I give up! This morning, Obama announced that he will continue to bargain with himself.

On Wednesday, Jared Bernstein discussed a number of budget items that we face. The most important of which was his argument that Obama should not put Chained-CPI into his budget. Chained-CPI is basically just a way to cut Social Security benefits without explicitly doing it. It allows the cost of living increases of the program to lag behind the actual rate of inflation that seniors face. Bernstein rightly notes that it is just bad negotiating.

What he doesn’t say, but what is clear enough is that the Republicans will take the concession and move on. When the president tries to actually get something for the concession, the Republicans will rebel, “But Chained-CPI is already part of the baseline!” But as I’ve argued before, this isn’t really a sign that Obama is a bad negotiator; it is a sign that Chained-CPI is just a policy that Obama wants. If anything, the concessions that the Republicans in theory will offer are just political cover for the extremely unpopular policy proposals he wants.

This morning, Paul Krugman offered a far more charitable take on what Obama is doing:

I only disagree with the part about why Obama is doing this. The rest is dead on: Obama will get very little credit for doing it and the Republicans will campaign against Democrats in 2014 by saying that they want to cut Social Security.

With friends like Obama, who needs conservatives?

Booker T. Washington was born on this day in 1856. Food safety scientist and advocate Samuel Cate Prescott was born in 1872. We have a bunch of actors: Walter Huston (1883); Spencer Tracy (1900); Melvyn Douglas (1901); Bette Davis (1908); Gregory Peck (1916); Nigel Hawthorne (1929); and Frank Gorshin (1933). And the great lecturer Lord Buckley was born in 1906.

The great independent filmmaker Roger Corman is 87 today. Colin Powell is 76. Just a note about the general: I will have difficulty ever forgiving him for Iraq, but I certainly will never forgive him if he continues to not admit his sins. The director of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Peter Greenaway is 71. And Max Gail, Wojciehowicz on Barney Miller, is 70.

The day, however, belongs to Thomas Hobbes who was born this day in 1588. He was not exactly a modern liberal, but he was far ahead of his time. What’s more, 200 years before the founding of the United States, he was working out a lot of the basics of liberal political philosophy. He helped make us what we are today—I mean that in a good way.

Happy birthday Thomas Hobbes!

On Tuesday, Daniel Schuman wrote, Congress Deserves a Big Fat Raise. This is something I’ve long supported. I hate the argument that we should pay our elected officials less. These arguments are, at base, nothing but bitterness. What’s more, even if we paid them nothing it would save us a negligible amount of money in the grand scheme of local, state, and (especially) federal budgets.

Schuman focuses exclusively on the Congress and primarily on the fact that current office holders make less than they used to. For example, Representatives made 20% more in 1992 than they do now. What’s more, their staffs have seen no pay increases for longer than that. And the total size of their staffs have decreased between 30% and 40%. What’s more, all of these people could make more in the private sector and this is why most of them will go on to do just that.

The article points out one very important aspect of all of this. Inexperienced staff members go to work in Congress and then end up dealing with lobbyists who not only have more experience, but who used to do those very same jobs. Unfortunately, Schuman doesn’t spend much time at all discussing how this warps the way legislation gets done. One of the most important ways that this happens is by under-staffed (and under-experienced) Congress members ending up relying on lobbyists and other private interests for information about legislation. In fact, these lobbyists often write the legislation. This isn’t technically corruption, but in practice, it is far more harmful than corruption.

Matt Yglesias followed up on this article with one of his own. But he offered a most ridiculous suggestion: pay legislators more by having fewer of them. I think we already have too few legislators. When the United States was founded, there were 68 Representatives for a population of 3,929,214 people. That’s 57,783 people per Representative. Currently, there are 435 Representatives for a population of 313,914,040 people. That’s 721,641 people per Representative. That’s a factor of 12.5 greater. What has happened in the United States that makes it an order of magnitude easier to reflect the opinions of the people? The answer, of course, is: nothing. In fact, it is likely that we ought to have a smaller ratio.

This is an important issue to me and I bring it up a lot in conversation. The reaction of people, almost without exception, is: that would cost a fortune! That just isn’t true. I haven’t been able to find an authoritative estimate of the actual cost of running the House of Representatives. Let’s suppose it is $5 million per Representative per year. (Note: this is about twice the cost estimates that I’ve seen, so my calculation is almost certainly grossly high.) With this assumption, the cost of the House is about $2 billion per year. This is substantially less than 0.1% of the federal budget. Increasing the size of the House by a factor of ten would raise this up to somewhat less than 1% of the federal budget. That isn’t that much to spend to greatly improve democratic access and accountability.

The financial issue could be more important on the state and local levels. But the “people to representative ratio” is not as bad at these levels. The California State Assembly, for example, has the worst people to representative ratio in the nation and it is still only half the corresponding number for the House of Representatives. But Yglesias’ idea of having a single chamber in the states is just ridiculous. The cost of the legislature is not the source of our budget problems. We can increase pay and improve staffs without cutting down on the number of representatives.

Schuman sums up the issue well:

We need more legislators and we need to pay them in accordance with the importance of the job they do. We treat teachers the same way: we act like they are scum and pay them as though they are worth about as much. We need to change the way we think. The problem is not them; it is us.

I know this news will be important to a number of my readers: the fourth season of Arrested Development is coming out next month. Netflix announced that they will be releasing 15 new episodes that will constitute a fourth season. All of the episodes will be released at once at 12:01 am Pacific time on 26 May.

The weird thing about this is that I’ve been checking Wikipedia often to see if anything had been announced. There hasn’t been a thing. I had begun to give up hope. One problem is that everyone (especially the kids) are getting older. But more important, many of the stars have become much bigger and thus, much more expensive. Now, it seems quite suddenly, Wikipedia reports that on 7 August of last year, the gang began shooting the new episodes.

Because I’m a pessimist at heart, I’ve suddenly become very worried. I was looking forward to the fifth season of Breaking Bad, as well, and it turned out to be a total disaster. I’m more hopeful for Arrested Development. It can take off in any direction. That wasn’t true of Breaking Bad. The problem with it is that the producers decided to turn the protagonist into an antagonist; it isn’t just that I don’t like that; the show is supposed to be believable and that change just isn’t. Arrested Development is a series about a bunch of really narcissistic characters. I’m sure they won’t change that and so there should be no fundamental problem plaguing the show as there has been for Breaking Bad.

So set your calendars and watches. I know I’m going to be there at one minute past midnight to watch one or more episodes. I’m sure I will have much to say here in the afternoon of 26 May.

Afterword

If you don’t have a Netflix subscription, I’m sure you can get one of those one month trials and start some time in May. Provide a little time before, so you can catch up on the show. They currently have the first three seasons on Instant Watch. But be sure to leave enough time afterwards to watch all 15 episodes. In my case, that would be about half a day.

Those clever devils at Quinnipiac thought to ask people whether they thought the same sex marriage issue should be settled by the Constitution or by the states. The results were: 56-36 in favor of Ye Good Ol’ Constitution. Everyone wants the Constitution to decide this one. Except… Are you ready for a shocker?! Republicans think the states should decide by the relatively narrow margin 49-45. What does that tell us?

Primarily, it tells us that people who know they are losing a battle grab onto states rights. The argument goes like this: Sure, you godless homo huggers can have your gay-boy marriage, but leave me and mine here in our intolerant state alone! And so what we have here is the conservative movement hunkering down and trying to stop the inevitable march of progress from touching them. They’re probably hoping North Korea bombs us back to the stone age before they have to give in on one of the two issues that God really cares about. (The other is that every zygote is sacred.)

The sad thing is that the conservative clowns on the Supreme Court are most likely going to do the same thing. “Oh, this is a state issue; why are we even talking about it?” I wonder if they really think that future Americans will find this dodge compelling. Certainly, when we see some person on the TV from years ago talking about “states rights” we don’t hesitate from thinking, “Bigot!” I suspect people like John Roberts think that their faith will protect them—that people will give them a pass because they were just following their religion. Of course, so were the bigots of the civil rights era.

It has been no secret that we are heading at breakneck speed toward sexual orientation equality. What is interesting about the Quinnipiac poll is that it shows that the Republicans understand it too.

Welcome to the 21th century guys! We look forward to you catching up!

The great French director Eric Rohmer was born on this day back in 1920. And Anthony Perkins was born back 1932.

Overrated, but reasonably good writer Maya Angelou is 85. Record producer Clive Davis is 81. Hugo Weaving is 53. And David Cross and Robert Downey Jr are 49.

But the day belongs to McKinley Morganfield, or as you probably know him, Muddy Waters. He was born on this day back in 1913. Here he is doing “Got My Mojo Working,” which I think explains just about everything you need to know about why he was so important:

This song has been going through my head for days. It is a great one at least: Edwin Starr’s “War”:

What a great live version: totally kick ass band. And Starr sounds great— regrettably just a couple of years before he died.