the City Fathers of Flint could
have used some help, he smiled ruefully and said "Yes,
well, good public officials are always a useful thing
to have"

So is Prof. Wright right? Is this not an economic
question? And does this mean the people of New York
made the right call in electing an MBA rather than a
public policy major?

On an unrelated note, I have to say your polemical
columns are much better when they have numbers in them
than when they don't. Anyone can make qualitative
assertions. You're one of the few who can give readers
a sense of the relative magnitudes involved as well.
posted by roublen at 9:06 PM

 
I have nothing against your racial profiling article.
But i wished you had picked a harder target. And I
especially wished you had made the super-important
point that the fuss over racial profiling is
inseparable from the obtuse injustice that is our Drug
War.

The simplest way to show this is a numerical example.

Suppose blacks commit 50% of all murders and
robberies, possess 20% of all drugs (for consumption &
dealing purposes), and are 10% of the population.
Lets further suppose .1% of whites are
murderers/robbers, 20% possess drugs (absolute realism
is not the point here). That means, to make the
numbers come out approximately right, 1% of blacks are
murderers/robbers, and 45% possess drugs.

So then, the conservatives trumpet: Random stops of
blacks are *10 times* more likely to be
murderers/robbers than whites. Obviously racial
profiling is a good thing, else we will have more
murders/robberies. So let's say the police stop
blacks 5 times more than they stop whites.

Two problems: 1) most murders/robberies are not
solved by random stops of the general population.
Instead, the predominant types of crimes dealt with
random stops are drugs, resisting arrest, driving
without a license, etc.. 2) Something very strange has
happened. Blacks are only twice as likely to possess
drugs as whites, but because they are stopped five
times more, they are *ten* times more likely to be
arrested on drug charges.

Blacks are not inherently unfair people, and neither
are cops. If the only consequences of racial profiling
was 1) increased inconvenience for law-abiding
minorities 2) caching more bad guys
(robbers/murderers), they would accept profiling.
Perhaps not cheerfully, but they would accept it.

The problem is that blacks view the stated goal of
catching more bad guys as a pretext to incarcerate
more and more blacks for non-violent (i.e. drug)
offences, thus improving police statistics and their
revenue, the prison-industrial complex, etc. And
largely, they are right.

I'm not saying police are bad people. They are merely
following the incentives set by shameless politicians
of the Ashcroft variety (and cowardly politicians of
the Clinton-Gore variety), which equates the
unpleasant practice of drug dealing not with selling
tobacco or alcohol or pornography or sweet, sweet can
. .dy, but with murder, rape, and pillage (gang
warfare arising out of drug-dealing is another
matter).

The racial profiling debate is actually very similar
to the affirmative action debate in college
admissions, in that minorites cling to the dubious,
certainly very small advantages, of affirmative
action, as a small recompense for the huge
disadvantages of lousy public schools and lack of
social capital.

And most conservatives make a mountain out of the tiny
molehill of an issue that is affirmative action, while
keeping mum about the real gaping sources of
inequality. Frankly, whites get much more benefit
from bitching about affirmative action than they would
if AA was completely abolished and the few slots on
the margin that now go to minorities went instead to
their racial brethren.

(I am aware of the sincere desire of many
conservatives to improve minority schooling, though
it was precisely this issue - of taking an active,
non-fatalistic, interest in improving social capital,
without gratuitous, counter-productive, not to mention
innacurrate, scapegoating and stigmatizing - that
caused Glenn Loury to quit the conservative movement
-. However, even on vouchers/ school choice there is a
lot more talk than action. Bush spent precisely none
of his political capital trying to pass vouchers - or
elect the "loser" Schundler)
posted by roublen at 9:05 PM

 
was, along with many readers, an admirer of your
"Let's see how you balance the budget" issue of US
News. Though, in hindsight, perhaps you could have
done a better job in stressing how short-term budget
projections are are very sensitive to variations in
economic growth and unemployment.

Obviously, You don't have the resources of a weekly
anymore, but I'm emailing you because I think some
version of the same thing is sorely needed now,
especially to make people aware of the coming deluge
of retiring baby boomers. And in general, to see how
their particular cause might fit into the whole.

For example, liberals generally support new programs,
but don't know *how* big, or how progressive they
would ideally want it. And conservatives want
"smaller" government, but don't think about *how*
small do they want it. (I don't mean to be
disingenously even-handed. I'm an unabashed liberal)

It seems to me American politics could really use the
notion of trade-off right now.

Perhaps you and the Atlantic could do something about
it?
posted by roublen at 9:04 PM

 
You seem to be saying that vehement opponents of the
drug war believe that being a drug addict is just
another, perfectly acceptable, lifestyle choice.
That's not it at all.

I believe that drug abuse is a sin, not a crime. And
while I have no problem with active governmental
efforts to reduce sin, I believe branding personal
sins (as opposed to violence, stealing, etc.) as
*crimes* on par with stealing and raping is a much
more dangerous impulse to a freedom-loving people than
sin itself.

As for the moral distinction between dealing and
using, I don't feel any moral distinction between
some nice college students buying drugs and some inner
city shlub selling them. Besides, I don't see many
Drug War Proponents attacking tobacco and alchohol
companies, even though their products kill many more
people, including children, than hard drugs do. What
should really boil the blood of any honest person is
that the tobacco industry even blocked the development
of a safer cigarette, because that would imply that,
heaven forfend, their previous products may have
been less-than-perfectly safe.

Likewise, obesity and too much television and internet
consumption, pornographic and otherwise, harm a lot
more lives than drugs do. Imagine a War on Television,
with Laurie Dhue as the seductive Television Dealer
and Roger Ailes as the Television Lord!

Whether on pragmatic or moral grounds, the War on
(certain) Drugs has become a far greater threat to
American interests and values than the drugs
themselves.

Read Eric Schosser's articles in the Atlantic. for an
anti-Drug War take.

Or if you want to read a perspective that is both Pro
and Anti Drug War at the same time, read Vincent
Bugliosi's "The Phoenix Solution: Getting Serious
About Winning America's War on Drugs"
posted by roublen at 9:03 PM

 
Earlier this year all the media talking heads went
into spasms of outrage over Clinton's Marc Rich
pardon, how disgusting it was, and how it proved that
Clinton was indeed a Very Bad Man.

Well, read these two articles, and then tell me
whether or not these two scandals outweigh Marc Rich
by several (hundred) orders of magnitude?



"One of the Bush administration’s first moves, as
noted here at the time, was to rein back – but not
entirely squelch – the Clinton administration’s
efforts to crack down on off-shore tax havens.  Now
Treasury Secretary O’Neill has cut a deal with one of
the most notorious tax havens of them all, the Cayman
Islands.  The deal gives tax cheats just 25 months to
move their assets elsewhere before the IRS swoops
in. And the deal apparently assures that any trail of
wrongdoing prior to 2004 will be permanently sealed
from view, so no one’s likely to get into too much
trouble for whatever they’ve done thus far in the
Caymans.  . ."

"The 25-month delay gives tax cheats ample time to
more their money to another tax haven, said Jack Blum,
a Washington lawyer who specializes in financial
frauds.  “They have written this in a way so that the
people who have been violating the law can get
themselves out from under the mess by moving to
another jurisdiction where there is no agreement,” Mr.
Blum said.  “This is simply astonishing"



"Harvey Pitt is not a household name. Until recently,
the only people who regularly came across him were
those in scrapes with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC). For such individuals, however, Pitt
was the man to see. He was considered the sharpest
securities lawyer in the country, and while not
everybody could afford his fees, those who could were
generally pleased with the results. When the SEC
charged Ivan Boesky with insider trading, he hired
Pitt, who engineered a lighter-then-expected sentence.
Over the decades, Pitt built an impressive roster of
similarly well-heeled clients who stood accused by the
SEC of securities fraud, misstating their finances,
other pecuniary offenses. And he has put his
persuasive talents to work not just for individuals
but for large economic interests who do business with
the SEC--on whose behalf he has prowled the corridors
of Washington as a super-lobbyist. Most of the time,
Pitt fought the SEC to a draw, or better.

But in August, Pitt entered a new line of work. The
bad news for those having difficulties with the SEC is
that they can no longer hire Pitt to defend their
interests. The good news--and, taking all things into
account, it vastly outweighs the bad--is that Pitt is
now chairman of the SEC. Pitt, in other words, heads
the agency charged with rooting out financial
crime--which is roughly the equivalent of making
Johnnie Cochran head of the FBI"

". . .Pitt has already replaced the top staff of the
agency's critical corporate-finance division--an
unusual move at the SEC, where the previous two
chairmen left the staffs they inherited in place--and
installed people who, like him, have a background
representing the industries the SEC regulates. In
October the Commission instituted an amnesty policy,
whereby firms accused of violations could turn
themselves in and receive little or no punishment. "I
think that there have been instances where what the
agency has done is focus more on an after-the-fact
casting of blame and aspersion than in figuring out
how to protect investors," he told the Post. "We
aren't going to play gotcha." Imagine if other law
enforcement agencies took this view"

"Swallowing camels and straining at gnats" I think
it's called.

I know it's not of the magnitude of the War on
Terrorism, just several hundred billion dollars, but
still. . .they shouldn't be able to get away with
this, should they?
posted by roublen at 9:02 PM

 
Fred Barnes in a recent article said any link between
the current recession and projected deficits was
ludicrous, and symptomatic of Democratic demagoguery.

I sent him an (somewhat unnecessarily uncivil, in
hindsight) email scolding him for overlooking the link
between deficit projections and long-term rates, and
this was his reply, FYI:

"Are you sure you're not kidding? Long term rates
"stubbornly high"?
Then why is everybody refinancing their homes? And
projected deficits a reason for Bush's recession? The
recession began, according to the NBER, months
before deficits were projected. Now I don't mean to
say Bush's economic policies are perfect. But
consider this: the actual downturn in the economy
began in mid-2000. It fell to recession-level in
March, two months or less after Bush took office. So
who might the president be who's responsible? Not
Bush."

He actually misrepresented my views a bit: I never
said this was "Bush's recession", just that the charge
he was mismanaging the economy was perfectly valid.

Criticizing Greenspan for tending to his legend is not
*entirely* fair: It was useful in 1998, for example.
His tax cut shenanigans, OTOH. . .

Also, do you really think Greenspan should go on
television and say that people should not expect a
quick recovery? Mightn't that backfire?

I agree with you that exports & interest-rate
sensitive sectors should be the drive train of
recovery, but I'm not sure I agree that the reason
(apart from deficits) that the Dollar and long-term
rates aren't dropping is because of self-defeating
optimism. Mightn't structural factors like
demographics have something to do with it?
posted by roublen at 9:01 PM

 

Argentina:
The case for devaluation seems so overwhelming to me,
it boggles my mind why the people who count are so
reluctant to do it. Maybe I feel this way because the
inflations of the seventies were before my time.

There are two big issues, it seems to me: whether or
not to devalue, and whether or not to default on the
debt. You've come down firmly on the side of
devaluation, what do you think of defaulting? Assuming
you support not defaulting, how would you prove that
the debt servicing would not be a crushing burden to
the Argentine economy, and in any case would be better
than defaulting?

Lastly, foreign aid. I'm in favor of it. I think the
standard conservative response will be 1) O'Neill's:
"I wan't some evidence it will work before we commit
money" 2) We could give away these drugs for free and
it still wouldn't do much good, because these
countries don't have the infrastructure to distribute
these drugs effectively. In fact, loose distribution
of these drugs may do more harm than good,by causing
the creation of new drug-resistant strains. I haven't
read the report, so I don't know whether they address
these arguments.
posted by roublen at 9:01 PM

 


two Krugman quotes from a 1999 Slate breakfast table
between Krugman and Kathleen Sullivan:

"As I read your remarks about how Kosovo reverses the
usual left/right roles on intervention, I found myself
wondering what Noam Chomsky--who epitomized the
left-wing view that all bad things are the result of
Western intervention--is saying now. Well, I couldn't
find anything about the current crisis, but thanks to
the miracle of search engine technology I did find
some remarks about Bosnia, which are pathetic but
revealing: First he tries to blame it all on the
Western Right, then suddenly gets all judicious and
practical. Here's the article"

"I have to say that this was not the week I would have
wanted to do the "Breakfast Table"--whatever thoughts
you and I might have had about other issues are
crowded out by the events in Kosovo. And I do not
think of myself as an all-purpose pundit. I remember
once (during the air phase of the Gulf War) seeing
John Kenneth Galbraith making pronouncements on TV
about the military situation, and telling friends that
if I ever start pontificating in public about a
technical subject I don't understand, they should gag
me. "

Both you and Krugman deserve sharp rebukes for
over-zealous, and therefore inaccurate,
rabble-rousing. Krugman emphatically did *not* say
that the war on terrorism was *planned* to obscure bad
budget news. He said the war was (dishonestly) *used*
to explain away bad budget news. You're too smart not
to see the huge difference between those two
assertions. Your animus towards Krugman blinded you.

As for Krugman, the first half of his column is
excellent. In the second half he gets sidetracked, and
suffers an embarassing lapse in logic, perhaps partly
because he was constrained by space. Obviously the
purpose of heavy duty conventional weapons is to be
used against states that harbor terrorists and develop
WMD, not individual terrorists with boxcutters.
Here's a better way to make Krugman's point:

Bush claims that the $5.6 trillion dollar surplus for
the next ten years his White House projected in
*April* 2001 (just ten months ago!) has shrunk to a
$1 trillion projected surplus because of the war,
recession and homeland defence. Suppose Defence
spending is increased an extra $50 billion dollars
for ten years, and add $25 billion for homeland
defence. For the recession, assume the economy stinks
up the budget for all of 2001 and 2002, chopping off
another $250 billion each year.

But wait a second. That adds up to 1.25 trillion. Add
the Administrations tax cut, which they claim is 1.35
trillion, under these very generous stipulations, it
still adds up to at most 3 trillion. Where did the
extra 1.6 trillion go? The answer is, in the
administration's dishonest math.

It is in this sense that Krugman is accusing the White
House of dishonestly using the President's war-time
credibility to cover up their lies, and he is dead
right. The situation is even worse than that, because
the Administration's $1 trillion projected surplus is
a lie. The surplus is all gone.
posted by roublen at 9:00 PM

 
concerning "Punditgate", I'm bemused by how things
that aren't true, like the assertion that you wrote a
"puff piece" for Enron in 1999, that you admitted
getting 50,000 dollars for "doing nothing", and worst
of all, that your primary response to ethics
criticisms was to "blame everything on a vast
right-wing conspiracy", can nevertheless be repeated
again and again by allegedly professional journalists.


Also, I got the sense that the media people had only
read your first posting on your web site, and not your
later additions. Perhaps when you post something
significant on your web page, you shold give a one or
two line mention in your column, so interested readers
can check it out. It doesn't really matter for
something as ultimately trivial as "Punditgate", but
your Argentina postings should have had as wide a
readership as possible.

Also, I think you can be fairly rebuked for three
recently sloppy arguments:

first, you said Enron, not the WTC attacks, will be
considered a bigger turning point, because an event
can't change everything unless it changes how you see
yourself, and being victimised cannot do that. By that
logic, Hitler coming to power did not change
everything for German Jews. Simply put, being
victimised on a sufficient scale can change how you
see yourself, and September 11th probably has.

Second, It is a non-sequiter to say that more
heavy-duty conventional weapons are not justified by
the war on terrorism because they can't attack
Al-Qaeda. Obviously, they're purported use is not to
go after individual terrorists, but to go after
terrorist-harboring, WMD developing countries. To
argue against the Crusader artillery system, you'd
have to argue it would be useless in potential war
against Iraq, not a potential war against Al-Qaeda.

Thirdly, if Bush allocates 11 billion this year and 9
billion *next* year, can't he be said to have
fulfilled his promise? You didn't make clear if the 11
billion was for just this year or for future years as
well. And you've never presented a reasoned analysis
of how much money New York *should* get. The 20
billion figure was basically just something Schumer
pulled out of his head. Surely how much money New York
should or should not get is a more important question
than whether or not Bush keeps his promise. After
all, he's broken so many!

I say this as a great admirer of your work. In this
vein, I think that readers who like your column may
really enjoy/benefit from reading your past books.
Going through your old books, I think "Age of
Diminished Expectations" is the only one where large
parts (but by no means all) of it have dated. In
particular, "Peddling Prosperity" holds up very well.
I used to think, to quote you, that if enough
influential people read Peddling Prosperity, "our
politics would be transformed". I'm no longer so
naive, but I still like the book.

Alas, liberals tend to be quite miserly, which is why
I think "Fuzzy Math" didn't do so well, being quite
thin for a harback. Perhaps a "Krugman Omnibus" ,
packaging your better popular writing into a big
paperback, from "Peddling Prosperity" to "Fuzzy
Math", would give potential buyer's sufficient value
for money? I think it would do very well.
posted by roublen at 8:59 PM

 
this a little off the beaten track, but what the hey,
you're a history Phd. . .

I've just been learning a bit on Lincoln's presidency,
(in particular booknotes for David Herbert Donald's
biography, PBS, and Clinton's farewell interview with
Dan Rather), and it seems to me pretty apparent that
Clinton tried to model the style of his presidency
after Lincoln's, especially 1) Lincoln's dictum of
"net getting out too far in front of the public" and
2) Lincoln's tendency to tell people what they
wanted/needed to hear, rather than what he may have
truly believed.

This seems to be an understandable, but tragic mistake
on Clinton's part, and may be an important key to
understanding why the primary assessment of Clinton's
presidency will likely be "unrealized potential".

The reason why Lincoln's style was appropriate for his
time was that voters had many strongly held beliefs
about polarizing issues which could not be finessed
and therefore Lincoln did not try to.
In our day voters beliefs are much more squishy, and
most issues aren't starkly polarizing, so voters are
more amenable to being "manipulated" or "educated"
(take your pick). Voter's are also more confused, so
they hunger for "authenticity", for straight-talkin' ,
trustworthy (looking) politticians to "discuss things
in ways I can understand".

In other words, "not getting too far out in front of
the public" is not good advice in our time. The
really important political battles in our day are won
by
*molding* public opinion, not conforming to it.

Or to put it another way, in our time how an issue
gets "framed" is very important to the final policy
result. In Lincoln's time, "framing an issue" has
relatively little to do with it.

hope things are going well,
rv

p.s. I strongly doubt the outside Enron investors are
connected with the GOP. They will be (I predict)
1) Houstonians or 2) Investment bankers/financial
advisors

a good article topic would be how to reform the
Corporate Tax Code so that the Enron's of the world
can stop evading them.
posted by roublen at 8:59 PM

 
I strongly think you're overreacting over Gephardt's
recent statement that we shouldn't revisit the Bush
tax cut.

I think what he's said is that it's no use talking
about revisiting the tax cut *while Bush is in the
White House*. He's also said "Bush wants to cut
taxes. So do I. *But I want to cut them for different
people*" This is not necessarily the rhetoric of a
moderate squish. It depends on what he's proposing.

More than positioning himself for 2004, I think
Gephardt is obsessed with winning back the House in
2002. Given the artful Republican manipulation of key
house seats, this probably means, or at least Gephardt
thinks it means, having to appeal to low and
middle-income white conservatives with no love for
Clinton.

In other words, a tough consituency to reach. Maybe
Gephardt isn't following the best strategy. But what
would be the best strategy for the Democrats to take
back the House in 2002?
posted by roublen at 8:58 PM

 
have you read the latest "tilting at windmills"? It
contains this eye-opener from Charlie Peters:

the federal judiciary, dominated as it is by Reagan
and Bush I appointees, along with a few Nixon and Ford
holdovers. The latest example comes from the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals. It has upheld a federal
district judge who had decided that the Department of
Agriculture had exceeded its authority by shutting
down the Supreme Beef Processors plant in Dallas. Had
the Agriculture inspectors acted arbitrarily or
hastily? Hardly. They did not act until the plant had
failed its salmonella contamination test three times.
Why, then, did the court rule against the inspectors?
For one thing, the court said, the meat already could
have been contaminated before it reached the plant.
For another, they said that since salmonella can be
destroyed by cooking, it should not be regulated under
the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

As to the first argument, don't we want to make sure
that the meat-processing companies buy uncontaminated
meat or, if they don't, that they decontaminate it or
throw it away?

As for the argument that cooking can destroy
salmonella, it ignores the fact that before the meat
is cooked it can contaminate kitchen utensils, cutting
boards, and other foods. And unfortunately, not every
consumer is going to cook the meat long enough to
destroy the bacteria. It may be fair to join the
conservatives in saying that the cook should suffer
the consequences of his or her carelessness. But what
about innocent family members? And what about innocent
customers of restaurants with careless cooks? Don't
they deserve protection? >"

Instead of digging through whether judges were racists
40 years ago, isn't this the sort of ammo judiciary
Democrats should be using? Whether or not shutting
down the Beef processing plant was appropriate, this
is not a legitimate issue for a court to decide, much
less a court of appeals. It is shameless, blatant
judicial activism at its worst.

key point: the conservatives want to use the next 4/8
years to shift the judiciary so far to the right that
it doesn't matter who's President after that. Hell,
they might even use a grandiose interpretation of the
"takings" clause of the constitution in order to
outlaw progressive taxation.

posted by roublen at 8:56 PM