David Atkins brought this map to my attention last week, The Renewable Energy Map and the Slave State Map. He compares it to a map of slave states in 1854 and as should surprise no one, there is a great correlation. Of course, it isn’t just about renewable energy. Take your pick: murder rates, teen pregnancy, poverty rates. There really is something going on here.

But here’s the thing: it isn’t the vestige of slavery. Rather, it is the vestige of the kind of people who settled those lands. These were the people who thought it was right and fitting to base an economy on slavery. For lack of a better way to describe such people, they are the kind who think that knowledge is something that is provided not by highfalutin science books but rather from the clarity of the King James Bible. There is a reason why the Scopes Trial took place in Tennessee and not California.

What I’m proposing is Colin Woodard’s thesis in American Nations. This is the idea that there are historical roots for different parts of the country and they affect the cultures of those areas to this day. It’s actually quite a depressing view of America because as a proud and lifelong Left Coaster (which doesn’t include Southern California), I don’t have nearly as much in common in those in the Deep South as I do with people in Switzerland. It’s hard not to think that if we had let the south leave the Union in 1861, it would still be a slavery based, impoverished country today.

And that gets to the very heart of the matter. My biggest problem with conservatives is how dedicated they are to fetishizing ideas to the detriment of practical matters. So it’s great to have a government that screws you as long as it screws your neighbor even more. It’s like that old joke about a genii that will give a guy whatever he wants, with the stipulation that his neighbor will get twice as much. So the guy says, “Beat me half to death.”

The broader problem here is that the consequences of this kind of voting are far broader than people realize. Let’s suppose that the people vote to “get the fags” or “get the uppity feminazis” or “get the lazy coloreds.” They certainly get that! But they also get taxed more to lower taxes on the rich, they get worse schools for their kids, and they get polluted water and air. But at least they struck a blow for the white man!

So it isn’t surprising that those states aren’t that interested in green energy. The people aren’t just voting for the interests of the business community—they’re voting for the interests of the biggest business community. It’s not just individuals who get screwed by the “get the minority group” voting; it’s also the smaller businesses—you know: the ones who will make the future better.

You might note as David Atkins did, that Arizona produces very little green energy. That’s strange, right? After all, Arizona is such a sunny place! You’d think that they’d be on solar power in a big way. Well, part of the problem is that, Arizona Imposes Unprecedented Fee on Solar Energy Users. If you thought you could make some money by putting cells on your roof and selling it back to the energy company, think again. They’re going to tax you for the privilege. But actually, Arizona produces a lot of solar energy. It’s just that it is exported to other states. Because, you know, it isn’t about the people. It’s about the profits of big business.

Menzie Chinn has been doing some amazing work over at Econbrowser about the effects of “pro-business” policies on economic growth in the states. In two articles, he compares payroll levels with the ALEC-Laffer Economic Outlook Rankings. He finds that states that don’t have the supposedly pro-business policies actually do better than those that do.

Of course, the truth is that the ALEC-Laffer rankings have pretty much nothing to do with economic growth. Chinn explains, “The ALEC-Laffer methodology equally weights 15 measures: Top Marginal Personal Income Tax Rate, Top Marginal Corporate Income Tax Rate, Personal Income Tax Progressivity, Property Tax Burden, Sales Tax Burden, Remaining Tax Burden, Estate/Inheritance Tax Levied, Recently Legislated Tax Changes, Debt Service as a Share of Tax Revenue, Public Employees Per 10,000 of Population (full-time equivalent), State Liability System Survey (tort litigation treatment, judicial impartiality, etc), State Minimum Wage, Average Workers’ Compensation Costs (per $100 of payroll), Right-to-Work State (option to join or support a union), and Number of Tax Expenditure Limits.” In other words, it’s just a conservative wish list. It’s a bunch of stuff meant to enrich and rich, and through the use of the job creator myth, they claim it is good for the economy.

Chinn’s first paper was, State Employment Trends: Does a Low Tax/Right-to-Work/Low Minimum Wage Regime Correlate to Growth? In it, he looks at four states that all got new governors in 2010: California, Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin. The first two with Democratic governors got ALEC-Laffer ratings of 47 and 46—at the bottom of the list. The last two with Republican governors got ratings of 15 and 17. Yet over the last four years, the states with the supposedly bad economic policies have seen their economies grow more than the nation as a whole and those with the supposedly good economic policies have seen their economies grow less than the nation as a whole.

Of course, this raises the obvious question, “What about the other states?” So Chinn wrote, State Employment Trends: Does a Low Tax/Right-to-Work/Low Minimum Wage Regime Correlate to Growth—An Econometric Addendum. What he found was that there really isn’t any correlation, but as much as there is one it is that the “pro-business” policies actually hurt the economy.

Let’s think about that for a moment. If we had a really equitable economy, allowing people to keep more of what they make might actually improve economic growth. But our economy is already so out of kilter that we aren’t going to see improvements from policies that allow the rich to keep yet more of their money. In fact, the opposite case makes more sense: funneling more money to the poorer classes is going to be a better way to stimulate the economy.

I find myself being very frustrated with most political issues these days. In this case, it is clear what ALEC and Art Laffer are doing: they are lobbying for the rich. No one should take them seriously. The economics of this stuff is very clear. But this kind of determined ignorance seems to be all that the conservative movement is these days. Today, Jonathan Chait takes George Will and Charles Krauthammer to task over their comments about global warming. In addition to everything else, these guys push the idea that the scientific community has a vested interest in global warming being true. But they make absolutely no mention of the fact that the the rich people Will and Krauthammer represent have far greater interests in denying global warming.

This is why our civilization is dying. Hopefully another civilization will rise up after us. And if it does, books will be written about the rise and fall of the American Empire. And they will conclude that what went wrong was that we turned into an oligarchy that was focused on protecting the interests of the rich. As a result, the society ossified and slowly died. And people like ALEC and Laffer and Will and Krauthammer will be a big part of the story. Thanks guys!

H/T: Michael Hiltzik

John Brown was born on this day in 1800. He was not a crazy man. He was not like the people today who think that abortion is such a terrible thing that they must murder doctors and others in the name of their cause. For one thing, these people rarely have much of clue what they believe. Other than being told by other believers, they have no idea why they believe that a 16-cell zygote is a human being. As I note all the time, Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe that. If a man of his great brilliance and erudition came to a different conclusion, it can’t be that obvious.

Brown thought about the issue of slavery carefully. And his idea was never to murder all the slave owners. His attack on Harpers Ferry was strategic. He thought that he could make a quick strike, cause a slave rebellion, and that slavery would quickly be ended. He was wrong about that—and deeply naive. But it was a reasonable thing to think at that time. While awaiting his death, he wrote, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

On that point, he nailed it. American slavery was a very well designed system. It didn’t start out as racist. The problem that the ownership class had was that the working, indentured, and slave classes had this nasty habit of binding together and demanding things like money and dignity. So the ownership class invented racism. Thus, they made sure that whites would not get together with the blacks. It’s brilliant, because the whites were not getting anything. But by taking freedom away from the blacks, it made the whites feel like did get something. It’s like that great line from Mississippi Burning, “If you ain’t any better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?”

You see from this that “What’s the matter with Kansas?” is not new. The rich have always been able to divide the poor. In fact, that’s what they had to do. Otherwise, the people would never put up with something like royalty or, as we call them in this country, “job creators.” See all the jobs that the slave owners created?! That’s what capitalists want today. But they don’t want to call it slavery. But I don’t see much difference between slavery and someone working three jobs who also has to worry about the authorities arresting him (for any of thousands of laws that are not normally enforced) just because he steps out of line. With the way that many state prisons are now run, you can’t even say that at least we don’t torture the poor today.

Brown was right that it would take a lot of blood to wash away the sin of slavery. There are still apologists today who argue that it didn’t need to be that way. They say that slavery was a dying institution. But that’s not true. As soon as it could, the southern states enacted Jim Crow. It was less horrible than slavery, but only marginally so. And the truth is that if the federal government hadn’t stopped them, after the Civil War, they would have reinstituted slavery. Too much money was involved. The only thing that might have finally killed off slavery is if other countries stopped buying cotton from slavery states.

Today, John Brown is thought to have caused the Civil War to come about earlier than it would have because his raid on Harpers Ferry made the southern states paranoid. So his work was not in vain. But let’s never forget what slavery was all about: profits for a tiny slice of the people. And today, poor people are being held down, and in some cases even being tortured in jail, in the name of profits for another tiny slice of the people. Yet we people of the poorer classes go at each other, allowing the rich to gobble up more and more of our shared resources.

Happy birthday John Brown!

Afterword

Check out this great segment by Sarah Vowell from This American Life about John Brown and the song:

I am going to be out of town for the next two days, so I’m not sure how much writing I will be doing here. I’m sure there will be some stuff. There will be the birthday posts, of course. And I’m sure there will be other things I find that I absolutely must share with you. As always, I’ll try to write a bunch of stuff tonight. I actually do have a number of odd things on my mind like professional basketball in the 1960s and The Three Investigators books and something new I learned about Frank Conniff. Plus there will doubtless be any number of political issues that really bug me. So stay tuned. Just keep your expectations low.

It seems I am suffering from another pundit crush. I know, I know! It always turns out badly. They often turn out to be hopelessly naive or worse: clueless. But while searching for articles about the big Republican hearing thud, I discovered Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times. He writes a blog called The Economy Hub. And the last couple of days have been really good.

By “really good” I mean that he agrees with me. Well, more than that. But we are amazingly in sync in terms of what we’ve written about. For example, his take on Donald Sterling is the same as my take. (Read his take, he knows the historical context far better than I.) His take on Art Laffer’s advice to red states is the same as my take. And his take on the 60 Minutes BP whitewash is exactly the same as my take.

I also got the following 7 Habits of High Successful People from his Twitter feed:

1. Skiing
2. Yachting
3. Snorkeling
4. Golf
5. Polo
6. Dinner parties
7. Shopping

I’ve added him to my daily reading folder. And I will shortly add him to the side bar here. Check him out!

Jonathan Bernstein has written a really interesting article, Democrats’ Electoral College Edge. Who’d a thunk it? I’ve generally thought of the Electoral College as being something that benefited Republicans because of the tiny red states that get more than their fair share of electoral oomph. But that is no longer true. Political scientist Ben Highton looked at it and indeed, the Electoral College is good for the Democrats. Very good.

Now what does this mean? If the popular vote comes out evenly divided, the Democrats would win the presidency 80% of the time. And the reason is very interesting. Blue states are getting bluer, so that pushes against Democrats getting an advantage from the Electoral College. But this is more than compensated for by the fact that Red states are getting redder at an even faster pace. To give you an example, the most heavily Obama-voting states were Hawaii and Vermont with 70.55% and 66.57% of the vote. Compare this to the most heavily Romney-voting states of Utah and Wyoming with 72.79% and 68.64%. Admittedly, Utah was hotter for Romney because he was a Mormon, but if you look at 2008, Utah’s still number three for the Republican.

What I find fascinating about this is how what is happening to the Republicans on the federal level has long been happening to Democrats on the state level. While it’s true that gerrymandering greatly harmed the Democratic Party after 2010, at least as big a problem is that Democrats are clustered in urban areas. So even when congressional districts are reasonably drawn, there is a tendency for the Democratic districts to be very Democratic. Now that same thing is happening on the federal level because increasingly, the hatred of the conservative movement is relegated to little states no one especially wants to visit: Oklahoma, Idaho, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Nebraska, Kansas. (For the record: I know there are a lot of fine people in those states.)

But Jonathan Bernstein said something else that I take issue with, “If these results hold up through 2016, expect the parties to begin flipping their positions on the Electoral College, perhaps very rapidly.” Despite what readers may think, I don’t consider myself a partisan. Yes, I am mostly against everything that the Republicans have to offer. But I’m more than willing to admit when someone like Rick Santorum has some reasonable things to say about economic policy. And although I am a registered Democrat, I largely disagree with the economic policy of that party. Even more than most so called independents, I go my own way. And on this issue, I value democracy far more than I value an advantage to the Democratic Party.

Where I really disagree with Bernstein is in his false equivalence. Yes, I’m sure that the Republicans will rush to the realization that the Electoral College is a Very Bad Thing™(pending). But I suspect that Democrats—other than the hyper-partisans—will keep thinking that the Electoral College is a very bad thing. Because liberals actually do believe in democracy. But I will go this far in Bernstein’s direction: it won’t be high on Democrats’ list of priorities.

I find the whole thing fascinating and I am glad that political scientists can look at it. But as much as I think democracy is an incredibly flawed system, I also think it is the best system yet devised for creating governments. I’m pleased that right now it greatly favors the less terrible party. But I am as much against it as ever. I can’t put it any more clearly than the bumper sticker above: I ♥ Democracy!

Afterword

If you haven’t seen it, you should watch the great CGP Grey’s video, “How the Electoral College Works”:

And then watch “The Trouble with the Electoral College”:

Yesterday, Thomas Friedman wrote another of his grand columns, Go Big, Get Crazy. It’s one where you can imagine him delivering it from a podium with big hand gestures that proclaim, “We will expand this great system of ours and let freedom ring…” On Mars or something. Actually, Friedman’s idea this week is for America to become energy independent to spite Putin. Instead of his old “Suck on this!” it is more “Suck on the ground to get them hydrocarbons!”

But Friedman wants to do it in an environmentally friendly way. But he’s no fool. He realizes that compromises must be made! And just like the “third way” moderate he is, all he thinks it will take is a little leadership™ on the part of Obama:

I think I have a new name for the man: Rip Van Friedman. Because he sounds like he’s been asleep for six years. Obama is not a Republican so there will be no compromise by the opposition. Remember the budget deal where John Boehner got 98% of what he wanted? That was the deal he turned down. This deal would be one that was overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. I don’t think there is a major environmentalist around who wouldn’t exchange Keystone for a carbon tax. The kind of deal that the Republicans would take would be Keystone in exchange for maybe some day considering a debate about the possibility that maybe we might want to think about global warming after Manhattan is under water.

Dean Baker was quick to hit back on the ridiculous economics in Friedman’s article, Thomas Friedman’s Big Deal on Fracking and Global Warming:

But the whole article is predicated on the idea that we must do something about Ukraine. Now, I don’t like what’s happening in Ukraine either. But it is a whole lot more justified than the United States’ invasion of Iraq. And Thomas Friedman was not only a big supporter of starting that war, he was a big supporter of it long after things had gone terribly wrong. I just don’t see how he is in any position to complain about Russia at this point.

After the Ukrainian revolution, Thomas Friedman was on the Sunday talk shows to gush about how great it all was. He said, “The West didn’t do this. The United States didn’t do this. The EU didn’t do this. The Ukrainian people did this.” Not really. Patrick Smith explained in Slate at the time:

It’s interesting that Mr Globalization is also Mr Nationalism. But it isn’t surprising. That’s the thesis of Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans (my last discussion of it: Bad Samaritans). The whole free trade business is really about enriching the advanced countries and keeping down the developing countries. But even apart from that, Friedman should shut up. He has no credibility to complain about Russia doing something that is more justified than policies he’s recent led cheers for.

Mike Wallace must be spinning in his grave. Tonight, Scott Pelley presented a segment on 60 Minutes, BP Cries Foul in Massive Oil Spill Settlement. They describe it as, “Is BP backpedaling on a settlement with oil spill victims, or are some Gulf Coast businesses exploiting BP to the tune of more than $500 million?” But even as ridiculous as that sounds, it was worse.

Even if the story had been as evenhanded as that description makes it sound, it is a towering example of false equivalence. In the golden years with Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes took on the big guys and how they were screwing the little guys. Now? 60 Minutes wants us to decide whether the little guys are screwing the big guy BP, who just happens to have destroyed the Gulf of Mexico.

But the segment was not evenhanded. Even the people who were against BP’s whining didn’t defend the people who were supposedly scamming the criminally polluting corporation. They just made the argument that should have made 60 Minutes not do the story: BP made an agreement and now that the public pressure is off, they are trying to wriggle out of their agreement.

One thing that was never mentioned was that the more you clamp down on fraud, the more that actual deserving people get refused. So 60 Minutes mentioned a few cases that sounded outrageous, but made no mention of what are undoubtedly far more that were marginal but which BP also doesn’t want to pay. But such nuance is hard to get across when you spend so much time spinning for BP.

I did learn something really interesting: who is representing BP. It is none other than the man who brought you the 43rd President of the United States, Mr Ted Olson! The man could sell ice to Eskimos. And sure enough, he was brilliant on screen. But I couldn’t help but think that Pelley only asked him questions Pelley knew he could answer. Here’s a great example:

But check out the slippery logic that BP is using. It is wrong for small businesses to use the law to their advantage at BP’s expense. But it is right for BP to use the law to its advantage—including going to the Supreme Court where the conservatives are very likely to go their way. As it is, BP got a great deal in the settlement. They are just trying to make more money now. And I don’t blame them. That’s what companies do: little and small. And that’s all that’s going on here on both sides.

What’s appalling is that 60 Minutes thought that a third of their show ought to be dedicated to allowing BP to make their case in the court of public opinion. It’s disgraceful.

We all know that Mississippi is the worst state in the union by most metrics, but it would seem that Oklahoma is now the most hateful state. It’s kind of like Texas but more backward. So this last week I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Oklahoma Republicans allowed a privately financed Ten Commandments monument to be put on the capital grounds. But The Satanic Temple did not like this. So they have commissioned a sculpture of Satan with two children gazing up lovingly at him, which they want Oklahoma to put on their capital grounds.

Now we know how this is going to end. Oklahoma, after all, stopped providing spousal benefits to all National Guard personnel, rather than allow same-sex couples to also get them. Did I mention that Oklahoma is the most hateful state in the union? Anyway, in this case, the courts will find that if Oklahoma is going to allow the Ten Commandments on their grounds, they have to allow the Satan monument on their grounds. So Oklahoma will decide to have no monuments on their grounds.

Of course, first Oklahoma will argue that the Ten Commandments are not religious. They will claim that they are the basis for our common law and so forth. This is all nonsense, of course. Just look at the Ten Commandments. I think it is widely understood that the first three are only religious, having no content that we would recognize as secular law. But what is not as widely appreciated is that in terms of emphasis it is almost exclusively religious. Of the roughly 326 words in The Ten Commandments, only 77 (24%) are what we would think of as secular. What’s more, of those 77 words, 27 are taken up with a long list of things you cannot covet, when one word would have done. That would have produced just 17% of the text.

And really, much of the 77 words are not what we would think of as laws anyway. Being nice to mom and pop is 22 words; no sex outside of marriage is 5 words; not being jealous of your neighbor is 33 words. So there are really only 17 words out 326 that any modern person would consider part of the secular justice system—that’s just 5% of the text. But just read through it: the focus is on what you do for God.

My favorite part of the commandments is the first: You shall have no other gods before me. You ever get the impression that this was written during a transitional period when the Jews were moving from polytheism to monotheism? Because how can you read this as anything but, “There are other gods, but I’m the top banana!”? And this gets us back to Satan. Now the truth is that the Bible is kind of unclear which characters are Satan. Was it Satan that tempted Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden? Most Christians will tell you that it was, but the Bible doesn’t say so. What’s more, Satan in the Old Testament is not a foil for God. He’s more like a prosecutor, always testing God’s chosen ones. Think of Job.

It is only in the New Testament that Satan turns into a kind of god: yin to God’s yang. And that means that Christianity kind of slid back into polytheism, although no Christian I know will admit to this. I mean, what is the great war at the end times all about anyway? If it weren’t a close contest, why would anyone fight the war? Similarly, if Satan is a god just like Yahweh, how do we know which side is good? All we’ve ever read is propaganda from Yahweh’s side. And given what Yahweh does to us on a regular basis and how he acted throughout the Bible, I think we may be on the wrong side.

The satanists see the casting out of Satan as a symbol for all people who society treats as outcasts. So their mission is “to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people.” And they have “seven fundamental tenets,” which make the Ten Commandments sound like the late Iron Age dogma that they are:

1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego your own.
5. Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
6. People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

That sounds a hell of a lot better to me. It is also general. It doesn’t have to say that murder is wrong, because that follows directly from the third tenet. What’s more, it isn’t religious at all. Obviously, the Satan monument is trying to make a point about pushing religion on other people and about the separation of church and state. But I think we would have a far better society if the Seven Tenets were displayed on government land everywhere.