Behold: the principled conservatives! Behold how they stand up to powerful interests in the name of free markets and free minds! Behold how they fold like a cheap card table the moment those powerful interests open their mouths!

The House Republican Study Committee released a report on Friday calling for reform of our nation’s intellectual property laws. It presented four very good policy prescriptions. First, statutory damages reform. This would stop the ridiculous practice of granting awards before judgement is made—of up to $150,000 per “infringement.” According to Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: A Remedy in Need of Reform (PDF), the courts have interpreted “willful” infringers in a most liberal way (i.e. in a way that helps corporations and screws everyone else).

Second, the House Republican Study Committee suggested that we expand fair use. Third, they say we should punish false copyright claims. This would curtail the tactic of large companies destroying smaller companies with illegitimate copyright lawsuits. And fourth, they suggest that we limit copyright times.

Anyone who regularly reads me will know that I think these are all very good ideas. I don’t think they are nearly enough, but they are movement in the right direction. So let’s hear it for the House Republican Study Committee!

Or not.

The report had been out less than one day when it was pulled. Paul S. Teller, the House Republican Study Committee director, sent out a memo claiming that the report went out without “adequate review.” What’s more, “Copyright reform would have far-reaching impacts, so it is incredibly important that it be approached with all facts and viewpoints in hand.” What do you think those viewpoints might be? Perhaps the viewpoints of corporate copyright holders who cut big checks to House Republicans? (I’m not suggesting that this isn’t also a huge problem with the Democrats.)

This isn’t a bill. This is just a brief. It’s just information. But the corporate overloads can’t even allow us to talk about such things. Because if we don’t talk about it; we can’t do anything about it. And we really must do something about it, or we will be extending copyright further every few years to stop Micky Mouse from falling into that nasty world called Public Domain. Public baaad! Corporate profits gooood!

The Young Turks reports that the leftist economies of Latin America are growing:

I really like Michael Hastings. Like most people, I learned about him when he published his explosive The Runaway General in Rolling Stone. I didn’t give the article itself that much thought. A reporter had a good scoop. It was the reaction to the article that made me take notice of him. It seemed you couldn’t turn the page of a magazine without being confronted with another journalist explaining why Hastings’ article was a bad thing. Never again would the disgraced Stanley McChrystal trust him.

My opinion of Hastings went even higher when he appeared on Up with Chris Hayes in August and dismantled Josh Barro’s fascist argument against Julian Assange. Even more than Jeremy Scahill, Hastings seems determined to get at the truth regardless (or perhaps because) of powerful interests.

Earlier this week, Hastings wrote an article for BuzzFeed, The Sins Of General David Petraeus. He doesn’t talk much about the sex scandal. In fact, he writes, “For the record: Who really cares whom P4 is sleeping with? The idea that the FBI was investigating his sex life says more about the FBI and our absurd surveillance and national security state than it does about King David’s morality.” Overall, he is understanding of both Petraeus’ and Broadwell’s dalliances.

The problem is not Petraeus’ affair with Broadwell; it is Petraeus’ affair with the media. Hastings then goes through the last ten years of his career and shows that it has been a sham. He managed to trick the Washington establishment into thinking that the Surge in Iraq was successful and then managed to get the Obama administration to repeat the Surge in Afghanistan—with tragic results. All while the media cheered along.

Of course, just as after the Rolling Stone article, there were journalists who had to snipe. Dylan Byers at Politico wrote a hatchet piece. It is particularly offensive because it tries to psychoanalyze Hastings. Hastings lost his girlfriend in Iraq? He went after someone who worked at Little, Brown because they decided not to publish his book? Hastings considers himself a Gonzo journalist? What any of this has to do with anything is unclear.

A commenter, Tr Randolph, wrote what I thought was a very good reply to this bit of journalistic nonsense:

Other commenters focused on one bit of Byers article that is worth repeating here:

This is exactly the argument we heard against the Rolling Stone article: you shouldn’t tell the truth about powerful people! If you do, you will lose access. And if you lose access, you won’t be able to… Continue to not tell the truth about them?

Afterword

This is a great bit of TV with Hastings at his best:

I got a free copy of Funny Times sent to me. It’s not bad. It’s clearly geared toward an older audience, but it definitely has its moments. Like this cartoon:

Jerry Nadler was on Up with Chris Hayes where he got to spout the official United States line regarding Israel:

Here’s the critical part:

I am really not a partisan in this matter. This whole thing is a mess. But I don’t find the Israeli justifications for its actions very compelling in this case. And it seems that American media always pick convenient starting times for any dispute. At this point, I figure all the actions of both sides are based upon the previous actions of the other side.

What people on the left react to is that the Hamas actions are mostly impotent while the Israeli actions are anything but. It would be one thing if Israel’s use of non-proportional retaliation accomplished anything. But all it seems to do is continue the conflict on while killing thousands of Palestinians.

As to Nadler’s remarks: they are entirely one sided. The Palestinians were firing rockets at Israel and Israel had to put an end to it. Implicit in his statement is that Palestine had no good reason to be firing on Israel and Israel has every reason to be firing on Palestine. I’m inclined to say that neither side is justified in this killing. But it is just wrong to say that one side has cause and the other does not. Also note: no mention of the ceasefire.

The coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reminds me of the countless Indian wars here in the United States. In those cases, one could certainly cherry pick examples of the Native Americans behaving badly. But what was really going on was a land grab. Is that what’s going on in Palestine? I don’t know. But the “Israel good, Palestine bad” rhetoric makes me appreciate that narrative.

Today, the WonkBlog staff went full tilt against the crazies on the right. First, our favorite nerd Ezra Klein took on crazies in Congress who claim that “tax reform” will solve all our problems. It’s sad that we even have to talk about this—that Klein even has to write an article. Their claim is that by lowering margin tax rates but eliminating deductions the free market will not be distorted and so will spontaneously jump into high gear and employ all the long-term unemployed. Really, that’s what they’re saying.

Klein talks about this with a few economists. Larry Summers seems to be fairly keen on tax reform for other reasons, but doesn’t think it will stimulate the economy. Bruce Bartlett, an apostate Republican, is more to the point, “I am not familiar with any tax reform that raised growth, here or anywhere else.” On the other hand, Alan Auerbach suggests that a different kind of tax reform—a regressive value-added tax, which no is suggesting—could stimulate the economy.

This last idea really bugs me. For the last three decades, we’ve seen big increases in GDP. And yet the middle class has seen almost no improvement in their living standard. Why do we continue to think that increased GDP alone is a good thing. The truth is that our GDP could go down but if it went along with more equality, it would improve the live of the middle class.

Regardless of this, all the Republican crowing about reforming the tax code is just that: crowing. It isn’t going to get us anywhere.

Social Security Tax Reform

The biggest problem with Social Security is that the crazies on the right want to destroy it for no good reason. And they won’t even talk about sensible changes to improve the program. Shockingly, Dylan Matthews wrote an article today about my favorite topic: the Social Security tax cap, How to Sort Out Social Security’s Finances While Making it More Generous. It seems that Senator Mark Begich of Alaska is proposing that we get rid of the cap, increase benefits for the wealthy (a great trade off), and fix the cost of living adjustments.

I don’t have much to say about this other than: more!

I know what you’re thinking, “What’s the point of reading another blog post when soon there will be no more Twinkies and we will all starve?” I hear you. But I have good news! It is very possible that Twinkies will live on, coming out the same factories, albeit, under a different name. And maybe for a higher price. But hell, what price is too high for a Twinkie?

As you must know, Hostess is going out of business. This is a big deal. Hostess currently employs 18,000 workers. But this is a typical story with a typical storyline. Of what I’ve read Dean Baker has the best analysis, No Cupcake: Workers Turn Down Bad Deal from Hostess.

There are two narratives: conservative and liberal. The conservative narrative is that the greedy unions would not take one for the team and so brought down yet another Great American Business. This is not true at all. As Baker points out, the unions had very good reasons for turning down the deal. (Although it was only one of the unions who actually did so.)

The liberal narrative is incomplete but mostly true: Ripplewood Holdings, a private equity company, took over Hostess in 2009, saddled it with debt and let it flounder. This is the process that Matt Taibbi laid out in his Rolling Stone cover article. And this one was pretty much by the numbers.

But Dean Baker argues that the biggest problem is that before and after the takeover, Hostess was badly managed. They did not change their products to move with the times. What’s more, they kept a very limited product line. This was all bound to happen.

Peter Frase over at Jacobin points out another problem, Hostess and the Limits of the Private Welfare State. The truth is that our country’s lack of a single-payer healthcare system, stable pensions, and limited unemployment make it far harder for both workers and companies. There is no doubt about that.

I am a great fan of junk foods. So I’m sorry to see Hostess go, even apart from the economic effects. Just the same, it might have been a good idea if they had worked to break into the Oroweat bread market. I’m sure there will soon be companies popping up to fill the junk food vacuum. And there is even hope that some of Hostess’ existing factories will continue to pump out cream filled snack cakes—even if they are called Tweenies or Twankies and Wankers. I’d eat a product called Wankers, if only as a toast to the Hostess management.

If you are as old as I, then you remember The Rumble in the Jungle. This was a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, the heavyweight champion at that time. This is documented in the excellent film, When We Were Kings. It is an amazing story. Ali was an aging boxer who was neither as big nor as strong as Foreman. It looked like Foreman would tear Ali apart. But it didn’t turn out that way. Ali—apparently spontaneously during the fight—invented what he later called “rope-a-dope”: a technique where he allowed Foreman to exhaust himself throwing mostly impotent punches. Ali knocked out Foreman in the eighth round.

What I find remarkable about this is not that Ali was a great fighter and still is a brilliant man. It is George Foreman. The gregarious man we know today seems totally different than the shy boxer in 1974. Defeat can do that to a man—make him better. Or it can not.

A few years ago, I saw a book about Muhammad Ali that contained an introduction by George Foreman. In it, Foreman talked about their fight in what was then Zaire. He talked about how Ali had outboxed him. But then he said something that shocked me: he said knowing what he now knows, if they could go back and have that fight, Ali would still figure out some way to beat him.

I don’t think that is necessarily true, but the statement shows two things. First, it shows that Foreman is a graceful man. Second, it shows that Foreman is a man who accepted his defeat. Not only did he admit that Ali beat him because he was better at that moment; he admitted that Ali was in a fundamental sense his better.

Contrast this with Romney’s recent conference call. Don’t even think about all that garbage about giving presents to poor people. Nowhere in that talk does he admit error. He did admit that Obama ran a great campaign, but he was quick to add that his campaing was good too. (All evidence to the contrary, not that it would have necessarily mattered.) The main thing is that Romney can’t admit the most fundamental reason for his loss: the people did not like the message. And the truth is, if all the people had voted, the popular vote would have been a blow out just like the electoral college actually was: 55% to 45%.

I understand that it’s only been a week. George Foreman was probably pretty bitter a week after the fight. But somehow, I don’t see Mitt Romney ever making it to the high road. I suspect that he will hold a grudge toward Obama (and the Democratic Party) for the rest of his life. We’ll see in the coming years, because I have a bad feeling that after perhaps a year of not seeing him, he’ll become a Fox News regular.