Say What You Will - the Semantic Art of Running Away From Real Economic Consequences.

Modern political discourse – or what passes for it anyway – seems to be mostly about semantics, and not really about substantive discussion and debate to find solutions.  Today’s 113^th Do Nothing Congress (as I hope History will remember them) spends more time parsing what is “revenue” and what isn’t then they do actually proposing policy and legal solutions to the nation’s problems (like 40 plus votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the House without a single vote on an alternative).

So, along comes Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post to politely suggest that the final piece holding us back from prosperity in our country is the semantics of what to call our economy. 

Among our problems is a failure of economic language. We lack the words and concepts to describe observable reality. By conventional wisdom, the Great Recession is long over. “Recession” connotes shrinking output. “Expansion” signifies the opposite. That’s how the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists, defines business cycles. Following this logic, the bureau determined the economy stopped contracting in mid-2009. Yet, most Americans — 53 percent, says a recent National Journal/Allstate survey — think we’re still in recession, by which they doubtlessly mean “bad times.”

It’s a tempting argument – if our “real” problem economically right now is we don’t know what to call our current decline (if it is even a decline), then the clear solution is to present different language.  The implicit benefit is that if we can better describe the “real world” as we see it, then we can get at those mysterious “causes” that keep Americans from being “confident” and recreating the post-WWII growth era into which so many of them were born.  Samuelson then postulates that if we got the terminology right, we’d be able to overcome a condition in which:

The problem might not be a dearth of investments so much as a surplus of risk aversion. For that, candidates abound: the traumatic impact of the Great Recession on confidence; a backlash against globalization, reduced cross-border investments by multinational firms; uncertain government policies; aging societies burdened by diminishing innovation and costly welfare states.

It all sounds cozy and nice, right?  The problem is that Mr. Samuelson, like so many on the Right side of the political aisle (where Mr. Samuelson sits his own protestations not withstanding), is unwilling to grasp a fundamental – and easily described truth of our current economic situation:

 The problem, then, is not machines, which are doing a great deal to boost productivity; the problem is that the benefits from increased productivity no longer accrue to workers. In a provocative paper earlier this year, Josh Bivens and Mishel argued that the gains for the richest 1 percent were due to “rent-seeking” behavior by CEOs and financial professions, not competitive markets. As John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.” The newly minted rich want to blame robots for declining wages at the bottom and their innate superiority for their disproportionate share of the income. But these excuses mask their theft of productivity gains that rightfully belong to the rest of us.

Put another way, when real wages decline against spending power in most jobs as the increased “productivity” in the economy goes to a small group of investors (also known by the counter intuitive term “rentiers”) and isn’t spread across the workforce, that loss of productivity contributes to the further erosion of wages by driving down demand for goods and services.  It also contributes to stampedes at Walmart on Black Friday in which people are killed for deep discounts on consumer goods.  Powerful economic elites probably lament the disorder that all this creates (hence their walled communities and bulletproof houses) but at the end of the day they seem to think many of those at the bottom have earned it.  

The ultra simple version is you can't solve demand side economic problems with supply side approaches or solutions.  But we've been trying ever since David Stockman helped President Reagan create the now infamous (and discredited by Stockman no less) Voodoo economics approach.

Cast against all this – and interestingly so given the professed Catholicism of so many conservative pundits and politicians – are the recent writings of Pope Francis.  Ever the Jesuit (and thus dedicated to the state of the nation’s poor and down trodden as few others are) his recent The Joy of the Gospel calls all this out for the heartless and discordant pursuit it is:

The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor.

As E. J. Dionne reminds us in today’s Washington Post:

His apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” is drawing wide and deserved attention for its denunciation of “trickle-down” economics as a system that “expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” It’s a view that “has never been confirmed by the facts” and has created “a globalization of indifference.” Will those conservative Catholics who have long championed tax-cutting for the wealthy acknowledge the moral conundrum that Francis has put before them?

But American liberals and conservatives alike might be discomfited by the pope’s criticism of “the individualism of our postmodern and globalized era,” since each side defends its own favorite forms of individualism. Francis mourns “a vacuum left by secularist rationalism,” not a phrase that will sit well with all on the left.

Mr. Dionne is right, of course, that many so-called Liberals have also made their beds with the gods and goddesses of the Market – how else to explain our current “Democratic” President’s interest in placating Wall Street (by not prosecuting them for their crimes in the court of public opinion, to say nothing of the actual courts).  Mr. Dionne goes on:

The difference is that a concern for the poor and a condemnation of economic injustice are at the very heart of Francis’s mission. “In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits,” he writes, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.” Can you imagine an American liberal who would dare say such things?

Well, as a liberal who has written similar words, why yes, Mr. Dionne, I can imagine it very well thanks you.

But to point is still well made – we as a Nation, a society, and as individuals do indeed have the language we need to accurately describe the world in front of us.  We don’t need to adopt the cumbersome semantic twisting of those who refuse to acknowledge the failures of clinging to economic myths simply because those myths both bolster our socio-cultural myths and shield those who have worked actively against the coming to fruition of our full potential personally and nationally.  If a Jesuit Pope from South America can accurately call out America’s ever failing supply-side experiment, using readily available words (and not in his native language), why can’t you Mr. Samuelson?

America's White poor - Republicans in Name Only

The number of Americans who are poor enough to qualify for food stamps has increased by a disturbing 30 million in the last 13 years. In 2000, 17 million Americans were receiving food stamps; in 2013, the number is 47 million. Hoping to stir up racial tensions, far-right AM radio talk show hosts and Fox News wingnuts try to paint food stamp recipients as strictly or mostly people of color. But the facts don’t bear that out. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites (in Ohio, it’s around 65%). So when Republicans vote to cut food stamps, many of the people they are hurting are white. On September 19, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to slash billions of dollars from the U.S. food stamp program during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Tough words today in Salon, especially since SNAP- more commonly referred to as Food Stamps - has long been viewed by Republican politicians as a coded way to talk about minorities in America.  Ronald Reagan affirmed that association during his political life by discussing the plight of the "Welfare Queen" and successive conservatives have only exacerbated the problem.

Yet since the beginning of the Great Recession, whites have NOT been spared the horror of slipping into poverty.  With American unemployment at 7.3% at the end of October , many of those same white folks are now several years into using a program of federal financial assistance (or dare I say it - welfare) that many of them never thought they'd need, but without which many of them will have a hard time surviving.

Monthly unemployment Rates January 20013 through October 2004

And while we are nowhere near the high (but not historic high) unemployment Rates we saw in 2009 and 2010, it is becoming clear that we are not yet at "full employment" and may never be.

So, in the end, many of the Congressman (and a few Senators) who have voted to cut SNAP - and are pursuing drastic reductions to Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA mandates, and even Social Security, are cutting the very federal programs keeping their constituents alive.  I hope that when these recipients go to get their checks, and see the reductions they get angry and demand their elected officials do something.  I fear those same officials will manage to frame the issues in a way that shifts blame from the politicians to somewhere, anywhere, else.  That shifting will have tragic consequences, but it will be America's economic margins - and so it will go unreported, unnoticed, and uncorrected.  America the exceptional indeed.

A Trickle Down Econimic Question for Conservatives

So, dear economically conservative fellow citizens, this liberal asks a fundamental, fact based question - if CEO pay went up 16% last year and real labor wages continue to decline (in inflation adjusted dollars) as is widely reported in the MSM these days, how is trickle down economics working, exactly?

I'll be waiting for an answer . . . .

Winconsin Updates

If both of these things are true, it says something really sad about the state of conservative political trust of Americans:

NPR's link to The Nation:

Wisconsin's Legislative Fiscal Bureau was created in 1968 by a Republican governor, Warren Knowles, and a Republican-controlled state legislature.

The purpose was to establish a nonpartisan agency that would provide honest fiscal analysis and information for Wisconsin Legislators. Across more than four decades, the bureau has done just that, earning the respect of legislators from both parties, including a young Scott Walker, who frequently cited the bureau when he served in the state Assembly.

Less than a month ago, a Fiscal Bureau memo reported that the state had a $121.4 million surplus through the remainder of the current fiscal year.

AFL-CIO Blog:

This from AFL-CIO Political Communications Director Eddie Vale who’s on the ground in Madison, Wis.

As we speak, Gov. Scott Walker & the Senate R’s are literally having the windows of the capital welded shut to keep people from passing food into the building to the people inside.

The Wisconsin stand-off and the Recession - can we please stop comparing apples and ice cubes?

This, dear friends, is why I hate all the "crush the public sector and it will solve our financial problems" rhetoric that is running amok these days:

Rather, the Left sees the public sector worker as a critical component of the service delivery that government is entrusted with by the people, much the same way GM sees their assembly lines as a critical component of its delivery of finished cars.

Right sizing the federal workforce?

In the January 10, 2011 edition of the Federal Times, Stephen Losey reports that both Congress and the Deficit Commission were angling to reduce the federal workforce from the 2010 level of 2,113,980 permanent civilians to a level of 1,913,980. That's a reduction of 200,000 employees, or about 10%. These figures do not include private contractors doing federal work, a force that is estimated to expand the size of government by 1/4th to 1/3rd.

Given the current economic times, many of those on the Right side of the aisle want to see government shrink. They argue that the federal government does too many things it has no business doing, and, to paraphrase the Republican leadership, is a job killing entity.

So, of course, they want to kill 200,000 actual jobs (at a savings by 2015 of $13.2 Billion) in an economy where we bounce back and forth around 10% unemployment. They presume that, in so doing, they would somehow stimulate the economy, and also make inroads in reducing the "regulatory burden" that they accuse government of inflicting on the economy.

I have three problems with that approach. First, with unemployment as high as it is, why intentionally increase that number just to make a political point? Wouldn't it be prudent to keep people who have jobs employed, so they can spend their paychecks and drive some portion of the recovery?

Second, that $13.2 Billion is a small fraction of the deficit - 9.6% to be precise. Rounding to 10% of this year's deficit, one still has to ask if it is worth it. Sure, a 10% reduction is an appealing target, but if one looks at the numbers, one finds that mandatory spending, coupled with decreased revenue through decreased tax receipts, is the real culprit. The real problem is that it's less then 1% of the $14 Trillion National debt, and that is the real economic drag that keeps our country from surging forward in many areas.

My third issue is philosophical. When Congress, particularly Republican members of Congress, talk about reducing the size of government, what they want more often then not is to do away with things like Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, the new health insurance regulations, environmental protection, science, and all manner of other social programs. They do not suggest cutting defense, or law enforcement. So to achieve that 200,000 person reduction, they will start from a disproportionately small set of government functions. And when that reduction fails to produce any economic benefit (but significantly hampers the delivery of federal services to Americans) they will lambaste government and seek to shrink it even more.

What I'd rather see is a robust debate on what government should do, followed by a realistic discourse on what it can do with the resources it has. Too many politicians (and their spoon-fed constituents) expect the impossible - maximum service for minimum investment. And my fellow federal workers pay the price every time it rains bad economic news.

The Annual Liberal Blog Post - Richard Cohen checks the box

I'm no fan of the Washington Post's Richard Cohen - he of supporting torture and state sanctioned terror (as long as America practices it). I believe Mr. Cohen serves no agenda but his own -which is undersatndable in a town that hastruly lost any ablity to conceive of real public service.

Yet today he makes some sense (in what is sure to be his annual "See, I'm really a liberal columnist who has to fight off all the big, bad conservatives" column).

This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans and wackos. It has nothing to do with America's real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic and political calamity. The Constitution is a wonderful document, quite miraculous actually, but only because it has been wisely adapted to changing times. To adhere to the very word of its every clause hardly is respectful to the Founding Fathers. They were revolutionaries who embraced change. That's how we got here.

He even manages (sort of) to point out that President Obama's Liberal credentials are, at best, strained:

Similarly, only a spell can explain why much of the Republican Party insists on calling Obama a socialist. To apply this label to the very man who saved Big Finance, who rescued Goldman Sachs and the rest of the boys, who gave a Heimlich to the barely breathing banks, can only be explained by witchcraft or voodoo or something like that. It has caused the GOP to lose its mind. Obama did something similar to the American auto industry, saving it from itself. He did not let it fail or nationalize it, as a socialist would have done, but pumped cash into it so that -- this is me speaking -- it can fail later on.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Almost a defense of liberal policies in a town where the policies, and their defenders get few and far between as the weeks drag on.

My problem with believeing this, of course, extends to Mr. Cohen's fetish for defending the indefensible:

At the same time, we have to be respectful of those who were in that Sept. 11 frame of mind, who thought they were saving lives -- and maybe were -- and who, in any case, were doing what the nation and its leaders wanted. It is imperative that our intelligence agents not have to fear that a sincere effort will result in their being hauled before some congressional committee or a grand jury. We want the finest people in these jobs -- not time-stampers who take no chances.

The best suggestion for how to proceed comes from David Cole of Georgetown Law School. Writing in the Jan. 15 New York Review of Books, he proposed that either the president or Congress appoint a blue-ribbon commission, arm it with subpoena power, and turn it loose to find out what went wrong, what (if anything) went
right and to report not only to Congress but to us. We were the ones, remember, who just wanted to be kept safe. So, it is important, as well as fair, not to punish those who did what we wanted done -- back when we lived, scared to death, in a place called the Past.

Its a great place Mr. Cohen live in, where we as a nation can break our own laws, destroy probably innocent lives (on both sides of the torture chamber) and then run around calling the people who did it great patriots. And as long as Cohen stand by these words, I can't stand by him as a liberal.

So thanks for your annual broadside at consrvatives. It happens to all be true. Sadly, it does nothing to buff your images with real liberals.

What's in a Tea Party?

From a comment in Glenn Greenwald's post today on erosion of U.S. Citizen rights, comes a link that took me to this:

So are the Tea Partiers ordinary people with no political leanings, as they say they are? Definitely not. The findings cited above and other data in the polls indicate that the Tea Party is overwhelmingly stocked with Republican supporters. They are by no means "ordinary people," although the public's perception that they are is one of their strongest suits.

Are they just economic conservatives then? The Winston survey tells us much about Tea Partiers‟ economic views, and the "Contract from America" released on April 14, 2010 focuses on taxes, federal spending, and big government. But if you Google the questionnaires that local Tea Parties send to candidates, you will almost always find more than questions about these issues. You will often discover inquiries about religion as well (e.g., Do you support school prayer? Do you recognize God‟s place in America?). And often there are questions about abortion and gay marriage and teaching Creation Science in public schools. And you run into queries about gun control, law and order, and immigration. So while Tea Partiers overwhelmingly take conservative economic stands, which bind them together most, many seem to be strong "social conservatives" as well. Local groups often speak of wanting only "pure
conservatives" or "100 percent" conservatives as candidates.

Healthcare Reform & Bobby Jindal - Cracks in the Republican Armor

There are two very different views of the Republican Party running loose on America’s streets at the moment. I bring them to your attention because I think they illustrate – aptly – why so many ordinary citizens are so far withdrawn from the modern political sphere.

The first stream – call it Liberal Frustration – is best exemplified by Paul Krugman’s October 4 column for the New York Times. In it, commenting on supposed Weekly Standard responses to the loss of the 2016 Olympic bid, Krugman Writes:

“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the President, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

Not content with pointing this out, Krugman seeks to deal w final blow to his opponents:

The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.

The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.

The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.

Sobering words – and they explain a lot about why Democrats attempts (feeble as they may be) to elicit bipartisanship in the Senate over healthcare reform have failed miserably. And rightly so.

Now, contrast that with the Op-Ed piece written by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in today’s Washington Post. This might be an example of Conservative Frustration - but we've seen so little of that its hard to tell. Jindal, a former health policy wonk, might be expected to contribute something new and fresh to the debate – especially since his party has contributed so little.

And he does – but in a very strange, almost liberal way. Writing about where we stand on healthcare reform, the Governor says:

A majority of so-called Republican strategists believe that health care is a Democratic issue. They are wrong; health care is an American issue, and the Republican Party has an opportunity to demonstrate that conservative principles work when applied to real-world problems.

Right off the bat, one has to wonder how he got into a party that has to be reminded – by one of its own supposed rising starts – of what its core principles are. I know the answer to that one: Jindal decided at some point (after I knew him in middle school) that he wanted to be a politician. And since Louisiana’s Democrats are still controlled by families named Long, Landreau, Edwards, and Morial, Bobby had to move to the Republican side of the ticket. One also has to wonder why supposedly free market loving Republicans want to continue to stand in the way of small business growth by keeping in place the current health insurance scheme, which is a failed market at best.

Taking off from there, the Governor then intones:

To be clear, the Republicans in Congress who have led the opposition to the Obama-Pelosi vision of health-care reform have done the right thing for our country. If they had rolled over, the results could have been devastating for our health-care system and our nation's budget.

But Republicans must shift gears. Conservatives should seize the mantle of reform and lead. Conservatives either genuinely believe that conservative principles will work to solve real-world problems such as health care or they don't.

I believe they will.

Again, note the reform call from within. Few other Republicans are standing on the national stage saying these things. And it remains to be seen if anyone will listen. But if the Republican Party is pinning its Presidential hopes on Jindal for 2012 or 2016, then perhaps the party needs to think long and hard about what he has to say.

Of course, like a good Republican (at least these days), Bobby then disappoints greatly with his list of the Top 10 Things Republicans need to back to create meaningful reform:

-- Voluntary purchasing pools: Give individuals and small businesses the opportunities that large businesses and the government have to seek lower insurance costs.
-- Portability: As people change jobs or move across state lines, they change insurance plans. By allowing consumers to "own" their policies, insurers would have incentive to make more investments in prevention and in managing chronic conditions.
-- Lawsuit reform: It makes no sense to ignore one of the biggest cost drivers in the system -- the cost of defensive medicine, largely driven by lawsuits. Worse, many doctors have stopped performing high-risk procedures for fear of liability.
-- Require coverage of preexisting conditions: Insurance should not be least accessible when it is needed most. Companies should be incentivized to focus on delivering high-quality effective care, not to avoid covering the sick.
-- Transparency and payment reform: Consumers have more information when choosing a car or restaurant than when selecting a health-care provider. Provider quality and cost should be plainly available to consumers, and payment systems should be based on outcomes, not volume. Today's system results in wide variations in treatment instead of the consistent application of best practices. We must reward
efficiency and quality.
-- Electronic medical records: The current system of paper records threatens patient privacy and leads to bad outcomes and higher costs.
-- Tax-free health savings accounts: HSAs have helped reduce costs for employers and consumers. Some businesses have seen their costs decrease by double-digit percentages. But current regulations discourage individuals and small businesses from utilizing HSAs.
-- Reward healthy lifestyle choices: Providing premium rebates and other incentives to people who make healthy choices or participate in management of their chronic diseases has been shown to reduce costs and improve health.
-- Cover young adults: A large portion of the uninsured are people who cannot afford coverage after they have "aged out" of their parents' policies. Permitting young people to stay on their parents' plans longer would reduce the number of uninsured and keep healthy people in insurance risk pools -- helping to lower premiums for everyone.
-- Refundable tax credits (for the uninsured and those who would benefit from greater flexibility of coverage): Redirecting some of the billions already spent on the uninsured will help make non-emergency care outside the emergency room affordable for millions and will provide choices of coverage through the private market rather than forcing people into a government-run system. We should trust American families to make choices for themselves while we ensure they have access to quality, affordable health care.

It all sounds great, doesn’t it? The problem for Jindal and the Republicans is that there is nothing new in here. Each of those ideas is already on the table in most, if not all, of the legislation in the Senate. I think all of those are in the legislation passed by the House. And most of it came from Democrats. So if the best that Republicans can do is to pick up Democratic ideas and champion them, then Mr. Krugman may be right, but for the wrong reason.

Republicans are engaged in the politics of spite, but only because they don’t actually have anything new to offer. Since that would show them to be the intellectually bankrupt Party – and drastically cut the chances of their return to power – they lash out. And America suffers for it.

If Republicans are to lead – and I think Jindal is right to call on his Party to do so – they need to LEAD, which means developing and championing the best ideas for America - regardless of the source of the idea, and with full attribution for the idea. To do less, frankly, is to demean the actions and successes of their predecessors, and that is as much a travesty as the state of current healthcare in this country.

Republican Positions on Healthcare Reform - the straight face test FAILED

Today we finally got some clarity on the Republican Party’s official position on healthcare reform. That clarity came from Party Chair Michael Steele, in a morning drive time radio interview. The interview, on today’s Morning Edition on NPR was full of all sorts of contradictory double speak by Mr. Steele, and a lot of defense when Inskeep tried to call him on it. I hope NPR posts a transcript today, so that I can update this with quotes and highlights. The transcript is now HERE

In a nut shell, Mr. Steele proposed in a recent Washington Post Opinion piece, that we preserve Medicare as it currently exists, not impose any cost controls, but refrain from creating further government run healthcare. Mr. Steele’s point today, which is more nuanced then his written word, is that Medicare exists, it has been here for 40 years, so we shouldn’t mess with it. Republicans, he said, still oppose government run healthcare, though he failed miserably to explain how Republicans reconcile to two diametrically opposing views. Mr. Steele was consistent in his interview, however, that current healthcare delivery, including the “bureaucratic” decisions of private insurers relating to treatment availability, is just fine with him. Even the Post’s Steven Pearlstein – he of capitalism is generally the preferred answer – said this is bunk.

This isn’t the first times Steele has said flat out that government can’t do anything right – like create jobs – even while the market in which he places his faith fails so miserably to do what America needs. Mr. Steele has bought the Social Darwinist construct lock, stock and barrel. And as the spokesperson for the Republican Party, he gave us two important messages today.

First, if you are a baby boomer, you needn’t worry – the Republicans are going to take care of you by allowing Medicare to continue, and allowing it to swallow an ever large portion of our tax dollar. And if you are everyone else, Republicans will throw you into the market, despite a classic market failure, because government has NO BUSINESS delivering healthcare (except when t already does).

Even more telling, however, is that Mr. Inskeep tried harder then most journalists to dig into these contradictions. Already, the NPR commentors are dissing him for having the audacity to question Steele’s assertions. I sent an email to the show through their comment section letting him know I appreciated it.

I want to award a thousand bonus points to Mr. Inskeep for his interview today with Michael Steele. Mr. Inskeep did not, as too many in the MSM do these days, let Mr. Steele's contradictory assertions go unchallenged, and Mr. Inskeep managed to keep his cool (I can imagine him turning of the mike to laugh) even when it became exceedingly clear that Mr. Steele was speaking from both sides of his mouth.

FYI, I'll be blogging this later today at http:/www.districtofcolumbiadispatches.blogspot.com

Keep it up!

Frankly, I think that if more journalists did this, we’d all be better off.

Contrast that with an email exchange I had with the Washington Post Ombudsman, Andrew Alexander over the same Op-ed:

There are rare instances when Post ombudsmen have addressed issues on the editorial page. But that has not often occurred. Indeed, a few months ago at the annual meeting of the international Organization of News Ombudsmen (incredibly, there is such a thing), none of those attending said they venture into editorial page matters. One reason is that you inevitably get bogged down in unresolvable debates over the validity of opinions. That said, I know that my predecessor wrote once about a lack of gender diversity on the editorial page. And there are a few similar issues that I may tackle. But they're pretty low on my priority list. Thanks again for writing.

Best wishes, Andy Alexander

Washington Post Ombudsman

Philip H 08/26/2009 03:38 PM

To
cc

Subject RE: Michael Steele's op-ed on healthcare reform



Mr. Alexander,

Thanks for your prompt response. Given Mr. Hiatt's track record in the aforementioned George Will incidents, I am not at all confident that he would be open to my concerns. I understand your primary mission is to the newsroom, but if the Washington Post is going to have only one Ombudsman, that person may need to wade into the water of Op-Ed from time to time. Turning a blind eye to the Editorial Page (and thus to something that has enormous influence on how the paper as a whole is perceived) may not be in the Post's long-term circulation interests.

Sincerely,

Philip L. H

From: ombudsman@washpost.com

To:
CC: ombudsman@washpost.comSubject:

Re: Michael Steele's op-ed on healthcare reformDate: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:26:14 -0400

Thanks for writing. As the news ombudsman, I focus on the news pages. You may wish to redirect your e-mail to Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt (hiattf@washpost.com).

Best wishes, Andy AlexanderWashington Post Ombudsman

Philip H 08/26/2009 12:44 PM

To cc

Subject
Michael Steele's op-ed on healthcare reform

Mr. Alexander,

As one of the legions of the Post's on-line readers (who also buys the Early Sunday Edition nearly every week at the news stand rate), I am aghast that your Editorial Pages would print the recent editorial by Michael Steele on the Republican's take on healthcare reform. Just as is the case with Mr. George Will's many columns on global climate change, Mr. Steele's piece is riddled with factual inaccuracies; it is in essence a bag of lies meant to derail meaningful reform. The Post holds itself out as a standard barer in print journalism, but the decisions to print these pieces, even as Op-Eds, reeks of sycophantic solicitousness of certain well moneyed, business oriented groups, most of whom have absolutely no interest in what is really the best thing for all Americans.The Post needs to do better in handling these. And your column and blog alone, while good at pointing out the factual errors, doesn't cut it. I'd really hate to have to switch to the New York Times to get my DC area news, but if this shoddy, blatantly partisan hacking that passes for journalism continues, I fear I will be left with no choice.

Sincerely,

Philip L. H

Unlike Mr. Inskeep, and NPR, Mr. Alexander ducked any responsibility, essentially conceding that anyone can print any unfounded lie on the Editorial pages and he won’t go after it. I suspect he’s still feeling burned from the George Will affair earlier this year. And while I do feel a modest bit of sorrow for Mr. Alexander – he does have to work there, after all, the whole reason that Mr. Steele believe he can go on NPR and not be challenged on his statements is that people like MR. Alexander will not work on our behalf to keep him honest in other media venues.

Thus the healthcare “debate” rages on with little of substance for Americans to consider. Maybe it is better that Senator Kennedy is now gone, so he doesn’t have to watch this ugly, un-American episode in our history play out.

UPDATE:
Over at Almost Diamonds, Stephanie talks about what "Pre-existing conditions" really mean in the health insurance "market." What I find so interesting about her comments, especially in light of Mr. Steele's position on behalf of the Republican Party, is that she illustrates the significant economic impacts that the current health insurance structure has on the U.S. If, as the Republicans postulate over and over, the U.S. is at its best when small business are opened, then removing barriers to that entrepeneurship SHOULD be important to Republicans. Stephanie's position illustrates how the Republican adherence to totally free markets stiffles that small business creation, by perpetuating a significant barrier - namely the exorbitnat cost of health insurance for small business owners. That Republicans are willing to do this -in the name of regional and national insurance companies that are, essentially, monopolies, should tell you something about how Free Market oriented they really are.

UPDATE 2



Here's who isn't served by the current market oriented approach. She has my daughter's eyes. And were my daughters not automatically covered by my plan, the older two would likely not have insurance, as they both have asthma and the middle one has a heart condition as well. Thanks to Stephanie for making the video for me to crib.

Almost Diamonds posts a gem - what the shouting at townhalls is all about.

One of the handicaps of not being a professional writer is that I often stumble in trying to make a point. Stephanie Z of Almost Diamonds, however, doesn't. She posted this about the health care "debate" currently going on in our country,, and the behavior of so called conservatives:

It's easy to tell yourself you're not like them, that you merely disagree
with the changes that are happening. After all, you're not insane, just
conservative.

Will that matter when the next person dies over this? Representative David
Scott has had a swastika painted on his office sign. Another representative was hung in effigy. Representative Brad Miller received a death threat. Senator Arlen Specter invited people to tell him what they thought about health care reform--held back the police who were concerned about violence and disruption--and still people screamed
in his face and called him a tyrant. A man showed up to protest the president's town hall meeting today wearing a gun and carrying a sign that said, "It is time to water the tree of liberty" (referencing Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.").

Those are just some of the politicians who are on the receiving end of violent anger. Fights are breaking out outside these meetings on health care. My husband was accused earlier this week, by someone who should know better, of planning to turn an old friend in for an "incorrect" political position. I can't buy ammunition right now to go target shooting because it's all sold out and has been for months. This whole thing is teetering on the edge. Someone else is going to die soon. Maybe lots of someone elses.

It will be your fault.

She is right - there is a definite fault line being drawn by conservatives in this battle. Tactics deployed against President Bush - which were necessary at the time to fight an emerging tyranny - are now somehow to be accepted because we're dealing with a domestic issue. the Republican Party, having so long sold its soul to both the ultra conservative Christians, and the corporatist oligarchs, now finds itself reaping what it sowed. If this is the best the party can do on a critical national economic issue (and health care IS an economic issue), then they have lost their place to speak to America morally.

Unlike Stephanie, and some of her commenters, I don't think we liberals should stop. We made as much, if not more, noise then this in the last Administration. We can do it again. MoveOn.org can drown out these voices. If we don't. they will pull the Nation I love dearly even further back to the days of the robber barons and white supremacist tyrants. We need to stop them.

The legal case FOR torture prosecutions

As the Torture Watch continues in the blog-o-sphere, there are a lot of defenders of the Bush 43 Administration who do so based on one or more of the following strawman:

• You say we tortured terrorists, but we do it to our own servicemen all the time, so it can’t be torture. A variant is to ask if waterboarding is torture for the same reason.
  
• There’s no legal basis for calling this torture, especially since we’re at war and so we have to circumvent the laws in order to keep our people safe.
  

There are a host of others, but I think you get the point. What they are driving at, as Glenn Greenwald so elegantly puts it, is proving that Serious and Thoughtful People know more then we mere plebs do, and so we must TRUST them with our very existence, lest we all vaporize in the latest terrorist attack.

Now I’m no lawyer. I’m an oceanographer. That means I’m trained to look at things skeptically, ask questions, formulate hypotheses, test them, and then draw conclusions. In this case, that means I want to know what the law actually says we can and can’t do.

So I went to Google, and there, from the U.N. Convention on Torture (At Part 1, Article 1, §1) we read (highlighting mine):

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Scrolling on down, we fin in Part 1, Article 2:

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Further, in Part 1, Article 4:

Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

And way down in Part 1, Article 16, we find:

Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture or references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Sadly for my many conservative, torture-defending sparing partners, the language could not be clearer on what torture is, and how we as a nation are supposed to deal with it. Basically, the Convention says you can’t inflict severe mental or physical pain and suffering intentionally, especially to get a confession or obtain information. It also says you can’t do that at the direction of any public official; that orders from a superior officer aren’t reason to do it, and that you can’t even do it under the rubric of war. And it says you can't inflict any other cruel or unhuman punishment even when told to do so by a public official or anyone acting in a public capacity.

Ok, I can hear them saying, why do you think this applies to us? It is, after all a U.N. convention, and what right does the U.N, have to tell us what to do?

It’s an interesting argument, until you read the U.S. Constitution. It says in Article Six, Paragraph 2:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary not with-standing.”

Translating that to modern, non-legal English: When the United States enters into a Treaty (which we do by Presidential Signature and congressional Ratification), that Treaty becomes Federal Law, and the language of the treaty becomes binding on the U.S., and particularly our judicial system. And Since President Reagan signed the Convention in 1988, and COngress Ratified it in 1994 (Under Republican control, as I recall), the Convention is the highest law of the land.

In other words, since the Convention on Torture says explicitly what torture is, and that it can not be sanctioned by any public official or in any public capacity, and since it says that the signatories must criminalize the act, and since it says war is not an excuse for torture, And since our own Constitution says this is our highest law; then the U.S. legal system has NO CHOICE but to investigate and prosecute any official for torture

“when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

The President, Vice President, White House Counsel, their Chiefs of staff, and the CIA and military officers are all public officials. The law is exceedingly clear. For anyone to pretend otherwise, is, as I see it, to destroy both the legal framework of the Constitution, and to pervert the intentions of our Founding fathers so they can engage in a sick, revenge drive blood bath. We need to eat our humble pie, investigate and prosecute. Otherwise, we are now a Nation that has 280 Million accomplices to torture in its name.

Shame on us!

UPDATE: Hilzoy has the best response to Mr. Obama's proposal for indefinite detention I've seen to date.

America tortures - and the Far Right yawns.

I haven't weighed in much on torture here - but I am commenting elsewhere when I see fit. Part of the reason is that this whole thing sickens me. The other part is other do it so much better.

There was a day when I respected Mr. Krathammer. Almost admired him. But as time goes on, he descends so far into the lap of the Far Right, that I can no longer count him among those whose words I read to frame a cogent opposition argument to my own beliefs. Rush Limbaugh passed that mark many years ago too. These men, who have so often called for greater imposition of their morals as the law of the land on many issues, refuse to sanction the application of that law (signed by Mr. Reagan whom they claim to revere). The double standard is appalling. I hope that some of the other conservative I monitor won't go there, but I fear for their souls as well.

Waterboarding is torture. So are a whole host of other "enhanced" interrogation techniques. These actions have ABSOLUTELY no place in a country supposedly dedicated to the rule of law. They are morally and religiously repugnant acts (their practice by the historical Catholic Church not withstanding). As such, there is no justification for their use other then revenge or unbridled evil masquerading as punishment. And to be clear - a government that tortures others will eventually begin to torture its own.

This just in - Make sure you pay your taxes

If the AP report on MSNBC is correct, firms taking taxpayer funded TARP money owe the U.S. government 0.02% of that fund in back taxes. Yep, you heard that right, TARP recipients owe back taxes. And they all had to sign certifications saying they didn't in order to get their funds in the first place.

Two thoughts spring to mind. First, will the Republicans who have sunk so many Democratic nominees over tax issues holler as loudly about this? Me thinks not. And second, will this be the "smoking gun" that will finally open criminal investigations into the very companies who willfully and gleefully took our economy into the tank in the name of short term profits? After all, Al Capone got sent up for tax issues . . . .

How Chas Freeman got me skinned

Thanks to my colleague Mike at The Big Stick, I’ve been reading some very interesting conservative and progressive blogs of late. I can’t say I always agree with what they write, but they write well, they are open to comments from seeming all sorts of people, and I think if the Republican Party can harness a few of them, then in 4 years Republicans might be a coherent opposition party again.

So I was interested yesterday when Megan McArdle took up the Chas Freeman Affair in her blog. She started by exerpting an Article from Foreign Policy:

David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy: “Financial trivia, minutiae from people's personal lives and political litmus tests have grown in importance while character, experience, intelligence, creativity and wisdom have fallen by the wayside.”

Then, perhaps forgetting that as a conservative she’s supposed to always rail against Democratic policies and politicians, she made this entirely reasonable point about how Mr. Freeman’s opposition had worked it’s magic:

Megan McArdle: “This new tradition of bulldogging every appointee in the hope of embarrassing the president has to stop. We should be focusing on whether or not the nominee can do the job, not whether there is some small breach of an onerous regulation in his history that can possibly be dug up. It feels good in the short term, but when ability to find a native-born nanny becomes a more important qualification for the presidential candidate than experience relevant to the job to be done, it's time for a national rethink.

While I may not agree with Ms. McArdle’s politics, I heartily agree with her assessment of the appointment process. Her commenters, however, took the opportunity to heap on as much spin as they could, to somehow deflect the fact that, when all is said and done, even Washington Post columnists think AIPAC gave MR. Freeman the shaft. So, 26 comments later, I said this:

Sadly, you have all missed the iceberg here. Mr. Freeman wasn't sunk because of these things, he was sunk because he speaks regularly and forcefully against current U.S. policy regarding Israel. Gleen Greenwald has the latest on his blog. All the things mentioned above were part of an organized campaign to discredit Mr. Freeman, without directly attacking him on this key issue. That it succeeded, and is intellecually dishonest at best, speaks volumes about the sad state of American foreign policy.
Posted by Philip H. March 11, 2009 1:29 PM

Not content to attack Ms. McArdle, they began to fire at me:

So, Philip H., what you're saying is that it's okay to be on the Saudi payroll, support the crushing at Tiananmen Square, and support the US Army firing on the Bonus Army veterans, so long as Jews oppose you? Would you have opposed Mr. Freeman on the basis of those other things if only AIPAC and the Jews hadn't been involved? Sure, I'm upset that enough other people don't seriously care about that horrific statement about the Bonus Army, about being on Saudi payroll, or about Tiananmen Square. That doesn't make me support Mr. Freeman just because I think not enough people are opposing him for the right reasons. In any case, your theory may be wrong anyway. Newsweek's sources claim that Speaker Pelosi's opposition came about because of Tiananmen Square. Of course, the Speaker and Newsweek could just be lying too...
Posted by John Thacker March 11, 2009 1:49 PM

Would if that were all true, but it isn’t. As has been noted by numerous bloggers and journalists, there is no Chinese or Tibetan human rights group on record as opposing the Freeman nomination. Nor is there any quote available anywhere from anyone who works on Chinese foreign policy and analysis that says anything bad about Mr. Freeman. What Mr. Freeman was saying, and said repeatedly, is that the Chinese government should have acted sooner to resolve the issue, whether by force or by negotiations. He never makes the case that what the Chinese did was right, just that it was done too late so that the Chinese governement had fewer choices in how to respond.

As to the Saudi payroll contention – if it’s perfectly acceptable for Republican officials to go back and forth through the revolving door of K Street lobbying firms (many of whom are also paid by the Saudi’s as well as other foreign countries), why is it not ok for Mr. Freeman?

Then I made the mistake of trying to bring this back to being a process argument, as Ms. McArdle intended her blog to be:

All, i'm not saying anything that other Atlantic Authors aren't saying. Railroading a guy out of public service because you don't like what he says is ok by me - so long as you are HONEST about it. Hiding behind supposed tax issues (unproven), or speeches (misquoted) on one subject when you really object for other reasons is LYING. That's where my problem exists.
Posted by Philip H March 11, 2009 3:21 PM

From that point, I was dismissed using many classic conservative approaches. First, I was accused of having some sort of God-like ability to discern motives which other commenters supposedly lacked (as if it is hard to fathom what AIPAC’s motive might be). This is called an ad hominum attack, BTW:

Philip H., where did you purhcase your finely calibrated motive-o-meter, which allows you to peer into the souls of people who you don't know, and thus unerringly discern the real reasons all the critics of Freeman have for opposing his appointment to this job?
Does everyone say stupid things at some times in their life? Sure. We aren't talking about some off the cuff remarks at a cocktail party here, however. We are talking about scheduled interviews, in which there was plenty of time to antcipate the questions that would be asked, and then WERE asked. To anaswer in a manner which suggests you have had a psychotic episode does not engender confidence.
Posted by Will Allen March 11, 2009 3:53 PM

Then, even though I’m trying to focus on the process by which all this was handled, the bus is backed over me because I haven’t said whether I agree or disagree with Mr. Freeman (which is irrelevant to whether he was dealt with fairly and honestly and evaluated on the credentials he would bring to the table):

so long as you are HONEST about it. Hiding behind supposed tax issues (unproven), or speeches (misquoted) on one subject when you really object for other reasons is LYING. That's where my problem exists.
Take it up with Newsweek and Speaker Pelosi, then, as they insist that her (very important) opposition was about China. They're liars, too?
But if that's where your problem exists, fine. Just answer one way or the other, Philip H. Aside from all the "opponents were motivated by the wrong reason" crap, and your allegations that they wouldn't care if someone on their team made his other statements, do you think his statements on Tiananmen and the Bonus Army were disqualifying? Do you at least disagree with them?
Posted by John Thacker March 11, 2009 4:11 PM

Finally, I am dismissed with a backhanded . . . compliment . . . . that what I’ve actually written is satire. I suppose one could argue that most political discussion these days is satire at one level or another, but clearly this is another attempt to move away from my central process thesis:

Aren't a lot of you missing Philip H.'s point? Do you really think he means to be taken at face value? He's written some pretty good satire there, and the uncertainty as to whether it really is satire only makes it better.
Posted by Bambi March 11, 2009 4:19 PM

Quite the ringer. How I managed to get away from being accused of being shrill is beyond me. Here’ the thing – Walter Pincus made the very point I was making in his article in today’s Washington Post. To quote Pincus:

For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," spokesman Josh Block said.

But Block responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: "As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background."

All I was trying to get at is this – if you are the official, employed spokesman for a political action committee, as Josh Block is, and you tell everyone that the PAC you work for has no official position even as you are meeting off the record with various journalists who grant you anonymity in exchange for the real thinking of your organization; and that thinking goes against the public statements of your organization, then you are lying. That’s one of the major reasons why our national political discourse is so broken. It is one of the things that needs to be fixed. And there is nothing satirical about my belief in this regard.

UPDATE:

Apparently I'm not the only one with the view that this is bad . . . . . .

The Real Stimulus Package

Over at Think Progress, Matt Yglesias has a good piece on what the final stimulus actually looks like. While some commenters got the colors wrong - I think there could have been a yellow in there instead of two greys - the basic idea is this. For all the howling by Republicans about the stimulus, the single biggest piece at approximately 32% is made up of . . . wait for it . . . tax cuts! Yes Sir, step right up, because Democrats are actually adopting Republican economic ideas, even after those ideas have been debunked by history. So, when they whine as they will about eing shut out, send them this graph and ask them to have Michale Steele apologize for their hystrionics.

And while we're at it, ponder this from teh Center fro American Progress study Matt cites:

"While Keynesian hasn’t been disproven, supply-side economics has. President Bush’s economic advisors assured the American public in the early 2000s that the president’s massive tax cuts would generate economic growth and create jobs. This classic supply-side policy intervention did no such thing. The 2000s economic recovery was the weakest of all post-World War II recoveries in terms of growth in investment, GDP, and job creation."

As I've said before, supply side responses to demand side issues just don't work.

What we learn from Mr. George Will.

There has been much press since 15 February about the writings of George Will on climate change. Back then, Mr. will wrote an opinion piece continuing his fight against climate change (and particularly climate change caused by human action) by misrepresenting global sea ice data to try and prove that global warming isn’t occurring, or is at least not the next big catastrophe. If you’ve missed this tempest, I’ve included many links below you can follow for a variety of view points.

I’m not going to spend time rebutting the science – others have done a far better job then I could. I’m also not going to spend too much time dealing with the journalistic ethics, though I did leave a fairly lengthy comment on the Columbia Journalism Review blog about the controversy. There, I wrote in part:

“So, if Mr. Will believe (sic) the science says something that I do not, he needs to do two things. First, he needs to accurately tell us what scientists say, instead of telling us the opposite, and he needs to cite his sources. And for the record, published scientists do not cite blog posts in peer-reviewed literature.”

Having framed my two arguments, now I am forced to ask myself – what do I as a scientist and blogger do about this? What role can I adopt? And what can I carry forward as a lesson for future events like this one?

First, I think it needs to be said that Mr. Will can always be expected to start his columns from a conservative ideological point, not a set of facts. Pundits always start with their worldview. Second, I think I need to remind a few people that we shouldn’t expect Mr. Will to frame the facts he chooses in ways that we recognize or agree with, at least if we come from a liberal perspective. That’s not his job. Third, we do need to be on our guard in our responses. As I have noted before (and so Glenn Greenwald), too many forthright and reasoned responses to conservative opinion makers get shoved aside because they can too easily be accused of being shrill (as if conservatives never are). Finally, we need to make sure our responses not only set the facts straight, but make clear when ethical standards have been violated. This is especially important, since many Republicans rail that liberals do not believe in personal responsibility, the rule of law, or any kind of moral or ethical code.

Having digested all that, I view Mr. Will’s two columns as a cautionary tale for liberals (and climate change scientists especially). We need to get out ahead of these controversies. We need, as bloggers, science journalists, scientists, bureaucrats in science agencies, to start figuring out where we might be confronted by conservative ideologues and run their stories with our rebuttals before they do. This shouldn’t be too hard anymore.

Over at The Intersection, one of Chris Mooney’s commenters, Wes Rolley, notes he has suggested to ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopolous that they have Chris on as a guest to debate Mr. Will. While I’d love to see Chris on that show (he’d thus be in D.C. and we could meet for brunch after), responding to Mr. Will now is too little, too late. Had we been data mining before hand, someone could have put this out on the intertubes, and then when the first column came out, we could have all politely directed the WaPo to the blog post in question, thus making the error not just one of science (where faked controversy helps the Post sell papers) but rather one of process. And journalists, as we’ve seen, love to defend their process.

I’ll grant you I don’t have the time to do that regularly. I don’t have the audience to make that impact. And I don’t have a good command of every aspect of the science. I also can’t easily think like a conservative most days. But I’m betting there is someone out here who can. And they need to start doing so, or we’ll end up fighting rear-guard actions for decades, all the while witnessing the increasing economic, environmental and security demands of a planet driven warmer by our inaction.

One note – my typing isn’t the best, and I have now spotted three typos in my CJR comment, even though I reread through it twice before hitting the POST button. I’d really love to see more spell checking available in blog comment sections for typing challenged folks like me.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/27/unchecked-ice-a-saga-in-five-chapters/#comment-15159

http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2009/02/george_will_lies_music_to_my_e.php

http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/02/the-george-will-scandal/

http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/15/george-will-global-cooling-warming-debunked/

http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/27/in-a-journalistic-blunder-reminiscent-of-the-janet-cooke-scandal-the-senior-editors-of-the-washington-post-let-george-will-reassert-several-climate-falsehoods-plus-some-new-ones/

http://mediamatters.org/items/200902240010?f=h_top

http://mediamatters.org/static/pdf/wapo-letter-20090224.pdf

http://mediamatters.org/items/200902260029?f=h_latest

http://mediamatters.org/discuss/200902260029

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/expers-big-flaw-in-wills-ice-assertions/

UPDATE:
Here's a good summary page that gives you the state of Play as of 5 March or so.

Vodoo economics v2.0 - the continued foilbes of Republican math

What he said.

Societal Shame - do we need more or less?

Over at the Atlantic, Ross Douthat has an interesting take on the effectiveness of shame in society. I commend it to you, even though he and I are definitely on different ends of the political spectrum.

Once you read it, come back here, and ponder this with me: If there were a strong sense of societal shame that would have stigmatized the actions of those responsible for the current economic crisis, would we be where we are today? You see, I tihnk that when Republicans talk about "voluntary" regulation of markets, they are theoretically calling for the establishment of shame mechanisms in society to keep individual actors in markets from doing things that are, in the long term, detrimental to those actors. If I'm right, Republican policy makers believe this moral imposition will be stronger then any governemental regulatory scheme, since you can't price being stigmatized the way you can price . . . . say air pollution fines vs. installing the latest clean air technology.

Now, the next question to ponder - have we, as a society, made enough use of stigmatization and shame in responding to this crisis? I'm not asking about what we should have to prevent it - I'm asking about what we are doing to respond to it. Clearly, We've seen Congress rake business leaders over the coals, and we've seen a few pudits begin to take these guys to task f or their actions. But if we aim to do more then just endure this crisis, maybe we need a more folks calling our business and elected leaders out on thier behavior. After all, many in congress who watched this mess unfold, and did nothing, are still on Capitol Hill.

H/T to Mike for turning me on to Ross' writing.