There is a story that is probably apocrypal that The Clash drummer Topper Headon told Joe Strummer, that if he (Headon) weren’t in the band, he might be able to kick his heroin addiction. So Strummer fired him.[1] The point of the story is something along the lines that Headon was asking for some bitter but necessary medicine. Although I doubt that was the right medicine for the situation, I think it is often the case that good behavior is encouraged by a lack of options. For example, being ugly makes monogamy much easier.

I bring this up because of the Senate filibuster. It will eventually be eliminated. And it must be. This has nothing to do with partisanship. The Senators simply cannot control themselves when it comes to this minority tool. Just look at this graph:

There is a psychology to this. When Republicans are in the minority, they push up the use of the filibuster. When the Democrats are in the minority, they tend to continue filibustering at the previous Republican level. This will not end. But even more important, I believe the Republicans have now taken the filibuster to the point where it cannot get worse without effectively shutting down the Senate. And that means that the moment the Republicans are in the majority, they will end the filibuster.

I’ve argued this before. But what I think is important now is that the Senate has become post-norm. It has become all about rules. The filibuster is from a time when norms ruled—when a handshake agreement meant something. But now, we have a Republican Party that will do anything the rules allow. And we have a Democratic Party that accepts whatever the Republicans do as the new normal. There is no way that this gets wound back up.

For the good of both parties, we must remove the filibuster temptation. It is like a drug. And that is especially true of the Republicans. What’s more, it impedes their efforts at reform. As long as they can get their way with dwindling minorities (this goes along with gerrymandering and voter-ID laws), they won’t worry about appealing to the majority. We must end the filibuster.

Afterword

Norm Ornstein wrote an article over at National Journal, Parties Prepare to Reverse Rhetoric on ‘Nuclear Option’ for Judicial Nominees. He argues that the best thing would be for the Republicans to return to regular order. I agree! My problem is that this kind of pie-in-the-sky talk only delays the inevitable. The Senate cannot handle the power of the filibuster. At some later time when normal order has returned, then the Senate can look at using the filibuster. But now it is all bad.

[1] This doesn’t make a lot of sense. Headon was a member of the band through its most popular period. Financially, he was set up for life. On the other hand, Strummer was kind of an asshole, and it does sound like him.

Supposed conservative reformer Avik Roy wrote an article over at the National Review on Monday trying to get in on all of discussion of the Republican apostates. What he’s trying to do is push back against the argument that many of us have made that these supposed reformers are doing nothing but tinkering around the edges of the dominant (and crazy) Republican center. But Roy claims we progressives are missing the big doings in the conservative pundit world, “Actually, there is something significant going on within conservative circles, something with potentially much longer-lasting effects than a shift on a few policies here and there.”

Ah, you see: we progressive getting all worked up about actual policy. There’s something more important than that! Can you wait to hear? I will torture you no more! “For many of today’s conservative reformers, equality of opportunity—especially for the poor—is the highest moral and political priority.” Ah, that explains it!

The problem here is that there is no such thing as “equality of opportunity”—at least not the way conservatives approach social policy. Last September I wrote:

Right now, our economic inequality makes equality of opportunity a joke. But what do Republicans want to do? They want to make it worse.

Another aspect of this that is ridiculous is that Roy’s argument would mean that Mitt Romney is one of those reformers. And that explains what Roy is really on about. “Equality of opportunity” is not a new philosophy. It is a new talking point. It is a new branding attempt. It is a way for conservatives to cloud their image as heartless villains.

The rest of his article is more or less a declaration of defeat. He says, yes, the reformers believe what the Republican Party believes in. But somehow their priorities are different. And this means that they really do care about the poor. It’s really something to behold. This is especially true if you see his article in the context of the whole Republican branding campaign of the last many months. We already know that the Republican establishment is not willing to do anything other than re-brand their old unpopular ideas. And now Avik Roy is explaining that the same goes for the reformers. Good job, guys!

Jamelle Bouie decided to answer questions on Tumblr last night. It was really cool. I’ve never before known what Tumblr was other than a kind of sub-blog that bloggers used with Twitter. But it has a device that allows people to ask questions to a Tumblr user that can then be answered in a permanent way. I also thought it was great that he took the time to do it. And some of the questions were great. One person asked what he thought of unpaid internships. I was quite interested in that because I’ve started ranting about this myself. Bouie wrote, “I think they’re terrible, and serve as a barrier to keep non-rich kids from entering particular high-status professions.” Exactly!

One exchange was pretty funny. Tumblr user dellbell asked, “OK, do you think that there will be comprehensive campaign finance reform, at least at the federal level, during your (presumably significantly longer) lifetime?” Bouie responded, “Nope.” That’s a disconcerting answer, because I’ve always felt that Bouie was a lot more optimistic than I am. I agree with him of course, but I thought that was just because I was cynical. Oh well.

How positive is Bouie? Well, one of his readers asked, “Given that most people don’t follow or read the news and presumably even less the commentary on it, do you ever wonder what the point of all the writing about it is? Is it ultimately anything more than a mostly irrelevant conversation between a small set of people with interests in these kinds of subjects?” Such a question would just make me slink away, but not Bouie:

But by far, the best question was from me. (That could be boast or sarcasm, but it’s probably both.) Since I had just written about Bernie Sanders’ concerns regarding the immigration bill, I figured I would put the question to Bouie. I was especially interested because Bouie writes a lot for the Plum Line, and Greg Sargent has been a Pollyanna about the subject: largely pushing what’s good and ignoring what’s bad. So I asked, “You seem to be in favor of the Gang of Eight immigration bill. Given that there are large negatives in the bill for liberals (long path to citizenship; gobs more H1-B and H2-B visas), where are you in terms of the pros and cons? Also: what would turn you against it?”

Bouie does like the bill a lot more than I do, but it was interesting to read his thoughts. The truth is that I don’t know where I stand on it. My natural cynicism makes me think that the final bill is destined to be terrible. But we’ll see. Here’s Bouie’s response:

I would only add that the long path to citizenship is by far the worst aspect of the bill. But even 11 years is better than the current situation, so I’m (yet again) largely with him.

I really appreciate Bouie taking the time to answer questions. And I like the Tumblr interface. Twitter has two problems. First, I have a hard time composing 140 character questions and I don’t get much from most 140 character answers. Second, tweets easily get lost—especially to people with almost 15,000 followers.

Afterword

With all due respect for John Scalzi, Bouie has limited taste in literature. But not completely.

Apparently there is a push going on to highlight “reasonable” conservative writers. Yesterday, I wrote about Jonathan Chait’s article on Josh Barro. And earlier this month, Ryan Cooper wrote an article, Reformish Conservatives. That’s a good term: reformish. In general, there are no reformers; there are conservatives who occasionally criticize their movement. And then there is Bruce Bartlett.

Before I get to the controversy, let me discuss Bartlett. He is the only one of the supposed reformers who actively does battle with the conservative movement. He was a conservative economist. He still is a conservative economist. Both the parties have moved to the right such that Bartlett now fits solidly in the Democratic Party. That’s an indictment of the parties, not of Bartlett. I don’t consider myself a political radical. It is only in our screwed up system with its Overton window so small shifted far to the right that I appear a radical. Similarly, Bartlett is a conservative.

Cooper’s article lists a number of these supposed reform conservatives. And it includes some people who are insightful: Joss Barro, David Frum, Ramesh Ponnuru. But even they are mostly apologists for the Republican Party. And the rest? David Brooks, Reihan Salam, Avik Roy, Yuval Levin, Ross Douthat. They are entirely apologists. All they do is put a friendly face on conservatism. They’re the guys who tell you in a soothing tone that they really care about the poor and that is why the estate tax must be abolished.

Thankfully, there has been some push back. Paul Krugman said pretty much what I do, “But what the ‘reformish’ conservatives Ryan Cooper lists do, in almost all cases, is either (a) to follow the party line on these issues or (b) to hint at some flexibility—and thereby cultivate an image of being open-minded—as long as the issues don’t get close to an actual policy decision, but to always find a way to support the Republican position whenever it actually matters.” This is the problem with the narrative, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party; the Republican Party left me.” The Republican Party has largely been post-fact for 30 years. I can understand taking a while to figure that out—Bruce Bartlett did. But even ten years ago it was too clear that the Republicans had fallen down the rabbit hole. Anyone still supporting them must at base be more interested in party loyalty than facts and policy.

Mike Konczal went even further. He listed the six tenets of the conservative movement. They are really just three: reduce taxes on the rich, cut spending on the poor, ignore (or worse) the environment. (If you think that’s a strawman, check out the article because he goes into more depth.) And then he listed the “reform” positions: the Fed isn’t all bad; EITC is good; minor financial reform wouldn’t be a bad idea; and crony capitalism is bad. These are at best snipping around the edges. As Konczal wrote, this is “more gestural than substantive.” And indeed it is! The original point of Cooper’s article was that the Republican Party just wants to change its messaging but not its policies. Well, in general, that’s all the “reformers” want to do too.

Konczal also noted that all the reformers work in the abstract. They don’t call for specific policies. He mentioned calling for the Republicans to stop blocking allowing a head to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Of course, none of them do that. At best, these reformers want to maintain their credibility in the Republican Party. But I think it is worse than that. They want to stay in the Republican Party but they want to signal to their friends that they aren’t one of those kinds of Republicans. So they want Republican policy, but they don’t want to be embarrassed at Washington parties.

Gallup reported today, Fewer Americans Identify as Economic Conservatives in 2013. I looked at the article because I wanted some good news. But I didn’t really find it.

I’m not sure what people think when asked where they stand on economic issues. Right now, 41% of Americans say that they are economic conservatives. Compare this to 37% who call themselves moderates and only 19% who say liberal. What exactly do people think an economic conservative is? I think this is typical of such polling questions: useless. For example, I suspect that even most Republicans would agree with the statement, “The government should invest in infrastructure to create jobs.” Similarly with, “Because the rich have received the vast majority of productivity gains over the last 35 years, they should pay more in taxes.” And: “Banks should be regulated to reduce the harm done by their excesses.”

It seems that all these polls show is that the word “liberal” has been effectively vilified by the right. That seems to be especially associated with economic issues. After all, it isn’t an “inclusive and accepting liberal” it is a “tax and spend liberal.” As a result of this, those who call themselves “economic liberals” have been stuck in the high teens since 2001. Meanwhile, self-labeled “social liberals” have moved from the low 20s in 2001 to the low 30s now. According to Gallup, we are moving from a country that wants to kill gay people to one where we are just fine with letting them starve to death.

By far the most disturbing aspect of this poll is how many people identified as economic conservatives after the banking crisis. The numbers jumped from 40% in 2008 to 48% in 2009 and 51% in 2010. This goes right along with Thomas Frank’s argument in Pity the Billionaire. The worst financial crisis in generations caused by a housing bubble fueled by banker malfeasance causes people to… demand that the government get off the backs the bankers?! Frank sums it up in his usual wry style:

The good news is that the number of those calling themselves “economic conservative” has cratered over the last year. They stayed in the high 40s through last year but are only 41% now. Similarly, there has been a slow but clear trend upward in terms of economic liberals. Almost all of the changes are between how the moderates and the conservatives self-identify. The total of them both is pretty constant at 80%, although it is down just a tad the last few years.

Again, I think these polls are fairly meaningless. But they do show that the American people have a natural disregard for the only form of economic policy that is geared to their direct interests. Pity the billionaire indeed!

Wednesday, Jonathan Chait over at The Atlantic published an article about the problems of Josh Barro of all people. Regular readers will know that I am of two minds about Barro. On the one hand, he is a smart and insightful guy—one of the best conservative observers around. On the other hand, every time I see his face, I want to punch it. But that’s a totally irrational reaction; he just seems like someone who badly needs to be punched. When it comes to policy, I am always interested in what he has to say.

So what problem does The Atlantic think that Barro has? It appears that the Republican Party is unhappy that Barro is attacking it, rather than nibbling around the edges like Ross Douthat. Chait speculates why this is without coming up with anything concrete. Then this morning, Ezra Klein offered, Josh Barro didn’t Leave Conservatism. Conservatism Left Josh Barro.

This is not strictly speaking true. Chait even shows this by having Barro go over his own (with Reihan Salam) glowing assessment of Paul Ryan’s 2010 budget. It isn’t that Barro’s outlook has changed in a major way. Rather, he sees now that before he was assuming the best and pushing problems to the side. In other words, he was engaged in apologetics. And that’s what I find with all the more reasonable conservative pundits and wonks. And that still includes Josh Barro on a number of issues.

Consider how the Republican Party has changed on healthcare reform. In the past, it was for what has become Obamacare. Why did it change? Well, it actually didn’t. Its embrace of the individual mandate was always just a cover against more liberal plans like single-payer and Hillarycare. Once those threats were off the table, there was no need to continue embracing any plan at all. So they stopped embracing any plan. In fact, you may have noticed how the GOP originally called for “repeal and replacement of Obamacare.” But they must have figured out that the new plan was no plan because it quickly became simply “repeal Obamacare.”

I don’t think the Republican Party has really changed. What seems to have happened is that Josh Barro got to see the reality of all the lies that Republicans tell themselves (we really do care about the poor; we want to grow the middle class; we support an culture of life). His change in attitude is very similar to my own change in terms of libertarianism. I still think he’s fooling himself with the thought that he just looks at the data. But there is no doubt that he’s a whole lot closer to that ideal than he was only two years ago.

Afterword

I believe the reason I have such a visceral dislike of Barro is his attitude that somehow he is just coming to objective conclusions based upon the data. I used to be very much like that. It is a very big delusion of libertarians especially. But as Barro now sees when looking at his 2010 Ryan Budget article, it is much less clear. He wanted to believe what Ryan was selling. There was nothing objective in his conclusions, even if every part of the analysis was objective. Over time, I’m sure my impulse to slug Barro will decrease with his smug certainty that he has possession of the Truth.

Over at Washington Monthly, Ryan Cooper wrote a nice, easygoing response to Michael Kinsley. As you may know, last week, Kinsley wrote, Paul Krugman’s Misguided Moral Crusade Against Austerity. In it, he tried to argue that the pro- and anti-austerity forces weren’t that much in disagreement. There were two problems with this. First, he made the major mistake of putting economics in a moral context. He made the critical error of writing, “I don’t think suffering is good, but I do believe that we have to pay a price for past sins, and the longer we put it off, the higher the price will be.” Kinsley was particularly attacked for that by various great minds. I also attacked him.

The second problem with Kinsley’s article is perhaps even worse, although it hasn’t gotten as much attention. It is just not the case that the pro- and anti-austerity forces are largely in agreement. I discussed this last year regarding a debate of sorts between anti-austerian Paul Krugman and pro-austerian Niall Ferguson on Fareed Zakaria GPS. I wrote:

And this is what Kinsley wrote. It is what austerity apologists always say: the anti-austerians are right that we need stimulus now but the pro-austerians are also right that we need austerity later. That’s what the anti-austerians say!

Cooper rightly notes that what Kinsley is really worried about is debt causing inflation. If you feel a little marginal about this stuff, I suggest reading the article. It is short and, I thought, very clear. What I want to focus on is this supposed connection between debt and inflation that the austerians are so concerned about. Check out this graph that shows bond rates since 2000:

Look at the extremes: 2000 and 2013. In 2000, our debt was low and getting lower. Yet the treasuries—the amount the federal government had to pay to borrow money—was high: almost 7%. In 2013, our debt is high and getting higher (although at a slowing rate). Yet the treasuries are low: about 1.5%. This is not an argument for federal debt causing high inflation. Of course, what’s really going on is that in 2000, the economy was doing great. The private sector was investing and thus there wasn’t a lot of spare cash around for borrowing. Now, the economy is doing poorly. The private sector isn’t investing that much. Instead, they are sitting on piles of cash looking for any safe way to use it. The safest way is in US treasury bonds.

We know, however, that most of the people who push economic austerity are not doing it out of concern for inflation. That is all a ruse. Instead, austerity and the fear of inflation is used to justify harming liberal policies. Of course, that’s not what’s going on with Kinsley. He’s just been fooled and frightened by those who want to destroy programs that Kinsley himself believes in. It’s sad.

Afterword

Cooper’s article is actually about a brand new Kinsley article where he defends himself against Krugman and his “attack dogs.” I thought a lot more of Kinsley before I read it. He doesn’t seem to understand that the reason everyone imputes bad motives to the austerians is that neither economic theory nor economic facts support their position. I hope that Cooper’s article will help in that regard. But I doubt it. In the new article, Kinsley spews a lot of nonsense that I would think he would be smarter than. I’m afraid he’s lost all perspective.

Update (22 May 2013 9:18 pm)

One more thing. Kinsley seems to think that his austerity obsession is okay, because he thinks that the way to balance the budget is to raise taxes. That’s sweet. But it’s also naive. Austerity is overwhelmingly a conservative movement. That means that if austerity wins the policy debate, we are going to get something like the Ryan Budget, not the Progressive Budget.

None of that really matters, however. The point is the austerity position is wrong. If Kinsley got his wish and we balanced the budget with tax increases, it would still hurt the economy. And that’s what all this about: what is best for the economy. And the austerians are provably wrong.

I’ve heard it said that we are the world. I’ve even heard it said that we are the children. And lest we forget: we are the ones who make a brighter day, so lets start giving. The problem is that this is total bullshit. We are parochial; we act like children; we are the ones who make everything worse, so let’s just give up. If there is a choice we’re making, it is whether we should focus on helping only ourselves or on hurting others. We normally split the difference.

For example: racist election officials. These people are not trying to be awful human beings. It is just that being awful is our way. It worked for our fathers. And our fathers’ fathers. But not to labor the point: and our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.

A group of three graduate students performed an experiment to judge just how awful election officials are. The three — Julie Faller, Noah Nathan, and Ariel White — are undoubtedly awful in their own ways. But the experiment was pretty cool. They created two characters: Greg Walsh and Luis Rodriguez. Then, they sent out email from the two accounts they created for these guys. The email asked for information about what kinds of voter identification they would need at the polls. The only difference in the email messages was that one was from a very white-sounding name and the other from a very brown-sounding name.

The study was a bit more complicated than this. If you want to know more, check out Dylan Matthews’ article on the subject. But all you really need to know is that the election officials were more likely to just ignore the email from Rodriguez. What’s more, when they did reply, the responses were “likelier to be non-informative, less likely to be ‘absolutely accurate,’ and even less likely to take a friendly tone.”

Other researchers have found the same thing regarding people with black sounding names. I don’t think this means that people are blatantly racist. But we are less in control of what we think and do than we normally assume. I know what it’s like to get a lot of email from people you don’t know. And it is easy for stuff to get lost or to at least put off dealing with email. In my case, the only bias I’ve noticed is that if someone writes me a long letter, I will often take a much longer time getting back to them. But it is entirely possible that other factors affect me in more subtle ways.

But this study has made me wonder about my name. Whether people recognize “Moraes” as a Latino name or just some bizarre “other” name, it could affect how people look at my email. Maybe I should change my name. How does “Craig Johnson” sound?

Yesterday over at Post Politics, Rachel Weiner and Matt DeLong reported on the difficult position of Oklahoma’s two Republican Senators with regard to aid for the victims of the Oklahoma City suburb tornado. The problem is that both James Inhofe and Tom Coburn voted against aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Somehow, the Oklahoma tornado is “totally different.”

Of course, the coverage of this clear bit of hypocrisy is apologetic in tone. Inhofe, for example, supposedly voted against Sandy relief because it was filled with pork. “Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place.” This is in contrast to Inhofe himself who did the moral thing of letting the Sandy victims suffer. But the fact is, Inhofe can’t say that any tornado relief wouldn’t be filled with pork either. But that doesn’t matter.

Politicians always have “a very good reason” for voting against popular proposals. What Inhofe is signaling here is that he will vote for tornado relief. Regardless of pork or any other problems with the bill, he will find that the good outweighs the bad. And the same exact thing is going on with Coburn.

What it all comes down to is that these guys didn’t want money going to the constituencies of their enemies. It isn’t even arguable: money for Oklahoma is good; money for New York is bad. And as long as the media pretend that these Senators’ claims are real, they will continue to use these ridiculous arguments. When a politician would love to vote for a bill but just can’t for reason X, it means that he doesn’t want to vote for that bill. And that’s fine! But the media should not accept his bullshit excuse.

When I was just in college, I worked for a conservative small business owner. He knew I was liberal, even if I didn’t talk about it. So one day he told me that he understood that our standard of living depended upon the exploitation of people in poorer nations but that he was fine with it. I simply acknowledged what he had said while thinking, “What a dick!” For one thing, it isn’t really true. The standard of living of the super rich is depended upon such exploitation, but I believe that fair and open markets would be best for almost everyone. What’s more, that kind of wise-sounding cynical talk is just a way of not engaging with an issue.

Still, I wish that this kind of candor were more evident in our country. All my life, I’ve heard governmental representative and the media denounce different governments around the world for their undemocratic and authoritarian ways. I used to believe them. But it doesn’t take long to understand what’s really going on. The first thing I noticed was that we had a hell of a lot of friends who were authoritarians. And then I noticed that a lot of our enemies weren’t all that bad. And then I noticed that a lot of our enemies really were democracies. When our government complains that Venezuela isn’t free, what they mean is that Venezuelan oil resources are not free to the oil companies.

Over the years, I’ve found myself in the uncomfortable position of defending Hugo Chavez. What you need to understand is that I would probably have blasted him if I had lived in Venezuela—at least the same way I blast Obama when he’s wrong. But in the United States, there was almost nothing but negative coverage of Chavez. And he was far from a pernicious actor in Venezuela. On balance, I’d have to say that he was quite good for the country. People who complain about him cherry pick information. And although there are plenty of pickings—Chavez was no angel—such attacks are grounded in the fact that American corporate interests were not best served by this democratically elected leader.

On Friday, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Mark Weisbrot reported on a new International Crisis Group (ICG) report, Venezuela: A House Divided. In general, the ICG is not a bad group. But it is mostly funded by the United States and there are just some issues on which it is not objective. As Weisbrot pointed out, most of the report “reads like a statement from the Venezuelan political opposition, rather than a neutral third-party observer.”

The 14 April 2013 election put Chavez’s former vice president, Nicolas Maduro in power. Pretty much everyone outside of the United States thinks it was a free and fair election. On the day of election, an audit was run on 53% of all voting machines. The machines were compared to the paper ballots they provide. And it was found that Maduro won the election to within a doubt of one in 25 quadrillion. Since that time, the opposition has been demanding that another audit be done. They agreed with the government to audit an additional 30% of the ballots. But then they changed their minds and demanded that all 47% be audited. These are clearly the actions of a group that knows it didn’t win the election and just wants to cause problems.

But the ICG report just mimics the complaints of the opposition. Weisbrot noted, “But the most ugly and pernicious thing is the report’s insistence that ‘the validity of the election result [in Venezuela] needs to be clarified’ and that a ‘full and transparent audit result’ is necessary, or else the government’s ‘rule will increasingly come to be seen by many as an imposition, with unpredictable, possibly violent consequences.” He rightly notes that this is an apologia for future violence. Remember, this is in a country where the military and business leaders staged a coup d’etat in 2002 against Chavez. A prominent businessman was put in power. But hundreds of thousands of protesters surrounded the presidential palace and eventually Chavez was returned to power. So the ICG report claiming that displeasure by the opposition could lead to violent consequences is very bad indeed.

Of course, there has been next to no coverage of the ICG report. But that isn’t how these things work. Instead, after a coup attempt, US papers will be flooded with reports about how “according to the International Crisis Group” this was bound to happen because of Venezuela’s “questionable” election. No mention will be made of an election audit that is far better than anything we ever do in the United States. Nor will there be mention that Venezuela’s elections are more free and fair than our own. Because none of that matters to the power elite in this country. All that matters is that Shell and BP (who contribute to the ICG) are not getting their drilling rights like they want.

Dear Senator Boxer:

PS: I want you to support Harry Reid and the “nuclear option” to allow Obama nominees to get a vote in the Senate.