Forget for a moment the economic debate of the past few months, over issues such as the impact of austerity or economic reforms on growth. Instead ask yourself this simple question: do you really think that an economic reform program, for which a government has no political mandate, which has been explicitly rejected in a referendum, that has been forced through by sheer political blackmail, can conceivably work?
—Wolfgang Münchau
Greece’s Brutal Creditors Have Demolished the Eurozone Project
Steve M over at No More Mister Nice Blog wrote, The Conservative Ethic: Punish the Losers. It’s a comparison of two articles by Paul Krugman: one about Jeb Bush and the idea that Americans should work more, and one about Europe’s cruel treatment of Greece. They certainly are linked. The essence of conservatism is that those with power are the right kind of people and those without it are the wrong kind of people. This is what leads to hundreds of billions of dollars given to banks without a thought but protests in the streets about helping home owners.
But I think Steve trivialized the situation a bit when he wrote, “The underdogs are supposed to do all the sacrificing, because the world is divided into the deserving and the undeserving, and the deserving shouldn’t really sacrifice at all.” Certainly, that’s true on some level, but it is just how the disease presents itself. The cause is deeper. And he got at it when he summed up the thinking of the power elite, “They think of themselves as the ones who have a genuine work ethic and who are willing to delay gratification, but in reality they insist that their gratification must proceed uninterrupted, because they deserve that.”
There are two attributes of the power elite that motive them. The first is a callousness toward others. All people have a tendency to over-honor those they are around and to mistrust those they aren’t. But the poor don’t dehumanize the rich, because our entire media and entertainment system is designed to lionize the rich. For every appearance of Montgomery Burns, there is an appearance of Undercover Boss and literally dozens of “rich people as oracles” segments on the news. And that is to say nothing of rich guy superheroes like Bat Man and Iron Man. These are the images our society has of the rich. The images the society has of the poor are of unkempt and dirty street people — usually also criminals. So it is no wonder that the rich especially can disregard them as undeserving.
The other attribute of the power elite is that they are shortsighted. That is a great irony, of course. As Steve noted, they are the ones who think they delay gratification, but they do no such thing. And the best example of this is how they fight tooth and nail against anything that will help the working class. You literally cannot help the poor without indirectly helping the rich. But you can very easily help the rich without helping the poor. Helping the poor grows the economy. The rich would be richer with more equality, but that might take a couple of quarters — even years. Can’t have that!
But it also takes us back to the first attribute of callousness. To a large extent, the rich don’t care about the absolute level of their wealth. It is the relative wealth. And that is a zero sum game. The rich can’t feel rich unless the poor are doing badly. If it came down to it, I’m sure the rich would be happier being poorer if the working class did even worse, than they would be to be wealthier if the working class were to close the gap. Of course, I don’t expect a rich person to think this in the abstract, but this is the conclusion based on how they act.
So there you have it. The rich are shortsighted and callous. It isn’t that they are necessarily horrible people — at least at first. But our system of economics and politics makes them horrible. And this is why they feel very good about themselves as they call for the lower classes to work more hours or for Greece to suffer for another decade or two.
I guess it is time for a little Political Science 101. Some conservatives are freaking out at the prospect that Donald Trump will lose the Republican primary and then go on to become an independent candidate and act as a “spoiler” in the 2016 campaign. That could certainly happen. The problem is that people are relating it to Ross Perot’s 1992 run for president. Donald Trump himself recently told Washington Examiner, “I think every single vote that went to Ross Perot came from Bush. Virtually every one of his 19 percentage points came from the Republicans. If Ross Perot didn’t run, you have never heard of Bill Clinton.” Oh those wonderful conservatives and their myth making!
The main thing for me is just that the economics predicted that Clinton would win. The economy was tanking and so the election was Clinton’s to lose. And he could have lost if he had made the election about foreign affairs or something. But he didn’t. Remember, “It’s the economy, stupid!”? So Bush was toast. I suspect that if Perot hadn’t ever entered the race, Clinton would have won by more than he did. The whole thing shines a light on one of the great Democratic myths, too: that it was all about his “Sister Souljah” moment and his conservatism. Hogwash.
But for those of us who lived through it, this conservative narrative of Ross Perot acting as a spoiler is clearly wrong. Perot did not appeal to one party. What was claimed about the Tea Party was actually true of the Perot’s Reform Party. It really did include people from the center: conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans who were very much concerned about the national debt. And that’s why the Reform Party wasn’t able to last as an important movement past Perot: the group had nothing to hang onto. (It eventually became a tiny party that nominates people almost randomly.) The Tea Party does, because it is now and always has been the base of the Republican Party.
Steve Kornacki released 21 tweets the other day that go through the history of this. It really isn’t complicated. Clinton led the polls throughout the last months of the campaign. And those polls showed that Perot supporters’ second choice candidates were evenly divided because Bush and Clinton. But even more than that, there is that odd bit during the campaign where Perot dropped out because, he claimed, people were threatening his family or something. And as the polls suggested they would, the Perot voters split about evenly for Bush and Clinton.
All this stuff about personalities in elections is fun. But it doesn’t mean much to the final vote. It certainly is true that Donald Trump would hurt the Republicans if he ran an independent campaign. He’s positioning himself as the Pat Buchanan candidate — the one who tells the base the “painful truth” that they are so right to hate minority groups. The people who would vote for him skew heavily toward the Republican Party. But as such, I doubt Trump could make the kind of go of an independent campaign that Perot did. The truth is that while the Republican base might love hearing Trump in his campaign of speaking bigotry to weakness, they know that the policies of Scott Walker would be just as good as those of Trump. So why split the bigot vote?
I have this thing about steroid use in professional sports: I don’t care. Sure, I think it is terrible that people do that to their bodies. They shouldn’t. But there is nothing very natural about professional sports. There is nothing natural about 330 pound tackles running 5 second 40-yard dashes. And then there is the whole question of drugs being a fairly vague category. Why not decide that professional athletes can’t eat more 2,000 calories per day? That makes sense to me. At least it would put an end to the physical freaks that now dominate the world of professional sports — especially football and basketball.
But what are we to make of David Frum’s accusations that Serena Williams’ unprecedented success as a tennis player is due to to steroid use? Well, that’s pretty clear: David Frum is a racist. I don’t mean that in the sense that he is likely to walk into a church and start murdering African Americans. But I also don’t mean it in the sense of everyone having racist impulses because we are human and thus tribal, and because we live in an incredibly racist society. I mean that David Frum is smart and worldly enough to check himself before publicly accusing the most iconic African American tennis player in history of cheating. And he decided not to.
This doesn’t exactly make Frum a bad person. It just makes him a clueless rich white guy. He’s so privileged that he has no clue about it. In one of his deleted tweets he brought up Mark McGwire and Lance Armstrong. I think he did that to convince himself that he isn’t a racist. That’s the thing: I’m sure that he doesn’t see himself as a racist. But the thing is that I can’t find Frum writing about McGwire and Armstrong before. I can’t even find him writing about steroids.
So what we have here is a guy who looks at Serena Williams; and it doesn’t seem quite right to him. So he jumps to steroids, rather than his own biased expectations of tennis — as understandable as they may have been. But having been caught, Frum isn’t backing down. He’s going back the McGwire and Armstrong hedge. Judd Legum explained in an update to his article:
It’s slippery. If called on the particular allegations (Frum doesn’t quite have his facts straight), he just goes to the “steroid use in tennis” narrative. But of course, his comment wasn’t about steroid use in tennis; it was about Serena Williams’ steroid use in tennis.
But apart from the racist content of the whole thing, I think Frum does himself no favor in trying to make it about steroid use in tennis. There is really only one more clear indication that one is a rich white guy without a clue than to be concerned about steroid use in professional tennis. And that is to be allowed to shift the conversation from a racist observation into a concern about the integrity of the game of tennis. That is ultimate proof that David Frum is a rich white guy.
Kevin Draper over at Deadspin reported, Wisconsin Senate Votes To Give $250 Million To Billionaires. This is in reference to the Wisconsin state senate voting to give a quarter billion dollars to build a new sports center for the Milwaukee Bucks. The owners of the team — Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens — are both billionaires. But that’s the great thing about being rich: you never have to pay for anything. Well, not much anyway. The two of them are going to throw in a total of $150 million dollars. So the actual owners will pay a whole 37.5% of the cost of their new home. And I don’t know the deal, but I assume that these guys are also getting huge tax breaks. So it is questionable whether they are paying any part of this.
Some people will claim that this is a great thing for Wisconsin to do. You know: the Bucks will bring in all kinds of money to the area. But as David Cay Johnston has noted in Free Lunch, the tax breaks and outright payments for sporting venues almost never pay for themselves. The big economic boost that is supposed to take place around the arenas, never comes. Instead, people drive to the events, spend their money at the events, and drive away. There is no spreading out — no trickle down.
What’s more, Johnston has done the calculations. It turns out that if it weren’t for taxpayers providing all the money they do for the millionaire and billionaire owners of the teams, none of the four sports leagues — baseball, basketball, football and hockey — would be profitable. We taxpayers spend $2 billion per year subsidizing all these teams. Obviously, the owners don’t need the money. They own these teams because they like it. But apparently, they don’t like it enough to pay for it. Regardless, as I said: the rich are used to not having to pay for anything.
Johnston noted something else interesting about our 43rd president. He’s a great example of how these things work, “George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow investors.” He’s talking about the time that they built a great stadium for the Texas Rangers in Arlington. One of the best ways to make money is to take a team from a crummy venue and move it to a nice one. All you have to do is get someone else to pay for it.
But the case in Wisconsin is particularly interesting. Because just a few days ago, “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a state budget that includes cuts of $250 million to the University of Wisconsin system, among other cuts to public education funding.” But this is the standard way for the modern Republican Party. Gone is any pretense of what conservatism used to mean. Now it is all about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. We’ve seen this in Kansas recently, where previous tax cuts for the rich blew a big hole in the budget. When it came time to fill in the hole, the Republicans in Kansas raised taxes on the poor.
In Wisconsin, we are seeing the same thing. Education has to be cut! So they have money to give to rich guys who own sports teams. Welcome to modern America.
On this day in 1945 — exactly 70 years ago — the Nuclear Age started with Trinity, the first nuclear detonation. It was an implosion-design plutonium device — the same kind that we would drop on Nagasaki less than a month later. It’s good to be reminded of this. The typical American believes that we must stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon because they can’t be trusted. I don’t want them to get a nuclear weapon either — but not because of concerns that they can’t be trusted. But that is what Americans think: the Iranians are “crazy” and would give nuclear weapons away to terrorists.
But supposedly one country that can be trusted is the United States of America. Yet we are the only country that has used a nuclear weapon — and we’ve done it twice. I’ve discussed this before, Stalin, Not the Bomb, Defeated Japan. What we did was kill well over 100,000 Japanese civilians. And we did not do it to protect ourselves or to defeat Japan. We did it to send the Soviet Union a message.
As evil as terrorism is, those who engage in it at least think that they are righting some wrong. When we dropped the nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were not doing that. Our leaders very calmly decided that it was fine to kill so many fellow human beings in the name of “flipping the bird” to the Russians. And as it was, it only took four years for the Soviets to get their own bomb. If the US hadn’t dropped those bombs, Stalin likely wouldn’t have felt it so pressing to get the bomb for himself.
I understand why we decided to get the bomb. It was thought that the Nazis would get it and win the war. It’s hard not to sympathize with that thinking. So I don’t have such a problem with the Manhattan Project or even with Trinity. But we didn’t have to use the bomb on fellow humans. Sadly, the leadership of the United States thought exactly the opposite. And for the worst possible reasons.
Welcome to the Nuclear Age, 70 years ago today.
There is a huge misconception, pushed equally by odd bedfellows in the financial community and Obama supporters, that Eric Holder didn’t send anyone from Wall Street to jail because “no one broke any laws.”
This preposterous meme grew out of something Barack Obama said on 60 Minutes. Here are the president’s exact words:
“Some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street — in some cases some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street — wasn’t illegal.”
Obama, a brilliant lawyer and wordsmith, was not saying that all of the behavior leading to the crash was legal. He merely said that some of the worst behavior wasn’t illegal. Which is true. Meaningless, but true.
Of course, some of the worst behavior was very illegal. This is confirmed in the fact that Holder extracted billions of dollars in settlement monies and even, in a few cases, obtained guilty pleas for crimes like fraud, manipulation, bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion.
—Matt Taibbi
Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
So a deal has been reached between Iran and the west. And I’m thrilled. For one thing, I’m not afraid of Iran. As a country, it has shown itself to be reasonable. And the people of Iran are generally quite pro-American. I’ve long felt that we should be engaged with Iran. As it is, we act like a jilted lover — just can’t get over that 1979 revolution. And we refuse to take any responsibility for creating it. You know, if we actually did push democracy overseas — if we had held the Shah in line and made him create a more just country — the revolution probably never would have taken place. Khomeini could have died in obscurity in France.
But what do my fellow Americans think? Well, mostly, they think, “What?! A deal, you say?” They just aren’t plugged in. They don’t especially care. The only people who really care are those who are plugged into conservative media. They’ve been fully manipulated into thinking that this is the worst thing in the world. So this evening, I was treated to a local news segment on it that really highlighted the people who were angry about the deal. Now each and every one of them was angry for the same reason. As the Merovingian would say, “They were told to be angry and they obeyed.” If a Republican were in office, they would think this was a good deal.
I don’t really care what Americans think. Similarly, I don’t care what Benjamin Netanyahu has to say. P M Carpenter gave Matt Yglesias a little ribbing because he posted one of Netanyahu’s tweets in Hebrew. But how could it possibly matter? We all know exactly what he had to say: this is the worst thing ever; Armagedeon; betrayal; shame shame shame; and so on. Who cares? Clearly Netanyahu has incentives that have nothing to do with the good of the world, the US, or even Israel.
But I am interested in what the Iranians think of this deal. So I was pleased to see that Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain over at The Intercept wrote, Iranians’ View of the Nuclear Deal: Optimistic, With Significant Caveats. It’s not surprising that the Iranians would be pleased with the deal: like people everywhere in the world, they care about economics. This is a deal that will both improve their economy and make war less likely. What’s not to like?
The people in Iran who are against the deal are very interesting: “fundamental Islamists who are now the only real hard-core nationalists in the country.” Other than the “Islamists” in that, the same could be said of the US: “fundamental Christians who are now the only real hard-core nationalists in the country.” That’s one of the things that has been so amazing to watch since 9/11: the two sides hate each other because they are so much alike. Or perhaps I should say the three sides, because the Israelis are the same.
What’s sad, is that Americans don’t know this. And that’s because our “neutral” press thinks that the right way to balance Netanyahu is to quote Lindsey Graham.
It seems that the conservatives have done another one of the undercover videos that we so love from James O’Keefe. And here we have the same thing with questionable edits. But the main thing is that it shows Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood talking about selling fetal body parts from abortions.
Snopes gives the claim a rating of “undetermined” because they are careful and lack much of a backbone. But the article is pretty damning. To begin with, it notes that even in the full length video, it isn’t clear what Nucatola is talking about. But this should tell you everything you need to know, “Nucatola states a price of ‘$30 to $100’…” For body parts?! No wonder Planned Parenthood is in so much trouble: they clearly aren’t good at business if they are going to sell off body parts at this price.
Planned Parenthood has made clear what’s going on in a statement:
So what’s with the money? Healthcare providers charge for the storage and transportation of the material. That’s why Nucatola said, “It has to do with space issues, are you sending someone there who is doing everything, or is their staff, what exactly are they going to do, is there shipping involved or are you coming to pick it up.” And certainly the people who have produced this undercover “sting” know this. Back in 2003, Planned Parenthood went through the same thing — being accused of selling body parts.
After Planned Parenthood pointed this out, the group (laughably calling itself “Center for Medical Progress”) responded more or less triumphantly. They claimed that the reproductive healthcare group had admitted to this heinous act of selling body parts. This is pretty typical of conservatives. Accuse an enemy of doing something that is completely standard and ethical, and pretend that it is a big deal. And it is: to conservative outlets. The Federalist reported, BLACKOUT: Media Go Dark on Planned Parenthood Organ Trafficking. Yes, if only the mainstream press would credulously repeat every conservative hoax, the world would be so much better! (Note: the mainstream press has on many occasions done exactly that.)
So what is this Center for Medical Progress? Well, it seems to have only been in existence for about two months. It is the brainchild of David Daleiden, an anti-choice activist. And Daleiden is — Wait for it! — a college buddy of James O’Keefe. So it’s the same old thing. Throw a bunch of tape together and hope that you can make the nation far worse off before anyone notices that it was a total scam. Will it work in this case? I don’t know. I thought International Business Times did a good job with the subject, Who Is Deborah Nucatola? 5 Things To Know After Planned Parenthood Director Is Accused Of Selling Baby Body Parts. But I’m a bit concerned about just how seriously The Washington Post took it, Undercover Video Shows Planned Parenthood Official Discussing Fetal Organs Used for Research. The fact that anyone is even talking about it is pretty bad. How long will these chicanery artists be given a fair hearing?
H/T: Paul Bibeau is a comedic genius with a bit of a political bent. He is, for example, the guy who brought us the hilarious Ayn Rand and L Ron Hubbard short stories. I don’t go to him for politics, however. But the other day he brought my attention to this, Snopes Thinks That Planned Parenthood Black-Market-Baby-Parts-Story Might Be Bullshit.
On this day in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was rediscovered. It contained more or less the same text in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the ancient Egyptian script language Demotic, and ancient Greek. It was a big deal, because no one at that time could read hieroglyphs. So it was important in the rediscovery of that language.
Written in 196 BC, it established the cult of the King Ptolemy V for all the world. He was in his ninth year as king — a position he took at the age of five. Apparently, his father died. To avoid any problems, his father’s favorites killed his mother and more or less took control with Ptolemy V as a puppet. But they too were soon murdered. You know how these things go.
The Rosetta Stone was original displayed in a temple to celebrate Ptolemy’s divinity, I assume. It was later used as a building material for Fort Julien, which was built in the 15th century. But in 1799, the French found themselves in control of the fort. Pierre-François Bouchard was an engineer with the French Army, and he was put in charge of rebuilding the fort. Lucky for us that he was. When the stone was found, he immediately saw it for the important artifact that it was. And he saved it.
Eventually Fort Julien was taken by the English in 1800. They took the Rosetta Stone back home and it has been there ever since. Happy anniversary Rosetta Stone!
I am so done with the Confederate flag. As you all should know, I’ve been complaining about it for years. It is not just because it was retrieved from the dustbin of history for specifically racist reasons. It was the flag of treason. Yet we did not punish the south for this horrible act of treason. We looked forward, but there are certain people in the south who have done nothing but look back. So I’m glad that there is a more concerted effort to get rid of it. But I hadn’t figured that I would be writing about it again — at least not so soon.
But this is just too amazing a story not to pass along. David Edwards over at Raw Story wrote, Man Calls Cops After Mostly Black Town “Hurts” His Feelings by Disrespecting Confederate Flag Parade. The man in question is Chris Oliver. He, his wife Angela, and about 100 other people in Virginia took part in a Confederate flag “parade.” Basically, they outfitted their cars with big Confederate flags and drove around. The problem is that they drove through Petersburg, a majority African American town. And not surprisingly, the people of Petersburg did not appreciate this display of “southern pride.”
According to Oliver, “There was people protesting, throwing bottles, hit my truck, hit numerous other vehicles, people yelling, yelling racial slurs.” His wife noted that they had brought their Confederate flags to Petersburg as a “peaceful ride.” And the result? “People throwing bottles at our vehicles, our property that we worked for.” Apparently, the local police weren’t too keen to help when Oliver went to the police. After all, a few plastic bottles thrown and some unkind words? The Olivers come off as pathetic. But I suspect in their minds, this is just what “those people” are always doing. So it makes sense.
But that’s not the worst of it. Oliver said, “The racial slurs are really what hurt me. You know, it’s uncalled for. There’s no need for that in today’s society.” Yes, can’t we all just get along? I mean, there these people were just minding their own business. Just taking a flag with a long history of racial oppression, and parading it through a town that is overwhelmingly populated with African Americans. What’s the big deal? Haven’t the people of Petersburg heard of a little thing called southern hospitality?
I can only assume that the Olivers are in earnest — that they really don’t see that they’ve done anything offensive. If that’s the case, this is an amazing example of white privilege. If the situation were reversed, certainly they could see it. It really doesn’t matter what the Confederate flag represents to fans of The Dukes of Hazard, to the people of Petersburg, it represents a long history of slavery, lynching, and oppression. But okay, maybe the Olivers didn’t know that when they started their parade. But they certainly should have known it afterward. And they should be ashamed.
Former governor Jeb Bush’s announcement this week that he thinks people should work more hours puts him in direct opposition to the two leading contenders on the Democratic side — both of whom are pushing proposals that will allow people to work less. This could mean that 2016 will be an election in which work hours play a central role…
The leading Democratic contenders are proposing policies to bring the US more in line with the rest of the world’s work weeks. Secretary Clinton indicated that she will support paid family leave and paid sick days, although she has not yet produced specific proposals. Senator Bernie Sanders, the other leading contender, also supports paid family leave and paid sick days, and he recently offered a proposal that would guarantee all workers two weeks per year of paid vacation. That might seem like small change compared to the five to six weeks a year that is now standard in Europe, but it would be a huge gain for tens of millions of workers.
There is a long way yet before the parties select their nominees, but if the general election ends up being a contest between Jeb Bush and either Clinton or Sanders, it will present the country’s workers with an unusually clear choice. We will have one candidate who wants to ensure that people can work less but keep the same standard of living, and another who wants people to work more hours and retire later for the good of the country’s economy — and the latter candidate is the one who doesn’t identify as a socialist.
—Dean Baker
Jeb Bush Wants Us to Work More for the Collective Good. Who’s the Socialist Now?