I am fond of quoting the opening of A Tale of Two Cities to note that it is always the best and worst of times. But there is one way that I am particularly focused on that modern America is the worst of times. That is the overwhelming influence of the power elite on economic policy. Right now, there is a huge push to tighten the money supply. The net result of this will be to stop even the modest economic recovery we have going. And why do we supposedly need to do this? Because the inflation rate might—Might!—tick up a bit past two percent.

Consider Evan Soltas. In Bloomberg View a couple of days ago, he argued that the economy is nearly at full employment. “The strongest piece of evidence is that far too many people are choosing to leave their jobs in search of better ones—what economists dryly call ‘quits’—for there to be much slack left in the economy and, in particular, in the labor market.” But Dean Baker countered this last night, Getting to Full Employment By Lowering the Goalpost. He noted that although the “quit rate” is up a bit, it is still well below the rate at the bottom of the last recession.

The point here is that the power elites are running around looking for any reason at all to raise interest rates. They’ve never cared about high levels of unemployment. But as long as inflation was running at under two percent, they couldn’t really get away with calling for higher interest rates. Not that many didn’t do just that, but it wasn’t mainstream. Now we have a situation where people are looking at the “quit rate” and screaming inflation, despite the fact that the employment situation looks like this:

This morning, Paul Krugman countered a different attack, Wages of Fear. In this case, the folks who are worried about inflation rising to a reasonable level are arguing that wages are rising and that spells disaster. But as Krugman notes: we are barely seeing any rise in wages and what we are seeing is only quite recent. But more to the point:

Sadly, I have an answer for Krugman. For the people trying to sell the “overheating economy” line, nothing is wrong with rising wages. It is just another plausible sounding argument to justify doing what they want: keeping inflation low. Remember, this is the rentier class. Inflation can’t get too low. The lower the inflation rate, the more their current rents are worth. These people aren’t concerned about the economy generally—only how it affects their particular form of wealth.

Notice that these people can go around and lobby for bad economic policy and no one raises an eyebrow. But the moment the working classes complain about a lack of jobs and income inequality, well, that’s class warfare. It’s maddening. A good economy helps everyone. A bad economy only helps the already rich. This really shouldn’t be a difficult choice. But the fact that even council members of small towns are dependent upon rich benefactors means that their interests take precedence over everything else. And that is class warfare. They’re killing the rest of us.

The Young Turks has introduced a new segment in their show, “Is It Racist?” And I think their premiere segment is great because it brings up a really important issue. Minnesota State Representative Pat Garofalo tweeted out the following:

And the question is, of course, “Is it racist?” This one isn’t even close: it’s racist. As Cenk says in the following video, “It’s a dog whistle I can hear.” Indeed it is!

Garofalo has defended his tweet by saying that he was not talking about blacks (that make three-quarters of the NBA), but rather the athletes who feel they are above the law, blah, blah, blah. That’s to be expected. That’s the point of a dog whistle: you can always say, “I didn’t mean that! You are the racist for thinking I did!” It’s just perfect for the hateful. It’s what allows Ann Coulter to say things designed to offend and then pretend to be offended when others don’t find her humorous.

What really bothered me was what Democratic Representative Dan Schoen said, “It was the wrong thing to tweet. Do I think Pat is a racist? No I don’t think that.” This is one of the problems with our modern thinking on racism. Schoen thinks that Garofalo isn’t a racist because he’s well spoken, wears a suit, and doesn’t use the N-word. But Garofalo not only is a racist—he’s the face of modern racism. His tweet is how its done by sophisticated racists.

See what the Turks have to say about it. It’s good and I look forward to more segments.

Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) wrote a great article, The Good Kind of Protesters—and the Bad Kind. It looked at the coverage of protest movements in Ukraine and Venezuela. And then compared it to coverage of Palestinian protest movements. Now you know that I am sympathetic to the current Venezuelan government. While they certainly could have done a better job, they’ve been infinitely better than the pro-corporate right wing movement that the United States government prefers.

But the point isn’t who is right or who is wrong. It is that the United States media might as well be controlled by the government. If the government is an ally of a country, then any protest movement against it is painted by our media as invalid. On the other hand, if our government considers a country an enemy, then any protest movement against it is portrayed as great, regardless of it nature. So in Palestine, peaceful protesters who get killed by Israeli forces just don’t matter. But in Venezuela, violent protesters are portrayed as though they were Thomas Paine himself.

Consider Leopoldo Lopez, the man who now seems to be the leader of the violent opposition. Based on his name being mentioned 77 times in diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, he seems like a despot in waiting. What’s more, these recent protests seem more like an internal struggle in the opposition than they do anything that has to do with the current government. This seems to have been Lopez’s way to leap to the top of the movement. Yet look at how Karla Zabludovsky of Newsweek portrayed him in the article, Leopoldo Lopez Gives Venezuela the Image of a Revolutionary Who Has It All:

Personally, I think that if Ms Zabludovsky has a crush on Lopez, she should keep it to herself. But the truth is that this kind of reporting is standard. The US government is against the current democratically elected government in Venezuela, so all the good “independent” journalists in the United States are hot on the trail for any story that will push that narrative.

As for the reporting in Palestine, that’s more an issue of just not caring. There are important nonviolent protest movements going on in the occupied territory. But the only time they get any coverage in the mainstream press is when some clueless reporter hears of one and writes what has become a genre article, “Why don’t we see this more of this?” As Patrick O’Connor notes in the Electronic Intifada article, The invisibility of Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance in The New York Times:

This is much bigger than these countries. Our media constantly push the narrative of the power elite. It has allowed our entire political system to move far to the right even while the people, if anything, have moved left. A critical media never would have allowed that. But since they’ve behaved as though everything is just fine—that whatever the millionaires and billionaires say speaks for the rest of us—the people do not realize just how out of kilter our government has become.

On this day, there are so many people I could have chosen to write about. There is the least interesting of the Three Stooges. There are two men who have been highly effective at making the United States a far worse country. And there are lots of good film directors, writers, and composers. But in the end, the choice was easy.

On this day in 1811, the great mathematician Urbain Le Verrier was born. He’s my kind of guy because he made great discoveries in astronomy without ever having to leave him room. What’s more, unlike other great mathematicians, I completely understand his work because it is mostly just celestial mechanics. He is best known for having predicted that the planet Neptune existed based upon discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus. (Note: another great mathematician, John Couch Adams, did the same work at roughly the same time.)

Le Verrier was also the first person to note problems with the Newtonian calculation of the orbit of Mercury. It was thought that this might be due to another planet as was the case with Uranus. But the real reason for the discrepancies had to wait almost 50 years after Le Verrier’s death when Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. But Le Verrier’s calculations were the basis of one of the first tests of the theory.

Here is Richard Feynman talking about both of Le Verrier’s discoveries:

Happy birthday Urbain Le Verrier!

This morning, Andrea told me that she started to watch a movie but only made it three minutes before she turned it off—it was so bad. That peaked my interest. Andrea has reasonably good taste in films, but she’s also quick to judge and often bases her dislike on minor things. A single aspect of a film can ruin it for her. So I asked what the film was. It was Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. I told her that it sounded fantastic to me and she replied, “I know! That’s why I put it on!” Then she gave me a summary of the start of the film: young couple having sex in a graveyard; zombie hands coming out of the ground; one hand sticks a finger in the man’s anus; it is broken off. That was about all Andrea could take.

On Netflix, the film has a rating of 2.9 stars with a “best guess” of 2.9 stars for me. For Andrea, it gave the film a “best guess” of 1.0 stars. So Andrea’s rating made sense. But what are we to make of my rating being exactly the same as the average? In general, I figure I will like a film if the “best guess” for me is higher than the base, regardless of the rating. After watching the film, I can see why the rating was the same. I suspect that other film viewers who are like me are split on the film: some hated it and some loved it. Because I loved Poultrygeist and I also hated it. But that’s to be expected. It is from Troma Entertainment, the company that brought us such similarly great and repellent titles as The Toxic Avenger and Blood Junkie.

On the bad side, the film is disgusting. There is a whole lot of John Waters in this movie. A perfect example of this is where the morbidly obese Jared has gastrointestinal problems and so we see close-ups of his defecation numerous times. By the end of the scene, the entire bathroom is covered with feces. The film is filled with similar scenes although every other time it is vomit or, much more commonly, blood. It is also filled with a 13-year-old boy’s idea of what sex is all about and a similar idea of what is sexually funny like one character who has a mop handle shoved up his anus (I guess) and out the front of his body so he walks around for most of the film with a five foot long phallus in front of him.

Now that list isn’t that long, but it makes up 70% of the movie. Most of the second half of the film consists of showing various ways that blood and gore can be distributed on a film set. I’m not a big fan of this kind of art, but I was impressed with the creativity of the efforts. Think of all the ways that one could die gruesomely in a fast food restaurant and there is a good chance it is in this movie. And the special effects were quite impressive—undoubtedly taking up most of the $450,000 budget.

On the good side, the film is a blistering social satire. Let me lay out the basic plot: a fast food restaurant (American Chicken Bunker) has been built on a sacred Indian burial ground. The restaurant is owned by General Lee Roy. Get it? The “bunker” owned by the general?! It’s delicious. At one point, the General is forced to eat his own chicken which has been infected with the Indian chicken green bubbling sludge (or whatever). Afterwards, he says, “It’s fine! In fact, it’s delicious! I’m lovin’ it!” The last line, of course, is the McDonald’s slogan. The film is filled with such moments. Of course, after this scene, like pretty much every scene, the General ends up defecating an egg that turns into a chicken and… Actually, I forget what exactly happened to the General except that he died bloody.

The “bunker” was managed by Denny, sort of a black nationalist parody, but without any of the politics. His big scene is a parody of the Indianapolis speech from Jaws:

And then a chicken bites Denny’s head off. The film’s like that: it has brilliant bits throughout it. And then there is a gore fest, because ultimately that’s what the film is all about. And actually, the gory scenes are the funniest things in the film. They go so far past the point of any real idea of gore to pure silliness, although I will admit, most people would not find this aspect of the film funny.

Oh! Did I mention it is a musical? Or at least the first half of the film is a musical. The second half of the film pretty much isn’t. At the very end, they throw in a song. But apparently, they didn’t want to interrupt the gorefest for a song. And that was probably a good call. The songs are actually rather sweet, if puerile in content like the rest of the film.

I always want to judge films on their own terms. And I don’t see how this film could be any better for what the filmmakers were trying to do. For me personally: I would rather watch something else. But the good in it made wading through the rest worth it. The filmmakers add a great deal of creativity and wit to a tired genre.

Many years ago, I read about the events that led up to a terrible airline crash. The pilots had set their plane on automatic pilot so that they could work on a problem they were having with their landing lights—an important but non-critical issue. But something had gone wrong with the automatic pilot system and the plane slowly descended. When the plane was about 100 feet off the ground, the pilots noticed the problem. But they were stunned. They just couldn’t believe that they were actually so low to the ground. And so they did nothing for several seconds and the plane crashed killing hundreds.

I had that same feeling this morning reading about Julie Boonstra in The Detroit News, Dexter Cancer Patient Who Called Health Care “Unaffordable” Will Save More Than $1K. It is about a Michigan “information” ad from Americans for Prosperity that features Ms Boonstra complaining that Obamacare canceled her old policy and now she can’t afford health insurance. Following my rules in Obamacare Helps the Poor and Sick, you should already know that this story is nonsense. There will be losers in Obamacare, but they won’t be middle-aged cancer patients.

And sure enough, The Detroit News finds that the combined total of her new policy and the maximum amount of out-of-pocket expenses will be $1,248 less than just the premiums on here old policy. So she’s likely to save way more than the one thousand mentioned in the headline; that amount is a bare minimum. When the ad came out, most observers were skeptical and now we know for sure. Case closed.

But that’s not the interesting thing about this story. After Boonstra was told what the truth was, she said that it couldn’t be true, “I personally do not believe that.” And I’m sure that’s true: she really doesn’t believe it. After all, she’s doubtless been told over and over by Fox News and hate radio (Who else would get involved with Americans for Prosperity?) that Obamacare is terrible. Remember: all the Obamacare scare stories that got debunked were never debunked in conservative media. They were reported, and when they didn’t pan out, the stories were just dropped.

So Boonstra is just like those pilots: she is so committed to a particular belief that she can’t see reality. Of course, the pilots were in that state for a couple of seconds. Boonstra and the folks at Americans for Prosperity are now trying to massage the story. Now it isn’t that the new plan is unaffordable. It is that the out of pocket expenses may come all at once. A spokesman for the group said, “Before her plan was canceled by Obamacare, Julie knew what her monthly costs would be. Now those costs are unpredictable and the potential for spikes in any given month make them unaffordable…”

But that’s not the case at all! Boonstra’s premiums were constant—and twice what she used to pay. She still had out-of-pocket expenses that she admits to in the article. Based upon what her new insurer says, those drugs are included in her new plan. In fact, the new insurer seems to be working really hard to calm the situation down. I’m sure they get a lot of Julie Boonstras: people who are determined to be upset about their new plans regardless of the facts.

There is another correlation between Boonstra and those pilots. Their mistaken certainties aren’t just hurting themselves. An airplane full of people died because of the pilots’ mistake. And a whole country is getting a worse political system because Boonstra and so many more like her are determined to see Obamacare as a terrible thing—even as it is actually making their lives better.

H/T: Jonathan Chait

Last year on this day, I talked about Osama bin Laden. And I recommend that you click over, because I think I was rather insightful. The article was called, Entitled Rich Boy. But I don’t have any more insights into the man. Rich people are simple to understand. They can afford to be. So as a result, I am doing Edie Brickell who is 48 today. (I was off by one year last year year.)

I don’t know much about her other than the fact that she’s married to Paul Simon. Although that relationship passes the “half plus seven” test, I still think it’s creepy. Also, she’s recently been playing with Steve Martin. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring you any of that because I find Martin annoying as a singer, even when he is backed up by Steep Canyon Rangers who are totally kick ass. In fact, screw it. Let’s listen to some Steep Canyon Rangers:

But it is Edie Brickell’s birthday, so here’s her song “Once In A Blue Moon,” which is lovely:

Happy birthday Edie Brickell!

Jonathan Turley is a great man and I very much admire him. He is an idealist in a world gone mad with cynicism. Even when I disagree with him, I see his point. And mostly, I do agree with him. And that brings us to his op-ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, The President’s Power Grab.

Turley’s position is that we are at a tipping point with regard to what he calls the uber presidency. Far beyond the unitary executive, the idea of the uber presidency is that the executive branch is taking over powers that are rightly the purview of the legislative branch. In general terms, I’m right with him: the president is far more powerful than is envisioned by the Constitution. But “tipping point”? I don’t think so.

We have gotten to this point quite gradually over the last 225 years come this 30 April when George Washington became the first President of the United States of America. I was particularly aware of this happening during the presidency of George Bush the Younger. (Not because he was the first, but just because I hadn’t been paying attention before that.) And I would say to myself, “Hopefully, a Democrat will become president and reverse all of this!” And then I would laugh and laugh at my little joke. I’m far too cynical to think that this kind of stuff ever reverses itself. I know of no president who ever willingly gave up power.

It is hard to say exactly where Turley is coming from in all of this. He lists seven examples of President Obama’s executive over-reach, each one of which is entirely underwhelming. One of them is: “The administration ordered all US attorneys to stop prosecuting nonviolent drug crime defendants who would be subject to what Atty Gen Eric H Holder Jr called draconian mandatory minimum sentences.” That seems to fall completely under the authority of the executive branch, which gets to decide how it wants to utilize its prosecutorial resources. And Turley must know this because after his list, he writes, “Some of these changes are admittedly close questions, and federal agencies are given considerable discretion in crafting regulations.” Right! So what’s the problem?

In the end, Turley’s problem isn’t with Obama or Bush or any president. It is given that these men are going to abuse their powers. The problem is with Congress, who he thinks should be fighting a turf war. But there are problems. First is that these are not such great examples of executive over-reach. I’m much more concerned with the practice of slicing and dicing legislation with executive signing statements—a practice that while nothing as extreme as under Bush the Younger, is still going on. The second, and more important issue is that Republicans are a bunch of authoritarians who want some kind of dictator. So they are never going to be against the uber presidency. And as long a Democrat is in the White House, the Congressional Democrats aren’t going to fuss. The one thing that unites Democrats is their fear that a Republican will get in the White House.

Regardless of all this, the truth is that we are at no tipping point. The situation simply gets worse and worse every year. And it will continue on that way until the entire American Empire collapses under its own weight. In the end, there are far bigger things to worry about than the fact that Obama is circumventing the No Child Left Behind Act with waivers. Jonathan Turley is coming off like a pedantic schoolboy.

If a public official is acting really badly, you can depend upon the fact that he is doing it, “For the kids!” It’s gotten to the point where much of the country is determined to destroy itself in the name of keeping the development of children arrested. It boggles my mind. Children are much less naive than most people think. Before puberty, no amount of access to naked people will make them interested in sex. And after puberty, no amount of naked picture depredation will keep them uninterested.

But that doesn’t stop many and sundry fools from trying. A new crop of neanderthals has decided to get upset about a state-approved sex education diagram being seen in a middle school, Kansas Senate Weighs Bill to Ease Prosecution of Teachers Over Offensive Materials. The State Senate is currently working on Senate Bill 401, which would pretty much make illegal anything that any of the fellow neanderthals are against.

The bill specifically targets “teachers, librarians or school principals.” Because the only way to stop an intellectual with “bad” facts is a conservative neanderthal with an unconstitutional law. The crux of this law is that “community standards” should rule. And so if a teacher talks about something that offends the local purveyors of intolerance: off to jail with them! Right now, it is all about sex. The “offensive” poster that caused all the ruckus was called “How Do People Express Their Sexual Feelings?” It listed things ranging from “cuddling” to “anal sex.” Personally, I think the girls need to learn about anal sex, given how many of them will be practicing it after their virginity pledges.

Regardless, after a parent complained about the poster, it was removed. What’s more, the state decided to reconsider its prior approval of the poster. That’s where it all should have ended. But instead, the conservative ideologues jumped on it and used it as an excuse to effectively criminalize the teaching of anything that they don’t like. Of course, it isn’t the actual penalties that matter, but the effect it will have on teachers. The Kansas—National Education Association wrote that, “The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that will purge literature from our schools, censor art classes, and stop field trips.” They noted, “The lead proponent of this legislation is the American Family Association in Kansas which has been leading an effort to force the removal of a sculpture of a bare-breasted woman from a public arboretum in Johnson County, going so far as to successfully petition to impanel a grand jury on the issue.”

Proponents of the bill claim it is necessary. For example, Mary Pilcher-Cook, one of the bill’s sponsors, claimed, “Right now if a teacher were to give pornography (to a student)… it is not likely at all that a prosecutor would take the case because there is such a high hurdle protecting our schools.” This is not true, of course. According to the president of United Teachers of Wichita, Randy Mousley, the law is a solution in search of a problem. “It’s just an overreach where some particular group is trying to impose their values on everybody else in society.”

What I think is very interesting is that the bill is so broad that it could include anything. And here I’m not thinking about art, but basic science. The same people who don’t want anyone’s children to know about different sex acts also don’t want them to know about evolution and that the earth is more than six thousand years old. I’ve been hearing for years that such supposedly anti-religious teaching are harmful to children. In fact, a 2003 study by the National Center for Educational Statistics found that 30% of parents home schooled for explicitly religious reasons. And another 31% did so because they did not like the school environment, which I figure is mostly religious too. A lot of those religious concerns are nothing more than fear of the teaching of natural selection.

None of this too much matters. The ACLU seems to think it is clearly unconstitutional. (Of course you never know.) But I’m more interested in it just in terms of what it says about our culture. We are extremely intolerant and closed-minded. The American Family Association is not concerned with keeping their children from seeing the breasts on the Venus de Milo. They want to stop everyone’s children, and by extension, everyone. It’s sad, but even worse, it’s dangerous.

I spent much of yesterday over at the Jack London State Historic Park. Not being much of a fan of his writing, I wasn’t that keen on it. But it turned out to be fairly interesting. It was also a good excuse to walk ten miles through the woods.

A lot is made of how the Londons (Jack and Charmian) encouraged their friends to visit them. Indeed, the whole complex seems to be set up for entertaining. But I think that the Londons had much the same experience that other rich people have when they build their dream homes in the middle of nowhere. Basically: it’s boring. So unless people are visiting there isn’t much to do. But given that they did have interesting artist friends, it sounds like it was a fairly fun place.

Of particular note is the Wolf House. This four story mansion (it might be more accurate to call it a castle) was clearly designed for entertaining. It must have been magnificent when it was completed. But it burned down before the Londons were even able to move in. But the ruins are still there, with the four story high fireplaces buttressed by steel supports.

What I find most interesting about London is how strong a supporter of socialism he was publicly. But you would hardly know this touring the site. In the House of Happy Walls Museum, there is one small display about London’s socialism. And most of it talks about how his socialism was somewhat theoretical, in his person he was a rugged individualist. We can’t cause the American visitors any consternation about the one true path of dog-eat-dog capitalism to the promised land of neo-feudalism!

Of course, London wasn’t what one could call an intellectual socialist. He believed in labor unions and seemed to have a practical bent in the philosophy, as he did in most things. George Orwell thought that London was more of a fascist based on his writing. In My Country Right or Left 1940-1943, he wrote, “With his love of violence and physical strength, his belief in ‘natural aristocracy,’ his animal-worship and exaltation of the primitive, he had in him what one might fairly call a Fascist strain.” I think there is a lot to be said for that view. In terms of his fiction, I see much Ayn Rand in Jack London with the romantic characters and the rugged individual against the world.

Regardless of all that, once London settled down in Glen Ellen, he lost interest in the worker struggle. It is hard not to conclude that his main interest in socialism was his desire for a bloody good fight. I’ve known a lot of young radicals who weren’t interested in social change so much as shouting and throwing rocks. London was in his late thirties when he was settled on his ranch. It isn’t that he repudiated his former beliefs so much as that he was simply bored with them.

By far the most interesting item in the whole collection was a letter from Jack London to the workers on his ranch. It is a list of rules. And some of it is kind of nice like his mention that he doesn’t care about the morality of the workers. What they do on their own time is their business. But the overall tone of the letter is that these working class stiffs were determined to do as little as possible and steal from him. In fact, the very first rule involves how “lost” tools will be charged to the employee. Hero of the working man!

Another thing that is very clear is that towards the end of his life, he’s just pumping out crap for money. He even says so—repeatedly. He’s just writing to build his ranch. In Americans and the California Dream, Kevin Starr said that there was always “a good deal of pose” to London’s socialism. And he quotes Mark Twain as saying, “It would serve this man London right to have the working class get control of things. He would have to call out the militia to collect his royalties.”

What I came away with from my visit is that London was an upper class bohemian with attitudes that were entirely typical of his class and time. It’s probably best to think of him like John Lennon who also died at the age of 40. That isn’t to say that either man was bad. I’m sure if I ever had anything even close to their success, I would be a far worse person. But great social reformers and thinkers they were not. Overall, they were on the right side of history. And they both left some art that rightly lives on. That’s not bad.

On this day in 1940, the actor Raul Julia was born. I hesitate to call him “great” even though he was a very fine actor. The problem is that he was in so much crap, it is amazing. Take, for example, Frankenstein Unbound. It isn’t that it is a bad film, it’s just so odd and silly. Yet up their on the screen are John Hurt and Julia acting their asses off. They are both so much better than the movie. And that was generally true of Julia’s career.

One movie that especially stands out to me, however, is Kiss of the Spider Woman. Raul Julia and William Hurt are great in that and they are about all their is in the film. Unfortunately, I can’t find much of the film online. The film is typical of another aspect of his career: he rarely played the lead role. Another great, but small, role: Sandy Stern in Presumed Innocent. That’s fine; he’s a great ensemble actor, which is the best kind of actor to be.

Some of his star roles are definitely worth checking out, even if they will require more effort than a Google search. One is as the title character in Mack the Knife, a twisted version of the Brecht play. And another title role in Romero, a low budget film made by Paulist Fathers, a group of Catholic priests. It was about Bishop Oscar Romero who was an outspoken advocate for the people, who was assassinated for his troubles. And, of course, Julia was the unquestioned star of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. It was not his fault! (You can watch the MST3K treatment of the film on Youtube.)

But Julia is probably best known for the ensemble comedies The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. And since I can actually find decent clips for them, here is a wonderfully twisted romantic scene with the similarly wonderful Anjelica Huston:

Happy birthday Raul Julia!