Accounting for Scott Sumner II

Scott Sumner presented an updated estimate of the cost of the financial rescue. He calculated 158 billion which is 165 billion lost saving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac minus 7 billion profit from loans etc (mostly purchases of prefered shares) of big banks.

This is nonsense accounting. In the case of the large banks, Professor Sumner looks at the present discounted value of cash flows both ways. In the case of the GSEs, he looks at their current debt and assumes that they will repay less than none (he wrote $165 billion and growing).

For the 7 billion figure he seems to use a CBO estimate from March. He provided no link or citation, but the CBO did make that estimate of $7 billion profit in March.
For the GSEs he presents no source, evidence or data whatsoever.

I believe that his rule of accounting is assume whatever makes things with an acronym including G look bad.

The CBO updated its forecasts in August. I'm not sure if Professor Sumner is aware of that detail. The current estimated cost of TARP is 66 billion. So why, when he relies on the CBO for some of his numbers, does Sumner calculate 158 billion and rising ?

I think it's because he doesn't bother checking the latest data before blogging.

Here it is (warning big pdf)

The CBO estimates a net transfer of 41 billion from the Treasury to the GSEs in fiscal 2010 on top of 96 billion in 2009 (which started October 1 2008 so the sum is most of it). The sum 137 billion is much less than the GSEs debt to the Treasury because the Treasury demands huge dividends on its prefered shares (10% per year).



I also note that the CBO estimates that interactions with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2011 to 2020 will reduct the debt in 2020 by 44 billion in expected (present ?)value. However the TARP law requires the CBO to discount flows with a high interest rate to compensate for risk. This is not how the US federal government deals with any other cash flow and makes no sense.

So the expected cost is 93 billion plus spending in fiscal 2008 and some interest. Not close to 165 billion.

NY Times Copy Editors II

I thought they were perfect. Now I read

Toiling Far Away for Philippine Dreams
By NORIMITSU ONISHI 3:15 PM ET
Money sent home by Filipinos working abroad accounts for more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product.

No it doesn't. That money might be equal to 10% of GDP, but it accounts for 0% of GDP. It is included in GNP but not in GDP. Surely people have noticed that the middle letter in most announcements changed from an N to a D. What's the difference ? Well money coming from abroad in exchange for work or the use of capital minus money sent abroad that's the difference.

Now of course the genuinely weird thing is that the USA can be the worlds biggest debter and yet people didn't even notice the shift from reporting GNP to reporting GDP. That's because US GNP and GDP are very similar, because US owned assets abroad pay much higher return than foreign owned claims on the USA. This is the issue in the context of which Paul Krugman said "if they are smart enough to understand that, they are probabily smart enough to understand that zero is not an especially important number."

update: not to be outdone, a www.washingtonpost.com copy editor demonstrates that he or she doesn't know what the word "species" means

Different species, same name

Current FDA rules don't permit customers to know if salmon in stores has been genetically altered.

Lyndsey Layton

A genetically modified salmon is only a member of a different species if it can not produce fertile offspring with an un-modified salmon. I think it would be good policy to require genetically modified salmon to be modified so that they are a new species, because then if a few escape they won't contaminate the wild salmon gene pool. However, currently existing genetically modifies salmon are not a new species.

"Species" is not an obscure word nor is it a word with a controversial or ambiguous definition. Ignoring the definition and acting as if different genes imply a different species is not the sort of thing I like to know about a member of my species (with somewhat different genes) doing.

New York Times Copy Editor Fail (This Past January)

I have never seen them miss one like this

"Mr. Sarkozy ... his responsibility as president to be above the law."

Noooooooooooo no one is above the law. That should be "above the fray", "above the court case", "above litigation", "above narrow legal disputes" but not never ever above the law.

Especially don't tell Mr Sarkozy that he should be above the law. Not as risky as telling Bush or (maybe) Berlusconi, but very very dangerous.

Now I don't type so good, but I really don't think I could ever type "responsibility ... to be above the law" by mistake.

Can one be honest but not intellectually honest ?

Julian Sanchez argues that one can, but I am not convinced (click the damn link)

There is a key issue not addressed in this post. If one is making a case (honest but not intellectually honest) does one say that one is making a case ? In a formal debate or a civil case or for the defence in a criminal case, it is clear to everyone that a case is being made and noting facts which undermine that case is strongly forbidden.

To me, making a case in those situations is totally honest in every way. If the best case which can be made without actually lying is p then saying "the best case which can be made without actually lying is p" is intellectually honest.

It seems to me that intellectual dishonesty occurs when someone acts as an advocate but does not say so. When someone states the best case for a claim x without saying "to state the best case for the claim x." It seems to me that this is plain dishonest. If someone claims to be balanced and is an advocate or claims to be just examining the evidence when he is making a case, then he is dishonest.

Or to shrink back a bit and weasel and stuff, I suppose it is possible to make a case without either admitting that one is making a case or actually lying, but I don't think that anyone actually manages to do so. It would require avoiding all phrases of the form "I think", "the relevant facts", "therefore it is reasonable to conclude" and hmm just about everything except for stating selected facts.

I have a challenge. Can anyone find a case of someone who is honest but not intellectually honest ? If someone says "I am going to make the case that X", then does this is totally honest. If someone doesn't implicitly claim to be doing anything else and makes the case, then, according to our host he or she is honest but not intellectually honest. But has this ever happened ?

Has anyone with an audience of normal adults ever managed to slide over the issue of whether they are acting as an advocate without plain ordinary dishonesty. I admit it is theoretically possible (quite possible if one is trying to convince a group of toddlers say) but I don't think it has been done yet.

Daniel Davies unites Ignatius Loyola and Maynard Keynes

several of the world's most important central banks have it written into their constitutions that they need to control inflation or target price stability. I think a good lawyer could make a case that a decision to target stability, but stability at a higher level would be consistent with the letter if not the spirit of these laws.

In the real world, inflation has momentum so it is not possible to increase the price level without accepting inflation for a while or inducing a recession. However, the Jesuit doctrine of dual effect might allow the ECB to act in a way which causes inflation provided that they sincerely aim only for a one off increase in the price level.

Casuistry in the cause of debt inflation might be just what the world economy needs.

I'd say that Mr Davies is the (typing) finger of my God, Who is mainly characterized by His or Her sick and twisted sense of Humor.

Blast from the past

Glenn Greenwald denounced TV "journalist" Jon Meacham. This belongs in comments but there are already 305 of them, so I will just note that Greenwald went easy on Meacham. He quotes Meacham from 2004

Let's remember, [Saddam] sent mixed signals about his own WMD to his own people. . . . He was not saying, "I don't have anything at all "

Of course Saddam did say that he didn't "have anything at all" in his official over 12,000 plust page report to the UN Security council.

On December 7, 2002, Iraq submitted its 12,000 page declaration, which claimed that it had no current WMD programs. Intelligence analysts from the United States and other nations immediately began to scrutinize the document, and senior U.S. officials quickly rejected the claims.

He had been claiming he didn't have any WMD at all for years. Those claims were so thoroughly dismissed that, I have no doubt, that Meacham had sincerely forgotten them.

The Bush administration asserted that the report was a material breach of resulution 1441 and that it was authorised to invade Iraq (which wouldn't have followed anyway). There was a huge debate about whether Saddam Hussein's lying claim that he "didn't have anything at all" justified an invasion. Then Meachem confidently and specifically asserted that the notorious ultra controversial claim never happened.

Shouldn't Mr Meachem be invited to seak a new line of work ?

In Praise of McDonalds

Noted foody Ezra Klein wrote "McDonalds is delicious". Utterly amazed, I clicked and found Adam Roberts's food blog post praising the taste of McDonalds's food. Amusingly Roberts reliably predicted the he would piss off either McDonald's fans or foodies who think that "the entryway to Hell isn't marked, as Dante suggested, with the phrase "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" but, instead, by golden arches."

I share Klein's and Roberts's opinion. However, Roberts insists that the food is unhealthy, because it contains preservatives.

"Note the wording on the box: "All The Best." Just those three words are suspect. Is this chicken sandwich really "all the best"? We know it's not. We know this bread is filled with stabilizers and preservatives,"

and

"All that food, however good it might taste in the moment, produces both a physical and spiritual aftertaste. You start feeling the chemicals on your tongue,"


I comment:

Brilliant and daring. Congratulations on the link from Ezra Klein (I never expected to read the link text on his blog).

However, you missed one group that you were bound to piss off -- preservative enthusiasts. OK I'm not sure the plural is accurate, since I might be the only one, but I am absolutely totally 100% sincere. I think that BHA and BHT are good for you.

The weird thing is that health food enthusiasts are convinced of two things -- that anti-oxidants are healthy and that preservatives are unhealthy. The only problem is that "anti-oxidant" and "preservative" are synonyms.

This is not (quite) a logical inconsistency. Their view is that natural preservatives are healthy and that synthetic anti-oxidants are unhealthy. There is essentially no evidence supporting this hypothesis and people have been looking for such evidence for decades.

Why did you insult preservatives ? I assert that the scientific evidence tends to suggest that bread with preservatives is better for your health than bread without preservatives. Is there any data supporting your contrary view ? What convinced you ?

What about feeling chemicals on your tongue. Can you really feel those chemicals ? Have you performed a blind tongue feel test with food that differs only by addition (or not) of those chemicals ? I would bet 100 to one that you haven't and that you claim you can feel something based not on a test of feeling but the way you feel given your knowledge and prejudices.

I stress this post is not a joke. I think that BHA and BHT are good for peoples's health. I even think that use of BHA and BHT are partly responsible for the increase in life expectancy since they were introduced.

update: Kevin Drum says my reasoning is in this post, but there isn't much above so I add the following:

My reasoning was not explained after the link (always click the link anyway -- Kevin Drum). I agree with Luther, so my claim is stronger than that made by Crissa. The logic is exactly that preservatives preserve us.

To get technical, preservatives are anti-oxidants and oxidative stress (roughly rusting) is allegedly implicated in cancer and cardio-vascular disease. I note that there was a dramatic increase in US life expectancy in the 70s (similar to the increase in the 40s following the introduction of penicillin). This was due to reduced incidence of heart attacks. It was ascribed to improved diet and increased exercize. Sure mac, that's why we are so much thinner than we used to be.

Now continuing improvement can be partly explained by statins (one can be overweight, eat lots of saturated fat, never exercize and have low LDL cholesterol these days -- that's my plan). Also some by bypass surgery and shunts and stuff. This is mostly post 70s. There is a huge mystery in the data which can be explained if it is noted that anti-oxidants reduce arterio-schlerosis in model systems (over-fed rats).

In any case, the claim that anti-oxidants prevent arterioschlerosis is absolutely totally very respectable and BHA and BHT are anti-oxidants. There is a fairly large literature asserting that this or that food contains anti-oxidants. In each case which I checked, the anti-oxidant was compared to BHA or BHT (or both).

So why are people so deeply convinced that BHA and BHT are bad for our health ? One reason is that extremely large doses cause cancer of the fore-stomach in mice and rats.

This result was part of the evidence which convinced people (including the guy who taught me organic chemistry) that organic chemistry was a menace, because many many synthetic organic chemicals are carcinogenic. In 1979, he predicted a big increase in cancer in the 80s roughly 20 years after they began flowing into our diet (20 year lag from aggregate cigarette smoking and lung cancer). That didn't happen -- aggregate cancer incidence is almost completely explained by age (to the fifth) and cigarette smoking. My view is that many compounds which are carcinogenic in huge doses are safe in small doses and in other cases the carcinogenisis depends on the fifth power of the dose which amounts to pretty much the same thing. Also I am not a mouse and don't have a fore-stomach.

There seems to be a very strong belief that natural chemicals are OK and synthetic chemicals are dangerous. This once convinced scientists (including that synthetic organic chemist). The evidence is now weaker. Note tobacco is natural and highly carcinogenic. Ergot is natural too.

I am not an expert on, well, anything, but I am absolutely sincere.

Do the Democrats want to lose power ? More importantly does Fred Hiatt want to lose power ?

I have been wondering why Democrats aren't stimulating the economy and buying votes by mailing out checks. A not so bad policy would be to send $500 to every family in the USA right now. It would certainly be better policy than temporarily extending Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. Also it would be much more popular. So why not ?

I think the Democrats are afraid of being denounced as populist class warrior demoagogues out to buy votes. This fear makes no sense. Such denunciations are exactly what they need to survive the next election. As everyone who actually looks at polls knows, there is a solid majority in favor of a more progressive tax code or, in other words, populist class war and soaking the rich. Somehow almost all pundits either make claims contradicted by the polls or are shocked and surprised by the latest poll which shows what polls always show.

My guess is that Democrats really care what the Washington Post editorial board writes about them. They are not willing to be called demagogues.

My new thought is that the pundits are not rationally seeking power. If I am right, they have great power now, because Democrats are in power and obey their will. Republicans ignore them completely (how many divisions does Fred Hiatt have ?). So if the pundits want to keep power, they have to help the Democrats win. They won't do this by endorsing Democrats a week before the election (Fred Hiatt has no divisions). They can do this by recommending increased tax progressivity.

Unfortunately, they are not evil people who seek power. The pundits are sincere, albeit blinded by class interest. But if they, or Democrats in power were in the grip of blind ambition, the unemployment rate would be lower next year and the national debt would be lower indefinitely.

Great moments in anonymity

at the New York Times magazine are really giving it to the Brits reporting on Britmedia criminality and Met (also known as Scotland Yard) complicity.

They also grant anonymity to two people, one of whom* is lying

The prosecutor was stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. “I would have said we need to see how far this goes” and “whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk,” said the former prosecutor, who declined to speak on the record.

Scotland Yard officials ultimately decided the inquiry would stop with Mulcaire and Goodman. “We were not going to set off on a cleanup of the British media,” a senior investigator said. In fact, investigators never questioned any other reporters or editors at News of the World about the hacking, interviews and records show. A police spokesman rejected assertions that officials failed to fully investigate. He said the department had worked closely with prosecutors, who had “full access to all the evidence.”

either "the prosecutor" or "a police spokesman" is lying like a doge (typo but I like it that way). Also, when in the hell did spokesmen get to be anonymous ? The whole point of spokesmen>/strike> persons carbon based organisms is to propagate lies which can't be ascribed to anyone who counts.

How in the F**king name of the NY Times Magazine style guide can "a ... spokesman" be granted anonymity ?

Oh my God this is special "On Aug. 24, 2006, George Galloway, a member of Parliament, was alerted by a detective that his messages had been hacked. Galloway said the detective urged him to change his PIN code. But when Galloway asked who had accessed his phone, the man from Scotland Yard “refused to tell me anything.” "

Uhm I think that a detective needs to have his head checked. One can be f*cking and S*domiz*ing sure that George Galloway is going to tell all. One can not be sure that he will tell all only to reporters who respect the anonymity of "a detective" who talked to a source.

My Religion (if I had one)

I am an atheist. At the moment I am wondering what religion I might have should I come to have any. I'd say that first I'd be Manichean then Jansenist. To me, the most plainly false part of theology is theodicy (which I can't help reading as theological idiocy) -- the justification of the ways of God to men. This is an effort to argue that their might be a deity who is omnipotent and benevolent. The challenge is due to the fact that the world clearly sucks. I mean not in any abstract sense but compared to the best world we mere mortals could imagine (and just think of how Great the best world He could Imagine must be).

Manicheans thought that this material world was the creation of a lesser and not so benevolent deity Whom they called Shaitan. Doesn't work too well since the world is not the worst i could imagine either and the evil He (or She) sure could outdo me).

Also Jansenists, while considering themselves Christian and even Catholic, thought that God was cruel (or Cruel) making people do evil and punishing them for it.

That makes some sense.

If I had religion I would worship the One who has a Sick and Twisted Sense of Humor. Most of all He (or She) seems to favour privileger and otherwise root for total utter idiocy.

Could Rand Paul be created by natural procesees ? Sure although I'd rather be far far away from those processes. Could natural processes cause Rand Paul to be 15 fucking points ahead in the latest poll ? Could mere idiocy achieve so much ? No only Idiocy (whose avatar is aqua Buddha) could make that possiblle.

I don't see any Angle for more positive proof that He (or She) is seeking to find the utter abyss of idiocy.

Ballance all time winner.

Jonathan Martin at Politico (via Steve Benen who reads Politico so I don't have to).

Millionaire businessman Rick Scott's surprise win in the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday left both parties scrambling over how to cope with a candidate who possesses both glaring flaws and considerable assets.

I understand that Politico can't say Republicans have a problem, but how many Florida Democrats are distressed that they have to run against the worlds greatest welfare cheat ever. Ok it was medicare not medicaid so you better not call it welfare especially not in Florida, but don't you think "Rick Scott should have kept his hands off your medicare" might be a pretty good slogan.

Scott does, of course, have considerable assets -- financial assets that is.

I wonder what Mark Rubio feels about sharing the ticket with a criminal. I expect him to be asked that question pretty much 24/7 by Crist and Meek.

More generally, I almost hope that the media narrative will be Republican primary voters have gone completely crazy. Not gonna happen (it is true but unBallanced) but a guy can dream.

Grey Lady Taking Bong Hits ?

I take a break from dumping on the www.washingtonpost.com headline and abstract guy or gal to note that the www.nytimes.com abstract writer seems to have abstracted from the case of Florida

Murkowski Is Locked in a Tight Senate Race in Alaska By DAMIEN CAVE 51 minutes ago
The race between Senator Lisa Murkowski and a challenger is still too close to call, but in other races, established politicians easily prevailed.

That would include established politician Rick Scott who has never held public office. Josh Marshall proposes the herbal explanation here.

Trying to be less sophomoric, I was struck by the following sentence in the actual article

She is battling for re-election in a political season in which another Senate incumbent, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, lost a primary after switching party affiliation to Democratic from Republican, setting off fears that a tide of anti-incumbency would spell doom for sitting lawmakers.

Why didn't Cave write "raising hopes that a tide of anti-incumbency ..." ? He could even have reported without slant by writing "raising the possibility that ..." or "causing some to predict that ...". It almost seems that he views the world as an establishment insider. Nah couldn't be.

Greenwald Vs Goldberg vs Plutonium 240

I have been enjoying Glenn Greenwald's proof beyond reasonable doubt that one should never ever trust Jeffrey Goldberg. This reminds me of my 2 rules of blogging

1. Never argue with Glenn Greenwald
2. If you are really pissed with Glenn Greenwald, consult rule number 1.

I want to amplify on one point made by Jonathan Scwatz in the post cited by Greenwald.

Schwarz claims that, before the Israeli bombing of the Osirik reactor Iraq didn't have an active nuclear weapons development program. He cites as supporting evidence the claim by Harvard Prof. Richard Wilson that the reactor would not have been useful for such a program. I recall Wilson's article and, in particular, the words "Plutonium" and "isotopes."

Wilson's claim is that the reactor made the wrong mixture of isotopes of plutonium, so making a bomb with spent fuel would be about as difficult as making a bomb starting with unenriched Uranium. I thought the point was that the reactor was a preassurized light water reactor not a graphite mediated reactor. Now I know a bit more.

update 2: This post is not of purely historical interest. The newly fueled Iranian Bushehr reactor is a light water reactor (via Juan Cole) I believe it is generally agreed that light water reactors are not useful for making atomic bombs as argued below.

Off at Wikipedia there is the claim "Spent civilian power reactor fuel typically has under 70% Pu-239 and around 26% Pu-240, the rest being made up of other plutonium isotopes, making it extremely difficult but not impossible to use it for manufacturing nuclear weapons[citation needed]."

Well a Wikipedia article with [citation needed] sure isn't proof beyond reasonable doubt. However, this is an engineering question and journalists feel confident in their ability to judge it better than engineers and physicists.

Schwarz also cites the testimony of everyone in a position to know. yet somehow it is an accepted truthiness that Saddam Hussein was using the reactor to develope a bomb.

update: Welcome DeLong readers. I didn't expect anyone to read this post, but, since it is getting some visits, I will amplify. I think the key issue is the moderator for the reactor.

Some review: One of the challenges is making a nuclear reactor is that Uranium 238 absorbs neutrons and doesn't fission (it turns into Plutonium 239 instead). Uranium 238 absorbs only high energy neutrons, so reactors contain something called a moderater to slow neutrons down -- water, heavy water, graphite or molten sodium.

Some reactors are used to make plutonium 239 for bombs. These reactors are graphite mediated or heavy water mediated. One of them is in Yongbon in North Korea. The agreed framework for preventing the use of Yongbon for bomb making (negotiated by, among others, Clinton and Kim Jong Il and unilaterally repudiated by Bush) was to replace the Yonbon reactor with a light water mediated reactor built at foreign expense and to supply N. Korea with fuel oil while this reactor was being built. It was generally agreed (even by the Bush administration) that this would end the problem of using Plutonium from spent fuel to make bombs.

The Bush administration repudiated the agreement because, they argued, that N. Korea had just shifted to enriching Uranium to make bombs. Then they changed their intelligence analysis and decided that N Korea was not able to enrich uranium and not even trying. Notably it is very hard to enrich Uranium and, so, it is currently agreed that it is very hard to make a bomb if all you have is a light water mediated nuclear reactor and not a graphite mediated or heavy water nuclear reactor. The Bush administration did not challenge this claim made by the Clinton administration. I can neither present nor imagine stronger evidence that this is an agreed scientific fact.

The Osirak reactor was light water mediated.

It is an agreed truthy that, if it had not been bombed, it would have produced spent fuel which would have been used to make a bomb.

Note the name "Osirak" (I probably misspelled it as Osirik above somewhere). Wikipedia asked me if I was looking for "osiris" the Egyptian god who notably was killed and resurrected (the pieces were tied together -- he was the first mummy). Frenche nuclear scientists can resist puns and called their heavy water reactor "Osiris" because spent fuel could be reprocessed to new fuel (or bombs).

I suspect a bit of bait and switch in which a bomb seeking Iraqi dictator asked for a reactor just like the Osiris reactor and the Frenche supplied the similarly named but light water mediated Osirak reactor. Then Menachem Begin, fell for the trick too and had it bombed.

Notably, Begin was advised by scientists and engineers who knew all about making bombs from spent reactor fuel (from the Dimona heavy water moderated reactor). He is also the person who said "Abu Nidal Abu Shmidal a terrorist is a terrorist" and invaded Lebanon to retaliate for killings by terrorists based in Libya. Also he was behind in the polls and there was an election scheduled for two weeks later (which he won).

I'm betting that the day after the Delaware primaries Independence Hall Tea Party PAC President Don Adams will be saying "missed it by that much."

Leading with my chin, I commented on Matthew Yglesias's blog that some popular soak the rich policies made up " the soundest policy agenda in the world." Turning his snark to it lowest level (don't be to hard on fools no one has heard of) Matthew Yglesias worries about squeezing Medicare too much and adds that his policy agenda includes a carbon tax and a reduced military budget.

So what would I add to get to a really sound policy agenda ignoring politics entirely ?

1. Carbon tax check
2. Cut the defence budget (in half or maybe by a factor of 4) check

and

3. Increase centralised (education department) funding for K-12, introduce national curriculum guidelies, and implement high stakes but not stupid testing. The USA has amazing inequality in learning far surpassing other developed countries. This causes inequality and reduces class mobility and something ought to be done about it (but won't).


4. let prisoners go. The USA has a huge immense incarcerating rate causing immense suffering (and costing a lot). Some of this is due to absurd policies like three strikes and you're out. Much of it is due to overestimates of the additional deterrent effect of severe punishment (or more likely desire for revenge sincerely perceived as belief in deterrence). More is due to a crazy war on drugs. It is possible to have less crime and less punishment. Don't ask me how, ask Mark Kleiman.

5. reform welfare reform. Welfare reform is considered to be a great success, because everyone decided the question was closed by 2000. Some said it was hard to tell what was welfare reform and what was the late 80s boom. It isn't hard anymore. More than all of it was the boom. The severe poverty rate is much higher than it was at the trough of the 74-75 recession. People are suffering, because a majority just refuses to accept the facts.

6. Increase the foreign aid budget 10 fold (that would bring it up to 1.2% of GDP). We can spare the money. We don't have to make the mistakes foreign aiders made in the past. Does it make sense to choose between treating AIDS (which reduces transmission) and treating TB ?

7. No aid to rich farmers -- that means no price supports, so the program should be aid to farmers with dependent children (back when I was young and naive I expected farmers would be less self righteous if they were given cash but they are not at all embarrassed).

8. Single payer public health insurance. Still sound policy even if it is way off any practical agenda. Seriously what about trying for Medicare buy in ?

9. Merge NASA and the NSF (that is close NASA and give its budget to the NSF). If a space progect is sound science, space grant applicants should be able to make the case on purely scientific grounds.

10. Stop wasting money on missile defences which work as well as North Korean missiles.

11. Outsource the war in Afghanistan to Afghans. We are spending many times their GDP. Surely we can find warlords willing to do it for less.

12. Eliminate all tariffs on imports. Anyone who hates inequality should hate them.

13. Eliminate all restrictions on immigration.

14. Be practical.

I like Karen Tumulty but she really has to stop quoting people without noting their vested interests. She ends her latest article by quoting then paraphrasing Grover Norquist criticizing critics of 51park (aka Cordoba house).

Norquist said "The support for criticizing a mosque is half a mile wide and an inch deep," conservative activist Grover Norquist warned. "And at the end of the process, the only people who will remember it are the people who feel threatened by this -- not just Muslims, but Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Mormons."

Tumulty goes on to paraphrase him in her own voice. I'd like to think that Norquist is right on this one. He is coincidentally on the side of freedom and justice this time. However, as usual, he is advocating for someone who gave him money. If a registered lobbyist says something pleasing to a (former ?) client, that affiliation should be noted.

Actually I'll go further. I think that journalists should be the natural enemies of lobbyists. I think a reasonable rule of sound journalism is that lobbyists should not be quoted -- ever. What can readers possibly gain from amplification of the influence of lobbyists ?

Jonathan Chait has a great post noting that in the early 19th century it was illegal to build synagogues in many states. He compares this to the Cordoba House controversy. Excellent point. He does express surprise about something which is not at all surprising writing

"even after the signing of the Constitution, First Amendment protections didn't stop cities from preventing the construction of Jewish housesof worship"

I will pass over the fact that, when it was signed, the Constitution was just the skins of 3 dead sheep. It only became a constitution when it was ratified. Then the bill of rights was a twinkle in Samuel Adam's eye. The bill of rights only saw the light of day two years after the signing of the Constitution.

A more important point is that the first amendment in no way guaranteed freedom of religion. It only prevented "congress" from restricting freedom of religion. Only state constitutions offered any protection of freedom of religion from state legislatures. The first amendment begins "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." so it restriced congress only and left state legislatures to ban synagogues, mosques or churches as they saw fit.

The US Constitution only established freedom of religion (all by itself without help from state constitutions) when the 14th amendment was ratifies. The key claus

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Notice that the "priviledges and immunities" are those of citizens. As far as I can tell (which isn't far) repeal of the first sentence (as proposed by Sen Graham) would make it possible to, say, declare that Jews aren't citizens and don't have the priviledge of building houses of worship. It seems to me that a state law which offered jews and gentiles equal protection from synagogues would be consistent with the text as re-written.

I never cease to be amazed at how often web-literate people write about the constitution without checking the text which is easily available.

Shorter Robert Waldmann

Jonathan Chait wrote "I focused entirely on the rationale for war, which I still think was solid, and failed to think very hard about the likely outcome of of an American occupation of Iraq."

So the rationale is different from the likely outcome ?

What does that mean ? What could that mean ?

I can understand, if not accept, the logic of absolute pacifism whatever the consequences but supporting a war whatever the consequences is insane. Chait is sane. He couldn't have meant what he plainly wrote. What could he have had in mind ? How could those words come to be written ?

Those aren't rhetorical questions. I ask for information.

Jonathan Chait is Great.

I love his blog and read it regularly. Don't missinterpert the fact that all my comments here are critical.

That said, Jonathan Chait manages the very difficult task of being unfair to David Frum. Frum says that liberals think the President should be able to legislate for four years. Chait passes over the irony of a Bush White House staffer claiming that liberals, liberals think the President should be able to over-rule congress as Bush regularly did (that is he broke the law and committed crimes). He quotes Frum claiming that it's Obama's fault that Republicans filibuster everything.

[M]any of the liberal blogs seem to take the view that once a president wins an election, his duty to persuade the country somehow adjourns for the next four years. That is not true, and it should not be true. If a president can mobilize the country behind an idea, it’s amazing how the filibusters will fade away.

Chait correctly notes that it is impossible to mobilize the country around the idea that, say Peter Diamond ought to be confirmed. The people won't push the Senate to do many of the things that the Senate has to do (one way or the other) because they are deeply obscure and most people haven't even heard of the issue.

Frum knows this. He is pretending that Obama's only trouble is with major initiatives which lack public support. This is exactly backwards. Obama got health care reform (plurality opposed). He didn't get cap and trade (plurality in favor) or Peter Diamond (majority huh ? Who's Peter Diamond ?). Frum knows that the country can't work if Republicans block everything unless the country is mobilized behind it.

However, Chait can't help overstating Frum's position when making fun of it. He wrote "So, I assume that the Senate is obstructing Peter Diamond's nomination to the Federal Reserve because the public is massively opposed to his ideas about monetary policy?" Frum never said the filibuster only works when the country is mobilized in favor of the filibuster. He said it won't work if the public is mobilized against it. Given the manifest absurdity of Frum's argument, Chait absolutely didn't have to distort it. He just does that out of habit.

Also -- Chait reconsiders the Iraq war. Basically he says Joe Klein has over-reactedand turned excessively dovish. An arguable position. However, then Chait presents a use of "rationale" which is totally irrational -- absurd -- something he would never take seriously except when he feels the need to argue that dirty fucking hippies were not totally exactly utterly right in spite of the fact that our predictions were correct and his were totally wrong. Chait wrote

Among other things, I focused entirely on the rationale for war, which I still think was solid, and failed to think very hard about the likely outcome of an American occupation of Iraq.

So the rationale for doing something is separate from the likely outcome ?!?!? What the hell could that possibly mean ? Chait evidently considers it reasonable to decide what to do based on benefit analysis not cost-benefit analysis. How could any semi-rational person use the word "rationale" the way Chait uses it ? In all his other posts, he acts as a consequentialist considering it best to consider the effects of a policy before advocating it. Yes somehow the platonic idea of the invasion of Iraq is sound in spite of the consequences.

This is deeply pathological. It is also unrelated to his main point.

Oh in the same post he suggests that Klein would have avoided fighting the Germans in WWII neglecting the fact that the Germans declared war on us.

Again incorrect history (as has been pointed out on the web) which is not needed for his main point. Why does Chait add nonsense to a rock solid case (against Frum) and an arguable case (against Klein) ? I recall my last post on Chait which noted that he misquoted Beinart in an aside in a post where he admitted that Beinart was partly right. There is an insane level of combativeness here, which I don't understand. I have never actually met anyone more intellectually combative than me (Michele Boldrin managed a solid tie) and I can't imagine what Chait is like in person.

What is Happening In Italian Politics ?

This will be a long post as it is not easy to explain how Italian politics got this way to foreigners. First I will discuss recent developments. Later I will discuss the characters in the commedia and history.

Until this week, Silvio Berlusconi was, on paper, a very powerful Prime minister with a large majority consisting of only two parties – the racist regionalist Lega Nord and the PDL a new party formed from the ex-post fascists and Forza Italia (yaaaay Italy) founded by Berlusconi. The PDL doesn’t exist any more. Berlusconi just expelled the cofounder – Gianfranco Fini last general secretary of an openly neofascist party and now President of the Camera de deputati (lower house of Parliament from now on “Camera”). This is not a return to the past as Berlusconi has kept more than half of the ex-neo-fascists. At the moment, Fini, however, has enough followers in the Camera to give the opposition a majority if he wants. On paper a no confidence motion should pass.

So what will happen next ? Well first everyone will go to the beach. It’s August, Parliament doesn’t meet in August. The breakup was scheduled to give a month of contrasting confident predictions before there is any actual vote. There will be a lot of conflicting press releases.

So what will happen in September ? One possibility is that Berlusconi will be able to win the support of enough members of Parliament to have a new small majority. He has announced the creation of 6 new positions of undersecretary with the obvious aim of offering them to MPs from tiny parties and MPs who have already switched party since being elected. The resulting struggle in parliament will be difficult for Berlusconi. It doesn’t help that to play against the referee and Fini can use his office to make the schedule as inconvenient as possible for Berlusconi. Since the laws on which they disagree serve no purpose except to protect Berlusconi and friends from judicial investigations, Fini should enjoy heated debate.

Berlusconi’s aim is to get the President of the Republic to call early elections. It is reasonably likely that he and his remaining allies would win such elections. Fini’s new mini-party “Futuro e …" I have to check uhm … does not have any name recognition, and the number of Berlusconi haters willing to vote for an ex post neo-fascist is tiny. The issue will be whether the Parliament should serve Berlusconi’s personal interests. This has been the issue for decades and Berlusconi has won more elections than he has lost. I have no idea why people vote for his parties – I have never heard anyone admit to have done so. It’s just a fact that with a clear choice between Berlusconi and the law and the constitution, about half of Italians choose Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s problem is that the President of the Republic is not quite like the Queen of England. He is supposed to be non-partisan, but is not expected to obey the Prime Minister. In particular, The President is supposed to call early elections only if it is absolutely impossible to find a majority in Parliament. The current President, Giorgio Napolitano is a terminally moderate mild mannered ex-communist. He has quarreled less with Berlusconi than either of the other Presidents who had to deal with him as Prime minister, but he sure won’t deviate a bit from the Constitution to help Berlusconi.

Berlusconi, being Berlusconi, is likely to demand early elections and demand that he be caretaker prime minister during the campaign (this is what he did the last time he lost his majority in Parliament, although he also said the Parliament didn’t have the authority to fire him, because the constitution was rendered obsolete by a law passed in Parliament – I promise you I am not exaggerating or removing necessary context). Berlusconi is not capable of pretending to respect the constitution or the principle of division of power. In his struggle to get to an early election, he will make it absolutely clear that no Italian who gives a damn about the constitution, division of power, the Democratic tradition or elementary logic could possibly vote for him. However, this has been absolutely clear for decades and he often wins elections.

My guess is that sooner or later, Berlusconi will get angry and resign – demanding that he be made caretaker prime minister and that there be early elections. Since he still has a majority in the Senate, he will be able to make it impossible for anyone else to be Prime minister. My guess is that he gets his early elections and the issues are how much contempt for constitutional democracy will he show while demanding them (probably lots) and how many Italians share that contempt (not an absolute majority but probably a plurality).

Some politicians in the center left, including Bersani the general secretary of the Democratic Party (which makes the US Democratic party seem to be well organized) and Massimo d’Alema (a former prime minister) have made it clear that they will attempt to patch together a new majority in order to avoid an election. This would require an agreement with the xenophobic, regionalist extremist Lega Nord whose leader just responded to a reporter’s question on the constitutional reform by showing his middle finger. The proposed deal is to have a short lived majority which will change the electoral law back to a proportional system so there will never be a strong majority in Parliament and leaders of little parties with almost no support (or regional support like the Lega) will be able to block everything again. I’m pretty sure that very few Italians find this effort less disgusting than I do and it makes me feel sick. I will discuss why the hell these people are discussing obscene deals in public after I regain my composure (in my next post).

So why did Fini do it ? Technically, Berlusconi broke with Fini expelling his followers from their joint party. However, this was clearly inevitable for months as Fini openly criticized Berlusconi. Elisabetta Addis argues that the issue is who will lead the right after Berlusconi dies (note no hope that his political career will end before his life). Slavishly following Berlusconi works fine (for those who can stand the humiliation) while he is alive, but is not the way to position oneself as a leader. Fini has shown some dignity and spine (also respect for his constitutional role but I’d guess that the center right voters are willing to forgive that). However, the pile of ex allies of Berlusconi on the ash heap of Italian politics is very high (Dini, Mastella, Pievetti, Casini (more or less)).

My personal guess is that it is very very hard for anyone with any self respect to deal with Berlusconi. Berlusconi doesn’t hide the fact that he considers himself the boss. He demands that everyone repeat his absurd lies about how he is not a crook, and it’s just that investigating magistrates all over Italy are out to get him.

It is important that Berlusconi has been trying to use the parliament to protect himself and his friends from the latest judicial investigations of their many crimes (I note I am writing this in Italy so it would be libel if I could not prove my accusation. However, I would have no problem proving that Berlusconi has committed many crimes just by referring to official sentences many of which conclude he is not to be declared guilty because of the statue of limitations, an amnesty, or the fact that he had earlier parliaments change the laws he broke after he broke them. Please please sue me Silvio).

The President of the Camera (and the President of the Senate) are supposed to defend the constitutional prerogatives of those legislative bodies. Berlusconi spits on constitutional prerogatives and makes it hard for Presidents of houses of Parliament to avoid totally humiliating themselves or breaking with him. Notably the last time Berlusconi lost a majority in Parliament, the then President of the Camera Irene Pivetti was an early leader of the back bench and presidium revolt.

The Presidents of the Camera or the Senate who have not broken with Berlusconi are incredibly spineless shameless worms even by the standards of followers of Berlusconi (dear judge, I mean that metaphorically and don’t claim that I can actually prove they are helminths, although in the case of Scongnamiglio I’d be willing to try).