brainiac conspiracy

Monday Night Music Blogging

Because. It's their day! (Mine too, so send me a rutabaga or something.)

---Baron V

Foodstuffs

Absolute must-read article here, but as revealing as it is about the formulation and marketing of sugar- and salt-laden junk foods that trigger pleasurable reactions in the brain and cause people to crave more junk, seems to me it's still missing a key part of the equation. Specifically, this:

Yes, the food industry has devised all sorts of clever marketing schemes to get its products onto store shelves in poor neighborhoods and into school cafeterias; it's perfected the "science" of junk-food production to tickle our brains' "bliss centers" so that we crave more of it; and changing consumer lifestyles (longer working hours, less time to prepare meals at home) have helped to incentivize junk-food/snack-food production and consumption. And, of course, federal farm policy, which subsidizes corn/cattle feed and which protects sugar prices with import quotas, plays a big role in making the cost of junk-food less expensive than it normally would be minus supports and subsidies. But even so, seems to me that one of the biggest drivers of cheap-food consumption in America is that fact that, simply put, we have a lot more poor people in this country now who might like to consume organic vegetables, fresh-squeezed juices and grass-fed meats but who simply can't afford them.

How to fix? Well there's been a lot of talk about changing consumer behavior by imposing sugar taxes, salt taxes and the like, but that's only going to make all kinds of food more expensive for poor people and will probably only drive consumers to seeks cheaper and even less nutritious "snack" alternatives. What if, on the other hand, governments offered tax credits/deductions for so-called "healthy food" purchases? In other words, you buy X number of groceries at a place like Whole Foods or a local co-op every year instead of snacks from 7/11, and you can take a credit or deduction for a generous percentage of your food expenses. Naturally there'd have to be a cap or limit so rich people didn't abuse the credit, but it seems to me as though policymakers might want to consider using the tax code to encourage consumers for engaging in certain market behaviors (just like offering tax credits for purchasing electric cars) instead of threatening to punish people for consuming the only food products they can realistically afford.

Other fixes? Local/regional farmer's markets have proliferated like rabbits across the country over the last ten years. They should all be required to accept food stamps. If the various accounting/processing costs are too burdensome for them, government should offer subsidies or supports to offset. Retail food chains that stock a high percentage of organics should be encouraged to open new stores in so-called "food deserts" via tax credits and government incentives and set-asides. (Hey, I'd rather see government float bonds for infrastructure improvements to lure grocery stores instead of football stadiums to town.) Teach kids about food, how it's raised and prepared and its health benefits, by making Home Economics a mandatory course in the public K-12 curriculum. Motivate the kids to excel by organizing student cook-offs and other culinary competitions. (Jamie Oliver's been promoting a pilot program along similar lines here in L.A. for some time, and it should be adopted nationwide.) Let older kids (middle/high-schoolers) earn credit by working in the school cafeteria and learning the businesses of food preparation/restaurant management (makes as much sense as offering old-school wood shop and metal shop classes). And of course, raising the minimum wage to $10/hour (or more) will give poorer people greater purchasing power, and more choice, at the local grocery store or farmer's market.

Finally, labor organizers and progressive activists should be lobbying businesses and local governments to institute a 35-hour work week. There are plenty of studies out there that suggest that a shorter work week can actually increase productivity and reduce unemployment, and the extra few hours of aded leisure time is time that families can spend shopping for, preparing, and enjoying healthy and affordable meals at home rather than dashing through the drive-thru at Karl's Jr. because they simply don't have the time for anything else.

Put all together, of course, these initiatives are going to cost billions over many years, but if the investment results in improved health-care outcomes (reduced levels of obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes), the future cost savings could dwarf the initial revenue outlays. An ounce of prevention and a pound of cure, and all that.

Granted, none of these things---or even all of them---are a perfect panacea, that many Americans will continue to consume a certain amount of cookies and potato chips because, well, they're tasty! But bottom line, you want more people to consume healthier foods, make healthier foods more affordable to them.

---Baron V

Lower the Damn Medicare Age

Should be a no-brainer for our elected leaders because doing it will yield two desirable outcomes: (1) More affordable health care for more people, and (2) more job opportunities for young people:

Three-quarters of retirees said they worked longer than they would have otherwise to maintain access to their health plan. A majority of current workers agreed with a statement that said they “planned to work longer than you would like in order to continue receiving health insurance through your employer.”

Yes, the olds can retire early if they want and get guaranteed access to health care starting next year, but they'll also find (as I have) that they're going to be paying a hell of a lot more for their coverage than they would have under an employer-based plan. I've managed to score coverage now that my COBRA benefits have lapsed, but my monthly premium has increased by a factor of four over what I paid at my last full-time corporate gig---and from what I gather, that's more the rule than the exception. That kind of "sticker shock" is not only going to prevent a lot of older people from retiring early, it will make it harder for them to save for their retirement once they do. Plus, as mentioned, hanging onto your job for five or ten years longer than you'd like keeps a lot of younger people out of the workplace, which is not a good thing, especially now.

---Baron V

Compromising With Crackpothood

At this point in our history, I'll never understand how anyone still believes this shit:

Doesn’t compromise mean setting aside one’s principles? It can, but it need not. The core responsibility of every representative is to support only those initiatives that he or she conscientiously believes will promote the good of the country. During times of deep division, compromise is especially hard: it will require each individual to endorse a package that includes elements that he or she regards as bad public policy. A compromise becomes possible when all parties conclude that despite its defects, it represents an improvement over the status quo and helps solve a pressing problem.

That is the core of the change of new attitude we need among committed partisans of all stripes: it is not unprincipled, but on the contrary honorable, to accept a hard compromise that promotes the national interest and the common good.

If you can tell me how you can compromise with people who believe that a zygote is the same thing as a baby, that the planet is less than 10,000 years old, that global warming is a liberal hoax, that rapists are incapable of impregnating their victims, that Barney Frank and poor black people caused the housing bubble crisis, that public schools are socialist indoctrination camps, that single-payer health care promotes euthanasia, that the solution to mass shootings is to hand every American an AR-15 at birth, and that the President of the United States is a closet Muslim who is conspiring with the United Nations to confiscate all of their guns so he can impose a North Korean-style dictatorship upon them, well, fine, just tell me how it's done and we'll try to cut a deal. There's just one caveat: our current President has been trying to do exactly that for the last two years. It hasn't gone over well.

Honestly, I don't know what it is with these American Unity Theater 3000 types---why they can't bring themselves to acknowledge that one of our major political parties in Washington has gone collectively insane over the last four decades and can never be bargained with rationally as it is currently constituted because it is not being run by rational-thinking people. There is an alternative, of course, and that is for the non-crazy people to ignore the crazy people altogether when formulating policy. No, it would not be "bipartisan"---if bipartisanship means consulting crazy people for bad advice---but it would promote smarter policy. And isn't that what serious persons like Bill Galston want?

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

No.

It never ceases to amaze how many members of the pundit class subscribe to the Great Man Theory, i.e., the belief that the tides of history can be magically reversed, and their flow altered, by a single strong leader blessed with singularly clear vision and an iron will. Think Hercules hosing out the Augean stables! In this case, however, no one person---or even a movement---can fix what's wrong with Republicans because the party is like an alcoholic on a three-day bender, refusing to acknowledge that it has a serious problem.

Making it plain: The party and its base have been trending crazier for decades, to the point that now roughly a quarter of the voting-age population is trapped in a kind of manufactured psychosis of voter fraud and death panels and legitimate rape and forced labor camps. No one leader can possibly serve as Therapist-in-Chief to "fix" what's wrong with them. Like drunks in denial, they are going to need to "hit rock bottom" before they ever change their act, and they aren't there yet by a long shot.

---Baron V

Friday Morning Rain Blogging

It's soggy and saturated in the Marxist dystopia today. Quelle surprise! To stay warm, I've got oxtail bones roasting in the oven, and later, they'll go in a pot to make homemade soup stock. So while we're waiting for the skies to clear, what's on everyone else's menu today?

---Baron V

Down on The Farm

Overwhelmingly sympathetic to the cause here, but I also think it's easy for some us to build up unrealistic expectations for its viability as a large-scale alternative to corporate agribusiness. For one thing, farming costs money---if you're starting from scratch, you need garden tools, seeds/seedlings, topsoil and emendments/nutrients, abundant water, and of course a plot of land. Some sort of fencing is desirable too, to keep out critters and thieves, and when you add it all up, it's a huge commitment of resources that a lot of people just can't afford.

Second, farming takes time. When I grew my own vegetable and herb garden a decade ago, I typically spent an hour or two each day digging, watering, weeding, picking and pruning. I was able to allot the time for these tasks because I worked out of my house, but if I had a conventional office job that took me away from home during daylight hours, there's no way I could have kept up with all of the daily maintenance a well-tended garden requires. So for many of us---especially in the suburbs, where people commute longer distances to work each day---it's a luxury of time we can't easily accommodate, even if we have the money to convert our suburban lawns from crabgrass to cabbage. Not trying to dump on the idea---I absolutely loved having my edible garden (it's one drawback to living in an apartment like I do now), and I certainly would like to see more government money being spent to acquire and develop community garden sites, as well as making it simpler for individuals to sell homegrown products---but I think we also need to be realistic in terms of how outwardly scalable "citizen farming" can be expected to be for the foreseeable future. More succinctly, seems to me we'd need to reengineer the social order along greatly more egalitarian lines,i.e., where more people make more money at their jobs and have more leisure time to spend at home before personal/urban farming presents a reasonable alternative to retail grocery chains. A tall order!

---Baron V

Light Blogging Afternoon

Away for a few hours in the Valley today. Go antagonize some old people while I'm away.

---Vitelius

Profiles in Courage (Bovine Edition)

Today's honoree: Tom Vilsack.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) retracted its endorsement of "Meatless Mondays" after GOP lawmakers blasted the move.

Republicans took to Twitter Wednesday to express their unhappiness with the USDA encouraging people to eat less meat.

Outside of Geithner, I can't think of another Obama appointee who has been a more willing corporate lackey than this guy. We really should insist on a new AgSec if we're to grant the President a second term.

---Vitelius

A High-Tech Leaking

Normally would have a hard time believing this:

This source insists that the claim that the joint dissent was drafted from scratch in June is flatly untrue. Furthermore, the source characterizes claims by Crawford’s sources that “the fact that the joint dissent doesn’t mention [sic] Roberts’ majority… was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him” as “pure propagandistic spin,” meant to explain away the awkward fact that while the first 46 pages of the joint dissent never even mention Roberts’ opinion for the court (this is surely the first time in the court’s history that a dissent has gone on for 13,000 words before getting around to mentioning that it is, in fact, dissenting), the last 19 pages do so repeatedly.

Bizarre. Can't imagine what type of Justice would engage in "pure propagandistic spin", can you?

I do know that CBS’s reporter, Jan Crawford, is a fine journalist whose good relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Tea Party booster and sometime Daily Caller correspondent Ginni Thomas, is widely known around the Supreme Court.

Thomas comes off as a principled conservative in Crawford’s story, especially by comparison to the Chief Justice. He is one of the conservative justices who “deliberately avoid[s] news articles on the court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times).” He doesn’t want to be “influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.”

Not sure what's most depressing here: (1) The fact that four of the Justices were willing to repeal the 20th Century last week; (2) the spouse of one of them is a right-wing political operative who lobbies on legislation that gets argued before her husband's court; or (3) one of our intrepid media watchdogs enjoys palling around with these truly awful people instead of doing her job, which is supposed to be, you know, reporting about what they fucking do, not channeling whatever gratuitous nonsense they leak to her.

Our incestuous Beltway politico-media culture is so hideously inbred at this point, it's amazing half the people in Washington don't have hare lips and hemophilia.

(Via DeLong.)

---Vitelius

That's What Executive Orders Were Made For

Still don't really see this is an unavoidable problem. Just sign a statement directing the Secretary of HHS to release the necessary funds, set up the exchanges, boom, it's done. You don't need to physically be in Iowa, or Wisconsin, or Florida or wherever to create the exchanges---some tech dweeb in the District could do it from his laptop so long as he's got firewall access and so forth. Money's not there? Just tell the Treasury to print up some more. Okay, so maybe it's not so simple as all that, but the only way I see this becoming a bonafide "problem" next year is if (a) the Serious Persons manage to convince the President that enforcing a constitutionally sound law would be needlessly partisan and shrill, or (b) Republicans win control of the White House, in which case you ca forget about the expansion since Medicaid is going to be fucked in general. So let's not lose the election, okay?

---Vitelius

Quote of The Day

ACA or no, health insurance is still too damn expensive, but it probably beats the alternative.

---Vitelius

Tea-Leaf Reading

Well, now that we know the other four wingdings on the Court would have voted to invalidate the entire health-care law, I am guessing the Chief Justice, looking twenty years into the future and thinking "legacy", decided to swallow his Federalist pride and side with the godless liberals. Avoids a massive political firestorm and forever confers upon himself the title of Fair & Impartial Jurist™ for life. Like I said, smart career move.

---Vitelius

Good Career Move

Also too, a banner day for broccoli farmers.

Still don't think the ACA is a terribly effective piece of legislation, but (a) am happy to be proved sorta-maybe-totally wrong about the Federalist Five (they're looking more like four-and-a-half now) and (b) our leaders now have a chance to revise and improve the existing law without having to start over again from scratch. Don't expect this to happen anytime soon, of course, but at least there's the chance.

---Vitelius

Numbers Games

Much as I sympathize with well-meaning attempts to reform our sclerotic judicial system, I don't really see what difference it makes whether we have nine justices on the High Court, or 19 justices, or even 99 of them if Team Democrat keeps losing Presidential elections and/or keeps acceding to crackpot demands (when they're out of power) to lard up the Court with crackpot nominees. The solution to me would be to string together four or five consecutive wins in Presidential election years, replace the crackpots one by one as they die off with less crackpotted nominees, and the problem will largely take care of itself. This is more-or-less how we got the Warren Court, after all.

Of course, this presumes that Team Democrat understands that in order to do this, they need to draw sharp distinctions between themselves and the crackpots, which does not---repeat, not---entail co-opting the crackpots' talking points and incorporating them into policies that simply a more benign version of the crackpot agenda. Nor does it involve making promises to various constituent groups (e.g., labor unions, antiwar activists) and then blowing them off after winning an election. Because all that people basically want is to be able to trust that their government will deliver what it promises---even if it's bad for them---and if you can't reliably deliver the goods, they'll vote for the other guy. Just something to keep in mind this year.

---Vitelius

Lots of Second-Guessing Here

But maybe they're just overlooking the possibility that it was, uh, a poorly written law?

Of course, if our leaders came to realize this, they'd have to acknowledge that maybe they're not always the brightest stars in the firmament, that they're prone to errors and lapses in judgment like anyone else, and that their true test of leadership is cultivating an ability to learn from their mistakes and not get too full of themselves:

Obama was clearly pleased with his solicitor general and the legal strategy they produced.

After the oral arguments, the president dispatched top aides to compliment the much-criticized Verrilli for “ably and skillfully” representing the government. Then, Obama personally called Verrilli to thank him for a job well done.

---Vitelius

Got a Real Simple Solution For This

Too bad our leaders can't figure out what it is:

Wrigley conducted one of the first studies of a food desert intervention, looking at what happened when a grocery store was brought into an underserved part of Leeds, an industrial city in northern England. Of shoppers surveyed, 45 percent switched to the new store.

Their habits, however, barely changed: Consumption of fruits and vegetables increased by one-third of a cup per day---about six grapes or two broccoli florets.

“The results came out quite small, a very modest increase in consumption of nutritious foods,” Wrigley says. “It seemed an almost nonexistent improvement.”

Similar research in the United States shows much the same.

This is not rocket science, people. If our leaders are really serious about getting us to eat more healthy foods, to cut down on obesity, etc., they can do the obvious thing and make cheaply priced junk food prohibitively expensive through the fucking tax code. We do this with gasoline, with alcohol, and with tobacco, and we know that whenever we raise taxes on those goods, per-capita consumption goes down. Unlike drinking or driving, however, people still need to eat, so if a Quarter Pounder costs more than, say, a composed salad (vegetables, cheese, hard-boiled egg, etc.), some people at least will tend to gravitate toward the less expensive alternative and pare their personal spending elsewhere since starving is not a viable option.

If that seems too draconian, our leaders could simply delete those provisions in the tax code that give junk-food producers a competitive advantage over producers of healthier foods, which would actually, like, encourage free-market competition. Or they could just ban the use of food additives that are hazardous to our health.

But since our leaders aren't proposing any of these things, it's safe to assume that they're not really serious about solving the nation's obesity problem.

---Vitelius

Our Failed Liberal Media

I really used to enjoy Ezra Klein's work when he was blogging at the Prospect, but there must be something in the Post's water cooler that lowers its employees' political IQ points. I mean, this has got to be one of the stupidest bits of analysis I've read in some time:

Even if you disagree with every one of Mitt Romney’s policies, there’s a chance he’s still the best candidate to lift the economy in 2013.

That’s not because he has business experience. For all his bluster about the lessons taught by the private sector, his agenda is indistinguishable from that of career politician Paul Ryan. Nor is it because he’s demonstrated some special knowledge of what it takes to create jobs. Job growth in Massachusetts was notably slow under Romney’s tenure. It’s because if Romney is elected, Republicans won’t choose to crash the economy in 2013.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Congress gridlocks this year---if it simply gets nothing done---the economy will take a $607 billion hit in 2013 as the Bush tax cuts expire, the payroll tax cut expires and assorted spending cuts kick in. Falling off that “fiscal cliff,” they predict, will throw us back into recession.

But it’s worse even than that: Speaker John Boehner has said he wants another debt-ceiling showdown. We’re not expected to hit the debt ceiling until February or March, and so the only scenario in which the debt ceiling matters is one in which Congress has already pushed us over the fiscal cliff. So as bad as the last debt-ceiling crisis was---and Gallup’s polling showed it did more damage to consumer confidence than the fall of Lehman Bros---this one would be worse.

Miles Nadal, CEO of the marketing and communications firm MDC Partners, says that at a recent event with executives of more than 100 companies, the business leaders, panicked about this possibility, agreed on the best outcome for the economy: “a Republican landslide.” Why? “Because anything that breaks the logjam is positive,” he says. “The quality of the leader is less relevant than the ability to break gridlock.”

Jesus, where to begin.

First, we might as well agree that this is tantamount to saying that government-by-blackmail is somehow preferable to the stalemated arrangement we have now. The problem with this argument, of course, is that it fails to hold the people responsible for the stalemate, well, responsible for the problem they've created and perpetuated. The government isn't deadlocked because of some holistic dysfunction that's baked into the Constitution: It's deadlocked because one party no longer respects the legitimacy of the opposition party---which is to say, in our form of liberal democracy---and is using every parliamentary device to prevent it from acting. Any attempt to discuss breaking up institutional gridlock in Washington that fails to mention the words "unprecedented filibuster abuse" is frankly hard to take seriously as a piece of objective analysis.

In other words, if the economy craters next spring because a debt-ceiling agreement isn't reached, it won't be due to some intractable "deadlock," it will due to willful sabotage inflicted by one party against the President and his party. This really is not difficult to call out, and if all those worried businessmen want to ensure this problem doesn't play out next year, they should all be putting the screws to the GOP Congressional leadership and pressuring them to behave like grown-ups, not fretting over the existential danger of divided government. Heaven forbid we actually let the voters have the kind of government they want.

Second, I think the logical fallacy at work here is the assumption that a lot of Serious Persons in the Beltway media make about the political leadership on Capitol Hill, i.e., that when the dust settles after November, President Romney and an all-Republican Congress will come to their senses and not blow another huge hole in the deficit with tax cuts for rich people and escalations in military spending, and paying for it all by phasing out Medicare, turning Social Security into a private-equity fund, and axing entire government agencies like the EPA and the Energy Department because doing so would yield obviously disastrous outcomes. Which is to say, we should not expect Republicans to do what they say they will do because, well, at heart they're rational actors who will act rationally when they're handed the reins of power and not start needless wars, bankrupt the Treasury, turn the federal bureaucracy into a party patronage machine, and drive the American economy into the ground while blaming liberals for everything. Even though the last time (ahem) Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, they started needless wars, bankrupted the Treasury, turned the federal bureaucracy into a party patronage machine, and ran the economy into the ground while blaming liberals for everything.

Congressional Republicans have not shown an ability to govern rationally in any discernible way since 1994. Why Ezra Klein or anyone else who isn't working for Murdoch would believe for a second that they'll somehow moderate their positions after the voters hand them control of all three branches of the government---which they will interpret as a mandate for scorched-earth policy-making---is beyond my ability to explain. Anyone care to attempt an interpretation? I'm stumped.

---Vitelius

Also Too, Unicorns

Not buying this on its surface:

Over the last week, the signals have been abundant that congressional Republicans are pivoting from their total opposition to “Obamacare” toward supporting the more popular chunks of the law.

It’s an election-year strategy to mitigate the fallout if the Supreme Court grants them their wish and strikes down the law next month. The House GOP is weighing a replacement plan to reinstate its more popular components, such as guaranteeing coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, letting people under 26 stay on a parent’s policy and closing the Medicare “doughnut hole.”

That may be what they're saying, but they're not going to propose any of those things---at least not in the forms that are being advertised. What you'll see coming from these clowns are a bunch of individual bills aimed at reinstating each of the Affordable Care Act's most popular provisions, and each bill will have a number of "poison pill" amendments attached to it---a rider permitting open carry on commercial airliners, or a rider creating a national Birth Certificate registry, or a rider defining abortion as a form of "domestic terrorism": In other words, proposals that they know Democrats can never vote for in good conscience. So the kabuki plays out: Republicans will vote unanimously in favor of these bills, Democrats will vote (mostly) unanimously against, the bills will die in the Senate, and Republicans will blame the Democrats for killing off the best parts of health-care reform.

Whatever approach they take, the Teabillies are not going to co-opt liberal health-care policy just because it's an election year, they're going to sabotage it---and use it as a tool to embarrass the opposition. Because if there's one thing these people like even better than winning, it's humiliating liberals. Sadism is baked into their psychic DNA; it's a signifier that defines their worldview.

And you know what? They'll probably be successful with this tactic. They can always rely on some headline writer at the Post or the Times to frame the narrative as "Senate Dems Vote Down Under-26 Health Coverage," and they can always bitch to the editors of Politico if the coverage doesn't suit them; and all the Serious Persons in Washington will shake their heads disapprovingly and wonder why Democrats can't find a commonsense middle ground with Republicans, and this is why we need Generalissimo Bloomberg, etc.

But either way, I really wish the President's supporters would try to stop spinning the impending nullification of the Affordable Care Act into some P.R. victory for the White House when the likeliest possible outcome in the court of public opinion is the exact and diametric opposite.

---Vitelius

Colonialism We Can Believe In

Riffing off the previous post, yet another reason why, in the realm of foreign/military policy, our leaders must be either neoliberal or neoconservative interventionists dedicated to upholding the primacy of Empire: Because, frankly, there's a lot of money riding on it:

The New Alliance was announced in conjunction with the G8 meeting last Friday. Under the scheme, some 45 corporations, including Monsanto, Syngenta, Yara International, Cargill, DuPont, and PepsiCo, have pledged a total of $3.5 billion in investment in Africa. The full list of corporations and commitments has just been released, and one of the most notable is Yara International's promise to build a $2 billion fertilizer plant in Africa. Syngenta pledged to build a $1 billion business in Africa over the next decade. These promises are not charity; they are business.

---Vitelius