I didn’t see Enemy of the State until 2003. I was over at my sister’s and it came on TV. The film grabbed me instantly. It’s directed by Tony Scott, with all of his wonderful excesses. And then there was Gene Hackman taking another turn at the reasonable paranoia of Harry Caul in one of my very favorite films, The Conversation. What was a real surprise to me was that the film was not new—it was released in 1998. It seemed so obviously an attack on the recent huge increase in the surveillance state after 9/11. It wasn’t that I was naive and thinking that this stuff suddenly appeared as a result of the Bush administration. But the film seemed almost exactly what happened: government leaders using fear as political cover to greatly curtail civil liberties.

Most people by now have seen Lindsey Graham telling Fox News, “I’m a Verizon customer; I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government, if the government’s gonna make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to terrorists; I know you’re not. I know I’m not so we don’t have anything to worry about.” With all due respect to Graham, this entirely misses the point. For one thing, we don’t know what the government is doing with those records. For another thing, data use creep is a well known phenomenon. I can well see the definition of terrorism creeping from “people who bomb us” to “people who sell drugs to us” to “people who cheat on their wives.”

But the biggest issue is the Enemy of the State problem. Under most circumstances, Graham is right: we have nothing to worry about. But we do have something to worry about if we start publicly complaining about government policy. We’ve already seen the “War on Terror” used against peace activists. For the average American Idol fan, there is nothing to fear. But that’s also true under most autocratic governments. The fact that Lindsey Graham and the hosts of Fox and Friends have nothing to fear is irrelevant.

The film Enemy of the State has many problems. For one thing, satellites can’t be moved around like that. But there were three things that Brill says that seem relevant to the recent revelations about the government’s spying programs. First, how long:

Second, how easy:

Third, how bad:

It’s alright to think it’s hopeless, because it probably is. But it is wrong to think it isn’t a problem.

Here is a good segment on the whole issue by Cenk Uygur:

Afterword

A big problem I run into with liberals these days is the idea that this isn’t a problem because we can trust Obama. Of course, it isn’t phrased that way. It’s mostly just an attitude: liberals shrug off these revelations or claim that Bush did the same thing. Well, that’s the point! First, we all elected Obama because we thought he would be better than Bush. Second, even if we can trust him, he will only be president for another three and a half years. Then we will have someone else. Eventually, we will have a Republican. And regardless, eventually we will have a really bad person in the job who will abuse these powers in a way that will shock even the American public. This is important stuff.

Remember yesterday when I reported on Ezra Klein’s most recent false equivalence? He rightly noted that the Republicans are not changing their position on the budget deficit even though the situation has changed substantially. But since he attacked the Republicans, he had to attack the Democrats. So he said that the Democrats have not come to terms with the fact that the Republicans are fine with the Sequester. According to Klein, the Democrats should be negotiating with the Republicans to make the law work better rather than holding out for a deal to replace it.

But then, just this morning, Klein’s own subordinate at Wonk Blog, Dylan Matthews reported, Will a Fight Over Defense Spending Blow Up the Sequester? He started the article almost taunting Klein, “Turns out Republicans aren’t willing to cut defense down to sequestration levels after all.” Of course, the Republicans just want to get rid of the defense Sequester cuts and keep everything else. That’s the usual way: Republicans think compromise is where they get everything they want and the Democrats get nothing. Hence the phrase: fair and balanced.

The point of all of this is that false equivalence is a tricky maneuver. It is really easy to be shown wrong. Yesterday, I called it, “I think he’s stretching here. The Republicans have had years to adjust to falling deficits and the Democrats have had just two months from the very beginning of the Sequester.” This doesn’t mean that the Democrats really can hammer out a deal with the Republicans. But it is simply wrong to state that the Republicans are perfectly happy with the Sequester. In fact, they are anything but; unfortunately, Klein is being naive, taking them at their word about it when we always knew most of them were just positioning themselves.

Whether Klein’s broader point is true, I can’t say. I already argued that if we really look at what the Republicans and Democrats want, they are acting rationally and are in no way ignoring new information. But fundamentally, this doesn’t even matter. Politicians aren’t supposed to respond to facts about the economy. They are supposed to react to us, their constituencies. We are the ones who are supposed to respond to the facts. And in general, I think we do an alright jobs of that. The problem is that the politicians don’t so much respond to us.

There is something that Matt Yglesias wrote that I quote all the time. In it, he talks about how those running around screaming about the federal debt are not really interested in it. He compares them to a hypothetical group of Quakers claiming that we must cut spending on the military in order to reduce the deficit. If the Quakers then rejected raising taxes to reduce the deficit, we would figure that the Quakers didn’t really care about the deficit; they just used it as an excuse to cut military spending. Well, the same thing is going on with the deficit scolds: they claim to want to reduce the deficit, but really they care about other things—cutting entitlements mostly.

Yesterday, Yglesias presented a chart from the Center for American Progress (pdf) that shows that the medium term budget deficit has largely been fixed. Fundamentally, he is making the same argument that Ezra Klein did yesterday: that the changing facts are not changing behavior in Washington. But yesterday, I countered that Klein was being naive. Conservatives are not calling for reducing the deficit because they care about the deficit. If they did, they wouldn’t try to lower taxes and increase military spending.

Yglesias puts it much the same way that I do:

And that takes us back to the Quaker problem. Why is it that the mainstream media still take these budget hawks seriously? Really, why did they ever? A budget hawk like Romney who wanted to reduce taxes and increase spending on an already bloated military should have been laughed out of politics. But he wasn’t. Most people pretended as though he was some honest broker.

Now the situation is far more absurd. We’ve managed to bring the deficit down without touching Social Security and Medicare. So what are the deficit scolds going to do now? They’re going to lie and obfuscate. They are going to create calculators like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that are designed to frighten more than enlighten. But the issue that Klein and Yglesias don’t discuss is that it doesn’t matter what those people do. What matters—what is really important—is that the media take these people seriously. They pretend that they really do care about the deficit. The the real question is when the media will start treating these people as the charlatans they are.

On this day in 1755, Nathan Hale was born. He is know for his death. When he was being hanged by the British as a spy, he said, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Maybe he didn’t actually say it. But after people die, they become mythical. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And so of course Nathan Hale said that his only regret was blah blah blah. He was 21 when he was put to death.

Speaking of the Revolutionary War, American painter John Trumbull was born in 1756. He really wasn’t very good. The Russian Romantic poet Alexander Pushkin was born in 1799. Radio pioneer Karl Ferdinand Braun was born in 1850. And scandalous Flowers in the Attic author V. C. Andrews was born in 1923.

Bass/stick player Tony Levin is 67 years old today. The great singer Holly Near is 64. Here she is singing “Gentle Angry People”:

And speaking of lesbians, Sandra Bernhard is 58. The great tennis player Bjorn Borg is 47. Borg allows me to spend a moment talking about how much watching tennis on TV sucks. Borg was known for his heavy top-spinned fore and backhands. But watching tennis on TV, you would never know that they put spins on the ball at all. In other words, 90% of the craft of tennis playing is lost on TV. It’s a great game, but you really have to be there.

But as much as I admire Borg and Near, the day belongs to the great Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velazquez who was born in 1599. He is mostly known for his portraiture, but I prefer his historical and “everyday” painting.

Happy birthday Diego Velazquez!

Brad Plumer presented a fun math problem this morning. But instead of using it to discuss why math makes everything better, he insisted upon discussing policy. Environmental policy, in fact. Now I’m all for that. You can decide for yourself if the article is worth reading from its title, Want to Boost Fuel Economy? Stop Thinking About Miles Per Gallon. It is worth reading! But I will give you the important conclusion: small increases in the mpg of gas hogs are far more important than big increases in the mpg of tiny cars that already have decent fuel economy. In other words, if you are shopping for a hybrid, mpg doesn’t matter that much. But if you are shopping for an SUV, you should pay close attention to minor differences in competing model fuel ratings.

How do we know this? Mathematics! All is revealed in the following puzzle:

Let’s assume that x is the number of miles that Dylan and Sarah each drive in a year. (I’ve already lost you, haven’t I? Pay attention! This is not just interesting; it is fun.) That means that the gallons of gas they each use is given by x divided by the mpg they get. So originally, Dylan uses x/29 gallons of gas per year. With his new car, he uses x/50 gallons. Similarly, Sarah uses x/12 gallons and x/15 gallons. The amount of gas they each save is given by the amount of gas they use with the new car subtracted from the amount they used with the old car:

To figure out who saves more gas, we just divide these two equations. This causes the number of miles (x) to cancel out and we get:

So Sarah will always save 15% more gas than Dylan for her small 3 mpg increase (25%) compared to his large 21 mpg increase (72%). You probably already know why this is: Sarah starts by using a huge amount of gas. In Plumer’s example, he uses 1,000 miles for his x value and finds that while Dylan decreases his gas consumption from 34 to 20, Sarah reduces her consumption from 83 to 67. In other words, she has more gas usage to save. Or think of it this way: imagine you have a car that gets a million miles to the gallon. If you drive 1,000 miles, you would only use 0.001 gallons of fuel. Getting a car with better gas mileage can’t same you more than 0.001 gallons.

So remember this if you are buying an SUV. And if you’re buying an SUV, I certainly hope that you have a very good reason!

David Bernstein wrote a good overview of last night’s Massachusetts Senatorial debate.If you’re interested in the race, I recommend clicking over and reading the whole thing. All I’m interested in here is the way that politics really does make a reasonable discussion impossible.

Current House representative Ed Markey is the favorite in this race. Republican Gabriel Gomez has spent the campaign thus far trying to get traction against Markey. And you can sympathize with Gomez. He is, after all, running in a very liberal state. What’s more, Markey is popular and experienced. So one of Gomez’s complaints is that Markey is an ineffective legislator as proved by the fact that Markey has never gotten his own bill signed into law by the president.

This was discussed at the debate last night. And Markey had a good answer. He has written and sponsored a number of bills that were later integrated into larger bills that became law:

Normally, that would be the end of this discussion. But Gomez doesn’t accept it, claiming that this is some kind of lawyer’s trick. As Bernstein notes, even if that were true, it makes no sense. Gomez only brought up the “you ain’t passed no laws” claim to argue that Markey was ineffective. Clearly getting his bills passed inside a larger bill with someone else’s name on the top is effective.

This is unfortunately the nature of politics. Gomez can concede the point and look like an idiot or not concede the point and look like an idiot. There is no room for him to win by manning up and admitting that the new information means that Markey really has been an effective legislator. Of course, the original idea was wrong. Legislators are successful in a lot of different ways; they don’t need to author legislation. But what is a conservative to do in Massachusetts? He can’t argue about ideology. So the debate is necessarily about technocracy. And even in that way, Republicans are at a distinct disadvantage.

I’m not sure there is a solution for this. I would think that blue state Republicans would liberalize more to become competitive. But they can only go so far before they become Democrats themselves. The process works better with Democrats in red states. Blue state Republicans have the advantage that if they can just get a low-turnout election, they might win. But the problem is more fundamental: we don’t want a real debate about issues. And so Gomez is using the only tools he can.

I’ve been trying to figure something out. How does immigration reform help Republicans? I mean, I understand if Republicans actually embraced it. They could changed their tune and say, “Of course we are for immigration reform. Immigration has made America great. People who risk death to come to America for economic opportunity are exactly the kind of people we want!” But they aren’t doing that. Even the big Republican advocates approach immigration reform as something they do reluctantly. “Okay, we’ll let the evil brown skinned people already here stay—but no more!” Then, as Greg Sargent reported this morning, Republicans in the Gang of Eight are trying to make the immigration “compromise” less “you can stay” and more “protect the border.”

The argument for Republicans embracing immigration reform is that it acts as a kind of political poison, keeping Latino voters focused on this one bad aspect of the Republican Party. But as I was arguing last year after the election, Republicans have much bigger problems with Latinos than the immigration issue. As long as Latinos are poorer than other groups, they will continue to vote for the Democrats in large numbers.

This isn’t all about political tactics. I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that Democrats want immigration reform because it will broaden their base of support starting in about 15 years. Similarly, I don’t think that Republicans are against reform because it might hurt them starting in about 15 years. I know some commentators have argued this, but politicians just don’t plan that far ahead. From a tactical standpoint, it is just about constituencies. Latinos are a major Democratic constituency. They are not a major Republican constituency. In fact, a major Republican constituency hates immigration reform.

A better argument in favor of the Republicans supporting reform is not that they want to win the Latino vote; it is just that they want to improve it from the pathetic 27% that Romney received. They remember the halcyon days when Bush won 43%. But I still don’t see how this helps them. If immigration reform passes, those Latinos who really care about the issue will see it as something that the Democrats gave them. Immigration reform could make Latinos even less likely to vote Republican.

In the long run, Latinos will stop being a minority group. They will just be like the Italians or the Irish. And in that case, they will vote as their interests dictate. But even if our immigration laws never get reformed and Latinos still strongly associate with the undocumented community, they will not blame Republicans of that time for the inaction of Republicans now. They will judge the Republicans on the positions that they hold at that later time. So again, I ask: if Republicans are unwilling to appeal to the Latino community in any other way, why should they try to appeal in this one way? Especially when their support is at best grudging and at worse nonexistent.

On this day in 1878, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa was born. Growing up, I always thought he was like the Mexican Billy the Kid. But if he was any kind of outlaw, it was Robin Hood. I think it’s all about racism. This morning, I was wondering about all of this immigration reform. Why is it that Americans have no problem with the Canadian border, but we want to build an electrical fence on the Mexican border? I know the justification is that Mexico is a poor country so people from there want to come into this country for economic opportunity. But doesn’t that beg the question? If we hadn’t had these racist attitudes, wouldn’t Mexico have by now reached economy parity with us? Regardless, Pancho Villa is rightly a hero is Mexico and he should be here too.

In 1941, monologist Spalding Gray was born. Here he is in Swimming to Cambodia:

The great journalist Bill Moyers is 79 today. He first gained attention as White House Press Secretary in the Johnson administration. But since then, he is one of the few establishment voices on the left who hasn’t been co-opted by the New Democratic movement. The fact that today he is considered some kind of leftist radical by those on the right (and even many on the “left”) is a good indication of just how out of kilter American politics has become.

Musician Laurie Anderson is 66. Here she is doing “Sharkey’s Day“:

The day, however, belongs to the most sinned-against man in modern economics, John Maynard Keynes who was born on this day in 1883. He spent most of the Great Depression with those in power ignoring him. But after that, we learned our lesson! I remember when I took Econ 101, I thought, “That’s great! We will never again have to suffer through a Great Depression.” Oh, silly me. During this crisis, those in power have done everything they possibly could to avoid believing everything we’ve known for the last 70 years about economic recessions.

What is particularly sad about this is that almost the whole of the “Chicago School” and “fresh water” economists did all they could to muddy the water. I particularly think of men like Greg Mankiw who argued against stimulus, who had always accepted the concept before Obama was president. What’s more Mankiw started to become pro-stimulus again as one of Romney’s economic advisers, I assume he was laying the groundwork for the upcoming Romney administration.

What Keynes taught about economics is about as basic as you can get. And there are very few economic situations in which it isn’t appropriate. One of those would be the stagflation of the 1970s. But what we have been suffering through the last five years is exactly the same thing we struggled through for 10 years after the crash of 1929. And mostly we’ve done better than then because of systemic changes in our governance. Now we have Social Security and Unemployment Insurance. So the recession wasn’t as bad. And we did (despite enormous resistance from the right) manage to pass a small stimulus. But otherwise, our response was the same as the response to the Great Depression. We have sinned against Keynes and against our entire nation of people.

Here is Keynes reporting on the good news of the end of the gold standard:

Happy birthday John Maynard Keynes!

According to Wonk Blog, Bill Watson over at the Cato Institute is unhappy that the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that a number of Apple products infringed on Samsung patents. He rightly notes that there is duplication in the patent law system. But I have a problem with this kind of approach to our broken intellectual property (IP) system. And especially with regard to Apple—one of the most egregious patent trolling companies.

I don’t know much about Watson, but I do know Cato. And they are not really for IP law reform. All Watson is arguing for is a limit to “forum shopping” where companies look around for the best place to sue. It’s not even clear to me that such a minor reform would improve things. Depending upon how the law was changed, it might just make a system that is heavily weighted toward big companies even more so.

The bigger issue is that the whole IP system is broken. But in its big policy document (pdf), Cato doesn’t even suggest any fundamental reforms. That’s quite something for a group known for its extreme recommendations. But it is entirely typical of the fake free market philosophy of the libertarian group. It calls for making these laws more friendly to “competition” but never in a way that would upset the flow of corporate profits.

One interesting thing about the article that features Cato’s Mr. Watson is that it is written by Timothy B. Lee. Who used to be at… Cato. If Wonk Blog wants to provide space to discuss this issue, it would be better off allowing Brad Plumer, who understand the the patent system fairly well. Or even better Dean Baker. (Admittedly, given that Baker attacks the Washington Post almost every day as “Fox on 15th Street,” he would not be politically viable choice.) What’s with the Cato boys getting the valuable space?

The article reads more like advocacy than reporting. No alternative points of view are even mentioned. And in the end, it seems that the point of the article is to keep cheap products flowing into the United States from overseas. It likely is the case that we ought to get the ITC out of the patent law business. But I’d like to see an opposing view. Or at least the view of some people who aren’t wedded to the Cato pseudo-free market ideology.

Update (5 Junue 2013)

I just found another article from Lee on patent trolls. He argues that legislation against a very limited definition of “patent troll” is not nearly enough. I agree. However, it would be no less a minor improvement than ending the ITC’s patent cases. Yet that would apparently be a great idea.

On this day back in 1738, King George III was born. You know, the king we Yankees whooped? The crazy King? I don’t know much about him—there aren’t many kings who are worth studying. But I did see The Madness of King George. And I didn’t much like it. But I did like one line from the film. (In truth, I suspect it works better as a play.) When asked who is to say what is normal in a king, Dr. Willis replies, “Who can flourish on such a daily diet of compliance?” I think about that line a whole lot. Here is America we have all kinds of people who are tortured by their celebrity and wealth. I often think that Howie Mandel, for instance, is only screwed up because he can be. If he had my life, he would not have the luxury of his mental illness. But beyond that, it is not good to be surrounded by sycophants. I have had the experience in a small way, and I find it most disquieting. And bad for me. The only thing that stops me from being a total asshole is the fact that I have wonderful friends who tell me very clearly when I am tending in that direction. So I suspect all kings are crazy, but I will allow that most of them manage to stop themselves from rubbing themselves against the lady-in-waiting. Anyway, the prick still managed to live to the age of 81. It’s good to be king.

Actor Dennis Weaver was born in 1924. I most know him from a remarkable made-for-television film Duel. The film is most associated with its director Steven Spielberg. But I think the direction is completely standard—what any director would have done. What’s great about it is its script, which, like so much of everything worth note in the 60s and 70s was written by Richard Matheson. Of course, as far as I know, Matheson never wrote about a cop on a horse.

Freddy Fender was born in 1937. He was a great songwriter, as you can tell from this:

We all like to think that we are that romantic. We aren’t.

Actor Bruce Dern is 77 today. Author Robert Fulghum is 76. I know: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. But I remember driving out to the river with a friend reading the book and finding it quite amusing. Admittedly, I love it when people read out loud. And I laugh rather easily. Oh, leave me alone! The actors Russell Brand and Angelina Jolie are both 38 today.

But reading out loud and laughing easily aren’t my only weaknesses. As regular readers know, I develop crushes rather easily. And they definitely affect how I judge the contestants in the birthday posts. Still, I don’t think that’s what’s going on today, which belongs to the great actor Rosalind Russell who was born on this day in 1907. That’s because she starred in one of my all time favorite movies His Girl Friday. But even without that, she’d probably win for being Auntie Mame. However, she will always be Hildy Johnson to me:

Happy birthday Rosalind Russell!