Living here in the future ghost state of California, I have a special fascination with water. But I’m hardly alone. It’s interesting to watch the local news and see people upset that it is not going to rain. People here are far past being concerned about their weekend plans. As our drought drags on, people see it as more and more of an existential threat. And while I’m pleased that people really are taking the situation seriously, fear is not the best of motivators. It tends to act as a cancer, and so it isn’t surprising that we are seeing people use the current crisis for some nefarious ends.

This last week, Kate Linthicum reported, Group says California Immigration Policies Contributed to Drought. It seems that a group called Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS — get it?!) is demagoguing the issue real good. They’ve produced a series of commercials. In one, there is a whiny little boy who asks, “If Californians are having fewer children, why is it so crowded?” It continues on with the boy asking other questions including, “Why isn’t there enough water?” A man in voice-over explains, “Over 98% of California’s population growth is from immigration. Let’s slow immigration and save some of California for tomorrow.” Meanwhile, the little boy looks dejectedly into the camera.

What’s amazing about this commercial is that it could have run in the 1930s. Now the subtext is, “Let’s get the spicks!” But in the 1930s, it would have been, “Let’s get the Okies!” Linthicum reported that earlier this month, the group asked its Facebook followers to “like” the statement that “California’s drought could have been prevented with responsible immigration policies and limited population growth.” And that is, you know, totally crazy in addition to be bigoted and generally evil. Even if no humans lived in California, it would still be going through its worst drought on record. What’s more, only 10% of California water use is from urban use. So the CAPS claim is just as wrong as it could possibly be.

Michael Hiltzik provided some great data about water use in California. It turns out that per capita water use among urban residents is way down: from 232 gallons per day in 1995 to 178 in 2010. That doesn’t even include the current drought, so I assume that number is even lower today. But even more amazing is that California’s total water use — with a huge increase in population and agricultural productivity — has actually gone down in an absolute sense: from 35 billion gallons per day in 1990 to 31 billion in 2010. That actually shocks me; I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Linthicum quoted one expert who noted that if Californians actually care about the drought, they should be campaigning against lawns, not immigrants. Hiltzik put it well:

But of course, CAPS is most definitely not interested in the drought. The group has been around since 1986. It’s like Matt Yglesias’s analogy about Quakers wanting to balance the budget with military cuts: CAPS is just using drought to push their real issue. And their issue is the same one that Californians have had for decades: I’ve got mine so stay away. It’s sad. But it has nothing to do with environmentalism.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the mythology of American policing and how it allows our criminal justice system to stay so messed up. And over at Vox, Redditt Hudson wrote an article that touches on this issue, I’m a Black Ex-Cop, and This Is the Real Truth About Race and Policing. He worked for five years for the St Louis Police Department, and since then, he seems to work in criminal justice reform. So he’s not exactly your typical police officer. But still, he’s been in the field. And I think he has a good take on American policing. In particular, he seems to be able to distinguish between the reality and the myth of the police. And that is refreshing indeed.

Fundamentally, I think it is the mythology of policing that is so dangerous. It is what allows police to think that they live in a world that is especially dangerous. And that leads to officers like Michael Brelo to jump up on the hood of a car and fire 15 more shots — past the 122 already fired — at an unarmed couple in their car. And it is what leads to judges thinking the whole thing was a-okay. Because, you know, Brelo was “fearing for his life.” This isn’t a story of the real world: a civil servant doing a (at worst) modestly dangerous job. This is a story of Odysseus struggling to make his way in a world of the Sirens and Cyclops.

The standard line whenever a police officer does something unconscionable is, “While the vast majority of police officers are dedicated professionals, this officer blah, blah, blah…” Every time we talk about misbehavior of an officer, we are expected to preface it with this disclaimer. But Hudson’s accounting sounds far more reasonable. No, it isn’t the “vast majority” of police officers. It is instead:

Clearly, this isn’t based upon a study. It is just Hudson’s impression. But regardless what the number are, this is the makeup. There are a relatively small number of “good” and “bad” officers and then there are a whole bunch in the middle that go with the flow. This is why certain departments become hotbeds of racism and why a strong administrative effort to clean up a department really can work. But if you asked me, I would say that it is more like 5% of the officers who will always do the right thing. Let’s call them the Eagle Scouts. Clearly, the probability distribution of police officers abusing their power will be heavily tilted away from the Eagle Scouts — that is, there are more “bad” than “good” officers.

Another thing that Hudson noted is that racism against African Americans is not just something that white officers do. He sees the problem as being fundamentally one of abuse of authority. So the racism is systemic: it is acceptable to abuse black and brown people. So officers, regardless of what race they identify with, will abuse black and brown people because they know they can get away with that. They know they can’t go out and abuse students at Stanford.

How the mythology plays into this is in how it allows the officers in that big middle group to justify abusing their power — although it is probably a potent justification for the people who were attracted to police work because of the power. I’m sure that the officers who killed Freddie Gray thought that somehow what they were doing was justified because they have such dangerous jobs and because all the world is evil and all that other garbage that we allow them to go on thinking.

I remember something that Jim Hogshire said in his excellent book, You Are Going to Prison. He was talking about prison rape and how it was accepted by the prison authorities — part of the mechanism of control. He noted that if a warden wanted prison rape stopped today it would stop today. Well, that’s what I think about police brutality. The reason it continues on is because of us. We don’t want to give up our mythology of policing. Maybe it would help if we just got explicit about it, “While most police officers are demigods who exist in a dangerous but magical world…”

See also: Most Dangerous Jobs.

Ian Millhiser wrote a great take-down of Charles Murray’s new book, By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission with the blunt title, Jeb Bush’s Favorite Author Rejects Democracy, Says the Hyper-Rich Should Seize Power. It comes with a great big picture of King George III. Because that is, in effect, what Murray is arguing for. Basically: democracy isn’t going to bring about the great libertarian utopia that Murray wants. (That’s because it is an extremely unpopular ideology.) “Murray, in other words, would rather transfer much of our sovereign nation’s power to govern itself to a single privileged individual than continue to live under the government America’s voters have chosen.” Kind of frightening that this guy is considered one of the great American conservative thinkers.

Millhiser focused a lot of attention on Murray’s misuse of James Madison to make his case. According to Murray, Madison didn’t believe in the expansive interpretation of the Constitution. That’s a questionable statement. Any time people make arguments based upon what various founding fathers did or didn’t think, we are getting into very dangerous territory. For one thing, most of the founding fathers weren’t wonderful people. For another: they lived in a completely different time with radically different needs. But when it comes specifically to Madison, he was a pretty practical guy whose opinions changed over time.

What I’m struck with is that the supposedly learned Charles Murray seems stuck with the Constitution as it existed in 1788 — that’s 227 years ago for those of you following along at home. The Constitution was set up so that it could be changed over time. This is something that people like Murray always seem to forget. They also seem to mistake the Constitution for the Articles of Confederacy. The whole point of the Constitution was to make the United States a practical possibility. The Articles of Confederacy were unworkable. And much of the original Constitution has needed to be shed because it too was unworkable.

And that brings us to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That was basically what turned Charles Murray’s beloved “Constitution” in the modern Constitution — greatly expanding the federal government and limiting the rights of the states. That’s because, oh I don’t know, we had just fought the Civil War over the issue of what states seemed to think were their rights. Murray claims that all that is wrong with modern America stems from the 1937 decision finding Social Security constitutional, Helvering v Davis. But what he really wants is a repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment where the federal government is neutered.

Millhiser concluded pretty much what I did a couple of weeks ago, Charles Murray Finally Realizes He Isn’t Winning. He noted the general change in the conservative outlook on politics, “When President Ronald Reagan was in office, he spoke with the confidence of a man who believed that the American people were on his side.” Conservatives sure don’t think that anymore. And here is the great big conservative “thinker” whining about how democracy can’t possibly help them to attain their goals.

Ultimately, Murray is calling for the decimation of the law itself. Of course, he is quick to add that his approach would only be used against laws that are invalid. But invalid according to whom? That’s a question that Murray doesn’t seem to grapple with, but the answer is obvious enough: the billionaires who fund his little project. So he may think that doing this will lead us back to the One True Way of (his version) of James Madison. But it leads further back than that: to King George III. This is the conservative goal. But it has always been — from Edmund Burke to Charles Murray.

According to Peter Wehner, the Democratic Party has moved far to the left while the Republicans have stayed pretty much where they were. The New York Times gave him a thousand words to make a shockingly disingenuous case for his claim, Have Democrats Pulled Too Far Left? But that title gives entirely the wrong impression, because it is not a question. Wehner is convinced of it. And by cherry picking issues and creatively starting the clock at the presidency of Bill Clinton, he sounds sorta reasonable. The problem is that his argument would only be convincing to readers of The Wall Street Journal editorial page — because they already believe such nonsense.

Wehner’s main argument is that the Democratic Party has moved back to being as liberal as it was before Clinton. This is supposed to be some terrible thing, because one of the things that all conservatives know is that the Democrats lost three presidential elections (1980, 1984, and 1988) because it was too liberal. As I’ve discussed to the point of exhaustion: this narrative is wrong. The Democrats lost those elections because the political science fundamentals were in the Republicans’ favor: the economy was bad in 1980 and then good in 1984 and 1988. What’s more, Clinton won in 1992 because the economy was bad, not because he was conservative and had a “Sister Souljah moment.”

But is the modern Democratic Party more liberal than it was under Bill Clinton? In some ways it is. But this isn’t because of some great lurch to the left. It is because times and evidence have changed. Wehner pointed out that the Democrats have turned against Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies. Yep. That’s because they have been terrible for the nation. Also: Clinton has turned against them. Democrats have also turned against Bill Clinton’s end of welfare as we have known it. Again: that’s one that has long been shown to be a failure and only ever looked like it worked because we were in the middle of a stock bubble created economic boom. In addition, you can add Obama being more liberal on things like gay rights, where the entire country has moved left. Finally, Clinton did not make as big a deal of global warming as Obama does — I wonder why! But that’s the extent to which Obama is more liberal than Clinton.

Wehner also noted that Clinton lowered the capital gains rate and Obama raised it. Yes, but Clinton lowered it to 20% and Obama raised it to 20%. Nothing is said of the fact that Clinton raised the top federal income tax rate from 28% all the way up to 39.6%. Obama only allowed it to return from 35% back up to 39.6% — while allowing all the lower income tax brackets to stay lower than they were under Clinton. And then, Wehner noted that Obama created Obamacare. Fair enough. But Clinton tried to create the even more liberal Hillarycare — and failed. So how is it that Obama is more liberal than Clinton?

And then, as though Wehner can’t write so much as transmit his conservative id onto paper, he switched his discussion to the recent UK elections. According to him, the Labour Party lost because it “ran hard to the left.” Again, this is the kind of nonsense that is believed only by those who get their “news” from The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Labour Party ran a decidedly centrist campaign, promising (very much like Democrats in the US) to be Conservative Lite. Wehner also mentioned that the election gave the Conservative Party its first outright majority since 1992. Yes, but with 36% of the vote — one of those oddities of supposedly democratic political systems.

As for how far to the right the Republicans have moved: he’s not even right on that account. He starts the clock at Clinton, so basically the big move right had already happened. But even still, as recently as 2008, the Republicans wanted to do something about global warming. As recently as 2006 they wanted to do something about immigration. On the issue of abortion, the Republicans have largely become absolutists, even while claiming that Obama’s position has somehow moved left. Republicans are now for giving more money to farmers and less food to poor children. Wehner’s entire argument is based on a very selective reading of history. It’s shocking that this guy has a job.

What comes across loud and clear in Wehner’s article, however, is his desperation. Anytime a conservative comes out in public trying to save liberals from themselves, you can be certain that it means that said conservative is very scared. And that is because conservatives long ago learned something that most liberals still don’t understand: you don’t need to win elections if you can move the political playing field far to your side. The fact that Wehner doesn’t get laughed out of polite society for claiming that Obama is a liberal firebrand shows just how successful the Republican Party has been at moving the playing field far to the right. The last thing he wants is for extremely moderate candidates like Hillary Clinton to take up any actual liberal — and popular — policy positions. So I’m glad to see him sweat. But I cannot say why The New York Times thinks it is appropriate to give such a disingenuous, nervous fool this very valuable exposure.

Afterword

I wrote this yesterday morning. I didn’t think that Wehner’s article would cause so much of a stir, but at this point, it looks like everyone has written about it. The consensus is the same: Wehner is an idiot. But I thought Ed Kilgore had a good take on it, The Tired Old “Both Sides Getting More Extreme” Meme. He noted that since Wehner is a non-crazy Republican, he has to make these kinds of arguments to justify staying in the party.

It has been amusing to watch this worldwide dust-up regarding the Fédération Internationale de Football Association or FIFA. Oh! My! God! There is corruption in world football! Something must be done to stop this because, God knows, society might fall apart if the people think that soccer isn’t on the up and up. But not to worry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch is on the case! People are being indicted. People are going to go to jail. She noted, “They corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and to enrich themselves.” At least, justice is done! Now that the evildoers are being punished, we can all rest safe at night knowing that soccer is clean.

Of course, this spectacle of “tough on soccer crime” comes just one week after it was announced that Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase , Barclays, and Royal Bank of Scotland were caught having “rigged foreign exchange prices” over the couse of six years. Loretta Lynch had strong words for these criminals: they had been involved in a “brazen display of collusion.” She added, “Starting as early as Dec 2007, currency traders at several multinational banks formed a group dubbed ‘The Cartel.’ It is perhaps fitting that those traders chose that name, as it aptly describes the brazenly illegal behavior they were engaging in on a near-daily basis.” Very bad stuff.

So if the US and EU are going to lock up people who have manipulated something as trivial as soccer, you can only imagine what happened to these bankers. What was it? Are they set to be hanged, drawn, and quartered? Or perhaps death by sawing? Burned at the stake?! What horrible end will come to these malefactors of great wealth? Well, if you read this website regularly — or if you have simply lived in the United States sometime in the last forty years — you already know: nothing.

That’s not how it is put in the press, of course. The Justice Department made a big deal out of the fact that the banks will have to pay $5.5 billion in fines. Also, the banks involved will have to plead guilty to some criminal charges. But you know the payoff:

Don’t worry about that last part. That is always said. When banks agree to settlements, some claim is made to the effect of, “This does not rule out further prosecution.” But in fact there are never any further prosecutions because that is understood in the deal. Meanwhile, the whole thing allows the CEOs of the company to make public statements about how they are as appalled as anyone. Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said, “The behavior that resulted in the settlements we announced today is an embarrassment to our firm, and stands in stark contrast to Citi’s values.” Citi’s values? I thought the thing about corporations was that their only moral duty was to make money for their stock holders. We’re now supposed to believe that (1) they care about anything but that; and (2) Corbat and the rest of the clan don’t actually know all the nefarious things that their companies do in order to “maximize shareholder value”?

But what is accountability in the financial sector compared to making sure that Brazil doesn’t unfairly get to host the World Cup? This is the kind of disconnect that is common in the law enforcement community. The cronies at the top of FIFA are rich. But they aren’t rich like Michael Corbat or Jamie Dimon. And so it is okay to hold those “low level” criminals accountable. People who work in banks are the “right kind of people.” And as a result, they aren’t the kind of people who go to jail. It’s disgusting.

Jonathan Chait wrote yet another article pointing out what should be obvious, Former Senate Republicans Admit Obamacare Lawsuit Is Crazy. This is in reference to King v Burwell, where four little words that contradict many other passages in the Obamacare text are supposed to be read out of context and used to deprive people of subsidies with they are buying insurance on federally run exchanges. The argument that the plaintiff is making is that the intent of the law was to twist the arms of the states and make them set up their own exchanges by disallowing subsidies on federal exchanges.

It turns out that no one in power actually thought this. Instead, Congress had just assumed that the states would set up their own exchanges — well into the drafting of the bill. Later on, someone realized that there would be some states that for whatever reasons wouldn’t set up their own exchanges. Thus the federal exchanges were born. So the infamous four words — “established by the State” — was just a drafting error. Everyone knows that. But it is a common conservative tactic to pretend to be more ignorant than anyone in history. It is often the only way that they can argue in favor of their own screwed up policies. See, for example, supply side economics.

The law on this seems very clear, and the fact that three justices (Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) are almost certain to side with the plaintiff should disturb the whole country. During the hearing, Antonin Scalia noted that it didn’t matter what the intent of the framers was; what mattered was what the law said. Fair enough. But in previous arguments, Scalia (along with the rest of the Supreme Court) has argued that a law doesn’t become unconstitutional just because it isn’t written well. The law has to be seen in total. But I’m sure for the Ideological Three, that’s only true when doing so would bring about the decision they want. In this case, they badly want to destroy Obamacare.

What I think is amazing is that whether or not a state set up an exchange is a minor thing. It certainly isn’t something important enough to take such a draconian approach to. Brian Beutler made a great point when he wrote:

In order to conclude the latter, you have to think that Democrats are like the Jews of Borat’s fantasy: they are evil for its own sake. And the truth is that if you listen to hate radio (or to a slightly smaller extent Fox News), you will hear exactly this framing. But it should be clear to anyone that this is not who Democrats are. They may be (and quite often are) stupid. They may be (and almost always are) beholden to special interests. But they aren’t in the business of destroying their own legislation. Think about another conservative canard: “Obamacare is part of a socialist takeover of America!” If that’s the case, why would all those closet socialists seek to destroy their own socialist legislation? It makes no sense.

Of course, it isn’t supposed to make sense. No one — Really: no one! — believes this nonsense about trying to coerce the states into setting up their own exchanges. This is just the best justification that the conservatives could come up with to justify this lawsuit. And the silliness of the justification shows just how ridiculous the lawsuit is.

Over at Salon, Digby wrote, The Republican Campaign to Destroy the Poor Stoops to a New Low. It’s a general article, but she is specifically referring to a new Kansas law that only allows people on assistance to get a maximum of $25 per day from an ATM. As Dylan Matthews wrote last week, it is a way of soaking the poor with expensive ATM fees. You know the ones; I’m sure you have been desperate at times and found yourself facing the screen, “This transaction will cost $3.00 in addition to whatever other fees your bank changes. Would you like to continue?”

Matthews noted that in addition to the various bank charges, the state of Kansas itself charges a $1.00 fee for withdrawals. So a conservative estimate involves $1.50 from the bank (but other banks charge more) and $1.00 from the state, for a total of $2.50 for each $20 withdrawn. That represents a 12.5% surcharge. What’s interesting about this is that a common conservative claim is that the poor need to learn the proper ways to manage their money. And here are these very same conservatives insisting that they do otherwise. I have little doubt that the banks themselves have worked behind the scenes to make this happen.

But the main thing is that this is about punishing the poor. It isn’t just a question of the financial penalty. The very idea of limiting withdrawals from their accounts is meant to make a big production of saying, “You are on assistance; you can’t be trusted; you are a low life.” Of course, clearly the politicians who are pushing this are the most repugnant kind of people. What’s more, Mother Jones reported earlier this year, People on Food Stamps Make Healthier Grocery Decisions Than Most of Us. But data don’t matter to these conservatives. They start with the conclusion: people are poor because they are immoral. The rest follows from that conclusion.

Dylan Matthews sums up exactly what I think:

But sadly, the problem isn’t fundamentally with the politicians. Yes, of course, they are vile human beings. But think about that little factoid I mentioned above about people who get food stamps making better food purchasing decisions. Most Americans — including liberals — would find that surprising. Our default way of thinking is that there must be something wrong with the poor. Indeed, David Brooks has never been publicly shamed for claiming that the poor are suffering because of their lack of middle class values — even though it is both offensive and intellectually embarrassing.

So the question is how long will the American middle class continue to feel superior to the poor? How long will it take before it realizes that the issue with poverty is not “They behave so badly” but rather “There for the grace of God”? Americans are a particularly parochial people. We think rather highly of ourselves, when all of our advantages have been given to us. It would be wonderful — but extremely surprising — if we finally managed to grow up.

See Also

Should People Pursuing Risky Careers Be Forced to Starve?
Pay No Attention to Rich Man’s Welfare!

On Monday, Paul Krugman wrote about one of the great myths of modern times: the increasing pace of technological development. In The Big Meh, he noted that while we seem to have a lot of new technologies, they don’t seem to be revolutionizing our economy. But what new technologies? People see substantial technological advances where there are only constant technological shifts. Once upon a time Flickr was a big deal, but then we got Instagram. The best you can say about most of this kind of technological change is that it allows corporate interests to better monetize play. It’s all summed up in Peter Thiel’s quote, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

Krugman even starts out the article by mocking the Apple Watch. And rightly so! Apple is the ultimate technology company of the modern world. That’s because it doesn’t do much in terms of technology. It takes other people’s ideas and packages them nicely. But more than that, it is all about brand and about how the products that people consume define them. It is extremely sad — pathetic, in fact. But in terms of the broader on the country, it doesn’t mean anything in a direct way. The newest version of the iPhone will not make us more productive and any happiness it brings will be short lived indeed.

But Apple provides a good example of why we don’t see much in terms of economic growth. The company employs a relatively small number of Americans: less than 100,000. These are generally good, middle class jobs. And then the company employs a million or so people overseas — paying them almost nothing. This allows Apple to keep more the fruits of laborers. And this is why Apple has been sitting on piles of cash. Eventually, in 2012, it was necessary to pay out major dividends. And then there have been the massive stock buybacks. Apple has lots of money, but no ideas. Unless you think the Apple Watch is a new, much less important, idea.

What all this means is that Apple works as a way to increase inequality. None of this would be surprising if Apple were just a tech film. Apple employs roughly the same number of people employed by Google and Microsoft. But they are not hardware companies. Just the same, the focus of venture capital these days is not on hardware. They are all out chasing their tails looking for the next “killer app.” And that will be… what? An application that will allow people to share even more moments from their lives with other people who don’t care enough about them to be part of those moments? I understand that there was a lot of marginal utility when grandma could see what granddaughter was up to in almost real time. The marginal utility of any new gains in that area are essentially zero.

Krugman ended his column by noting that the exact things that are said about technology today were said about technology in the 1930s. Then as now, it was used as an excuse for why it was that companies like Apple were sitting on piles of cash and not hiring. Today, we hear that everyone ought to be computer programmers or the ill-defined “entrepreneurs.” It’s all silly. Those Chinese workers pumping out iPhones are not better educated or otherwise more capable of doing that work than are Americans. It’s all about incentives. As Dean Baker is fond of noting: globalization has only been allowed to destroy the jobs of the American middle class. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, and scads of other professions continue to enjoy economic protection.

I’m not a futurist; I don’t know where technology could go if our culture weren’t held captive by a bunch of little brains who are only interested in next quarter’s profit statement. But I do know that technologically speaking, there is more sound and fury than substance when it comes to technological innovation. Having a transistor radio was an improvement on the home radio, but it wasn’t anything close to as big a deal as the invention of radio itself. Now people want to make a big deal about Pandora on their phones or extra gigabytes for MP3s. These things are nice, but hardly revolutionary. When was the last time we had a technological revolution? Container ships have undoubtedly had a bigger effect on our lives than computers — much less the most recent iPhone.