On this day in 1902, the great poet Stevie Smith was born. She was also a novelist, but I haven’t read anything but her poetry. In fact, I most know of her from a really great film Stevie—which you should watch if you get the opportunity (it isn’t available on DVD). Her work is simultaneously playful and dark. Take, for example:

The great television producer Jay Ward was born in 1920. He created shows such as Crusader Rabbit, Hoppity Hooper, and George of the Jungle. But I love him most for Rocky & Bullwinkle. I discussed the show only last month (it includes a documentary about the show). But rather than embed yet another clip of that show, here is Super Chicken:

Other birthdays: songwriter (co-writer of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”) Roy Turk; actor Anne Meara (84); actor Sophia Loren (79); and activist Van Jones (45).

The day, however (and easily), belongs to the great writer Upton Sinclair who was born on this day in 1878. He is best known for the novel The Jungle. It is an amazing book. It is dystopian yet true. With 1984, there is always the sense that no government could be that perfectly authoritarian. But in the case of The Jungle, that is really the way life was. It is also the way life is in many parts of the world. And perhaps most interesting of all, it is the way that modern day conservatives wish society to be. This brings to mind the work of John Rawls who said that a just society would be the one that you would choose if you couldn’t predict where you would be born. Conservatives always look to a society in which they would be at the top. And indeed, the Gilded Age was a great society to be in if you were rich.

In addition to his large body of work, Sinclair also tried his hand at politics. He ran for governor of California in 1934. He was hugely popular. But then the newspaper owners turned against him and effectively cut off any good or even objective coverage of him, and he ended up losing. It’s a good thing to remember. There is no such thing as democracy if there is not a free press. And the lack of a free press does not have to be the result of government interference. Around here, Sinclair is most often mentioned for one of his many great quotes, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” We see this again and again, but most profoundly, we see it with supposedly objective journalists.

Happy birthday Upton Sinclair.

Yesterday, the House Republicans finally got around to dealing with the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), generally known as “food stamps.” Traditionally, food assistance to the poor was linked to farm subsidies in the Farm Bill. But this year, the Republicans just couldn’t do it, because the leadership was only able to offer a $20 billion cut to SNAP—the nihilistic wing of the party refused to vote for the bill without a $40 billion cut. So back in July, they cut the Farm Bill into two pieces: one for support of farmers and one for support of the poor.

Very quickly they passed the “farmers” bill. This part of the Farm Bill has long been attacked by liberals and conservatives alike as crony capitalism. As it is, it gives billions of dollars away to very wealthy and profitable farmers. But the House Republicans not only funded it. They funded it for more than Obama had requested. Apparently, there is no limit to Republican largesse when it comes to the rich.

It took the House Republicans over two months, but they finally passed the “poor people” bill. And of course, the nihilists got their $40 billion cut. In addition to this, states will have strong incentives to cut the program even more. Estimates indicate that as many as 6 million people will lose access to SNAP benefits. There was this stunning bit of hypocrisy:

All of this is not to say that the Republicans do not have their stated reasons for being for these cuts. Initially they stated that it was all about stopping fraud. But there is basically no fraud in the system. Now, they claim that they are just trying to get those lazy bums to get jobs. They point to the economic recovery as a reason that there should be less people receiving SNAP benefits. But Paul Krugman demolished this argument earlier today. Although there has been an improvement at the top, the poor have seen no economic improvement at all. He provided the following graph to show that SNAP enrollment and the plight of the poor work in lockstep:

There really is no point in countering the Republican arguments here. This is as clear an example of what the Republicans are as you will ever seen. They want to spend money on the rich. They do not want to spend money on the poor. It isn’t that they are hypocrites so much as that their constituency is simply the rich. Earlier today, Jonathan Chait responded to Henry Olsen at the National Review who found this behavior “baffling” and referred to the image of Republicans as “Scrooge McDucks” as a stereotype:

The problem for the Republicans is that there are very few rich people. So they need to maintain the pretense that they really care about the non-rich. But they are indeed lucky that they have a mainstream press that is willing to pretend that they mean what they say. It isn’t just the National Review that won’t admit that Republicans simply hate those who make less than a quarter million dollars a year. It’s all about “plausible deniability” except that rather than bombing the poor in Cambodia, the Republicans are starving the poor in this country. They claim to be helping the poor. But it takes a lot of effort and apologetics to believe that.

Earlier this week, I discovered a great website, On the Issues. It provides quite detailed information about the positions of politians at various times in their careers. I’ve found it really useful. One thing that isn’t so useful—But very interesting!—is their use of the political philosophy chart. These charts place a person’s ideology on two scales: economic and social. Thus, if you are economically conservative and socially liberal, you are a libertarian. (In my experience, libertarians are not this, but that’s another matter; it is what they claim to be.) If you are economically liberal and socially conservative, then you are a populist. You get the idea.

The reason such charts aren’t that useful for politicians is because it is highly subjective how you would rate different votes. In particular, I think the scale as used by On the Issues makes the range of disagreement on economic issues look much wider than it is. Nonetheless, it provides a decent idea of where politicians are. The website provides ratings for all the presidents since Kennedy. So I went ahead and plotted all of the presidents on one graph, with the Republicans in red and the Democrats in blue:

What immediately stands out is that the Democratic presidents have been much more moderate than the Republicans. The only president who doesn’t qualify as moderate is Obama, and this I find hard to believe. I accept his 80% on social issues, but if he is a 20% of economic issues, it is only because of the extremism of the Republican Party. You may wonder who that most moderate of presidents is—there just on tic from the very center of the graph. That is none other than Richard Nixon! And that is more or less correct.

What you see with the Republicans is a steady march toward extremism. But surprisingly, the most extreme Republican president wasn’t Reagan or Bush Jr. It was Bush Sr. That shows how the ranking are not that accurate. I don’t think that anyone thinks that Bush’s father was more extreme on social issues than his son. But the chart is clearly correct in that the two Bushes and Reagan were roughly equivalent in their ideologies.

Similarly, on the Democratic side, the numbers don’t seem quite right. The first three Democratic presidents—Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter—are all ranked at 40% on economic issues. Carter was distinctly more conservative than his predecessors. And the idea that Clinton is even more liberal is just ridiculous. Again, I think these ranking are just relative. Since both Clinton and Obama received nonstop opposition from the Republicans, they are ranked as more liberal than they should be.

What is most interesting in all this is how there have been no populist presidents. I understand there being no libertarian presidents; libertarianism is an extremely unpopular ideology. But the vast majority of the Republican base is actually populist, not “right conservative.” These people are mostly Republicans for social reasons. Yet the party does not offer them a populist choice. The reason for this is that the Republican elites really are libertarian. But since no one likes libertarians, they have a choice: they could compromise on economic issues and become Democrats or compromise on social issues and become Republicans. Their answer should be obvious: they care about money far more than they care about freedom.

But if the political philosophy chart was really accurate, the Democrats would be clustered around 60% on economic issues and the Republicans would be clustered around 90%. Bearing that in mind, the chart is very interesting. And if you want to drill down into policy, On the Issues provides a great deal of useful information.

The Republicans really are divided. But it isn’t between the crazy and non-crazy. It is between the nihilists and the extremists. What are normally referred to as the Tea Party are just conservatives who aren’t interested in the political process and so want to send “messages.” As a result, those who want to, you know, win elections, are pretty upset at what is going on in Washington right now. Bear in mind, these people are not any more interested in what is best for the country than the Tea Party is; they just recognize that explicitly trying to destroy the nation is a really bad marketing campaign for the GOP.

Byron York is a man who I almost never agree with, but he was making a lot of sense yesterday. Over at the Washington Times he wrote, Actually, Senate GOP Can’t Filibuster to Defund Obamacare. It’s a really good article because it explains some of the ins and outs of congressional process that I have to admit to finding mysterious. He points out that the Republicans do not have the 41 votes they need for a filibuster in the Senate. But it’s worse than that. “Cruz & Co” can’t even stage an old fashioned talking filibuster.

This morning, the House passed their bill of a continuing resolution (CR) along with defunding Obamacare. But as York points out, Harry Reid can just strip this out of the bill with a simple majority vote:

All this information came from a Senate Republican aide. It is very clear that a lot of Republicans are just sick of all this bullshit. The aide said, “This is not a gimmick or a scheme. It is Rule 22 of the U.S. Senate. Everybody knew this. This is an existing rule. It is taught in Senate class when you do your orientation. It is not a surprise. Nobody sprung it on [Ted Cruz].”

By Democratic standards, I’m an extremist (that is, I’m a liberal). And from time to time, I am certainly in favor of hardball tactics. For example, in the end, I think the immigration bill that Congress came up with was most likely not worth supporting. But there is a very big difference between the good extremist fight and political self-immolation. This is the major rift in the Republican Party today.

Where this goes from here, I’m not sure. But one thing is for clear: the House Republicans will not be able to claim that they passed a CR and the Senate killed it. That means that public opinion on a government shutdown is going to come down hard on the House Republicans. If the Senate had voted the House bill down, the Republicans could have framed the issue as, “The Democrats are forcing a government shutdown just for the sake of funding Obamacare.” But as it is, they won’t be able to say that. Instead, the Democrats will correctly claim, “The Republicans are forcing a government shutdown just for the sake of defunding Obamacare.” The optics of that are really bad—so bad that Boehner may be forced to allow a clean CR vote and move onto the next (and far more dangerous) Debt Ceiling hostage crisis.

This week, the Census Bureau released data on the median family income in the United States. They found that it is lower than it was in 1989. That’s a big deal because the US economy has seen huge increases in productivity since 1989, but none of it has trickled down to the people. That isn’t really surprising. In general, since the late 1970s, productivity growth has not been shared with workers. There were modest gains during the Clinton years, small losses during the Bush years, and then huge losses following the 2009 crash. Still, it isn’t obvious to everyone. In particular, Matt Yglesias just doesn’t believe that people today are doing worst than they were 24 years ago.

I understand where he’s coming from. We have bigger houses now. We have more cars. More of us are graduating from college. He speculates that the consumer price index (CPI) is inaccurate over long periods of time. There is something to that. The CPI doesn’t just look at increases in costs; it also factors in technological improvements. So cars today are worth more than they were 24 years ago because they are now better. So even though the absolute price of a car may have doubled in that time, the inflation wouldn’t be 100% because now we get something equivalent to a car and a half. All of this means that the CPI is an imperfect measure, even though the example I just gave should (if anything) overstate how well we are doing today.

But I think that Yglesias is falling into the trap of thinking that marginal changes in standard of living are bigger than they really are. As Ha-Joon Chang noted, “The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has.” This is an argument that I’ve been having with high tech friends for a long time. In the 1950s, people had AM radios in their cars. Now they have satellite radio and MP3 players. Is this an improvement? Sure! But it is only a marginal improvement. It is easy to overstate the importance of such things.

The things that Yglesias mentions as indicative of affluence don’t really mean that much. Having a home is a lot better than living on the street. Having a 1,700 square foot house really isn’t any better than having a 1,600 square foot house. Having more cars is probably more a function of lifestyle changes—especially more members of the household working—than it is anything else. And more education has not led to more wealth for workers. What’s more, Yglesias admits that fewer people have health insurance now than did then. But even there he diminishes the change by noting that there are procedures available now that weren’t available then. Well, for one thing, that’s a very marginal improvement. But more important, a larger share of people’s income is going to medical care, so that must swamp any improvements and provide a distinctly decreased quality of life.

I think the graph that he provides tells us all that we need to know:

What we see here is roughly what we already knew. During the end of the Reagan-Bush years, wages had stagnated. Under Clinton wages went up. They again stagnated under Bush until the crisis when they plunged down. Are we worst off now than we were in 1989? Maybe yes and maybe no. The main thing is that we aren’t doing much different than we were 24 years ago. This is during a time when per capita GDP has increased by more than 70%. I think that Yglesias is just being picky. I don’t think he would question that the median family is not doing substantially better today. And that is the important point, regardless of how accurate the CPI is.

Update (20 September 2013 9:23 pm)

Matt Yglesias has written another article on this subject, The BLS Says Incomes Are Up Since 1989. In it, he notes that the BLS data indicate that after tax incomes are 11% higher since 1989. He is too caught up in the details of this. The point is, as I said above, that after 24 years the median family is at best doing very slightly better. The fact that statistics might be off by a few percentage points after all that time is not a story. The fact that Americans are not sharing in large productivity gains is a story.

Despite the heroic efforts of 22-year-old Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, Miss America’s stereotypes are still firmly in place.

Not only is Theresa the first woman ever to join the National Guard, she took on the male-dominated world of archery with her femininity intact. How many beauty queens have those bragging rights?

Perhaps even more inspiring was her brave act of defiance when she willingly chose to “step outside the box” and flash her ink at the judges. In an interview prior to the competition, Theresa reminded anyone who was listening that showing her permanent support of AA was “a bold move!” She went on to say, “And it’s risky, it could very well cost me the crown.”

Theresa did indeed jump out of the box, hoping to leap the hurdles of beauty pageantry, only to be forced to prance around in a two-piece. Hopefully she will find comfort in knowing that she strutted her stuff with dignity.

The always great Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll at The Incidental Economist have provided a summary of the new Republican plan to replace Obamacare, The Republican Study Committee Has a “Replace” Plan. Their take on it is very much the same as what I wrote yesterday, Republicans New Healthcare Distraction. That isn’t too surprising, given that much of my thinking about healthcare has been informed by Aaron Carroll. But as usual, they noticed some things that I had missed.

The big part of the Republican plan is to provide a standard tax deduction for purchasing health insurance. The current system is unfair. If your employer provides you with insurance, he gets to write it off; but if you buy insurance for yourself, you don’t get to write it off. So the Republican plan allows individuals to write off up to $7,500 per year for insurance. But there are two problems. First, this is going to be a very expensive program. It’s weird: when the government spends money to pay for a program, conservatives understand that this costs money. But when they cut taxes to pay for a program, they somehow think it is free. Regardless, of what they think, this program is not free.

The second problem is that this is basically just another tax cut for the rich. Most of the poor will not be able to afford health insurance, so they won’t get the tax break. Those poor people who do manage to buy health insurance will not see their taxes go down by much because they aren’t paying high marginal tax rates. So the program is little more than a giveaway to those relatively wealthy people who are already buying insurance on the open market. It will do very little to make insurance affordable for those without it now.

That is generally true of the Republican “replacement” program. Obamacare has two major goals. First, it tries to provide health insurance to those who do not currently have it. Second, it tries to reduce healthcare costs. Even though the program has not been fully implemented, we are already seeing success with these two goals. But the Republican plan does nothing to reduce healthcare costs other than the usual “magic of the marketplace” nonsense. And at best it does nothing to provide health insurance to those who currently have none.

It is more likely that the plan will make healthcare less affordable for those without it. A good example of this is the tired old conservative idea to allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. Frakt and Carroll note, “[The policies will] be great if you’re young, healthy, or wealthy enough to afford to fill in the coverage gaps. They’ll be terrible if you are older, have a chronic condition, or, again, if you’re low income.” We see this time and time again with their ideas. It really is as simple as this:

What the Republicans seem to be saying is, “Obamacare is a law that involves healthcare, so here is a replacement bill that also involves healthcare.” There is no consideration of what the new healthcare law is actually being used for. And that’s because the Republicans are not putting forward this “replacement” plan in good faith. It is only put forward as political cover. It is like replacing SNAP (food stamps) with another “poverty program” that let’s everyone write off their food purchases.

Of course, the media is not covering it like that. For example, the Christian Science Monitor covered it as though it were a real plan and only mentioned a single (weak) liberal complaint against it. And that’s the big problem with political coverage: the media will always present clear Republican nonsense as though it were a real effort at legislation. There continues to be no downside for the Republicans’ continuing efforts to destroy civil society. And so the Republicans continue to try to destroy civil society.

Congratulations to Nina Davuluri. Her genetic lotto ticket really paid off!

She and loser Theresa Vail are both stunning examples of American Exceptionalism. They both encapsulate our country’s obscene attraction to all things superficial and its tacit acceptance of implicit misogyny.

As for the racist flak that is being hurled at Nina, I hope she can ignore the hate grenade tossers—they won’t go away, but they’ll be distracted by another target soon enough. In the meantime, she can amuse herself with the thought that if her family did own a 7-11, Theresa’s family would be buying chewing tobacco from them.

Don’t cry for Theresa though! As a lovely distillation of America’s exceptional white trash patriotism, she’s sure to get an offer from Playboy any minute now. That validation of her true merit will undoubtedly ease the pain of losing to someone who didn’t even have the decency to be born a dyed-in-the-blonde American such as herself.