We Already Know How to Solve Most Problems. Why Don't We Do It?

We've already a head start with Social Security (expand it!), Medicare and VA healthcare system (expand it to everyone, who doesn't deserve it?), and the general aspects of unemployment insurance, food stamps, TANF, and child tax credits (expand them all or fold into a guaranteed minimum income equal to a combination of the components). Why don't we? If everyone paid what they could afford, then everyone would be okay, right? Oh, I get it: Conservatives will have none of it.

Danish fathers still don't take enough advantage of paid paternity leave, study says.
But the Danish system beats the hell out of the U.S., where we have none.

It's always confounded me that Americans don't seem to want what's in front of their faces, and that's more of the social programs already proven to work.

But Paul Krugman knows. He's generally on point on most socio-political economic questions. We don't need new ideas:

I’m not saying that politicians shouldn’t be open to new thinking and evidence about policy. But a political party isn’t like Apple, which needs to keep coming up with glitzier products to stay ahead of Android. There are huge problems with U.S. policy on many fronts, but very few of these problems come from lack of good new ideas. They come, instead, from failure to act on what we already know – and, for the most part, have known for a long time.

Let me give two big examples: access to health care and environmental protection.

On health care, we know perfectly well how to provide more or less universal access, because every other advanced country does it.

How can a nation provide universal access to health care? There are actually three ways. You can have direct provision by a government health system, like Britain’s NHS; you can have a single-payer system of government health insurance, like Canada (or Medicare here); or you can use a combination of regulation, mandates, and subsidies to prod the private sector into covering everyone, like Switzerland.

And all three systems work! True, you can have trouble if the funding is inadequate or the rules aren’t effectively enforced, but that’s true of any policy. Universal health care is a solved problem. We don’t need new ideas to achieve that goal here – in fact, we got about halfway there under Obama, and all we need to finish the job is a progressive president and a progressive majority in Congress.

What about protecting the environment? I guess you can make the case that there were important new ideas in the 1980s. Until then, environmental policy consisted almost entirely of top-down regulation. Economists had known for generations that there was a case for exploiting market forces via things like emission taxes or tradable emission permits, but these first made it into the world of political reality with the Bush-era emissions-trading scheme used to control acid rain.

That's exactly right. We know how to do these basic things, and we only need the correct political environment in which to accomplish them and expand upon them.

A commenter on his article puts it all together so very well:

Moving past the two Republican crimes against American humanity of the greatest 'free-market' healthcare rip-off in the world at an obscene 17% of GDP and the Trump-Pruitt Environmental Pollution Agency, let's give full credit to the primary Republican crime against American humanity: the branding, marketing and force-feeding of 'supply-side' economics strychnine to 320 million.

This incredible economic fraud and Big Lie is simply a form of economic torture and sadism, an enshrined misanthropic assault on virtually every building block of this democratic republic that has decimated the election process, destroyed national infrastructure, trashed public education, made a Reverse Robin souffle of the tax code, and pervertedly turned public goods like national defense, prisons, healthcare, and the the environment into private profit centers for vulture capitalists.

Supply-side economics is a Republican fraud.

Demand-side economics is what powers healthy economies; Keynesian economics is what works well, not right-wing cuckoo Robber Baron economics.

Higher worker wages, strong worker unions, high consumer spending and increased government spending leads to business expansion resulting in greater employment opportunities.

Higher wages and higher levels of employment create a multiplier effect that further stimulates aggregate demand leading to greater economic growth.

Bring back Keynesian economics.

And dump Republican Reverse Robin Hood national-train-robbery economics.

About right.

Paul Ryan's Makers- and-Takers Stance Is in Open Conflict with Christian Values

Ryan fires House chaplain for "being too political." I think what he meant was "Don't call out my hypocrisy."

Thing is, it doesn't trickle down if you grab it and send it back up.

Speaker Paul Ryan stepped in it this week, by all accounts, when he fired the House chaplain for including Christian values in a recent invocation.

Holy Jesus, Batman! What about market forces?!?

Yeah, what about them? A Bloomberg View writer recycles the zombie economics of trickle-down to declare Ryan all-in on behalf of the poor. Sample graph:

At a nationally televised town hall last week, Paul Ryan was asked how he upholds the Catholic Church’s teaching that we should help the poor. Ryan, a Catholic, answered that his emphasis on economic growth, upward mobility and opportunity for all is how, as House speaker, he puts that teaching into practice.

Ugh. How many times do we have to send the money up to the top and watch income inequality increase to understand that market forces don't work (at least the way you say they do)?

Even if it works a little, does that mean Ryan is satisfied that he's a little Christian and the priest should shut up a lot?

I for one want to move past Ryan. He's a well-documented fraud. His numbers never added up, and even as speaker he never tried to push through a budget that met his exact prescriptions and instead pushed budget busters. So here are my general thoughts on the inherent conflicts in conservative economic thought:

Sides in an argument can agree to disagree. That, often, is civil discourse. Fine.

But when one side disagrees with itself -- when its core beliefs conflict with its core values -- the only way the situation is resolved is through confession or hypocrisy.

The central problem is conservative libertarianism runs counter to Christian communitarianism. You either have to say "I don't want to give food to the poor, flat out," (honesty) or you say "Jesus would cut food stamps, too." (umm, no). This is difficult for evangelicals who primarily line up with Republicans. (inarguable)

Liberals don't generally win the religious vote (inarguable), but they don't have any such conflict of beliefs versus values. "We want to feed the poor," lines up nicely with "Jesus went right past food stamps to loaves and fishes, so good chance Jesus is into feeding the poor, too."

My conclusion: Conservatives are dogged by conflicts where liberals aren't, even though conservatives can claim (statistically) that they are the proper home of Christian evangelicals.

Liberals for the win, in this case. If not, explain how a true Christian conservative would solve this dilemma?

Note. Here's how income inequality charts:

A picture's worth? How about another?

At some point, can Americans stop demonstrating such toxic greed? What ratio would Jesus want? (Full disclosure: I'm an atheist. Doesn't mean I don't have values.)

Americans Want Things Only Liberals Will Provide, and Polls Show It.

Below is a list I found in Salon of policies Americans would rush to enact.

And the trouble is Democrats are afraid to totally embrace this, for fear of what, alienating non-college-educated white men? Er, maybe.

Here's the list:

• Allowing the government to negotiate drug prices (supported by 79 percent)
• Offering students the same interest rates as big banks (78 percent)
• Universal pre-kindergarten (77 percent)
• Fair trade that protects workers, the environment and jobs (75 percent)
• Ending tax loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas (74 percent)
• Ending gerrymandering (73 percent)
• Letting homeowners pay down mortgages with 401k funds (72 percent)
• Debt-free college at public universities (71 percent)
• A $400 billion infrastructure jobs program (71 percent)
• Requiring the NSA to get warrants before collecting our data (71 percent)
• Disclosing corporate spending on politics and lobbying (71 percent)
• Medicare buy-in, available to all (71 percent)
• Closing offshore corporate tax loopholes (70 percent)
• A "Green New Deal," creating millions of clean energy jobs (70 percent)
• A Full Employment Act (70 percent)
• Expanding Social Security benefits (70 percent)

How many of these things are you against? Thought so.

Get out and tell your representatives what you want. Then vote 2018.

Scott Pruitt's Corruption of the EPA Might Be the Worst of the Trump Effect

Scott Pruitt's living arrangement can only be considered classic corruption, deserving (in any rational, moral administration) of termination, even legal actions. In Trumpworld? Who knows, and that's an ominous result of the overall corruption Trump seems to relish.

We are and should be moving away from coal. Trumpworld wants it back. Why?

Paul Krugman presents all we need to know in a Twitter thread:

Thinking some more about this Pruitt story. Kudos to Bloomberg for getting the facts; but I wish reporters wouldn't lump de facto bribes from lobbyists with padded expense accounts, like unnecessary first-class travel. Corruption is a much bigger deal 1/ https://t.co/cVaDP3Oap4

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

Think about it: if a govt official abuses his office by taking a fancy trip, taxpayers lose the expense of that trip. But if he accepts what amount to kickbacks from corporations who can benefit from his actions, the cost can be far larger 2/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

Environmental enforcement is, in a way, almost custom-built for corruption. If you waive or fail to enforce a rule that, say, prevents certain companies from dumping toxins in the water supply, the benefit of your action accrues to a small, well-connected group 3/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

Meanwhile, the costs of your malfeasance fall on a large, diffuse group -- ordinary citizens -- who may not even be aware that you're compromising their health and sending some of them to an early grave, and certainly don't employ DC lobbyists 4/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

So if we let environmental officials get away with personally profiting from lobbyist connections, you're going to have a pronounced pro-pollution bias -- and this will be true even if the social costs of their laxness are vastly larger than the benefits 5/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

If you try to put an economic value on the sickness and death caused by pollution, the numbers are huge; but if officials get a green light to be corrupt, they'll cheerfully impose those costs to raise a few companies' profits 6/ https://t.co/AyXcqKeyWV

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

So officials at the EPA need to be squeaky clean -- even more than officials in general. But Trump has set the standard for his administration, and we're well on our way to third-world-level corruption everywhere 7/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018

Trump Can't Find a Lawyer? It's Because He Can't Tell the Truth.

Donald Trump is coming up on the moment when he has to talk to Robert Mueller. If he can't pack some truth for the trip, he's fried, seriously fried. Lying to Mueller has been more than one man's Waterloo.

Great briefing this afternoon on the start of our Southern Border WALL! pic.twitter.com/pmCNoxxlkH

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

Trump is always needing to reinforce, for his base, the notion that he's delivering on his promises. (That's why he's started trade wars by putting tariffs in place, only to roll them back when the shit hits the international fan. Real tough guy!) So he's "tough" on trade like he promised.

Congress, though, even a Republican-controlled Congress, won't give him the border wall he promised Mexico would pay for. But, goddamit, he's getting his wall after all! Or maybe not. 

The project, which started in 2009, will replace a 2.25-mile section in the California-Mexico border wall, according to a statement last month from US Customs and Border Protection.

The original wall in that section, built in the 1990s, had been built from recycled metal scraps and old landing mat materials, the agency said.

"Although the existing wall has proven effective at deterring unlawful cross border activity, smuggling organizations damaged and breached this outdated version of a border wall several hundred times during the last two years," CBP said.

The project will replace the old wall with a 30-foot-high, bollard-style structure.

Great. Not only is it an old wall built during the Obama years, it's been breached so many times it's laughable. But it'll be a GREAT WALL! For his base, at least.

He can't even brag about his wall without constructing a large fraud -- mostly because nobody's building a goddam wall for him. Congress won't give him the money. So he resorts to, well, his usual tactics. He'd better not try that with Mueller. Any lawyer worth is salt is pretty sure Trump can't help himself. Why should they believe otherwise? Hence, no legal team worth a damn. Pity.

Why Bolton and Trump Will Fail at Their Alt-Diplomacy

The Bobsey Twins of America First Militarism are bound to fail because their tough-guy diplomacy is beyond ham-fisted.

When all options are on the table, you need to use all options.

This is not original thinking in that I gleaned it from two articles I just read, but alarm bells did go off when I grasped the implications. On the Twitter, Ross Douthat pointed to a Reuters bit that had John Bolton schooling Trump on required parameters to a North Korea meeting, at this point tentatively scheduled for May. Bolton went on Radio Free Asia to pontificate:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, said Trump should insist that any meeting he holds with North Korea’s leader must be focused squarely on how to eliminate that country’s nuclear weapons program as quickly as possible.

Bolton, a hawk who Trump named on Thursday to replace H.R. McMaster in the key security role, told Radio Free Asia on Monday that discussions at the proposed summit with Kim Jong Un should be similar to those that led to components of Libya’s nuclear program being shipped to the United States in 2004.

Great. Bolton chooses an Asian venue to tell Kim he'll insist on a Libya-style solution -- in which, years later, Qaddafi is pulled from a culvert and ends up beaten to death by the side of the road. Yeah, Kim's totally going for that offer.

Then, in the next article I read, we've got Vox pointing out the implications of Trump pulling out of the Iran deal:

What does Donald Trump’s stance on the Iran deal have to do with his relationship with North Korea? It turns out, quite a lot.

That’s because the president’s desire to pull out of a historic nuclear deal with Iran could likely hurt his chances of reaching a significant weapons agreement with Pyongyang.

There’s a simple reason why, experts tell me: If Trump backtracks on America’s promises to Tehran, then North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has no reason to trust Trump during negotiations about Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

Game, set, match. What's worse is that the next review of the Iran deal is set for May (the U.S. revisits the deal every 90 days to check if Iran is complying), ostensibly the month the North Korean talks are set, although Kim hasn't actually signals it's on. I guess this is supposed to be set up by the South Koreans, or something.

So, here's the deal. Bolton wants a pre-condition that North Korea will end its nuclear program in order to meet, and Trump is set, at Bolton's encouragement, to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal just as the two sides are scheduled to meet. Why, then, would Kim agree to anything? So he can agree to something you can't trust the Americans to uphold, or agree to something that ends with him dead in a ditch?

I don't think so. Way to go, Monsters of War™.

Arm Teachers. That Will Fix Everything.

We are insane.

Uh, could it possibly be the guns? And, hey, why not universal concealed carry?! (They want it in the omnibus budget bill on Friday.)