Laura Berman over at The Detroit News doesn’t like Pete Hoekstra’s dumber than racist “China owns America!” commercial:

I’m certainly on board with Berman’s analysis of the commercial and how it doesn’t appeal to anyone other than the racists already planning to vote for Pete Hoekstra. But the article seems to accept the premise of the ad that China owns most of our government debt. But it doesn’t. The total foreign owned debt is 32%. For China, it is 8%. The majority of our government debt is owned by… Americans.

So Pete Hoekstra’s “Doesn’t California look like China?” commercial is not only offensive and ineffective, it is also just factually wrong.

On 8 July 2010, Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson were on Fareed Zakaria GPS.[1] Niall Ferguson was saying that we have to deal with the budget deficit now. He’s been saying this for years. Paul Krugman was saying that we need to stimulate the economy. He also said that eventually, we would need to deal with the budget deficit, but to do so now was wrong and probably self-defeating because it would hurt the economy and thus hurt tax revenues.

After interviewing both men, Zakaria came on alone to give his thoughts on what should be done. He said he agreed with both men. We should stimulate the economy now and work to close the budget deficit over the long-term. You can probably already see the problem here. Although he claimed that he agreed with both men, he only really agreed with Krugman. What Zakaria was proposing was exactly what Krugman had said. Ferguson didn’t say we needed to balance the budget eventually; he said we needed to do it now. We are coming up on two years, and still US government bonds are ridiculously low. Ferguson is finally coming around.

The problem here is not that Ferguson was wrong; it is rare indeed when Krugman is not right about such matters; pity the man who decides to argue against him. The real problem is that we have journalists like Fareed Zakaria who will not say what they think or what is obvious. He insisted on making nice and pretending to accept Ferguson’s fallacious ideas. And that makes it appear like the two sides are equally valid.

We’re only supposed to do that about global warming.

[1] This is the only video I could find. I know the whole thing is available somewhere online.

VoteView has provided the following graph of how much to the right or left all the presidents since World War II are:

This is interesting in that it shows very clearly that Obama is the most conservative Democratic president in the post-war period. But it also goes against my often stated contention that Democrats are now more conservative than Republicans of the past.

Does this graph make me rethink my position? Definitely. However, it isn’t clear exactly what the graph means. I checked out VoteView’s website in some depth and did not find the details of their process.

Here’s my question: are policy positions based upon the existing (at the time) political range? I suspect that VoteView would say it is not. However, there are problems with this contention, even if VoteView made it—and I don’t know that they would. Certainly, Reagan was generally a bigger proponent of tax cuts than Obama, even though—as a practical matter—Obama has cut taxes more than any president. Obama wants to raise the top tax bracket to 39% while Reagan lowered the top tax bracket to 50%. I suspect that VoteView would see this as Reagan being more conservative on taxes than Obama, even though the net practical effect is that Obama’s top tax rate would be 11% lower than Reagan’s.

So I think this is still an open question, and I’m open to whatever the evidence indicates. Regardless, the graph clearly puts the lie to the conservative talking point that Obama is some kind of radical socialists.

Dean Baker wrote an excellent article about copyright that goes along with much of what I (as the creator of many copyrighted works) believe. I certainly don’t want to go back to the days of Cervantes when publishers alone were allowed copyright of authors’ works. But the truth is that today, with all the changes that have been made to the copyright laws, we are ending up with much the same thing. Baker takes on the common canard that welfare is social engineering while copyright enforcement is just protecting the free market:

Artistic freedom Voucher

In the article, Baker links to a paper he wrote about The Artistic Freedom Voucher. The basic idea is brilliant. Our current system (copyright law) supports creative activity by pushing money from the bottom to the top. The AFV would support creative activity in a much more direct way by allowing everyone to give $100 to their chosen artist. This would be done as a tax credit—in my mind at least, kind of like that question on Form 1040, “Would you like to give $3 toward elections?” or whatever it actually says. The program would be entirely voluntary. Taxpayers would not have to give and artists would not have to participate. If artists did participate, they would have to give up any copyright protection for some period of time (Baker suggests 5 years).

If everyone participated, this would support a half-million artists at an income of $40,000 per year. As Baker says, this is one possible alternative to copyright law. And one that would appeal to most artists who are not, like the Mothers of Invention, just in it for the money. The more important point is that there are lots of ways to support the arts. We don’t have to stick with copyright law and there is nothing “natural” about copyright law.

Protect Corporations (and Paul McCartney[1])

This is a very exciting idea to me, because I have long been a critic of copyright law. In the US, copyright is now a minimum of 95 years. This means the wonderful and rare “Lu-Brent’s” Exclusive Card Mysteries that I own is still under copyright even though it was published in 1933. Give me a break! It amazes me to think that the copyright on The Beatles’ Yesterday will outlive me! This is madness. And the government has only made it worse, extending copyright retroactively. This is not done for the benefit of artists and their heirs; it is done for the benefit of corporations. And it no only hurts art consumers, it hurts art creators.

[1] According to The Telegraph, McCartney is worth upwards of one billion dollars (a half billion pounds). Could this be why he really hasn’t done anything particularly good since my childhood? Let’s see, Shakespeare sucked after he was wealthy. Cervantes only got better throughout his life of poverty. I have three data points and the results are in: money destroys artists!

Update: It isn’t that I expected McCartney to do Yesterday and Penny Lane for the rest of his career. Quite the contrary. There are flashes of brilliance throughout his later career that make my observation all the more poignant. I still think that Here Today is the only listenable John Lennon tribute song, even if it does only barely transcends some of McCartney’s worst lyrical impulses.

It’s a moot point, as Perry has fallen from the STUPID[1] bus, but this needs to be addressed because it bothers me. No one understands the subtle humor of this carefully constructed visual jest, so I will deconstruct it for my obtuse friends.

Normally one says “I can see my house from here” when flying over Kansas, standing at the top of the Empire State building, or some other high vantage point — not because you can actually see the house, but because it’s impossible and silly.

If you will notice, Perry is casually looking to his left which implies that he is looking at a nearby object. A nearby object would be easily identified. So…if Perry is looking at a house down the street and is pretty sure it’s his house, that would make him pretty dumb.

I think my mistake here was using Perry instead of Romney. Oops.

[1] Society That Undermines Philanthropy, Intelligence, and Dedication

I do not care for puppets. Even as a child I found them to be at best moderately amusing, but mostly just weird. Mr Rogers’ puppets in particular, so as to seem normal in his neighborhood, were curiously creepy. Even the subtle condescension in his own voice and manner gave the impression that Mr Rogers was addressing insane and potentially violent viewers rather than very young children. As I was being raised to see any and all strangers as potential threats, his opiate personality were unsettling and suspect.

In later years, I experienced the other end of puppetry, kneeling behind a puppet stage, arm raised over the edge with a googly-eyed puppet on my hand. As an evangelical enabler, part of my missionary position involved performing puppet shows for the poor dumb kids whose sadistic parents dragged them to church every Sunday. My puppet was a felt flower with the insipid name, Flower. I don’t have the scripts of any of those charming morality plays (many of which I helped author), but I know they were funny as hell.

As an adult I can now appreciate, if not always the humor, at least the skill required to manipulate a puppet well. That isn’t my point in exposing this shocking puppet exposé. The point is, there is an Ohio-based television station that is using puppets to get the news to the people. As stated in what I hope will be an award-winning article by Thomas J. Sheeran, “…a television station barred from using cameras during a high-profile corruption trial covers the highlights with a nightly puppet show. It stars a talking squirrel ‘reporter’…”. That Mr Sheeran felt the need to put “reporter” in quotations gives you some idea of his “take” on the story.

I can only say that combining news or “gossip” with puppetry is simply brilliant. Not only are WOIO and it’s sister station WUAB Job Creators, have stumbled upon a so-crazy-it-just-might-work method for propagating “information” to the people of Ohio. Information that, sadly, they would be unable to process using yesterday’s news methods. Of course, the real credit goes to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who have succeeded in making humor a necessary part of a healthy information digestive system. Kudos.[1]

Of course, this will put even more pressure on Sesame Street, which is already under pressure from the Society That Undermines Philanthropy Intelligence and Dedication (STUPID) to make learning more fun and less educational. I think we can all agree that the goal is within reach. It’s only a matter of time until the news is animated by Koreans and directed by Matt Groening.

Until that day, remember, while corporations may be people, puppets are tools like most other members of the media. Tools we can use to shape a tomorrow that is easier to digest.

[1] In your face Colbert! I mocked it first! How does it feel when the puppet master is not you, but a MILF in New Jersey? Well, not fromNew Jersey, I was born in California and moved here about ten years ago, so technically… Nevermind! You have just been puppet-powned.