The Commentariat -- September 28

President Obama's rally in Madison, Wisconsin:

     ... Post-event New York Times story here. AND Wisconsin State Journal report of the event here. Expanded New York Times story here. See video above.

Supreme Court Press Release: "Beginning with October Term 2010, the audio recordings of all oral arguments heard by the Supreme Court of the United States will be available free to the public on the Court’s Web site, www.supremecourt.gov, at the end of each argument week.  The audio recordings will be posted on Fridays after Conference."

The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition. It is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with. It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it's been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it's that Fox is very successful.
-- Barack Obama

Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone interviews President Obama. Full interview. ...

... Tom Curry of MSNBC: "President Barack Obama’s lecture to his supporters to snap out of their lethargy is getting a frosty reception from some on the left side of the Democratic coalition."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka invites us to join "One Nation Working Together" at the Lincoln Memorial on October 2. The sign-up Website he mentions is OneNationWorkingTogether.org:

     ... At a forum held in New York City's Cooper Union, "Trumka said it is vital to channel working-class anger away from Fox News and Tea Party extremists who are delivering"

a cynical, deeply dishonest and incoherent message—that big government is somehow to blame for the current crisis that the budget deficit will eat our children, and that illegal immigrants took all the good jobs.

Here's the second of three articles adapted from Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars. An audio clip of Woodward's interview of the President:

     ... Here's the transcript.

The Voodoo Factor, a/k/a the Hypnotic Oath. Joseph Gerth of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. See more about Rand Paul on the Campaign 2010 Kentucky page.

Bob Herbert shares the content of some of the images & videos New York's Republican candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, thought were so hilarious he had to forward them to friends & acquaintances. Here are two:

A photo showing a group of black men trying to get out of the way of an airplane that is apparently moving across a field. The caption reads: 'Run niggers, run.'

A video clip of a nude couple engaged in intercourse with the title: “Miss France [expletive].” Mr. Paladino characterized it as 'a keeper.'

The Decided. Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "At least one-third of all ballots across the country this year will be cast before Election Day, party officials said, reflecting a steady rise in early voting that is profoundly influencing how political campaigns are conducted in many parts of the country."

The Editors of the Louisville Courier-Journal explain American politics to visitors from other countries:

Republicans, riding a tide of corporate cash and public anger, are counting on voters to have such short memories they'll bring back the disastrous policies of the Bush years. And Democrats, who hold the White House and large majorities in both chambers of Congress, are too fumbling and afraid to call the Republicans out.

Vice President Biden kicks of Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show, "The Last Word." The Vice President & O'Donnell discuss a range of issues from the tea party to the Afghanistan war:

No Surprise Here. Hope Yen of the AP: "The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession. The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S....." The ratio of rich to poor income is nearly double what it was in 1968.

No Surprise There. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "Women made little progress in climbing into management positions in this country even in the boom years before the financial crisis, according to a report to be released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office."

Worse than I Thought. Katie Curnutte of Zillow Blog: almost one-third of Americans who apply for home mortgages have credit scores so low banks won't lend to them. Via Huffington Post.

Greg Sargent: if quitting her governor's gig & nattering on Fox "News" was part of Sarah Palin's strategy to become President, it isn't working.

Massimo Calabresi of Time: "CQ reports a deal, months in the making, between [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the White House on tougher Congressional oversight of covert intelligence programs." [The CQ story is subscriber-firewalled.]

Believing Isn't Knowing. Rachel Zoll of the AP: "A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths." ...

     ... Sam Hodges of the Dallas Morning News puts some southern seasoning on the story: "People in the South – the Bible Belt – tended to score lower on the survey than those in other regions."

... "Junkets for Jesus." In Mother Jones, Jeff Sharlet details how Congressional "Family" members "travel the world to preach [Christianity] to dictators on the taxpayers' dime."

It's a little bit like Custer. He underestimated the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and he paid the ultimate price for it.  -- Sen. Bob Graham, on Adm. Thad Allen's assertion that underestimatetion of the Gulf oil flow was inconsequential

William Broad of the New York Times:"Federal prosecutors have charged [Los Alamos nuclear scientist] Dr. [Leonardo] Mascheroni with trying to sell nuclear secrets to Venezuela as part of a complicated scheme to have that country bring .... to life... his plan to build a giant laser for the achievement of nuclear fusion.... According to the indictment, he negotiated the deal in 2008 and 2009 with the undercover F.B.I. agent, who paid him $20,000 out of an overall promise of nearly $800,000."

The Fault, Dear Brooks, Was in Your Star

How to write a David Brooks column: (1) read a book; (2) regurgitate the author's findings; (3) draw a conclusion that is completely inconsistent with the author's findings. This week, the title of Brooks' column is "Tom Joad Gave Up." Tom Joad is the protagonist in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the latter part of which is set in California.

Brooks read some stuff that told him California state government was a lean, clean, operating machine up through the administration of Gov. Pat Brown, after which it became dysfunctional. Brooks found this set of facts so compelling, he accepted it. The problem for Our Miss Brooks was that he could not bring himself to name the person responsible for the California disaster. Consequently, he blamed the fictional Tom Joad for "giving up" on California.

The Constant Weader fills in the blank:

Aren't you clever! You name the last "progressive" governor, Pat Brown, then you identify a "period" when California politics started to go south. But you never mention the movie star who destroyed the state's government. Bravo, you did one heck of a job of dancing around the unnamed anti-hero -- a fellow called Ronald Reagan who was governor from 1967 to 1975.

Reagan ran against, & beat, the admirable progressive Pat Brown (Jerry's dad) on a platform of "sending the welfare bums back to work" (very classy) & "cleaning up the mess at Berkeley" (where my messy husband was teaching at the time).

As governor, Reagan was so confrontational he sent in the California Highway Patrol to quell student demonstrations & the National Guard to literally occupy Berkeley. He also effectively declared war on the state university itself when he used J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to cook up charges of "ultra-liberalism" against professors, members of the Board of Regents & Clark Kerr, the chancellor at Berkeley & president of the UC system. Since Reagan was simultaneously hoping the Republicans would nominate him for the presidency, evidently he wanted to show them he would be a good war President.

As for his fiscal conservatism, Reagan raised California taxes more than any other governor of any U.S. state EVER. His budget was more than twice that of Pat Brown's. It was that tax increase that led to the backlash that produced Prop 13, which hobbled the state forevermore by severely limiting property tax revenues.

"Tom Joad gave up"? A fictional character had nothing to do with the end of good governance in California.

It was a real actor who was to blame -- Gov. Ronald Reagan. Funny you didn't mention him.

"Structural Unemployment" Is an Excuse for Inaction

Paul Krugman: the claim that current high levels of U.S. unemployment is "structural" is a fake excuse for not pursuing real solutions.* In this column, Krugman offers no solutions (though he does elsewhere), so ...

... The Constant Weader proposes a solution! --

The problem, then, is that demand is low. Americans aren't buying widgets & washing machines because they can't afford them, or think they can't afford them.

There are a couple of ways to increase demand.

Plan A is the George Bush way: tell everybody to go shopping. The trouble is, too many people took his advice (true, they were shopping till they dropped way before Bush suggested it). Americans ran up huge debts, often ballooning under the weight of absurd interest rates. Especially when the recession hit, they (1) either found themselves out of work or underemployed & really could not afford to pay off their debts, or (2) they still had jobs but realized they had better start paying off their usurious debts rather than buying a new car on credit. People who are fortunate enough to be in Category 2 are doing the right thing for their families by beginning to live within their means, even if they are constricting the economy.

So, let's go to Plan B. I call it redistributing the wealth. (And you may label me a socialist if you like.) If we want more money in circulation, let's tax the you-know-what out of the super-rich. That's the best way the government can increase demand: put the tax dollars of the rich to work employing the not-rich (that would be 97% of us).

High taxes for the rich aren't a "punishment" as Republicans &, last week, Ben Stein, complained. They're a privilege & an honor -- a badge of recognition that a taxpayer has done mighty well for himself. Congratulations are in order. Send the payers of high taxes fancy certificates. Send super-high payers engraved plaques. Let's spring for fancy silver loving cups for billionaires like Bill Gates & Warren Buffett. They deserve it for the great contributions they'll be making to the American economy.

Or, there's Plan C, advocated by Herbert Hoover & the Fed guy from Minnesota -- Kocherlakota. Plan C, of course, will bring on a full-blown 1930s-style depression, wherein we become officially a third-rate country, a hopeless debtor nation, unable to sustain our own people or to keep up with more robust economies.

The correct answer is "B."

If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.
-- Winston Churchill

* On the One Hand. Krugman presents evidence there are no major labor shortages anywhere in the U.S., & there are no "major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, [no] major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, [and no] major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers." ...

... On the Other Hand. Rana Foroohar of Newsweek says just the opposite. She says that "three fields — construction, manufacturing (particularly in the automotive sector), and finance — have been hit much harder than others." She says the housing crisis has also cost the labor force flexibility: "...with so many homeowners underwater on their mortgages, their ability to relocate has diminished."