Just See This, I Mean, Just See This

Via Atrios:

Watch all of it. We're dumb. He's not.

Okay. What I mean is that he kicks my tribe's ass. So, I'm a fan.

Oh, and it goes back aways:

Didn't mean to get too deep. Yes I did.

RIP DC Scandals

I haven't been blogging of late because the news out of Washington was so dyspeptic that I couldn't form a coherent thought that didn't involve Darrell Issa and a string of expletives. This morning things changed as I caught a WaPo blog post from rational human being Ezra Klein called "The scandals are falling apart." Whew.

The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions. Government wrongdoing is boring. Scandals can bring down presidents, decide elections and revive down-and-out political parties. Scandals can dominate American politics for months at a time.

On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out. There’ll be more hearings, and more bad press for the Obama administration, and more demands for documents. But — and this is a key qualification — absent more revelations, the scandals that could reach high don’t seem to include any real wrongdoing, whereas the ones that include real wrongdoing don’t reach high enough.

Ezra then goes about explaining why there is no there there -- albeit it tentatively -- and that the scandals will likely fade into oblivion. Let's hope so. Thanks Ezra!

This also assumes that the Republican Party is willing to abandon the stupid, and that may not be a good bet to take. Oh well.

Viewing the 2nd Amendment from a Free-Market Perspective

Free and unfettered markets: That's the ticket!

I think I'm onto something here.

Here are my premises:

• Politics and economics are often interchangeable, in the sense that the economic ramifications of a public policy usually trumps other considerations. The obvious exception might be moral values. Yes, religion sometimes mucks things up, but even still it helps to follow the money.
• A principal public-policy divide that defines Liberal/Conservative, Democratic/Republican, Left-Wing/Right-Wing is free markets versus regulated markets. In this analysis I lump the libertarians in with the conservatives (libertarians are conservatives who smoke pot and go to Rush concerts) (just kidding) (maybe not!).
• We can analyze the 2nd Amendment debate as a free market versus regulated market divide.
• An important caveat: In my opinion, free markets are beloved (by those who love them) primarily because, unregulated, they open up opportunities for conning, scamming, grifting, and otherwise scooping up wads of cash you don't readily obtain the old-fashioned way (earning it).

Here are, in the gun-policy debate, my conclusions:

• Powerful forces want a lot of markets to be free, including the market for guns.
• A free market for guns is supported primarily by the NRA, with help from other gun lobbying groups, and, I suspect, the various chambers of commerce.
• The fight against any and all gun regulations are centered on how many guns and how many varieties of guns -- along with accessories and ammunition -- can be sold or otherwise traded.
• Any gun control regulation is seen as an encumbrance to more gun-related commerce.
• Any "freedom" argument, or "fight tyranny" argument, or "they're coming for our guns" argument, or "guns make us safe" argument, or any other such argument are actually offered as obfuscation. The true driver in the gun debate is money, money, money. Using politics, religion, hysteria, cultural symbols, historical contexts -- while sometimes reflecting something akin to core values that do influence and motivate gun buyers -- are just techniques, tried and true, for marketing gun products.
• The thousands of citizens of all ages who are killed and injured annually by guns are considered, in the free-market context, collateral damage or, perhaps, an externality. Gun merchandisers and those they draw into their market don't think of reducing this gun violence as one of their core values.
• To subjugate these core values, a doublethink is employed: We need guns because of gun violence.

Liberal progressives easily find themselves on the other side of the argument because:

• They believe in regulated markets, and they believe the gun market in the U.S. is yet another example of a market failure.
• They don't wish to employ a doublethink: they believe we need to strictly regulate guns to stem gun violence.
• Limitations on gun ownership, gun marketing, gun design, etc. are necessary to stem the chronic violence and death surrounding gun ownership.
• Gun-control advocates are up against a marketing problem: Selling "My first rifle!" is easy; selling "You'll never have a rifle!" is hard. Selling "I'm fucking Rambo!" is easy in our culture; selling "You won't need a gun if nobody had one" is impossible. Even "Just the one will be fine, thanks," won't do and never will.

If you believe free markets are rational and efficient, then you believe that the gun market, unencumbered, will sort itself out. Of course, this shows no signs of happening.

If you believe that free markets are often irrational and inefficient, then you'll be looking at the gun deaths and accidents as unconscionable market failures. And I'm with you.

Also, if people like Wayne Lapierre, David Keene, Ted Nugent, Alex Jones, and Jim Porter strike you as con men who would sell you antifreeze as cough medicine, you're on to something. They're not gun "advocates," they're salesmen, and they love them some free markets. This might not directly apply to Ted Nugent, but then I don't know exactly what applies to Ted Nugent. But he is selling something, and for whatever reason, guns help.

Guns, guitars, Ted Nugent, and the American flag. Yeah,
that sounds about right. Unless, of course, you're sane.

Susan G. Komen for the Bucks: A Grifter's Tale

Nancy Brinker: Grifter for the Cure

Nancy Brinker founded Susan G. Komen for the Cure in honor of her sister who died of breast cancer, in and of itself a fine tribute. Its fundraising technique has centered around 5k runs and fitness walks.

Then, in 2012, Brinker decided to get political with the "non-profit," hiring an ultra-conservative vice president -- Karen Handel, who resigned in the middle of the firestorm -- and cutting off Planned Parenthood from future funding, a step Brinker hastily undid as protests spread, contributors dried up, and race participants fled in droves.

Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon tells it:

Turns out that in 2011, it spent just 15 percent of its donations on research — nearly half of what it did just a few years prior. And, significantly, its founder, Nancy Brinker, the woman whose vow to the sister she lost to cancer has served as the organization’s poignant, relatable narrative, stepped down as its CEO. In August, Brinker announced she was taking on a new role, as chairwoman of the executive committee. (She is, however, still listed as its CEO and founder on the Komen site. Komen says it’s still looking for her replacement.) In short, the whole series of fiascoes was so appalling that Deanna Zandt, author of “Share This! How You Will Change the World With Social Networking,” called the Komen fiasco a teachable “example of what not to do.”

Yet after more than a year of bad publicity and declining participation, Brinker herself seems to be doing just fine. As Cheryl Hall pointed out this weekend in the Dallas Morning News, Brinker made “$684,717 in fiscal 2012, a 64 percent jump from her $417,000 salary from April 2010 to March 2011.” That’s a whole lot of green for all that pink. Hall notes that’s about twice what the organization’s chief financial officer, Mark Nadolny, or former president Liz Thompson were making. And as Peggy Orenstein points out on her blog Monday, it’s considerably more than the average nonprofit CEO salary of $132,739.

Nancy Brinker once had a great narrative, and as far as anyone knows it was sincere. Now, though, she, like many others, has turned her operation into a scam and herself into a grifter. When she got a taste of the high life, she wanted more. Breast cancer research, not so much.

The narrative now should be run, don't walk, away from Nancy Brinker. Komen must now take the cure and stop the con.

More than a year later and the shame continues.

Misunderstanding Keynes, Famous Economist Edition

John Maynard Keynes

This is also another edition of Ferguson v. KrugTron, albeit indirect in two ways. First, the most recent clash was not a case of either Niall Ferguson or Paul Krugman (KrugTron's human form) attacking each other, and, second, John Maynard Keynes was again the foil, or in Ferguson's case the petard upon which he hoisted himself.

The linchpin is Keynes' famous quote, "In the long run we are all dead," which on the face of it is witty in and of itself. I've always taken it to mean that at some point long-range planning has to include the eventuality that in the long run, WE ARE ALL DEAD, which, hopefully, would lead at least some of us to engage in short- to medium-term actions.

Niall Ferguson

That's only if you take the quote out of context and simply make a stab at what Keynes was trying to say. Niall Ferguson went further, and that's where he got into some trouble. Daniel Politi in Slate:

Ferguson was speaking at an investment conference in California on Thursday when he was asked about Keynes' famous observation that “in the long run we are all dead.” Ferguson disagrees with that idea because “in the long run our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are alive, and will have to deal with the consequences of our economic actions,” he said in his statement. But during the presentation, he went further.

Financial Advisor’s Tom Kostigen paraphrased Ferguson’s reply at the conference:

Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had.  He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive.

Ferguson then went on to say that “it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish world view because he was an ‘effete’ member of society,” according to Kostigen’s account.

Paul Krugman

Enter Paul Krugman, who flagged Ferguson's gaffe in his blog post, "The Gods Themselves Contend in Vain." Look to the "Please tell me this report is false" link for the news of Ferguson's off-putting remarks. Then Krugman links to Ferguson's almost immediate, unqualified apology.

Krugman, being the teacher that he is, the next day took the opportunity to remind people that the full text of the famous Keynes quote shows that he meant to make a completely different point. First, the quote in context:

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

Keynes was chiding his own profession to actually say something, build a model that calls for solving current problems and not simply slip away by saying "tax cuts will trickle down and save us all" or "fiscal consolidation will eventually solve all our growth problems." Sez the professor:

As I’ve written before, Keynes’s point here is that economic models are incomplete, suspect, and not much use if they can’t explain what happens year to year, but can only tell you where things will supposedly end up after a lot of time has passed. It’s an appeal for better analysis, not for ignoring the future; and anyone who tries to make it into some kind of moral indictment of Keynesian thought has forfeited any right to be taken seriously.

[...] And look, this isn’t hard. The overwhelming fact about our current situation is that conventional monetary policy is played out, with short-run interest rates at zero. This means that there is no easy way to offset the contractionary effects of fiscal austerity (maybe there are exotic ways to do something, but they’re tricky and unproved). And this in turn means that austerity right now is a terrible idea: any fiscal savings come at the expense of reduced output and higher unemployment. Indeed, even the fiscal savings are likely to be small and maybe even nonexistent: lower output and employment reduces revenues, and may inflict long-run economic damage that actually worsens the long-run fiscal position.

I'm not an economist or a mathematician, but it's not hard for me to see that cutting spending in a recession reduces government revenues because my spending is your income and vice versa, as Krugman often points out. If my spending goes down, your income goes down, and GDP suffers, tax receipts shrink, etc.

On the other hand, I see how spending of any kind during a downturn, whether private or not, drives up GDP and tax receipts, etc. Now, I can also see how, without gargantuan multipliers debt will grow long-term and eventually surpass the added tax receipts. Government spending is often efficient but not that efficient.

The point, in the end, is that the fiscal hawks want to stop spending now, now, now and thus inflict pain now, now, now. Yet, if we spend now -- on infrastructure, education, research, yada yada yada -- the pain is softened. We are left, of course, to find long-term ways of paying down the increased debt, and we have an obligation to do so before we are all dead.

I think that's at least an approximation of Keynes, and I believe in it. It suits me better than, say, kicking the poor and elderly early and often because oh my god Greece!

KrugTron the Magnificent: Right once again.

A Useless Trope: Taxpayers Know How to Spend Their Money Better Than the Government!

Uh, no they don't.

If you give tax revenues back to tax payers, chances are they won't save it for retirement. There is an exception: rich people. If you cut taxes for the rich, they invest it (which amounts to saving for retirement), unless, of course, they say, "Now I can buy that obscenely large yacht I've been dreaming of!" And as for the poor, any tax break they receive they turn into home meals and a few at Burger King, soft drinks, beer, cigarettes, rent, utilities, school supplies, and maybe some new clothes from Wal-mart. Then they're broke again, of course.

And the middle class? Yes, a few folks throw a few hundred bucks into savings, but generally they pay down debt, which actually amounts to alleviating the burden of previous spending they shouldn't have engaged in in the first place. But then, if you just lost a job, maybe the only way to take care of your family is to put it on a high-interest credit card. Some of us "uniquely American" people don't have it easy.

None of this behavior on any level is bad for the overall economy: GDP will get a modest bump from this economic activity, though as private spending crowds out government spending, the whole exercise settles in as a wash.

So what's the problem, and what's the origin of the trope? The trope was generated by "fiscal conservatives" who want to make the point that taxes are "stolen" from citizens who can use their money very wisely, thank you very much.

The problem is that these tax savings are not used for fixing our roads, hiring more cops in distressed neighborhoods, medical research, maintaining our emergency services, building airports or ports, fighting wars (necessary or not), building schools and expanding school programs, cleaning up aging forests to prevent catastrophic fires, or job training. The list is endless of the things government does that private citizens don't. And when we don't do it, our society slowly crumbles.

The point is that there are tasks best left to government because government is good at doing things that average -- or above average -- citizens can't do by themselves. When was the last time you heard a school teacher say, "I just got a tax cut. I'm buying new fire hoses for Engine #6 down the street."

Government, though you'll rarely hear conservatives or libertarians saying it, is actually the people banding together to do things they can't do individually. And taxes are the individual contributions the people agree to make to pay for these necessary projects individuals can't do.

So, please, knock it off with this stupid expression. It's absolutely meaningless. Instead, turn it around. What is it that the government knows best how to spend our tax money on? Then, after giving it a lot of thought, vote for the politicians that seem to know what to spend our money on and hold them accountable.

Why? Because we need this stuff done. We can't do it, so get people into government who will.

29% of Americans Think We're Probably Headed for an Armed Revolt

(Note. I put these videos first just to remind us why people in America is weird.) Glenn Beck weighs in on the crazy sounds going off in his head:

You don't have to listen to all of either video, as mesmerizing as Beck is...

Holy crap.

I just flagged this post at Talking Points Memo:

Three in 10 registered American voters believe an armed rebellion might be necessary in the next few years, according to the results of a staggering poll released Wednesday by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind.

The survey, aimed at measuring public attitudes toward gun issues, found that 29 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” An additional five percent were unsure.

Eighteen percent of Democrats said an armed revolt “might be necessary,” as compared to 27 percent of independents and 44 percent of Republicans. Support levels were similar among males and females but higher among less educated voters.

Of other discoveries in the poll, one stood out, that 25% of Americans believe we're being lied to about Sandy Hook in order to support a political agenda. This tracks well the conspiracy theories I generally find when sifting through comments on any gun-control issue. It doesn't matter if I counter with facts that show guns are unsafe or kill and wound thousands a year in the U.S., I'm generally met with comments like "Liberals make up those statistics to support their agenda. The truth is meaningless to them."

(One libertarian gun lover on Google+ asked me, "Please tell me the place of your gun statistics so I can refute them." Not "so I can compare them to what I know in order to make a reasoned judgment," or "so I can test their accuracy against my own research." No, just "so I can refute them.")

It's very difficult to have a conversation with people who won't believe a damned thing you say unless you tell them exactly what they already believe. Why, it's almost like talking to a Fox News or Rush Limbaugh fan.

I would remind you that the 23% or 28% of people who liked George W. Bush at the end of his presidency are the Bush dead-enders and can be counted on to stay in the far-right conservative base.

There's more to it than that. Yes, the dead-enders are still in the base, but it's the ones who religiously get their news from Fox, Limbaugh, Breitbart, and WorldNetDaily and only from them that have their heads located in a totally counterfactual alignment. Oh, well.

And, you know, these people are not new, and they won't be going away anytime soon. Take Bryan Fischer radio commentator for the American Family Association:

Here's Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council explaining that gay marriage might lead to revolution:

Here's the soft-spoken, heart-wormingwarming Ted Nugent:

People "resist that statistic" because it's not true, Ted. Of course, why would you believe statistics? But you do seem to look forward to the revolution.

Let's check in on the sounds rattling around in Glenn Beck's head to see if he's "adding to the conversation:"

OMG, I just found an ordinary citizen who understands exactly who the Bush dead-enders are:

JaclynGlenn, you nailed it. You must be one of the other 71% that are, maybe, better educated, at least enough to have passed your Civics class.