“Benghazi!”

I heard that Fox News had a big scoop: an interview with the five commandos who have come together to write the soon to be released, 13 Hours: A Firsthand Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi. You know how it is: when the right wing start talking about Benghazi, you have to find out what it is even though you know that for the umpteenth time it will be nothing.

So I went to Google News and entered the search term “Benghazi.” And what comes up is, of course, Fox News stories. Not just them, though; there are also articles in The Blaze and World Net Daily. What’s more, there are articles on liberal sites wondering just what the hell Fox is on about now. The best of this is Olivia Marshall’s article at Media Matters, Fox’s Newest Benghazi Conspiracy Immediately Debunked By Fox Guest.

Yesterday, supposed straight news guy Bret Baier announced that it was a “dramatic new turn in what the Obama administration and its allies would like to dismiss as an old story.” But as Marshall shows, this idea was dismissed by Charles Lane during that broadcast:

What’s more, this is not news. We already knew this. The commandos are trying to make a bunch of money, which they can do both because Fox News and other conservative outlets have been pushing the supposed Benghazi scandal for the last two years, and because they are pushing it now. Normally, books promising to tell “what really happened” need to offer something more than publicly available information.

Igor Volsky at Think Progress wrote about what is really going on here, The Amazing Shrinking Benghazi Scandal. It really is quite amazing. It is as if after all the Watergate investigations, it had turned up the fact that the conspiracy stopped at G Gordon Liddy. Of course, in the case of Benghazi, it doesn’t seem as though they’ve even managed that. The whole conspiracy theory started with the likes of William Kristol writing, “It would have been a presidential decision.” And now it is, “The contractors say that the CIA station chief [acted] on his own authority and was not operating under orders from anyone in Washington DC.” So there is a difference of opinion about the response to the situation on the ground at the time. The worst you can say is that the station chief was wrong and even that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The right wing seems to have one thing and only one thing left in this scandal.

“Benghazi!”

Ezra Klein wrote an article this morning with some extremely positive news, The Obamacare Train Keeps Not Wrecking. It is primarily about some new information from the Kaiser Family Foundation that shows that where we have data, insurance premiums on average are going to go down next year. That in itself is a big deal because healthcare premiums pretty much never go down. But this is especially notable because the most recent claims from conservatives have been that there will be “rate shock” next year and that premiums will go up by double digits.

The worst case that Kaiser found was in Nashville where the premiums look to go up 8.7%. But this is more than offset by declines in places like Seattle (-9.8%), Providence (-11.4%), and Colorado (-15.6%). Of course, you aren’t likely to hear much about this in the news. Ten months ago, Intelligence² held a debate with the title, Is The Affordable Care Act Beyond Repair? In that debate, 16% started in favor of the motion; 32% ended in favor. That’s the nature of public coverage. Since then, there has been nothing but good news about Obamacare, yet that news has gotten shockingly little coverage.

Part of that is simply that “good news” is no news. The problems with the website were clear and potentially disastrous. But all the news since then has been of the nature, “Obamacare working as intended — but better.” Even if suddenly everyone in the United States had health insurance because of Obamacare, it would get at most a passing reference on the nightly news.

But there are some places that are determined not to report even the best of news:

It would be getting blanket coverage, of course. But what coverage is the good news getting? Not a drop.

This gets to an important point about Fox News and other outlets that I try to explain to people who consume “news” in this form: the greatest propaganda aspect of this kind of reporting is not in the reporting itself; it is in what is and is not reported. Look at Solyndra — the solar panel company that went out of business. It was a small story. But the right wing media beat on it for years. The story was that it had gotten a large government loan. This was seen as some kind of scandal, even though the vast majority of money in that loan program was paid back. But the full context was never reported by them. After other mainstream outlets pushed the full context of the loan program, the right wing simply dropped it. And this is why you will still find conservatives ranting about it: after blanket coverage, the right wing media just dropped it and their consumers were never the wiser.

The problem with this is not just that conservative voters get their news from biased sources that simply ignore any ideologically inconvenient information; the conservative elites do the same thing. And this is how the entire Republican Party has managed to go on tilt. Notice that despite the internet allowing people to get far better and more thorough news about the world, conservatives have allowed themselves to be cocooned in a hermetically seal media system that is even more limited than the news people got from the television in the 1950s.

What is most problematic about this is that the right wing echo chamber is only sealed regarding information getting in. The people who watch Fox News all day and every day think they are well informed. Most people don’t pay much attention to politics, so they are not able to go to family gatherings and rant about global warming being a conspiracy and Benghazi being a conspiracy and Fast and Furious being a conspiracy and so on. But the dedicated Fox News viewer can — and will. So all the looniness of the right wing gets spewed out. And it has an impact. One of those is the continued ignorance about Obamacare that is turning out to be a far greater success than I ever dreamed possible.

Update (6 September 2014 5:03 pm)

Paul Krugman posted something about the mechanism I discussed here, A Note on the Dynamics of Misinformation:

If you look at economic data even as casually as I do, you cannot have missed noticing that the United States’ economy does better under Democratic presidents than it does under Republican presidents — a lot better. Looking at all the presidents after World War II, the economy grows at about twice the rate under Democrats as it does Republicans. I’ve never thought that much about it. I’ve always figured that it was due to a lot of luck.

Well, I was just over at Mark Thoma’s blog (absolutely essential daily reading if you are at all interested in economics) and he posted a paper by Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, The US Economy Performs Better Under Democratic Presidents. Why? These two Princeton economists look seriously at this question and conclude… Well, they are academics and so it is all very nuanced and complicated. But let me see if I can lay it out for you.

First they looked at both fiscal and monetary policy to see if that explained anything. There was no correlation with fiscal policy (stimulus), and the monetary policy actually favored the Republicans. So the two colossal economic drivers have nothing to do with the fact that Democratic presidents are far better for the economy than Republicans. That’s important to remember.

They next looked at five kinds of economic shocks that might indicate that it is just a matter of luck. The shocks are: oil price; productivity; foreign growth; consumer expectations; and defense spending. When they included all of these, half of the effect was explained. But that doesn’t mean that these things are all random. Oil and military shocks are both affected by government policy. What’s interesting is that consumer confidence goes up during Democratic presidencies. This is a big part of the correlation. The authors ask, “Did [the public] know something economists didn’t?” All I can say is that it wouldn’t be surprising; the economic profession is known for its cluelessness.

But that leaves half the effect of better economic performance under Democratic presidents unexplained. I have an idea: it’s the policies, stupid. Especially over the last four decades, Republicans seem far more interested in enriching their already rich friends than doing what is best for the economy. For example, I’m sure that the Iraq War was terrible for our economy. The economy did grow through the early years of it, but that was what it was already doing. I’m talking opportunity cost here. We could have built roads and bridges and factories; we could have educated more people and done more research; in other words: we could have built our nation’s infrastructure with the money we spent blowing up things in Iraq. I have been very hard on both Presidents Clinton and Obama for their foreign policies. But there is no doubt that as lethal as their policies are, they are not huge economic drags.

Similarly, when Republicans want to stimulate the economy, they generally do it in the most inefficient way possible: they give lots of money to people who already have more money than they can spend. Democrats are much more efficient with programs like the payroll tax holiday and extended unemployment benefits. While Blinder and Watson looked at total fiscal policy, they didn’t look at it’s effectiveness. I suspect if they did, they would find a big effect there as well.

So the bottom line is that Democratic presidents produce better economic growth because they offer better economic policy. The Republican prescription of convincing people to vote for them to “get the darkies” so they can give tax cuts to the rich and start bloody good wars does not lead to a good economy.

Mark Thoma wrote an interesting article over at CBS Money Watch, Sagging Job Growth: It’s Not Just a Skills Gap. The idea is that the reason the rich are getting richer than the poor is because they went to college and so their job prospects are better because their skills are more in demand. There’s just one problem: that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, readers of this blog should be well aware of the issue.

Thoma is a careful guy, so he won’t come right out and say it. But I will: the “skills gap” is little more than apologetics designed to minimize economic inequality. Paul Krugman is fond of pointing out that all the 80,000 odd public school teachers in New York have a combined salary equal to a single hedge fund manager, even though the education level of the jobs is about the same.

This isn’t to say that education and training have nothing to do with inequality. It is just that it isn’t a primary cause and that is what the research Thoma reported on demonstrates. The big issue is what David Harvey has been ranting about for many years: capital can move anywhere, so jobs go where they are cheapest. This causes what seems to be a problem in the system: businesses can only sell things as long as people have the money to buy them. An impoverished middle class today implies an impoverished upper class tomorrow.

Regardless, there is a fundamental problem with the idea that it is the skills gap that creates inequality. Dean Baker wrote about it on Tuesday, Actually, the Chinese Can Do the High-Skilled Jobs at Lower Cost Too. The idea that only Americans can do highly skilled work is, in addition to being arrogant, just wrong. As I am well aware: there no kind of high tech work that you can’t find someone in Romania who is just as qualified to do for half the cost. This is why American companies are so keen to get more H1-B Visas approved in the United States. It ain’t about getting skills that are unavailable here. It is about getting skills that are available all over the world for less money.

It isn’t limited to high tech either. As Baker talks about a lot, there are great doctors all over the world. The reason that they aren’t here is because the American Medical Association has managed to get the government to protect their jobs. So over the last three decades, we’ve see the government allow globalization as it is related to manufacturing workers. But doctors, lawyers, and college professors have been protected. So that’s the reason that there is any kind of basis for the skills gap: if you can get into one of the protected professions, you will do well. But that isn’t because of the skills gap. Rather, it is just government policy.

Whenever you hear someone talking about how the reason we have inequality in this country is that the poor are not getting college educations, remember this. Of course, I think in ten years no one will be able to make this argument. As it is, those with recent college educations are finding the job market really hard. The main thing they have to show for their college degrees is large amounts of debt. And that too is government policy.

Hooray for the DC Circuit Court! It just withdrew the July decision of a three judge panel that upheld the Halbig v Burwell challenge to Obamacare. I wrote about this case just last night, Originalism, Textualism, and Politics on the Supreme Court. Halbig is a stupid case based upon what is little more than a typo in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which itself is contradicted by other language in the law.

But there really has been an amazing degradation of judicial thinking on the right over the last three decades. One can certainly argue that liberal justices were “reaching” in the 1960s and 1970s. But since that time, “legislating from the bench” is almost entirely a conservative activity. And that is especially true on the Supreme Court where there is only one liberal compared to five conservatives, three of the nutty variety.

In July, the two Republican appointed judges on the Circuit Court panel found as their politics dictated. So the Obama administration asked for an en banc rehearing. This is a hearing where the whole court is involved. Since the Democrats have now appointed most of the judges, we assume that they will find against the plaintiffs because it is only reactionary conservatives looking for any excuse to destroy Obamacare who would find the logic of Halbig compelling.

Because a Fourth Circuit Court panel unanimously found against the same argument, there was good reason for the Supreme Court to look into this case and make a final decision. (There are a total of four very similar cases making their way through the courts.) But with today’s DC Circuit Court decision, that becomes less likely. Of course, those pushing this case have already petitioned the Supreme Court. According to Jonathan Cohn in the article above, most legal scholars think the Supreme Court will at least wait to see how the DC Court finds. But you just can’t say with this court.

Regardless, this is very good news. If the Fourth and DC Circuit Courts had stayed in conflict, the Supreme Court would have been forced to clear up the law. Assuming the DC Circuit Court overturns the panel decision, there is no necessity to do so. But it only takes four Supreme Court justices to request a review. And we have three extremists on the Court. And when it came to Obamacare the last time it was at the Court, it seemed that Anthony Kennedy was as extreme as anyone. So we can’t say for sure.

Cohn quoted Andrew Koppelman who said pretty much what I think:

I think that’s the one thing that keeps Obamacare relatively safe: Chief Justice Roberts’ concerns about going down in history as the partisan hack he is. Sometimes vanity is a good thing. I just wish that Roberts would expand his view of what hurts the reputation of the Court. Obamacare is the least we could expect. It will be Citizens United v Federal Election Commission that Roberts will be remembered for. In fifty years, people will ask, “Couldn’t they see that would destroy democracy in America?” But that apparently is too much to ask of the savior of Obamacare. I’m not saying he will be remembered like Roger B Taney, but history won’t be much kinder. As for the others: if they even decide to hear the case, it will be yet another nail in their historical coffins.

Let me explain something to you about judicial theory that has really had me confused. There is a theory called “originalism.” This is the idea that laws should be interpreted as they originally were. So the Constitution should be interpreted according to what people thought about it in 1788. I find it a totally indefensible theory, but there you go. There is another theory called “textualism.” This is the theory that the law should be interpreted only on the basis of its text. It doesn’t matter if we know that the legislators intended a law to be a certain way; if there was a typo in the legislation, that’s what the law means.

Based upon this, you would think that originalism and textualism would be opposites. But that isn’t the case. For one thing, originalism is a bit more complicated than what I explained above. There is the idea of original intent but there is also the idea of original meaning. So all these years that I’ve referred to Antonin Scalia as an originalist, I’ve been technically right. But it is more correct to say that he is a textualist. Of course, as I’ve discussed before, Scalia is nothing but an ideologue who simply finds however is necessary to go along with what he’s learned from listening to Rush Limbaugh.

The reason this all comes up is the most recent challenge to Obamacare, Halbig v Burwell. This is the case that is going to set all the poor people free in red states by not allowing them to get federal subsidies on the federal healthcare exchanges. It is literally based upon a typo in the law. But as Jeffrey Toobin explains in The New Yorker today, other parts of the law clearly indicate that the federal government did intend to provide subsidies when state governments didn’t set up their own exchanges. So the question is what a justice is suppose to do when there is a conflict in the law.

Do you question how Scalia will see it? He will almost certainly grab onto the typo and ignore the rest of the law. I know this (Everyone should!) because if a lawsuit came in saying that Obamacare was unconstitutional because Obama was a doo-doo face, Scalia would find some reason to agree. And that gets to the most fundamental thing about the Supreme Court that you should never forget: it is 100% political 100% of the time.

What is interesting here is not really Scalia. From my perspective, Thomas is actually more consistent. Scalia is kind of a loose cannon. On any given day, he might find anything at all. But just like Fox News viewers everywhere, if the issue has been publicized, he is dangerously consistent. So neither Scalia nor Clarence “Predictably Dark Ages” Thomas are interesting. It is John Roberts who fascinates. Because he is totally political, and explicitly so. Scalia wouldn’t admit that his decisions are political. The same is true of Thomas. But how could Roberts deny it?

John Roberts is the one person on the Supreme Court who clearly thinks, “How is this going to play?” That’s why he found in favor of Obamacare the first time. And that’s why I fully expect him to find for Obamacare this time. We will see, of course. But by the time this thing actually makes it to the Supreme Court (assuming it does), it wouldn’t be decided until this time next year. And at that point, if the Supreme Court found against Obamacare, there would be millions of people who suddenly saw their healthcare costs go through the roof for what would only be seen as partisan reasons.

I’ve argued before that Roberts is very concerned about how history sees him. In this case, it would possibly be about history seeing him as the Chief Justice who cast the deciding vote that caused the people to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Supreme Court. Because at that point, I don’t think anyone would consider the Court anything more than yet another partisan institution that simply votes according to the interests of the party that nominated them.

Jeffrey Toobin is interested in whether Scalia will stand by his textualist philosophy. I don’t think there is any real question. Somehow, Scalia will find a plausible way to justify doing whatever it requires to destroy Obamacare. It is possible that even Halbig v Burwell may be a bridge too far and he’ll side against it. But that will only be because he’s concerned about his reputation and he knows he’s not going to win. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see this case go down 7-2, with only crazy Alito and medieval Thomas voting to uphold.

But regardless of how the decision comes in or whether the Supreme Court decides not to take the case, it is all about politics. The decisions of Roberts and Scalia have nothing to do with the law and everything to do with their ideologies and their concerns about their own reputations.

You may remember last month when I wrote, Why Republicans Will Nominate Rand Paul in 2016. The basis of my argument was that Rand Paul’s current position on foreign affairs would never be palatable to the Republican base. Lucky for Paul that he doesn’t seem to have any commitment to his stated ideology, so he will simply become a generic (extreme) Republican by the time the primary really starts next year. But he will maintain the libertarian brand that so flatters the base. No one else can really touch that.

Today, Charlie Pierce brought my attention to the latest example of Paul’s “evolution” (or: “shameless pandering”) on his way to the Republican presidential nomination, For the Benefit of Mr Paul. Back in 2011, Rand Paul proposed a bill that would end foreign aid to all countries in the Middle East — including the untouchable country, Israel. Last month he claimed that he never proposed doing this. He also noted that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

At that time, his comments were mostly about Israel. One can’t be neutral toward Israel and be a mainstream national politician in this country. If American has “exceptionalism,” then Israel has “super-duper exceptionalism.” One would think Paul would have realized this long ago. But if there is anything that Rand Paul’s career has shown, it is that he isn’t all that smart, and he surrounds himself with similarly capable sub-subgeniuses.

Last week, the Associated Press explained Paul’s new position, Perry, Paul Bash Obama for “No Strategy” on Syria.

Other than tipping his hat to the Constitutional mandate to seek Congressional authorization for starting yet another war in the Middle East, I don’t see this as anything different from America’s favorite comedy duo, McCain & Graham. And that is the point. Paul is well on the road to getting rid of the few libertarian ideals he has left, while maintaining the “libertarian” brand.

It isn’t hard to do. Libertarians believe in having a military (or at least a militia) that will defend against invading hordes. It just isn’t hard to move from that to defining any group we don’t like as an existential threat allowing for the permanent war we now have. And for that matter, it isn’t much further to making a “libertarian” argument for throwing Charles Schenck in jail for arguing against World War I.

Next be prepared for Rand Paul to do a little hedging on his support for cannabis legalization. “I’ve only ever been in favor of legalization if we absolutely positively can keep it out of the hands of children!” But we aren’t able to absolutely positively keep alcohol out of the hands of children. Isn’t that an absurd criterion for legalization? “I’ve am in favor of legalization if we absolutely positively can keep it out of the hands of children!”

On the issue of LGBT rights, he’s more likely to just not talk about them. But you can imagine something like, “I believe in same sex marriage, but I never said gay people should be able to teach our children!” So you aren’t in favor of LGBT equality? “Of course I am! But no one has a Constitutional right to a job!”

And on the issue of immigration, I think he will get on board with Marco Rubio’s brilliant political innovation. “I’ve only ever been in favor of naturalizing our illegal population after not one person is coming across the boarder illegally.” But isn’t that an absurd criterion that can never be met? “That’s why I’ve only ever been in favor of naturalizing our illegal population after not one person is coming across the boarder illegally.”

Although he’s never had far to travel, Rand Paul is well on his way to being the kind of LINO (Libertarian In Name Only) that Republicans can support. What’s funny about it is that I’m sure whoever runs for president on the Libertarian Party ticket will get far fewer votes in 2016 than they did in 2012. It’s amusing that Republicans fancy themselves libertarians but don’t really support libertarian policies. But it is a laugh riot that much of the official libertarian establishment is exactly the same. It shows just how ridiculous the entire conservative movement in this country has become.