MSN Money sends us to an article telling us about 5 Beers Americans Aren’t Drinking. That’s the kind of title that is hard to resist—at least if you are a beer drinker, or even more, a beer snob. Which I am.

According to the article, sales of “traditional, full-calorie beers” are declining. A lot. In 5 years, Budweiser has sold 7 million barrels less per year in the United States. How much is that? Anheuser-Busch (the brewer of Budweiser) produced 125 million barrels in 2007—that is all brands for all the world.

Why would these beers be dropping in sales? The article doesn’t actually say. But I think I know. People who want to drink a real beer have decided to, you know, drink a real beer. Budweiser is about as expensive as good beer. So there really is no reason to drink a watery, high calorie beer when you could drink a beer you can sink your teeth into. Maybe Pete’s Wicked Ale or Arrogant Bastard. Or if you are on the other side of the divide, you could drink Bud Light or whatever.

You can see this in the top five beers Americans no longer drink:

1. Michelob
2. Michelob Light
3. Budweiser Select
4. Milwaukee’s Best
5. Old Milwaukee

I know, two of those are light beers, which kind of goes again the narative of the article. I assume it is because there are just too many light beer brands on the market. Of the remaining beers, one isn’t bad: Michelob. I actually used to buy Michelob Dark. But I haven’t drunk even it since I was in graduate school.

Anyway, I think this shows that the beer market has divided itself between people who want to drink beer and people who are just too embarrassed to order a wine cooler. But I’m feeling generous tonight. Mr. President, if you’re reading this, it’s okay to ask for what you really want. That Bud Light isn’t fooling anyone.

Afterword

I’m not to fond of cops, but at that beer summit, the only one who had a decent beer was Crowley, who had a Blue Moon.

Also: Lowenbrau is a decent beer and they had a great ad campaign long before I knew that:

Let us give a little thought to Jack Lew. Obama has nominated him to replace Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. The Republicans are afraid—very afraid. How can Obama choose Jack Lew?!

And he is a scary guy, I can tell you that. Last year, Eric Cantor told Politico, “No one was more prepared and more in tune with the numbers than Jack Lew.” This was in an article titled, Jack Lew: A Liberal GOP Says It Trusts. So you know: this is Freddy Krueger scary. No. Wait. Not Freddy Krueger scary; Kermit the Frog scary. When it comes to Obama nominees, it doesn’t take much to scare the Republicans.

Jonathan Bernstein over at The Plum Line tells us that Jeff Sessions (Fucktard from Alabama) is against Lew becoming Treasury Secretary. But not because Lew is a drunk or a philanderer. No, Sessions thinks he doesn’t have the “gavitas” for the job. What this means is just that he’s against him because that’s what you do to all the nominations of a Democratic president—especialla un oo’s a colored. Bernstein is nicer, “Or, as Kevin Drum figures, it’s just that Lew insists on using real math during budget negotiations.” That’s even worse: a edacated colored nominee.

Bernstein argues that the real problem is that congressional Republicans have abandoned norms. Until Obama we elected, it was accepted that the president should be allowed to have the cabinet that he chose. But no longer. This is what I call the Republicans becoming a revolutionary party. As I wrote before:

I’m not sure what we are to do about this other than try to get out the vote and generally make these people pay for their reactionary governing. For the time being we pretty much have to accept this madness and the fact that it is based on nothing except obstruction for the sake of obstruction.

Massimo Calabresi over at Time has a different take. His article is chalked full of apologetics, but he does paint a compelling picture of Lew. I don’t think the right’s opposition to him is based upon facts, but Lew is a progressive. I think that conservatives could find anyone this side of Hitler and Stalin’s satanic love child wanting. But you can see how a man like this would be poison to them:

Bottom line: we should support Lew for Treasury Secretary.

Afterword

It is widely know by people who really need to get a hobby that Jack Lew has an unusual signature made up primarily of circles. Yahoo! was nice enough to create an app that signs any name like he would. Here are a few that I did.

Okay. Okay. So Lew is a little weird…

Update (12 January 2012 7:53 am)

For a more critical take on Lew, see 12 Questions for Mr. Lew.

Eduardo Porter is an economics writer for the New York Times. He wrote an amazing article on Tuesday, Health Care and Profits, a Poor Mix. Despite the title, it is not only about healthcare. It is more about how the United States has embraced the idea that markets work “magic” and if you want to reduce the cost of a government service: privatize it!

This is a religious believe on the right. And it isn’t confined to the supposed free market. Paul Ryan’s big idea for Medicaid is to “block grant” it. What this means is just to shove some money at the states and let them deal with it. Now I want to be clear: the intention is to destroy such programs. But the argument that is made (because “fuck the poor” is not a very compelling argument) is that the states will “experiment” and find innovative ways to make healthcare (or whatever) cheaper. It doesn’t work. Not only is there no evidence that states are more effective than the the federal government, business is also not more effective.

What Porter shows is our experience over the last 25 years has shown just the opposite:

Indeed, the use of HMOs and other private care for Medicare has only increased costs. But it is even worse than the costs would indicate. Porter describes a study of tranquilizer use at for-profit and nonprofit hospitals. Doses given at the for-profit hospitals were four times as high. This was because the for-profit hospitals cut staff to the bone and it is easiest to manage patients who are asleep most of the time.

Let’s think about this. We get worse healthcare for more money via the private healthcare systems. We get corruption and abuse of the poor with our private bail bond system. We get an unstable economic system and higher income inequality because of our under-regulated banks. Yet conservatives are taken seriously everywhere spouting policies that have clearly failed. In fact, much of the “liberal” Democratic Party is devoted to these same failed policies.

To do a riff on Brad DeLong’s line: why oh why can’t we have a better government?

H/T Dean Baker

There is a lot of talk about minting platinum coins. And an increasing amount of talk about the Treasury issuing IOUs (Krugman calls them Moral Obligation Coupons). Jonathan Chait gives a good overview of these ideas. He notes that the coin option solves the debt ceiling issue forever, but it will surely cause the Republicans to react in an even crazier way. (I’m not sure we would notice—they’re already negligibly close to the asymptote.) The IOUs only solve the problem temporarily, but they have advantages like not seeming like such an outrageous thing as the coin and putting pressure on the Republicans from the business community.

I haven’t written at all about these potential solutions to the Debt Ceiling crisis because I can’t get beyond the fact that this is a non-issue and should be treated as such. Obama’s initial plan that he laid out in early December at the Business Roundtable is what we should be doing. We don’t negotiate with terrorist and they are a hell of a lot more rational than the Republican Party. Why are we negotiating with the House Republicans? Unfortunately, since those fine words at the Roundtable, Obama has shown that he is still 50 shades of weakness.

Noam Scheiber provides more evidence of this in The New Republic, writing, “It suggested that even if Obama plays his cards exceedingly well in the run-up to the debt-limit showdown, he could still come away with a worse deal than he deserves because of his willingness to make concessions in the closing moments.” He explains how the White House got a worse Fiscal Cliff deal by screwing Harry Reid. Read the article for the whole story—it is really interesting. Scheiber sums up:

And that leads us to today where the Republicans have every reason in the world to think that Obama will blink. And that leads either to an economic catastrophe or Obama taking a bad deal. Well, bad for the American people. Based on the last four years, I would say that Obama is itching to cut Social Security and Medicare. That would cement him legacy as a Very Serious Person. And you know the definition of a VSP: someone who does no good at all by inflicting large amounts of pain on the poor. You know: a dick.

But whether Obama is a dick or just an incompetent (or both), it is all the same in the end. Right now, the American economy is on the verge of a decent recovery. This stuff—the Republican hostage taking and Obama’s anemic response to it—really does hurt us.

Update (10 January 2013 11:39 am)

Ezra Klein says we shouldn’t go with the platinum coin option. I agree:

I found this on Joey deVilla. It was reportedly found by a waiter. I’m inclined to think that it is the real deal because it includes the bit about Prop 30 in California.

What I think it most interesting is how petty this is. All those years of reading Shakespeare warped my mind into thinking that the wealthy ought to be above this. Of course, all my experience in life indicates that the rich are fairly miserly. When they do give, they tend to be ostentatious about it.

Think about this for a moment. The federal income tax is only going up 4.6 percentage points on income over $450,000. The Prop 30 tax is going up roughly 1 percentage point on income over a quarter million. This is no justification for not tipping, because a rich person’s income devoted to eating certainly is included in the income that is not taxed more. Additionally, the total tax rate hike on this upper income only goes up by about 6%. This is much less than the 15% minimum expected tip.

There is another side to this, of course. If you really were limiting your expenses, you would not stop tipping. You would eat at cheaper restaurants. Or eat out less. But let us not forget that it is very likely that this card wasn’t left by a rich person at all. It was just as likely left by a conservative trying to make a point. You know the kind: Joe the Plumber, who was so concerned about paying taxes on income he had never come close to making.

Whoever left this card is just being a dick. And I even tend to think that he (You just know it’s a guy, right?) will soon get over it. Then he’ll go back to tipping. But I tend to think he is a pretty bad tipper anyway. Most people tip well because they want to be liked. People who want to be liked try not to be dicks; they don’t go out of their way to be one.

Afterword

Note also the, “I wish it didn’t have to be this way for both of us.” This is definitely a dick way of saying, “I know it is because of poor losers like you that my taxes went up!”

I took my brother to the movies today. Normally, that would lead to another Marxist film review. But because of a scheduling conflict, we were forced to miss Jack Reacher and instead see Parental Guidance. Actually, this is my kind of movie: I really like sentimental comedies. And it was okay—pretty much exactly what you expect of a film like that.

The plot is typical: little known family member comes to babysit. Hilarity ensues. And it ends with everyone learning deep lessons about acceptance and forgiveness and the importance of the shot heard ’round the world. The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!

Two things struck me about the film. The first comes out of my generally mediocre opinion of Billy Crystal. Note: mediocre, not bad. But he is impressive in this film. He has more onscreen charisma than the rest of the cast combined. Without him, the film would be hopeless. And that leads us the second thing that struck me.

Don’t people rewrite scripts anymore?! The first act and even the beginning of the second act are fairly strong. Or at least, strong for this kind of very predicable family fare. But then it wanders off in a sort of dramatic random walk. There is a subplot where Artie (Crystal) is trying to get a new job. It has almost nothing to do with the main plot and it is never resolved. The main plot is no more robust, except that it does manage to provide compelling but much too hasty resolutions. Above all, from the second act on, the film has no dramatic momentum. Nothing pulls the viewer through the film except the thought of another scene with Crystal.

And yet, the film is fairly amusing. It is touching. It has some genuinely moving moments. In other words, it is a typical professionally produced Hollywood film. It just goes to show that if you shove enough talent at a production, you can make it work well enough. But they spent $25 million dollars on this film. They could have divided up that money 50 times, given it to independent filmmakers, and ended up with at least 25 films that were more enjoyable.

Afterword

There are three kids in the film, each with a problem. The youngest is Barker who seems okay to me except that he has an imaginary kangaroo. It is run over by a car. In my experience, imaginary friends fade away. Sudden, violent death probably doesn’t bode well for Barker’s teen years.

The middle child is Turner. He stutters. Somehow he overcomes this by memorizing a speech. Speech therapists are really amazing. Stuttering is not something you get over by becoming and actor. Just ask any actor who stutters, such as Austin Pendleton.

Harper is the oldest. She is too focused on achievement. She is trying to get into a music school with her violin playing. Twelve year olds of any ability whatsoever play the violin very well. So well, in fact, that most listeners could not differentiate them from Itzhak Perlman. Harper plays the violin about as well as I do. And I don’t play the violin. She is probably the least developed character in a movie of stereotypes.

The fact is this—anyone paying careful attention could have told you that the Tea Party was simply the old far right dressed up in funny new clothing. Its numbers historically hover between one-fifth and one-third of all voters depending on the times. These were the people who thought President George W. Bush was still doing a bang-up job at the end of his catastrophic presidency. Hence, pretty much nothing can make them rethink what they believe they know to be true.

Interestingly, the opposite dynamic appears to be at work in the coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is far more popular with the public than with the media. Even before its current slide in popularity, the Tea Party was never even remotely as popular as the Occupy Wall Street movement was when it began and remains today. As CAP’s Ruy Teixeira demonstrated back in October, the movement’s favorability rating was already “twice as high as that of the conservative Tea Party movement.” Teixeira noted that 54 percent of the public, according to a Time/Abt SRBI poll, said they were “favorable to the movement that has been protesting policies that ‘favor the rich, the government’s bank bailout, and the influence of money in our political system.'”

—Eric Alterman
Why Do the Mainstream Media Like the Tea Party More Than Occupy Wall Street?

Yesterday, I listened to Michael Krasny’s excellent Forum show. It featured a debate between Glenn Greenwald and Mark Bowden on the issue of torture, especially as it applies to the appointment of John Brennan as CIA Director and the movie Zero Dark Thirty. It was interesting. Greenwald really went after Bowden. He seems to have no patience with even the smallest amount of torture apologetics. And I think he’s right.

Just the same, I can see why Bowden gets a bit angry. In general, Bowden’s position on torture is pretty enlightened—at least compared to that of most Americans. He believes that we should not do it. The problems come up when he does the old John Yoo maneuver of defining torture away. “Of course, I’m against torture! But bamboo shoots forced under the fingernails isn’t torture!” Not that bad, but still.

Mark Bowden repeated one thing that sounds reasonable. He said that it was wrong to say that torture is never effective because clearly it sometimes is. I accept this. The problem is how this bit of information is presented. As we know from economics, choices have opportunity costs associated with them. If you go to see Bruce Springsteen, there is an opportunity cost of missing the Pink Floyd concert that is at the same time. So the question is not whether torture sometimes provides good information. The question is does the torturing provide more information than other options like rapport building. And that, I think, is where the “torture is effective” argument breaks down.

I recommend listening to the show. It is a good primer on these issues:

And check out Greenwald’s article on the John Brennan nomination at the New York Times, Nomination Ignores War Crimes.

Ah, incentives! Economists love them, people respond to them, and politicians fuck them up. MSNBC is reporting that Wendy’s and Taco Bell franchises are cutting work weeks down to 28 hours to avoid penalties for not providing healthcare. This is understandable, of course. These are just business decisions. And they are not new.

Although I do not think that this was part of the thinking, ACA is becoming part of the corporate welfare system. By reducing work hours, these companies manage to make healthcare the government’s problem. But it is worse than this because it is likely to create a chain reaction. This is because it will affect the behavior of what we normally think of as good companies: the ones who will provide healthcare anyway. If their competitors manage to provide the same benefits (healthcare) without paying for it, these good companies will be at a distinct disadvantage. And thus, they are likely to stop providing the benefits.

Matt Yglesias talks about this today. And his take is that this eventually leads to a society in which everyone gets their healthcare through the government exchanges. In general, that’s true. But it also does this by reducing everyone’s work week down to below 30 hours. That might not be such a bad thing. After all, Americans work too much. What’s more, that is an easy way to get to full employment. But it doesn’t seem like the right way to achieve this goal. I think it would have been better to go with a single payer healthcare system and let people decide for themselves how much they want to work.

Regardless, mark Wendy’s and Taco Bell on your list of asshole companies to avoid.

First they came with their Social Security,
and I didn’t speak out because it seemed like it would be good for the old and the economy too—a win-win.

Then they came with healthcare for all, and there was only the crazies to complain because sadly they had not yet come with mental healthcare for all.

—with great apologies to Martin Niemoller
and grateful inspiration from Alex Jones