Saturday, December 20, 2014
The Horn of Winter
Friday, December 19, 2014
TARP Bottom Line
According to Lew, the total profit for American taxpayers on TARP investments stands at $15.35 billion. The NYT report added, “Less than $1 billion in taxpayer funds remain scattered in about 35 community banks around the country, but with the sale on Thursday of the government’s last 54.9 million shares of Ally Financial … the Treasury declared the bailouts done.”For some years now, I have been writing that estimates of the cost of TARP were probably over-estimates (I didn't speculate wether it would actually be profitable). I told you so. It is true that TARP was small beens compared to the much huger Fed bailout efforts. Also TARP profits are tiny compared to the huge immense gigantic profits from the Fed's efforts and the separate huge immense gigantic profits from the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac. In those cases, we are discussing extremely high profits which are, at the least, among to the highest profits ever reported in human history.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Feeling Good is Easy When Barry's solid Blue
the same percentage of US adults have a favorable view of the ACA as say it does not establish death panels.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Kaili Celebrates Chanukah
In any case, as is traditional on this blessed holiday, Rick Perry, the Simple Child, will now ask the Four questions, and if he can actually remember at least three of them, it will have been sufficient. Dyaneu.*Quote of that other day
Monday, December 15, 2014
Random Opinions
Friday, December 12, 2014
sharp as a pin tight as a Drum
He lists Democratic victories in the cromnibus (aside from that keeping the government open thing) then asks
shouldn't someone have been in charge of quietly making the progressive case for this bill? It wouldn't have convinced everyone, but it might have reduced the grumbling within the base a little bit. Why was that not worth doing?In comments I speculate wildly about 11 dimensional chess (remember the good old days of 11 dimensional chess?).
One hypothesis is a grumbling, indeed rebellious, base is useful to the Democrats who deal with the Republicans. It sure seems that Republicans have gotten rather a lot (especially during the debt ceiling crisis negotiations) based on the argument that they need these concessions to fight off the crazy tea partier base.
I have long thought that leftist attacks on Obama, Reid and Hoyer are useful to them. It helps Democratic negotiators to be able to say they have given up all they can and almost too much. A non grumbling base makes this impossible. It helps most Democrats to be attacked from the left on some issues (although most definitely not for being too nice to bankers).
The huge publicity given to Republican victories which the vast majority of ordinary voters (including tea partiers) hate is also useful to Democrats.
Frankly I think a victory which is perceived as a defeat is the best outcome for Obama. It isn't as if he has to worry about being primaried.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
For those with strong stomachs
But Mitchell is largely responsive to Larsen's questions, and perhaps the most striking moment is when he reacts to the intelligence committee's findings that torture had not yielded actionable intelligence. It wasn't supposed to, he says. It was supposed to make detainees more responsive to other questioning. "It's almost like a good cop, bad cop kind of set-up," he says, "with a really bad cop." The point, he says, "was to facilitate getting actionable intelligence by making a bad cop that was bad enough that the person was engage with the good cop," Mitchell continues. "I would be stunned if they found any kind of evidence that EITs, as they were being applied, yielded actionable intelligence."Mitchell did not respond honestly to the evidence that his torture was ineffective or counter productive. Throughout the executive summary of the SSCI torture report, information obtained before the torture was compared to information obtained during and after the torture. Consider a claim only slightly more absurd, dishonest and irrelevant than Mitchell's. He could just have well have argued that, yes, people didn't give useful answers while being waterboarded, because they could speak no more than they could breath. He absolutely does not address the evidence and made a totally irrelevant argument assuming that viewers would not have read the executive summary. I have read it. There is no evidence that torture caused people to be more cooperative when interrogated *after* the torture. In fact essentially all of the valuable information obtained from Al Qaeda prisoners was obtained before they were tortured, certainly the information most often cited by defenders of the torture program was (this is documented in repetitive meticulous detail in page after page after page of the executive summary). In particular, Rasul Ghul provided key information relevent to finding Osama Bin Laden in the first two days he was interrogated (notably without "enhanced" techniques) then nothing even noted by defenders of the torture program after he was tortured. Mitchell set up and knocked down a straw man. Unsurprisingly he is completely dishonest and pretends to respond to the evidence which he ignores counting on listeners' ignorance. Also his crimes must be prosecuted. Torture of prisoners is almost unique in that the Geneva conventions (which are ratified and therefore US law) do not allow prosecutorial discretion.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Sensible Redactions
So that is how history is made, with the text message "I M W KSM".
OMG
Ali Soufan Vindicated
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Senate Torture Report (executive summary)
Because I assume many others are starting on page 1 and because reading about the torture techniques is very painful.
update: Talk about burying the lead. Only on page 226 does the Senate Report describe the Jose Padilla dirty bomb plot in detail
An issue key to the assessment of the effectiveness of techniques (which are criminal and unacceptable in any case) is when information was obtained from people the CIA tortured. FBI agent Ali Soufan claims that he and his partner obtained valuable information from Abu Zubaydah *before* he was tortured and that Abu Zubaydah stopped providing information when the "enhanced" interrogation began. I will not how many times CIA representations say something about who talked and what they revealed but avoid any hint about when.
Not in the report, the Washington Post presents both sides of the debate
CIA Director John Brennan on Monday rebutted ...Note no hint as whether the interrogation which produced intelligence was "enhanced" or on whether it occured before the "enhanced" interrogation techniques were used on that detainee. His alleged rebutal is consistent with Soufan's claim.“Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom [enhanced interrogation techniques] were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives,” Brennan said in the statement. “The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.”
The Senate report stresses this issue and claims it is the first official report to address it.
From the report page 206
The report continues
Abu Zubaydah's inability to provide information
The not at all shocking at this point fact is that, as the report notes on page 503, long after the water boarding CIA employees repeated the claim that Abu Zubaydah ceased to cooperate before being water boarded and that he then revealed valuable information. Those thoughts moved from hypothesis to history without ever being reported as current events. Or to put it another way, people guessed wrong, authorized torture based on their guesses, and then lied.
Ah this is still shocking. Before torturing Abu Zubaydah the interrogation team wrote in a cable "assumption is that the objective of this operation is to achieve a high degree of confidence that [Abu Zubaydah] is not holding back actionable information concerning threats to the United States beyond that which [Abu Zubahdah] has already provided"
The standard isn't torture if you know it is necessary but torture if you have only a moderate but not a high degree of confidence that it must be useless, because all actionable intelligence has already been obtained by legal means.
This is cute. According to the report the CIA's representations about the interrogation of both Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Muhammad bpth contain the unsupported claim that the terrorist "believed the general US population was 'weak' lacked resilience and was unwilling to 'do what was necessary." (I am quoting p210-11 on KSM, but the exact same quote (except missing the period) is on page 205 on AZ). So CIA torture advocates asserted that AZ and KSM believed the US was too weak to support torture and the CIA. Bit of rather obvious reverse psychology there no ?
udate: minor discussion removed for space.
Catch 22. Janat Gul was subjected to "enhanced interrogation" because Source Y said he had vital information related to an imminent atach in 2004. Gul denied everything. When confronted, source Y admitted he lied. So the enhanced interrogation provied the useful information that Source Y was a liar. The vital information Gul revealed was that Gul had no vital information to reveal. Heads they win, tails the Geneva Conventions lose.
Are they even trying ? On page 366
Monday, December 08, 2014
Ouch. that's going to leave a mark
I edit down a Jon Chait post
Quin Hillyer @QuinHillyer[skip]Follow Obama: racism 'deeply rooted' in U.S. http://fw.to/KbBforM I disagree. Rather than "deeply rooted," it's "mostly buried." As in near-dead.
Hillyer, who is quoted above, participated last year in an unpleasant exchange with yours truly, in which he concluded, “We’re not oblivious to racism; we just want to transcend it by leaving it out of discussions where it doesn’t belong.” Apparently the places it doesn’t belong include an interview about race with BET — which is to say, it doesn’t belong anywhere
Saturday, December 06, 2014
On Chait on Klein on Chait on TNR
Jon Chait feels obliged to write about something Klein wrote about what Chait wrote about The New Republic.
"The New Republic and the Imperfect Media Market
A reply to Ezra Klein, FWIW."
The subtitle is extraordinarily modest "FWIW" for what that's worth, and makes it clear that Chait felt obliged to comment on Klein and felt that "I agree with Ezra" was not an acceptable comment. I think there is something odd and very characteristic of Chait wrong with his reply -- basically Chait is so drawn to polemic that can't resist attacking people, with whom he agrees. I fear that the reason my only other complaint about Chait is that he doesn't blog enough is that I enjoy attacks on the people he usually attacks. Of course Chait's extremely intense feelings about TNR must affect his judgment.
update: the post below is a total waste of pixels. But there is someting so odd about Chait's post, that I want to add a bit which might be interesting. Chait begins "Many journalists, myself included, are currently mourning the meltdown of The New Republic, a century-old liberal magazine currently abandoning its historic mission. But Ezra Klein has a contrary take." I too find Klein's take to be "contrary," because he much more nearly agrees with Chait than anyone else I regularly read. So why did Chait comment on Klein and not the many people who totally disagree with Chait ? I'm sure a large part of it is that Chait wrote he reply before these other people wrote their attacks on TNR, but I suspect that he does not consider them worth his time and attention -- maybe he doesn't read them or maybe he reads but doesn't feel that they are important enough for a reply. Unlike Klein, many writers write that nothing much will be lost as TNR fundamentally changes. Brad DeLong in reply to Klein
The Washington Monthly and The American Prospect at their peak and in their prime may have been better at thinking than today's digital successors. But I am wracking my brains trying to think of examples in which the Martin Peretz-era New Republic was better at thinking.Max Fisher (at VOX edited by one Ezra Klein) Atrios Atrios again Booman Charles Pierce John Cole Billmon Chait begins
Many journalists, myself included, are currently mourning the meltdown of The New Republic, a century-old liberal magazine currently abandoning its historic mission. But Ezra Klein has a contrary take, summarized in his headline “Even the liberal New Republic Needs to Change.”Now the fact that Chait makes his claim that Klein's take is contrary after quoting nothing but the title. This does not prove that Chait made the irreversible decision that he and Klein disagree after reading only the title of Klein's post. However, I think the quotations below prove that Chait must have done that -- that there was nothing Klein write after the title to shake Chait's conviction.
Chait himself explicitly notes only one substantive disagrement with Klein.
"Having read through Klein’s story, my substantive disagreements are actually small. He describes TNR as a “policy magazine,” a description he qualifies by noting its tremendous culture section, but doesn’t qualify enough. " -Chait
Not quite a confession that he began writing his reply and maybe typed the word "contrarian" before reading Klein's post, but damn close to one. Of course one can erase typed pixels (I just did when I found I was about to make incorrect claim about Chait's piece based on an incorrect memory of the bit I just quoted).
I quote from Klein "The New Republic, in particular, had an amazing culture section."
I wonder if "tremendous, spectacular, amazing, wonderful, amazing cultural section which consisted of no fewer pages than the policy focused part" would have been sufficient qualification.
Chait describes this as his main substantive disagreement. I think after typing that, he should have realized that there was no good reason for him to write a reply to Klein, and just refrain from posting (as I should just not post this crap).
It is possible that Chait considers the following bit a further substantive disagreement.
TNR has never been a policy magazine. It is and always has been a magazine of politics and culture pitched at a high intellectual level, which necessarily limits its appeal to a slice of the public too small to be financially viable.Now if Klein's claim had been that the New Republic needs to change because it has ceased to be profitable and magazines need to be profitable, the fact that it has always required subsidy would be be substantive and even crucial.Crucially, nothing has changed to make the magazine less financially viable. It has required subsidy for its entire existence.
Again I quote Klein
"the TNR of yore, even if it lost money indefinitely (as it has in the past)"
I guess "in the past" doesn't imply "every year since it was founded," but there is no hint anywhere in Klein's post that he thought TNR needed to change because it was losing money in the past. No sensible person would imagine for an instant that Klein doesn't understand the economics of high brow publications (he is editing one). Yet, in spite of the fact that the post contains evidence (not amounting to proof beyond reasonable doubt) that Klein knows all about this, Chait insists that Klein wrote, in effect, "publications always are and should be required to be profitable, so the TNR needs to change".
Am I really claiming that Chait ascribed such a crazy view to Klein ? I quote
The odd thing about Klein’s column is that, other than this small disagreement about TNR’s character, I cannot find anything in it with which I disagree. He straightforwardly described the problem of highbrow magazines that serve a public-interest function and have always lost money. He proceeds from that accurate description straight to the conclusion in his headline — TNR must change — without explaining why. One could just as easily conclude that TNR will always lose money, and its value should be assessed in non-market terms and subsidized accordingly by a willing donor. That unacknowledged leap of logic contains nearly all our disagreement. It seems to be rooted in a deep faith in the power of the free market when it comes to media.First I note that the disagreement about TNR's character is whether "amazing culture section" is a strong enough assertion. Second I note that when one writes "seems" one should reconsider. Chait should ask if he really thinks media should be judged in market terms (so VOX would rate way behind Hustler). He should (and did) look for evidence. When the best evidence he can find is that Klein defends The Huffington Post's "What Time is the Superbowl" articles as follows
People always bring up that Huffington Post article. What I think is missed in that discussion is that that article is super useful. Every year I need to know when the Super Bowl is. I always forget. I often find that article. It tells me exactly what time the Super Bowl is.Note nothing about markets or profits. He says he finds "that article" useful. Chait concludes that therefore Klein thinks that the market is a perfect judge of media. Evidently Chait considers it unacceptable for any media to transmit the time the Super Bowl starts and that this is an offense serious enough to outweigh everything else except profit, so any defence of a web journal which reports when the Super Bowl starts is proof that the defender considers profit the be all and end all of journalism. I think this is an entirely fair summary of Chait's argument. And this after (just after) Chait said he had no substantive disagreements with Klein except for the "amazing culture section" stuff.
Ah but Chait notes that Klein's conclusion is inconsistent with the wish that TNR might continue as it was losing money. I quote the last words in Klein's post "something is being lost in the transition from policy magazines to policy web sites, and it's still an open question how much of it can be regained."
Yep sure sounds as if Klein is celebrating the change. No hint that he thinks there could be anything wrong there.
I think most of what went wrong with Chait's post is that he drew a conclusion based only on reading Klein's headline and the wouldn't allow any evidence to make him question Chait's conclusion. Note "the conclusion in his headline". This doesn't necessarily imply that Chait's final guess as to what conclusion Klein reached was based entirely on the headline, but it is a bit more evidence.
Chait entirely ignores Klein's discussion of the influence of TNR
That's why it was believable that The New Republic was the "in-flight reading on Air Force One." President Bill Clinton was a policy wonk. What else was he going to read? But they're no longer the center of the policy conversation in Washington. That conversation has spilled online, beyond their pages, outside their borders. The in-flight reading on Air Force One is probably saved to President Obama's iPad.Now if one is writing a policy oriented (front half of a) magazine, influence on policy makers is a central concern. This is a "non-market" issue (unless the policy makers are corrupt bribe takers).
In fact, one might even imagine that Klein cares about policy, so he cares about in flight reading on Air Force One because he cares about what that reader will do and not because he cares about the writers. The fact that Chait completely overlooks a discussion of what the President of the USA reads makes me wonder what motivates Chait.
Chait seems to interpret "a viable web publication, in a world where viability — and, arguably, influence — requires web traffic" as Klein saying policy journals *should* be required to have high web traffic. But the full sentence is "Hughes believes his charge is to make it a viable web publication, in a world where viability — and, arguably, influence — requires web traffic." The sentece does not state Kleins view but rather the view which he ascribes to Hughes.
I note that the title is ambiguous. Words all have multiple meanings. Extremely brief statements are often ambiguous with context necessary to disambiguate. In particular "needs" is abiguous. "Needs to Change" might mean "is being compelled to change" or "is morally obliged to change". The literal meaning of "TNR needs to change" and "TNR must change" are the same, but the second is more amenable to Chait's interpretation. The last sentence of Klein's piece is consistent only with "is being compelled to change" and definitely not with "Is morally obliged to change".
My conclusion is that one should read the post before beginning to write a reply to it (this is a do what I say don't do what I do conclusion as I usually comment before finishing posts)
Friday, December 05, 2014
Huh?
2. Democrats keep asking each other how they can appeal to the White working class.
3. I think that Democrats can propose raising taxes on high incomes and cutting taxes on the middle and working class. This proposal has been made by Democrats in political campaigns for example by Clinton in 1992 and Obama in 2008. It seems to have worked. But I don't hear any such proposal. I wonder why.
Almost all Democrats don't propose middle class tax cuts (financed by increased taxes on high incomes, capital gains, and corporate income. Why ?
4. I also wonder how Republicans got their majorities in congress and Governorships in purple and blue states (include the two saphire blue states in which I have ever been resident). I am fairly confident that a large part of the reason is point 3.
5. I also can't help believing that if other people knew as much as I know, they would vote the way I vote (that is to say I am human). So I am attracted to the idea that they are misinformed and inclined to blame the mass media. In particular, I don't think they are informed about the effect of the policy platforms of the two major parties on their personal pocket books. Here I guess the most dramatic example is the absurd delusional median guess that the foreign aid budget is about 10% of the US Federal budget. I blame the mass media for not reporting the basic bread and butter facts again and again and again until voters are informed.
6. Elite commentators hate #SocialSecurityAndMedicare. Why ? Many villagers consider the budget deficit the biggest problem the US has. This is a view shared by the extremely rich. Why ?
7. All the elite behavior which seems odd can be understood as the result of a combination of the financial self interes and peer pressure.
the financial interest is obvious -- major contributors to campaigns are rich. Top commentators are rich (which I will define as income over 250000/ year not as income over $150,000/yr -- the median threshold from a poll). Publishers and CEOs of corporations which own networks are rich. There are rich reactionaries eager to pay people to argue against economic populism but no super rich financers of economic populism (I think the rich who care about the non rich and support higher taxes on rich people (Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates) try to help directly not by influencing politicians and commentators).
But I think the peer pressure is very strong -- that people fear that they will be called demogogues if they are populists (hell "demogogue" is Greek for "populist" and "popolares" is Latin for "demogogue").
Uh oh it almost sounds as I am saying that politics and the discussion of politics and policy is based on elite class interest. Importantly class interest not just narrow personal interest. A commentator can get very famous arguing for egalitarianism (see Krugman, Paul). Politicians can get elected president by promising to increase taxes on the rich and cut taxes on the non rich (Clinton, Obama). But such things aren't done often.
Oh nooooo I agree with Marx.
I hate Marx. I hate the Republicans, conservatives, conservadems, villagers, very serious people, third wayer, DLC and Pete Peterson for making me agree on anything with Marx.
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Housekeeping Note
Vulgar Marxism
I have always been extremely hostile to Marx (this was due to my pathological nationalism -- Marx was less influential in the USA than other countries (back when he had any influence anywhere) -- for the same reason I also said that good cooking is not important).
But even I must be fair to him, and note that he would not ever have written something as simplistic as this post.
I am thinking about US politics. People keep asking what Democrats can do to convince white working and middle class Americans that the Democratic party is on their side. I keep writing that they can propose increasing the progressivity of the US tax code (a proposal also known as class war). A solid majority of US adults support increased progressivity. The Republican party is almost entirely focused on reducing taxes on the rich and on corporations. They also have acquired an interest in raising taxes on the working poor, the working class and the middle class. This is a shift. Reagan was an enthusiastic supporter of the Earned Income Tax Credit. George w Bush Jr (the evil one) signed a bill cutting taxes for the rich and also expandint the child tax credit.
The child tax credit benefits the middle class.
Limitations - The credit is limited if your modified adjusted gross income is above a certain amount. The amount at which this phase-out begins varies depending on your filing status. For married taxpayers filing a joint return, the phase-out begins at $110,000. For married taxpayers filing a separate return, it begins at $55,000. For all other taxpayers, the phase-out begins at $75,000. In addition, the Child Tax Credit is generally limited by the amount of the income tax you owe as well as any alternative minimum tax you owe.Median household income was around $60,000 per year. people with much higher than median income get the full $1000/child. The credit is non refundable so I sure can't be called "welfare".
Republicans (and Reid and Schumer) were working on a bipartisan bill to make corporate tax breaks permanent without making the child tax credit expansions permanent. They are totally cruising for a bruising. Attempting to reach agreement on this bill was just one of many Democratic attempts at political suicide. Obama intervened with a veto threat (I do not consider this an adequate intervention given the gravity of the behavioral disorger -- I think that Reid and Schumer are also in urgent need of psychological care possible including major tranquilizers as they were clearly delusional -- but a veto threat is better than nothing).
OK Schumer, who said the ACA didn't do enough for the middle class while negotiation a bill whihc would eliminate all incentives for the Republicans to extend the 2009 expansions of the child tax credit also would need treatment for sociopathy, but unfortunately the only known treatment is the so called "primary" which is not available at the moment.
This leaves two questions. The first is why the hell to people in the lower 99% ever vote for Republicans and the second is why don't Democrats propose further expansion of the child tax credit financed by closing corporate tax loopholes and the carried interest loophole and higher taxes on incomes over $ 2 million a year ?
I think it is clear that Republican politicians don't know the answers to these questions. I won't bother finding links to quotes, but they express fear that the USA is nearing a tipping point when the takers outnumber the makers. I think they discuss the possibility that Democrats will begin to fight in a class war, because they know Democrats would crush them in that war if they fought it.
At the moment I can't resist writing that one explanation is that there might be extraordinary bourgeois class conciousness and solidarity. The strange pattern could be explained if almost all members of the upper 5% work together, sometimes sacrificing their personal interests, for the greater good of the upper 5%
Thus politicians refrain from recommending that the middle class fight back in the class war, because their respect for the subcultures norms that this must not be done is even stronger than their desire to win elections. Also, and very importantlly, journalists do not inform the public about current US tax policy, proposed reforms (and where the parties stand) or about where the US Federal budget is spent (hint not foreign aid). I think most of them are generally inclined to inform the public, but I wonder if their fear of unleashing the raging lower 95% (which would hurt the 96-99 percentiles while aiming for the top 1%) is stronger than their desire to do their job (and really I don't doubt that most journalists would, in general and if class interests are involved, prefer that the public be informed). I also think most of them vote for Democrats, but their desire that the Democratic party win is weakened by their fear of the raging red lower 95% of the US public which might raise the taxes they owe by say $500/yr (I am saying top tax rate up 5% times income $10,000 over the top bracket).
I hate to admit that Marx might have had a point there. I hate the vulgarity of my involuntary lapses into Marxism. But I just can't fully convince myself that there is, that there must be, any other hypothsis which is consistent with the available data. I certainly can't come up with one.
p.s. It is not easy for me to write the word "bourgeois" for at least 3 reasons.
1) I hate to admit that the USA is not a classless society.
2) I hate to admit that Marx might have had a point.
3) I don't know how to spell "bourgeois"
I am not typing it -- I am pasting after copying it to my clipboard. (well actually I copied "bourgeoi" by mistake so I'm typing in the s(. To spell [cntrl-v]s uh I mean "bourgeois", I googled a misspelling (I don't remember what exactly) waited for google to ask me if I meant to google "bourgeois" and then copied bourgeois to my clip board. I think this demonstrates not only my general contempt for spelling but also my particular hatred of Marxism.
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Bang the Drum repeatedly
Drum (my bold)
In broad terms, I agree with Schumer's critique. Democrats need to do more to appeal [to] the working and middle classes, not just the poor. But Schumer is maddeningly vague about just what that means. And as it relates to 2009, in particular, he's full of hot air. In the first few months of the year, Obama passed a big stimulus. He rescued the auto industry. He cut everyone's payroll taxes. Then he changes the issue from winning politics to effective policymaking and asks
"what big ticket items are left that would buy the loyalty of the middle class for another generation?"
(how about permanenly reducing the payroll tax (say cut it in half) and replacing the lost revenue with higher taxes on corporate income, capital income and capital gains ? That big ticket enough)
I'm all in favor of using the power of government to help the middle classes. But what does that mean in terms of concrete political programs that (a) the middle class will associate with Democrats and help win them loyalty and votes, and (b) have even a snowball's chance of getting passed by Congress?Hey wait how did "getting passed by Congress" get added ? Earlier the issue was "appeal the working and middle class" now it has become actually helping them, rather than just getting their votes. Drum is too public spirited and high minded to be willing to talk about political strategy without slipping into a discussion of practical effective policy making. That means that he is not interested in proposals which aren't enacted.
Of course you have to actually deliver in order to win the votes of socially conservative working class voters who don't give a damn that Republicans claim to be pro-life since they haven't managed to reverse Roe V Wade. Oh and who also don't care at all about prayer in school or teaching the kids to respect tradition and their elders. Oh and Republicans gained nothing from trying to block the ACA, because they failed. I think that purely political calculation doesn't have a snow ball's chance in hell for occupying Kevin Drum's brain for an entire blog post.
The world would be a better place if we were all like Drum in this way. But it would be a worse place if all Democrats were like that yet in that imaginary world as in this real one most Republican politicians are mainly interested in political strategy.
my comment at his blog.
You keep asking the same question and I keep giving the same answer. To appeal to the working and middle classes, Democrats should propose raising taxes on the rich and cutting taxes on the working and middle classes. You note that they have done this "He cut everyone's payroll taxes."
Now I'm not claiming that a proposal to increase tax progressivity has a chance in hell of being passed by this congress, or even by this senate with a thermonuclear option eliminating the filibuster -- it would be blocked by conservadems even if there were no house and no filibuster.
But the original question was about using policy proposals as a political strategy. In general, people judge parties by results and a proposal which isn't enacted doesn't have much effect. However, tax progressivity is a very simple issue where Republicans and the vast majority of US adults have strong diametrically opposite views.
I think that proposing tax increases for the rich and tax cuts for the middle class works even before the policies are enacted. The reason I think this is that two democrats have done this. They are Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. They are also the only non-incumbent Democrats elected at a time when the income tax was constitutional and the top marginal tax rate was less than 69%. They are also the only non incumbent Democratic presidential candidates who promised such direct and clear class war. Obama even delivered on his promise.
This is a long long sad story in the comment section of this blog. I recall (with pleasure) how you and Felix Salmon say people in the USA oppose higher taxes on the rich. Then I pointed you to the Gallup polls starting in 1992 all of which show solid to huge majorities think the rich pay less than their fair share of taxes. Being a classy guy, you noted this and even quoted me and said you had been wrong. Being a classless guy, I keep reminding you and also keep reminding you that there might be a whole lot of political support for soak the rich class warfare.
The Democrats have tried it before, and it has ever failed them yet.
Oh it would also be good policy if enacted, but that's not so relevant, since that won't happen.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Orwell Meets Google
Monday, November 24, 2014
Game of Thrones
Restoring Coral Reefs
Thursday, November 20, 2014
In which a nerd gropes for the concept of "social intelligence"
So I was thinking about how some people have different personalities than others. To be honest about my nerditude I was thinking about extremely smart people I have known and how their ways of thinking are completely different But anyway I thought of a very geek question. You know two people. They are quite different. Now imagine a Science Fiction novel where the characters were aliens. Would a reasonable science fiction author choose to make those two characters members of two different intelligent species ?
I am reminded of a not very good Sci Fi movie Sphere (which I think was an Ishtar level waste of talent). It starred Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel Jackson who are stuck on a spaceship from the future which contains a strange sphere (you guessed that) which spoiler alerts them.
The Jackson character is interesting. An un-naturally calm math genius who doesn't relate with other people in a normal way (the millionth Spock in science fiction) . He shaved his head for the role. Now it just so happens that Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone are almost exactly the same height and Jackson is a head taller. Oh also you know he is African American. I noted that he looked about as physically different from his crew mates as Spock ever did.
The role was Spock who might or might not be Spock with a beard. I think the film is worth 5 minutes of your time (scroll past the boring beginning) for a bit of his performance.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Phrase of the Day: Fournier Transform
Read this post for free (shrimp not included)
It seems that Forbes, the AARP and Mike Huckabee object to his research which involved a shrimp running on a treadmill. He confessed at the Chronicle of Higher Education
My name is David, and I am the marine biologist who put a shrimp on a treadmill—a burden I will forever carry. To be clear, the treadmill did not cost millions of taxpayer dollars, the goal of the research was not to exercise shrimp, and the government did not pay me—or anyone else—to work out shrimp on treadmills.[skip]
Exactly how much taxpayer money did go into the now-famous shrimp treadmill? The treadmill was, in fact, made from spare parts—an old truck inner tube was used for the tread, the bearings were borrowed from a skateboard, and a used pump motor was salvaged to power the treadmill. The total price for the highly publicized icon of wasteful government research spending? Less than $50. (All of which I paid for out of my own pocket.)[skip]
In an effort to put an end to the erroneous media reports of wasteful government sponsored shrimp-treadmill research, I am willing to put my infamous treadmill up for sale. All profits will go toward supporting marine-biology research so that grandmothers across the country will no longer be denied medication, our heroic soldiers fighting abroad might be able to get the military equipment they need, and the House science committee can rest easy knowing that they can once again eat fat juicy shrimp—free of bacteria—without using up government funds. For the bargain price of $1-million (shrimp not included)—that’s 67 percent off the price listed by Forbes.com—a lucky individual, perhaps Rep. Lamar Smith (the Texas Republican and chairman of the House science committee), can literally put their money and their shrimp where their mouth is.
He got links from Wonkette and Mike the Mad Biologist (but isn't in the Fournier league)
The merchandise
The Fournier Transform
Major meme
#Fournierderp
It looks as if Ron Fournier may sweep the left blogosphere.
I read this by Joan McCarter at DailyKos
The nation's most stubborn and willfully ignorant pundit, Ron "why won't Obama lead and make Republicans like him" Fournier, strikes again.I thought it would be absurd for this blog (traffic about zero) to link to DailyKos (daily traffic much less than the population of China). McCarter goes on to quote Fournier again
On health care, we needed a market-driven plan that decreases the percentage of uninsured Americans without convoluting the U.S. health care system. Just such a plan sprang out of conservative think tanks and was tested by a GOP governor in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.Honestly. He wrote that. In November, 2014. Four and a half years after the Affordable Care Act—modeled after a Heritage Foundation proposal and Mitt Romney's Massachusetts law—passed. After a presidential election in 2012 that featured Mitt Romney going through insane contortions trying to differentiate between Romneycare and Obamacare because they are almost exactly the same.
Instead of a bipartisan agreement to bring that plan to scale, we got more partisan warfare. The GOP resisted, Obama surrendered his mantle of bipartisanship, and Democrats muscled through a one-sided law that has never been popular with a majority of the public.So a bill to bring that plan to scale became a one-sided muscled through law that essentially brought that plan to scale (the main difference is that the Federal Government funded both, as the USA can't send the bill to the One World Government (yet)). So how did bringing RomneyCare to scale become "a one-sided law" ? That would be the famous Fournier transform, in which Ballance beats reality if reality is embarrassing to Republicans. I also note that Jon Gruber has become an un-person. It is very likely that, before his "stupidity" leaked, McCarter would have quoted RomneyCare architect Jon Gruber saying that it's the same damn plan. Jon Gruber, the wonk who must not be named (even though it is reasonably likely that you or someone you care about will owe him your, his or her life some day). Now I see that Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesias are on the case. Yglesias even brought up Jon Gruber, reminding me that Yglesias is doubleplusungood at being a hack. Last I checked Chait hadn't checked in (he does have a genuinely great post on ObamaCare Uber Ales which you really ought to read) Update: Jim Newell too "DC pundit takes troll game to new level: Ron Fournier’s strange history of Obamacare" Aaron Carroll (via Jonathan Bernstein) Gary Legum at Wonkette (that hit is going to leave a snark)
Ron Fournier has written many dumb columns in his career. In fact, Ron Fournier has written only dumb columns in his career. But today he has outdone himself by gracing our political centrists, yearning as they are for some bipartisanship, with the dumbest column of his, nay, of any pundit’s career.Steve Benen too
Monday, November 17, 2014
Waldmann V Waldman goes up past eleven
Fear Factor
Everything Is Horrible - Let's Stay The Course
So weird.I comment
David Cameron has issued a stark message that “red warning lights are flashing on the dashboard of the global economy” in the same way as when the financial crash brought the world to its knees six years ago. ... Politically, Conservatives believe an emphasis on the risks still facing the UK will make anxious voters recoil from handing stewardship of a fragile economy to a relatively untried Labour team.
Both you and the Guardian's correspondent* are attempting to explain the strategy with a model in which voters decide how to vote based on their views of the consequences of their votes -- an attempt rational or otherwise to reason.
I suspect that Cameron's strategy is based on the fact that fear makes people conservative. Psychologists have published experimental results which I will paraphrase from memory (make up on the spot) in which showing people a photo of the mouth of a great white shark causes them to oppose gay marriage (that is in their is less support for gay marriage in the shown a shark subsample than in the shown a flower sub sample -- recall I am working from memory of what I remember from reading abstracts -- that is bullshitting) Here is the abstract I vaguely remembered (thank you Google). I don't know exactly what the "a mortality salience threat" was or what way of being "staunchly unsupportive of homosexuals" it induced.
I doubt Cameron knows this literature even as well as I do. I do not doubt that his message has been tested on focus groups and that it works, and that it works through fear. My guess is that ISIS and Ebola would do just as well as red lights flashing on the economic dashboard.
*I admit I just read the URL and didn't click.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
In which I compare, Rand Paul, Jay Ackroyd, and David Dayan
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Kevin Drum and the White Working Class
I quote bits here and cut and paste my comment
"white working class, which voted Republican by a 30-point margin last week:"
"As Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin observed this summer, 54 percent of the white working class born after 1980 think gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, according to data assembled from the 2012 election." -- Kevin Drum quoting Noam Scheiber quoting Teixeira and Halpin
"But if that's the case, why does the WWC continue to loathe Democrats so badly? I think the answer is as old as the discussion itself: They hate welfare. "
"So who does the WWC take out its anger on? Largely, the answer is the poor."
"That's because they're closer to it. For them, the poor aren't merely a set of statistics or a cause to be championed. They're the folks next door who don't do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars."
"Does it matter that the working class barely pays for most of these programs in the first place, since their federal income taxes tend to be pretty low? Nope."
"So sure: full-throated economic populism? That might work, though everyone seems to have a different idea of what it means. But here's one thing it better mean: policies that are aimed at the working and middle classes and that actually appeal to them. That is, policies that are simple, concrete, and offer benefits which are clear and compelling."
I comment
When Teixeira and John Halpin write "the white working class born after 1980 " they are basically not at all talking about the same "white working class, which voted Republican by a 30-point margin last week:"
Last week 12% of voters were under 30 and 37% over 60. The election told us what older people (such as myself -- age 54). You basically don't discuss age at all. This really makes no sense when discussing 2014, 2012 and how they are different.
OK what is to be done ? Look it's simple. There is a difference between not paying much income tax and paying less than zero. the number 47% horrifies Republicans for a reason. They fear that if the fraction whose income tax liabilities are less than 0 gets enough over 50% to make up for lower turnout of the less rich, then the "takers" will take over. I think they have a point, except that I think that would be a good thing (given the large numbers of takers who work full time year round and pay much more in payroll taxes than they receive in EITC).
I think that Democrats can win elections by promising higher taxes on the rich and lower taxes for everyone else. I think that few voters buy the Republican line that Republicans cut taxes for the non rich. I use the word "think" but I think that these claims are about as weak as the claim that the climate is getting warmer.
First try to name a Democrat with the following features
1. He was elected President
2. He was not an incumbant at the time
3. the top marginal income tax rate was under 69%
4. the income tax was constitutional
and 5 he didn't propose higher taxes on the rich and lower taxes on everyone else.
Hint, this is a trick question -- those 5 conditions have never ever been met. In contrast both Clinton and Obama were elected after promising higher taxes on the rich and a middle class tax cut (and Obama actually delivered).
I also recall a TV discussion of a focus group which watched a Bush senior Clinton debate with the dials. The group included declared undecided voters, declared Clinton supporters and declared Bush supporters. Clinton said something like " only the rich have received tax cuts" and the average declared Bush supporter twisted the dial to agree. Rage at the Republiscam of promising tax cuts for all and giving them only to the rich was strong in 1992 *among rank and file Republicans*.
Since then Gallup has polled again and againa and always gets solid majorities who support higher taxes on the rich (as I very much enjoy reminding you, long ago I pointed out these polls to you and you were very surprised). In 2005 polls showed that the only social security reform with majority support was raising the payroll tax ceiling. In 2009 and 2010 polls showed that the only provision of the ACA which reduced the deficit and had majority support was and is the surtax on high incomes.
People in the USA want to soak the rich and spread it out thin. This is a feasible policy (Obama did it -- mild on the soaking -- but he did it). I am sure it would be good policy. The popular populist policy and the practical way to address income inequality is to make the income tax more progressive.
This would, of course, creaate problems such as .... I mean we might return to the dread economic growth rates of the 50s when the top rate was 91% and the 60s when the top rate was 70%. I absolutely promise you that there is less than no evidence that a higher top marginal income tax rate would be bad for growth
see https://ideas.repec.org/p/rtv/ceisrp/281.html
. OK enough policy proposals, I want to whine about how unfair it is,
I note that the WWC includes a lot of people on food stamps and/or receiving EITC. I also note that the ACA has done a lot for a lot of white working class people including those under 4/3 the poverty line (who may be poor not working class by the original definition of the phrase but the few who vote are included in the numbers you quote), those who don't get insurance from their employers and those who might lose their job with benefits. That is almost all of them.
You note but do not focus on the deep deep irrationality of welfare hatred. The only huge means tested program is Medicaid which is almost as popular as Medicare. Many hard working people benefit from food stamps and the EITC. The people getting checks without working are over 65 (and that program is super popular) disabled (and that program is not hated) or very few and getting tiny checks. I am sure that welfare hatred is not based on knowing people who are actually living on welfare.
Also you don't note foreign aid hatred. On this issue, the delusions of the overwhelming majority of US citizens are so extreme that they are not discussed in polite debate. In polls The median US respondent guesses foreign aid is 10% to 28% of the Federal budget (I have a total of 2 polls in mind but the numbers are all in that range). This is absolutely not based on living next door to a foreigner who receives aid. This is pure fantasy (foreign aid is less than 0.7% of the US Federal budget). Foreign aid is a tiny program. But the vast majority of US voters think it is a huge program. That means that hatred of foreign aid is a big issue.
pulled back from comments: The counties in North Carolina that had the highest percentage of slaves to whites in 1860 are the same counties where more than 90% of whites voted for Mitt Romney. Links to follow at my blog. Thornton Hall Which reminds me that "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Thursday, November 06, 2014
QOTD
Do I really have to wade through that Stephanie Schmidt-Grohe and Martin Uribe paper too, and reverse-engineer their result as well? I'm too old for this. Don't any of you young whippersnappers have an economic intuition? Do you all get snowed by every fancy-mathy paper that comes along?
I expect I will have to. Pray for me.--Nick Rowe Who earns a bonus victory lap for keeping an extremely elaborate metaphor un-mixed and out of the ditch.
I had to click the link to find out that "the Scandanavian flick" was related to driving cars and not Swedish monetary policy.
If you had asked me to describe a Scandanavian flick I would have said there is this knight by the sea who meets death and they decide to play chess (actually I thought of another Ingmar Bergman film "Monica," which I have heard described on PBS as "an escapist skin flick" -- the sea is featured in "Monica" too, but Monica is much better looking than death).
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Grey Power and Rational Self Interest
He concludes "we have an off-cycle electorate that assumes that they’ll be dead in 15 years, so let the good times roll."
I comment.
The argument makes sense, but the votes of US adults over 60 don’t. The Republican policy stance (except during campaigns) is the opposite of “let the good times role”. They fight for reduced deficits and, in particular, demand entitlement reform.
In particular, Arkansans over 60 voted for Tom Cotton who voted to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 70. This is a “death bet” only if to death they say “you betcha”.
Cotton’s vote is on a roll call and the Republican Study Group budget is public, so I think it is OK to link to a partisan source
http://pryorforsenate.com/cottonfunders/
“Cotton Was the Only Member Of The Arkansas Delegation To Vote for Republican Study Committee Budget That Transformed Medicare Into Voucher System, Raised the Eligibility Age For Medicare To 70 And Cut Social Security Benefits.”
One can not use rational self interest to explain why people aged over 60 vote for Republicans who demand that Democrats accept entitlement reform and then denounce the Democrats for accepting some of the Republican demands.
Tuesday, November 04, 2014
Orwell wasn't good at arithmetic
Orwell himself couldn’t have come up with a more ironic title for this spy program than “Students Against Fear,” although I suspect the idiosyncratic capitalization would’ve killed him if he weren’t already dead.
Being There: Colorado and Jerzy *
Stupidoclypse allert
Friday, October 17, 2014
Remain Calm About Ebola -- Bethesda !?! Did Just read Bethesda ???
What TPM Reader JM Said
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Nail Biters
I Just Voted by E-Mail
A Comment on StrawKrugman
Thursday, September 25, 2014
The usual comment on Wren-Lewis
I will write a second comment. I will try to respond to your questions. I wasn't an economist in the 70s so (as usual) I don't know what I am talking about.
"So why didn’t this happen? Why did we have a revolution which overturned an existing methodology and temporarily banished Keynesian theory, rather than an adaptation and augmentation of what was then mainstream?"
"Was the attraction of overturning orthodoxy too strong, as it is for a minority of heterodox economists today? "
I think this attraction was very strong. There is something else. A couple of Economists from U Minnesota mentioned Harvard for no clear reason -- I think there was and is an element of Midwestern pride (neither of the economists is originally from the USA). In particular a distasteful aspect of appeals to common sense or judgment is that they are and must be assertions of intellectual authority. Math has the appealing feature that a proof is a proof and does not rely on the authority of the person stating it.
" Did an ideological imperative of dismissing Keynesian ideas play a role?" I think it definitely did. Friedman, Lucas, Prescott and Barro are very ideological. The models change but the policy proposals remain the same. Views on methodology change (Sargent asserted that Lucas and Prescott were all in favor of testing models as null hypothesis until he rejected their favored models).
"To what extent was the hostile reaction of many in the macroeconomic establishment to eminently sensible ideas like rational expectations responsible? "
I think the extremely hostile reaction played an important role (of course, I don't think that rational expectations is a sensible idea).
"Was the attraction of a methodology where at least you could be sure you were consistent too enticing, ? "
Here I would say that mathematics was enticing. Writing papers that look like Physics except the variables have different meanings is enticing.
"perhaps encouraged by increasing segmentation between theoretical and empirical macro? "
I'm quite sure this came later. In the 70s and early 80s new Classicals developed new empirical tools and did a lot of empirical work. I think theoretical macro separated from empirical macro when the data kept saying that new Classical models were not good approximations to reality.
So far, I have made no progress towards understanding how a few departments were so influential. Here I think that hard work and the passion due to fanaticism were important. The general rightward political shift also must have mattered. I think that the loony left managed to cast discredit on Republican Keynesians somehow. But I really don't understand how and why it happened.
I have two other thoughts.
If macro theory (or non theory or ad hoc models or whatever) were about as good as it is would ever be in 1973, PhD candidates and junior faculty would still have to present something new. In fields which aren't progressing a new and crazy original contribution is preferable to an unoriginal contribution. Here I think the trouble is that some questions in macro are too simple and have for decades been answered well enough to serve. I think it is very easy to fit consumption and investment without theory -- 1960s equations fit well out of sample.
If aggregates depend on expectations which are not rational nor adaptive nor anything which can feasibly be modelled, then the problems of stabilizing output and even of forecasting can't be solved. If so the only reasonble thing to do is to try something and if it fails badly try something completely different.
I think many of the questions are too easy and have been answered (but young researchers can't afford to accept this) and the unanswered questions are too hard (I fear unanswerable).
Now my usual boring pointless comment
Here I am again more certain than ever that this comment serves no useful purpose. You support an eclectic approach and not the utter rejection of all of the past 40 years of theoretical macroeconomics. I guess this must seem obviously reasonable to you and to basically everyone. However, while you have very often stated this view, I don't recall much in the way of argument, evidence or even examples.
"Microfounded models could have shown the kind of errors that can arise in more empirically based models when theory is ignored or only applied piecemeal, "
for example ? To be sure such errors can arise, one should point to examples of such errors arising. The classic example is the 1960s era Keynesian ad hoc assumption that the Phillips curve is a structural relationship. This error never happened. It may well be that going to the data armed only with common sense and verbal arguments leads to errors which would have been avoided if one used formal theory. But to claim that such errors occured, one should cite them with authors, dates, titles, Journal titles volume and page numbers.
"However I also think the new ideas that came with that revolution were progressive. I have defended rational expectations, I think intertemporal theory is the right place to start in thinking about consumption, and exploring the implications of time inconsistency is very important to macro policy, as well as many other areas of economics. I also think, along with nearly all macroeconomists, that the microfoundations approach to macro (DSGE models) is a progressive research strategy."
I note that the word "progressive" appears twice. I think it is very useful, too useful. To argue that something is progressive, one need not point to achievements. The word is consistent with the claim that the approach will in the future yield valuable fruits. I recall reading in 1982 Sargent expressing the hope that realistic micro founded models which could be taken seriously and confronted with the data would be developed in the following 30 years. I say time is up.
I also note "to start". Now the claim that something is the right place to start can't be disproven. The claim is that something good will happen. I know of no evidence against the view "(6) Changes in expectations of the relation between the present and the future level of income. — We must catalogue this factor for the sake of formal completeness. But, whilst it may affect considerably a particular individual’s propensity to consume, it is likely to average out for the community as a whole. Moreover, it is a matter about which there is, as a rule, too much uncertainty for it to exert much influence." Keynes 1936 chapter 8 section II.
I have 2 3 final questions.
1. What evidence could possibly convince you that intertemporal theory is not the right place to start in thinking about consumption ?
2. What evidence could possibly convince you that DSGE isn't a prgressive research program ?
3. What could the data do which they have failed to do in the past 40 years ?
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Ballance at Vox ?
the aside is
(Of course, information loops can go the other way, too: a lot of liberals probably don't know that of the much-discussed 8 million enrollees in Obamacare's insurance exchanges, new data suggests only about 7.3 million stuck around as paying members.)It is, of course, true that a lot of liberals don't know about the 7.3 million as it is true that a (smaller) lot of liberals never heard about the 8 million -- political junkies can't imagine how little normal people know about public affairs.
That said, Klein's argument is so weak that, if I didn't trust his integrity, I would suspect that he was trying to convince people that all loopy information loops loop right. 7.3/8 >90% . The fraction is at the upper end of predictions. political junky liberals have been reading forecasts that the ratio will be about 90% for months from, for example, Charles Gaba .
The 7.3 million number was trumpeted at liberal sites
Trusting Klein's integrity as I do, I think the aside really does provide strong evidence for the opposite of its apparent claim.
First the news for the ACA has to be very good indeed for "only about 7.3 million" to be the example of not as good as the rest of it news for the ACA.
Second, the hack gap is huge. New liberal alternatives to the MSM (shuch as Talking Points Memo and VOX) play it straight. In fact, liberals like Klein feel the need to add a bit of Ballance.
Well at least I sincerely honestly believe this. Klein's critique of Klein and people like him is so feeble and his obvious interest in convincing people of the opposite of his stated claim means that my confidence that he didn't make an invalid argument on purpose indicates my absolute faith in his integrity.