The Commentariat March 31, 2014

Internal links removed.

Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times: " President Obama's healthcare law, despite a rocky rollout and determined opposition from critics, already has spurred the largest expansion in health coverage in America in half a century, national surveys and enrollment data show. As the law's initial enrollment period closes, at least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage. Some have done so through marketplaces created by the law, some through other private insurance and others through Medicaid, which has expanded under the law in about half the states." ...

... Excellent Timing. Fredreka Schouten & Kelly Kennedy of USA Today: "The federal government's healthcare enrollment website -- HealthCare.gov -- went down briefly early Monday for extended maintenance as heavy traffic was building on the last day of open enrollment for 2014." CW: Really, could these programmers be any more clueless? Who scheduled a maintenance check on the last official day of sign-ups? ...

... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "Republicans have mostly tolerated the portions of the [ACA] that benefit the middle class.... The real controversy, as with Medicaid five decades ago, centers on health care for the poor."

Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world's oceans, scientists reported Monday, and they warned that the problem is likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct."

Thomas Frank in Salon: Plutocracy is the norm. It will not dismantle itself. "That is our job."

Zombies! Paul Krugman: "... the belief that America suffers from a severe 'skills gap' is ... a prime example of a zombie idea -- an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.... If employers are really crying out for certain skills, they should be willing to offer higher wages to attract workers with those skills. In reality, however, it's very hard to find groups of workers getting big wage increases.... Influential people move in circles in which repeating the skills-gap story ... is a badge of seriousness, an assertion of tribal identity.... Moreover, by blaming workers for their own plight, the skills myth shifts attention away from the spectacle of soaring profits and bonuses even as employment and wages stagnate."

CW: Brad DeLong has an opinion piece in the New York Times. I don't understand a word of it. If anyone wants to translate, thank you very much. If economists & other experts want to have influence, they have to learn to write for people with a high-school education. See Krugman above.

Speaking of lying brainiacs, as we do in today's Comments section, Driftglass has a lovely review of the expert guests commissioned to Tell Lies Using Big Words on the Sunday shows. ...

... Charles Pierce does the same. Turns out one of the healthcare experts was Rick Santorum -- so no Big Words. Except maybe "abstinence."

Ayn Rand Lives! Jonathan Chait: The funniest thing happened on the way to Paul Ryan's plan to show the poor some love. He drafted the House budget, & it slashes the hell out of poverty programs. Again. But hey, he's thinking about thinking about maybe doing some anti-poverty thingee sometime.

** Jamelle Bouie in Slate: "Nearly twice as many whites as blacks favor the death penalty.... There's no separating capital punishment from its role, in part, as a tool of racial control.... Not only [were] whites immune to persuasion on the death penalty, but when researchers told them of the racial disparity -- that blacks faced unfair treatment -- many increased their support.... If you needed a one-word answer to why whites are so supportive of the death penalty, 'racism' isn't a bad choice."

N. Montenegro of the USCCB: "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration, joined by bishops on the border, will travel to Nogales, Arizona, March 30-April 1, 2014, to tour the U.S.-Mexico border and celebrate Mass on behalf of the close to 6,000 migrants who have died in the U.S. desert since 1998. The Mass will be celebrated at 9 a.m. on April 1, followed by a press conference at 10:30 a.m." Via Greg Sargent. ...

... As Sargent points out, the USCCB is stepping up pressure on the Obama administration: in this letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, the Most Rev. Eusebio Elizondo, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration, rips the administration's immigration enforcement policies. ...

... Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Across the country, immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among Latinos, enough to threaten recent gains in voting participation that have reshaped politics to Democrats' advantage nationally, and in states like Colorado with significant Latino populations." CW: Another good reason for Republicans to stall/fight immigration reform.

Matthew Wald of the New York Times: "... both G.M. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than previously acknowledged, ignored or dismissed warnings for more than a decade about a faulty ignition switch that, if bumped, could turn off, shutting the engine and disabling the air bags. General Motors has recalled nearly 2.6 million cars and has linked 13 deaths to the defect." ...

... Christopher Jensen & Matthew Wald of the New York Times: "... the revolving door between the [National Highway Transportation Safety Administration] and the automotive industry is once again coming under scrutiny as lawmakers investigate the decade-long failure by General Motors and safety regulators to act more aggressively on a defective ignition switch that G.M. has linked to 13 deaths. When David J. Friedman, acting administrator of the highway safety agency, testifies before House and Senate panels on Tuesday and Wednesday, a central question will be why the agency failed to push for a recall."

Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Military officials said they are investigating the conduct of a U.S. Marine who was on assignment for President Obama's trip to the Netherlands last week, after witnesses said he was talking in detail about his job and passing around his government security badge during a night of drinking at a bar.... Circulating an official pass that would allow someone to gain entry to the summit would be a serious security breach...." CW: I can't help feeling President Obama's security detail isn't all that interested in protecting him.

Beyond the Beltway

Jim Miller of the Sacramento Bee: "The ... FBI affidavit against [California state Sen. Leland] Yee and more than 20 other defendants says the San Francisco Democrat's focus on retiring a $70,000 campaign debt from his unsuccessful 2011 mayor's race and raising money for his 2014 candidacy for secretary of state led him to accept bribes in return for official favors and arrange overseas weapons deals.... Money is a never-ending concern of politicians facing campaign costs that run into the six and seven figures." CW: Another good reason for campaign finance reform -- it will free up candidates from the need to run guns, consort with gangsters & take bribes.

The Rich Are Different from You & Me. Cris Barrish of the Delaware News Journal: "A Superior Court judge who sentenced a wealthy du Pont heir to probation for raping his 3-year-old daughter noted in her order that he 'will not fare well' in prison and needed treatment instead of time behind bars, court records show.... [A] The lawsuit filed by [du Pont heir Robert] Richards' ex-wife accuses him of admitting to sexually abusing his infant son between 2005 and 2007, the same period when he abused his daughter starting when she was 3." CW: See, if you're rich, abusing & raping infants & toddlers is an illness; if you're not rich, it is naturally a crime; if you're black, it's a death-penalty crime (see Jamelle Bouie above). The American justice system is not that difficult to understand.

News Ledes

AP: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rushed to the Middle East on Monday for a surprise visit aimed at rescuing his Mideast diplomatic efforts, as peace talks approached a critical make-or-break point. Kerry landed in Israel late Monday before heading to Jerusalem for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then to the West Bank town of Ramallah to meet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas." ...

... Guardian: "Russia flaunted its grip on Crimea on Monday, with the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, flying in to the newly annexed territory for a cabinet meeting, cementing the sense of resignation in Kiev and the west that the seizure of the territory is irreversible. At the same time, Russian forces appeared to be pulling back from the border with eastern Ukraine. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, said in a phone conversation with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, that he had ordered a 'partial withdrawal' from the border, according to Berlin. The developments came after a four-hour meeting on Sunday between the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, in which both sides put their visions for resolving the Ukraine crisis on the table. After the meeting in Paris, Lavrov said Ukraine should introduce federalisation of power."

AFP: "The United States criticized China as provocative Monday after its coast guard tried to block a Philippine vessel that was rotating troops in the tense South China Sea."

Seattle Times: The death toll from the Snohomish County mudslide climbed by three to 21 on Sunday, and searchers found four additional victims who are not part of that official count. The number of people still missing after nine days of searching stands at 30." ...

     ... Update: "The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit Monday afternoon released a list of 22 people missing in the Oso mudslide."

Comments

[Akhilleus]

It strikes me on occasion that Paul Krugman makes such sense, backs his positions so sturdily with facts, history, and impeccable erudition, and so frequently and successfully beats on fallacious right-wing economic "theories" like they were rugs hung on a line for spring cleaning, that surely his thinking must penetrate somewhere.

Sadly, this seems not to be the case. At least not so's you'd notice.

But, as we've observed with tedious frequency, conservatives are impervious to facts and history, especially in the realm of the dismal science, made increasingly crepuscular every time one them opens their mouth. Put it this way. They're for any theory that fucks the poor, exalts the rich, and leaves everyone else jumping off the Good Ship Supply Side, scrambling for the few lifeboats (mostly occupied by the Kochs and Trumps) remaining.

Case in point, one Gregory Mankiw, professor of Economics at Harvard. Author of the textbook for Harvard's massively subscribed (pretty much everyone takes it at one point) intro to Economics course, the venerable EC 10. EC 10 has migrated, under Mankiw from a broad survey of economic theories to a year long conservative screed (students walked out en masse several years ago in protest), something that one might expect from the guy whose economic advice to Dubya helped bring about the most massive economic downturn in most people's memory. He also served as a close advisor to Mittens (to hell with all you moochers) Romney.

'Nuff said.

Anyway, last week, Mankiw graced the Times Op-Ed page with his latest and greatest thoughts on why the minimum wage should not be raised and why the ACA causes great harm and thus, apparently, should be scrapped. But he couches his arguments in the sort of faux philosophical drivel that would have encouraged Socrates to order up a double hemlock.

Like many conservatives, he changes his positions to suit the required results, rather than the other way around. This, I suppose, offers a warped sort of consistency. No matter what the facts, the outcome is the same. Nice, in'it?

But don't take my word for it. Matt Bruenig on the website demos.org deconstructs Mankiw's latest balderdash and finds it sadly wanting.

By the way, Mankiw's self aggrandizing title is "When the Scientist is also a Philosopher", countered by Bruenig's title "When the Scientist is Not Also a Philosopher."

Pretty good take down of one of the more obnoxious and omnipresent voices in right-wing "economics". I think Krugman would approve.

Mankiw: I am a philosopher too, ya know

Bruenig: Oh, bite me, Bozo.

[PD Pepe]

Thanks to you, Akilleus, I have spent the last hour reading both your linked pieces and then did some digging into the esteemed professor of philosophical meanderings–––and now I have the beginning of a headache. But I thank you for introducing me to Mankin, who according to my research appears to be one of several conservative economists at Harvard who take the same stance as he. Linked below is a long, but very thorough article on "Just Right Inequality" by Thomas Edsall you may find interesting–-he discusses Mankin and his views.

By the way, in Bruenig's piece it's unfortunate that he misspelled desserts throughout–-gave one commentator––and he only had one––a complete turnoff.

Mankin's little scenario of the doctor and his three organ deceased patients (utilitarian argument) and a fourth healthy one is straight from some horror film––let's kill the healthy one and give his organs to the others. And this is supposed to be an intelligent scenario?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/opinion/edsall-just-right-inequality.html

[Marie Burns]

@ Akhilleus & P.D. Pepe: When Krugman repeatedly jousts with a fellow-economist, as he does with Mankiw (just last week, fer instance), I figure the fellow jouster has got something wrong. In Mankiw's case, as Akhilleus points out, another clue is the company he keeps.

Marie

[Akhilleus]

PD,

Thanks for the link. Edsall's article suggests one reason so many who are burdened by right-wing economic plans keep their mouth shut and not only go along, but cheer the oligarchs who have been kicking them in the shins for years. Conservative apostates are considered worse than traitors. Besides, if a member of your tribe is telling you that there's simply nothing that can be done so we're all gonna sit here and watch the rich pile up the moolah, then that's what you do. Conservatives tend to be good at following orders without asking questions.

I think Mankiw's scenario involving killing the healthy person in order to distribute his organs to save others is his way of expanding on the Trolley problem and painting the concept of behaving in a utilitarian manner as morally reprehensible and insupportable. The problem, of course, is that he's also trying to make the case that distributing organs from a man you have killed (in order to save other's who might otherwise die) is the same as taxing the rich. He is being willfully misleading in this. First, people being taxed at a slightly higher rate than the ridiculously low rate affecting the rich does not kill anyone. No one is lying in wait for the rich to blackjack them and pick their pockets while they breath their last.

This is a facetious and insulting argument, but as with many conservative arguments, it takes a position to the most absurd extremes and deals with that as if it is the standard model: redistribution (taxation)=murder.

Of course, Utilitarianism does, at its core, say clearly that the greatest good for the greatest number is the goal, but it doesn't require, categorically, that some must to die for others (although isn't that the central theme of Christianity? The message is the importance of sacrificing yourself for the benefit of others. Guess it doesn't work for the oligarchs--as Marie pointed out in another context, one law for the rich, one law for the poor). There are ways of moderating utilitarian processes that can allow for good outcomes that don't deprive others of their lives (although extreme examples, such as the Trolley Problem, do point out the drawbacks--or consequences, depending on your point of view--to strict adherence to that principle).

Nonetheless, the tribal influence (we right, they wrong, in all cases) that keeps many conservatives from voting their own interests, is and probably will continue to be, a major stumbling block for the country in dealing seriously, and honestly, with economic issues, especially insofar as they are connected to inequality (and not many aren't).

[Akhilleus]

Re: the media circus bullshit slinging Driftglass refers to.

Two quick things. It's important to remember, as noted in a link DG provides, that a bullshitter is worse than a liar because the liar confronts actual facts and says, they're wrong, or words to that effect. The bullshitter totally ignores facts, history, and evidence and simply makes shit up out of thin air.

These are the most prevalent intellectual buzzards representing the right on the Sunday morning gasbag shows. They are scavengers and parasites.

But the single most important question that one must pose to these characters is "Cui bono?". Who stands to make out if the bullshit is accepted, even by a few, as hard fact? And the answer is, in nearly all cases, right-wing ideology, conservative power brokers, and the rich. In which case you can change the channel and see if NOVA is on PBS.

One other thing to remember is that, at this point, there ARE no intellectually honest, non-bullshitting right-wing representatives on any of these shows. Those people have been kicked off the team. And the few who were left after that, who have been trying to hang on, have pretty much deselected themselves from the running due to severe wingnut poisoning. Seriously, how long could you hang on trying to make a legitmate case for conservative points of view if you look to your left and see Michele Bachmann and across the table see Ralph Reed or Louie Gohmert? Fuck that. Shoot me now.

So those people are gone, baby, gone. In their stead are the bullshitters. Oh, there are still plenty of liars (lookin' at you Paul Ryan), but plenty of them have learned to bullshit as well (c'mon down Mitch McConnell).

And the problem, for the rest of us, is that the adroit vendors of the vacuous and the versant have become thoroughly skilled in looking and walking and talking like sentient, serious people who would nevah, evah, just make shit up.

They walk among us. And then they put on microphones and never shut up.

[JJG]

Re: I got me a high skool education; Brad Delong speaks to me. I am a Delong whisperer. Shh! He's communicating; he likes the Marx Brothers; no, he doesn't likes one of the Marx Bros; Karl. (Who's Karl? I thought Zeppo was the capitalist.) Shh, oh, the one with the beard, like the duck guys. Duck Soup? One of my favorites. No. Karl Marx, the commie, that Marx. Ah, the commie Marx. Ok, what's he saying now? Shh, ah, Delong and the deshort of it is Brad says Marx was wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. Shh, I can't hear him, oh, labor will be fine as long as the universe expands at the speed of light. Jez, I could have told you that. Machines won't kill labor but paper cuts will. I think that's what he said.
Speak to me, Brad, enlighten me. Shh, he's at my ear, ohhh, a golden nugget of wisdom; more Facebooks, more labor. Got it.
This whispering shit is exhausting.
Here's my problem, Brad smartypants. Do you like pie? I like pie. Most of us like pie. We all want a piece of pie. The economy is a big pie. Capitalism makes a good pie. So does Socialism. Problem is; who cuts the pie? Today in America Capitalism has discovered it doesn't have to share the pie let alone cut the pie. Capitalism took the pie making offshore. Foreign pies are cheaper to make than domestic pies because the pie makers charge less for making the pie. Now you would think we would all share in the cheaper pie, but no, the capital behind the pie makers wants all the profit from the cheaper pie. They want their pie and my pie and they tell the rest of us to "eat cake".
So Brad, until the pie is somewhat evenly divided and shared by all; the capitalist pie; no matter how good of a recipe, is doomed to fail because of greedy pie eaters.
god, I'm hungry.

[Akhilleus]

Moving on from the pretend intellectuals on the right to the true imbeciles, has anyone heard from Bombs Away McCain, or Fainting Beauty Graham, or any of the "Obama Lost Crimea" crowd about the phone call an obviously concerned Vladimir (Boyfriend of Wingnuts) Putin made to the president about finding a way out of the Ukrainian muddle?

Not me.

Oh, the site RealClearPolitics, a conservative hacksite, reported the incident, trying to get as far along through the report as they could without actually mentioning the president's name in any but the most perfunctory ways, as if this shit happened on its own, out of the blue, or maybe Putin was scared of all the Republican saber rattling.

At one point, when they couldn't think of anything really bad to say about the president, they sniggered that, after hearing some of Putin's plans for staving off further conflict, Obama "suggested" (their quotes) that the Russians put their ideas in writing for further discussion, as if making that "suggestion" was somehow morally, ethically, or poltically questionable.

What else should he have done? Told Putin to have his ideas tattooed on his ass for later close examination?

When their bullshit gets above their heads, they learn to eat it, breathe it, and like it.

Assholes.

[Ken Winkes]

See that the Krugman piece has elicited more than 500 comments so far. Wish I had the fortitude to read them all, but I don't. Didn't think it was one of his best in that, while covering part of the political side of the unemployment issue , he didn't have much to say about the structural drivers of it.

I wrote this last night:

"Last year I talked to an expert on the federal guest worker program. We began with farm labor issues at a local berry farm, whose owners have arranged for more "guest" laborers to compete unfairly with local workers; then the conversation moved to Boeing, which makes increased use of guest workers of their own, many of them with technical expertise, who displace American workers with the same technical skills who possess bargaining power and other rights foreign workers do not have. In both cases, American workers are available but the employers choose to hire outside that pool to decrease costs, increase their control and avoid any commitment to their workforce. In neither instance is the lack of trained American workers the problem. Your (Krugman's) penultimate paragraph hits the bullseye.

Besides outsourcing and the replacement of workers by technology, even in the service sector jobs, supposedly immune to outsourcing and worker replacement by technology, have increasingly taken assembly-line shape, broken into discrete bits that can be done by rote--by virtually anyone willing to work for a low wage."

(Think Amazon and Walmart and, more and more, education and healthcare..)

Of course, corporations don't want to talk about what's really happening, how they're using algorithms, technology, and guest worker programs to increase profit and bust unions, so they blame the workers. As I said, Krugman has that right.

I'd hope future Krugman columns will cover these and other factors behind the scenes of the major shifts we're seeing in our employment patterns. Politics is the front stage stuff, but it's the backstage behaviors that make sense of the politics.

We need to pull aside the backdrop behind the changing front page scene.