Category Archives: Politics

Three Elvis Costello Political Songs

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Spike - Elvis CostelloI think my wife, or soon-to-be wife, bought the Elvis Costello album Spike for me for Christmas. It was a good present, because I was a big Costello fan. Since that time, I haven’t actively sought out his music. The albums before, King of America and Blood & Chocolate, are probably my favorites of his. Spike was a disappointment following them. I find it an uneven album. In particular, the hit off the album, “Veronica” is quite weak, and is indicative of Costello’s worst habits of songwriting with its kaleidoscopic melody and impenetrable lyrics that require him explaining them to you.

I’ve always been a big fan of Costello’s overtly political songs. The best, off Punch the Clock, is probably “Shipbuilding.” I just learned that the music for the song was not written by Costello but rather Clive Langer. That’s interesting because I’ve always thought it one of his best melodies.

Spike included two political gems. The first is “Tramp the Dirt Down.” I can’t be objective about that song. I despise Margaret Thatcher as much as Costello does. But in an objective light, if it hadn’t been her to bring social Darwinism to England, it would have been someone else. Sometimes, countries go on tilt and decide that the problem is that the poor are doing too well and the rich just aren’t rich enough. So they “choose” a despot. Thatcher’s defense of Augusto Pinochet was no accident; despots love each other, even if they appear different in long established “democracies” than they do in fragile South American military dictatorships.

But the song that most impressed me on Spike was, “Let Him Dangle.” It is about the execution of Derek Bentley and more generally the “angry mob” basis of the death penalty. The story is well known in England, but not so much here in the United States. Bentley was a marginally mentally retarded 19-year-old man. After losing a number of jobs due to physical problems and unsatisfactory work, he was refused military service because he was judged “mentally substandard.” Not that I place much credence in these tests, he had a 77 IQ score.

Bentley and his 16-year-old friend Christopher Craig attempted a burglary of a warehouse. They were seen and the police arrived. It all resulted in a shootout, where Craig killed one office and wounded another. Bentley didn’t use any weapons against any of the police. But according to them, he said, “Let him have it, Chris.” Now this is interesting because if Bentley and Craig had been in a James Cagney movie, that might might have meant, “Shoot the copper!” But this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Bentley supposedly said this after the officer Craig wounded, Frederick Fairfax, said, “Hand over the gun, lad.” Regardless, this led to the wound, not the death. So the claim that Bentley was culpable in the later shot that killed Constable Sidney Miles requires a number of jumps in the causation chain.

Regardless of all this, by English law, Craig could not be given the death penalty because he was younger than 18. So they killed Bentley. But it wasn’t as though there was a huge cry from the people or even the political establishment that Bentley should hang. Over 200 MPs signed a petition in favor of Queen Elizabeth’s formal plea for clemency. But the then Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir, refused it. He was politically ambitious and I suspect it is somewhat like John Kerry’s vote to authorize the Iraq War. And in the end, he wasn’t alone. I dare say the majority were for it. Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill seems to have been. I only mean to say that Bentley did have his defenders.

In To Encourage the Others, David Yallop argues that it wasn’t Craig’s bullet that killed the police officer. According to him, it was rather a stray bullet from another police officer. This doesn’t really matter, of course. The logic of killing Bentley went like this: he said something that caused Craig to shoot; this leads to more shooting by Craig; this leads to Craig killing Miles. If Yallop is right, the logic simply changes: Bentley said something that caused Craig to shoot; this leads to more shooting by Craig; this leads to the police accidentally shooting Miles. By the logic of the time, Bentley is still put to death.

Bentley has since been given a posthumous pardon, which means exactly nothing to him since he has been dead at the hands of the state for over 60 years. I question how important that symbolic gesture is to society. There is no death penalty in the United Kingdom today. But when it was abolished, there were still a third of the MPs who voted to keep it. There will always be people who want to kill for killing. And every time there is a publicized atrocity, the pitchfork crowd is out baying for blood. I think this is perfectly captured in Elvis Costello’s song:

Here in California, we have the death penalty, and it is still pretty popular. In 2012, we had the opportunity to repeal it, and 52% of my fellow state citizens said no. I don’t think it has anything to do with justice in any particular case. For people who support the death penalty, each execution is a kind symbolic act to suppress the outrage about murder. So when someone is executed, they are not executed for their crimes, but for all our crimes. I know people aren’t aware of this thinking. They claim it is about justice and some of them reference the Bible. But if it really is “an eye for an eye” then why aren’t all murders killed? Of course, the most twisted of people think all murders should be killed and quite a lot more. But such people clearly need help and the kind of pity they seem incapable of.

Charles Darrow’s Monopoly

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Charles DarrowOn this day in 1889, Charles Darrow was born. He is known for having invented the game Monopoly. The problem is that he didn’t. He did, however, get a government provided monopoly to sell the game: US Patent 2,026,082. This is ironic, right? A depression era game based upon the idea that capitalism is an unjust system for the distribution of resources was effectively stolen from its actual creators using the tools of the oligarchs.

In 1903, Elizabeth Magie developed The Landlord’s Game, which was designed to show the ill effects of monopolies. She self-published the game and it became rather popular. It was used by college professors to teach about monopolies and was even adapted into a Scottish game. After Parker Brothers released Monopoly in 1935, Magie was publicly critical of it. Parker Brothers had previously published her games, so apparently in a bid to shut her up, they published three more of her games, including The Landlord’s Game.

It’s important to remember that The Landlord’s Game is not Monopoly. How it became it is an interesting example of sociology. The Landlord’s Game was popular enough that people started making their own versions of the game. This led to the game Finance which was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. (Parker Brothers eventually bought it and sold it into the 1960s.) Eventually, it made its way back to the east cost. One version, taught to Darrow by Charles Todd was localized for Atlantic City. This was Monopoly, and it is the game (including the misspelling of Marven Gardens) that Darrow patented.

Wikipedia notes, “Darrow was later promoted as the sole inventor of the game, though later research has shown that Magie, Jesse Raiford, Ruth Hoskins, Louis and Ferdinand Thun, and Daniel Layman, among others, were collectively responsible for virtually all of game’s significant elements.” But that isn’t to say that Darrow was just a thief. He packaged the game well, including hiring a graphic artists to jazz up the game with things like the Water Works image. There is something to be said for that.

The problem, of course, is that the system we have is not fundamental to the idea of capitalism. In fact, I think it is clear that it is a distortion of capitalism. The fact that Darrow was able to get a patent on the work of others, shows a fundamental flaw in our intellectual property law. But even if Darrow had added something substantially new to the work of the others (he didn’t), it doesn’t make sense for him to get all the reward. The fact that he does shows there is a very large random element in our economic system. And this does not create good economic incentives. But you already knew that—because you played Monopoly when you were a kid.

Happy birthday Charles Darrow!

Beware Libertarians Offering Basic Income Guarantees

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Matt ZwolinskiRegular readers know that I believe in a guaranteed basic income. Not only would it solve a lot of problems, it is what we should do ethically. We simply are too rich to allow people to be desperately poor. Two hundred and twenty years ago, Thomas Paine laid out the basic logic: every human is born with an equal right to the resources of the planet. We have created a system that allows some people to do far better than this natural state would dictate through the use of laws and history. At the same time, poor people do worse than they would in the natural state where they could just farm and hunt as they wanted. Therefore, some amount of redistribution is called for to make up for the fact that our economy is rigged. (See: Inequality: the Monopoly Analogy.)

But I wasn’t happy to hear that libertarians like Matt Zwolinski were writing things like, The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee. The reason is that Zwolinski isn’t interested in the question at hand. This is just a provocative way of saying, “Look: the government doesn’t work!” At this point, I’m to the breaking point of dealing with disingenuous libertarian “arguments.”

If you spend any time arguing with libertarians, you will run into the “local is better” argument. This is the idea that local governments are better because they are more responsive to the needs of their people. There are many problems with this. For example, when the United States was formed, its population was less than four million people. This is roughly one-tenth the population of California today. Is it really true that the federal government was less responsive to the needs of its people than the state government is today? Also, what we’ve seen is that state and local governments are generally too responsive to the “needs” of certain people leading to discrimination. Over the last half century, the worst government abuses toward individual rights have been at the state and local level.

Of course, the whole idea of pushing “local is better” is to allow libertarians to do in a circuitous way what they can’t do in a direct way: destroy the government. We see this with the general conservative obsession with block grants. The idea is that the federal government just gives money to the states to use as they will. Of course, what will happen over time is that federal support for these grants will decrease. Why should federal politicians support giving money for programs when they have no control. When we decide we have to balance the federal budget, the block grants would be the first things cut.

Mike KonczalSo when the John Galt crowd starts arguing in favor of a guaranteed basic income, you know it is not because they care about the poor or that they’ve been reading Thomas Paine. It is just a ruse to push more of their anti-government and “makers vs takers” ideology. Luckily, Mike Konczal is on the job in an article yesterday, The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Doesn’t Add Up. He takes the argument far more seriously than I do. He goes through the numbers and shows that we couldn’t replace all the welfare programs with a minimum income without costing more in taxes—something that no conservative would agree to.

But to give you an idea of just how disingenuous Zwolinski is, one of the programs that would be cut would be Medicaid. Poor people don’t need no stinking medical care! Of course, he never even mentions Medicaid. It is central to his argument, but it isn’t stated because even the most gullible of readers would notice that a basic income of $10,000 per year would not allow someone in our country with its broken healthcare system to get the care they need.

It doesn’t matter though. All the calculations and bright ideas are meaningless. Zwolinski doesn’t care about fixing anything. He is only interested in making the argument that the government doesn’t provide welfare efficiently. It is yet another “government is the problem” argument. But as Konczal shows in the following graph, the government is actually very efficient in providing welfare:

Welfare Program Administrative Costs

None of this reflects on the basic idea of a guaranteed basic income. I’ve never thought that such a program would eliminate the need for other welfare programs. For example, it seems to me that poor families with children would have extra needs. And it is certainly true that universal healthcare would be necessary. What Zwolinski is offering is an actual smart man’s version of Paul Ryan’s poverty plan. This is the same old thing with conservatives: they have a certain bag of tricks that they apply to every problem, because they aren’t interested in solving the problem. They are interested in using the problem as an excuse to push their existing agenda.

The Proper Way to Ogle Women

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Effective Catcalls

Buzz Feed put out the following video, What Men Are Really Saying When Catcalling Women. Given the material, it’s actually pretty bad. The actors are all quite good, but the writing is weak. It does, however, get to the what catcalling is all about, even if it isn’t aware of it. And it misses an opportunity for an effective ending by giving men a pass I think they don’t deserve.

After showing various somewhat true statements, it ends with an 18 second riff on, “I do this ’cause I’m lonely.” If that were true, it would still be a pathetic ending. But in fact, it is not true. Catcalling is all about signaling that the catcaller is a virile and heterosexual man. And who is he signaling it to? Mostly to himself.

It is a sad truth that male culture as I have found it in America is primarily about convincing everyone that you aren’t gay. This isn’t to say men are a bunch of closeted homosexuals. But there is such a taboo about male homosexuality that you would think that every football party was on the verge of breaking into an all mall orgy. You may remember last year I wrote, These Are Victims: Matthew Shepard and Emmett Till. In it, I noted Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty and his “creepy obsession” with anal sex. He is not an exception but very much the rule in the “real man” culture.

I don’t know how the objects of catcalling respond to it. I suspect there is a wide range. Introverted women probably find it very upsetting. But I’m sure there are women who do take a certain pleasure in the public confirmation that they are nubile. Still, even for such women, I’m sure men sneaking glances does the job as well. We men are not nearly as subtle as we think we are. And certainly, as Dan Arel noted at Patheos, “I joked about never meeting a couple who had the story about meeting when, ‘I was walking down the street and he yelled to me from his car about my ass and we have been together ever since.'”

There is, of course, a reason that you never hear a story like that. I don’t think it matters who you are, what is most attractive is self-confidence. It is hard to get too worked up about people who seem adrift. And catcalling does not say, “I’m virile and heterosexual!” It says, “I’m afraid I’m not virile and that you might think I’m homosexual!” And that isn’t attractive. Much better is to act the way that Mike Birbiglia and I act when confronted with an attractive woman: stare at your feet uncomfortably and avoid looking at her. Because it communicates the same information without nearly as much noise.

Now that’s how it’s done!

The Roots of Republican Reagan Idolatry

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John QuigginThe outsize Republican idolatry of Reagan is explained in part by the fact that there’s no one else in their history of whom they can really approve. The Bushes are a bad memory for most, Ford was a non-entity and Nixon was Nixon. Eisenhower looks pretty good on most historical rankings, but he’s anathema to movement conservatives: Eisenhower Republicans were what are now called RINOs. Going back a century, and skipping some failures/nonentities, Theodore Roosevelt is problematic for related but different reasons. Going right back to the beginning, and skipping more nonentities and disappointments, some Repubs still try to claim the mantle of the “Party of Lincoln” but that doesn’t pass the laugh test. As many others have observed, the “Party of Jefferson Davis” is closer to the mark. So, they have little choice but to present Reagan as the savior of the nation.

—John Quiggin
Reagan and the Great Man in History

Emiliano Zapata

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Emiliano ZapataOn this day in 1879, the Mexican agrarian reformer and revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was born. He was a huge figure in the Mexican Revolution. But I must admit: I find the Mexican Revolution baffling. It is so complex with different factions and constant changes in alliances. But I’m not so much interested in Zapata as a revolutionary. I’m interested in him as a reformer and I think in a different time and place, that’s all he would have been. His participation in the Mexican Revolution was from beginning to end about reforming the system and freeing the peasant community.

During his whole life up to the Mexican Revolution, Mexico was an autocracy with what was effectively a feudal system. I find this more and more in my reading of history. Feudal system are an equilibrium that societies very often fall into. We know that feudalism in England turned into capitalism. But as we see in our own country, capitalism has a tendency to creep back into feudalism. It is very simple: money and power are positive feedbacks. The more money the rich have, the more they can manipulate the political system to their advantages. And this is exactly what happened in Mexico. According to Wikipedia, “These officials [of autocrat Porfirio Diaz] became enforcers of ‘land reforms’ that drove the haciendas into the hands of progressively fewer and wealthier landowners.” Sound familiar? (For the record, Diaz was nominally the democratically elected president.)

By the age of 30, Zapata was elected council president of his home town of Anenecuilco. He worked peacefully to get the hacendados (large land owners; think: oligarchs) to return land to peasants. He was somewhat successful. But most had no intention of giving land back and, in fact, continued to steal land. The state government was not at all interested in doing anything. So eventually, he used the local militia to simply take over disputed land. Now, a common conservative complaint about this kind of thing is that it is wrong to take someone’s property by force. But this is the ultimate conservative trick, claiming that however things are at a given time is how they should be. This land was stolen by the hacendados, generally from peasants who were still alive and wanted it back. And the state government understood what modern conservatives understand: if they just do nothing, then the rich win.

In 1910, Francisco Madero became a viable threat to Diaz. So Diaz had Madero arrested. Zapata aligned with him and this was pretty much the start of the Mexican Revolution. Madero did become president in 1911 and stayed in power until 1913 when Victoriano Huerta (with the help of Diaz supporters and the United States government) staged a coup d’etat. He was subsequently assassinated. Zapata spent much of the next several years at war with Huerta’s forces. If you look at photographs of the players in all of this, you can see why the United States would align with Diaz and Huerta: they were white. The more you know of American history, the more you see how large racism looms over it.

Once in power, Madero did what most powerful people do: he abandoned his ideals and the people’s interest. One of the first things he did was to appoint a governor of Zapata’s home state of Morelos who, like governors Diaz had appointed, supported the interests of hacendados. Zapata was very unhappy. In response, he wrote the Plan de Ayala. Much of it involved the revolution itself. But the main thing is that it called for land to be taken away from the hacendados and given back to local townships and individuals. Talk about local control! Libertarians always tell me that’s what they want, but I have a feeling that they would be totally against this.

Zapata’s assassination in 1919 pretty much ended the Mexican Revolution. Many of his reforms were eventually enacted, although never on the scale that he had wanted. And Zapata stands today as a hero whereas everyone sees Diaz and especially Huerta as villains. So there’s that.

Happy birthday Emiliano Zapata!

Afterword

Warren Zevon’s second album has a song called “Veracruz” about the US troops leaving Veracruz after having occupied it for much of 1914. I’ve always liked it. Now I see it as kind of a pro-Huerta song, with the characters being wealthy land owners. I mean, why is the American troop withdrawal from Veracruz the death of the city? I know that Zapata practiced modern warfare, but still: who didn’t? Regardless, it is a nice song and it is responsible for my first introduction to the Mexican Revolution:

Officer Richard Recine Shouldn’t Have Been Fired

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Richard RecineWhat is wrong with the police in Helmetta, New Jersey?! As you may have heard there was an incident where one of their part-time officers said, “Obama has decimated the frigging Constitution, so I don’t give a damn. Because if he doesn’t have to follow the Constitution, we don’t have to.” But that’s not what I’m talking about. The officer, Richard Recine, has since claimed that he was being sarcastic. And you all know me: I’m not keen on the law enforcement community and I am usually the first to blast them. But I actually believe Recine. Well, mostly.

If you watch the whole video, you can see a situation developing. Steve Wronko is some kind of animal rights activist and he has taken to shooting video inside of animal shelters. And like most politically involved people, he’s passionate and annoying. Actually, he’s more annoying than that. Because he doesn’t seem as interested in doing what he came there to do as he is in having this confrontation with the officer. He has been given the okay to go around and collect his video footage. Yet he doesn’t.

So I can see that Recine is getting more and more agitated. But I’m so used to police agitation leading to choke holds, tasers, and hails of bullets that this confrontation seems downright charming. At one point, the Police Director comes in to see what’s going on. Wronko asks him his name, and the man says, “Bob.” Again, this is not usual for a police department. Usually it is something like, “Police Director Bob Manney!” Or worse: something coarse and belligerent.

Then Manney says that if Wronko is being disruptive, he will have to leave. And Recine comes to his defense, “No. He’s not being disruptive.” But soon enough, it all does get a bit unpleasant as the police escort Wronko out of the building. They had a disagreement about exactly what Wronko’s rights were. But what’s interesting is that earlier on, Recine had okayed for Wronko to record in the building with the animal shelter, but not the offices. As far as I could tell, Wronko was making the argument that if a building was public, he could go anywhere he wants. I think that’s a misreading of the law, but I’m all for people pushing the limits of access. I just don’t see this really being the way to do it: waving around papers with “case law” in front of police officers.

Regardless, I thought the whole thing was handled pretty well. In general, the police are not interested in the Constitution. The Constitution is not a simple document and it has over 200 years of decisions based upon that. I’m sure it is annoying to the police to have people quoting the Fourth Amendment to them. So I think what happens here is that Officer Recine is annoyed and so he says, “We don’t need no stinking Constitution.” Whether Recine actually thinks that Obama has “decimated” or not, I can’t say. He claims to be a Democrat, and he may well have been conflating the conservative ideologues who claim this about Obama and this guy who seems equally extreme. It hardly matters. It is certainly true that Recine did not literally mean that the department didn’t have to follow the Constitution.

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So now Recine has been fired. I think that’s a shame. We live in a nation where police officers kill children because they think their toy guns are real. They kill old women wielding vegetable peelers. They suffocate men suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes. And in these cases, it is almost always found that the police acted properly. But here, we have an officer who is more patient than I probably would have been. And he’s fired because he makes at worst a provocative, but not at all intimidating, comment.

So to answer my original question, the only problem I see with the police in Helmetta, New Jersey is that they fired Recine. Otherwise, I wish more departments behaved as well.