“As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications were probably monitored.” That’s what former President Jimmy Carter told CNN today. He added that if he wants to write a world leader, he sends it on paper through the post office. When I heard that, I had two thoughts. First: my God, even a former president has to worry about this nonsense! Second: my God, now the government is going to monitor his mail! But then I thought: no!

To a very large extent, the government listens to our phone calls and reads our email simply because it can. It’s like the old joke about why a dog licks his balls. But a better example of it is the video store. In the old days of video stores, getting an account was slightly more complicated than becoming a foster parent. Their applications requested ridiculous amounts of information including social security numbers and drivers license numbers. Because I’m a pliant person, I always provided this information. But then I got married to a privacy freak and she absolutely refused.

That’s when I found out that some things. First, the video stores didn’t check the accuracy of the information. Second, they didn’t do anything with the information other than put it into their databases. Third, they didn’t care if you gave them the information. They were just collecting it because they could. As long as it didn’t cost them anything, it was great. But the thought that it might cost a single video rental was not worth it.

As a result of this, I suspect that the government will not go after Carter’s mail. After all, they can’t think he is doing anything wrong. Going after his mail would take effort whereas tapping his email just requires pushing a button. But who knows? Carter also mentioned that President Obama never requests his advice on foreign affairs. He thinks this is because of his position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Carter is very even handed about that and in modern American politics, everyone is supposed to just pretend that the Israelis are always acting morally and the Palestinians are just a bunch of terrorists.

My newest concern is the spy fly. This is a drone the size of a fly. I am sure that they have these because I’m sure that my tech partner and I could make one. Maybe it would be more the size of a moth, but if we could do that, the government could do a fly. And that means that they can spy on us at any time. Carter’s letter might be safe, but the fly could record him as he writes it. The only thing is that the government would have to have agents within a couple of blocks. So that gets back to the government having to make an effort. So that’s something. But still, a government that spies on ex-presidents is not free, open, or democratic.

Emily Crockett has written one of the best articles I’ve read all year, Timothy Lee, Latest Mansplainer on the Birth Control Benefit, Gets It All Wrong. It all started with the puppet video about reproductive rights. Crockett tweeted out a link to the video adding, “Puppets are creepy. So is your employer deciding whether you can get birth control.” Apart from the unnecessary puppet slight, I’m right with her. But then came Timothy Lee. You may know him, because I’ve written about his excellent writing about intellectual property. He a libertarian and when it comes to such issues, he is surprisingly good.

But when it comes to most issues, Lee is just an ignorant conservative. Truthfully, he reminds me of myself at that age. Anyway, he replied to Crockett’s tweet with this own, “Luckily people are free to pay for their own birth control.” Just on it’s surface this is such a stupid comment. What’s the point of having health insurance through your employer if they can decide what kind of care is reasonable? As Crockett noted, an employer might be a Christian Scientist. In that case, they ought to be able to stop their employees from getting cancer treatments because God can cure everything except for broken bones.

The whole thing does point out the need for government provided single-payer health insurance. But, of course, Lee would be totally against that. Just like a typical libertarian who has thought through everything half way, Lee forgets about the history of employer provided healthcare and how it is part of people’s compensation. Because here’s the thing that isn’t widely known: Hobby Lobby—the company going before the Supreme Court to try to deny their employee’s birth control coverage—provided health insurance before Obamacare that—Wait for it!—provided birth control coverage. So taking it away now is just a way of giving women a large cut in pay.

What’s more, the whole thing shows that this is not about religious liberty at all. It’s about grandstanding. And if the Supreme Court finds for Hobby Lobby, it will show that it is no longer a judicial body but just a bunch of (at least five) partisan hacks. That’s why I’m not at all convinced that Hobby Lobby will lose. But based upon what Lee said, I can only assume that he thinks they ought to win. And it demonstrates that libertarianism is at base just a philosophy developed by the power elite to justify and expand their power. Thus, libertarians tend to upper-middle class (or better) white men. It is not surprising that Lee is an upper-middle class white man.

Crockett goes on to make some excellent points about the issue. I recommend checking out the whole thing, but here’s the guts of it:

The whole episode goes to show how stupid it is to glibly apply ideology to complex issues. But this is the way with libertarianism, is it not? There’s some theoretical ideal that it pushes without a thought to the practical consequences to actual people. Timothy Lee’s tweet is entirely typical of the libertarian world view. There answer to every problem is, “Well, be rich!” But when you look at actual issues and actual human beings, the philosophy is cruel and useless.

Digby also sent me to a very funny article by Roger Simon, Mess With Bull, Get Horns. But she didn’t see the article the way I did. The article makes fun of the sudden outbreak of Putin love here in the United States. But as one would expect from Politico, Simon couldn’t just attack the conservative side, which is the only side with the crush. So he engages in some of the most extreme false equivalence I’ve ever seen.

You have no doubt seen the love that Fox News is giving to Putin. It takes the form of, “Putin rides around shirtless on a horse while Obama rides a bicycle (How girly!) with a helmet (Wimp!) in mom jeans!” Check out The Young Turks video, “You’ll Never Guess Who Loves Putin” for a good rundown. (I’ve embedded it below.) Others have noticed the weird double image conservatives have of Obama. On the one hand, he’s a despot who has staged a huge power grab. On the other hand, he’s an indecisive wimp. So the subject is ripe for humor.

There are liberals who have sided with Putin. Jonathan Chait described this group in an article last week, The Pathetic Lives of Putin’s American Dupes. But as he pointed out, this is a small group. And a weird group. And they are not Putin lovers; they are Russia apologists. There is not a lot of humor potential there.

So what is a Washington insider determined to equate left and right to do? First, define centrists and conservatives as liberal! Did you know that the Washington Post editorial page was liberal? I don’t mean in 1972; I mean today. I’m sure you didn’t, because it isn’t. This is why liberals call it “Fox on 15th Street.” And then there is Thomas “Suck on this!” Friedman. And centrist Fareed Zakaria. According to Simon, if you aren’t a fire breathing conservative, you are a liberal. That is, interestingly, the conservative defintion of “liberal.” But you would think a reporter would have a more objective definition. But wait, there’s more!

Simon quotes Rudy Giuliani saying, “[H]e makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. And then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader!” And then he quotes Sarah Palin saying, “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans.” And even staid old Charles Krauthammer saying, “Putin fully occupies vacuums. In Ukraine, he keeps flaunting his leverage.”

And what do we get from the “liberal” Washington Post? Only this outrageous quote:

There are similarly tactical statements from Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman about what Obama must do. Now I may or may not agree with what all three are arguing. I’m not really interested in taking the time to read those articles. But there is no Putin idolatry in any of the these supposed liberals’ views of the situation. There isn’t even anything close to Krauthammer’s statement.

One thing I think we all like about comedy is that it takes a stand. That stand doesn’t have to agree with the listener or fit into some pre-existing ideology. But what Simon has done is madness. He’s clearly going after the the conservative “Putin’s so manly” meme. But he hedges his bet by throwing in a few quotes that have nothing to do with what he’s writing about. And it is all for the purpose of maintaining some ridiculous notion of objectivity. It’s pathetic.

In this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, Adolph Reed wrote Nothing Left. Sadly, it is behind a paywall. I went and got a hard copy when I heard about it. And it is a great article. Unfortunately, my well marked copy has set idle because I haven’t had much to add to it. It is very much what I think. But this morning, I read an article by Ed Kilgore where he largely dismisses it. That’s not a surprise. Kilgore is a New Democrat and Adolph Reed’s sights are set on the New Democratic movement.

Reed’s argument is that the Democratic Party doesn’t really stand for anything anymore other than winning elections. What he says is what I say around here all the time: economic issues are what matter. My favorite example is that it is more important for a gay man to be able to find work than to marry. It’s a Needs Hierarchy thing. But the Democratic Party has pretty much turned in all their economically liberal ideas and now depend almost exclusively on social issues as the basis of their claim to be liberal.

This is the critical passage from the article:

The response from the Democratic elite and the Obama worshipers is always that Obama (or Clinton, or whoever) really is liberal, but the political realities dictate being more conservative. Give him the House and 60 members of the Senate see what he does! Of course, we did give him that. And what did we get? The Republican healthcare plan! A supremely watered down stimulus. And this wasn’t the result of resistance from the Blue Dog Democrats. Obama never even proposed liberal policy. As he is quoted in The Obamas, “I’m a Blue Dog at heart.” Indeed he is.

But it isn’t just the economic issues. Reed does a good job laying out the supposed necessity of Democratic politicians to have a Sister Souljah moment. It’s interesting that there is never such a requirement for Republican politicians. In fact, it is rather the opposite. But what it mostly comes down to is Democratic politicians criticizing powerless constituencies. Reed notes how it is always portrayed as being a show of strength when it is just the opposite. After all, beating up on the weak is what we would call bullying if it happened on a school yard.

An excellent example of this was Obama’s “Popeyes Chicken” speech where he chastised a mostly black audience about feeding their kids junk food. “You can’t do that,” Obama said. “Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school.” Apart from the fact that of all the issues facing minority children, the eating of friend chicken is pretty minor, the comment is simply offensive. As Reed notes, “Perhaps, but it’s noteworthy that Obama didn’t give the Popeyes speech to groups of investment bankers.”

Another way to put the problem is, “Radicalism now means only a very strong commitment to anti-discrimination.” This goes along with the neoliberal idea we don’t have to do anything about inequality as long as the inequality is color blind. As long as 5% of billionaires are gay and 10% are black, everything’s okay. Except that it isn’t. Such a society is still unfair.

I also think that the New Democratic attacks on Reed are unfair for another reason. He isn’t saying vote against the Democratic Party. He has a long-term vision of building a truly liberal movement. It is absolutely the case that the Democratic Party will not be doing it. But as a liberal movement grows it will take over the current Democratic Party. Regardless, he isn’t saying that Bush and Gore were the same, only that they weren’t much different when it came to economic issues. And it is no way forward for the Democratic Party to be Republican Party Lite.

If there is a liberal demographic tidal wave that it coming, the Democratic Party will squander it if we liberals just allow things to continue on as they have been. It will be 2009 all over again with Democratic super-majorities. If the Democrats continue to provide the same watered down liberal policies and super-strength neoliberal policies, people will back away. They’ll stop voting. And I can’t see that there will be any reason to blame them.

You may remember last month, I wrote about Dave Camp’s budget plan that I called Another Giveaway to the Rich. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about it, most especially the timing gimmicks that would “starve the beast” over the long term, and a reduction in the number of tax rates to move toward a flat tax. But I also made a point of noting that the best thing in the plan, a tax on the big banks, was flawed. The idea was to tax the big banks to pay for their implicit “too big to fail” insurance. The problem was that the tax was an order of magnitude less than the benefits they were getting. It would be like giving a 50-year-old full health insurance for $40 per month—something Republicans are absolutely, positively against.

I learned today from Jonathan Chait that even this little tax was too much for the Titans of Wall Street, The Republican Party’s Prague Spring Is Officially Over. He explained the situation thusly:

What Republicans Stand For

What should be clear to everyone about this is how the Republican Party operates as a revolutionary movement. There can be no brooking of even the smallest deviation from ideological purity when it comes to the core issues of the movement. And this was the wealthy’s outrage at having to pay 10¢ on the dollar for their insurance. Just imagine what their reaction would have been had Camp suggested taxing them at a proper level. They would have been screaming. And rightly so! These huge financial institutions wouldn’t show much profitability at all if they didn’t have “too big to fail” insurance. In other words, the federal government is keeping inefficient companies in business. And the main protector of these inefficient companies is the Republican Party.

Although Chait still seems enamored with Camp’s budget, and doesn’t seem to understand that the “too big to fail” tax was a pittance compared to its worth, he fully understands what the Republican Party is all about:

He’s quite right that this isn’t the goal of Republican voters. I talk to them all the time. They are often willfully ignorant and hold some of the stupidest and vilest of beliefs. But in general, they hate Wall Street as much or more than the liberals do. They hate crony capitalism as much or more than liberals do. They hate the bank bailouts as much or more than liberals do.

Those Kind of People

But while all that was happening, Republican voters sat on their hands. But when the government was going to give low income homeowners mortgage relief, well, that was a different matter! Then it was time to take to the streets! I just watched Inequality for All, the new Robert Reich documentary. (I’ll probably write more later today.) One of the things I didn’t like in the film was how it tried to equate the Tea Party with Occupy Wall Street. It’s true, as I just indicated, that listening to the rhetoric of the Tea Party (at least at the beginning), they cared about the same issues. But when all is said and done, the Republican Party can depend upon conservatives to vote for it because the voters know the Democrats represent those kind of people. And by that, I’m not even necessarily talking race. Those people are just the other—younger, darker, far away, whatever—and therefore undeserving.

Another aspect of this that I find frustrating is that small business owners skew heavily toward the Republican Party. Yet the Democratic Party is actually better for this group. The Republican Party does not represent business. They don’t even represent big business. They represent the super rich and an outcome of that is that they are freakishly pro-corporate to the point of being anti-American. We can’t stop corporations from hiding their money overseas! But this would never fly without a hundred million people voting to hurt those kind of people. But there’s another those kind of people who the Republican base ought to be paying attention to. Because the Republican Party gives away far more to its those kind of people (the super rich) than the Democratic Party ever even thought about giving to its own (the poor).

Just to close out this section of the day, on last night’s The Daily Show, Jon Stewart introduced a show that never made it to Nickelodeon, Skippy and the Tick. This came from a comment made by Bill O’Reilly who said of Jason Greenslate, “This guy is a parasite… He’s a rat.” To which Stewart responded:

It’s very funny, but the truth is that I would totally watch that show! It’s got that whole The Odd Couple meets Archy and Mehitabel meets the Black Death. What’s not to like? I even have an idea for a pilot episode called, “Skippy Gets a Blood Transfusion.” And I have a catchy theme song for it. The chords are:

Here are the lyrics:

Now if I can just pry the rights away from Jon Stewart, it will be smooth sailing!

Thanks to Andrea for altering the image for use on this page.

Last September, the Huffington Post published an article, Jason Greenslate, Food Stamp Surfer, Responds To The Haters. Greenslate is the young man that Fox News used for weeks to vilify the food stamp program (SNAP). It’s an interesting article because the young man is clearly intelligent—more so than most people on Fox News, much less those who watch the propaganda mill. And he made two points. First, he noted that it is wrong to make him the poster child of food stamps. In reference to the House Republicans using him as an excuse for cutting the SNAP program, he said, “I don’t think that one person should be the decision for 47 million people.” Second, he noted that it isn’t true that he doesn’t work—in fact, he works more than 40 hours per week. “I’m just not making any money. I’m setting up a career for myself.”

That’s the crux of it. Conservatives have a problem with his choice of careers. Now I don’t think this is true, but they would say it is because it has a low probability of success. But isn’t this one of the constant refrains from the Republican Party, “People need to be rewarded for taking chances”? Greenslate will probably fail. And he will pay a stiff economic cost for it later in life. What’s wrong with that? I would think nothing is wrong with it from a conservative perspective.

But the Fox News crowd seems to think that if Greenslate is going to make this choice, he should be forced into extreme poverty. He should be forced to starve. The social costs of his choice should be borne only by him. But that’s madness. First, there is an extreme social cost that we all play by how our society over-rewards professional entertainers from musicians to sports figures to the ranters on Fox News. (See Frank and Cook’s Winner-Take-All Society for more on this.) Why is there no concern about this, but excessive concern that we are making sure that a young man who is determined to following his unlikely dream is at least given enough food?

What’s more important is that the Fox News crew have a big problem with Greenslate for an unmentioned reason: they think that social value is perfectly determined by your salary. This is the old Ayn Rand game that claims that markets are not only efficient, they are perfect. As Ha-Joon Chang pointed out in Bad Samaritans, by this theory, no one would ever plan for the future. It would make no sense to get an education, because that costs money when one could be working right now and making money.

What the Fox News argument comes down to is that they don’t like how Greenslate is investing in himself. But they aren’t willing to come out and say that. So they claim that he is just wasting time and money. But the exact same thing could be said about college students taking out loans to study engineering. It is just that the career path for someone with an engineering degree is a lot safer than that of someone with a totally rad band. But the funny thing is that Greenslate’s food stamps cost us far less than paying the interest on those student loans for four years.

I’ve been planning to write about Greenslate for months. I only got around to it because he came up last night on The Daily Show. The A segment of the show was probably the best thing I’ve ever seen Jon Stewart do. I don’t recall seeing him quite so obviously angry before. Recently, he got into a bit of an argument with Eric Bolling at Fox News over their deceptive campaign against food stamps. Bolling said, “Food stamps aren’t just used for food. A lot of clowns are withdrawing cash from the EBT cards then spending in on things like booze, weed, and lap dancers.” Stewart responded, “”What we were ridiculing was the way you exaggerate the scope of public assistance abuse through random, often unprovable anecdotes, hour-long specials…” I suspect Bolling will come back with something akin to, “So’s your old man!”