Earlier this week, Paul Krugman wrote, Rand Paul and the Empty Box. It follows on what I seem to be seeing everywhere: the argument that Rand Paul can’t become president because there just aren’t that many libertarians. Apparently, one in nine voters call themselves libertarians. I guess people can call themselves whatever they want. But even as an ex-libertarian, I find most people’s use of the term offensive. For most people, being a “libertarian” is something like Rand Paul: they are conservatives who think maybe we shouldn’t incarcerate cannabis smokers and maybe we should leave the LGBT community alone. Or as I often put it: libertarians are conservatives who are embarrassed to call themselves Republicans.

But Krugman countered the libertarians with what we might call the populists. These are people who are socially conservative and economically liberal. Krugman thinks that there are even fewer of these people than there are libertarians. Everyone has their blind spots, I guess. And Krugman’s overall point is correct, regardless of what people think, they tend to gravitate into the liberal or conservative camps. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of populists. I think that the populists may, in fact, be the biggest political class in the United States.

Think back to Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? The whole story of that book was not that the people of Kansas were economically conservative. It was that their social conservatism trumped everything else. Although the book has been characterized as being about people voting against their own interests, it is not. It is about people placing social issues at the top of their concerns and the Republican Party using that to enact laws that mostly have nothing to do with what the social conservatives want.

If you look at polling on American’s beliefs about different political issues, you will see that they are slightly to the right on social issues and they are fairly far to the left on economic issues. In fact, they are usually well to the left of the Democratic Party itself. I’ve discussed this problem a lot around here. The Democratic Party really doesn’t offer much of a choice on economic issues — it is mostly like Republican Lite. So if a populist cared equally about social and economic issues, she would have a real problem choosing one of the two big parties because the Republicans would to her right on social issues and the Democrats would be to her right on economic issues.

I am a liberal on social and economic issues. But they are not equal in my eyes. If there were a truly populist party — moderately conservative on social issues and quite liberal on economic issues — I would abandon the Democratic Party. I wouldn’t feel good about the social issues. But I would feel certain that greater economic equality would lead to greater social equality. And it might do so quicker than it would on our current path.

But it bothers me me greatly that as keen a commentator as Paul Krugman would think that these populists represent a small part of the electorate. His belief is part of what sustains a political system that does not even try to appeal to a huge segment of the population. Instead, we are stuck with both major American political parties beholden to Wall Street and other interests. This is democracy in name only.

JJ Goldberg provided a little history for us regarding the brilliant statesmanship of Netanyahu, How Bibi and Bush Made a Mess of the Middle East. At the time of 9/11, Ariel Sharon was prime minister of Israel. And when the Bush administration started talking war with Iraq, Sharon’s administration was shocked. They advised against it. They correctly predicted three things: it would cause sectarian warfare; it would keep the US stuck in the country for a decade; and it would empower Iran, which they rightly considered a far greater threat. But that wasn’t what the Bush administration wanted to hear.

But there was someone in Israel who was telling Bush what he wanted to hear: the once and future prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s kind of like the John McCain of Israel: there is no problem that cannot be solved with a war. He is a great example of how if you are powerful and — in this country anyway — conservative, being wrong never matters. He was shockingly wrong about the Iraq War. Here is video of him testifying before Congress about the “enormous positive reverberations on the region” that it would have. And maybe his idea of enormous positive reverberations is the rise of the Islamic States. But for most people, this has been a bad thing.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that Netanyahu and all of the neocons are disinterested in the health and safety of the United States, Israel, and the world. They just want to go to war. They don’t believe in diplomacy. As Robert Parry noted recently, “The neocons are so confident in their skills at manipulating the U.S. decision-making process that some have gone so far as to suggest Americans should side with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria or the even more brutal Islamic State, because those groups love killing Shiites and thus are considered the most effective fighters against Iran’s allies.” There is no long-term thinking in any of this. We hate Iraq, destroy it. If that gives the Islamic State power, destroy it. It we decide that Iran is the real threat, back the Islamic State (we can destroy it later). The idea that Obama was playing 11-dimensional chess was always fatuous. But this “bomb Iran” crowd is playing one-dimensional chess.

What’s really interesting about Goldberg’s narrative of the long process that led us to the current Iran nuclear deal is how the American and Israeli governments switched in 2009. The US went from only halfheartedly trying to make a deal with Iran to being very interested in it. Meanwhile, Israel went from the much more open-minded leadership of Ehud Olmert to that of Benjamin Netanyahu (so mean he once shot a man just for snoring). As Daniel Larison wrote recently, there is a generalized rejection among conservatives in the very idea of diplomacy.

Indeed, this is what Fred Kaplan concluded in an article at Slate, The Deal of a Lifetime. He was blunt, “Anyone who denounces this framework is not a serious person or is pursuing a parochial agenda.” But we knew this; after the framework came out and it looked better than we could have hoped, Netanyahu claimed that the deal must include Iran recognizing Israel’s right to exist. In other words, no deal would be good enough. If he got that totally irrelevant concession, he would then require that all Iran convert to Judaism — or something similarly silly and outrageous.

According to conservatives in the United States, we should listen to Netanyahu. But just like Netanyahu’s complains about the Iraq deal, our own conservatives only look to him because he is telling them what they want to hear. If he suddenly deciding that the deal was good for Israel, conservatives would abandon him with claims like, “I don’t see why we are looking to the leaders of other countries to decide what American foreign policy should be.” And if they did that, they’d be making the most sense they’ve made in a long time.

North Charleston, South Carolina police officer Michael Slager has been charged with the murder of Walter Scott. We’ll see if he gets convicted, and if so, of what charge. Obviously, this is a tragedy. Scott should be busy planning his wedding. And it certainly seems that Slager is guilty. So the criminal justice system works! Hooray! But I don’t see it that way.

Let’s start with the fact that somehow Slager thought that it was proper to shoot eight bullets at the back of Scott while he ran away. How is it that police officers — who we are told ad nauseam are such highly trained professionals — so often don’t seem to have a clue about the law? It seems that in our police departments, the philosophy is: the police are always right and any civilian who doesn’t do exactly what an officer wants deserves to die.

But what bothers me about this case is that if it weren’t for the video recording of the stop, there would be no story. It would just be yet another case when a police officer was fully justified in using deadly force against an unarmed civilian. It appears in America, the only way you have a chance at justice is if you have a gang of people following you around surreptitiously filming you.

The Daily Beast published an interesting article, Michael Slager’s Attorney Dumped Him As Soon As He Saw Video. The lawyer is cagey because he can’t break attorney-client privilege. But reading between the lines, it seems that what he’s saying is that Slager lied to him in a way that the video made very clear.

What I find most striking about the video is how unreal it seems. The officer shows no emotion. And then, after Scott is bleeding on the ground, there is no rush to get help. It seems like just another day — nothing to get especially excited about.

The mystery in the video is the way that Slager picks up something from the ground where he shot from and casually drops it next to Scott body. Speculation is that it had to do with the taser. Regardless, it would seem that Slager is tampering with the crime scene. And the other officer doesn’t say a thing. Again: just another day on the job.

According to Bustle, Slager had a pretty clean employment record. There was, however, one incident reported “in September 2013 by a man who alleged that Slager had ‘shot him with a taser for no reason.’ The matter was subsequently investigated internally, and Slager was exonerated of any wrongdoing.” Of course, that goes without saying; there was no video of the incident and in this country, we always assume that the police are honest — despite a mountain of evidence indicating that this isn’t true.

Here is a summary of the official story the police department told before the video surfaced:

This might all be technically true. Nowhere in it does it say that Slager had to resort to his service weapon. The video is consistent with Scott grabbing the taser. But very clearly, Scott is running away while Slager is drawing his gun. And slowly, he aims and kills Scott. There are two circumstances under with an officer can use deadly force. The first is when someone’s life is in danger. That’s clearly not the case here. The second is when the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect has “committed a serious violent felony.” That doesn’t seem to be the case either; though we can be certain that Slager will argue just that, “He grabbed my taser!” And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if a jury accepts that excuse.

The main thing is that this case is exceptional in that we have evidence that the officer and the department were at least being deceptive. The statement above was designed to give an incorrect impression about what had happened. But that is not exceptional. I’m sure that happens all the time. And I fear that after officers are all wearing body cameras, there will be lots of cases where the cameras don’t work or were accidentally turned off. We are a very long way from holding our police forces accountable.

Update (10 April 2015 10:07 pm)

Unbelievable:

Andrew Sprung wrote a really interesting article, Why Do More People Say the ACA Has Harmed Than Helped Them? In addition to all the polling data from people saying that they don’t like Obamacare, there are also people who claim that they have been directly hurt by the new healthcare law — more than say that they have been helped. And that is, well, not factually true. Sprung tried to get to the bottom of why that is.

How exactly can someone be hurt by Obamacare? It’s a curious question, because if lots of people were hurt by the law, the Republicans would be parading them everywhere. Yet polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation currently finds that 22% of Americans think the law has hurt them and only 19% think it has helped them.

To some extent, this is predictable. Insurance rates generally go up each year. With the very effective propaganda campaign of the conservative movement, many people simply think that any changes in their healthcare are the fault of Obamacare. It is hard for people to see the fact that their premiums are rising more slowly than before as something that is helping them. But there are good signs. Last May, 24% of the people thought the law had hurt them and only 14% thought it had helped them.

What really seems to be going on is that companies all over the nation are using Obamacare to scare employees and to justify things they are doing for other reasons. I discussed a particular instance of this back in January, Worker Delusions and Corporate Profits. A local FedEx driver was complaining that Obamacare had more than doubled his health insurance costs. But the truth was that FedEx was just using “Obamacare” as a way to cut “the company’s fastest-growing expenses.”

There is a lot of complaining about how individuals and voters just aren’t very rational. That’s often true. But I don’t see how we can complain when businesses show the same irrationality. More reasonable businesses have applauded Obamacare as a way to reduce their expenses. For example, Trader Joe’s put their part-time employees in the public exchanges and gave them $500 per year. That increased the amount of money that the employees had and decreased expenses for the company. A win-win for everyone.

The companies like FedEx are in the middle ground where they take advantage of Obamacare where they can directly, but mostly just use it as an excuse to change worker contracts that hurt workers and help the company. And then there are the truly delusional companies who are just certain that Obamacare is destroying their profits — often even before the law went into effect.

Of course, fundamentally, the “Obamacare hurt me” meme is based on people just not liking and understanding the law because of the “nonstop disinformation and smear campaign conducted by the GOP these past six years.” For example, 40% of Republicans claimed the law had hurt them. There’s no way the law can have that kind of a partisan effect. I wouldn’t doubt that we would see similar numbers if Republicans were asked, “Did Obamacare kill a baby you know?”

A number of healthcare observers have noted that Obamacare will never be popular because it was designed to be invisible. Most people who benefit from Obamacare (for example, by getting cheap insurance on the exchanges) don’t see it as getting Obamacare). But it does seem that over time, people will stop thinking about Obamacare at all. And that is the way the law works. I think after Obama is out of office, things should improve more rapidly. But meanwhile, people will continue to blame the law for everything they don’t like about our admittedly screwed up healthcare system.

On Monday, Paul Krugman discussed the upcoming elections in the United Kingdom, Economics and Elections. He noted that the current conservative government is likely to stay in power despite the fact that they’ve done a terrible job managing the economy over the past five years. But the economy has been doing better over the last year or so, and that is all that matters to the voters. This is Politics 101, and I talk about it all the time. It is the reason why I hate things like this week’s Tom Tomorrow, where he mocks the chances of Ted Cruz becoming president. If he manages to get the Republican nomination, he will become president if the economy tanks in 2016.

But Krugman noted one thing that is very near and dear to my heart, “[T]he evidence suggests that the politically smart thing might well be to impose a pointless depression on your country for much of your time in office, solely to leave room for a roaring recovery just before voters go to the polls.” Of course, no one thinks people actually do this. For one thing, it is hard enough to get people to accept the well documented fact that people vote on the basis of the economy shortly before an election. Getting them to believe that voters won’t hold leaders responsible for years of suffering would be a harder sell, even if it is almost certainly true.

I’ve been arguing for years that the American political system is naturally designed to elect Republican Presidents. This is because conservative economic policy is bad. When Republicans get into office, they tend to cut aid to the poor and cut taxes on the rich. While this is very effective at making the rich richer, it is not good for the economy. It just puts more money into the hands of those who already have more money than they can spend. And it takes money away from poor people who would spend it all. But after the bad economic policies of the first year, the economy will slowly adjust. By the fourth year of the Republican presidency, the economy is improving and the president is re-elected.

The situation is the opposite with Democrats. Their policies tend to be better (although not that much better). So things like the Obama stimulus really do help the economy — for a while. But (again) as with the stimulus, these programs run out and the economy declines. So why did Clinton get a second term? Alan Greenspan. Why did Obama? Because the economy was so depressed we even have a decent chance of getting a third consecutive Democratic President.

Obviously, this is just a theoretical construct. Unlike my theory about the New Democrats, there is no empirical basis for this. But I still think it is something that we need to think about. It highlights the fact our political system is screwed up and does not lead to us choosing politicians and parties who actually do perform for us. We shouldn’t have to fear that Ted Cruz could be our next president. But sadly, we really do need to fear it. And if he were elected, there is every indication that he would be re-elected.

I get so aggravated by people just repeating the same lies over and over again, with the hope that people will just accept them. Case in point, last week at The Upshot, Tyler Cowen wrote, It’s Not the Inequality; It’s the Immobility. This is a perfect example of a headline used by a Very Serious Person. Yes, silly people like me care about inequality, but that’s not the problem at all! The problem is immobility. I guess Cowen is using the word “mobility” instead of “equality of opportunity” since that phrase has now been totally destroyed as the apologetic drivel that it always was.

Technically, there is a difference between mobility and equality of opportunity. What Cowen is pushing is the old Milton Friedman idea that it doesn’t matter if almost all of productivity gains go to the rich, as long as their rising tides lift all boats. But look at just what a fraud Cowen is; he wrote, “[W]hile we have talked incessantly about the disproportionate gains of the top 1 percent, the wage slowdown in the United States in recent decades is a bigger problem for most people.” He’s right in the second half of that. But does he really expect us to believe that the decoupling of wages and productivity is not a direct result of things like the decline of labor unions that have allowed the rich to capture all of those productivity gains as increased profits?

He goes on to say that inequality shouldn’t necessarily be a negative term. I agree. A certain level of economic inequality is desirable. For example, some people want to work less and are willing to sacrifice the extra money that goes with extra work. And no one has a problem with incentives. But given the staggering level of inequality in the United States and to a lesser extent the developed world, how can anyone talk about inequality being a good thing? If Cowen wants to have this conservation, he can bring it up when corporate CEO wages are back down to 50 times the average worker pay. Until then, inequality is indeed a very bad word.

The entire article is so filled with caveats that it made my head spin. But the point of the whole thing is very clear: let’s not look at inequality! Instead, we are supposed to look at “immobility.” And how? By making it easier to become a doctor or a lawyer? Oh no! We can’t do that. That might cost Tyler Cowen’s friends money. Instead, “[C]onsider the licensing of occupations like interior decorators and barbers.” This is a favorite of upper class columnists everywhere. Those barber licenses are really what’s keeping the poor down! (Note: I think many of these kinds of regulations are stupid. But I’ve written much in the past of the kinds of things that I, as a micro-business owner, find most difficult in making a living. Licensing requirements are greatly overstated as a barrier to doing business.)

He ends the article with some brilliant but pernicious apologetics:

The whole point here is that we shouldn’t pay attention to income inequality. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” The fact, however, is that inequality is largely the cause of immobility. Dean Baker took on these issues in an article, Tyler Cowen’s Three-Card Monte on Inequality. In addition to mentioning many of the same things I did, he noted that inequality itself can reduce productivity growth. And most important of all, “[M]any of the policies that would most obviously promote equality also promote growth.” But this is what Cowen — or any of the Very Serious People — wants to talk about. He just wants to talk about how we can improve the lives of the poor by dislocating the middle class. And never, never, never think about the justice of the rich extracting all the productivity gains of the economy for themselves.

I was talking to Will over the weekend about Glenn Ford — the recently exonerated Louisiana man who had spent 30 years on death row. He’s been in the news recently, because the state is refusing to pay full restitution to him. Meanwhile, Ford has stage four lung cancer. He has been released just in time to die. And the state is messing with him. The judge in the case claimed that “he did not have clean hands.” This is because he knew those who did commit the crime, but despite what the judge says, there is actually little evidence that he was majorly involved in the crime. But what does it matter? Ford is poor, black, old, and dying. The state of Louisiana is showing the kind of callousness that we expect.

But Will thought I was talking about a different case. Anthony Ray Hinton was convicted of two murders a year after Ford in the similarly enlightened state of Alabama. He spent 28 years is solitary confinement in a 40 square foot cell. But that is the least of the injustices done to him. Hinton had no criminal record. The police tried to get him for the non-fatal shooting of a man working at a restaurant. As usual with these cases, the only evidence against him was an eye-witness — the victim himself. But it turned out that Hinton could not have committed the crime. So the police went searching for a crime that they could charge him with.

Five months earlier, two managers at a fast food restaurant were murdered. There was no evidence, but the police decided that Hinton had done it. They searched his house and found a pistol that belonged to his mother. The prosecution claimed that the gun was used in both crimes. Hinton’s public defender did not counter this — probably because he didn’t know he could have requested extra funds to hire a ballistics expert. It was determined much later that not only was that not the gun used in the crimes, the two crimes were committed with different guns. Hinton was railroaded.

There is much more to the case. You can read Steven D’s excellent overview if you feel like being enraged, Alabama AG: “No Comment.” That title is in reference to the fact that the Alabama Attorney General had no comment on the case, even after the state had spent over a decade fighting a retrial after experts discovered that Hinton must be innocent. (The case had to go to the Supreme Court before Alabama would grant a retrial.)

I think it is interesting that Will and I could be confused about similar cases. This is because there are so many of them. And the total apathy of those in the “judicial” system is staggering. But I guess it goes along with the American attitude that it is more important to look like you are doing something than to actually accomplish something. In this case, rather than actively seek justice, prosecutors and judges just try to stop the world from knowing about the injustices that they create every day. In the case of Glenn Ford, they were probably hoping that he would just die in prison.

Meanwhile, no one is held accountable. The prosecutor in Hinton’s case was a known racist who was allowed to say in court that he knew Hinton was evil just by looking at him. I’ve tried to find the name of the prosecutor, but I have been unable. He’s probably dead anyway. And if he isn’t, there will be no public shaming, much less professional or economic penalties. (To his credit, Ford’s prosecutor has apologized and has advocated for him.) The police who railroaded Hinton doubtless got raises for bringing down such a dangerous criminal. And it is not clear if Hinton will receive any compensation from the state. Another day for justice in America.

On Thursday, Jonathan Bernstein provided some real insight on a side of things I hadn’t much thought about, The Iran Deal and US Politics. I was most struck by what he said about public opinion, “President Barack Obama is extremely unlikely to get a short-term public opinion bounce from the deal announced today that outlines next steps in curbing Iran’s nuclear program.” If he had started bombing Iran, well then, his approval rating might shoot up to over 50%. Leave it to Americans to be happy about something we know they would complain about in short order. But the main thing is that while Americans may live their lives in terror about Iran, they aren’t at all interested in the actual work of governments to reduce that threat.

Now Senator Bob Corker has proposed a bill that would limit, and potentially eliminate, the President’s ability to lift most of the sanctions against Iran. He can do this because it is a matter of national security. I’ve never been so keen on all of this kind of Unitary Executive Theory garbage. But the right of the President to manage foreign affairs is established in the Constitution and by tradition. But the Republicans, who always claim they want a “strong” President, decide against that the moment the President doesn’t see his job as going to war at every opportunity.

Of course, it isn’t just Republicans. Many Democrats in Congress are for doing this as well. This is why this is potentially a threat to the deal with Iran. It is possible that Corker’s bill could get enough support from Democrats that it would be able to overcome a veto. In the Senate, 13 Democrats would be needed. But here’s the shocking thing, “In the Senate, nine Democrats have already signed on as cosponsors… with several more supporters said to be waiting in the wings.” Just brilliant. When it comes to NSA spying or unrestricted drone killings or bank bailouts while homeowners get screwed, the Democrats in Congress can’t get in the way of the President. But on this issue, the Democrats are going to take a stand? Unbelievable.

And who is one of the biggest supporters? Only the future Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. He’s a multiple threat: a Wall Street hack and apparently someone who thinks that Israel ought to be dictating US Middle East policy. The thing is, all this “tough on Iran” business is nonsense. The deal we are looking at is really good. And this is all reminding me of the budget deal that John Boehner passed up in 2011. In 2012, Obama allegedly chided him, “You should have taken that deal when you had the chance.” We aren’t going to get a better deal with Iran. And to those many people who think that the Iranian regime is on the verge of collapse, I have one word: Cuba. (Of course, most of these same people think that after 50 years, Cuba is on the verge of cracking too.)

It is possible that the excellent Iran deal framework will change some minds — at least in the Democratic Party. But it is hard to say. The truth is that all this anti-Iran hysteria is not based upon a rational analysis. It is rather based upon the same old irrational belief that our enemies are monsters who just can’t be trusted to act in their own interests. And that very clearly isn’t the case. If this is the hill that Democrats want to die on with respect to standing up to the President, it will be very sad for this country.