The Commentariat -- May 24, 2014
Internal links, obsolete audio & related text removed.
White House: "In the State Dining Room of the White House, President Obama nominates San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro as the next HUD Secretary, and current HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan as the next OMB Director":
... Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Since becoming mayor [of San Antonio, Texas,] in 2009, [Julián] Castro, 39, has championed urban renewal and steered San Antonio through a kind of renaissance that has built new housing in areas once ignored by developers and made the city hipper and more expensive.... If he receives Senate confirmation, Mr. Castro, whose twin brother, Joaquin, is a Democratic congressman representing San Antonio, apparently would become the first housing secretary in the 48-year history of the position whose parents lived and worked in public housing projects." ...
... Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post on why President Obama is moving Shaun Donovan to OMB: "As Obama looks to his final two years -- a period in which he is not likely to have a compliant Congress -- he will need to increasingly rely on executive actions that stretch the limits of his authority. He'll probably want to push in more liberal directions on issues like climate change, immigration, civil rights, poverty and the economy. With Donovan at OMB, Obama is likely to have someone who is willing to be a partner in such efforts at a time when the administration is losing those most adept at formulating executive actions."
Your Holiday Maths Problem (Because Everyone Likes to Spend a Three-Day Weekend Doing Macro-Maths). Chris Giles of the Financial Times: "The data underpinning Professor [Thomas] Piketty's 577-page tome, which has dominated best-seller lists in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings. The FT found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those which last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. The central theme of Prof Piketty's work is that wealth inequalities are heading back up to levels last seen before the first world war. The investigation undercuts this claim, indicating there is little evidence in Prof Piketty's original sources to bear out the thesis that an increasing share of total wealth is held by the richest few." ...
... Neil Irwin, now of the New York Times, links to Piketty's response to the Financial Times. in a rundown of the controversy Giles created. (Unless you're signed with the FT, their stories are usually impossible to access.) ...
... Matt O'Brien of the Washington Post: "... this doesn't seem to be a Reinhart and Rogoff situation. Their Excel errors really did change their conclusions. Piketty's don't. Unless, like Giles, you average inequality by population instead of by country -- which is debatable, at best, since Piketty is only concerned about inequality within countries." ...
... Paul Krugman: "Giles finds a few clear errors, although they don’t seem to matter much; more important, he questions some of the assumptions and imputations Piketty uses to deal with gaps in the data and the way he switches sources.... The fact that Giles [argues that Piketty's whole thesis is wrong] is a strong indicator that he himself is doing something wrong.... None of this absolves Piketty from the need to respond to each of the individual questions. But anyone imagining that the whole notion of rising wealth inequality has been refuted is almost surely going to be disappointed.None of this absolves Piketty from the need to respond to each of the individual questions. But anyone imagining that the whole notion of rising wealth inequality has been refuted is almost surely going to be disappointed."
Matthew McKnight of the New Yorker: "On Thursday, the Senate confirmed David Barron to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. As a lawyer in the Justice Department, Barron wrote the memo that gave President Obama the authority to use drones to kill terrorist suspects, including those who are American citizens.
Gail Collins: Senate Republicans block popular bipartisan legislation -- that they love! -- because that mean Harry Reid won't let them tack on partisan amendments that have nothing to do with the bill under consideration.
** In a New York Times op-ed, Dr. Sam Foote explains why he blew the whistle on VA appointment waiting times. He offers a list of reforms that would alleviate the problem.
CW: I was surprised by Akhilleus's assertion in yesterday's Comments that "In Detroit, the Kochs are working to torpedo a bankruptcy settlement that would allow municipal workers to retain some of their retirement, it would also help the city stay afloat, but neither positive outcome fits with the Koch schemes." Well, it's true. AP: "Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group supported by the Koch brothers, has launched an effort to torpedo a proposed settlement in the Detroit bankruptcy case, potentially complicating chances for completing the deal just as its prospects seemed to be improving." ...
... David Firestone of the New York Times: "The Koch brothers, through the screeching megaphone they built known as Americans for Prosperity, condemned the [bankruptcy settlement] deal and announced plans to contact 90,000 conservatives around the state to build up pressure against it. The Associated Press reported that the group threatened to run ads against any Republicans in the legislature who voted for the deal in the coming days." ...
... Ben Snyder of Grist takes a stab at explaining the Koch boys' interest in further undermining a major American city: "Functioning cities -- like everything else the Kochs oppose, such as environmental protection and social justice -- require functioning governments. If your goal is to undermine government and collective action for the public good, then naturally you'd oppose saving Detroit. Cities are more energy-efficient than suburbs. If, like Koch industries, you make much of your money refining oil and investing in the Canadian tar sands, then it makes sense that you would favor suburban sprawl.... The right-wing hatred of cities -- whether it's for their racial and ethnic diversity, their culture of tolerance, or the way that density inspires liberal attitudes toward the common good -- is long established.... Hypocrisy doesn't much concern Koch. As The New York Times recently reported, when [David] Koch ran for vice president as a Libertarian in 1980, he was living in a rent-stabilized apartment" in Manhattan. ...
... Charles Pierce: The Koch brothers "want it all, and their [sic.] damn close to getting it, and that's why Harry Reid is right for belting them around the way he is. Civility, or the Beltway equivalent thereof, is very much beside the point."
Jeff Bezos, Mafia Boss. David Streitfeld & Melissa Eddy of the New York Times: "Amazon's power over the publishing and bookselling industries is unrivaled in the modern era. Now it has started wielding its might in a more brazen way than ever before. Seeking ever-higher payments from publishers to bolster its anemic bottom line, Amazon is holding books and authors hostage on two continents by delaying shipments and raising prices. The literary community is fearful and outraged -- and practically begging for government intervention. 'How is this not extortion? You know, the thing that is illegal when the Mafia does it,' asked Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, echoing remarks being made across social media."
Adam Nossiter of the New York Times: "There is a view among diplomats [in Nigeria] and with their governments at home that the [Nigerian] military is so poorly trained and armed, and so riddled with corruption, that not only is it incapable of finding the girls, it is also losing the broader fight against Boko Haram. The group has effective control of much of the northeast of the country, as troops withdraw from vulnerable targets to avoid a fight and stay out of the group’s way, even as the militants slaughter civilians.
Annals of Journalism, Ctd.
Two Jerks Call Each Other Jerks. Glenn Greenwald responds to Michael Kinsley's NYT critique of Greenwald's NSA/Snowden book. Also, not just Kinsley, but most American journalists are pawns of the U.S. government. That would include George Packer of the New Yorker, Jonathan Chait of New York & -- Greggers (CW: who arguably is not a journalist at all). ...
... Here's Packer's review, published in the British magazine Prospect. He accuses Greenwald of "a pervasive absence of intellectual integrity" and provides examples.
Senate Race
Sam Hall of the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger connects the dots between Senate hopeful Chris McDaniel & the three men arrested in connection with videotaping Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-Miss.) extremely ill wife.
Darren Nichols & Christine Ferretti of the Detroit News: "A federal judge threw U.S. Rep. John Conyers a political lifeline Friday, ordering the Detroit Democrat onto the Aug. 5 primary ballot because his lawsuit to overturn a Michigan election law is likely to succeed." Local & state officials had ruled many of the qualifying signatures gathered by Conyers' staff invalid because the signature gatherers were not registered Michigan voters.
Marie's Sports Roundup
Tami Abdollah of the AP: "Donald Sterling is turning his ownership stake in the Los Angeles Clippers over to his estranged wife [Shelly], and she is in talks with the NBA to sell the team, a person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press on Friday." ...
... CW: Great! Shelly Sterling will be a model NBA owner, a paragon of probity -- just as she is a model slum landlady. Kevin Armstrong of the New York Daily News (April 30): "Shelly Sterling -- who distanced herself from her spouse’s hate speech in a statement on Monday -- was accused in a 2009 deposition related to a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Sterlings of saying that Latinos were 'filthy' and that she had called one of her husband's tenants a 'black motherf-----.'" ...
... Update: According to ESPN, Shelly Sterling isn't planning to remain owner for long. Ramona Shelburne of ESPN: "Disgraced Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has agreed to allow his wife, Shelly, to negotiate a sale of the team, sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN. Shelly Sterling and her lawyers have been negotiating with the NBA since commissioner Adam Silver banned her husband from the NBA for life on April 29 for making racially charged comments on an audiotape."
News Ledes
Life & Death in the U.S.A.: Los Angeles Times: "A law enforcement source told The Times that Elliot Rodger is the suspected gunman responsible for a shooting rampage in the Isla Vista neighborhood near UC Santa Barbara that left seven people dead, including Rodger. Santa Barbara County sheriff's officials, who have not identified the man suspected of shooting and running people down with his BMW, said they believe the rampage was premeditated. They have said they are looking at a video titled 'Elliot Rodger's Retribution' in which a young man who identifies himself on his blog as a student in Santa Barbara threatens violence." ...
... AP Update: "A Hollywood director believes his son was the lone gunman who went on a shooting rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara that killed six people -- weeks after the family had called police about disturbing YouTube videos he had posted, his lawyer said Saturday.... Alan Shifman -- a lawyer who represents Peter Rodger, one of the assistant directors on 'The Hunger Games'. -- issued a statement on behalf of the family saying they believe Rodger's son, Elliot Rodger, was the shooter."
AND in Belgium. BBC News: "A gunman has shot dead two men and a woman at the Jewish Museum in the Belgian capital Brussels. A fourth person was seriously wounded, emergency services said. The attacker arrived by car, got out, fired on people at the museum entrance, and returned to the vehicle which then sped away, Belgian media report."
Streaking Obama. Washington Post: "A man walked up to a White House entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday afternoon, stripped naked and assaulted an officer who tried to subdue him, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service."
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Reader Comments (4)
As some of commenters to the Krugman blog post on the Giles' Piketty riposte pointed out (I checked before I bothered to), we've seen Giles' method many times before. Find a few items to nitpick in order to cast doubt on the study's major conclusions. Giles is a Merchant of Doubt plying a familiar trade. The Merchants have played their villainous role in the tobacco wars, in the contrarian position on unlimited population growth (the economy's health depends upon it), and made frequent guest appearances in the environmental wars, in the last decade particularly casting all the doubt they can on climate change conclusions.
Finding some reason to toss out a drop or two of dirty bathwater, they hope the baby will follow. But inequality is a stubborn, vigorous child, a giant in the making, impossible to ignore, certainly no easy mark for baby-killers like Giles. Giles is too late. If you hate facts, you have to abort them before they're born.
And in the case of wealth inequality that would have required far more progressive tax policies than I suspect Giles and The Financial Times would support.
It's rich that the wingnuts will be going completely apeshit over a minor (at least according to Professor Paul) error in Piketty's examination of income inequality. I did okay in Ec 10 in college but these days I'm lucky if I can calculate price elasticity of supply. Hell, I'm lucky to correctly define price elasticity of supply, so don't count on me to formally dissect and elucidate the problem. (I haven't even read the book yet....but neither have many of its detractors, I would bet the next ten years of my mortgage payments.)
What's funny is that winger pundits who base their own economic prognostications on fantasy assumptions and fabricated data will now giddily be pointing fingers and howling at every Foxbot with five minutes of air time over Piketty's math problem.
And, as Ken points out, will be trying to bury his conclusions because of it, because to the wingers, any talk of income inequality=suspicion of those patrons of oligarchical control and zero taxes on the filthy rich, Saints Charles and David Koch, and holy crap, we can't allow that, now, can we?
Kind of like questioning the artistic status of an entire Hemingway novel because of a split infinitive on p. 42. Or declaring that global warming cannot be conclusively proved, ergo no action need be taken, until Hartford, CT becomes a seaside resort ("Visit the beautiful Mark Twain Beach!).
In the World of Propeller Heads, wingnuts need only a 1% possibility (see, Cheney, Unconscionable Dick) to entertain absolute certainty. Everyone else needs 120% unassailable accuracy to be considered a tiny bit right.
As I've said before, I used to be a fan of Greenwald's when he wrote the blog "The Undiscovered Country." As time went by, he became more and more shrill and more self-righteous. Finally, I could no longer stand what he'd become. I still can't. He seldom brooks opposition to his views. People who disagree with him are tools of the government. He never offers proof of this.
If the government is after him, why is he pretty much allowed to come and go?
Kinsley obviously doesn't like Greenwald. I think that tainted his book review. Packer's is much better. I wonder if maybe the "Guardian" wasn't too unhappy to see him go, since he doesn't qualify as an objective journalist.
I guess he and Snowden served a valuable public service, but I can't abide either one of them.
Does it surprise anyone that the Kochs have a place despoiling the Canadian north for a share of the tar sands loot? I wonder how much money the Kochs have funneled into Albertan provincial politics? I never really thought about those sordid, dirty bastards screwing up Canada, but they will. Go look now at North Dakota, because soon enough the rapacious bastards of Koch and company will have bought off the entire political apparatus. Then, what was once a nice place will be pockets of nice surrounded by dirty, avaricious money grubbers who only want to be there for the money.
Excuse me; just thinking about the Kochs makes me want to bathe. Do think the ceremonial blood of Christ is enough to cleanse oneself against their stench?