The car with the star

Just an amazing song by a legend. No commentary required.

Moderate White Supremacy

Haley Barbour has come under some fire for some comments--old and new--about race, the Citizens Council, and the Civil Rights movement. The most problematic of his recent statements was a suggestion that the Citizens Council movement was primarily targeted against the KKK, and helped maintain racial peace in Yazoo, Mississippi.[1]

You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.

Now it's true that the Citizens Councils didn't like the KKK, and they did organize against them. But the bulk of their activities were organized against the NAACP and other organizations that they saw as interfering in the noble southern traditions of apartheid and anxious assertions of racial supremacy. And all of their activities were aimed at preserving white supremacy, both in law and in community belief. Whereas Barbour sees them only fighting the Klan, and ignores them trying to keep the white community's boot on the neck of blacks, Matthew Yglesias has a more revealing take:

In Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s most white people were white supremacists. And within the large and powerful white supremacist community, there was a split between more moderate and more radical factions. The moderates pursued a strategy of economic coercion and the radicals pursued a strategy of violence. There was also a small minority of white proponents of racial equality. In Barbour’s home town of Yazoo City, Mississippi the moderate faction of white supremacists had the upper hand. And Barbour thinks the strength of moderate white supremacists helped create a beneficial political atmosphere in his hometown.

Hell we could call this triangulation, but really it's the classic strategy for those who want to achieve/maintain desired policies in an inhospitable climate. It is the same strategy employed by racial egalitarians in the Civil War/Reconstruction period, who sought to separate out a sphere of social equality from the spheres of political and civic equality. They recognized that they could only make gains in the latter if they forswore equality in the former.

From a 1965 NY Times article, a nice taste of this divide between moderates and extremists.

Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson made his strongest public statement against racial extremism, during an introductory speech for Senator James O. Eastland, who recently has been accussed by ultra-conservatives of 'going soft' on segregation. Referring to racial extremists, Governor Johnson said 'We're not going to be the pushing boy for that element ever again. We were not only the architects but helped build the dog house we now find ourselves in.'... Johnson, who won election on an uncompromising racist platform, asserted he would continue to fight for segregation, but through legal channels. 'Rather than accept the interpretation of laws by some bureaucrats,' he said, 'we prefer to go to the courts for their interpretation.'

I especially love that Johnson both ran on an uncompromising racist platform and still is able to refer to extremists as "that element." While the center of gravity has moved rightward on a whole series of issues, it has definitely moved to the liberal position on matters of race. 



[1] His watermelon comment is probably the most offensive in one way, but it's also weirdly ambiguous. On the one hand it is a classic racist trope. It was said, however, as a somewhat jocular warning to an aide who persisted in using racist language during an 1982 election campaign. It's possible that what upset Barbour about his aide's comments were that they were overheard. Of course, his own comments were also reported. Racist language and sentiment are a deeply ingrained part of the social and political discourse in many areas and communities of the country, south and non-south. Much of this is tied to actual policy positions, in the sense of not just believing blacks inferior and undesirable but in the belief that government and private power should be employed to sustain and strengthen white supremacy. But not all of it, and possibly not even most of it. Barbour's comments have always struck me as the latter: racist language, possibly reflecting underlying racist beliefs, but constrained by a belief in a citizenship regime that does not actively discriminate or sustain racial hierarchies. I felt similarly when Harry Reid's 'negro' comment came out. Certainly doesn't excuse it, and one should hold public officials especially to a standard in which the power of language and the reality of racism in government and society are recognized. But different than Trent Lott's comments that the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond been elected President in 1948, which are really hard to understand except as an endorsement of public and private power being deployed to maintain white supremacy. Also, the fact that Barbour, in trying to upbraid an aide for racist language, couldn't help himself but to get in a racist joke, seems sufficiently sophomoric to raise broader questions about his judgment. But sophomoric has definitely been his M.O. throughout his career, and probably explains some of his electoral appeal.

Goddamn Christmas.

I've always felt that the true Christmas spirit was captured by the Pogues' Fairytale of New York, by the Ramones' Christmas song (see below) and by the story of the gift of the Magi. Christmas for me is a fighting time, a time to reflect on relationships with people whom you love only slightly more than you resent. The Gift of the Magi fits in because, well, what the hell is wrong with those people anyways. Yes coordination does remove some of the romantic surprise, but there are considerable gains in efficiency to be made. (Also, in the version I remember, dude sells his car so that he can buy his girlfriend a comb, while she sells her hair so she can buy him some shit for his car. There seems to be an asymmetry embedded in some sexism.) So merry fucking Christmas:




The Ramones: Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight.

Damned if things aren't always the same.

From the 1962 report Education and the Disadvantaged American, published by the National Education Association:

"The problem of the the disadvantaged arises because their cultures are not compatible with modern life."

This has been boilerplate for progressives since at least the 1890s, and the underlying premise-- that the "poor did not need money but changes in their values and lifestyle" (Jeffrey 1972, p.10)--is what you get when you combine the comforting rational that the poor are poor because that is their lot in life (see human history, from the beginnings of agriculture to sometime around 1800) with the discovery of culture in the early colonial period. That is to say, it is an argument with a long pedigree. It is embraced by progressives because it allows both an opportunity for improvement (as opposed to mudsill economics theories), and because it excuses all sorts of busy-bodying and dramatic moralizing on their part.

Julie Jeffrey nicely summarizes the mid-century progressive stance on the poor and education:

"Educators delighted in describing this environment of poor children. Brought up in broken families, deprived of normal family communication, attention and all the toys and physical objects found in any middle class household, the deprived child was damaged by the time he reached school." (Jeffrey 1972, p.10).

I particularly like the use of the word "delighted."

Anyway, I've always found efforts at flipping this script to be appealing, and when well done, highly satisfying. Hardcore and punk rock were very good at this, and I think this helps explain their enduring appeal, why, despite being a tired, tired man, I still love Suicidal Tendencies.

There were at least two ways to flip the script. The first, much more common in British punk, was to point out that forcing children to attend schools designed in accordance with the beliefs held by progressives[1] as to what made for a productive worker also imposed an obligation upon the state once the inevitable happened and yesterday's vision of a productive worker turned out to be a 'structurally' unemployed adult with non-transferable skills in a boss' labor market. Which is really the basis for the classic, "Do They Owe Us a Living? (Of Course They Fucking Do").

The other way, more common in American punk, was to point out that the ideals and values that were being taught in these institutions were deeply incapacitating. We were their John Stuarts to their James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, guinea pigs in the creation of their particular vision of the productive and upstanding citizen. And that brings us to today's classic, "Institutionalized."

In both versions, the message is pretty clear: Run Rabbit Run.




[1] Not just progressive, but really the UK conservatives have generally tended to believe that most social problems could be solved with more spanking. This could be done in school, at home, or by any decent person on the street who felt that an uppity child needed a good thrashing.

Jeffrey, Julie 1972. "Education for Children of the Poor: A Study of the Origins and Implementation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965." PhD Thesis, Rice University.

Always read David Leonhard

 NYTimes: In Tax Cuts, the Options Run Short 

His main point is that the democrats have once again painted themselves in a corner. If they can't convince two republicans in the senate to support the extension of the under-$250,000 tax cuts, or some sort of compromise, the the GOP can let all the cuts expire and pass retroactive legislation extending them all permanently once they have the house majority in January. Then the burden would be on the Senate or Obama to reject or veto the extension, expiring all the cuts.

This would be a huge political blow, one that almost all democrats of influence want to avoid (Obama pledged to not raise taxes on those making less than $250,000), and so the real question is how big the Democratic retreat will be to avoid being in this position.  Or, what can they negotiate for to allow them to give the GOP all they want without totally losing faith.

My bet? Tie it to DADT repeal and unemployment extension. But no one cares about the unemployed anymore so I wouldn't be surprised if the democratic "win" would be to extend all the cuts temporarily for 3 years, so it wouldn't be an election year issue (the GOP will push for a 2 year or permanent extension. They'll float 3 years as a compromise.)

So I'm betting the Democrats are not so totally divorced from their base and economic conditions that they won't do their best to get unemployed benefit extension through. Obama's pay freeze announcement gives me very little confidence here; all I've got to go on is the audacity of hope.

The Tea Party; Taibbi; Ticked Off

Steve Benen highlights the following exchange between Matt Taibbi, David Gergen and Gary Hart, and argues that "the Gergen/Hart argument is that their numbers lend them credibility. But isn't that a pretty clear example of argumentum ad populum?" This is the sort of shit that makes me despair for the Democratic coalition.

Taibbi: To me, the main thing about the Tea Party is that they're just crazy. If somebody is able to bridge the gap with those voters, it seems to me they will have to be a little bit crazy too. That's part of the Tea Party's litmus test: "How far will you go?"
Gergen: I flatly reject the idea that Tea Partiers are crazy. They had some eccentric candidates, there's no question about that. But I think they represent a broad swath of the American electorate that elites dismiss to their peril.
Hart: I agree with David. When two out of five people who voted last night say they consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party, we make a huge mistake to suggest that they are some sort of small fringe group and do not represent anybody else.
Taibbi: I'm not saying that they're small or a fringe group.
Gergen: You just think they're all crazy.
Taibbi: I do.
Gergen: So you're arguing, Matt, that 40 percent of those who voted last night are crazy?
Taibbi: I interview these people. They're not basing their positions on the facts — they're completely uninterested in the facts. They're voting completely on what they see and hear on Fox News and afternoon talk radio, and that's enough for them.
Gergen: The great unwashed are uneducated, so therefore their views are really beneath serious conversation?
Taibbi: I'm not saying they're beneath serious conversation. I'm saying that these people vote without acting on the evidence.
Gergen: I find it stunning that the conversation has taken this turn. I disagree with the Tea Party on a number of issues, but it misreads who they are to dismiss them as some kind of uneducated know-nothings who have somehow seized power in the American electorate. It is elitist to its core. We would all be better off if we spent more time listening to each other rather than simply writing them off.

Taibbi is arguing that the Tea Party supporters are crazy. Why? Because "They're not basing their positions on the facts — they're completely uninterested in the facts"; because they "vote without acting on the evidence." Benen defends Taibbi here, arguing that his criticism is "fair" and asking "what do we when we're done listening, and we realize that a contingent is saying things that don't make sense?"

This is nonsense. I disagree with so so much that the Tea Party supports, and I recognize that lacking a coherent and centralized organizational structure [1] identifying what "they support" is itself an amorphous category, the unstable aggregation of protest signs, TV interviews, and the position-taking of elites trying to capture a leadership position (what does it mean to be a leader of the Tea Party? It is unclear. It is almost like a valence leadership, in that if you can be identified as a leader, regardless of whether you have been chosen through any institutional mechanism, you will receive substantial support and opportunity to gain political power and leverage). And I think that Benen is right to point out that the Tea Party is in some sense just the conservative base of the Republican Party. The early organizational apparatus of the Tea Party seems to have been one that drew heavily on existing apparatuses of the conservative movement.

But what is the standard that we are comparing it against? I could definitely find you a large number of Democrats--liberal, conservative, whatever--that hold contradictory positions, that reject certain established 'facts' as being reflective of some form of institutionalized bias. Certainly a lot of us rejected the 'facts' of the Great Moderation, and many of us still reject at least some of the 'facts' of free trade. So one question, which I think the Tea Party has been right to ask, is "whose facts?" Now certainly some of the facts that have been rejected by different voices in the movement are probably actual facts, well-established by any reasonable metric. But even here I guarantee that you could find the same for any sizable portion of the Democratic coalition. And we would in all probably also find a comparable portion of Democrats treating the presentation of evidence contrary to our beliefs by doubling down on our positions.

What about contradictory positions? Those Social Security getting, Medicare loving, farm-subsidy dependents hate government programs, hate government health care, and hate dependency. Maybe these are contradictory, maybe not. Certainly previous generations of Democrats believed that there was value in basing Social Security (and by extension, Medicare) on contributions, precisely to undercut the opposition to redistribution (taking from Peter to pay Paul) that the Tea Party seems to be articulating. They believed that while Social Security was redistributive, that straight out redistribution was not sufficiently defensible or desirable and instead decided to base it on contributions, to make it into an insurance scheme instead. And most of us think that certain industries should be getting various forms of governmental support, either through favorable regulations, subsidies, or tax breaks. And we usually think that the ones that should get the most support are those that are either concordant with our values or that we believe are likely to further our values in some way. So renewable energy, public broadcasting, higher education. There have been a lot of complaints that the Tea Party is hypocritical because various self-proclaimed Tea Parties attack welfare but love farm subsidies. But maybe these Tea Partiers don't see these as hypocritical at all: the first (they might believe) encourages dependency and not working, while the second (they might believe) encourages national food self-sufficiency and working. And even still, how many of us--regardless of how well-educated, how well-informed, how self-criticising--have managed, or even sought, to make sure that our various beliefs are all in alignment with particular expressions of all the different first principles we might hold.

Furthermore, when Taibbi says he "interview[s] these people", does he mean the sympathizers, the identifiers, the active members, the rally-attenders, the rally-organizers, or the various levels of people trying to place themselves in the leadership positions? Like I said above, if you interviewed the Democratic sympathizers, the Democratic identifiers, the active members of the Democratic party (those who have volunteered for campaigns, attended rallies, worn buttons), or the ward leaders, you would almost certainly find a comparable degree of inattention to inconsistencies, to contrary evidence, to contradictory positions. They, like the rest of us, are regular people with some core values, some enduring identifications, some personal experiences, and some informed positions; all these interact in complex ways, and there is always a lot of noise going on around us while we try and sort these things out. That the end result is often an inconsistent, unstable mess is hardly a surprise. You'll even find these amongst members of Congress and the President. After all, their job really is to put together and keep together a coalition of different and often contradictory interests all the while appealing to a broader population whose positions are themselves often unstable. And if he is interviewing higher-ups, those who 'ought to know better,' well like I said, their job is coalition building and maintenance. That will necessarily lead to some issue incoherence.

But more importantly, who the hell are these higher-ups and why should we take them as representative? They haven't been elected as representative of the Tea Party. They are in all likelihood competing with each other for positions of influence within the movement. Some of these positions will be democratically chosen, while others will be valence representation--Sarah Palin representation, where identification with her, in a whole hell of a lot of ways, and appreciation for her, in a whole other set of ways, is sufficient to give her a following and leverage. All movements have this quality to them; all movements have these tensions; all movements try to motivate people by appealing to almost anything that they think will both resonate and further their own specific agendas.

The end result of all of this is that there will be a lack of coherence, a mess, one that relies on appeals that many believe, and many know to be false, and that even the listener and the audience might believe to be false. But they often serve larger movement purposes. The civil rights movement, the Populists, the Progressives, the environmentalists, and pretty much any other popular social movement has done the same. And when, like Taibbi, you disagree with the agendas, you are especially likely to see the worst, to see crazy, to see a deeply regressive and anti-rationalist band that is out to destroy everything you hold dear.

But democracy doesn't require intellectuals; it doesn't require a highly informed citizenry; I don't even think, Machiavelli to the contrary, that it requires a virtuous citizenry. It just requires one that is able in the aggregate to recognize when times are bad, and to vote out whoever is in government at that time. That's all we've ever had; that's what we have now; and that's part of what we had in the midterms, mediated through the specific institutional arrangements of American government (namely, that we voted on  1/3 of Senators, all the House and not on the Presidency).

And I despair for the Democratic coalition, because it's exactly Taibbi's brand of Jane Addams elitism, albeit with his own particular anti-corporate aggression (which I wholeheartedly support), that feeds the impression that liberals are fundamentally looking down their noses at the mass of the population. It is an impression rooted in the fact that the Democratic party, with the exception of the union movement and much of the civil rights movement [2], has become intellectually and electorally un-moored from the working classes of this country.


[1] It is not unorganized; nor is it disorganized. And saying it is over-organized is also inaccurate. Rather, it is a valence label, one that a resonates with a significant number of people and which a number of different groups and individuals are trying to organize into something more coherent. But its temporary strength has to be in some part its lack of coherence, something like the old Democratic-Republican societies, those "self-created" societies that claimed to speak for the people directly and that sought to bypass existing institutional structures.
[2] These are obviously influential components of the Democratic coalition, but I would also suggest that they are the components that are least influential in the progressive-managerial consensus that has dominated, in one form or another, the Democratic party since Clinton.

The President writes a children's book...

... and Fox News make asses of themselves.

Original headline (as indicated by the URL):

Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General

Then, of course, we get

Editor's Note: Headline has been corrected for historical accuracy.

with the new headline

Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Defeated U.S. General

Now I don't care about the President's book. But this is some pretty petty stuff. This is referring to Obama's inclusion of Sitting Bull in Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, which is a tribute to 13 Americans presented to children.

Francoise Hardy...

...incomparable. She apparently does not like her version of this song, and the music is something of a departure from other renditions. It ranks as amongst my favorite versions, however, and the simplicity of her voice could carry the song even were one not to like the latin beat.

Obama might believe the GOP wasn't elected on a mandate of gridlock...

... but he doesn't seem to really be holding out for a lot of progress being made in the next Congress.

“They are not going to want to just obstruct, that they’re going to want to engage constructively,” he said of his Republican adversaries. “And then we’re going to have a whole bunch of time next year for some serious philosophical debates.”

There's nothing like "whole bunch of time" for "some serious philosophical debates" to really inspire a belief that any significant legislation will be passed in the 112th Congress.

Dumbest thing you'll read today...

... from Douglas Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell. 

It involves such gems as 

But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

This, by the way, from a former Clinton (both Hillary and Bill) adviser. Now they I don't think Schoen [1] actually believe this. He was an adviser to Bill Clinton, who was also drubbed in the first midterms. It is also beyond ironic for Schoen to write

Obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the consultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president's political prospects.

This, from the man who insisted that they shouldn't pass health care reform because it would negatively impact the Democrats at the polls. They suggest a national unity government, and claim that "if he is to bring Democrats and Republicans together, the president cannot be seen as an advocate of a particular party, but as somebody who stands above politics, seeking to forge consensus." Now this is standard 'third party' claptrap. Without actually changing the institutions of governance, this would result in a largely ineffective President who had few allies whose fates were tied to him and so could cut him loose at will. We have seen this movie before; Mr. Tyler I am thinking of you.

Schoen and Caddell claim that

Forgoing another term would not render Obama a lame duck. Paradoxically, it would grant him much greater leverage with Republicans and would make it harder for opponents such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) - who has flatly asserted that his highest priority is to make Obama a one-term president - to be uncooperative.

This is nonsense. They do their best to shuffle away from providing any mechanism by which this supposed increase in leverage would be accomplished. And they ignore the fact that if Obama were to announce that he was not seeking another term it would feed the Republican (and Schoen/Caddell) narrative that Obama's agenda has been repudiated. It is not a paradox that this would strengthen him; it is a lie.

Also, lines such as

Moreover, if the president were to demonstrate a clear degree of bipartisanship, it would force the Republicans to meet him halfway

might as well have been written in 2009. Oh wait, they were. But the Republicans stuck to their game plan of 'no' and were handsomely rewarded. Not to say that this will always work, but that it can, especially when the economic factors are favorable. All in all, this is the dumbest article I've read in weeks. There is an argument with shallow explanations and with no mechanism. It lunges across the line from ironic to hypocritical. And it has about as much likelihood of influencing the President as I do of being elected President. But that's not the point. The point is to feed the narrative to achieve policy (and political) objectives, namely, the repudiation of any progressive gains, hardline military stances against Iran, and possibly the re-ascendancy of the Schoens and Caddells of the world in the Democratic party.

[1] Did you know that Schoen wrote a biography of Enoch Powell? Presumably a PhD dissertation. Given my own interests, I am pretty sure that sooner or later I will be reading up on the old Ulsterman.

Working class anthems...

...inspired by the recurring joy I've been getting from remembering Stan Rogers' classic. The criteria here is not necessarily songs about working class life, but rather songs that get everyone singing when they are played at the bar.  If there is a gathering at a house, and the whisky's been flowing, these are the songs that most people know and everybody sings.

Now the immediate impulse is to go with another Stan Rogers, maybe "Barrett's Privateers" or "The Mary Ellen Carter" [1]. But the morbid, fatalistic lyrics of Dark as the Dungeon will get any good bar going [3]. It'll start off as a low hum, and when it is done will leave the bar empty of sound, as everyone stares into the drinks and remembers or imagines the loved ones dead on the job.

Now the only question is whether to go with Cash, Travis, or Ernie Ford. I think I'll go with Travis, which includes the often-skipped final stanza

The midnight, the morning, or the middle of day,
Is the same to the miner who labors away.
Where the demons of death often come by surprise,
One fall of the slate and you're buried alive.

[1] Don't think this is a working class anthem? Go to any bar in the Maritimes and many bars in the west or Ontario, put this one on the juke, and hear the slowly gathering crescendo [2].

[2] I recognize and disregard the redundancy.

[3] Eventually we'll bring these selections up to date a little; it's not just the old hands singing, but the young'uns as well.

More on the Chairmen's Mark...

Two charts tell the story of the proposed reduction of the top rate of taxation to 23%, and how this reduction has been labeled a tax increase.

This shows the proposed tax rates under a number of different scenarios. The one that they suggest is the "Eliminate all Tax Expenditures," including the mortgage tax credit, the health care tax credit, the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, and other political favorites. Now some of these are policy favorites as well, especially the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, and so the chairmen propose first getting rid of them all (making this the Zero Expenditure Plan), lowering the tax rates accordingly, and then raising the rates according to which of the tax credits are brought back.

So the top bracket gets a decrease in their tax rates under the zero expenditure scenario of 35%, that is from 36% of income to 23% of income. (I'm going to assume that the Democrats cave, of course, and all the Bush tax cuts are extended.) The lower top rate gets a 30% reduction, from 33%-23%. The current bottom rate, introduced by the Bush tax cuts, is 10%, and this decreases to 8%, a 20% reduction. The next lowest is at 15%, and decreases to 8%, a reduction of 46.7%. The lower middle, currently at 25%, gets a 44% reduction to 14%, while the upper middle gets a decrease of 50%, from 28% of income to 14% of income.

Of course this still benefits the top bracket the most, as their 36% decrease will--in actual dollar terms--dwarf the decrease of the middle's 50% reduction. It is not exactly progressive, although in percentage terms it benefits the middle more than the top (less so, however, if the Dems don't actually extend the Bush tax cuts for the above $250,000 crowd). And the slim reduction for the bottom bracket? We call that "broadening the base," on the grounds that the $0-$8,375 crowd currently isn't contributing their fair share from the less than nothing they have left over after scraping by another goddamned year.

But when we assume that the major tax expenditures are not going to be eliminated (the most likely scenario in my view), then this changes somewhat. The bottom bracket gets a tax increase, from 10% to 13% (30% increase), the upper bottom gets a 13% reduction from 15% to 13%, the bottom middle gets a 16% reduction, from 25% to 31%. The upper middle gets a decrease of 25% (from 28 to 21% of income). The lower top gets a 15% decrease and the upper rate gets a 20% decrease.

So to be clear, under the most likely scenario

• $0-$8,375:  tax increase of 30%
• $8,375-$34,000: tax decrease of 13%
• $34,000-$82,400: tax decrease of 16%
• $82,400-$171,850: tax decrease of 25%
• $171,850-$373,650: tax decrease of 15%
• $373,650-above: tax decrease of 20%

And under the situation they propose:

• $0-$8,375:  tax decrease of 20%
• $8,375-$34,000: tax decrease of 46.7%
• $34,000-$82,400: tax decrease of 44%
• $82,400-$171,850: tax decrease of 50%
• $171,850-$373,650: tax decrease of 30%
• $373,650-above: tax decrease of 35%

Not the most regressive it could be, but not exactly making the tax code more progressive. Remember, we want to "broaden the base" not "soak the rich."

The next chart is the distribution of benefits from tax expenditures. It is effect of the credits on the after-tax income, by income quintile.

The benefits of the tax expenditures go disproportionately to the wealthy. Surprised? So eliminating some of these might mean a progressivization of the income tax, although it depends on which are eliminated.

The devil will be in the details. On the whole it seems likely to make the tax code less progressive (which is troubling, given that federal income taxes are pretty much the only progressive element to the American tax system). But that overall it will likely be a reshuffling and simplification of the existing rates.

Deficit Commission

The key point in the Deficit Commission's Chairmen's Proposal[1]:

Set global target for total federal health expenditures after 2020 (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, exchange subsidies, employer health exclusion), and review costs every 2 years. Keep growth to GDP+1%.

 Well hell, if the CBO could just say keep health care inflation to GDP+1%, then we wouldn't need a Deficit Commission in the first place. And their mechanisms for achieving this?

If costs have grown faster than targets (on average of previous 5 years), require President to submit and Congress to consider reforms to lower spending, such as:

• Increase premiums (or further increase cost-sharing)
• Overhaul the fee-for-service system 
• Develop a premium support system for Medicare
•  Add a robust public option and/or all-payer system in the exchange
•  Further expand authority of IPAB

Now that's all well and good. I recognize that each of these could in fact lower the health care inflation rate. And I certainly like the "Add a robust public option and/or all-payer system in the exchange," although I suspect that when crunch time came we would have a premium increase, a premium support system for Medicare, and maybe, just maybe, an expansion of the authority of the IPAB.

The main problem is political: "require President to submit and Congress to consider reforms to lower spending." Now there might be some mechanisms that could require Congress and President to do this, but I can't think of any off the top of my head that would not be easily avoided by a Congress or President who didn't want to take on health care. The exception, of course, is that if health care costs continue to rise at the rate they've been rising, then eventually there will be so much pressure to tackle the deficit (interest rates will be high and the Fed will say that interest rates are where they need to be to maintain price stability) that some course of action, almost certainly involving caps, rationing, and withdrawal of coverage, will be necessary.

But avoiding this seems to be the whole point of a Deficit Commission. So "mandating" these changes doesn't really make much sense to me, if the only real mechanism for making the President and Congress act is the fact that the problems of a large debt have already arrived.

[1] Note the qualifiers--this is not the Deficit Commission's proposal, as they are unlikely have the 14 votes needed to approve the report. Rather, this is the Chairmen's proposal, sent out to the media in order to dominate the conversation. Its release was not approved by the full commission, many of whose members are surprised that the chairmen did this, considering they have yet to vote on these proposals. Furthermore, the Deficit Commission is not a congressionally established Commission--it has no privileged procedural rules, as was originally proposed, and so its primary influence is in shaping the conversation. Which is partly why having staffers whose salaries for working on the commission are paid for by hard-right conservative institutes and centrist New Democrat institutes is such a scandal. Kevin Drum puts it well:

It's just a draft presentation put together by two guys. Do you know how many deficit reduction proposals are out there that have the backing of two guys? Thousands. Another one just doesn't matter.

I disagree on the "just doesn't matter point," largely because I think the Chairmen knew damn well that the headlines were going to be  "Examining The Deficit Commission's Proposals" (NPR) and "Examining The Deficit Commission's Proposals" (Examiner.com) and "Factbox: Deficit commission tax cut ideas" (Reuters) and "The President's Deficit Commission Makes Recommendations" (Nightly Business Report) rather than "Two Guys Spew Off."

Bush, McCain, and Obama

Bush had a remarkable candor with other politicians; Bush was always willing to lie to his constituents; Bush got a kick out of screwing with people; Bush saw very little in Obama that would unsettle the basic achievements of his administration; Bush can hold a grudge.

All of these and more might explain the following:

The venue was the Oval Office. A group of British dignitaries, including Gordon Brown, were paying a visit. It was at the height of the 2008 presidential election campaign, not long after Bush publicly endorsed John McCain as his successor.
Naturally the election came up in conversation. Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain’s campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate.
Not a chance. “I probably won’t even vote for the guy,” Bush told the group, according to two people present.“I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.”

 

Many summers were spent driving through Saginaw, Michigan

A classic "gone west" song. Note the differences with The Idiot: here the reason to go west is to earn enough to marry his love, not his own sense of dignity, which a changing economy has not denied to him; here the contrast is not between work and "lying down," between a rotted soul and self-respect, but between greed and humble living. It is probably more in line with the classic themes of country music, and it lacks some of the moral complexity of Stan Rogers' song.

But its a different time, and I wonder what the song would be if it was about the end of the Saginaw fishermen, the collapse of that industry, and the fact that you could no longer support your family, not even taking her father's avarice and standards into account.

The End of the World...

...or, why Obama shouldn't have reappointed Bernanke.

Now there are many things about a hyper-polarized media and political environment that are probably harmful to the achievement of desirable public policy. But, given that right now expectations of future high inflation would be a net positive, inducing people and companies to invest in the present, it would have been nice to use the hyperactive bombast that already characterizes so much of our political and policy debates to good use.

In short, we should have dumped Bernanke. It might not have been the End of the World, in the way that going off the gold standard signaled the collapse of Western civilization, but surely in this media environment it would have led to (greater circulation among influential voices of) claims that Obama is interfering in the Fed, undermining its independence, and trying to loosen up monetary policy with reckless disregard for the future costs of inflation. We might not had CNBC or Bloomberg making comparison with Zimbabwe or Wiemar, but I'd bet a pretty penny that they'd be raising the possibility of Venezuela or Argentina (they would couch it in "such an action could potentially lead to high inflation, which Argentina and Venezuela are currently experiencing" language.)

My reading of Obama's keeping on Bernanke was that he wanted (and wanted to stress) continuity in the economic management of the crisis. This seemed, in part, an effort to assuage markets and conservatives, similar to his keeping on Gates at Defense in order to not be accused of undermining the American war effort. This seems to me to have been politically disastrous, but I'm increasingly convinced that assuaging the markets was also a bad policy move. Whether a non-Bernanke Fed Chair would actually have been able to get the Fed to pursue more expansionary monetary policy sooner is unclear; but I expect that replacing a Republican with a Democrat (hell, even a centrist Democrat) would have led to expectations of more expansionary monetary policy. It is unlikely that this would have had a similar impact as going off the gold standard, but with 24 hour news needing to fill time with ratings-grabbing bombast, it probably would have been portrayed as a huge regime change, the expectations of which would have been for higher future inflation. And that in itself would likely have been helpful.

Blue Yodel No.9

One of Louis Armstrong's last performances?

The Jimmie Rogers version is perfect, but it's always nice to see Cash in action.

Cheers...

Classic Cheers

I think this scene captures Cheers at its best. The back story is that this man has come in with a problem, and wants to talk to the former owner Gus about it. The problem, which he has already stumped Coach with, is that his son has just come back from college with his fiancee, who is black.

The rest is just golden.

Felix Salmon on QE

There have been a number of excellent discussions on the new round of quantitative easing and what exactly that means. My understanding is that it is an effort by the Fed to impact the long term interest rates, with this round of QE being aimed at the interest rate on 5 year Treasury notes. The Fed will 'print' off some cash, buy 5 year Treasury notes--in increments of $1 million--and thereby lower long-term interest rates (the short term interest rates are already up against the zero-lower bound). Felix Salmon's summary in particular is worth a read.

The way that QE works is that the Fed will publish a schedule of how many Treasury bonds it intends to buy and when. It will then go out and buy those bonds from “the Federal Reserve’s primary dealers through a series of competitive auctions operated through the Desk’s FedTrade system.”... what that means is that the New York Fed has a direct line to the biggest banks in the world (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, etc — 18 in all). And it gets all those banks to compete with each other, either directly or on behalf of their clients, for who will sell the Fed the Treasury bonds it wants at the lowest price. The winners of the auction get the Fed’s newly-printed cash, and give up Treasury bonds that they own in return. The people selling Treasury bonds to the Fed, then, are big banks, who are told in advance exactly how many Treasury bonds the Fed wants to buy. As a result, they’re likely to buy Treasuries ahead of the auction, with the intent of selling them to the Fed at a profit....Once the banks have made that profit, it’ll get paid out in bonuses to the people on the bank’s Treasury desk, with the rest going to their shareholders. We’re not exactly helping the unemployed here.... [T]he Fed isn’t going to be buying any more bonds than the Treasury is issuing — so it’s not going to be lifting a lot of holders of Treasury bonds out of their long-term investments. But insofar as the Fed is forced to offer such high prices that investors simply can’t say no, those investors are probably just going to take the proceeds and invest them in agency debt instead from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That debt is just as safe as Treasuries, and it even yields more than Treasuries, to boot.What’s emphatically not going to happen is that the people who used to own Treasury bonds will take the Fed’s billions and suddenly turn around and spend them buying croissants at their local family-owned bakery. We’re talking about monetary policy here, not fiscal policy: the aim here is to bid up the price of Treasury bonds, which means that the yield on Treasuries will fall, and that those lower interest rates will somehow feed through into greater economic activity. The aim is not to take $600 billion and spend it on stuff in the real economy. That would be a second stimulus, and the chances of a second stimulus right now are hovering around zero. Which is why Brad DeLong puts the value of buying $600 billion in Treasury bonds at about $7 billion in total, rather than anything near the headline $600 billion figure. The Fed is playing around with interest rates here — that’s its job. It’s not trying to directly stimulate demand.

Of course its Congress's job to directly stimulate demand. But that is not going to happen, and so we are dependent on what looks to be pretty weak sauce, which has the wonderful appeal of being another giveaway to the banks.

On Dignity

I went to a George Kateb lecture the other day, on the subject of Human Dignity. Very interesting, although I must admit to squirming through his discussion of "Nature!" and "Science!" One does not often meet a High Victorian Liberal these days, who brandishes "Science!" as our greatest achievement but dogmatically[1] refuses to accept the actual scientific research of the last 75 years. It is totemic, not something to be engaged with but something to be brandished. As a friend mentioned, it makes one realize that Derrida is not in fact only arguing against straw men and long-dead men. And that's all well and good.

But he wants to use the concept of human dignity as a foundation for human rights, and accordingly he wants dignity to be an ascribed characteristic of every human, one that is non-forfeitable (although it can be assaulted) and one that is shared equally by all humans. And I'm fine with that in theory, and certainly I hope to treat all people in line with this basic Kantianism precept.

I have long been playing with dignity as a basis for a political project. And I'm increasingly despairing that  one cannot articulate a politically relevant conception of dignity that does not draw a boundary of exclusion; that is, all conceptions of dignity that seem capable of doing any political work (that is, tell an ethically constitutive story that motivate political behavior and commitments) require the establishment of a set of conditions for its achievement. And these conditions necessarily create a boundary of exclusion. Where that boundary is drawn matters enormously, and Kateb wanted to draw it such that it includes all human (and all humans equally) but no animals.

And it's on that thought that I bring to you The Idiot. No, not Dostoyevsky; Rogers, Stan Rogers.




I often take these night shift walks when the foreman's not around.
I turn my back on the cooling stacks and make for open ground.
Far out beyond the tank farm fence where the gas flare makes no sound,
I forget the stink and I always think back to that Eastern town.

I remember back six years ago, this Western life I chose.
And every day, the news would say some factory's going to close.
Well, I could have stayed to take the Dole, but I'm not one of those.
I take nothing free, and that makes me an idiot, I suppose.

So I bid farewell to the Eastern town I never more will see;
But work I must so I eat this dust and breathe refinery.
Oh I miss the green and the woods and streams and I don't like cowboy clothes;
But I like being free and that makes me an idiot I suppose.

So come all you fine young fellows who've been beaten to the ground.
This western life's no paaradise, but it's better than lying down.
Oh, the streets aren't clean, and there's nothing green, and the hills are dirty brown,
But the government Dole will rot your soul back there in your home town.

So bid farewell to the Eastern town you never more will see.
There's self-respect and a steady cheque in this refinery.
You will miss the green and the woods and streams and the dust will fill your nose.
But you'll be free, and just like me, an idiot, I suppose

The line I think of most is "Well, I could have stayed to take the Dole, but I'm not one of those." 

This is a line of great ambiguity for the modern left; we reject it, we hate it, we don't like it's "no life on the dole" poor-bashing. But we get so damned lost in fighting back against this that we miss the fundamental point: our culture values work, values independence, and the left will only be able to make any progress if we take these values to heart. (As an aside, this is why I've always wanted to reframe welfare as a wage)

But can we make the claim that the government dole will rot your soul, and therefore we need a government that will commit itself to creating and maintaining good jobs where one is able to live a relatively decent life, without embracing--subtly or forcefully--the claim that those on the dole are degraded? I am less and less sure, although I think that it is worth finding out.

[1] "I cannot accept..." was probably the most frequent rejoinder.

Norman Jewison's an asshole

....we can now add ...And Justice for All to the pile.

Evidence includes (1) his cheap take on the elderly, (2) his portrayal of Ralph, the transvestite mugger. I'm still suffering through, so I'm sure there will be more.

Update: Not sure whether it is standard to be practicing so many different types of law at once: accidents, paternity suits, muggings, murder defenses, rape. Truly impressive practice this guy has. Plus, as plot developments, hostage takings are usually one of the cheaper tricks. Almost as cheap as throwing cafeteria plates and a judge tackling a lawyer. The thing that makes Jewison such an asshole is that he things everyone else is an asshole, and artlessly throws his shit at the wall and hopes it will stick.

Update 2: I wonder if Norman is killing off Al's clients (2 of em dead now) so as to make room for the promised plot? I suspect the main motivation was to somehow have a hostage negotiation scene, and that killing off the client was the only way he saw fit to move on to the next scene.

Update 3: Better and better..... Al has just been given a series of polaroids from one of his many clients (paternity suit/accident) showing the judge, the head of the ethics committee, and a hooker engaged in S&M. See Update 1.

The distribution of pricing

 I think this piece  by Felix Salmon is excellent for understanding the oft-obscured distributional effects of the various 'pricing' solutions that are frequently proposed to problems of public policy.

The problem here is traffic, which pretty much everyone hates.

The solution? Dynamic pricing! In San Francisco!

" the central idea is brilliant, and should be adopted everywhere: reduce traffic congestion by pricing parking according to demand — including pricing garages lower than street parking — so that there’s nearly always at least one free parking space on every block. No more crawling around interminably looking for a spot! Congestion should drop immediately, since a huge proportion of city traffic is people looking for somewhere to park."

All of this is certainly true. Parking is only rarely and indirectly priced according to demand. That is, it is priced according to demand at garages (when these haven't secured friendly zoning and bylaws to engage in rent seeking) and pretty much nowhere else. The San Francisco system will only change on a monthly basis, and is limited in how much of an increase can occur in a given period. And this will almost certainly reduce traffic.

But of course the cost of reducing traffic is not evenly shared. Salmon will no longer have to struggle through the interminable struggle for a spot, but only because I will no longer be able to afford it. Granted, those of us who are the targets of this policy are currently paying less than the market deal for parking.[1] Myself, and the rest of the driving world, are probably getting a sweet deal. But given the relative inelasticity of parking supply, in many urban areas this will mean that many people who currently rely on finding reasonably proximate parking will be out of luck.

If you work in a popular shopping, tourist, or entertainment district, you are likely to be shit out of luck. Hope you don't mind walking twenty minutes on top of your commute. And for what? So that those who can afford to pay the market price, a price set by the combination of large demand and quasi-fixed supply, will no longer have to deal with the interminable frustration.

Is it a bad idea? Within limits probably not. The current system of prices in-connected to demand is clearly a mess. But whenever someone tells you that the solution is a better pricing mechanism one should always pause to think about the distributional consequences of the policy proposal. In this case, it will effectively be putting the need for working people to find parking reasonably close to where they work against the consumption patterns of the wealthy. I wonder which will be priced out.

[1] Is it fair to say the targets of this policy? I think so. It only makes sense as a congestion reduction policy if it will get those who don't want to or cannot pay the price off the streets. Certainly this will effect middle class consumption, and will probably be a net positive. But it will also price out working people who will find yet another  obstacle in their way.

What else is like...

...the effect of the economy on election results. That is, there is a pretty broad consensus in the political science literature that the "fundamentals" determine electoral outcomes, at least in the US where our long election periods allow for campaign effects to wash out, leaving variables such as economic growth, unemployment, and party identification as the principal determinants of election results. But rarely are subsequently perceived consequential elections described in terms of the  economic growth of the previous administration (although there are exceptions, such as 1932).

What we get is the structure/agency disconnect, in which prominent and even dominant narratives (history trumps political science in discourse)  stress agency, but statistical analysis suggests that agency is much less important than the structural determinants. Popular perception, amongst practitioners and non-practitioners of the dark arts of politics alike, are in serious tension with the statistical evidence.

Question of the day: in what other domains does this general trend hold, in which there is a pretty strong consensus by people who study the field that everyone who actually does this for a living (i.e., the Obama advisors who believe a "choice" option rather than a "referendum" option will save the democrats come September)  is mistaken?

Gramsci and Reich

"One of the last things learned is the Duty of every Government to concur in & approve measures which they could not if they would hinder-in this way things are stopped from going to Extremes." Rufus King, 1821

This strikes me as both a fundamental and under-appreciated maxim of statemanship as well as a sad rationalization of someone who has already lost the war of position (Gramsci) and seen the goalposts successfully moved by the other side. On which, see Robert Reich's defense/critique of Obama.

"The real choice is between achieving what’s possible within the limits of politics as given, or changing that politics to extend those limits and thereby more assuredly achieve intended goals. The latter course is riskier but its consequences can be more enduring and its mandate more powerful, as both Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan demonstrated."

The fundamentals of the recovery are sound....

That seems to be the message from the administration going into the midterm elections.

In an op-ed piece today, featuring the dreadfully tone-deaf title, "Welcome to the Recovery", Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner presents the good news....The public is unlikely to be fooled.... Americans are all too well aware of the extent of joblessness, and forecasts put a return to full employment around mid-decade. Banks and businesses have repaired their balance sheets—and  are too concerned about the state of recovery to do much new investment. 

I find this to be nearly as tone deaf as John McCain's claim in September 2008 that the "fundamentals of the economy are sound." McCain was rightly and widely criticized for this claim (although the fact that the fundamentals of the economy were indeed not sound is probably what led to the Republican defeat). It was so utterly tone-deaf that he spent considerable time trying to walk it back (remember his subsequent clarification that the fundamental of the economy is the American worker. You wanna talk smack on the American worker?). If the decision to go this route, the lie-to-the-American-citizen's-face path, is the best electoral strategy they've got, then they're in big trouble. If this, however, reflects the genuine belief of the administration, then it's us who are in trouble. This brings us to Brad DeLong's frequently asked question: "Why aren't there irresistible political demands for more government action to steer us toward a better economic recovery --or at least to hedge against a double-dip in what seems likely to be called not a “recession” but a “depression” when historians get around to writing about it?"


His theories are: 

1. "widening wealth inequality and an upgrading of the class position of reporters and pundits, who are no longer ink-stained wretches immersed in mainstream America;
2. the collapse of union power, which ensures that nobody who sees real workers on a daily basis sits at the table when the deals are made;
3. increasing job security for the powerful in Washington, aided by the growth of the lobbying apparatus that envelops the mixed-economy government;
4. the collapse of professional integrity among the Washington press corps, which no longer dares to call balls and strikes as it sees them, preferring to say only that the Democrats say it was a strike and the Republicans say it was a ball, and that opinions on the shape of the earth differ."

If you asked me a year or two ago, I would have probably said that the 2nd--the decline of the unions--was most important, followed by the 3rd. Increasingly, however, I believe that the first is an incredibly important factor, although I would not limit this to reporters and pundits but rather broaden it to include much of the professional Washington establishment class. For many, especially those with significant investments (other than real estate), the recovery is already well under-way.

Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train

"The engineer pulled the throttle, the conductor rang the bell,
 The brakeman hollered all aboard and the banks all went to hell."

I love pretty much any type of American folk music (pre-WWII; afterwards, things can get a little less pleasant). Likewise I am someone who is very interested in American politics, especially American political history. And, being of a particular vintage, I always love the crossover. So obviously older political folk songs pretty much get my engines going. "The Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train refers" to a scandal in in 1930, involving the Governor, Senator Luke Lea, the floating of bonds, and bank failures. That is to say, what's not to love about this song.



I find that the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music has some excellent examples of the genre, including the "The Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train," "Governor Al Smith," and (I believe it's on this album) my personal favorite, "White House Blues."

The latter, about the assassination of President McKinley (and the rather pathetic train ride from Buffalo to Washington that followed) is based on "Wabash Cannonball" and includes two of my favorite lines in American folk music: "Roosevelt in the White House, drinking out of a silver cup, McKinley's in the graveyard ain't ever going to wake up" and "Hush now children, don't you fret, you'll draw a pension from your daddy's death." The second line refers, somewhat sardonically, to the fact that McKinley was the last President to have fought in the Civil War and so they would be the recipients of the great federal pork that was the Veterans' Pensions. And I'm not sure, but I've occasionally read or seen hints that there was some belief throughout the South and West that Roosevelt might have been a secret free-silver politician, willing to dump the gold standard and replace it with the free-minting of silver (I find it ironic that the Tea Party, which has occasionally embraced comparisons with the Populists, tend to be much more anti-inflationists wanting a 'sound dollar'---with 10% unemployment and steady disinflation upon us, deliberately inflationary policies would probably do us some good).  Not sure about this reference, but that's how I read it.

Millions of working moms breathe a sigh of relief....

....upon the publication of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. Or at least this is what the Washington Post would have us believe, given sentences such as 

The study may bring hope to working mothers, who have labored under a collective societal guilt since the 2002 publication of landmark research showing that early maternal employment hampered child development. 

Now I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, but I suspect that any guilt that working mothers have is not the result of a 2002 publication. Nor is another report likely to create collective relief for them. It's certainly not clear that there is any collectively felt guilt at all: some mothers probably feel bad that they have to work, while other mothers feel liberated by the opportunity to work, and still other mothers have nannies and think that any guilt for not being at home should be borne by those other, nanny-less mothers. That is, while there are certainly some individuals who feel guilty for working while having young children, this does not aggregate to a collective sense of guilt.

But that really isn't what the Post is suggesting: the "collective societal guilt" is not a guilt felt by the mothers, but rather a condemnation that society imposes on working mothers. And since society itself is not a unanimous voice, we can say more specifically that this is a condemnation that the Post and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and other organizations have been making.

The new study is "every bit as important as you might think," because it suggests mothers can decide, without guilt, "whether they want to stay home with their children," said Greg Duncan, a scholar at the University of California at Irvine, who is president of the Society for Research in Child Development.

 In fairness, it isn't clear whether Greg Duncan himself is suggesting that before this study mothers should have felt guilty for working--the staff writer Daniel de Vise makes that inference for us. But unless this research is part of a broader move away from blaming women for balancing career and child-raising, towards general acceptance of male child-rearers and female breadwinners, and, yes, a rejection of the current double stigmatization of single mothers who are called lazy if they are on welfare, and deemed to be terrible mothers if they work and leave their children at home, then I suspect that this publication isn't going to do much for relieving the various burdens under which working mothers labor.*


*Just to be clear, I have no problem with the research. I think it is am important topic for study. I just am reacting to the premise that working mothers should feel guilty, which allows us to avoid framing the issue around other premises, like society should make it easier for mothers to work, out of choice or necessity, through day-care initiatives, more generous maternity and paternity benefits, and social insurance income so that single mothers will not be forced to work out of home instead of working to raise their kids. 

I got my motorcycle jacket but I'm walking all the time

Excellent song, despite being post Topper and Jones (explaining the drum machine and uninspired guitar). Ironically, it has become a favorite of the St. George's bunch.

"this is England, we can kill you in a jail"

Excellent news from Indian Country

&nbdip;News From Indian Country - Obama says he’ll sign Tribal Law and Order Act&nbdip;

Now by no means is this actually institutionalizing a relationship of justice, mutual accommodation and non-domination (in the sense used by Iris Marion Young and Philip Pettit) but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

I'm pleased to see greater opportunities for the Indian nations to prosecute non-natives for crimes committed on native land. Hopefully this will help move us away from the virtual impunity that non-natives enjoy if they commit "major crimes"* against natives. It does not change the fact that native sovereignty remains undermined and rejected, despite occasional language to the contrary, but definitely an improvement over the existing mess of limited jurisdiction for the Indian nations and limited interest and attention by the US government.

I had heard that the Obama administration had been intending to push through some major reforms in Indian law, and this definitely counts as both major and positive.**

*They are indeed major crimes. The inverted commas is not intended to diminish the significance of the crime but rather to emphasize the awkward and unique nature of this legal category as it applies to Indian country.

** The health reform act also had some important sections for the provision of health care on the res, if I remember correctly.

Ta-Nehisi Coates...

...once again speaks the truth, his incomparable nuance and forceful articulation of injustice in full bloom.

Taking it all in, it must be said that the landscape is as follows: We have an administration that will contort itself to defend a movement whose convention speakers call for the reinstatement of the tools of segregation. That same administration will swiftly jettison an appointee, herself the victim of homegrown terrorism, for echoing the kind of message of redemption and personal responsibility that has become the president's hallmark on race. Andrew Breitbart says that Sherrod's speech, not the Tea Party's rhetoric, is the real racism. It is an argument that is as old as American white supremacy, and one that this administration, through its actions over the past week, has tacitly endorsed.

The argument has been made that this isn't Obama, just the people working under him. That theory elides the responsibility of leaders to set a tone. The tone that Obama has set, in regards to race, is to retreat with great velocity in the face of anything that can be defined as "racial." Granted, this has been politically smart. Also granted, Obama has done it with nuance. But it can not be expected that the president's subordinates will share that nuance.

More disturbingly, this is what happens when you treat the arrest of a black man, in his home, as something that can be fixed over beers. This is what happens when you silently ascent to the notion that racism and its victims are somehow equally wrong. The ground, itself, is rigged with a narrative of inversion that goes back centuries. When you treat the two side as equals, expect not just more of the same. Expect worse.

truly appalling...

I don't have much to add to what has been said elsewhere. Jonathan Bernstein I think puts it best:  "Appalling. Disgusting. Awful." The knee-jerk speed with which Ms. Sherrod was let go points to an executive department that quivers in fear, unwilling to stand its ground on issues of race [1]. The possibility that the White House, as Greg Sargent notes, "will not lean on Vilsack to reinstate Sherrod," and that even having been given the opportunity to put things right chose instead to distance themselves from the entire matter, is deeply disappointing. 


I was, however, pleased to see Anderson Cooper come out swinging tonight. While stating that he'll let the viewer decide, it was clear that he was not willing to pull many punches in his coverage of Ms. Sherrod's firing, or the role of Andrew Breitbart in disseminating the video (although apparently he did not edit it). Even Glenn Beck was defending her, or at least suggesting that something was amiss (he did of course get in his jabs at the NAACP--"When was the last time the NAACP didn't give someone the benefit of the doubt right away who was African-American?")[2]. 


Ta-Nehisi Coates writes "I'll talk a bit later. In all honesty , I need to calm down.... I feel like the last week has radicalized me in the worst possible way." Until he does, probably the most insightful comments came from Breibart himself, who noted that "This was about the NAACP attacking the Tea Party and this [the video of Sherrod] is showing racism at an NAACP event." Breitbart was hoping for an excellent day, between this and the failed take-down of Spencer Ackerman. Did things go as planned? Ultimately I think they did, even if Ms. Sherrod gets her job back and despite Ackerman's holding onto his. The purpose was to draw blood, to create an atmosphere of fear, and to show anyone who was paying attention that the right has no qualms about fighting a bloody war of attrition on this issue. In a sense, the right has been doing what Spencer Ackerman suggested the left needed to do in the leaked Journolist emails: "What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a right winger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously, I mean this rhetorically.”


This is not new politics, not by any means. But it is certainly ugly politics. It is slimy and vicious, zero-sum for the participants, and probably a negative sum for everybody else.


[1] Which I think is the exception, rather than the pattern for this administration. Obama has chosen his battles carefully for sure, but when engaged, the behavior of the administration has been better characterized by constancy of purpose rather than anxious, expedient and knee-jerk responses. Again, I think Bernstein said it best: "The White House, in my opinion, did an excellent job of handling these things last year, letting Van Jones go when something specific they were wise not to defend surfaced, but ignoring other attacks if they were based on phony smears.  This one doesn't fit the pattern."

[2] The answer? Far too damned often. The NAACP has been slow to recognize mass imprisonment as an important issue, with various local chapters supporting "martial law" and "zero-tolerance" policies that have been marked by problems of racial profiling. 

What I like about Sarah Palin...

...to be honest, I do like the degree to which I recognize and can relate to Sarah Palin's family. Theirs is a family much like that of many of my friends, loved ones, and relatives. Of course Bristol and Levi are back together. And of course this is a screw-you to Sarah Palin. So here's an opportunity for me to suggest one of the only enduring truths I've learned from my years of study.

When your child (or friend) breaks up with their significant other: don't shit talk the ex- cause they'll be back together soon enough, and they'll hate you and blame you for driving them apart.

The second part of this rule, "they'll hate you and blame you for driving them apart," will manifest itself in various forms of subtle and not-too subtle swipes in your direction. Most commonly, the former ex- and now back-on again significant other, will be increasingly invited over to the house, or if not your child, will be invited to events where you will be certain to see each other. The purpose is to test you, to confront you with the fact that they were able to overcome whatever petty personal vendetta had led you to your misplaced antagonism in the first place. The fact that your opposition to their relationship, often voiced only after the breakup, was (1) only an attempt to cheer them up by pointing out the ex-'s obvious deficiencies or (2) based on the accurate observation that the ex- was a terrible and inconsiderate partner, is absolutely beside the point. This is time-worn truth.

Celebrity-status does not change the dynamic; rather, it changes the venue. Instead of coming home to find that your daughter and her former ex- have been hanging out in the basement, with the door closed, 'listening to music' and are now going to 'go out'--daring you to even try and punish her!--you get the pleasure of reading all about it in Us Weekly.

Now obviously none of this should be seen as either disqualifying or qualifying for political office (although the fact that Sarah Palin failed to recognize and adhere to this rule raises some questions about her political judgement). But I do think that there is a symbolic component to political leadership: the extent to which we believe our political leaders are immersed in situations that we can relate to indicates to us the extent to which we ourselves are included in the polity. And so I think the candid and clumsy way in which Palin's family assert themselves into the national discourse is not only refreshing, but potentially positive if it works to expand the symbolic scope of our understanding of political belonging in the United States.

But to paraphrase Ice-T, I live in 21st century America. And around here, shit ain't like that. It's real fucked up. Most likely, the symbolic expansion of the polity that Palin represents will be limited to rural whites. Tim Wise puts it well,

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

I think that "everyone" should be "quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because 'every family has challenges.'" I would love if what Wise call's "white privilege" were extended, if it were no longer seen as a privilege but rather as a presumption. But more likely is the non-reflexive double-standard that Wise highlights. The expansion of the understanding of who is a proper and legitimate member of the polity to "families with challenges" should be a cause for celebration; it is more likely, however, to be coupled with an contraction of the symbolic boundaries of the polity, excluding African American, Hispanic, and other stigmatized minority "families with challenges" as capable, responsible, and full citizens.

The formation of political coalitions

An excellent post by Timothy B. Lee on the institutional basis for the conservative-libertarian alliance. What I find most compelling is Lee's description of the basis for political coalitions:

"political alliances are built by concrete actions toward shared goals, not by abstract statements of philosophical agreement."

Given a shared set of goals, coalitions are necessarily exclusionary toward other political projects. In order to agree to do things you need to shut up about other things. I think Lee underestimates the importance of crafting articulation of philosophical agreement, but I see these, which are the staple of the political entrepreneur, as efforts to consolidate the earlier ties of cooperation that Lee highlights.

The articulation of philosophical principles that supposedly undergird the alliance does matter, in part by creating the sense of cohesion and almost natural-seeming alliance that Lee suggests many libertarians feel toward the conservative movement.

"After a couple of decades, you reach the point where a smart guy like Ilya Somin can claim that “liberals and libertarians have much in common in terms of ultimate values, but relatively little common ground in terms of practical policy agendas.” There are, in fact, lots of practical policy issues on which libertarians and liberals see eye to eye. The reason it doesn’t seem that way is that most libertarian organizations (with Cato an honorable exception) have made it a matter of policy to avoid writing about them."

I suspect its not just this avoidance of issues where the libertarians and conservatives diverge that leads smart guys such as Somin to discount the convergences between liberals and libertarians. Rather, it has been the success of the repeated articulation of a philosophical agreement on the desirability of small government that have made many in both of these camps believe their 'natural' allies are each other.*

All of this reminds me I need to re-read  Riker. 

* one thing Lee discounts is the possibility of conflict extension, the development of shared positions on other areas as the result of the alliance itself. Given that this is a fairly natural psychological process, if it is happening very little in this alliance might suggest the alliance is more fragile than its proponents believe. Or maybe not. It is an open empirical question as to whether libertarians are becoming more conservative and conservatives more libertarian as a result of their alliance. I think that the more it does happen, the stronger the coalition but the more it becomes divorced from its non-activist social base.

Political science and political advisors

I'm on a political science softball team. We are regularly defeated by our nemeses (can you have multiple nemesis?) The RNs and the business school team. So I have a fair amount of sympathy for those who believe that its the Obama political team that OS screwing things up.

Rahm's an asshole. That was originally his appeal but is increasingly seen as a liability. Axelrod seems to believe that his polls, presumably focusing on independents, are a better arbiter of economic policymaking than the advice of economists (the economics softball team is regularly defeating us as well). The communicators can't communicate. And so on.

But articles such as this one in Politico always make me wonder why there are no political scientists in the political team of American Presidents. Harris and Vandehei write:

"on the issues voters care most about — the economy, jobs and spending — Obama has shown himself to be a big-government liberal. This reality is killing him with independent-minded voters — a trend that started one year ago and has gotten much worse of late."

There is of course no evidence for this, other than a diffuse opposition to the health care bill. And on the issue of jobs, most polls show Ameicans-and even the over-hyped independents-want the government to do much much more. But that's the fault of the journalists, who are just making shit up. My concern comes from the fact that this article is supposedly based on interviews with members of the administration, some of whom seem to believe this. And that makes me think the political team could use some political scientists.

Now don't just have political scientists; the sad results of that lineup can be seen every Tuesday and Thursday evening on B Field. But maybe throw one into the rotation, who might be able to remind the others that American presidential and congressional elections are largely driven by the fundamentals: the economy, partisan identification levels, war. That campaign effects are very marginal. And that virtually nothing inside the Washington gossip loop matters at all.*

Now this presumes that, given the lengthy campaigning season, both campaigns will effectively spend all their ammunition, canceling each other out. And this is probably true. And in midterm elections campaigns will matter more as turnout in the base is more important. So by no means get rid of the Axelrods and their ilk.

But as  Ezra Klein points out  (quoting Larry Mishel), ""At this point, the economic outcome is pretty much set.” And that probably means the election is, too."

Which is probably why political scientists rarely find employ as political advisors. Telling your boss that his loss has already been written and was written months, possibly even a year before is not if much practical help. But this is not simple economic determinism. Economic growth is in part endogenous to the political sphere. The political scientist might be of less help in September (although we do have some positive things to say about campaigns) but is necessary to be there in the February prior, hello even the prior September, to say "we need to support policies that will be leading to job growth come election time." Which is what both Brad Delong and Paul Krugman were arguing in 2009. So maybe once again the economists have defeated the political team.

*There are exceptions to this, but they largely reveal the marginal importance of campaigns: they matter only when the campaigns themselves are remarkably close. Richard Johnston has a book on the 2000 election making this case.