One this day in 1817, Branwell Bronte was born. He was the underachieving brother of the Bronte sisters. But he was accomplished in his way. He was apparently addicted to alcohol and opium at various times and had a bit of a gambling habit. All of that hard living is usually said to be responsible for his death at the age of 31. But there are a couple of things to think about. First, he outlived both Anne and Emily; Charlotte only beat him by 7 years, as did his mother. His father, for whatever reasons, lived to be 84 years old. As Charlotte might have said, “He was tenacious of life.”[1] The second thing to consider is that Bronte died of tuberculosis.

His painting is not at all bad for an amatuer; he clearly had the talent to become a fine artist if he had focused on it and lived longer. And I rather prefer his poetry to that of his sisters. It combines lyricism with great clarity that is not at all typical of the poetry of the period. It’s sad that he is now thought of as nothing more than the drug addicted brother of his famous sisters. He is much more than that.

The author of The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck was born in 1892. Peter Lorre was born in 1904. He is one of my favorite actors. He’s always interesting—regardless of what he does. Here he is in his breakout roll as Hans Beckert, the pediophile serial killer in the film M. This is his confession scene:

The Black Stallion author Walter Farley was born in 1915. Composer Jacob Druckman was born in 1928. Here is bassist Lisa Dowling performing Valentine. It is quite interesting, with a sound that owes a lot to prepared piano. I’m afraid that only more serious listeners and those with open minds will enjoy it:

Mick Jones of The Class is 58 today. Chris Isaak is 57. Basketball player I always reminded for his work ethic, Jerome Kersey is 51. Star of one of my very favorite films, My Best Friend, Dany Boon is 47. And dog fighter Michael Vick is 33.

The day, however, belongs to Kathryn Johnston who was born in 1914. Rather than explain myself, I’ll just provide the Wikipedia description:

She is a symbol for everything that is wrong in our Drug War. She is a martyr in the name of the philosophy that there really isn’t anything worse that consensual drug use. She could be alive today if it weren’t for the corruption, incompetence, and vilainy of our “justice” system.

Happy birthday, Kathryn Johnston!

[1] That is a quote from Jane Eyre. Rochester says:

That’s brilliant dialog because without being explicit he has said that he loves her.

It looks like a couple of newspapers are interested in Glenn Greenwald’s past. In particular, they want to know about his history as a pornographer. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to say, “You can’t make this stuff up.” But that’s not true. This is exactly the kind of thing that I write: the intrepid journalist breaks a major story and all anyone cares about is the fact that he once was co-owner of a business that distributed adult movies. If I wrote it, I would set it in the future where pornography was illegal to set up the tragicomic ending where a prostitute is lionized for murdering him to get money for a fix.

Anyway, the whole thing is nonsense. I am an admirer of Glenn Greenwald and regardless of anything else, I am grateful to Edward Snowden for the revelations. But when did this story become about them? There is a real story that few in the media seem particularly interested in. Maybe it is just that it’s a lot easier to dig into Greenwald’s decades old business dealings or Snowden’s chatroom musings about the gold standard. Looking into the NSA is hard. Of course, that’s why people should be so grateful to Greenwald and Snowden.

In another Greenwald column, he discussed the Espionage Act. That law goes back to the bad days of World War I. It was what Oliver Wendell Holmes was defending when he said that one couldn’t shout “fire in a crowded theater.” That law was never about espionage and always about silencing critics of United States foreign policy.

I hadn’t given it too much thought, but it is remarkable that until Obama—over 91 years—the Espionage Act had only been used three times total and in the last 4+ years, Obama has used it 7 times. I’ve heard the stat before, of course. But given that I didn’t have much hope for Obama anyway, I didn’t think much about it. But it is important to put this into context. James Goodale recently said, “President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.” Obama might want to think about that. In the long run, his great legacy may not be Obamacare but rather a major move backwards in government transparency and individual privacy.

It seems to me that the forces of darkness are winning. I’m sure that to some extent, this is just an indication of my frame of mind. But it does seem that Obama is winning in those areas where he is wrong and the conservatives are winning in all the other areas. I will not give up the fight, but it weighs heavily on me. And the consolation prizes like same sex marriage aren’t nearly enough.

Matthew O’Brien brought my attention to the graph below which shows the inflation adjusted value of gold over the last 8 centuries. What it shows is that gold is a really terrible investment. Gold does not hold its value. Since about 1500, it has been going down in value steadily. And there are only two times recently where its value went up. The first was in the 1970s when the United States went fully off the gold standard and people could buy it. And the second time was after the financial crisis when Tea Party types became convinced that we were devaluing our currency. In other words, gold only goes up in value in a major way due to bubbles.

What boggles my mind is why people think that currency based upon gold eliminates the possibility of inflation. Gold just isn’t that valuable a commodity. Much better is to base the value of our currency on the productive capacity of our economy. And regardless, gold could be inflationary if their theories about money were correct. Imagine that huge gold reserves were discovered. Gold bugs are deluding themselves. I wish they would study this graph:

I remember reading a libertarian book many years ago (I can’t remember its title). It was a good overview of libertarian thought, but the chapter on the gold standard was remarkable. The author pointed out that we didn’t need to worry about the money supply. If the economy grew too fast and more money was needed, the value of cash would just go up. Problem solved! Now, that sounds like a good idea. But like much libertarian thought, the theory is okay but it is a disaster on a practical level. If the value of money is increasing, then people have an incentive to hoard it. That means there will be less investment in the economy. If that weren’t bad enough, the hoarding of money would only make the money supply smaller and thus increase the value of it and cause more hoarding.

I still find the science of money supply confusing. And so I sympathize with the gold bugs who want to simplify the whole thing. But this really is a case where we have clear experimental data. The gold standard is not a solution to our money supply problems. And why people would think so after decades of low inflation, I can’t say.

Earlier this month, I asked a rhetorical question, Why Should Republicans Support Immigration Reform? It was rhetorical because I knew there was no answer. As I’ve argued again and again since this silly issue came up on the evening of 6 November 2012: the Latino aversion to the Republican Party is a hell of a lot bigger than immigration reform. Less than a week after the election, I noted that when it comes to Latinos, Ideology is Biggest Republican Problem. And as time has gone by, it has become more and more clear that if the federal government does pass some kind of immigration reform, it will be despite the Republican Party, not because of it.

Still, many political observers who I respect—most notably Greg Sargent—seem to think that Boehner will allow a vote on the immigration bill because a whole bunch of House Republicans who don’t want to vote for it themselves will nonetheless want it passed because it is good for their party. First: really?! I mean, one thing that almost defines the Tea Party caucus is that they don’t give a flying fuck what the party elites think. They believe that the Republican Party has lost its way by being too liberal and too inclusive. According to this line of argument, all the Republican Party needs to do is get more conservative than Hitler and enact a few voter ID laws and they will rule Washington. These are not people who are thinking, “If only we won 45% of the Latino vote, Mitt Romney would be president!”

But there is a bigger issue that Ed Kilgore explained perfectly this evening:

What Sargent and company seem to be missing is that the 11 million undocumented immigrants here in the United States is not a huge thorn in the side of the recent immigrant community. True: most of them would like something done about this shadow culture. But they still care most about what everyone cares about: bread and butter issues. And on those issues, the Republican Party has been very clear: they don’t care about helping the poor or giving them a hand up. As I wrote just after last year’s election, It’s the Poor, Stupid. Most immigrants are poor and that is why they vote for the Democratic Party. And no amount of single issue pandering is going to change that.

So I’m with Kilgore. It’s possible that Boehner will bring the immigration bill to a vote. But I don’t see any reason why he would. Politically, it seems like a real loser to me.

Update (24 June 2013 11:11 pm)

Steve Benen is usually an insightful guy, but this morning he offered up the following clip of Lindsey Graham as evidence of reasonableness from a Republican:

The problem is that other than the little words, pretty much everything that Graham says is false. He is pushing this idea that Latinos are really conservative that is simply wrong. Also: if they don’t pass the immigration bill Latinos will not vote for Republicans because of that. In general, Latinos will not vote for Republicans anyway. There are two Republican sides on this. One includes the Republicans who understand where their political fortunes lie. We’ll call them the evil Republicans. And the other includes the Republicans who are deluding themselves about getting Latino votes. We’ll call them the crazy Republicans. It could be that the crazy Republicans will win this fight. But I’m afraid that Benen is letting his desire for an immigration bill cloud his perceptions of what is going on in the Republican Party.

Timothy B. Lee has been doing a lot of excellent reporting at Wonk Blog about our broken intellectual property system. At first, I was highly skeptical of Lee. Maybe it was unfair, but he used to work at the Cato Institute and my experience is that most libertarians have a blind spot when it comes to these issues. But he clearly understands the warping effects of these laws. At this point, things are so out of control that the system could be greatly improve before we would disagree on how best to move forward. In the end, I think that a socialistic approach to intellectual property is the best, and I doubt that Lee would agree. However, I’m in favor of a voluntary system; the big Hollywood studios could keep their copyrights. But a good solution to the problem would require that tax dollars go to support the system.

Lee’s latest IP article discussed the outrageous ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—for the second time! As he reported, “A firm called Ultramercial claims to have invented the concept of showing a customer an ad instead of charging for content.” This would be like thousands of years ago someone claiming that he invented the concept of exchanging goods for services and mandating that everyone pay him for his “invention.” Last year, the Appeals Court found the same way and the Supreme Court slapped it down and told it to reconsider the case. And they did: they found that they were right the first time.

Our patent and copyright system has degenerated to a point were it is little more than a legal maneuver. The idea of “showing a customer an ad instead of charging for content” is something we’ve had since at least the invention of newspapers. In this case, the court found that the “invention” wasn’t abstract enough to not qualify for protection. What I don’t understand is how this ruling can be seen as furthering any interests except that of Ultramercial, which is clearly just a patent troll. The justification for patents is that they encourage innovation. This ruling does exactly the opposite.

When I see rulings like this, all I can figure is that the justices are in way over their heads. They really don’t understand how the economy works and they don’t get innovation at all. They must see it as nothing but a legal strategy and may the best lawyer win. But the law is not supposed to be a game. Patents distort the market, but maybe that is okay because the benefits outweigh the deficits. But vague and obvious patents like the idea of advertising on the internet distort the market so much that they encourage litigation and discourage innovation.

The good news is that there is a decent chance that the Supreme Court will hear the case. Lee reported:

But it doesn’t make me feel too good that there is so much damaging thinking in our legal system. There is a tendency on the part of conservatives especially to blame our litigious society on the poor. But the real problem we have is in the business community where we have true takers like Ultramercial who add nothing but demand their rents.