Rick Hasen over at Election Law Blog asks, Will the Bauer-Ginsberg Election Reform Commission Improve Our Dismal Election System? He concludes that it is all very good in theory, but that the commission has such limited goals that in the end it will probably be of no practical value. You see, the commission is not looking toward any federal laws. The assumption is that the Republicans would never go for that because they know (as we all do) that the easier it is to vote, the worse they do. So the commission will instead come up with a list of “best practices” that Republicans in red states will ignore because, you know, scary black voter fraud.

My biggest problem is that the Republican half of the head of this commission is Ben Ginsberg. People keep describing Ginsberg as “Romney’s campaign lawyer.” Okay, he is that. But I know him from Recount. The movie paints a picture of him as a win by any means necessary conservative. You know: a Reasonable Republican. What I think is very telling is that there is an interview on the DVD with the real Ben Ginsberg and he is thrilled with his portrayal.

Hasen has what is probably a more objective view of Ginsberg, but it isn’t exactly positive:

That last sentence is critical and it is why I feel so cynical about the whole process. Republican policy is not popular. The more people who vote, the worse they do. In a country that required voting, the Republicans would have to moderate their ideology back several decades. So their only incentive is look like they care about democracy and perhaps make voting marginally more fair.

And I don’t blame them. If my policy ideas were unpopular, I would still try to get them enacted. I would rail against democracy. And I would do it because I would firmly believe that my ideas would be good for everyone, even those idiots who disagreed with me. (Of course, I think a lot of conservatives know very well that their policies are not good for everyone. They know that their policies are really only good for the elite. You can see this in their embrace of social Darwinism. See Corey Robin’s excellent The Reactionary Mind for more about conservative thinking.)

There is a catch-22 kind of thing going on here. By allowing the Republican Party to radicalize itself, it becomes very difficult to bring the country back from the edge of the abyss. This is very clear in our current attempt to keep America a democracy. When the most reasonable Republican we can choose for our election administration commission is a win-at-any-cost ideologue like Ben Ginsberg, we are in real trouble.

I’ve avoided writing about Marco Rubio. Mostly, it is just pena ajena—it embarrasses me to watch others’ public humiliation. But also: what is there to say? His State of the Union response was complete Republican boilerplate: pretend that the president is someone else and attack that guy.

Matt Yglesias has an interesting take on the speech. To him, it marked the return of Bushonomics. There is something to this, although I think he is giving the Republicans a bit too much credit. The theory goes something like this. The Republicans have been focused on the budget deficit for the last four years. If only we balance our budget (on the backs of the poor, of course) then it would be Morning in America! But now, Bobby Jindal and more explicitly Marco Rubio are signaling the return of the theory that we don’t need to worry about deficits because monster economic growth will save us.

In a separate article, Yglesias takes Ezra Klein to task for claiming that the Bush policies produced reasonable growth, Actually, Bush-Era Growth Was Pretty Lousy. He notes that Rubio is now promising 4% growth, just like Bush did. But just like Bush, Rubio’s policies are likely to result in something more like 1% growth:

I agree with all this, but I don’t agree that Rubio is signaling any change. The Republican claim is always that they are going to create incredible economic growth via tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts for the poor. But these policies are more consecutive rather than concurrent. When a Democrat is in the White House, they call for spending cuts that hurt the poor. When a Republican is in the White House, they call for tax cuts that help the rich.

Rucio’s speech was typical vague Republican policy. It all comes down to “make the rich richer and the poor poorer.” But they can’t come out and say that. So they talk about out of control spending and legislative uncertainty. In fact, I think that Yglesias has been a little fooled by the Republicans. He seems to think that Medicare Part D was about something other than giving pharmaceutical companies huge unjustified government checks. Yes, the Republicans are at least as wedded to big government as the Democrats. It’s just that they want to hand out checks to big corporations rather than poor people.

Bushonomics and Ryanonomics are the same thing. It is just that Bushonomics is for when Republicans are in power and Ryanonomics are for when Democrats are in power. The only thing Marco Rubio is signaling is that he plans to run for president in 2016.

I know that I’m in something of a rut, but I’ve watched another Tim Burton film: Corpse Bride. And what a wonderful film it is! It is so rare that I see a movie that is enjoyable from beginning to end. But it is, after all, my kind of film: lots of silliness and a very sweet, even sentimental story. Combining Corpse Bride with Frankenweenie and Nightmare Before Christmas makes for a great triple feature. They are all quite different, even as the form a cohesive visual whole.

But as much as I liked Corpse Bride, I thought a slightly more complex story would have worked even better. Actually, I think this is so obvious, that I suspect that the writers must have played with the idea. The back story is that the Emily (the corpse bride) was waiting to be married when she was murdered. It is revealed that Lord Barkis was both her fiance and her murderer. The plot follows on with Barkis getting his comeuppance and Emily being set free, transforming herself into dozens of butterflies. Okay, but I think we could do better for her.

It would provide a more fulfilling ending if Emily’s fiance was not Barkis. Her fiance could, through any number of plot devices, find himself at the final wedding. Barkis could kill him, thus allowing Emily to have a happy ending. Then the rest could be the same: Barkis triumphantly drinks the poison and then is attacked by the corpse mob.

The one thing that I wonder is what problem there is with this idea. Like I said: I’m sure they tried it. It must have been abandoned due to some problem that I’m not clear on. The one thing I can see is that there is already a little problem with Victoria accepting Victor after he has been pretty clearly unfaithful. (In his defense, he thought Victoria willingly married Lord Barkis.) It might have been too much complication to justify Emily’s unfaithfulness to her fiance. Plus, it would take some time to establish the fiance’s good reason for being late.

Still, I think these are solvable problems. Sometimes it is just a question of time. Once a production gets the go ahead, it has to move fast lest the money be pulled. Still, if you haven’t see Corpse Bride (or you just haven’t seen it recently) go and see it. It is wonderful.

On Monday, The Onion reported, Resigning Pope No Longer Has Strength To Lead Church Backward. The article says, “According to the 85-year-old pontiff, after considerable prayer and reflection on his physical stamina and mental acuity, he concluded that his declining faculties left him unable to helm the Church’s ambitious regressive agenda and guide the faith’s one billion global followers on their steady march away from modernity and cultural advancement.”

I know, I know: after posting Fuck the Mother Fucker, you think I have it out for the Catholic Church. But that isn’t it at all. I really like the Catholic Church. In a play I wrote, I even put a sex scene in the baptismal font. So you can forget all thought of that. I like the rituals and churches and robes and all that stuff.

But The Onion is onto an important theological issue. Should our theology be constrained by dogma? I don’t mean just in moral terms, but that is the biggest problem from a cultural standpoint; I mean in a theological sense. There really are theological innovations. For example, monotheism was an advancement over thinking there were endless gods controlling each part of the world as we found it. And today, we really should be past thinking that there is some God in the sky who really cares that we only stick penises in vaginas.

It is unfortunately the case that most religions are actively involved in keeping our spiritual thinking as primitive as it was hundreds or thousands of years ago when the religion was created. For all the ridiculousness of something like Scientology, at least it is a new idea. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same for most Christian offshoots. Mormonism, for example, just takes the Christian mythology and moves it horizontally.

My biggest question about most modern religions is how they can possibly answer people’s spiritual questions. Clearly, Jainism is malleable enough to allow one to really search. But Christianity? It just seems to be a system designed to stop people for thinking. I remember as a little kid being extremely frustrated that my church explained the existence of God as being “begotten not made.” For whom do such answers help in the least?

Note: I’m come to think of the universe as being begotten not made. But there is a big difference: my mind is wrapped around the absurdity of that statement. It is part of my deep appreciation for the unknowable nature of existence. I would never tell someone who was struggling with the concept that the universe was begotten not made. That kind of thing just stops thinking. And so do most religions.

I am, however, hopeful that the new pope will be at least a tiny bit more liberal than the last. Regardless, I know this: eventually the Catholic Church will accept homosexuality just as it now accepts shellfish eating. The twenty-first century awaits the arrival of all of the Abrahamic religions!

Minimum Wage in San Francisco: $10.55 per hour!

So much of conservative economic analysis comes down to, “I kind of paid attention to the lectures that term I got a C in Econ 101.” It is certainly true that you can understand a lot of what is going on in the economy by understanding some simple economic theory. But you can also go very wrong with this if your understanding is too limited. This is what we get from a lot of libertarian leaning people.

Let’s consider the minimum wage. A very simple understanding of it indicates that if you raise the minimum wage, it will result in fewer jobs as employers drop marginal employees. But it doesn’t work this simply. First, minimum wage employees do some of the most basic (and important) work at a company. Most companies could survive for a month or two without a CEO; they can’t survive without the janitorial staff.

Much more important is the issue of company profits. A common myth among conservatives is that if a company’s taxes are raised, the company will simply pass on the cost to the customer. Belief in this myth belies a shocking level of ignorance about not only how companies operate but also how markets themselves work. Undoubtedly, some increased costs will be passed on. But much of the increased costs will just have to be absorbed—profits will decrease and the company will be forced to become more efficient.

The same goes on with the minimum wage. The fact is that most companies paying minimum wage could afford to pay more. What’s more, if the minimum wage were less, most of them would pay that lesser amount. Now, is it true that raising the minimum wage never causes people to be laid off? Not at all. It is just that the increased pay also increases the demand in the economy more generally. Remember: the economy is nothing so much as one very big feedback loop and your spending is my income. Really, the economy is only slightly less complex than existence itself.

But as Travis Waldron reported last year, this isn’t just a theoretical calculation, Studies: Increasing The Minimum Wage During Times Of High Unemployment Doesn’t Hurt Job Growth. He discusses five papers that were summarized by researchers at the Center for American Progress that showed that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t slow job growth—even during periods of high unemployment. They write:

In other words: what I just said but with data. Interestingly, Freakonomics has reported on research in Indonesia that found that raising the minimum wage actually increased employment, primarily by moving workers from the black market to the legal (tax paying) market. They also note that this same thing would not likely happen in an advanced economy. Nonetheless, it shows that the economics are more complex than the simpleminded conservative refrain that paying people a living wage will destroy us all.

Last year, Democrats in the House wanted to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour. This would have put it at the level that it was in 1968 (adjusted for inflation). Obama called for $9 per hour in his State of the Union address. I can see why. The conservatives are flipping out even at that level. Of course, the conservatives would be flipping out if he had suggested raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $7.26. In fact, Paul Krugman reported back in 2009 that conservatives wanted to cut the minimum wage. This is, by the way, a really bad idea. (Of course it’s a bad idea; it’s a conservative idea!)

There aren’t many policy ideas that are not harmful and that do unquestioned good. Raising the minimum wage is one of these few policies. The business community will freak out, of course. But they will manage fine, just like they always do. And it might even increase inflation a little and that’s very good for business. Let’s raise the minimum wage now!

Afterword

Note that raising the minimum wage even up to $9 per hour is a 24% increase. This is not optimal. Think of your rent. You like it a lot better if your landlord raises the rent by 10% every year than 100% every ten years—even though it is much cheaper if he does the latter. This is because the rare but significant increase is a shock. The same goes for businesses. The problem is that conservatives drag their feet on the minimum wage and thus require big increases whenever Congress gets around to it.

What we should do is just raise the minimum wage every year by the rate of inflation. Business owners would like that a lot more, even though they would actually pay more. In addition, if Congress found that the minimum wage was getting too high, it would be an easy matter to cut it back.

After Afterword

This is via Greg Sargent. Here is video of Ted Kennedy giving his “When does the greed stop?” speech at a Senate the last time the minimum wage was raised. It is 7 minutes of wonderful:

Update (17 February 2013 7:54 pm)

From Mike Konczal interview of economist Arindrajit Dube:

Yesterday, Dean Baker wrote two important articles that obliquely addressed the conservative obsession with all the terrible things we are doing to our children’s future. You know the kind of thing: “We are mortgaging our children’s future!” Or: “Someday our children will have to pay these bills.” And perhaps most perniciously: “Our children will go bankrupt paying for the long and lavish retirements of their parents!” You know, class warfare is terrible, but inter-generational warfare is grrrrreat!

Baker writes, Millions of Children are Growing Up With Unemployed Parents Because of Fix the Debt and Other Deficit Hawks. After that headline, you hardly need to read the article. But let me break it down for you anyway. As anyone knows, debt is not that bad a thing as long as you have a good job that allows you to manage your financial obligations. For example, my biggest problem is not my debt; it is that right now there is much too little money coming in.

The deficit hawks effectively want to will to our kids no debt but also no opportunities. Children growing up in poverty today are having their futures limited. As has been well documented, if you want a college degree, it is better to be born rich than smart. Of course, being born poor also limits your chances of excelling even in grammar school. It is hard to focus on school when you are insecure about where you will live, much less if you will have enough to eat.

It isn’t that the deficit hawks don’t know this. We are really better off thinking of these people as royalists. Their concern about future debt is not that the middle class will be held down. It is that in the future everyone may see the necessity of taxing the rich at a reasonable level. The deficit hawks are the rich looking out for the interests of the rich. Even the millennial deficit hawks are what I accurately describe as Rich Kids for the Rich.

The main point of this is that if we really care about future generations we need to do something today about income inequality and unemployment. We can’t cede the “Save our kids!” ground to people who are really just pushing for “Save our rich kids!”

Bake also takes on world class fucktard and humility expert David Brooks. He writes, “David Brooks told us again today that he doesn’t like Social Security and Medicare. He does this frequently in his columns although usually while he ostensibly makes some other point.” You see, Brooks says that those dirty stinking retirees with their $1200 per month stipends and oh so convenient healthcare “needs” are destroying our future!

In two different ways!

First, they are taking money away from forward looking projects like building rockets to go to Mars so that we could terraform it and turn it into like Disney World, but more cool, because, hey, Mars! You know, like on Futurama where Mars is like New Las Vegas?! We could totally have that if it weren’t for those dirty stinking old people and their hip replacement surgeries which could cost anywhere from $10,000 to $120,000 if you can even get a quote. And hey, wouldn’t a moon colony be really cool?! (Note: David Brooks’ column is only slightly less fanciful with its discussion of past Americans who “gave their lives a slingshot shape.”)

Dean Baker notes that even if he got rid of Medicare, the tax revenues wouldn’t still be there. People accept a tax for Medicare because they like Medicare. If you take away the program, the people will want their money back. Also (and we talk about this a lot around here), the problem is not Medicare. The problem is that healthcare in the United States costs twice what it should.

Brooks goes on to show that he doesn’t understand the basics of finance. It’s a funny thing. Week after week, Dean Baker embarrasses David Brooks and yet, Brooks just chugs along. I really don’t understand it. It isn’t like I’m never wrong. I am stunningly wrong from time to time. But unlike Brooks, I look for opportunities to get my facts straight and correct earlier mistakes. But what is a deficit hawk like Brooks to do? He needs to protect the wealth of the future rich while maintaining that he is protecting the future more generally. When you are involved in such an endeavor, you either have to lie or be really stupid. I’m not sure exactly how Brooks partitions these attributes.

Regardless of all this, we really do need to worry about future generations. And that means fixing our politics and economy today. That means reducing the effect of money on politics. That means enfranchising more voters. That means addressing our accelerating income inequality. That means fixing our healthcare delivery system. It does not mean screwing old people in the name of inter-generational warfare.

Every morning I get up and anxiously think, “What am I going to write about on Frankly Curious?” And this morning was no different. There are a few things on my mind. I’d like to counter this reasonable sounding but wrong idea that raising the minimum wage will hurt job growth. And I’d like to discuss just how pathetic it is that the Republican great white hope is someone of such limited skills as Marco Rubio. And I’d even like to highlight how much it says about the Democratic Party that no one thinks it of particular note that Obama gave a great State of the Union address. But something else is on my mind right now.

Each morning, I start my day with a nice cup of tea. I got into this in graduate school when I lived with the Wild siblings, a couple from England who taught me how to drink far too much alcohol and just the right amount of tea. In particular, I remember Straford explain to me that the reason there were so many more Irish pubs than English pubs in America is because most of the English in America came here because they wanted to leave England. There is at least something to that. A lot of Irish people I know have fairly sketchy backgrounds.

There is something very relaxing about sitting in the cold morning drinking a nice cup of tea. No one is talking to me. There are no demands on me. I can sip my tea while I read Greg Sargent or Jonathan Chait. And that means, by the end of the cup, I’m ready to start ranting about important matters of state.

Speaking of which: my tea is almost done. Gotta go!

I have had a very bad cough for almost three months now. I went to doctor and she told me if it didn’t go away in another month, I should come back. I figure I have tuberculosis and there is just a conspiracy of silence because everyone thinks that I don’t want to die. The fools! I laugh death. I guffaw at the grave. I snicker at slaughter. I chuckle at ceasing. I would do a good deal more if there were more matching synonyms for death and laugh![1]

But today I broke down and went to the store to get some generic Robitussin, which in this case turned out to be TopCare Tussin DM. And I was immediately annoyed. I get the damned thing home and I take it out of the box. The sealed box! And of course the bottle inside has its cap sealed in place. After all, some maniac could have taken the bottle out of the box, put poison in it and then glued the box back. I would have never known! I might have died peacefully in my sleep having never had to live blog the State of the Union address over at The Reaction (which was my idea, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying).

After clawing at the plastic on the bottle for five minutes like I’m a brain damaged kitten, I finally get to the cap. Then, after another five minutes, I manage to get the cap off, which was just one of those push down and turn numbers, but for whatever reason it was really hard to do. I assume they make it this way so that potential poisoners will be dissuaded. So finally, I have the top off and…

There is another safety cap on the bottle top!

This, of course, is to protect against the case when the poisoner gets the bottle out of box. Then he gets the plastic doohickey off the cap. Then he gets past the poisoner protection cap. But he finds that last bit of cardboard and screams, “Foiled again!”

I feel so god damned protected, I could scream from joy! (Well, I could scream anyway.)

[1] Or you might say that death is my bread and danger my butter:

Cenk Uygur said something on The Young Turk about America that is a common sentiment, especially liberals: people all over the world love our culture and if only we just lived up to our ideals, everyone would love America. I used to believe this. But it is total bullshit. On the show, this is demonstrated by Syrian soldiers dancing to an Usher song.

The problem is that Syrian soldiers dancing to an Usher song and Afghanistani peasants being bombed by US drones is all part of American imperialism. In general, we don’t occupy countries like the British Empire. Instead, we install or otherwise empower foreign governments that allow American imports. (Think: Opium Wars.)

In general, people like the art that they are familiar with. Under normal circumstances, Syrians would like Syrian artists. America is very good at creating least common denominator art. But they are far better at marketing that art. And in a very real way, that marketing comes from the barrel of a gun.

So it is not a matter of other cultures really wanting to love America if it weren’t for our aggressive and immoral foreign policy. These cultures love and hate us for exactly the same reasons. If we stopped bombing them (which we should do) they would mostly go back to being indifferent towards us. And that is how it ought to be.

Afterword

Here is the clip from the show:

Nate Silver wrote a very interesting article that goes right along with something I’ve been thinking, New Rove Group Could Backfire on G.O.P. He goes into a lot of detail, but basically his argument is that lack of money is not the reason that establishment candidates lost primaries. This ought to go without saying; by definition the establishment candidates are going to have more money. Still, it is surprising just how big the difference is. Of the 23 races he looked at, the median establishment candidate funding was $3 million compared to the median “outsider” candidate funding of a bit less than $400,000—a 7.5 fold advantage for the establishment candidates.

There is one overwhelming reason that this funding is a bad idea: the optics. The sad truth of the Tea Party people is that they think of themselves as anti-establishment even while all of their policy preferences are elitist. “We’ve got to stop those establishment politicians from being so mean to those billionaires!” So as a result, the more an “establishment” candidate is pushed via the media, the more the base will rebel.

He notes that there is a weak correlation between campaign contributions and winning. But as Ezra Klein has written a lot about (So much so that I can’t find a link!) the causation is probably reversed. When people see that a candidate is likely to win, they contribute more. So that isn’t probably that big a deal, if it is an issue at all. What’s more important is that marginal cash expenditures are less and less valuable. Thus: the first $100,000 a candidate spends is far more valuable than the fortieth.

What this all means is that the Republicans are likely to go on nominating poor candidates. This will happen as long as the Republican base is kept radicalized by Fox News and hate radio. And truly, I don’t see how this will change any time soon. Liberals are open to change by definition. What’s more, liberals are open to facts. Conservatives? I think it is hopeless as long as the Republican Party continues to not be routed.

I was raised Catholic, so I have a certain fondness for the church. But it more than this. The truth is that I like the idea of religions being old. So the Catholic and Orthodox churches strike me as more valid. The idea that one would reform these churches but only do it around the edges as happened with Protestantism, strikes me as kind of pathetic. And let’s face it, the Catholic Church is wonderfully, hilariously ridiculous. The whole thing with the censer during mass? That’s some seriously medieval stage craft there!

This all comes to mind since Cardinal Ratzinger has announced he is stepping down from the Pope gig. I think this is great. We need special occasions and the choosing of another Pope is a great opportunity. I also like that it highlights some of the nuttier aspects of the Pope gig. Think about it: how can he step down when he is infallible? Now we’re supposed to believe that he will be infallible just up through the end of the month? And clearly, his body is fallible, because that’s his reason for stepping down. (If he dies before the end of the month, I will rethink God’s existence, because that would be just like Him.)

All of this is not to take away from the many church controversies. My biggest problem is the church’s stand on condoms. How many millions of people have died as a direct result of this? It is unconscionable, and really deprives the church of any moral authority in my mind.

But much more talked about, if on a smaller scale in terms of number of victims, are the child rape cases and the church’s culpability in them. (In its defense, this seems to be a problem with all churches and similar institutions to one degree or another.) But occasional contributor Mike Blottin directed me to Tim Minchin who puts this subject into perspective in a musical form.

Note that this applies much more to the “nice” Pope John Paul II than to the “angry” Pope Benedict XVI. But in terms of taking these guys seriously at this point, Minchin is totally correct: fuck the motherfuckers!

Do you know who is a real Reasonable Republican? Joe Scarborough. And that pretty much explains why the search for the lauded Reasonable Republican is such a foolish errand. When you find them, they simply have all the stupid policy prescriptions of other Republicans but they don’t think that rape victims ought to have to carry their pregnancies to term.

Of course, in Scarborough’s case, since he isn’t in office, his thinking has been heavily influenced by the Very Serious People in Washington. This was fully on display a couple of weeks ago when Paul Krugman came on Morning Joe to discuss the economy. Scarborough just could not understand what Krugman was talking about. How could the budget deficit not be the most important issue facing the nation when everyone Joe knows thinks it is?!

You think I’m kidding? After the show, Scarborough took to Politico to write a column, Paul Krugman Vs. the World. In it, he wrote:

In other words: “I’ve talked to other people who know nothing about economics and they agree with me!”

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait took Scarborough to task for his most recent rant, Wow, Joe Scarborough Doesn’t Understand Economics at All. In this case, Scarborough is attacking Nancy Pelosi for saying two things that are, you know, facts. The first thing is that going forward, we don’t have a Medicare problem, we have a healthcare problem. Unless we get healthcare costs under control, in a few decades, Medicare will be the least of our problems.

But the biggest thing that Scarborough did was good old fashioned Republican deception. He argued that Pelosi was saying that there is no spending problem. And that Eric Cantor is the reasonable one. The truth is exactly the opposite. Pelosi is claiming that we have to deal with our deficit problem through spending cuts and revenue increases. (I disagree with this conclusion, but that’s her claim.) Eric Cantor is claiming that we only have a spending problem and that we must cut the deficit through spending cuts alone.

That’s a Reasonable Republican for you! If a Democrat claims 0 and a Republican claims 10, split it right down the middle: 10. What’s most telling about all of this Joe Scarborough nonsense over the last couple of weeks, is that no facts seem to be able to make it past his protective barrier. Now if only women had that same defense against rapists’ sperm, the Republicans might have something.

Update (13 February 2013 4:41 pm)

Here it is, thanks for commenter LiberalANDProud below, the best smack down of Joe Scarborough ever. You can skip to about 6:45.