Paul Krugman is an economics columnist at the New York Times, and received the Nobel Prize in economics for work he did in the late 80’s. Those two things give him a certain cachet in the realm of economics policy. However, ever since George W. Bush was elected in 2000, he has turned nearly totally partisan, using his clout to attack conservatives and defend liberalism, at the expense of intellectual integrity. His latest column is an example of how wrapped up in partisan rhetoric he is.
Krugman is a Keynesian. Keynesians believe that in economic downturns massive government spending must take place to turn the economy around. This was the prevalent school of thought in the FDR administration, and the economic policies of the 1930’s reflect that. However, Krugman goes too far with his attempts to interpret Keynesian success from the 1940’s:
From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today.
Had anyone proposed spending even a fraction that much before the war, people would have said the same things they’re saying today. They would have warned about crushing debt and runaway inflation. They would also have said, rightly, that the Depression was in large part caused by excess debt — and then have declared that it was impossible to fix this problem by issuing even more debt.
But guess what? Deficit spending created an economic boom — and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity. Overall debt in the economy — public plus private — actually fell as a percentage of G.D.P., thanks to economic growth and, yes, some inflation, which reduced the real value of outstanding debts. And after the war, thanks to the improved financial position of the private sector, the economy was able to thrive without continuing deficits.
I’m no economist, nor even an economic historian, but it strikes me fairly obvious that America’s economic prosperity following WWII might have had something to do with the fact that it was the only industrialized nation that hadn’t been devastated by war. Germany, Russia, Britain, France – all had their industrial centers ravaged, their male populations decimated. BMW and Mitsubishi weren’t exactly in a position to challenge GM, Ford or Chrysler in 1946. Britain didn’t end food rationing until 1954 – nine years after the war ended.
I’m sure America’s economy would see an uptick if the rest of the world’s industrial infrastructure crumbled overnight. I don’t think we’d even need to go into public debt if it did happen to trigger the boom. I’m just not sure how Krugman is proposing for it happen.
There have been indications since spring that this was going to be a Republican election cycle. That, in and of itself, isn’t a shocker – the President’s party usually loses seats in non-Presidential years, and given the overwhelming Democratic majority, the Republicans couldn’t really go anywhere but up.
What is surprising is the latest Gallup generic party poll. Gallup has been performing that poll since WWII, and is now registering a 10-point Republican lead – by far the largest in history. Historically, Republicans are under-represented in that poll, so a 1-2 point Democratic lead usually means a wash. Even in 1994, with the Contract with America class, the lead was only 5 points. What’s more, up until August, the distance between the two parties on the poll was fairly close, with Democrats and Republicans switching places every couple of weeks. The entire month of August, however, has shown the Republicans with a sizable lead over Democrats, and that it’s widening.
Traditionally, political voting patterns begin to set in late August, as the primaries finish and candidates begin open campaign season. By the end of September, voting trends are pretty much locked into place, with the ability of politicians (barring an October Surprise) to shift the electorate usually limited to just a couple of percentage points.
As such, it’s now that we look for indicators that the voting populace is breaking one way or the other for a given election cycle. I’d say a historic lead for Republicans in the Gallup poll qualifies for just such an indicator. With such an advantage, even Republicans that shouldn’t have a chance (running in historically Democratic districts), assuming they run a competent campaign, move into the “toss-up” category.
Last month, Politico posted about the decline of Hotline, the political newswire. I’d heard about Hotline a while ago, when Rush Limbaugh touted it as the cutting edge of political information. He was right at the time – in the infancy of the web, Hotline gave timely, daily political synopsis via fax. I wondered how I could access to it, but at $15,000, it was a little bit beyond the means of my allowance.
But the advance of technology that put Hotline in such demand also signaled it’s decline. Now, up to the minute news from Washington can be had from dozens of websites. Still would like a subscription to it.
A friend of mine recently commented on Net Neutrality (and specifically, the Verizon/Google collaboration). My thoughts on the matter are a bit long for a comment, so I thought I’d turn it into a full post.
Net Neutrality, at it’s most basic idea, is the idea that bits should be considered bits only – that bits shouldn’t be treated differently based on where they are from, where they are going, or what they are carrying. Now, any techie will tell you this is unreasonable – the very underlying technology that provides for the Internet violates this (Time To Live field in IP). And I’ve used quality of service (QoS) settings in my house to great effect, which would be verboten under such a regime. Ditto for network protection measures.
So it’s not about treating all bits the same. Fair enough, that was a simplification. The real fear regarding the issues of Net Neutrality is this: some people are worried about corporations cutting deals to lock out people from the Internet and it will become a gated community (usually with political connotations). Others are worried that the government will take control and turn the Internet into a political football and regulate away the dynamic nature of it. Depending on which you worry about more generally determines where you end up on the divide.
There are a couple of points I’d like to make here: First, we currently have de facto if not de jure Net Neutrality. No service provider I’ve had blocks me from going to the many sundry and controversial parts of the web. As such, arguments for Net Neutrality are based on a perceived threat, and not an actual one.
Second, the most likely means of Net Neutrality is through FCC oversight. In response to a point my friend made about with government oversight, at least “we can vote the bastards out”, the members of the FCC are appointed bureaucrats and not elected. In fact, I honestly couldn’t name any member of the FCC beyond Michael Powell, who (rather infamously) oversaw the FCC during the surge of decency complaints following Super Bowl XXXVIII. As such, the oversight of the FCC regarding the Internet would be controlled by people appointed to the position, and reflect the political winds of the time but insulated from voter retribution. Unless you believe your political ideology will rule from here on out, this should be a worry for you.
Third, consider the primary broadband provider in any given area – the cable provider. Sure, DSL exists, but it’s much narrower than cable. Cable is building on top of an infrastructure that allows it to provide TV and other services. This combined infrastructure gives it a much larger revenue stream than just broadband. And that revenue stream means that they are able to pursue the costs of meeting the regulatory requirements necessary to move into a given market.
Now, admittedly, my knowledge in the area of municipal telecom regulations is somewhat murky, but what I’ve read seems to backup my general belief that most corporate unseemliness is either enabled or caused by government regulation (and the manipulation thereof). For instance, a couple of years ago, the FCC forced a relaxation in the requirements for entry into the cable market. In ruling in favor of the FCC’s action, a US court noted, “For example, Verizon’s comments indicated that, of its 113 franchise negotiations pending as of March 2005, only ten resulted in franchise grants after one year.” Additionally, “[C]omments submitted by service provider Qwest indicated that it withdrew franchise applications in eight different regions due to economically burdensome build-out requirements.” (See here, pages 19 and 20).
Now, this situation has me a bit conflicted. On the one hand, as a big believer in federalism, I feel that it’s, as a general rule, proper to devolve authority to the lowest levels possible. But at the same time, when it’s the actions of the local community that make it too burdensome to enter into the market, I hardly feel it’s right to complain about the lack of competition.
These three points lead me to the conclusion that there is not a clear and present danger to the spirit of the Internet as it’s existed, that the granting to the government of additional oversight in the way the Internet is run brings with it new and unnecessary hazards, and that the best way to preserve de facto Net Neutrality is to further ease the regulatory and bureaucratic requirements on companies wishing to enter into the market.
During the Clinton Administration, the White House fought against a Congressional ban on partial-birth abortion. An important part of the administration argument, and subsequent court battles over the issue, was the findings of a panel from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”
The problem is that wasn’t the finding of any of the doctors on the panel. It was language inserted by Elena Kagan, serving as a political adviser to Clinton. The draft document said that the panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” Kagan said that this language was politically disastrous, and had to be changed, which it subsequently was in the official statement from the ACOG.
If you have ever complained of political meddling in the affairs of science under Bush, I do not see how Elena Kagan, after these revelations, can be considered acceptable.
I came across a series of pictures a while ago in a Front Page Magazine article. They are snapshots of the graduating class of Cairo University from 1959 through 2004.
Hint: look at the women.
New York Post via Rich Lowry
Nevertheless, to make the boss look like he’s in charge, his administration keeps threatening BP with thuggish language (“We will keep our boot on their neck”) and made public a criminal probe — something the Justice Department doesn’t normally do until it actually files charges.
“If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.
Tough guy. But look at his mild comments about the Times Square bomber on “Meet the Press,” where Holder never expressed even the mildest rebuke of the terrorist: “Well, you know, the evidence develops, and I think we have to always try to be careful to make sure that the statements that we make are consistent with the evidence that we have developed,” he said, adding that his people were going “to try to understand what is it that took him over the edge and that converted him from being a person who seemingly was an average American to somebody who was bound and determined to kill Americans.”
So when it comes to terrorists, understanding is the main goal. With corporations, it’s punishment.
Dropping into pure-political analysis mode for a minute, I’ve been looking at the upcoming Senate races. Everyone is projecting a bad year for Democrats, and barring something completely unforeseen, that looks to be the case. When Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, and even Russ Feingold are in tight races, that means that the Democrats are in serious trouble, with many projecting about five seats switching to Republicans, with some putting the outside chance at ten. But, unless that unlikely circumstance were to happen, the Democrats will look to hold on to the Senate, so it won’t be too disastrous.
The real trouble, however, is that this year is the class of 2004 – the last year the Republicans held the majority in the Senate. Right now, the number of Senate seats up for election are split evenly between Republicans and Democrats at 18 each. The next two elections will be for the classes of 2006 and 2008 (which were heavy anti-Republican years), where Democrats won a number of close races they normally would not have. Republicans that won, however, won under the worst circumstances they could expect to endure, thus proving themselves as strong candidates that probably won’t lose in the future. So the Democrats will be defending a number of candidates in weak positions whereas Republicans will be running candidates that were able to pull it out in a very anti-Republican election.
Additionally, the side-effect for the Democrats of winning all those elections is that now they have many more incumbents to defend – 20 to the Republicans 10. The same story goes for 2014, where 19 Democrats are up against 13 Republicans.
Between having to defend incumbents in Republican-friendly states and the sheer imbalance in number of incumbents to defend, barring some sort of massive turn against the Republicans on the scale of 2006, the Democrats can look at raw attrition losing them, reasonably, 10 seats in 2012 and 2014. Combine that with what look to be a number of losses in traditional Democratic strongholds this year (Illinois, Nevada, Delaware) in addition to other, expected Republican victories in Republican states, the Republicans could see seats in the high-50’s quite reasonably in 2015.
Basically, it looks bad for Democrats in the Senate over the next six years. At best, Democrats will have a majority for the next two years only.
I try not to fall into the meme that Democrats hate America that many on the right do. I assume that they simply have different points of emphasis from conservatives regarding patriotism. But, then, I read stuff life this:
He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its [sic] own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.
I’m
The United States and China reported no major breakthroughs Friday after only their second round of talks about human rights since 2002.
The Obama administration wants to push Beijing to treat its citizens better, but it also needs Chinese support on Iranian and North Korean nuclear standoffs, climate change and other difficult issues. …
[Assistant Secretary of State Michael] Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.
I’m sorry, but criticizing the US on crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination? These are problems in *every* society on the face of the Earth. You can’t tell me that China’s problems of crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination are in *any way* better dealt with than the way they are dealt with in the US.
The fact that Obama’s envoy not only accepted the criticism as justified, but then, on his own, bashed America for having a state that let police officers arrest people for being in the country illegally is beyond comprehension. We’re taking human rights criticism from a country that revers a person who killed 40 million of his own people not 50 years ago. That ran over it’s own democracy movement with tanks not 25 years ago. That still arrests people for political crimes or practicing a non-state sanctioned religion.
Does Obama think that the US is no better than China when it comes to the subjects of freedom, liberty and human rights?
Elena Kagan is about as good a liberal judicial nominee as Republicans could hope for (outside Laurence Tribe), but that doesn’t mean she’s a good nominee. Her credentials and temper seem to be impeccable, but her underlying ideology is incompatible with conservative judicial philosophy. These judicial nominations should be battlegrounds for arguing that, but instead we have this frustrating whirlwind of personal attacks on her. It’s an equal-opportunity problem – the left did the same to former Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams in ‘91 in an effort to embarrass Republicans.
Ace of Spades wrote about the problem in perhaps the single best column I’ve ever read on the subject. In it, Ace equates it to the Prisoner’s Dilema:
The point is that it is strongly in both men’s interest to refuse to betray, assuming a high-trust environment where they could expect the other to refuse to betray. But because neither man has full trust in the other (and can’t work out a binding contract to this effect with the other), their “best move” turns out to be betraying the other, even though this results in a bad outcome for both men.
If they could communicate, establish trust, and forge a binding contract — if they could cooperate — they could both have the optimal result. But they can’t, and that forces upon both of them a sub-optimal result.
It seems to me the dirtier aspects of politics are just like this. If both parties could really agree on what smears were out-of-bounds and forge a binding contract to avoid such smears, both parties could achieve what many long for, an optimal sort of politics, in which smears (and invasive questions) were not on the menu.
But the two parties can’t cooperate, for a variety of reasons (including the fact that the parties can’t actually control any of their millions of members, so any single person can decide to void the contract and go dirty, thus making any such contract between the parties meaningless).
So both are forced into a suboptimal solution in which each “betrays” the other with smears and arguably dirty tactics.
The two sides have fundamental, often irreconcilable differences. That doesn’t mean that the various political actors can’t be civil and rational. I’ve seen Al Sharpton on the Sunday morning talk shows completely transform himself from the firebrand image he puts on for mass-consumption. The thing is, people only pay attention to politics when there are elements of drama, otherwise they become cynical and apathetic. So rather than have a civil, meaningful discussion that will influence only a small percentage of the population (the rest quickly losing interest), they both make a grab for the large chunk of undecided voters:
The public — and when I say “the public,” I don’t mean all of the public, I mean the 20-25% “moderates” who are largely apathetic and apolitical and tend to vote according to things like gut-level reaction to a candidate’s charisma and presentation — does not like ideological spats and in fact prefers to believe that ideological spats flow only from emotional pique and meanness of character, and that, if everyone just coolly and amicably sat down together and rolled up their sleeves, such spats would disappear altogether, because they’d find a Magic Compromise which achieves all goals simultaneously while imposing no costs.
They refuse to believe that choosing one theory of governance will come with associated costs. They like the Republicans’ idea of cutting taxes; they don’t like the Republicans’ ideas about cutting spending (except in theory).
They like the Democrats’ idea of voting ourselves all a big raise in the form of new social spending given to almost everybody (except the ultrarich). They don’t like the Democrats’ plans about upping taxes, or, as Democrats call it, “investing in our future.”
Choosing is an act that requires both intellectual effort and a certain amount of moral effort, too. If you decide to take money out of someone’s pocket, or cut the subsidies they’ve grown accustomed to, you need a certain level of moral surety that you’re doing the right thing.
. . .
I’d like to deal with them as if they were adults and just say “Hey, here’s their ideology, here’s theirs; they’re probably not bad people, on the whole, but their ideas are bad, and you have to finally chose their ideas or mine,” but, on a political level, they’re not adults.
They are in fact children, and you don’t explain to a small child the moral consequences of lying or the nuanced cases in which a lie might be justified or inconsequential.
You tell a small child that if he lies, his Mommy and Daddy will cry, and hope that that blunt emotional messaging does the trick.
So how does that apply to the “Kagan is lesbian” rumor? Because it’s what will get that middle %25 to pay attention.
Here’s what politicians can never say, but I’m not running for office, so I can: There are a lot of fucking Dummies in this country and they’re lazy to boot and the only way you can hope to engage them in politics is through Punch-and-Judy puppet-shows with lots of slapsticking and crude drama.
And if for a lot of these Dummies, the only question they’re asking about Elena Kagan is “Is she a lesbian?” — because it’s a fun question like they often see on Melrose Place, except with much hotter women — that is one more question than they were ever interested in as regards Sonia Sotomayor
And because that’s the only question regarding Kagan the Dummies have even heard of, that limits the actual political content of the debate they’re willing to even hear to “Does that mean she supports a guarantee to gay marriage?”
It’s not my fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not our politicians’ fault. Frankly, I gotta say, it’s often not even the Democrats’ fault.
It’s the Dummies’ fault. Our politics is fundamentally stupid because those marginal voters that are the key to every election are fundamentally stupid — at least as regards politics.
Ace is very right-wing, and sometime a bit too crude for my tastes, but this blog post isn’t just spot on, but it’s enlightening and transcends ideological lines – I think even liberal can find a lot to agree with in his observations. Read the whole thing.
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