brainiac conspiracy

Divorced From History

You think that a heavily unionized labor force, a progressive tax code with top rates of up to 90 percent, a minimum wage that's worth more than nine bucks an hour in today's dollars, and 30 years of generous New Deal social programs had anything to do with this?

His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricy, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today.

More important, the income gaps did not lead to big behavior gaps. Roughly 98 percent of men between the ages of 30 and 49 were in the labor force, upper class and lower class alike. Only about 3 percent of white kids were born outside of marriage. The rates were similar, upper class and lower class.

Of course, in Brooksworld, stuff like tax policy and trade policy and labor policy and education policy are mere "distractions" from a greater truth, which is that basically, poor people are poor because they're morally deficient, and rich people are rich because, well, they aren't, and if we'd all just emulate our betters and watch less TV and stop having babies out of wedlock, we really wouldn't be having all these niggling social problems. I guess this is what passes for a philosophy of compassionate conservatism, but all I can really make of it is that scolding individuals for their bad behavior is far more important than examining the institutions that affect and influence their behavior.

---Vitelius

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Why can't we have nice things instead of . . . ?

The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: a bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target.

The breakthrough comes courtesy of engineers at the government’s Sandia National Laboratories. They’ve successfully tested a prototype of the bullet at distances up to 2,000 meters---more than a mile [...]

The lab’s day-to-day operations are run by an auxiliary of Lockheed Martin. Of course, Lockheed’s been a longtime partner in the military’s quest for the ultimate self-guided munition. In 2008, they scored a $14.5 million contract as part of Darpa’s “Exacto” program, which sought to develop sniper rifles with guided bullets.

---Vitelius

Young People

Will sometimes say stupid things that they don't really mean as a way to get a rise from their peers. It's all a part of the maturation process. As grown-ups, it's our job to employ our maturity of age to figure out when young people are talking trash, and when they're being sincere, before arriving at any firm judgment. It's not all that difficult, really---unless you happen to work for the Homeland Security department.

Also too, I guess this means that if you book a flight on a transcontinental airliner---or any airliner, probably---you had better be able to make peace with the fact that you're being spied on by your own government. Because obviously, you are.

---Vitelius

Chemical Weapons

You would think our leaders would be wise enough at this point in our history to refrain from spending our money on research and development programs that could end up killing millions of us. You would also, however, be wrong:

In the experiments, university-based scientists in the Netherlands and Wisconsin created a version of the so-called H5N1 influenza virus that is highly lethal and easily transmissible between ferrets, the lab animals that most closely mirror human beings in flu research.

That work led to fears that the modified virus might also be able to easily jump from person to person. Such transmissibility, which the board said could significantly raise the odds of a pandemic, has only rarely been seen in natural H5N1.

“If influenza A/H5N1 virus acquired the capacity for human-to-human spread . . . we could face an epidemic of substantial proportions,” the board wrote.

---Vitelius

They Won't Attack Us

Unless we or the Israelis attack them first.

So maybe we shouldn't be thinking about attacking them first?

---Vitelius

No We Can't

It's the mantra of deficit hawks everywhere, and all the more reason why anyone in the administration's inner circle who hewed to this philosophy should have been ushered out the door before the inauguration. Because No We Can't is kind of like the diametric opposite of Yes We Can, and because, well, we needed a budget-buster moon-shot project in 2009. And we still do---starting right here:

In another recent study, researchers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, found that beef products from conventionally raised and grass-fed animals were equally likely to be contaminated by antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli. In a second study by the same group, poultry products labeled “no antibiotics added” carried antibiotic-resistant E. coli and Enterococcus (another bacteria that causes invasive disease in humans), although the microbes were less prevalent than on conventionally raised birds.

“The real question is, where is it coming from, on the farm or post-farm?” says Paul Ebner, a food safety expert who led the Purdue studies. And the biggest question of all, he says, “Is it impacting human health?”

“There’s a tremendous amount of interest in this issue---feeding antibiotics to food animals,” says Ellen Silbergeld, an expert on health and environmental impacts of industrial food animal production at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “Thus, determining when amending that practice makes a difference is important.”

“The definitive study would take every bacterium and follow that along until it gets in humans---from food supply to causing a certain disease,” Smith says. “It would be a huge and costly study that no one’s going to do, but that’s what the meat producers” say is missing.”

---Vitelius

Stimulus Vs. Deficits

The fact that our wise Democratic leaders felt that they needed to engage in this argument at all---which is to say, an argument over the wisdom of unilateral disarmament before the battle has even started---only proves that some of Washington's best and brightest minds aren't really all that bright:

Obama was told that, regardless of his policies, the deficits would likely be blamed on him in the long run. The forecasts were frightening, and jeopardized his ambitious domestic agenda, which had been based on unrealistic assumptions made during the campaign. “Since January 2007 the medium-term budget deficit has deteriorated by about $250 billion annually,” the memo said. “If your campaign promises were enacted then, based on accurate scoring, the deficit would rise by another $100 billion annually. The consequence would be the largest run-up in the debt since World War II.”

There was an obvious tension between the warning about the extent of the financial crisis, which would require large-scale spending, and the warning about the looming federal budget deficits, which would require fiscal restraint. The tension reflected the competing concerns of two of Obama’s advisers. Christina Romer, the incoming chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, drafted the stimulus material. A Berkeley economist, she was new to government. She believed that she had persuaded Summers to raise the stimulus recommendation above the initial estimate, six hundred billion dollars, to something closer to eight hundred billion dollars, but she was frustrated that she wasn’t allowed to present an even larger option. When she had done so in earlier meetings, the incoming chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, asked her, “What are you smoking?” She was warned that her credibility as an adviser would be damaged if she pushed beyond the consensus recommendation.

Peter Orszag, the incoming budget director, was a relentless advocate of fiscal restraint. He was well known in Washington policy circles as a deficit hawk. Orszag insisted that there were mechanical limits to how much money the government could spend effectively in two years. In the Summers memo, he contributed sections about historic deficits and the need to scale back campaign promises.

If there ever was a time when you wished that some of our political leaders had a little more experience working in the private sector---not Mitt Romney's private sector, but the brick-and-mortar version that the rest of us labor in---this would have been it. Because anyone who has worked more than ten minutes in the real private sector knows that cost-cutting never creates any jobs. In fact, companies usually engage in cost-cutting with the expressed aim of eliminating or consolidating jobs.

The other amazing thing about this depressing essay is this: nobody at any time seems to have thought that a good way to find the money to help pay for the stimulus would be to, you know, raise taxes on rich people.

On February 1st, a day before Obama was scheduled to meet with congressional leaders from both parties to make his case for the stimulus, his advisers wrote him a memo recommending that he keep the stimulus package from growing: “We believe that it is critical to draw a sharp line not to exceed $900 billion, so that the size of the package does not spiral out of control.” Senators would likely amend the bill to add about forty billion dollars in personal projects—some worthy, some wasteful. At the same time, Obama hadn’t abandoned his dream of a moon-shot project. He had replaced the smart grid with a request for twenty billion dollars in funding for high-speed trains. But including that request was risky. “Critics may argue that such a proposal is not appropriate for a recovery bill because the funding we are proposing is likely to be spent over 10+ years,” the advisers wrote.

To find the extra money—forty billion to satisfy the senators and twenty billion for Obama—the President needed to cut sixty billion dollars from the bill. He was given two options: he could demand that Congress remove a seventy-billion-dollar tax provision that was worthless as a stimulus but was important to the House leadership, or he could cut sixty billion dollars of highly stimulative spending. He decided on the latter.

Obama's gut instincts were right. He should have held out for the moon shot as well as aid to states, and informed all of his advisers that they were free to resign if they disagreed with him. It only goes to confirm, I think, the biggest problem we've had in Washington the last three years: Not a lack of vision, nor of resources, but a lack of political will to get shit done that needs to get done.

---Vitelius

The Light at the End of The Endless Tunnel

Hard to see how we ever extricate ourselves from the economic doldrums unless and until our leaders get serious about reforming our outlaw system of housing finance. Because they weren't serious about it four years ago, and they're still not now:

The financial crisis in 2008 was made worse when Wall Street traders made bets against their customers and the American public. Now, some see similar behavior, only this time by traders at a government-owned company who are using leverage, which increases the potential profits but also the risk of big losses, and other Wall Street stratagems. “More than three years into the government takeover, we have Freddie Mac pursuing highly levered, complicated transactions seemingly with the purpose of trading against homeowners,” says Mayer. “These are the kinds of things that got us into trouble in the first place.”

---Vitelius

Spending Isn't Up, Revenues Are Down

As anyone who has devoted ten minutes to the economics of the recession can figure out. Unfortunately, our Democratic leaders have chosen to spend the last year prattling on about the need for deficit reduction through spending cuts and "entitlement reform" when the real solution to the deficit (besides raising taxes on rich people) is to return to full employment and getting all those jobless people, you know, paying taxes again. Failing to make this point creates a mammoth-sized opening for the lying liars to hammer a credulous news media over "runaway government spending", which isn't really happening but which becomes the overriding issue of our time to the Gregorys and Blitzers in TV Land because Republicans insist that it must be so because deficits can only be caused by spending too much money for the benefit of lazy poor people. Maybe our Democratic leaders would consider, as an alternative, ceasing their endless parroting of right-wing talking points?

---Vitelius

Only a Moron

Would write this:

“Obama’s ratings have been consistently among the most polarized for a president in the last 60 years,” concludes Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones in a memo summing up the results. “That may not be a reflection on Obama himself as much as on the current political environment in the United States, because Obama’s immediate predecessor, Bush, had similarly polarized ratings, particularly in the latter stages of his presidency after the rally in support from the 9/11 terror attacks faded.”

Our guess is that Jones’ latter hypothesis is the right one---that we are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action.

Uh huh. Remember how many Democrats disapproved of the last Republican President at the end of his first year in office?

Bush begins 2002 still enjoying wide support from the public. His current rating of 83% represents a slight decline from his high of 90%, and is tied for the 19th highest job approval score Gallup has recorded since 1938. Currently, Bush enjoys a 98% approval rating among Republicans, 81% among independents and 69% among Democrats.

How about all those Democrats who disapproved of the President two years later?

Just over half of Democrats approve of the president's job performance, 52%, while 39% disapprove.

Actually, jackoff, Democrats approved of the last GOP President when it looked like he knew how to do his job, and disapproved when it became apparent he didn't. But because the Republican Party is currently caught in the grips of mass psychosis, in official Washington that naturally means that Democrats must be equally psychotic. This is how the law of false equivalencies works---let's call it Cilizza's Law from now on---where Republicans are never fully responsible for anything they say or do because Democrats, you know, are always equally unhinged.

---Vitelius

Not Making My Day

By starting it off with this welcome news, then realizing I live a block away from the Israeli consulate. Oh well, if the truck bombs start detonating on Wilshire Boulevard this year, you'll hear it here first.

As an alternative, perhaps some people in our government would consider adopting policies that would make it less, not more, likely that any truck bombs go off in my quiet and lovely neighborhood this year?

---Vitelius

27 Percent

It really is uncanny how often that number pops up in opinion polls.

---Vitelius

Playing Hardball

With criminals generally does not involve negotiating with criminals ahead of time over the severity of punishment the criminals find appropriate for their crimes.

Besides, whether the criminals agree to pony up $25 or $35 or $50 billion, it doesn't really alter the greater reality that the criminals are fundamentally insolvent and need to be broken up.

Also too, bad, terrible, really bad politics.

---Vitelius

Our Liberal Media

Have never been, frankly, very liberal at all:

The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

Yes, it's not a new article, but it's well worth re-reading, especially for those of us (present company included) who had forgotten about it, and for what it portends about the state of our national news media coverage---then and, quite possibly, now:

“There is quite an incredible spread of relationships,” Bader reported to the senators. “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.”

And to think so many of us were up in arms over the impropriety of "embedded journalists" in Iraq. Who knew the Pentagon was only following tradition?

---Vitelius

Technocrats

Are pretty much the same everywhere: Interested only in efficient outcomes, and free from ideological bias. They simply don't believe in democratic rule.

---Vitelius

Little Blogging Today

Tending to work-related stuff today, and need to take a break from griping about our terminally diseased political system anyway. Or maybe it's just the unbearable inevitability of Romneyhood that's got me trapped in ennui. Whatever, practice random acts of austerity while I regenerate some excess bile.

---Vitelius

The Ethics of Warfare

Always kind of cracks me up when I hear people bringing up the the subject since, well, war is pretty much universally unethical. Even so, for the sake of discussion, it's hard to see how leveraging technology to make war easier and less bloodless to fight is ever going to deter people from waging it. Then again, maybe that's the point.

Still, don't you ever find yourself wishing we'd use some of that money for stuff like soil conservation or food inspection? Like the old saying goes, you can't eat a Tomahawk missile.

---Vitelius

Alchemists

Have at last divined the method for turning shit into gold:

1. Give banks more free money to ease credit markets.
2. Banks hoard the money; credit markets tighten.
3. ???
4. Morning in America!

Meanwhile, people who need some quantitative easing.

---Vitelius

Investors' Darlings

We all know who they are: Plucky entrepreneurs who anticipate market trends by developing innovative new products that regularly exceed their earnings forecasts by logging record sales. Investors take their profits, shareholders reap dividends, consumers get shiny new toys to play with, and jobs are created as the business expands. It's win-win-win-win! Who says capitalism has to be a zero-sum game?

Meanwhile, labor camps.

Also too, sick people:

Apple's reticence was heavily criticised last May, when at least 62 workers fell sick after inhaling n-hexane used to clean touch screens at a Wintek electronics factory in Suzhou. The managers at the Taiwan-owned plant reportedly switched to the noxious chemical---which can cause nerve damage for up to two years---apparently because it dried more quickly than alcohol, thus increasing efficiency.

Hospitalised victims, cited in the new Green Choice video, said they made products for Apple and have written to the company's chief executive, Steve Jobs, requesting an explanation.

---Vitelius

Retaining Top Talent

Is one of the hoariest old canards our job creators offer up to justify their often-outlandish compensation packages. But at least a business case can be made for lavishing huge sums of money onto people if and when they display a genuine talent for increasing market share, profitability, etc., but when they've only proven themselves to be a bunch of dissembling incompetents who've grenaded their own companies, wouldn't it be better for the business to either (a) fire them and replace them with competent people, or at very least, (b) reduce their pay and let them leave if they don't like it?

Although generally he limited cash compensation and made some reductions in pay, the Special Master still approved total compensation packages in the millions. Special Master [Kenneth] Feinberg said that the companies pressured him to let the companies pay executives enough to keep them from quitting, and that Treasury officials pressured him to let the companies pay executives enough to keep the companies competitive and on track to repay TARP funds.

Given OSM's overriding goal, the seven companies had significant leverage over OSM by proposing and negotiating for excessive pay packages based on historical pay, warning Special Master Feinberg that if he did not provide competitive pay packages, top officials would leave and go elsewhere.

It's still one of the great mysteries of our time: Why our leaders allowed a bunch of executives who failed spectacularly to keep their jobs in the first place. They didn't extend this courtesy to GM; why did Goldman and JPMorgan get favored? There are any number of theories you can likely come up with to explain this, but whichever one you choose, none reflects well on the administration.

---Vitelius