Query: Is there anyone telling us now that Christie is, or might be, innocent who wasn’t telling us in October 2012 that Mitt Romney was going to win or that the election was “too close to call”?
—Mark Kleiman
Journalism V. Hackery
Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote, The Undeserving Rich. This is a favorite issue around here. Conservatives try to argue that the poor are not deserving and the rich are. In fact, Krugman wrote a blog post about this last week that I discussed, The Rich Versus the Upper Class. (This is quite typical; if you read Krugman’s blog, you don’t really need to read his columns, although I still do.)
Anyway, in the column, he called Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal to task for just outright lying about the recent economic progress of the poor in this country, Obama’s Envy Problem. Quoting from the Census Bureau, Stephens claimed that the incomes of the bottom fifth of earners have gone up 186% since 1979. This, of course, is wrong. That is not inflation adjusted. If you adjust for inflation (which Krugman points out, the Census Bureau did in the exact same table Stephens got the 186% number from), the bottom fifth of earners have seen their pay go down.
That’s embarrassing. Really embarrassing. In fact, when that error is fixed, Stephens’ article has nothing. It is the linchpin of the whole article. He criticized Obama for talking about inequality. Basically, he was saying, “Sure, the rich are getting richer, but so are the poor!” Except, of course, they’re not. But hey, we all make mistakes. Live and learn. Yet Stephens’ article went uncorrected.
So Krugman upped the ante. Later yesterday, he called out Stephens in a blog post, Department of Corrections, and Not. Apparently, Stephens had complained to the New York Times that since he had written his original article, Stephens had put out another article on how one really ought to use inflation adjusted numbers when looking at such issues. This is one of the most chickshit things I have ever seen in my life. All Stephens would have to do is add an update, “The 186% number is not inflation adjusted. The number is actually blah blah blah.”
It has now been almost two days since Krugman’s column first came out (they come out the night before about 7:00 pm west coast time). And still, there is no correction. Forget about Stephens. What does this say about The Wall Street Journal? Have they no shame? Well, historically, The Journal’s editorial page in fact has had no shame. But I don’t see how Stephens and company live with themselves. When I find out about an error I’ve made, I’m a wreck until I correct it. But conservative “journalist” either just take down embarrassing article or pretend they aren’t wrong, which is pretty much the same thing.
Even worse than this shameful and totally indefensible conduct on the part of conservatives is the effect that this has on other conservatives. People will go on writing articles about the fact that there is no economic inequality problem and they will quote from Stephens’ article. Now, they are conservatives, so maybe they’d just do the same thing Stephens did and pick a convenient number to make their points. But one thing is clear: the conservative movement will never become fact-based if their premiere publications can’t even be bothered to correct their most egregious errors.
Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer for commentary last year. That doesn’t speak well for American journalism generally. I don’t mean to say that this one mistake makes Stephens a bad writer. Just last week, I rather liked his criticism of Robert Gates’ new book. But what he’s doing now speaks to a general sense of not caring about facts. The Pulitzer citation reads, “Awarded to Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal for his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.” Contrary to the facts?
Jonathan Chait wrote an excellent article today, Deficit Scolds Are Holding the Unemployed Hostage. It is broadly about something I talk about a lot around here. The deficit scold industry may have it’s stated purpose—to reduce the long-term deficit—but what it actually accomplishes is to push all economic policy rightward by the use of endless false equivalence. But it isn’t an accident.
This works very simply because of the fact that the Democratic Party isn’t liberal on economic issues. So it turns out that what these rich-people groups want in terms of economic policy is the same thing that, for example, Obama wants. But they can’t admit that. They’ve got to pretend that they are right in between the parties. If only the two sides would compromise! Of course, the Democrats have done little else but compromise for the last 35 years.
Think of a very unfair parent. He has two kids. One of them stabbed the cat to death and the other left the refrigerator door ajar. Fifteen minute timeouts for them both! Except that the deficit scolds are worse than this. Imagine that one of the kids stabbed the cat to death and the other did exactly as he was told. Fifteen minute timeouts for them both! This is a huge benefit the deficit scolds are providing for the Republicans, because regardless of how badly they misbehave, they are never punished for it—at least not by the deficit scolds.
But here is the thing that you have to understand, and that Chait is not willing (publicly anyway) to talk about. The deficit scolds don’t care about the deficit. They really don’t. It is just an excuse for cutting entitlement programs and lowering taxes on the rich. I don’t normally go in for long quotes, but shortly after the last presidential election, Matt Yglesias wrote what I think of one of the best pieces of opinion journalism I’ve ever read. We were headed toward the “fiscal cliff.” If nothing was done by Congress, federal income taxes would go up on everyone who pays them. This is something that should have thrilled the deficit scolds. But it did not. Here he is discussing the top deficit scold group, The Fix The Debt Two-Step:
So having zigged, the conversation then zags and we hear that this kind of rapid deficit-reduction would be economically harmful. What we really need is “smart” fiscal consolidation.
Thumbs up. Right on. But here’s where we shift out of breathtaking dishonesty terrain and into staggering hypocrisy terrain. This outfit, after all, is called Fix The Debt. Its messaging is all about the evils of the national debt. Its core thesis is that high levels of government borrowing are setting us up for a catastrophic economic collapse. Indeed, it was precisely on those grounds that these people spent all of 2009, 2010, and 2011 arguing that we shouldn’t let short-term labor market problems distract us from the urgent need for long-term deficit reduction. If you really believed any of that, there’s just no way you’d be out there with all this fiscal cliff scaremongering. What you’d say instead is that, yes, the fiscal cliff is bad. Yes, ideally congress would avoid it. But the fact remains that the fiscal cliff is a mechanism for the vital task of long-term debt reduction and the overwhelmingly most important thing is that congress not fear the cliff so much that they merely further delay action.
But Fix The Debt isn’t saying that because they’re not actually so dumb as to believe their own nonsense about the overwhelming importance of debt reduction.
What they believe in, instead, is the overwhelmingly importance of rate-cutting tax reform and reduced spending on retirement programs…
And then he goes into his brilliant analogy about Quakers who want to balance the budget by cutting defense.
You may wonder what “rate-cutting tax reform” is. Normally, this is where tax rates are decreased, but so are deductions so that the total amount brought in is the same. Much of the debt scold industry claims to want to do this so that the total brought in goes up. It doesn’t much matter. Let’s just go with the equalized case. What is the point of doing it? Well, you could do it because it is fairer. (I discuss this concept in depth in, Hidden Welfare for the Rich.) But that’s pretty minor. It is not the reason that billionaire Pete Peterson has spent oh so many millions trying to change the tax code. Tax deductions are far easier to get enacted than tax rate reductions. What’s more, it is especially easy for the rich to get those special loopholes. So it’s a great deal: swap the deductions for the rate decreases. In ten years, the deductions will all be back but the new low rates will still be there.
So everything that Fix the Debt and related groups are doing is designed to take money away from the poorer classes and give it to the rich. “Fix the Debt” would be more appropriately called, “Screw the Poor.” And by “poor,” I many almost everyone in this more and more unequal society.
It is Martin Luther King Day! It is the day we celebrate the mythic figure rather than the man. And that is how it should be because no country has ever celebrated an actual man. But at least King is a happy exception to Lord Acton’s observation, “Great men are almost always bad men.” King was that kind of man Acton had in mind when he equivocated. Still, given that we are celebrating the symbol and not the man (we celebrated his birthday when it actually occurred last Wednesday), I would prefer to call it, “Civil Rights Day.”
I know that’s kind of generic, but it does have a few advantages. One very big one is that while King was hugely important to the civil rights struggle, he was hardly alone. What’s more, the civil rights struggle continues. Just ask blacks in Virginia. As I’ve noted before, “Everyone now accepts that poll taxes were a real issue meant to stop poor blacks from voting. What are voter ID laws other than a poll tax by another name?”
But I have a not-so-pure reason for wanting to call today Civil Rights Day. Republicans really bug me when it comes to Martin Luther King. Because he has become a mythic figure just like George Washington, he is cuddly and can be embraced by everyone except people who are explicitly bigots. I would find it less annoying to argue about the continuing civil rights struggle (Republicans think it ended in 1965!) than to argue about how King would now support the Republican Party.
Last night, TMCB Patriot sent me to the following image made by some true believing Republican:
As TMCB Patriot noted, MLK Was A Republican! Photo Montages Don’t Lie. I guess I can see how a Republican who said, “We believe in setting people free,” would think that. And all that disguised control in the form of charity! I can just imagine King saying those immortal words, “”Free to starve, free to starve! Thank God almighty we are free to starve!”
But this is the kind of nonsense we get from Republicans. They really are the postmodern party: reality is whatever we agree on. So if they say that Martin Luther King was a Republican long enough, he must have been. Just like in the 1960s they said (And some still do!) that he was a communist. But there is no evidence of either of those claims. Publicly, King stayed nonpartisan. Privately, he clearly tended Democratic.
What I find interesting is that Martin Luther King Sr was a Republican. At least he was until 1964. And then in the 1970s until his death in 1984, he was an outspoken Democrat. His political journey indicates what happened to the parties. The Democrats—especially in the South—had been a racist party. Similarly, the Republican Party used to be in favor of civil rights. But the Democrats evolved on the issue and the Republicans devolved on it. That’s why the image contains pictures of pre-Civil War icons.
Look at the whole message of the image: blacks vote Democratic out of habit or something. The use of the Elbert Guillory quote implies that blacks are either stupid or childish for voting Democratic. But note that the image reveals its own lie. Yes, blacks used to vote overwhelmingly Republican. And then they changed—because the parties changed. At least when the Democrats were a racist party, they didn’t run around whining that blacks were just voting Republican out of habit.
So happy Martin Luther King Day! And happy Civil Rights Day! But it is not a destination, just another step on an eternal journey.
Ed Kilgore has a great King quote from a 1965 sermon:
Amen!
I’m about to quote Phil Robertson, but this is not about Duck Dynasty. This is about religious intolerance in a general (but American) sense. I just heard that in Robertson’s GQ interview, he also said something about Shintos. Of course, that in itself is kind of funny because not that many people in the United States know what Shintos are. But I understand. Robertson is a college graduate and started his career as a teacher. He’s also clearly smart. But I had to find out what the old man said about those nasty Shintos!
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the actually interview so I had to settle for a quote from a Dylan Matthews article where he’s being pretty silly, 9 questions you were too embarrassed to ask about Duck Dynasty. It delighted me to read it. Matthews introduces it by saying, “Here’s Robertson on why he thinks Shintoism—much like Communism, Nazism and Islamism—leads to violence.”
Before we get to the Shintos, let’s discuss the Nazis. They were explicitly Christian. Now I know what Christians always say to this, “But they wouldn’t have behaved like that if they were real Christians. If they knew Jesus’ love, they wouldn’t have behaved that way!” This is the same thing they say when a Christian bombs an abortion clinic or does any number of other horrific things in the name of Jesus. But if that’s the case, then Christianity is totally unaccountable. I could say that only people who don’t read Frankly Curious lie. And then when someone who does read it is shown to lie, I could just say, “Yeah, but they weren’t a real reader. If they understood what Frankly Curious is all about, they wouldn’t lie.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but my understanding was always that the start of World War II was a fairly complicated thing. That is to say that bombing Pearl Harbor didn’t happen in a vacuum. But regardless, that was all much more about the emperor. I don’t think it had anything to do with Shinto beliefs. Regardless, we here in the 80% Christian United States decided to not so much fight the Japanese army as the Japanese civilian population, which we laid to waste. I don’t recall where Jesus said, “And if you are attacked, be sure to kill as many enemy civilians as you can because they’re just fucking Shintos who will murder you if they get half a chance.” Note, Wikipedia says, “Shrine Shinto is associated in the popular imagination with summer festivals, good luck charms, making wishes, holding groundbreaking ceremonies, and showing support for the nation of Japan.” I just don’t see the murder part of that, but moving on.
As for the Communists and Islamists, I just don’t see them as any more violent that the 80% Christian United States. But what the quote really says is, “Christianity is better than all the other religions, of which I am ignorant.” That’s usually a big problem when a group of people are overwhelmingly of the same faith. They start thinking that somehow they’ve got hold of the Truth. In this particular quote, we’re to believe that it is the lack of Jesus that makes people violent. But what about Jainism? Certainly that is a far more peaceful religion than Christianity. No one can question that. They don’t even kill animals to eat. What does the Christian say about the non-violence of Jainism despite its complete lack of Jesus?
Well, he was just providing an example! The point point always was that Christianity is it. This is why in America, Christianity and nationalism are so closely linked. When they chant, “We’re number one!” they mean both the United States and Christianity. This kind of intolerance and ignorance of other religions shows a shocking level of insecurity. Because as all good Americans know, there is nothing that need be taught to an American or a Christian. And sadly, there is usually nothing that can be taught, either.
Paul Krugman makes a great point in a blog post today, The Myth of the Deserving Rich. But then he commits an error (which he does all the time) that drives me crazy. But first, let’s talk about the article generally.
His point is that just as we try to justify the poverty of the poor, we try to justify the wealth of the rich. Well, we don’t. But pretty much the entirety of the mainstream press and pretty much any politician with high aspirations. Of course, Krugman doesn’t go into it, but there is a big reason for this: social unrest. I think it is the biggest issue that society will have to face over the next couple hundred years if we manage to keep civilization going that long. If we all admit that our society is hopelessly unjust, how will we deal with this? We want to create a society that encourages people to do good things with their lives. But it isn’t a stupid person’s fault that he is stupid.
Krugman, of course, is more interested in the injustice and social waste of not providing real opportunity to the children of the poor. I’m interested in that too. But I think the problem is much deeper than that and eventually we need to solve it if we are going to make progress as a society. Personally, I believe in guaranteed incomes. But that discussion can wait for another day. What’s more, I’m sure there are other solutions that have not occurred to me.
On the other side of things—apologizing for the wealth of the rich—is at least as absurd. A canard I used to hear a lot is, “If the rich didn’t deserve their money, they would have lost it by now.” No. There are several reasons this is wrong. One is that the children of the rich get educated in how to manage money. Another is that the rich don’t really manage their own money; they pay experts to manage their money. And don’t forget: inheritance in the primary way people get rich. This Forbes article is a good example of what Krugman talks about in his article: using the well off but not rich to make the rich look better. (A half-million in wealth including your home is the definition of rich? Right!)
What Krugman keeps doing that bugs me, however, is saying that only the top 1% is upper class and that the 19% below them are the upper-middle class. Look, if the bottom 20% is the lower class, the middle 20% is the middle class, then the top 20% is the upper class. I admit, someone barely in that class is not rich at all. (My sister would fit into that category, although by the Forbes article, she would be rich just based upon her house.) I’ll even admit that the 19% are not rich. But they are by definition in the upper class.
The reason this bothers me is that it tilts the field against the lower class. By this way of thinking, the bottom 20% somehow balance the upper 1%. But that isn’t what’s really going on. People living on the streets might balance the 1%, but not the bottom 20% generally. They really are the contrast to the management class (and those few people who still have decent unions). I’m in no way against the upper class—I have family and friends in this class. Sadly, however, not one of them will admit to being in the upper class. And seeing reality is a prerequisite for improving it.
I know that I have sworn off MSNBC, but I got a tip that this morning there was real news coming on Up with Steve Kornacki. So I watched it. This is amazing. Really, you’ve got to see it. The description of this segment sums it up pretty well, “Top officials in Chris Christie’s administration appear to be linked to an effort to use Sandy relief funds to force the city of Hoboken to expedite a project that also happens to involve the law firm of the Port Authority chairman.” There were three blocks that The Rockefeller Group owned in Hoboken that the Christie administration really wanted to be rezoned in such a way as to make a development there very profitable. About most things, I’m pretty skeptical—even things I want to believe. But the more I hear about the widening Chris Christie scandal, the more it seems true.
This is just the first segment, but it lays out the whole narrative:
One thing that was very interesting in the discussion that followed on the show was how at least two people there were minimizing it. For example, Josh Barro noted, “People nationally will not obsess that long about a story about a traffic jam.” He was saying that as the outlook of the people in the Christie administration, but it’s clear that he more or less agrees with that view. What is fascinating is that these are exactly the kinds of things people said about Watergate, “Why are you guys obsessing over this little burglary?” That misses the main point. It’s a thread. And the more it is pulled on, the more the entire Christie administration seems to be unraveling. Like the story today: it is only big news in the context of the larger story that Christie’s administration seems to be every bit as big a bully as Christie himself. And bullies usually end up breaking the law at some point. They are people who don’t accept social norms so they aren’t real clear on how to act generally. People will not soon get tired of this story.
This is a slightly different take on income inequality than I normally propose. I say that the rich should want more equality because great inequality breads revolution. In this clip, Bill Maher makes a more immediate argument. If people are desperate enough, they will kidnap the rich. Of course, I suspect most rich people will look at that bit and say, “Well, I’ll just get one of those flaming cars.” Or, “I’ll hire a private army to surround me.” Sadly, one thing that history shows us is that the rich never learn. I’m not saying they are different than anyone else. Everyone thinks things will just continue to be the way they have been. And in fact, that’s a good way to predict the weather. You will be almost 50% accurate predicting that tomorrow will be just like today. But eventually, the clouds roll in. Eventually there is a hurricane. And the rich have far more to lose than the rest of us.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the movie Cradle Will Rock. It really is a good film and an indication of this is that I had totally forgotten that I had already written about the film. I was still thinking, I’ve got to figure out how to write about the film. And this morning, it hit me, “My Suitcase and a Clown.” But all it really meant was that I have more to say about the movie. For a general discussion of it, go and read what I wrote.
I write songs and in my lifetime, I’ve certainly written over a hundred and very likely double that. My style was always a bit unusual, but in the last decade it has gotten to the point where it is mostly bizarre—or at least that’s the case in the songs I most love. I can still write a blues song. Not that long ago, I wrote a song in iambic pentameter called, “Angela’s Drilling a Hole.” (Regardless what you think, it’s not about that.) And I can still grind out the kind of post-punk I cut my teeth on like a song all my friends hate, “Jimmy Burned His Hand.” (That one probably is what you think, as long as you assume he did it intentionally and that there are lots more like him.) But these more recent ones—the bizarre ones—are, according to those who have heard parts of them, unlistenable.
As far as I can tell, they are unpleasant (But not to me!) because they are highly syncopated and repetitive. They are, in fact, the kinds of songs I tried to write when I first started writing songs. But people told me that they weren’t songs. And they were right: they were more along the lines of chants—but really “in your face” chants. The first of these more recent “bizarre” songs I remember writing was, “You Make Me Want to Be a Meat Inspector.” (You can probably guess that’s a love song, but you probably misunderstand the meaning of “meat.” Don’t think sex, think 1 Corinthians 13:11.)
One of the problems with these songs is that I so love them that I never really finish them. They’re like those old Bob Dylan tunes that have dozens of verses. But because no one is paying me or even willing to listen, I never have to stop. And that brings me to “My Suitcase and a Clown.” Obviously, this is about a a labor dispute between a ventriloquist and his “dummy.” Okay, it isn’t obvious at all, but that’s what it’s about. The “clown” in the title is the ventriloquist, not the “dummy.” Just like the labor struggles of old, it starts violent, but it ends with respect and profit sharing.
As you know if you’ve read my other article on Cradle Will Rock, Bill Murray plays Tommy Crickshaw, an old vaudeville ventriloquist. He is one of the anti-communists, but it is pretty clear in the film that the main reason he testifies against the FTP that he is part of, is that he has fallen in love with Hazel Huffman (Joan Cusack). But his testimony has put him out of job and now all the other artists hate him. He’s in his dressing room talking to his puppet and it is implied that Crickshaw used to be a communist himself. And then we get the following scene (don’t worry about the length, it is cued to the right part):
And then we know. He sings (as his puppet) “The Internationale”[1] by heart. He was a communist. And he is lost. We only see him very briefly later where he and Huffman meet, perhaps implying a relationship, but they both seem broken by the experience.
What I think is interesting is that I’ve always flattered myself that I was unique. And I do think that labor relations from the perspective of a ventriloquist and a “dummy” is fairly creative. What’s more, my take on it is quite different. But I admire Tim Robbins for coming up with the idea and putting it into this film in this way. It really is brilliant. And when the puppet falls off the stand and onto the floor, it is shocking—perhaps the saddest moment in the film.
Clearly, puppet is an inanimate object. In the scene, Crickshaw is doing all the work. In our society, things are the reverse of that. We have a system where the puppet is what is most valued. After all, he’s the funny one; he’s the one who appears to be delivering the goods. But without Crickshaw, he is nothing. By this I absolutely do not mean that capital shouldn’t be privately owned or that it doesn’t deserve a cut of the profits. But for almost 40 years—the vast majority of my life—productivity gains have gone almost exclusively to those who own capital. The Crickshaws, who make everything work by, you know, working have gotten virtually nothing.
In the movie, Crickshaw’s puppet is a symbol of lost innocence. But in our world, the dummy is now in control of the ventriloquist. I do not wish it, but one day, the cradle will fall.
[1] In case you aren’t familiar:
One of the first things that Obama did that angered me was to keep Robert Gates on as Defense Secretary. Of all the cabinet positions to put a Republican in, that is the worst. The Republicans have been (wrongly) hammering Democrats for being soft on the military for decades. So what was Obama saying other than, “I can’t find a Democrat as good for this job as this almost random (just happens to be the current office holder) Republican.” Now, I’m not an idiot. I know what Obama was trying to do; he was trying to “reach across the isle”; he was trying to show that he was open-minded. As I’ve pointed out, he was (and in many ways still is) a very naive politician.
But the thing is, I didn’t like Robert Gates under Bush and I didn’t like him under Obama. And now, he is out with a tell-all book about his time under those two presidents. I am not going to read Duty, of course. These kinds of books are always the most tired and useless things. Life is too short. But I have been really interested to hear what Gates had to say about Harry Reid because it is really unfair.
The biggest thing is that Harry Reid said that the surge in Iraq was a bad idea because the war was already lost. Gates thought this was treasonous. Well, this kind of thinking is exactly what I expect from a man like Gates. Yes, no one should ever be allowed to express a negative opinion about a war. But someone should be allowed to make a bunch of money writing a book that takes potshots at a sitting president and vice-president. I’ve got it: IOKIYAR.
The other thing is that Gates is mad at Reid because Reid asked him to put a study of “irritable bowel syndrome” into a military appropriations request. But this is how politics works. If Gates thinks that the Secretary of Defense is not a politician, then he is an idiot. In fact, anyone who claims that the top tier generals in the military are not politicians are totally ignorant of what they do.
Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal takes Gates to task, summing up the book, “Now he wants you to know he was offended, irritated, enraged, scandalized, ‘too old for this $%*&,’ and just plain itching to quit nearly every day he spent at the top.” But as he notes again and again, Gates didn’t step down. It isn’t like he needed the money; he’s valued at $5 million. As Stephens also notes, “Serving as secretary of defense, after all, isn’t really a duty; it’s an honor and a privilege.”
The only duty I see in Robert Gates is his duty to cash in even more on his government work.
As many in America get excited about the French sex reports that are only scandalous in America, there is actual very bad news out of France. But first up, the sex scandal.
French President Francois Hollande was caught having an affair with actor Julie Gayet. And it may indeed be the case as Joshua Keating says that, The French Merely Pretend to be Blase About Sex Scandals. But while he may be right that they are as interested in the sex lives of famous people as anyone else, they are not puritanical about it the way we are here in the United States. Here it is not news that a politician cut food stamps for millions of poor children, but it is news that he had a one-night stand during some conference. What’s more, the French media don’t treat Hollande’s sexual affairs as political matters.
Meanwhile, Hollande has moved over to the dark side politically speaking. The supposed socialist has decided that the best way to get France’s economy going is to do what the conservatives want: cut social spending and cut taxes! Sound familiar? Sound like exactly what the Republican Party in our own county always wants to do? Sound like what every person who ever passed Econ 101 would tell you is exactly the opposite thing to do?
Francesco Saraceno quotes Hollande saying Tuesday, “L’offre cree meme la demande.” This means more or less, “Supply creates its own demand.” That is, the old conservative canard that by making more stuff there will suddenly be people there to buy it. In economics, this is Say’s law. (Actually Say’s law is a bit more complex than this but it is basically the idea that all economic downturns are the result of businesses not producing the right stuff.) I call it the “Field of Dreams” fallacy: if you build it they will buy. It’s pretty simple to disprove. Assume you have an economy like ours: there are 100 people, 99 of them have no money and one has a huge amount of money. If some great low cost innovation comes along, only the one person will be able to afford it. Of course, the real economy is more complex than that but the principle is the same. Here is a great graph from Saraceno’s article:
The graph shows year by year what French businesses claim to be their biggest problems. The graph is kind of hard to read (go over to Saraceno’s article for a better copy), but the blue line is “demand” and the yellow line is “supply.” So roughly 50% of firms are suffering from lack of demand and 15% are suffering from supply problems. Roughly 10% (purple) are suffering from both. But as Saraceno points out, “Firms move from demand difficulties to no difficulties and back, but in the past six years they did not substantially change opinion on red tape, regulation, labor costs.” Do you see any evidence there for cutting the taxes of the rich?
This morning, Paul Krugman wrote a great response to Hollande’s new claim, France by the Numbers. He shows that while France is not doing great, they are actually doing fairly well. And much more important, the nonsense that Hollande is now pushing will only make things worse, not better. Currently, France’s GDP is going up. It’s budget deficit is going down. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is on its way down. And France can borrow money at reasonable rates. So why the sudden turn to the right? Is it just another case of Lord Acton’s observation that power corrupts and that, “Great men are almost always bad men.”
I am especially upset, because I’ve been a big Hollande booster. He was the “moderate socialist” who would do the right things, but incrementally and not upset the nation. Well, I guess this is just more evidence moderates of all stripes are useless because when it comes right down to it, they all come running back to the power elite like a lonely dog desperate for a pleasant pet.
Of course, when Hollande’s new found conservative economics turns out to only make things worse, I doubt very seriously that the people of France will blame it on the fuck-the-poor and give-to-the-rich policies he now favors. They will understandably think that getting fucked for the benefit of the rich is just the socialist way. I think Hollande needs to spend more time hitting the economics books and less time hitting the lovely Ms Gayet.
I haven’t written much if anything about the West Virginia chemical spill. That isn’t because I’m not interested in it. I haven’t been covering much politics for the last couple of weeks. Or much of anything else. But Reed Richardson wrote a great article on the coverage of the spill, or lack thereof, Let Them Drink Coke: The Mainstream Media’s Casual Incuriosity of the West Virginia Chemical Spill. In it, he explains the main reasons that the story hasn’t gotten more attention is the laziness of the national media.
Rather than report the story, they just report the political reactions to the story. But in West Virginia, even the Democrats are afraid of saying anything that might upset the coal industry. If the Democrats and Republicans agree on this spill, it must just be an unfortunate accident like a tornado. Sure, you cover it, but there’s no long term story there. The problem is that there is a story here. And as bad as this is for the people (And environment!) of West Virginia, the story is much bigger than even that.
John Boehner claims that we have enough regulations on the books and then has a temerity to ask, “Why wasn’t this plant inspected since 1991?” Well, I’ve got one reason for you: the government doesn’t spend enough money to pay people to do the necessary inspections. And this is because of people like John Boehner who know it is hard to repeal regulations, but it is easy to deprive agencies of the money they need to perform their mandated duties. In fact, most Republicans would eliminate the entire EPA if they could. And they’ve been gunning for the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. (Note: the Clean Water Act was passed under a Republican; the Clean Air Act was greatly expanded under two different Republican presidents.)
But I can hear the conservative cry foul, “But the government just doesn’t have the money to properly regulate!” And, “The private sector can’t afford to clean up their act when the economy is weak!” Both of these statements are exactly the opposite of the truth. The government can now borrow money at no cost. Thus, it should be borrowing money to clean up the nation and repair and expand infrastructure. And do you know what? That would stimulate the economy. As for the second claim, the economy is bad for workers. Business is doing better than ever. Now is the time they can afford to clean up their acts. And do you know what? That would stimulate the economy, because it would force the rich who are just sitting on piles of cash to actually spend some of it. This is not rocket science, folks; this is Econ 101.
Boehner’s question is an excellent example of conservative double speak. On the one hand, he wants to claim that this wasn’t the fault of Freedom Industries; it was the government’s fault for not doing its job. (You know, the job John Boehner actually thinks the government shouldn’t be doing?) On the other hand, conservatives (not John Boehner specifically) usually think that if left alone, businesses will do the right thing. They say things like, “Why would they pollute half a state? That just costs them money!” (The answer is that not doing any maintenance for 23 years saved them far more than any clean-up or punitive costs this spill will cost.) Well, my conservative friends, you can’t have it both ways. Either Freedom Industries is totally to blame here or we need to properly fund our government’s regulatory systems.
Richardson makes another great point about the spill:
The only state that has poorer people on average than West Virginia is Mississippi. Richardson complains when the Washington Post compared life in West Virginia to “camping,” writing, “What is happening in West Virginia is not at all like camping, it’s more like a taste of the Third World, where the powerful behave recklessly and leave the poor to suffer the consequences.” And that, in the end, is what it is all about. In the coverage of Hurricane Sandy, there were lots of stories of middle class people (none of truly poor people that I remember), because they were close by to the rich who really matter. West Virginia is not exactly a Mecca for the beau monde.
To me, the West Virginia chemical spill story is yet another story about income inequality. It’s all about economics. As I always point out, although I am a liberal on pretty much all issues, I don’t especially care about anything but the economic issues. If we lived in a reasonably equitable country, we would be doing something about global warming. We wouldn’t be treating coal with 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol to make it “clean.” We would be revitalizing West Virginia so that it’s people could be doing something that is not destroying the planet. Of course, Freedom Industries itself is a fairly small company with about 40 employees and roughly $5 million in profits each year. But it only exists because of far bigger and more profitable coal companies. The huge profits provide great incentives to create externalities. And the huge profits provide great political power to make sure that when tens of thousands of people are harmed by those externalities, nothing costly is ever done to these power elites.
And as Reed Richardson notes: that includes even having the stories properly covered by the national media.
The local press continues to provide good coverage. This morning’s news, Pregnant? Bottled Water Recommended. As of Friday, the concentration of the chemical was at 2 ppm. As of today, it seems to be below 1 ppm, which the CDC claims is safe. But they say if a woman is pregnant, it is best that they wait until the concentration is below detectable levels. Regardless, many people question this 1 ppm level, being as it is based on very little study. The US Navy laboratory at Norfolk Naval Air Station, Norfolk, VA says the only safe level is less than 0.057 ppm.