Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.
There used to be a large minority of the gay community that never wanted marriage equality. These people didn’t want to be like the straight population and they feared that their movement would be co-opted by the corrupt mainstream society. They were right.
Recently, it was announced that American hero and government scapegoat Bradley Manning would be the Grand Marshall of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. After this announcement the SF Pride board president Lisa L Williams released a hysterical statement saying it was all untrue. She said, “Bradley Manning is facing the military justice system of this country. We all await the decision of that system. However, until that time, even the hint of support for actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform—and countless others, military and civilian alike—will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride.”
Glenn Greenwald countered her argument in some depth. He pointed out that her claim that Manning put people in harm’s way is “a substance-free falsehood originally spread by top US military officials which has since been decisively and extensively debunked, even by some government officials.” He then goes on to note all of the vile sponsors of the parade that are a-okay with Williams:
So apparently, the very high-minded ethical standards of Lisa L Williams and the SF Pride Board apply only to young and powerless Army Privates who engage in an act of conscience against the US war machine, but instantly disappear for large corporations and banks that hand over cash. What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture. Even at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, once an iconic symbol of cultural dissent and disregard for stifling pieties, nothing can happen that might offend AT&T and the Bank of America. The minute something even a bit deviant takes place (as defined by standards imposed by America’s political and corporate class), even the SF Gay Pride Parade must scamper, capitulate, apologize, and take an oath of fealty to their orthodoxies (we adore the military, the state, and your laws). And, as usual, the largest corporate factions are completely exempt from the strictures and standards applied to the marginalized and powerless. Thus, while Bradley Manning is persona non grata at SF Pride, illegal eavesdropping telecoms, scheming banks, and hedge-fund purveryors of the nation’s worst right-wing agitprop are more than welcome.
As I argued last month, the problem is that the LGBT community is no longer a liberal constituency. In a short period of time, the assimilation will be complete. There will be no “gay” identity and those previously associated with it will go on to be liberal or conservative as their incomes dictate. So it is no surprise that in San Francisco especially, those who organize the Gay Pride Parade are no more liberal nor willing to counter power than the organizers of Chicago’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. But it is still sad, because even the gay community in San Francisco knows what it is to be an oppressed minority. They should celebrate Bradley Manning and not spit government claims at him like he were a witch on trial in Salem.
Say goodbye to the scary anti-establishment San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. For good and bad, say goodbye to gay culture itself.
I have an immigration plan that should gain wide bipartisan support in Congress. This is because it will appeal to Republicans. Also: Democrats will go along with anything. There are three pillars of my plan: border security, guest workers, and path to citizenship.
First, border security. The Canadian border is fine the way it is, because they’re white like us. But we really need to make the border with Mexico secure. May I suggest: the Berlin Wall. Let’s set up two walls with armed guards every 20 feet on top of the north wall. Anyone who gets over the south wall will be shot. This would require a total of a bit more than 1.5 million guards at a total cost of $30 billion per year, if we pay them minimum wage and give them no benefits. But that is a small price to pay for securing our borders.
Second, guest worker program. American workers are famously demanding. What we need is a program that will allow any employers to hire guest workers if they can’t find American workers at a price they like. But I know what you’re thinking, “With the ridiculously high $7.25 federal minimum wage, won’t the guest workers still break the backs of the American businessman?” No, because we will not only eliminate the federal minimum wage, we will make it illegal for states to set a minimum wage. With these pro-growth policies, the US economy will be as strong as Bangladesh.
Third, path to citizenship. This is a contentious issue, but I think I have a workaround. As I discussed last week, we could set the path to citizenship to a reasonable length like 125 years. Given that humans seem unable to live longer than 124 years, we would be safe from any poor or brown-skinned person becoming a citizen. But I know what you’re thinking, “With advances in science, isn’t it possible that in the future people might live longer thus allowing a few people to become citizens?” That’s an excellent point. That’s why I’m putting a clause in the bill that would link the path to citizenship to one year longer than the maximum age that any person can live.
This is a plan that Republicans can embrace. And who cares what the Democrats think, although I suspect many of them would support it as well. So what do you say guys? I can see the headline in the New York Times now, “Bipartisan Immigration Reform Passed!”
Our best wishes go out to Jamelle Bouie. We hope he has a speedy recovery.
Bouie was a very insightful commentator over at The American Prospect, but he is totally wrong this morning. He wrote an article at the Plum Line, A Small Victory Against Anti-Tax Conservatives. In it, he discussed new legislation to require sales taxes be collected on all internet purchases. It is apparently getting a lot of bipartisan love. Bouie noted, “What Heritage and Norquist want is a Republican Party governed by ideology alone, where no tax is acceptable, no matter what. That they’re losing this fight is a sign Republicans are at least open to bucking anti-tax extremists.”
This is a sure sign that Bouie has caught Washington Pundit’s Disease (WPD). It starts by affecting the memory. In his case, he has forgotten the last two years of American politics. This is so sad!
Bouie may think so, but the Heritage Foundation and Gover Norquist are not really against this sales tax legislation. It is just that they are contractually obligated to oppose all new tax proposals. I can assure Bouie (because I do remember the last two years), that they are not putting much pressure on Republicans to oppose this bill. Remember (which Bouie sadly can no longer do): Republicans are not against new taxes. For the umpteenth time (which sometimes helps WPD victims and sometimes doesn’t): they are against new taxes on the rich. That’s it. They had no problem allowing payroll taxes to go back up. What’s more, a bit more than a year ago, they were fighting an extension of the payroll tax cut (“holiday”).
So this recent move does not, not, not show that the Republicans are moving even just a little on taxes. This is the position they’ve had all along. And Jamelle Bouie used to know that. But apparently he’s entered Stage 2 of WPD where he now feels the compulsion to make nice and pretend that the Republicans are showing signs of being reasonable. It’s sad when anyone gets WPD, but especially when it effects a fine writer in his prime. All we can do is help him remember.
Sympathy cards can be sent to Jamelle Bouie care of The American Prospect, 1710 Rhode Island Ave, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036.
Over the weekend, Lori Montgomery at the Washington Post wrote, GOP Moves Away From Entitlements and Toward Tax Reform in Budget Deal. In it, she explained that because seniors don’t like the idea of entitlement cuts, the Republicans are planning to focus on tax reform. And in the name of this tax reform (that mustn’t raise any new revenue), they will threaten to crash the economy with the Debt Ceiling.
You must remember the Debt Ceiling, because it is the only economic policy from the past few years that truly terrifies me. The federal government can only borrow money up to whatever debt amount—called the Debt Ceiling—that Congress has set. For the last 2 years, Republicans have been threatening to not raise the Debt Ceiling, and that will cause the federal government to default on its debt obligations. It’s kind of like an individual saying, “I know I ran up $1,000 on my credit card, but I don’t think my debt level should be above $100, so I’m not going to pay my bill.” Failing to raise the Debt Ceiling would not only greatly harm our economy, it would make any debt problems of the federal government far, far worse.
What I find so amazing about this is that the politicians who are threatening to crash the economy are exactly the same people who argue that if we don’t get our debt under control, we will become like Greece and be unable to borrow money at the low interest rates we have been able to borrow at for the last 4 years. This comparison to Greece is ridiculous, of course. There are a number of ways that we are distinctly not like Greece. But if we don’t raise the Debt Ceiling, we will default on our debts. That will cause interest rates on government debt to skyrocket. And that really will be an economic catastrophe.
The Republicans actually don’t care about that. This has never been about debt or economics or policy. It is about forcing the government to do their bidding even while they are a minority party. And from their perspective, it might work out very well. If they crashed the economy, there would be fewer tax revenues, so the deficit would go way up. But because we’d defaulted, the cost of borrowing would be much higher. There would be no recourse but to savage spending—especially on the poor and weak. Of course, it might also mean the end of the Republican Party as a major force in American politics, but I’m not sure conservatives think that far ahead.
But let’s assume that the Republicans don’t actually plan to force a debate. What is it that they are using this ultimate threat for? They want to cut marginal income tax rates and pay for them by closing loopholes. As we’ve seen before, that will necessarily be a regressive policy change because the big money is in the mortgage interest deduction. But even more than that, it is a way to stop the Democrats from raising taxes on the rich through the closure of loopholes that affect them. So if you’ve ever wondered why it is such a big deal to conservatives to do this kind of revenue neutral tax “reform,” there you have it: it is to protect the rich from future tax cuts and probably give them new tax cuts right away.
The best case scenario is that the Republicans are willing to risk crashing the economy in order to lower the taxes of the rich. The worst case scenario is that the Republicans think that crashing the economy would be a good thing. Take you pick. It makes the Republican Party a pernicious actor in our public policy.
Afterword
It is also possible that crashing the economy would completely backfire against conservative desires. The situation could be so bad that the government had no recourse but to radically raise taxes.
I have long been a fan of the Scottish director Bill Forsyth. He is most remembered for two of his earlier films: Gregory’s Girl and one of the greatest movies ever made, Local Hero. Annoyingly, after that, few people seemed to care, even though he made three excellent films in quick succession: Comfort and Joy, Housekeeping, and Breaking In. And the two films after that (Being Human and Gregory’s Two Girls) have been savaged. I am here to tell you that there is a 90% chance that whatever films you watch over the course of the next month will be worse than the weakest Forsyth film, and there is a 99% chance they will be worse than his average.
Over the last week, I’ve been revisiting Forsyth’s film. It all started when I at long last got to see his first film, That Sinking Feeling. It tells the story of a bunch of unemployed youths who learn how much steel sinks are worth. From there it turns into a bizarre heist movie that is really just an excuse for spending some time with all of the colorful characters Forsyth has created. And that’s pretty much what goes on in all of his films: there is some plot that is an excuse to meet and hang out with what are always very interesting people.
After that, Forsyth made Gregory’s Girl, which was hugely popular based almost entirely on its overwhelming charm. It tells the story of Gregory’s search for a girlfriend and a kind of “girl’s union” that sees to it that he gets the right one. What makes it so enjoyable is that it portrays boys as various kinds of nerds who are focused on whatever (like one friend’s obsession with Venezuela because he’s heard there are many more women than men there), guided along by wise and practical girls who are immune to such nonsense. But mostly, there are just wonderful characters like Gregory and his ten-year-old sister Madeleine.
This theme of Forsyth’s continues in his next film[1], Local Hero. But instead of boys, it deals with men. From the owner of an oil company to the old beachcomber who stands in the way of a deal, all the men are strangely detached from the practical aspects of life. The film emphasizes the importance of the larger community to the individual. This is distinct from later films were he is more interested in sub-communities where people find meaning together outside their larger connections. I suspect this film is so well loved because it is Forsyth’s most overtly artistic film. There is lots of material to allow the viewer to speculate about meaning. But again, it is really just an excuse to hang with more wonderful characters.
Next up is probably my favorite Forsyth film, Comfort and Joy. And typically, it isn’t even available on DVD in the United States. It tells the story of a guy whose crazy girlfriend leaves him heartbroken. In attempting to get over her, he becomes involved a turf war between two ice cream truck companies. Rarely does a film combine three of my favorite things: crazy women, the meaning of life, and ice cream. Don’t pass up the chance to see this film. And right nowthe whole film (in 7 parts) is on YouTube. But don’t wait! It may disappear soon!
After a couple of years off, Bill Forsyth came back with his first theatrical film based on someone else’s story, Housekeeping, from the novel of the same name by Marilynne Robinson. He couldn’t have chosen better—it exemplifies the themes that clearly interest him. But it adds one that doesn’t come easy to him: the way in which the larger society can stifle the individual and keep sub-communities from existing. All of Forsyth’s films are deliberately paced, but they tend to be rather loud and chatty. Housekeeping is very quiet and arguably his most beautiful film. It also features a remarkable performance by Christine Lahti as crazy Aunt Sylvie.
Two years later, Forsyth was back to his old tricks with Breaking In. Again, he didn’t write it, but he chose well; it was written by another of our greatest modern storytellers, John Sayles (if you haven’t seen it, go watch Silver City—I’m figuring you’ve already seen The Brother from Another Planet). It is about a bored teenager who breaks into houses just to hang out. One night, he meets a professional thief when they both break into the same house at the same time. They start working together and become good friends. Here we get back to Forsyth’s fascination with the nerdy interests of men: in this case, burglary.
The last two films took five years each to see the light of day. The first was his largest budget film, Being Human starring Robin Williams with a really excellent supporting cast (John Turturro, Bill Nighy, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Carlyle, Hector Elizondo, and on and on). I don’t have much to say about it because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It was originally 3 hours long and the producers had it cut down to 2 hours. The director’s cut has never been released. It is clearly not Forsyth at his best, but it is a lot better than people say. Give it a watch if you can find it.
Finally we come to Gregory’s Two Girls, a sequel to Gregory’s Girl, set 20 years in the future when Gregory is a would-be radical, teaching English at his former school. I heard nothing but horrible things about this film, so I was really worried going into it. But as usual, the complaints of the critics were meaningless. I think the problem is that critics will only be happy if Forsyth makes Gregory’s Girl or (especially) Local Hero again. Gregory’s Two Girls is everything that I’ve come to expect from him: interesting characters, strange but ultimately pointless plot, and a bold and positive theme. Now I know how Forsyth could have made Gregory’s Two Girls into a film that everyone would have loved: changed the beginning and end. The opening is a most inappropriate sexual fantasy between a teacher and a student. He could have cut two minutes off it and everyone would have found it charming. Instead, they tended to find it disturbing. I think Forsyth thought it was funny as hell, and it is on a second viewing after you know what’s going to happen. People also have a problem with the ending which would likely work better in a novel than it does on the screen: it is too uncertain. But Forsyth knows what he’s doing; it isn’t a random ending.
And that’s the thing about the reactions to Forsyth: people get angry when he doesn’t provide them with the film they hoped he would make. This is my biggest criticism of film “criticism”: rather than approach a film on its own terms, the ombudsmen complain that it is not a different film. In the long run, history is kinder to the artists who maintain their idiosyncrasies. And that defines Bill Forsyth. That Sinking Feeling fully predicts Gregory’s Two Girls. And I’m glad for that. I am so tired of seeing innovative filmmakers turn into predictable Hollywood hacks.
Now go and sin no more. And watch Comfort and Joy while there’s still time!
Afterword
To make it very easy for you, I’ve created a play list so you can watch all of Comfort and Joy together:
Update (28 April 2013 4:19 pm)
I just watched the whole film. There is a problem. It cuts off during the credits. There is a voice over during them where Dicky reads an add for the new product. It isn’t critical to the film, but it is a nice touch. The film is every bit as good as I remembered it. And it is a lot funnier than I had recalled. It’s brilliant.
[1] Forsyth made a TV movie Andrina based upon a George Mackay Brown short story. It has never been released in any form so far as I know.
The great Harper Lee is 87 today. On even the most impressive days, she would be the person of the day—just not today. Not totally unreasonable conservative James Baker is 83. Novelist Terry Pratchett is 65. Once funny comedian Jay Leno is 63. And actor Penelope Cruz is 39.
But the day belongs to mathematician Kurt Godel who was born in 1906. When I was young, I worked very hard to understand his incompleteness theorems. These basically said that any axiomatic system of sufficient complexity was necessarily incomplete. Since the time of Euclid, mathematicians had hoped they could state a few postulates and create a complete system based upon this—know everything about the system. Not true, showed Godel. Here is Rudy Rucker’s non-mathematical proof from his book Infinity and the Mind:
The proof of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is so simple, and so sneaky, that it is almost embarassing to relate. His basic procedure is as follows:
Someone introduces Godel to a UTM, a machine that is supposed to be a Universal Truth Machine, capable of correctly answering any question at all.
Godel asks for the program and the circuit design of the UTM. The program may be complicated, but it can only be finitely long. Call the program P(UTM) for Program of the Universal Truth Machine.
Smiling a little, Godel writes out the following sentence: “The machine constructed on the basis of the program P(UTM) will never say that this sentence is true.” Call this sentence G for Godel. Note that G is equivalent to: “UTM will never say G is true.”
Now Godel laughs his high laugh and asks UTM whether G is true or not.
If UTM says G is true, then “UTM will never say G is true” is false. If “UTM will never say G is true” is false, then G is false (since G = “UTM will never say G is true”). So if UTM says G is true, then G is in fact false, and UTM has made a false statement. So UTM will never say that G is true, since UTM makes only true statements.
We have established that UTM will never say G is true. So “UTM will never say G is true” is in fact a true statement. So G is true (since G = “UTM will never say G is true”). “I know a truth that UTM can never utter,” Godel says. “I know that G is true. UTM is not truly universal.”
Of course, Godel was a nut. Many mathematicians are profoundly introverted, living largely in an unseen word of ideas. Even with my little brain, I feel very much a kinship in this way and I regret having studied physics rather than math. Regardless, I’m not crazy. Godel starved himself after his wife died because he would only trust food she had made. It is very sad. But he left us a great legacy.
Mike Elk is a labor reporter at In These Times Magazine. “A labor report?” you ask. “I thought those weren’t allowed in the mainstream press!” Well, In These Times Magazine ain’t exactly mainstream. They only have a circulation of about 20,000. Now if they started covering everything from the standpoint of the business community (especially big business), then maybe people would taken more Seriously. But thank God for the few Mike Elks foraging on the edges of the media forest. Last week, the Washington Post, which is committed to never allow pro-labor reporting, did open its opinion pages to him.
He wrote, The Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion Cannot Be Forgotten. It is a fantastic article that compares the coverage of the Fertilizer Plant explosion with that of the Boston Marathon bombing. As I discussed last week in Profits Before People, as much as the Boston bombing is a tragedy, the Texas explosion is worse.
Elk provides more details that are not widely know. (He’s clever that way: slipping actual facts onto the pages of Fox on 15th Street.) Here are a few of the highlights:
The plant held more than 1,350 times the legal limit of the highly explosive ammonium nitrate.
Various safety measures like fire alarms and legally required blast walls were not installed.
With current funding levels, OSHA would only be able to inspect such facilities every 129 years.
The main point is that a lot of people die in preventable workplace accidents and very few die from terrorist attacks. In fact, the number of American killed by terrorist attacks each year is about the same as the number crushed to death by their TVs.
But there is an even more fundamental issue going on and it gets to the heart of the culpability of the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets. During the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Elk tweeted and Ken Ward Jr responded brilliantly:
@mikeelk Terrorists want media attention, so we give it to them. Unsafe industries don’t want media attention – so we give that to them.
This really is not a question of journalists just chasing the exciting story. There could be a great deal of excitement chasing after the plant owner and asking him why 1,350 times the legal limit of ammonium nitrate was in the plant. In fact, that sounds like something 60 Minutes did in the old days. There could be countless pundits on cable news screaming about how unacceptable this is. Instead, after it was determined that the West Fertilizer Co. plant explosion wasn’t a terrorist attack but just another greedy company that cares only of profits and nothing of its employees, the media tuned out. Anyway, most news outlets don’t have labor reporters. How would they even cover it?
You know how racism works, right? You hate blacks; you think they are violent. You see a news story about some black guy who killed his girlfriend. That’s more evidence that blacks are violent. You see another news story about some black guy who helps young people start small businesses. Well, that’s the exception; you never said that all blacks were bad (even though you in fact did). It’s all about an inclination. Racism is natural for us as a species. The real question is if you have strong feelings about any group of people, are you going to feed it with biased information or not? You can fight against these irrational feelings or your can use your rational mind to reinforce them. It is up to you.
The same thing goes on with societies at large. The best example of this is how Islam is portrayed. Every time there is a terrorist attack by a Muslim, the whole country emits a huge, “See?!” When a terrorist attack is performed by someone else, the reaction is vague confusion, “Oh, what a surprise!” And it gets filed under, “Sometimes terrorists are not Muslims, but usually they are.” And that’s as far as it goes.
Juan Cole wrote an amazing article over at his blog informed COMMENT, Terrorism and the Other Religions. He looked at political and religious violence over the last century and found that very little of it was done by Muslims. They make up almost one-quarter of the population but only about 2% of the killing. Now most of that killing was in the world wars. But he goes on to note the universality of terrorism. This part particularly struck me:
As for religious terrorism, that too is universal. Admittedly, some groups deploy terrorism as a tactic more at some times than others. Zionists in British Mandate Palestine were active terrorists in the 1940s, from a British point of view, and in the period 1965-1980, the FBI considered the Jewish Defense League among the most active US terrorist groups. (Members at one point plotted to assassinate Rep. Dareell Issa (R-CA) because of his Lebanese heritage.) Now that Jewish nationalists are largely getting their way, terrorism has declined among them. But it would likely reemerge if they stopped getting their way. In fact, one of the arguments Israeli politicians give for allowing Israeli squatters to keep the Palestinian land in the West Bank that they have usurped is that attempting to move them back out would produce violence. I.e., the settlers not only actually terrorize the Palestinians, but they form a terrorism threat for Israel proper (as the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin discovered).
I remember back to all the trouble in Northern Ireland when the IRA was most clearly a terrorist organization. They killed over 600 civilians in a country of only a million and a half. (That is equivalent to over 100,000 in the United States.) That was political and religious. And yet no one went on TV and attacked the Irish. There was no discussion of radical-Catholicism. And there’s a good reason for that: the Irish and the Catholics by that point were well integrated into our society. Muslims are still thought of as outsiders. I even hear people say the same things people said about the Irish and Catholics earlier in our history, “They stay among themselves; they don’t want to integrate!” It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. There is a process and it takes generations.
Our media really need to take a lot of blame for this. All this emphasis on Muslim terrorism and endless apology for all others just feeds the cultural bigotry against one of our more recent groups of immigrants. You can go back to the beginning of our republic and see the same dynamic again and again. We should learn to put this stuff in perspective. Juan Cole’s article is a small corrective. I recommend reading the whole thing.
Afterword
Here is a great Bill Moyer interview with Glenn Greenwald on some of these issues:
The day, however, belongs to Samuel Morse who was born on this day back in 1791. In addition to all that business about the telegraph, he was rather a good painter. He was also a total asshole. Let me count the ways. First, he was radically anti-Catholic, because, you know, he was a protestant and knew the one true way. Second, he was anti-immigrant, because, you know, he was already here. Third, he was pro-slavery, because, you know, being born in Massachusetts he had no reason to be for it except that the Bible told him so. Just listen to the great man on the subject:
My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom. The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.
That’s the problem with getting your morality from a book—especially one from thousands of years earlier that is filed with the vilest of social conventions cloaked in the idea that it was God’s will. Anyway, like most evil men, he had a long and happy life. He certainly didn’t make as much money off his patents as he could have, but he lived and died quite rich. So if you hear anyone complain that he didn’t get his due, remember: he lived like Mitt Romney but might have lived like Warren Buffett if his patents had been better controlled. Excuse me if I don’t care.
Anyway, happy birthday you bigot! Morally, you should have telegraphed to the word: . . . – – – . . .
In a series of academic papers with Carmen Reinhart… we find that very high debt levels of 90% of GDP are a long-term secular drag on economic growth that often lasts for two decades or more.
Nowhere did we assert that 90 percent was a magic threshold that transforms outcomes, as conservative politicians have suggested.
I will admit, Carmen Reinhart did not run around the country claiming that we had to have austerity or we’d have slow or even negative economic growth. No, it’s always been Kenneth Rogoff. Just the same, we didn’t hear a peep from Reinhart that he was mischaracterizing their work. But let’s lay that aside for the moment. If Reinhart & Rogoff didn’t show that a 90% debt to GDP ratio was some bad tipping point, what was the big deal of their paper? Matt Yglesias answers this question, “The raw fact that there’s a statistical correlation between debt:GDP being high and GDP growth being low is trivial and offers no policy guidance.”
What we have here is a case of scientists riding a popular wave based upon an obscene overstatement (that they helped create) of their work. And then when their work is shown in no uncertain terms to not show what was claimed, they retreat back to the safety of scientific objectivity and caveats. This is totally unacceptable. Rogoff especially should be thrown out of the field. But of course he won’t be. He’s “elite.” And you know what that means: unless he’s caught tweeting pictures of his junk, he can’t be touched.
Have you heard? Senate Votes to End Furloughs of Air Traffic Controllers. The House is working on it as I write this and the President is likely to sign it. Are you surprised? Only if you’ve been living in a cave your entire life.
I think we should call this the “Rich People Can’t Be Inconvenienced in the Least” act. Because that is what this is all about. It is totally okay if the poor and weak are harmed by the Sequester. Shared sacrifice, am I right?! We’ve all got to pull together and if that means that malnourished children have to march for days without shoes, that’s just the way it has to be. On the other hand, if a rich man has a pebble in his show, why, we’d better do something about it. Perhaps a few barefoot children could carry him.
The Senate cares about these flight delays because because it affects them and their wealthy friends. This is not a partisan issue! They are all in it against the rest of us. When the Sequester hit the Head Start program hard, that was just the way it had to be. And I understand this: the Sequester was a terrible piece of legislation. But now Congress has decided to make it even worse. The rich, whose lives are already, shall we understate it and say “good,” have Congress (and the President!) jumping to attention to make sure that the Sequester only hurts people whose lives already suck.
Paul Krugman’s column this morning was called, The 1 Percent’s Solution. In it he talks about how the people of the United States do not want austerity. They do not want to cut programs for the poor. They do not want to cut programs for the old. But can you guess who does want all these things? The rich, of course. And Krugman points out what we have become: a country “of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent.”
And so it goes on. Our supposedly democratic government will continue to inflict pain on the poor and weak. Why? Because they are poor and weak. At the same time they will do anything the wealthy and powerful want. Why? Because they are wealthy and powerful.
And the la-hand of the Freeeeee!
And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!
Afterword
In case anyone is wondering, I know a lot of non-rich people travel by air. I am one of them. But that is not why Congress has sprung into action.
There used to be a large minority of the gay community that never wanted marriage equality. These people didn’t want to be like the straight population and they feared that their movement would be co-opted by the corrupt mainstream society. They were right.
I have an immigration plan that should gain wide bipartisan support in Congress. This is because it will appeal to Republicans. Also: Democrats will go along with anything. There are three pillars of my plan: border security, guest workers, and path to citizenship.
Our best wishes go out to Jamelle Bouie. We hope he has a speedy recovery.
Over the weekend, Lori Montgomery at the Washington Post wrote, 
I have long been a fan of the Scottish director Bill Forsyth. He is most remembered for two of his earlier films: 
You know how racism works, right? You hate blacks; you think they are violent. You see a news story about some black guy who killed his girlfriend. That’s more evidence that blacks are violent. You see another news story about some black guy who helps young people start small businesses. Well, that’s the exception; you never said that all blacks were bad (even though you in fact did). It’s all about an inclination. Racism is natural for us as a species. The real question is if you have strong feelings about any group of people, are you going to feed it with biased information or not? You can fight against these irrational feelings or your can use your rational mind to reinforce them. It is up to you.
Kenneth Rogoff, 
Have you heard?