There was a lot of talk the last day about whether Fox News is going to admit now that Hillary Clinton really did have a concussion, now that we know she really did. But then Jonathan Chait, always trying to be an iconoclast, tweeted, “If a Republican claimed concussion before testimony over controvery or pseudocontroversy, would liberals believe them? Many wouldn’t.” I have an answer for that.

I would have thought the Republican was lying. Similarly, I thought Clinton was lying. I pretty much always assume that people are lying when it is an excuse for doing something unpleasant. But Chait is not asking the right question.

There are really two issues here. First is the controversy. Do Democrats go around holding trumped-up hearings about anything they can grab on to? The only time I can remember anything I felt the least bit concerned about was the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.[1] But at least there was a real issue there. With the Republicans, especially of late, these hearings seem more like Area 51 conspiracy enthusiast meetings.

The other issue is that while many liberals are cynical just like me, I don’t think this issue would have made it to The Rachel Maddow Show. So Chait is just acting as an apologist for the right wing echo chamber. It is a subtle form of false equivalence.

[1] I want to be clear on this. My primary problem here is that the hearings really should have been about Thomas being totally unqualified for the job rather than his office indiscretions. Although I find his behavior abhorrent (see Blinded By the Right), I don’t think people should be publicly humiliated over changing mores. Of course, in this particular case it was Anita Hill who was publicly humiliated. Thomas got a job he doesn’t deserve. And the Senate embarrassed itself.

Howdy folks. I saw something on the TV machine today that was too much. I don’t get to see a lot of Tea Party lunacy, because I avoid regular TV. But there was one of them on Up with Chris Hayes. Her name is Amy Kremer and she is with the Tea Party Express. And I can see why the group puts here out to speak for them. She’s good on camera and well-spoken—a whole lot better spoken than I am. But she is just a talking points machine. She really doesn’t understand what she’s saying.

This was most clear when Steve Kornacki (who was hosting the show for Chris Hayes, and who most clearly is not a morning person) countered her on her complaints about the Fiscal Cliff. She covers reasonably well, but it is clear that she thought the Fiscal Cliff was something that was going to make the budget deficit worse. You have to ask: how is the Tea Party holding the Republicans accountable, when their leaders fundamentally misunderstand the issue.

I don’t claim that the following video is good. But it gets to heart of my reaction to this ignorant woman’s bombastic proclamations.

For more about how conservatives don’t know how the government is too big, just that it is, see, John Boehner’s Position on the Gaming License.

Two days ago, I reported on Ezra Klein’s contention that Republicans think that they lose out in budget deals because the tax increases are real but the spending cuts are not. This is curious, because the evidence indicates exactly the opposite. For example, President Clinton and the other Democrats managed to do the painful work of raising taxes and cutting spending. This along with a great economy created budget surpluses. And as soon as the Republicans were back in power, they passed budget busting tax cuts.

But there’s more to this. Just think about it. What would be harder to get Congress to do: lower tax rates or increase spending on Medicare? Now, I know that the Republicans created a great big new Medicare benefit. But there are three things to remember. First, that was after two big tax cuts. Second, the program was not paid for. Third, the program was more a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies than a benefit for the elderly.

Anyway, Josh Barro takes his fellow conservatives to task on this issue. He notes that Ryan Ellis of organized fucktards Americans for Tax Reform makes this case when discussing Bush Sr’s Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. Ellis says:

Barro is so upset by this quote that he launches the e-bomb, “This is false!” For someone as studiedly cool as Barro, ending a sentence with an exclamation mark means something! (For me, it means nothing at all!)

He goes on to point out that Ellis is using an earlier projection from almost a year before the bill was passed. In the mean time, things had changed. In particular, the cost of the Savings &amp Loan bailout greatly increased. It turns out that we got almost exactly the spending cuts that were agreed to.

Barro is great at cutting through the conservative nonsense. And that’s why I so often write about him, even though we disagree about most policy. He ends the article by allowing for what he most likely believes (taxes are bad), but calling foul on the misrepresentation:

Update (6 Dec 2019)

One thing I didn’t mention here is that this also doesn’t take into account the fact that the population of the country continues to increase. So it makes sense that the size of the federal government should increase. (Just think about the IRS: it should require more people to process tax returns.) The argument made by Ryan Ellis is disingenuous.

As far as I know, Barro is now a Democrat. That shows just how ridiculous American politics is. Barro does fit well inside the Democratic coalition. But that shouldn’t be the case for the left’s political party. As I’ve noted before, the Republicans becoming unglued is the result of the Democratic Party’s constant push rightward from the mid-1970s onward. Barro’s a fine guy but he should not be in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party needs to be further to the left than that if this country stands a chance in the future.

Matt Yglesias writes today, Inequality in Pre-Revolutionary Russia. He is reporting on the work of two economists: Steven Nafziger and Peter Lindert. They’ve been looking at income inequality in Russia under the Tsar at the turn of the 20th century. What they find is that Russia was about as unequal as similarly rich countries of that time. The more important finding: Tsarist Russia was less unequal than—Wait for it!—the United States today.

I’ve been thinking of the evolution of political/economic systems. We know that any economic system can lead to a totalitarian system if the government takes too much power. Libertarians are fond of pointing this out and rubbing the noses of liberals in it. But the assumption is always a capitalist system only has the government to worry about. Left to itself, a capitalism leads only to free markets and free minds. But as far as I can tell, a truly free market (and regardless of what they claim, no conservative—including libertarians—are really for free markets) leads to effectively a feudal system where 99% of the people are nothing more than serfs.

This takes me back to The One Percent and all the nonsense that Milton Friedman was spouting. It is interesting how libertarians always make practical arguments when presented with moral issues and moral arguments when presented with practical issues. Capitalism leads to an immoral level of inequality? Practically speaking, everyone is better off! (This is not even true, but it is a religious Truth for libertarians.) The poor are dying young because of lead in their water? It is immoral to take money away from anyone who earned it!

But you would think that information indicating that we have a worse income inequality problem than the one that led to the Russian Revolution might give such free marketeers pause. After all, democracy can push back against the unfettered market utopia that conservatives preach. But conservatives don’t pause. Regardless of what Ayn Rand said about enlightened self-interest, capitalism is now and always an extremely short-sighted system. The power elites don’t care any more about income inequality than they do about global warming. After all, the Russian Revolution was way before their time. And they don’t think any longer than one financial quarter ahead.

The video below is amazing. It is also not true. It is a “render,” which I take to mean it is speculation or “pretend.” Clearly, it has something to do with a brick render or surface. What it shows is a Samsung Galaxy S4 that is about 1/8 inch thick with a docking station that provides a laser keyboard. I’m sure that we will soon get just that—on all phones. Of course, being the Luddite that I am, I will have to wait about ten years after that. But even I find the idea exciting.

But what is most interesting is how Samsung is kicking Apple’s butt. And this no doubt is why Apple, like a good rentier, is running around trying to stop competition through the courts with their long used strategy of look-and-feel lawsuits. You know, the kind of lawsuits that are only upheld in the United States where money and power always trump justice. Still, I am enough of an optimist to think that in the end truth will out. If Apple wants to succeed into the future, they need to offer something more than a lesser Galaxy in white.

And frankly, that’s about all they currently offer.

The Apple lifestyle will only save them for long.

Glenn Greenwald sent me to a CNN article from 1 July 2008, Mandela Off U.S. Terrorism Watch List. The first sentence of the article reads, “Former South African President Nelson Mandela is to be removed from a U.S. terrorism watch list under a bill President Bush signed Tuesday.” You’ve got that right: Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the United States until the middle of 2008.

The point here is that when we say “terrorist” in the United States, we don’t necessarily mean anything other than, “someone we don’t like.” In the case of Nelson Mandela, the problem was most likely American corporate interests in South Africa who didn’t like his political work. And that’s very important when we claim that torture is acceptable to fight “terrorism.” We tend to expand the definition of that word to whatever we find useful.

In the end, I truly believe that the use of torture says a great deal about the torturer and very little about the tortured. And when our definition of a terrorist can include Nelson Mandela for almost 7 years of the “war on terror” (when he was in his 80s), it means the United States government is willing to torture anyone.

I think it is good when very wealthy people have a certain amount of guilt about economic inequality. I congratulate them on being human. But I don’t give them any extra credit. And that is at the core of my disappointment watching Jamie Johnson’s documentary The One Percent. Johnson is the heir of Johnson & Johnson. He seems to have realized that his position in life owes much to luck and little to any greatness of character or brilliance.

The film contains a number of interesting interviews. The best is with economist Milton Friedman. There were two aspects of it worth note. First, Friedman shows very clearly that his economic ideas are nothing more than religious faith. He argues that progressive taxation is socialism. This goes along with his work with Augusto Pinochet in Chile. As all of Friedman’s “free market” proposals failed, the reason was never the ideas themselves. It was always that the country wasn’t free market enough. This is a typically libertarian view that we saw very often after the financial collapse of 2008: the problem wasn’t deregulation, it was that there was still some regulation that was stopping the markets from working perfectly.

The second notable part of the interview gets to the heart of the problem with the whole film. Johnson really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His arguments come down to nothing more than, “Don’t you think that maybe the rich are too rich?” Friedman pointed out that while the rich may have gotten much more wealthy over the last 30 years, the poor have at least seen some improvement in their standard of living. Johnson countered anemically that the gains should have been more equally shared. Why? He doesn’t seem to have an answer. The truth is that many of the poor have seen their standard of living decrease. But the more important point is not that the poor are better off, it is how much better the poor would be doing if, for example, we still had strong unions in this country. To Friedman it is just a given that if the rich got less there would be no innovation, no productivity growth. But Johnson could not counter him on this because he didn’t understand what he was talking about.

Early on in the film, the Johnson family financial adviser Brian McNally tells Johnson, “You’re making a fool’s argument.” And that’s true. Jamie Johnson seems to think that maybe dividends should be taxed as regular income and maybe we should have an estate tax. But he doesn’t begin to get to the core of the problem. And that core is exemplified by the privilege of Mr. Johnson himself. Normally, no one would take seriously a documentary filmmaker who is so ignorant of his subject. And he certainly wouldn’t have been writing a column for Vanity Fair. So even without his money, he is way ahead in life.

But at least Johnson is vaguely aware of the pure luck that is his life. One of the interviews in the film demonstrates the more typical beliefs of the rich about their wealth. Roy O. Martin is the owner of Martin Lumber Company. He is certain that God chose him. He also has a very curious understanding of Jesus’ claim about rich people and the eye of a needle. Rich people of Jesus’ time were the most moral people, Martin explains. Therefore, Jesus is saying that being rich is not enough to get into heaven, not that they can’t get into heaven. Even though that is explicitly what he says.

I can see that this film does some good in terms of pointing out income inequality. And it does highlight some of the biggest problems. But this issue is much deeper than tax policy. And I hate to see very real problems trivialized by a filmmaker who doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m glad that Jamie Johnson feels guilty about his wealth. That makes him a human being. It doesn’t make him a knowledgeable truth teller.

Here is the whole 80 minute video, which is not totally without worth:

Michael Stickings of The Reaction blog was suggesting that I might want to do more blogging that quotes. You know the kind of thing: “I found this interesting article” followed by a quote from the article. I think he’s worried about my health. He’s been at this blogging things for a long time (almost 8 years), and I think he has seen his fair share of blogger burn-out.

I told him that I’ve tried to do that. I just want to share something. So I start writing an introduction to it. And before I know it, I have five paragraphs and I haven’t even gotten to talking about whatever it is I started to write about. So logorrhea is part of the problem. Speaking of logorrhea, Not I by Samuel Beckett.

I was thinking of what Michael had said earlier today because of two stories I’ve read. The first was Ryan Grim excellent discussion of the Fiscal Cliff, that I wrote about earlier. The second, was an amazing (not necessarily in a good way) story about the presidential campaign over at the Boston Globe, which I will write about this evening. I’ve already seen other people writing about these articles. But the articles are all pretty much one sentence introductions followed by long quoted sections. I’m not really interested in doing this.

If you are Digby or Mark Thoma, it makes sense. Both of them have a large readership and, especially Thomas, read a lot of obscure things. But I only have one thing to offer: my insights. So unless I have something to add, there doesn’t seem to be much point. Unfortunately, that seems to be more the norm among bloggers.

There is an irony to all of this. Despite what Michael said, most of the articles that appear on The Reaction are not of that kind. They tend to be pretty quotation light. Certainly there are exceptions; there are exceptions here too: videos posts, Twitter posts, all of my quotation series. But generally, The Reaction adds to the debate rather than just amplifying it. And that’s what I want to do.

At least until I collapse exhausted on my keyboardaejrfffffff fffffffffff fffffffff ffffff ffoi vvvvvvvvv vvvvvv oijwjwj wjwjwjwjw jwjwjwjw

Thirteen years ago, Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot wrote a book, Social Security: the Phony Crisis. I just read it. The most amazing thing about the book is that nothing at all has changed. They could have written the book this year. I still hear people calling for Social Security privatization. I still hear people crying Chicken Little about demographic changes that will crush the economy. And every day now we hear about changing how the government deals with inflation. Yet all of these are at best minor issues and more often the opposite of reality.

Privatization

The call for privatization is perhaps the most evil aspect of the anti-Social Security crowd. This is not because it is the worst thing for the program. Rather, it is just that it is done as a way for private fund managers to skim a large profit off the retirement savings of all Americans.

As they point out in the book, the assumption is always that the stock market will do as well in the next 75 years as it did in the last 75 years. This is compared to Social Security estimates that the economy will grow half as fast in the next 75 years as it did in the last 75 years. In the long term, the stock exchange can only do about as well as the economy. Otherwise, it is just a bubble. So those pushing for privatization are painting a ridiculously rosy picture of the future.

In the end, if economic forecasts turn out to be better than expected, Social Security will do better than expected. And there won’t be any broker fees taken out.

Demographics

Baker and Weisbrot deal with the demographic issue in great depth. In fact, I had to learn some more advanced economics just to understand part of it. The truth is there is a major demographic shift in this country. Most of it has already happened. But the bottom line is that increases in per capita productivity dwarf the changing demographics. I’ve used the following graph before. It is taken from Baker’s blog Beat the Press:

Even assuming poor economic growth (1%), there is nothing to worry about.

Inflation

People have long been trying to destroy Social Security by slowly draining benefits to the point where it is useless. Baker and Weisbrot show that in general, senior citizens tend to suffer a higher rate of inflation because they consume more healthcare, which is going up in price faster than just about anything. But even more telling, they show that it isn’t possible for the CPI to be that far off. If it were, then back in 1960, the vast majority of Americans would have been living in poverty, despite the fact that almost 60% owned their own homes and 75% owned cars.

The weird thing about the whole discussion of Social Security is how it is taken as an ultimate truth that the program is in bad shape and must be cut. This is the Social Security Paradox that I’ve written about before: we may need to cut benefits in the future so let’s cut them now. Baker and Weisbrot show that this is all nonsense. What we need is to provide more social security (in its generic forms), not less. If you want to be involved in the fight, you really need to read this book.

The poem below was sent to me by my Christian Conservative aunt. If she’s sent it out, it must be viral among the Christian crowd on the internet. It is a parody of Twas the Night Before Christmas. As poetry, it shows about as much skill as I’ve come to expect from ChristiProp. There is a total lack of understanding of accents and meter. For example, the first line of the song has 12 syllables; the parody has 15.[1] But this isn’t what bothers me.

I can accept the assumption that all kids go to heaven. I can even accept that all the children are happy except for that one little girl who is a total buzz kill remembering her parents. But I can’t accept the explicit political nature of the poem. Just on the surface: none of these kids seem to remember their teachers. When I was that age, my teachers were very important to me; I spent a lot of time with them. But the poem doesn’t even mention teachers, I suspect because they are (1) union members and (2) teaching in a secular school.

Much more problematic is badass Jesus. He’s going to take his country back. He’s wants the country taken out of the hands of “fools.” Who do you think he could mean? I’ll bet Sarah Palin could tell you. And, of course, he’s going to take back the schools, because that’s what caused this shooting: no school prayer. This is pure Christian Nationalism: what we really need is for America to be a Christian Nation. That and tax cuts for the rich will solve all our problems.

It is interesting that murders at schools have been going down. This is from Up with Chris Hayes:

So that’s a little good news. But the good news of the poem is: ain’t it nice to think that all these children are now living in bliss with Jesus. That may be a happy thought, but it doesn’t do anything for those of us who don’t believe in their myths. In fact, it is worse than that: such happy thoughts just allow us to continue to do nothing about problems that actually exist.

This poem may serve to make certain people feel better. But its main intent is to push a particular, very conservative, political agenda. You have to ask yourself: why would it take this particular tragedy to inspire Jesus to “take his country back”? If he does have this power, why didn’t he do it 2000 years ago? And if it is because humans just have to make their own mistakes, then why did the murder of these 20 children cause him to change this policy?

Read the poem. I think it is worth it. Also: I’d be interested in what others have to say.

Update (28 December 2012 2:25 pm)

Jeremy wrote a really good article at Our Daily Train that is well worth checking out:

[1] How about this, which took me no time at all:

Twas just days before Christmas, ’round nine thirty-eight
When 20 lovely children stormed through heaven’s gate.

And yes, I understand that the “20” is still wrong, but I figure it is very important to them to drive home what they’re talking about. “When loads of bright children stormed through heaven’s gate” works much better.

The crazy just gets crazier. Yesterday the Republicans staged a real fiasco where the House passed a bill to cut aid to the poor and elderly but couldn’t even manage to increase taxes on incomes over a million dollars. I thought it couldn’t be out done. But riding the crest of crazy, the NRA surpassed even the United States House of Representatives!

At a news conference this morning Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the death cult, announced that the NRA had a great idea to stop gun violence in the schools: armed policemen at every school. This is a stupid idea in oh so many ways. But consider the logic here: shooting at a school? Put armed guards at all schools! Shooting at a church? Put armed guards at all churches! Shooting at a movie theater? You see what’s happening.

This is just the NRA’s usual argument that an armed society is a polite society. If everyone is armed, we’ll all be nicer to each other! This won’t lead to the smallest of conflicts turning violent. Nope. That couldn’t happen at all!

But this does bring up an important point: mass shootings, horrific as they are, are not the problem. There are over 10,000 gun-related deaths per year, and very few of these are people protecting their homes from an intruder. Even more kill themselves with guns. We have lots of problems in the United States that relate to these statistics. But primarily, it is a gun problem. Here’s something: gun purchase waiting periods dramatically decrease suicide rates. That seems like an easy reform that saves lives. Of course, the NRA is against it.

It is indeed strange that the NRA would rather we turn America into a police state rather than yield on the smallest of gun legislation. And what is the reason? I really don’t know. The craziest of them think they have to have guns to protect against a tyrannical government. So they call for a tyrannical government? “Give me guns or give me death! Liberty not so much.”

Afterword

Wayne LaPierre took no questions. Some press conference.

Update (21 December 2012 11:26)

If only an armed guard could be placed next to every state trooper. gaw.kr/ZZOk1O

— Jim Naureckas (@JNaureckas) December 21, 2012