The fact is this—anyone paying careful attention could have told you that the Tea Party was simply the old far right dressed up in funny new clothing. Its numbers historically hover between one-fifth and one-third of all voters depending on the times. These were the people who thought President George W. Bush was still doing a bang-up job at the end of his catastrophic presidency. Hence, pretty much nothing can make them rethink what they believe they know to be true.

Interestingly, the opposite dynamic appears to be at work in the coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is far more popular with the public than with the media. Even before its current slide in popularity, the Tea Party was never even remotely as popular as the Occupy Wall Street movement was when it began and remains today. As CAP’s Ruy Teixeira demonstrated back in October, the movement’s favorability rating was already “twice as high as that of the conservative Tea Party movement.” Teixeira noted that 54 percent of the public, according to a Time/Abt SRBI poll, said they were “favorable to the movement that has been protesting policies that ‘favor the rich, the government’s bank bailout, and the influence of money in our political system.'”

—Eric Alterman
Why Do the Mainstream Media Like the Tea Party More Than Occupy Wall Street?

Yesterday, I listened to Michael Krasny’s excellent Forum show. It featured a debate between Glenn Greenwald and Mark Bowden on the issue of torture, especially as it applies to the appointment of John Brennan as CIA Director and the movie Zero Dark Thirty. It was interesting. Greenwald really went after Bowden. He seems to have no patience with even the smallest amount of torture apologetics. And I think he’s right.

Just the same, I can see why Bowden gets a bit angry. In general, Bowden’s position on torture is pretty enlightened—at least compared to that of most Americans. He believes that we should not do it. The problems come up when he does the old John Yoo maneuver of defining torture away. “Of course, I’m against torture! But bamboo shoots forced under the fingernails isn’t torture!” Not that bad, but still.

Mark Bowden repeated one thing that sounds reasonable. He said that it was wrong to say that torture is never effective because clearly it sometimes is. I accept this. The problem is how this bit of information is presented. As we know from economics, choices have opportunity costs associated with them. If you go to see Bruce Springsteen, there is an opportunity cost of missing the Pink Floyd concert that is at the same time. So the question is not whether torture sometimes provides good information. The question is does the torturing provide more information than other options like rapport building. And that, I think, is where the “torture is effective” argument breaks down.

I recommend listening to the show. It is a good primer on these issues:

And check out Greenwald’s article on the John Brennan nomination at the New York Times, Nomination Ignores War Crimes.

Ah, incentives! Economists love them, people respond to them, and politicians fuck them up. MSNBC is reporting that Wendy’s and Taco Bell franchises are cutting work weeks down to 28 hours to avoid penalties for not providing healthcare. This is understandable, of course. These are just business decisions. And they are not new.

Although I do not think that this was part of the thinking, ACA is becoming part of the corporate welfare system. By reducing work hours, these companies manage to make healthcare the government’s problem. But it is worse than this because it is likely to create a chain reaction. This is because it will affect the behavior of what we normally think of as good companies: the ones who will provide healthcare anyway. If their competitors manage to provide the same benefits (healthcare) without paying for it, these good companies will be at a distinct disadvantage. And thus, they are likely to stop providing the benefits.

Matt Yglesias talks about this today. And his take is that this eventually leads to a society in which everyone gets their healthcare through the government exchanges. In general, that’s true. But it also does this by reducing everyone’s work week down to below 30 hours. That might not be such a bad thing. After all, Americans work too much. What’s more, that is an easy way to get to full employment. But it doesn’t seem like the right way to achieve this goal. I think it would have been better to go with a single payer healthcare system and let people decide for themselves how much they want to work.

Regardless, mark Wendy’s and Taco Bell on your list of asshole companies to avoid.

First they came with their Social Security,
and I didn’t speak out because it seemed like it would be good for the old and the economy too—a win-win.

Then they came with healthcare for all, and there was only the crazies to complain because sadly they had not yet come with mental healthcare for all.

—with great apologies to Martin Niemoller
and grateful inspiration from Alex Jones

Meet Greg Walden, the Republican representative from Ogegon. He is an idiot. But he has lots of company. Like our “liberal” president. Do you remember when Obama said, “After all, small businesses and families are tightening their belts. Their government should, too.” Well, Greg Walden is using the same flawed argument in his new bill to eliminate the “trillion dollar platinum coin” loophole.

He writes, “My wife and I have owned and operated a small business since 1986. When it came time to pay the bills, we couldn’t just mint a coin to create more money out of thin air. We sat down and figured out how to balance the books. That’s what Washington needs to do as well.”

That does sound reasonable, doesn’t it? The problem is that it is totally wrong. People make the mistake of assuming a whole economy is like its pieces. But it isn’t. Consider for a moment the paradox of thrift. In a family, you can balance your budget by spending less. This does not work in the economy as a whole. This is because my spending is your income. If everyone decides they are going to spend 10% less than they have been, then everyone will find that they are making 10% less than they have been. A family or business is not like the economy as a whole.

The same is true of the government. But it is a bit more complicated. If the government lays off an employee, they will save that money. But they will gain extra costs like unemployment insurance and other welfare programs. Plus, the employee will no longer being paying taxes to the government. And most of all, that person will not have as much money and so there will be less money in the economy to be earned and spent. Of course, this isn’t the only or even the main reason that Walden’s analogy is nonsensical.

Jonathan Chait notes this morning that businesses come and go, but governments are supposed to last. A small business that goes bankrupt does little harm to the economy as a whole. A government that goes bankrupt (or simply defaults on its debts) does an immense amount of damage. Chait goes on to take Walden’s example at face value:

This all boils down to something very simple: silly for silly. Everyone knows that the trillion dollar coin is a silly idea based upon a loophole in the law. But it is being used to counter a silly abuse of the debt ceiling. Paul Krugman put it very well. Obama, he said, “will, after all, be faced with a choice between two alternatives: one that’s silly but benign, the other that’s equally silly but both vile and disastrous.”

Ezra Klein, last night on The Last Word, asked if doing this wouldn’t be admitting that we now live in a banana republic where we were incapable of governing intelligently. I don’t know that I would use the term “banana republic,” but as long as our elected officials believe that the federal budget should be treated the same as a household budget, we will indeed be incapable of governing intelligently.

Matt Yglesias ended his reporting from American Economics Association conference yesterday with a discussion of, Romer and Romer on Monetary Policy Complacency. It is really important work, but I think that Yglesias is being a little too cool for school. I guess he just figures that anyone who knows anything of what is going on should understand the subtext of his article. I will make it plain.

The paper looked primarily at the two cases where the Federal Reserve did a bad job of managing the economy: the Great Depression of the 1930s and the stagflation of the 1970s. In both these cases, the people at the Fed understood what was wrong with the economy. The problem is that they convinced themselves that nothing could be done. As David Romer put it, “Fear of impotence is bad for performance.”

The reason this is important is that this is a good description of the Federal Reserve these past four years. It has been particularly telling, because the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke spent most of the 1990s complaining about the lack of action by the Bank of Japan. He proposed a number of non-standard monetary policies that could have helped. But once he was in the position to do something about it in his own country, he did nothing—or as close to it as he could get without widespread criticism. Paul Krugman has long complained about this.

Some economists like Karl Smith believe that only using the Fed we could have gotten out of this recession. I don’t generally agree. I don’t think that Yglesias does either. But it is clear that the Fed could do a whole lot more to help the economy. David Romner’s comment seems particularly to apply to Bernanke: his fear of impotence (of his ideas over the years) is bad for his performance.

Yesterday, I saw the following graph that shows cumulative public and private job losses and additions. What it shows is that the there was a big loss in private sector jobs, but we’ve gained them all back. This doesn’t take into account the people who have been added to the workforce, but it does indicate that the private sector is on the mend.

Public sector jobs, however, have just seen a steady decline. That little spike was for the census, so don’t even consider that. This shows the lie of the Republican talking point that we have seen explosive government spending under Obama. Just to stay even, the government should have been steadily adding jobs because the country is growing.

You would never know this given the reporting on conservative media. You would never know it listening to conservative politicians. And this is one of the reasons our policy is so screwed up. We do not have an honest discussion because one side of the political spectrum doesn’t even concede the basics facts. Of course, if they did concede them they would say they it was a good thing, because they just know the government is too damned big!

Okay. This is interesting. Alex Jones started a petition to “deport Piers Morgan.” This is because Morgan has spoken about banning some guns. So Morgan invited Jones onto his show. The results are below:

So Alex Jones is insane and should certainly not be allowed ever to have a gun. But the bigger problem is that Alex Jones has a radio show. You can tell what his show is like. There is no thought. He just has a perpetual rage-on. And I have no doubt that the (mostly) men who listen get very worked up. It is very bad for society.

Here is the second part of the interview. Jones finally answers some questions. But not about guns. About his belief that 9/11 was an inside job. It is amazing stuff:

Afterword

For the record, I am all for deporting Piers Morgan. I just don’t think his stance on guns is cause. American Idol is, though.

Update (8 January 2013 9:01 am)

Alexandra Petri writes in the Washington Post:

I watched the short interview below with Isabelle Carre from the promotion of Romantics Anonymous, that I’ve already written about. I was really struck by something she said in the interview. She was talking about going to an actual RA meeting and how she didn’t want to go. Even though she is also shy, she felt that she was only going to the meeting as a kind of preparation for the role. She said,”I did not want to go because I was thinking that I did not want to use the fragility of the people at the meetings because they suffer. To use this felt wrong to me, or manipulative.”

This really struck me, because I remember hearing an interview with Sidney Lumet about Serpico. He talked about how Al Pacino had hung out with the real Frank Serpico. Apparently, Serpico had thought that he and Pacino had become friends, when it was just work for Pacino. Lumet told this story in a prideful way. Sort of: we in Hollywood really are American royalty. He told the story even while admitting that Frank Serpico was a really interesting, knowledgeable, and funny guy. I was horrified by both Al Pacino’s behavior and Sidney Lumet’s telling of the story.

I have a great love of art. (Of course, I’m not sure if what they do in Hollywood should be considered art.) But to place art above humanity strikes me as one of the vilest things imaginable. It was nice to hear one of the stars of one of the sweetest films I have ever seen confirm this. Carre goes on to explain that once she did go to the meeting, she found that she fit right in. These two facts may be related. Anyway, I’ve always thought that to become a Hollywood star, you kind of have to be a dick. If humanity is to survive, it is no surprise to find that it does so primarily outside the United States.

Here is the interview, which is just over 4 minutes long:

Yesterday, I came upon a filmed version of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. It was made way back in 1992, which surprised me. Marlowe’s works are rarely even performed on stages and almost never filmed. But it makes sense. Edward II has a clear five-act structure that lends itself well to screen. What’s more, all of the implicit homosexuality can now be laid bare.

In this adaptation, Derek Jarman lays it very bare. This is not only the case in explicit homoerotic scenes but in Edward’s repeated spurning of advances by the beautiful Tilda Swinton as Queen Isabella. In fact, the film, like the play is quite interested in all kinds of sex, as Isabella pairs up with one of the few straight men in her circle, Lord Mortimer.

The film looks really good. And it does it with the cheapest of sets. I think this comes from Jarman and his crew and their background in the theater. The film is almost a master class in how to take a couple of props and create an interesting set. But it’s more than that. The framing and lighting of shots adds an equal amount to the effect, thanks in no small part to the work of cinematographer Ian Wilson.

But lest you get the idea that Jarman and co-writer Ken Butler had removed all of Marlowe, there is still much of the play on screen. It is fascinating how Marlowe’s dialog compares to Shakespeare’s better known plays. There is no doubt that as time went on, iambic pentameter became less structured. Shakespeare’s verse sounds more like everyday speech than Marlowe’s, just as Beaumont & Fletcher’s sounds more normal than Shakespeare’s. Listening to the characters speak Marlowe’s dialog, I hear the poetry. That is rarely the case with Shakespeare. With his dialog, it just sounds odd. Really, I often have a hard time deconstructing Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter. Too much of it uses 11 syllables and the accents seem almost random. Thus I am left wondering why Shakespeare’s verse is held so highly: it is too structured to sound normal but not structured enough to sound poetic. In Edward II, I really enjoyed listening to the dialog in a way I rarely do with Shakespeare.

I highly recommend this film. I think Christopher Marlowe would have been delighted. It brings his play to life in a way that is rare for any writer other than Shakespeare. There is a filmed version of The Jew of Malta coming out in February. I hope it is anything close to as good.

Afterword

The story of Edward II is pretty much the same as in this skit from That Mitchell and Web Look, except, of course, that in Edward II, everyone ends up dead:

This came from Dylan Matthews at Wonk Blog in an article that says it all, The Saddest Graph You’ll See Today. The main thing to notice are the two little men in the lower left hand corner. Those represent the falsely accused men. Notice also that even in the very small number of cases that go to court do the defendants face jail.