brainiac conspiracy

Tuesday Night Ballad Blogging

Because we are still waiting for our ship to come in.

---Vitelius

Dirty Little Secrets

I know it's potentially fog-of-war stuff, but if true, the election's over:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has what he says is an informed explanation for why Mitt Romney refuses to release additional tax returns. According a Bain investor, Reid charged, Romney didn't pay any taxes for 10 years.

Now sure, this could all be a squeeze play to pressure Willard into releasing his tax returns, and if so, well played. But Harry Reid is not exactly the kind of guy who goes around shooting his mouth off and smack-talking Republicans (or anyone else) if he doesn't have the goods to back up the boasts. Would certainly help to explain the $100 million IRA, though!

---Vitelius

Not Bad Enough Yet

While I can understand the concern here:

“This is my fear, and it’s a real, legitimate fear,” Greene says, revving up the engine. “You have this huge, huge class of people who are impoverished. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we will build a class of poor people that will take over this country, and the country will not look like what it does today. It will be a different economy, rights, all that stuff will be different.”

More often than not, fears like these manifest as loathing for the current administration, as evidenced by the recent wave of Romney fund-raisers in the Hamptons. “Obama wants to take my money and give it to do-nothing animals,” one matron blurted at a recent party at the Pierre for Dick Morris’s Screwed!, the latest entry into a growing pile of socioeconomic snuff porn geared toward this audience.

Greene, a registered Democrat, isn’t buying this school of thought. “It is kind of a problem in America that so many Americans believe if they elect a different president, everything is going to be fine. This whole idea of American exceptionalism, that we’re the greatest, when people don’t have health insurance, don’t have housing,” he says, swinging past the guesthouse, which has 360-degree views of the bay, and the staff house, which does not. “There are all these people in this country who are just not participating in the American Dream at all,” he says. This makes him uncomfortable, not least because they might try to take a piece of his. “Right now, for some bizarre reason, a lot of these people are supporting Republicans who want to cut taxes on the wealthy,” he says. “At some point, if we keep doing this, their numbers are going to keep swelling, it won’t be an Obama or a Romney. It will be a ­Hollande. A Chávez.”

I doubt it. More likely in the short term, it will be a Franco if we're lucky, and a Mobutu if we're not. But an honest-to-goodness socialist government? Shit, we can't even get a working majority of people in this country to recognize the advantages of single-payer health care, let alone demanding that workers control the means of production. Problem is, the virtually all of the attempts at socialist/progressive government in this country all grew out of a series of economic calamities---in 1893, 1907, 1920 and 1929---that make our current economy, by comparison, look dynamic and vibrant. But until 2008, it had been a very long time since we'd had such a precipitous market crash, and there were very few people still around who could remind us from experience of what Hard Times were really like, what positive effects the New Deal exerted on the populace, and the amount of sacrifice and struggle that was required to get those social programs enacted into law. Instead we have two generations of Americans---pretty much everyone under the age of 50---whose political consciousness has been informed by an anti-union, anti-goverment, pro-corporatist policy agenda that rewards rule-bending and punishes regulation. Tens of millions of working-class Americans have bought into this bullshit, and unless they themselves become hopelessly destitute, or die off from old age, there's simply no way an American Spring can ever take root in this country

What I'm getting at is this: it is going to take a second Great Depression, with Spanish-level unemployment numbers, before we begin to see the stirrings of class-consciousness that are the prerequisite for the formation of a viable progressive movement---and even then, we're likely to be confronted, as were progressive protestors in the past, by a neofascist news media and state-sanctioned goon squads and NRA shock troopers who'll aim to smash up our demonstrations and break our resolve. And this time they'll be armed with Tasers and AR-15s instead of billy clubs and police dogs.

What I don't think possible anymore is expecting our sclerotic system of government to reform itself from within by simply electing "better Democrats" to office, much as I would like to think that it would. What it is going to take is a mass movement of millions of people committed to nonviolent resistance and willing to undergo tremendous hardships for the cause. And sorry to say, I only detect the slightest murmur of this at present at a typical Occupy rally. For the short term, some of us might even be better advised to consider some form of self-imposed exile, to keep our powder dry and our asses safe, because things will have to get a lot more desperate here before social conditions will permit an American Spring to flower. But in the short term, it's only a matter of whether we get our own version of Argentina under the generals, or the Congo under the kleptocracy. Come to think of it, we're already well along the way to realizing the latter.

---Vitelius

MInimal Blogging Day

Gotta earn some money today, so go insult some journalists while I'm away.

---Vitelius

Monday Night Funk Blogging

Because life without thrill rides would not be worth living.

---Vitelius

The Aspen Ideas Festival is Decadent and Depraved

Last month:

The Art and Science of
Human Inventiveness
The best-selling author of Imagine thinks differently than most about how creativity “happens.” Demystifying our notions of who is creative and what constitutes a creative type, Lehrer offers insights through history and contemporary society to the nature of human inventiveness---which, at its core, is really quite scientific. Can you imagine?
Jonah Lehrer
Interviewer: John Seely Brown (Emphasis added.)

Today:

Jonah Lehrer, a best-selling author and prolific journalist who wrote for Wired, Scientific American Mind, the Wall Street Journal and other publications, has resigned from his position as a New Yorker staff writer after an article in Tablet Magazine reported that he had fabricated quotes in his latest book “Imagine.”

Well, making shit up is one way of being creative, I'll give him that much.

Future historians will surely marvel at the earliest decades of the 21st century and wonder how we as a species ever resisted falling under the influence of cynics, charlatans and self-serving grifters who comprised the bulk of our most respected media and policy elites. That is, if we manage to accomplish this at all.

---Vitelius

With Friends Like These

Who needs Republicans?

Since the 1960s, LBJ’s Great Society and JFK’s New Frontier have competed for federal dollars. And as the cost of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security has skyrocketed, we’ve spent less and less of our budget educating kids, building roads, and curing disease.

In this report, we argue that the only way for Democrats to save progressive priorities like NASA, highway funding, and clean energy research is to reform entitlements. The lame duck offers Congress a “Now or Never” chance to set the terms of a budget deal that saves money on entitlements, raises revenue, and protects investments. And the heart of the Democratic brand is depending on it.

Snark aside, they are only channeling the conventional Beltway wisdom, which defines "grand bargain" thusly:

1. If Democrats are to reclaim their birthright, they must be willing to take an axe to Social Security and Medicare; and,

2. If Republicans are to reclaim their birthright, they must be willing to take an axe to Social Security and Medicare.

It is almost---repeat, almost---enough to make one wish for a Romney landslide next November, with big Republican majorities in both houses zeroing out capital gains and estate taxes for rich people and imposing Ryan Plans and VAT taxes on everyone else en route to driving the Republic into a second Great Recession. But after all that, I'm afraid that these sensible Third Way centrists would still be impervious to the suggestion that attempts at compromise with Francisco Franco Republicans are tantamount to capitulation. They'd shake their heads, scold bloggers like yours truly for being uncivil, and remind us again of the need for sensible entitlement reform because, well, bipartisanship. The thought of moving overseas for the next few years seems increasingly more attractive each day.

---Vitelius

If The Shoe Fits

Wear it, dude.

Suppose it would have been fairer to see a few more billboards like this sprouting up around the country during the previous administration---and maybe some did?---but better late than never either way. Far as I'm concerned, the worst thing you can say about it is that it's in poor taste, but otherwise, it's a message that deserves a wider hearing.

---Vitelius

Banking Reform

Not necessarily an endorsement here, but it's not too hard to see how the following legal remedy could incentivize good behavior:

An Iranian court has sentenced four people to death for a billion-dollar bank fraud that tainted the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state media reported on Monday.

Iranians, hit by sanctions and soaring inflation, were shocked by the scale of the $2.6 billion bank loan embezzlement that was exposed last year and by allegations it was carried out by people close to the political elite or with their assent.

Of the thirty-nine people tried for the fraud---the biggest in the Islamic Republic's history---four were sentenced to hang, the IRNA state news agency reported [...]

Two people were sentenced to life and others received jail sentences of up to 25 years, Mohseni-Ejei said. In addition to jail time, some were sentenced to flogging, ordered to pay fines and banned from government jobs.

---Vitelius

Enemy Combatants

When I was a kid, we called them "Viet Cong." Today we call them "militants." Exactly who they were was never easy to pin down, but over time we established a reliable standard for identifying them: Which is to say, anyone we killed in a military operation who wasn't wearing a uniform.

---Vitelius

First as Tragedy

Then as Little America 2.0:

Among the projects criticized by the inspector general is a plan to use costly diesel generators to provide electricity to residents of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, until the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers install a new hydropower turbine at a dam in the violence-plagued hills of neighboring Helmand province. Purchasing diesel to run the generators, which produce about 25 megawatts of electricity each---enough to power about 2,500 Afghan homes or small businesses---is projected to cost U.S. taxpayers about $220 million through 2013.

Senior U.S. commanders argued that increasing electricity through the “Kandahar Bridging Solution” would be an important part of the overall American military effort to beat back the Taliban in Kandahar province. Those commanders asserted that more power to operate lights, television sets and fans would please residents and lead many of them to throw their support behind the Afghan government.

But other civilian and military officials have questioned that logic. When U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl was the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Kandahar last year, he said he could not find any evidence that the additional electricity was yielding greater employment, stability or support for the government [...]

Back then, Dahl also noticed a disturbing disparity: The installation of the turbine at the dam, which will not occur for at least two more years, will produce significantly less power than the city receives from the generators. Since the Afghan government will not have the financial ability to buy diesel for the generators, that means the city’s power supply will inevitably ebb once the turbine is operational and U.S. funding for diesel ends.

Am about two-thirds of the way through Chandrasekeran's book at this point and am finding it a terrible slog to get through not because of the prose style, which is exemplary, because of the jaw-dropping examples of #EpicPolicyFail that leap out from almost every page. It's as if no one in the Washington foreign-policy establishment wants to accept the obvious fact that the country is run by a gang of corrupt warlords and opium-runners who are hated by their subjects and whose only use for us is as temporary leverage against their tribal/political rivals, and that most Afghans simply want to be left alone after 30 years of armed conflict to get on with their lives. Not to mention the fact that, oh, maybe all that government spending on infrastructure might be more wisely invested here.

---Vitelius

Minuscule Blogging Day

Went to bed late last night, woke up late this morning, and going out soon to the Valley for the evening. Feel free to behave like an amoral dickwad until your regularly scheduled blogging resumes tomorrow.

----Vitelius

Not Enough Jail Cells

Truth to tell, if everyone responsible for our current economic malaise were held legally accountable for their actions, we'd have to undertake a massive new round of prison construction. Which is why we don't indict anyone but a few wildcatters and low-level operatives---because of an acute housing shortage, basically.

---Vitelius

Sure Looks Good on a Bumper Sticker

Ten. Fucking. Years:

The OMB, in its Mid-Session Review to Congress released Friday, projects unemployment will drop gradually, to 7.7 percent in 2013, 7.3 percent in 2014, 6.7 percent in 2015, 6.2 percent in 2016, 5.7 percent in 2017 and remaining at 5.4 percent from 2018 to 2022. The national unemployment rate was last at 5.4 percent in May 2008, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The projections are based, the report said, on accelerated economic growth as the country comes out of its recession.

And this assumes no Euro-meltdown or some similar fiscal catastrophe in the interim.

At least we could all take some solace in knowing that our leaders had fixed the broken institutions that caused the recession in the first place. They haven't, of course, and instead will likely devote their near-term efforts to "fixing" institutions that didn't because wasteful spending.

---Vitelius

The Booming U.S. Export Market

Can't see what could possibly go wrong by injecting millions of dollars' worth of munitions and weaponry into one of the most politically unstable regions on the planet:

The U.S. can underwrite the war in Somalia for a relative pittance---the cost over four years has been less than $700 million, a tenth of what the military spends in Afghanistan in a month---but the price tag is growing. More than a third of the U.S. assistance has been spent since early 2011 [...]

The U.S. is supplying the African forces with surveillance drones, ammunition, small arms, armored personnel carriers, night-vision goggles, communications gear, medical equipment and other sophisticated aid and training, documents show.

Before the soldiers deploy, they receive boots, uniforms, protective vests and 13 weeks of basic training in combat skills and detecting hidden bombs. There's also more specialized instruction for medics, intelligence officers and combat engineers.

Sigh . . .

There was once a time in this country when we exported all sorts of stuff to people around the world: Cars, food, minerals, textiles, timber, durable goods, etc. We still export some of those things, of course, but it sure seems that America's most reliable and profitable export nowadays is, well, war. Which would be basically fine, except for the fact that innocent people usually end up getting killed as a result. Not to mention that $700 million spent to eradicate some scary brown people is $700 million not being spent to, oh, put some Americans back to work building something else besides night-vision goggles and armored troop carriers.

---Vitelius

Light Blogging Tonight

Heading into the bowels of the O.C. to partake in some popular culture this evening, so get down with your own bad selves tonight.

---Vitelius

No One Could Have Possibly Predicted

That there would be no real tax increases on rich people because asshole Southern Democrats:

Senate Democrats, who are united in support of higher income tax rates for millionaires and billionaires, are paralyzed by disagreements on how to tax the estates of the wealthiest Americans.

Lobbied by business owners and billionaires, Democrats including Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana resisted a proposal from President Barack Obama to tax individual estates of more than $3.5 million---roughly three in 1,000---at a top rate of 45 percent. The split among Democrats, who control the Senate, will give Republicans more influence on the issue after the Nov. 6 election.

“It’s something that’s really divided and perplexed our caucus about what’s the fair way to move forward,” said Landrieu, who supports repealing the estate tax and wants to reach a compromise with Republicans. “We don’t have the votes to do anything, really, with it.”

Even if it costs them the Senate for another few years, Team Democrat would be far better served in the long term by letting these people lose their re-election bids and concentrating their resources in districts and states where Real Democrats, not Blue Dogs, can win. Just cede the entire Old Confederacy to the GOP---every single seat---and the Teabillies still only control a quarter of the Senate. Time to fucking give up on the Rahm Emanuel 1990s Blue Dog experiment already because yeah, okay, it won Congressional majorities for Democrats---at the cost of sabotaging the Democratic policy agenda. Unless elections aren't about policy at all but are simply popularity contests.

---Vitelius

A Nation of Whiners

Nobody forces anyone to go into farming. It's a free will decision in a free country, and in a free-market economy such as ours, you succeed on your virtues or fail on your own poor lifestyle choices:

Given farming’s vulnerability to extreme weather, against which private insurance may not exist, there may be a limited role for government protection from genuine catastrophe. This drought might or might not qualify, depending on what crop you’re talking about and where it’s planted.

Otherwise, farmers should have to hedge as other businesses do: by diversifying their product lines, purchasing insurance at market rates, leveraging assets or maintaining cash reserves.

Not to wish ill on our economy, or to root for higher unemployment, but a bruising round of layoffs amongst the member of Post's editorial board would be an educational experience for them, don't you think?

--Vitelius

Random Thoughts

I really liked the Olympics a lot better when the Opening Ceremony was just a band playing the anthem, a few nymphs tossing bouquets of flowers, and all of the athletes marching around the track. Enough of the overload of cultural signifiers already.

On the other hand, the in-your-face tribute to socialized medicine was spot-on.

On the other other hand, American TV yakkers are just awful.

Also too, NBC apparently preempted some Tribute to Terror Victims™ last night in favor of an interview with Michael Phelps. They seem to be catching some grief for it this morning, but I'm frankly glad they did it. Exploiting national tragedies to yank our emotional chains is one of the most heinous things professional sports and network television do on a regular basis, particularly when they occur in a venue that inflames our spirit of patriotism, and all these rituals ever really accomplish is to appeal to our wounded sense of collective victimization. Which, considering that we are talking primarily about the U.K. and the U.S. here, is doubly obscene wen you ponder the carnage we have wrought on the rest of world as payback for sins that were commited against us. So good on NBC for ignoring this exercise in self-pity; now if they and their broadcast brethren would just do the same to all those 9/11 tributes that happen at every major-league baseball game, I'd say we're making some progress.

---Vitelius

Epitaphs

Worth reading in full, but the money quote belongs on the administration's tombstone should it fail to survive November:

Nothing blunts the fierce urgency of now like the soft promise of later.

---Vitelius