.
Professor Krugman on the poor folks’ weapon, “The Uses of Ridicule”:
… Matt O’Brien has a lot of fun with Paul Singer, a billionaire inflation truther who is sure that the books are cooked because of what he can see with his own eyes:
… check out London, Manhattan, Aspen & East Hampton real estate prices, as well as high-end art prices, to see what the leading edge of hyperinflation could look like
Hyperinflation in the Hamptons; hard to beat that for comedy, although Matt adds value with the Billionaires Price Index.
But Singer will get very angry if you make fun of him; in fact, he denounces reporting that points out how wrong he and others have been as the “Krugmanization” of the media, a term I’ll adopt with pride. It’s yet another illustration of one of the remarkable revelations of recent years, the incredibly sensitive feelings of the superrich, who are so hurt at any suggestion that great wealth does not also go with great wisdom and great virtue that they threaten to take the economy with them and go home.
But we must make fun of such people — and not just because, I admit, it’s one of the pleasures of life… Making fun of billionaires who are clueless about economics, and lack the menschood to admit their mistakes, serves a couple of functions. It reminds the audience that being rich doesn’t mean that you know what you’re talking about; it also provides other rich people some incentive to think before they speak, and maybe even do some homework before preaching to the rest of us. I’m snarky for a reason…
Krugman also links to a classic Molly Ivins column, but you’ll have to click over for that.
***********
Apart from re-arming the snark cannons (catapults?), what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
Keith G
Too bad snark ≠ motivation to vote.
Mustang Bobby
The intertoobs to the office website — and thus access to all the stuff I need to catch up on after taking a day off — are all clogged up. So all I get is a little spinning hourglass and the “Connecting…” promise. Ah, well, I didn’t come in early just to work anyway.
Love me some Krugman in the morning. Snark is a dish best served piping hot.
Schlemazel
Very big goings on at work this weekend. It should be the end of the first of two ultra-high pressure panic driven projects for November. Then I have next week to look forward to when all the work for the second must be done & I have a part to play in every one of 19 individual projects that must be completed successfully or hell will be paid. Oh, and I can’t get my boss off his dumb ass to do a couple of things he must do in order for me to complete those tasks.
good times.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Reading this clowns news letter is just wow –
Slow economic growth and high unemployment are going to cause hyperinflation because art prices are shooting up, what?
Marcion
Don’t snark, organize.
Schlemazel
Scott Meyer draws Basic Instructions 3 times a week & they are always good. Todays not only works for the office environment but could easily embody the truth of the economic shit storm:
http://www.gocomics.com/basicinstructions/2014/11/07
bemused
Molly Ivins was a national treasure. Love strong, feisty, smart women like her.Without looking at date and author, you’d never guess her Lyin’ Bully column was written freaking 20 years ago. Still the same old but now more Republicans bullies are in office.
I miss Rand Rhodes too. She was on top of shit every day.
Mike E
I did gotv for nearly a month…clearly, my work is done!
Back to filling in for the early early shift at my conv ctr, but still no full time employ since before the Phillies last won it all. Thanks, Obama!
raven
Went to the Cirque last night. We got back at 11:30 and my sleep was awful, no big surprise. Almaluna was not as production heavy as the other 9 that we have seen but it was still stunning in many ways. The opening of the second half was a woman assembling a gigantic bunch of sticks!
LARA JACOBS RIGOLO –THE BALANCE GODDESS. Many reviews have it listed as the highlight of the show. Personally I didn’t really get it but I did make a couple of good jokes that cracked my wife up!
WereBear
Went back to work and my work laptop picked up the Ethernet AND wireless, no problem. In fact, it seemed to claim I had imagined the whole thing!
On the other hand, new hosting company seems amazed I wanted my email to come along for the ride. The ones attached to that domain. Sigh.
Schlemazel
@raven:
The last couple we went to have been a disappointment to us. They seemed to rely more on big production numbers and less on individual performances. Still a good time but just not as exciting or interesting. One, and I forget which it was right now, left me with the impression of large groups of costumed people running around for no apparent reason to really annoying music. Its the only one where on the way home nobody was talking about any amazing performance.
Schlemazel
@raven:
WOW! that is one hell of an act!
Iowa Old Lady
I’m either going to the gym and then to write, or I’m waiting at home for a plumber. Depending on the plumber.
raven
@Schlemazel: You might like this better but the all-female band did rock more than you would like.
MattF
Via LGM, in case you don’t believe in the winger singularity:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/11/05/nyc-pastor-starbucks-is-flavoured-with-the-semen-of-sodomites/
Mike E
I clicked a little further into the WaPo universe than I should have…after Matt’s article I read some petulant piece about a Reid staffer plus readers’ comments. Wow.
I support anybody’s pledge to cancel that subscription!
BruceFromOhio
I awoke to a world where the Cleveland Browns are in first place in the AFC North, for the first time in the 21st century. WTF planet is this.
mai naem
Paul Singer’s a POS hedgefunder/PE guy asshole who thinks Obama is a shoshulist/marxist commie who’s after his money and believe in class warfare etc. etc. etc. He also supports marriage equality and and gave big $$$ to the HRC because his son is gay. Never mind that most in his party would be happy to see his son hung from a fence post. I may be wrong about this(I get confused with all these PE guys) but I think SInger was also one of those oh so patriotic assholes who wouldn’t give an inch during the auto bailout. He’s also the one who’s sued the Argentinian government because he doesn’t want to take a haircut. This POS who doesn’t want to pay his share of taxes has not problem using our court system to get his money from the Argentinian government. If there’s ever pitchforks, Paul Singer should be in front of the line along with Mitt Romney.
Steeplejack
@BruceFromOhio:
Another thing Obama gets no credit for! And another thing the lamestream media didn’t report on until after the election.
Tommy
@raven: I am jealous. When I lived in DC Cirque would just set up in a field in Tyson Corner. It was like they were there and they were not there. They put on a show where tickets were hard to come by.
satby
@Schlemazel: I thought that was cool too.
scav
@MattF: I say; that was fun. ! Seriously. Suddenly those Elon imitation rants seem fantastically understated and well below the top.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Krugman’s column at the Times is great. Chozick’s on the manufactured rush to annoint Hillary, not so much.
Yeah, Bill and Hillary’s candidates lost big, but Martin won’t run because Brown ran a horrible campaign. Uh huh.
We need to push back against “Inevitable II – Electric Boogaloo”… O’Malley has the potential to be a fine candidate (not without some flaws, of course). We need to make sure he, and others, have a chance to [make] his case.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
JMG
It would be good for the party and country and last but not least herself if Clinton had some viable competition in the primaries, but I’m not sure O’Malley fits the definition of that adjective.
Tommy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I do not know what to think. I don’t dislike Hillary even if I am a lot more liberal than she is. Maybe I spend too much time here but I didn’t see the bloodbath, and I can’t find another term for what happened in my district. For the first time in 70 years we elected a Republican to a House seat. We lost elections across the board. We lost every election. Not sure how this happened.
raven
@Tommy: It’s a long drive from here to Atlanta, 70 miles, but it can take quite a while depending on traffic. It’s always a special occasion for us to have a nice dinner with friends and then see the show. IN some ways Schlemazel is right, after going to ten of them it doesn’t have the bang it once did. It’s probably a combination of familiarity and them being spread thin. My wife likes it when I do ANYTHING besides football. We’re going to take Monday and Tuesday off since my birthday is the days before Vets day. A drive up through the mountains, hang in Chattanooga and see Chickamauga should be fun.
Baud
@MattF:
It’s the other half in half-and-half.
scav
@raven: If you make it to Chickamauga, could you pass along a thought for James E Belote killed there on the 20th? Another 78th IL boy, and as the family basically dead-ended after the war, we’ve rather adopted them. Have some of their letters somewhere. Thanks.
Josie
Molly Ivins was spot on (as usual) about Bubba and his problems. The job for the Democratic message people is to figure out how, in very simple terms, to show Bubba who is his enemy and who is his friend and then convince him to do something about it. Make it about income level and not about race or sex.
danielx
For those of us wondering what Matt Taibbi has been occupying himself with while dealing with the ongoing clusterfuck that is First Look, well, it appears that he’s been a busy boy. Even if it’s piecework for Rolling Stone (click through Naked Capitalism for original RS article)…
Taibbi: Ex-JP Morgan Lawyer With Smoking Gun on Mortgage Fraud Stymied by Holder Cover-up
Did you know about that provision in US criminal law that says if your company is under criminal investigation, you can just call DOJ for a sit down to have a heart-to-heart with the US Att’y General about it? No? Me neither.
Equal justice under the law? It is to laugh…
Tommy
@raven:
I hope you have a wonderful time. I often say here I am a hiker/camper. I find TN one of the best states. I’ve walked many miles in it.
Now the only way I’d take issue with you is those are not really mountains. I am a flatlander. The most elevation I get is a speed bump. Those are hills. I started to go out west and see mountains and fell to my knees the size and scope of the mountains.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Amy Chozick is not alone in suggesting that Brown’s loss makes it less likely that O’Malley will even run, let alone get the nomination.
(Not saying that view has anything, or nothing, to commend it.)
Cervantes
Singer’s combination of wealth and greed would be simply hilarious if it were not also a serious threat:
From an article in Fortune by Michelle Celarier (March 26, 2012).
raven
@scav: Will do. I think we’ll go there and maybe hit one or two more on the trip.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
Tommy, do you live in IL-12 (currently Enyart)? Because wow, your new guy, Mike Bost, is some kind of craaaazy dog-killing tantrum-throwing RWNJ, if my Facebook feed is to be believed.
OzarkHillbilly
Dog, I miss Molly.
d58826
(SIGH) Now they tell us, not that it would have made any difference but job numbers are out. Economy added 214k new jobs and unemployeement rate is down to 5.8%
Of ourse the silver lining to Tuesday’s bloodbath is the conservative media will stop demanding to take their country back. And now that they have it, it will still be Obama’s fault. They will stop won’t they? won’t they???????????
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes I do and I am beside myself. We don’t elect people like Bost. I say 70s years and that is a fact. 70 years since we elected a Republican. We elected a crazy person.
If people don’t know your reference to “dog killing” his nephew’s dog bite his daughter. By all accounts it was pretty bad. So he went over and shot the dog. I don’t know where you live but that is cause for me to maybe find a gun and come talk to you. Not in a polite manner.
beltane
@d58826: You’re joking, right? Even if they purged this country of every last non-wingnut they’d still be frothing at the mouth demanding to take their country back. That is the nature of the beast.
beltane
@Tommy: We almost ended up with another Paul LePage in Vermont because people were pretty content with the status quo and so they stayed home on election day. Lowest turnout ever.
Kay
@Josie:
They have a bigger problem though and it gets worse every cycle. They’re losing states. 31 states have GOP governors and they have a huge number of state legislatures. Republican governance will be dominant in the country no matter what Congress and the President do. We’re talking about 80% of election law, 90% of criminal law, most of the credit/finance law that affects ordinary people, 90% of public education, a lot of the worker regulations (workers comp, state regs onwage and hour), environmental regs at the ground level, reproductive rights, and on and on. Even the health care law has a huge state component.
It’ll become more and more difficult for national Dem leaders to say this far Right stuff is radical, because more and more people will be living with it every day.
I even worry about is far as young people working in government. If you’re 25 and ambitious, with this many GOP governors and you want to work in government it’s a better career move to be a Republican. You’ll actually get hired.
I cannot believe they’re spending time sniping at each other about who lost the US Senate, when this slaughter is happening in states. They should worry not about losing power in the Senate, they have the filibuster and Obama has the veto, but about losing 31 states. They should worry about irrelevancy.
I don’t know how they let the state map get away from them. It’s like a GOP march. They’re losing eastern blue states, and a huge part of the upper midwest is GOP-controlled.
beltane
@Kay: No one in the Democratic party leaderships seems to understand the nature of power. Are there no ruthless people on our side?
This graphic from DailyKos should be put on the FP here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/07/1342883/-Who-needs-the-White-House
Josie
@Kay: Is this sort of planning the job of the Democratic party apparatus or of think tanks or what? Who has been falling down on the job here, and how can the party begin to correct the situation?
d58826
@beltane: yes I’m joking. we really really need a snark/gallows humor font
Mr. Twister
@Kay: A few more states and then the call for a Constitutional convention will go out. Then the real fun starts.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy:
My reaction would not be much different.
beltane
@Mr. Twister: My dual-citizenship is the only thing that lets me sleep at night.
Kay
@Josie:
I don’t really know. There’s an ideological difference between Republicans and Democrats on state v federal power, and that’s where some of it comes from; Democrats believe in a strong central government, etc.
But it’s reached the point where it’s ridiculous. That isn’t how this country works. We HAVE 50 states and they DO have a huge effect and power over peoples’ lives. The national/DC focus among liberals and Democrats went from misguided to delusional. It’s fine to want a strong federal government, but you have to allow for the reality of how the federal/state laws actually work.
They should take half the DC focus and money and put it in states. I don’t think there have EVER been 31 GOP governors in my lifetime. I think 26 was our previous low point, and that was 2010.
I just imagine this scenario where all this crappy state law is going in, reams of it, and the entire Democratic Party is focused on whether Harry Reid will filibuster. At some point it doesn’t matter what they do in DC.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: Sorry, I was talking about this:
JPL
Unemployment fell to 5.8 percent. How long before the republicans take credit?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Without a doubt, the party is falling down on this. Where do congressmen and senators come from? State legislatures. Where do state legislators come from? County councils and city aldermen. Of course, with all the kvetching about “Why don’t Dems have people in these races?”, I never heard one person say, “That’s it. I’m running next time.”
The Other Bob
I was too late to comment on the Al Franken post last night. I am starting to think that crazy dude might make a decent Presidential candidate.
Don’t laugh, Raygun was a shitty actor, why not a comedian?
beltane
@The Other Bob: No one should laugh. It would be a failure of the imagination to argue that Hillary Clinton is automatically presidential while Al Franken is not. Lazy thinking is a big part of our problem.
d58826
@Kay: The key here will be election law. While I don’t really think we will see Jim Crow come back what we will see is the election process rigged in a variety of ways that will render the votes of democratic leaning groups worthless. We already see some of that in the gerrymandering of the House districts. African Americans can still vote and pile up huge margins for the democrat but it is all concentrated in one or two districts. The rest of the state is divided up among white/GOP leaning voters. So even if the state totals were 60/40 democratic the state still sends mostly GOOPers to the House.
I think the next area of concern is the Electoral College. There have already been several attempts to eliminate the winner-take-all system and replace it with a system that prorates the votes based on House districts. And surprise guess who would have won in 2012 under that approach.
Ths also explains the GOP push to repeal the direct election of senators. With 31 govenors they would have a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate and be within one or two votes of having the votes to convict Obama in an impeachment tral.
Belafon
@Kay: Democrats do need to, but I’m pretty sure every governor had a Democratic challenger. I think a lot of what happened is explained here in this Salon article. Remember, not too long ago, when we though the Republican party was going to die? What if they just morph into the you’re-not-racist-so-join-us-in-blaming-blacks party? There are a lot of people in this country, including existing Southern Democrats, who would join that.
beltane
@Belafon: I read that article and the way to combat it is to stop putting conservative-type Americans on a fucking pedestal, genuflecting at the altar of their white supremacist “culture”. A Democratic party that accepts the idea that some Americans are more real than others deserves to die. We will never capitalize on the new demographics until we attack the Republican base itself.
buddy h
‘government is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.’
– frank zappa
Marcion
@Kay:
The massacre in the states is what shocked me the most on Tuesday too. I was expecting to lose the Senate…I would have been pissed, but could have dealt with learning we’d lose all the close races too…but losing governorships to Scott, Brownback, and LePage? That scares me. What could they do that would possibly make people sick of them at this point?
And, it’s killing our bench. Who do we have now that could, say, give Hillary a fight? Crickets. If Hillary loses… who do we run in 2020? More crickets. The house is on fire, guys.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@The Other Bob:
Al Franken is one of the smartest and wittiest guys I have ever met. Super serious, and a policy wonk, and also a steadfast liberal. He would make a GREAT president.
NotMax
Cannot decide which is the more distasteful, the rending of garments or the Chicken Littleism saturating too much emanating from the Left since Tuesday.
@Kay
31 in 1995 through 1998, also 1968 and 1969 (looking over only years since there were 50 states).
Amir Khalid
I see the midterms are still on everyone’s mind. Understandably so. But in other news, the charge against AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd, of trying to solicit a murder, has been dropped. But he remains on bail on the other charges, drug possession and making death threats. AC/DC are still on for their next tour.
And the Shariah court in the state of Negeri Sembilan has ruled that transgendered Muslim women have a right to dress as women in public.
Applejinx
Yeah! Al Franken for President. Russell Brand for veep :)
Because who gives a fuck about rules at this point?
beltane
@Marcion: A majority of the country has checked out of the process altogether. They have been made to feel that they don’t matter, their concerns are irrelevant, and that resistance is futile.The wage slaves of this country have given up all hope of a better life. A “don’t ask me I just work here” attitude has been cultivated by media efforts on the part of the PTB. How can this type of thing be turned around?
beltane
@Applejinx: Against me better judgement, I happen to adore Russel Brand. I wish we had out own Russel Brand.
FlipYrWhig
I’m pretty bad about staying abreast of local and state government myself. I think most people are. That’s what creates a vacuum that The Crazy can occupy.
Alicia
@Kay:
I can’t agree with this more. I expected the Democrats to lose the Senate, but losing most of the governors races (outside of Pennsylvania) hurt more than losing the Senate.
It’s the governors and state legislatures who “test” legislation out which then spreads to other states. All of these voting laws started at the state level, same with abortion rights, “religious freedom” and other reactionary laws these legislatures and governors are passing.
I hate to keep sounding like a broken record (and other people have mentioned this as well), but the Democrats need to get back to the 50-state strategy. They need to start pumping money and recruiting candidates for state and local offices. All politicians start at the local level and right now the Democrat bench is very weak.
But I also agree with beltane that most people have checked out altogether and feel as if their vote does not matter. There’s far too many people that have just accepted the status quo. Among my friends I hear a lot of “why bother voting, both parties are the same.”
Marcion
And the weird thing is it’s not like the GOP is popular. Check out the poll aggregators… Unfav/Fav is 53/36 for the GOP and 48/42 for Dems. That’s 11 points in our favor. So how are they steamrolling their way through the state houses like this? Is it just that no-one pays attention to those races? Is the gerrymandering really that aggressive?
beltane
We also need to find a new funding source. Small donors are financially stressed and cannot compete with the wealthy. Wall Street money creates weak Democrats. Since anything goes now, we need to think outside the box.
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
You know, of course, that Russell Brand goes around saying that voting is futile.
beltane
@Marcion: In Michigan the Democrats got more votes and still lost. This leads to people thinking that their vote doesn’t count which in turn further depresses turnout. The media’s misinformation campaign also depresses turnout and interest in politics in general. “Both sides do it” is the cancer that will kill this country.
Marcion
@beltane:
My depressive side says things are going to have to get a lot, lot worse before they get better.
My hopeful side says we’ve come back from worse than this as a country. The institutional corruption we have today is less than what we had in, say, the 19th century, when we ran things on the Spoils System. What can we learn from how they turned things around?
Belafon
@beltane: I keep wanting to tell people who want to blame the blacks for things “You do realize that, for the rich, nigger is just a code word for lazy poor person, regardless of their skin color?”
beltane
@Amir Khalid: That’s why I said “against my better judgment”. It would be nice if the Labour party and the Democrats didn’t appear to be such hapless collaborators with the right-wing.
Someguy
Just because somebody is crazy, doesn’t mean they are entirely wrong. The inputs on the inflation figures are being changed each month with different factors or weights being used. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s tampering but let’s just say it’s manipulation and leave it at that. Quite a few Wall Streeters are aware of this and acting accordingly…
FlipYrWhig
@Marcion: The people who are sick of them… didn’t show up. I hadn’t thought of it but I think Kay is right (as usual) about the need to do party-building at these local levels.
Belafon
@Marcion: I posted this yesterday:
Something we have to figure out how to fix: Michigan Dems Got More Votes and Still Lost (Daily Kos link): Democrats outvoted Republicans 1,536,812 to 1,474,983, but the Republicans will control the state House by 63-47. Republicans received slightly more votes for state Senate, 1,527,343 to 1,483,927, but will control the chamber by 22-11.
So, yes, gerrymandering is a huge problem.
beltane
@Belafon: I tell them that I’ve known rich people and that they think everyone who’s not like them is icky. Money transcends race and the rich are a tribe of their own.
raven
The only thing more of a bummer than all this shit is a Georgia Football blog. Pull yourselves together, steady in the ranks!!
Belafon
@beltane: I’m curious what there is other than the wealthy and the not-wealthy. That pretty much seems to cover everyone.
Marcion
@beltane:
We’re going to have to make taking corporate cash into a stigma, like being a child molestor. That’s pretty close to what we believe anyway, right? So not a hard lift ideologically. We must turn their strength into a weakness. The public is already pretty disgusted with the volume of money in politics – maybe what we need is a raft of candidates who will say,”every dollar in politics is twenty dollars out of your wallet.” Take out opponents and link deeds to donations.
FlipYrWhig
@Marcion:
A friend on FB said she asked her (college) students if they voted. Few had. Why? Because they feel like they don’t know the issues. I told her it was precious that they thought they needed to know the issues before voting. Just show up and vote for the Democrat. Even a sucky one is like a billion times better than the best possible Republican. You don’t need to be informed. The people who hate us aren’t informed, they just get their asses into the polling places.
Marcion
@FlipYrWhig:
being informed on local issues is a real, real, problem. The decimation of newspapers has been a real tragedy of the commons here. no reporters covering local issues means all kinds of sliminess goes unnoticed.
Hmm. Maybe this is one place we should start. Get people digging into local issues, and take out the slimelords on the local levels. And use that to build to the next level…
FlipYrWhig
@Marcion: Everyone hates corporations, except for all the corporations that command intense and widespread loyalty and affection, like Apple and Target and Starbucks and Honda and Samsung and…
Elizabelle
@Marcion: I like your idea.
It should cut both ways, against corporatist Democrats too.
Money in politics drives out free speech, and it drives policy that benefits the few over the public good.
It is a cancer.
ETA: there will always be money in politics, but massive amounts of money, from sources that can remain anonymous?
We need public financing.
Mostly, we need Democrats who will turn out and vote. I am still numb.
FlipYrWhig
@Marcion: Few of the people voting at the local level are voting based on issue stances, though, I’m pretty confident in saying. It’s just a zombie army. You vote for your side. Let the party be a proxy for basic human decency. No Republican candidate has it. Just get out there and vote. That’s basically what I do. I suppose I _could_ be looking into what they propose to do with stormwater bond issues and so forth, but all I care about is not letting Republicans get their grubby hands into the machinery of power. And it usually fails. Because too many of us have an unfortunate compunction against mindless tribalism, and the other side doesn’t.
Marcion
@FlipYrWhig:
So start with ones people hate. Finance, mostly. The connect more dots. Compare the donations given to the profits the corp gets from, say, some subsidy. Or link corps that try to say, influence health and safety regs with the kind of profits they’re making. We have to make the corruption obvious. And tell the voters that comes out of THEIR wallets.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Do you remember this place after the 2010 election? It was the same thing.
the Conster
The biggest threat to the country is the media. It’s impossible to break through the right wing/both sides do it/missing white girl infotainment puke funnel with any message that creates any class consciousness. There is no one on broadcast or cable “news” that connects the dots for people, even though the dots are all under everyone’s nose. Some local media is effective, but the relentless focus on negativity and fear mongering just wears people down who are already worn down and they stay home, or, they vote their fear and pull the lever for GOP daddy. Sharing and community is never promoted as a value, because socialism! and religion is teaching people that your economic status is a result of your moral choices. If I were an evil mastermind out to destroy America, this is exactly the system I’d set up.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: But nobody’s voting on that basis, and you’ll end up with Russ Feingold-style purism, where you go down to defeat because you’ve willingly disarmed yourself. In theory, yes, it’s a huge problem. But there’s not going to be a mass movement against it. Most people just don’t object to “corporate” things that much. We’re a nation of consumers. We buy things as a statement of identity.
Mike E
@FlipYrWhig:
I suppose that works re: Warner/Gillespie, but jeebus, by the looks of his winning margin, just barely. Apparently.
Marcion
@Elizabelle:
Yep. It will not be popular with the DNC types. But what has the DNC done for us lately?
We suck up to Big Money, and still lose. So… how much are we really gaining from continuing to suck up to them? Better to have them as our enemy and make it clear where the lines are really drawn. Corporatist Dems blur the lines between the parties… because however bad the GOP may be they can always point to Dems with their own pet industries.
We need to make it clear that today in this country our politicians have two constituencies… the donors and the voters. And they have to listen to the donors first. That is what we must be against.
Elizabelle
@the Conster:
I agree. The media is accused of being the “view from nowhere”, but it is hardly that.
It serves its corporate masters.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I can remember stuff from 45 years ago like it was yesterday. 2010, I dunno!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Marcion:
You realize that took a Presidential assassination to overturn the patronage system, right?
the Conster
@Elizabelle:
Yesterday morning from the 7:00 to the 7:30 slot I watched Good Morning America. That is typically the time slot that news/issues are discussed. Instead it was recapping all the Country Music Awards nonsense from the night before, broadcast on… wait for it… ABC. No information of any use to anybody was purveyed about what to expect from Republicans going forward, policywise. There was no history, no context, like everyone is a goldfish in the goldfish bowl and they’re providing the little plastic castle. It was so disgraceful. Their job was done. There is no pretense at all that they’re providing anything but a distraction and cover for the money men. The experiment in democracy is over. It just is. Unfettered capitalism is just way too distorting a force on it.
Tenar Darell
@Amir Khalid:
There is a non-trivial, non-logical part of me which agrees with him. The part of Brand’s commentary/act that seems to drive people crazy is that the system no longer works for most people and the choices on offer (candidates and policies) are so sanitized that there is no point. However, I don’t feel comfortable complaining if and when I don’t vote, so complaining wins, I vote, but usually I’m holding my nose so hard my eyes cross!
If your choice is between two corporate drones, without a message of how they will help you (like universal basic income etc.), then you’ll pick the one who sounds authentic or says “your enemies are over there.” If there were politicians who were sticking up for the fact that access to day care, health care, birth control, and abortion are economic necessities for all women…if they actually made that connection explicit? That families need help moving to where the jobs are? And reasonably priced housing when they get there? That a living wage is good for Americans and our economy? That a bunch of billionaires figuring out more and more exotic ways to put their money to work destroyed the economy and the government’s job is to rein that in and make a few examples? “Vote for us, because we’re not as bad as the other guys” is not a motivating message. A movement that will get young people to the polls and prove that you’re on the side of people, needs much much more. Politicians not being afraid to trumpet their accomplishments, but never resting on their laurels should be the minimum. /rant
Kay
@Alicia:
You have to call it something other than the “50 state strategy” because there’s too much mythology around that.
2006 was a wave year for Democrats. Acting as if “the 50 state strategy” was some magic winning formula has nothing to do with the reality of the actual ideas behind a 50 state strategy, which have to do with slow building of state and local power.
We can’t use that term. It has a million different meanings and a narrative around it that goes like this “we had Howard Dean and the 50 state strategy so we won that wave election in 2006 and now we’re losing because we don’t have Howard Dean and the 50 state strategy”
None of that has anything to do with what actually happened, or a 50 state strategy. 50 state strategy means “slow”. That’s what it is. It’s slow. It takes years. Winning a wave election in 2006 has nothing to with what that strategy means.
Marcion
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Well, that says something in and of itself. If we get another 2008-style event and these clowns are still in charge… anything could happen. President Garfield was shot by a nutjob… and hey, did you by any chance notice how many guns we have floating around these days?
But Charles Guiteau didn’t force the patronage issue to be resolved. There was also a movement waiting in the wings to actually push a bill through Congress. Where do we get that movement?
Tenar Darell
Oh, and on a completely non-politics topic, I was going to post this:
I had an art/architecture heavy week. Started when I went to the open house at the Athenaeum last Sunday. The Goya exhibit at the MFA is worth taking the time to see. it’s a big retrospective, more than 8 exhibit rooms, so if you’re going with elderly or children make sure you’ve got the right equipment for those with walking/standing issues. It’s interesting how they had it arranged. You really rarely see prints, drawing, and paintings in the same galleries. Too easy to damage the most light sensitive materials. But, you can see the connection between the different media Goya used much much better this way. Note, it’s organized thematically, so if you need a chronology of his life to connect to his changing technique over time there’s one in one of the “middle” exhibit galleries.
I think I’m going to have to go back, which may mean I’m going to have to put off going to see the Calders at the PEM. Next week I want to see the newly re-opened Fogg etc. at Harvard.
GregB
I also think that there is going to a time in the real short distance where the Republic ends up in pretty dire straights due to the geo-political realignments( the collapse of the old Middle East order) and the efforts of the far right and the deep state and the military industrial complex to push for a war.
Firstly, the Republicans intend to destroy President Obama as President but also as a human. The amount of vitriol will only increase.
Remember, the Party that actually spent years questioning the Presidents right to actually be a President, spent years calling him a closet gay murderer, recommended Second Amendment remedies to deal with him and his party, wagged fingers in his face and loudly heckled him during a State of the Union address are the real victims of terrible partisanship because he failed to drink enough Kentucky bourbon and failed to give a condolence phone call to poor Eric Cantor.
Chuck Todd has a new book out raking Obama over the coals.
They are turning him into a subject of disdain and ridicule and much of the Democratic Party will go along with that by running away from him every chance they can. They intend to make him into the next Jimmy Carter so that their next Ronald Reagan can spend 8 years saying that Obama fucked everything up.
I really fear they are going to box him in and force a wide and massive war in the Middle East against Iran and Syria. That is what Saudi Arabia, the US hawks and the Netanyahu government want.
The same folks that spent 8 years regretting the Iraq war clusterfuck will be cheering for one more war to remake the Middle East and I fear they’ll get it.
Chris
@GregB:
With the Saudis and Israelis both getting increasingly pissy at the U.S, the immediate future’s goign to be a kind of interesting time. (In the Chinese proverb sense of the word).
Betty Cracker
@danielx: Holder has been great on civil rights. He’s been a disappointment on dealing with the massive and ongoing financial chicanery.
Kay
I have sort of a global theory that people will hate!
I think that as labor’s influence waned within the Democratic Party (partly because Democrats ran away from it, but partly because labor waned, that’s chicken/egg to me) the Democratic Party found it more and more difficult to clearly articulate the concerns, issues, whatever of working people. In a way they outsourced that aspect of their message to labor and that was okay when labor was a big force, but with labor much decimated, it’s missing. That’s where it came from, the language and the ability to connect on that level, it came from labor people.
I think the wonkishness you hear now, the (IMO) over-reliance on a sort of technocratic approach, was balanced by labor voices, and it no longer is.
They needed both, they needed smart wonky people and blunt passionate people and it’s out of wack now, because labor is so decimated. There’s no populist voice to replace that, for Democrats. They’re lesser without it.
MomSense
@Kay:
QFT
Also, too Obama didn’t end the fifty state strategy. That is more mythology or looking for someone to blame. And guess what, 2006 also had a lot to do with the dreaded Rahm Emanuel. Some of the 50 state strategy was just choosing conservadems who could have a shot at winning the +4/5/10 Republican districts. A lot of the people who pine for the 50 state strategy hated those 2006 blue dogs with a passion. You can’t have both winning in more Republican districts and true progressives.
As someone on the ground during the 50 state strategy I can honestly say that if you blinked you missed it because it was the same people making the same calls as every other year. We were just calling people who were pissed about Iraq, Katrina, and all the other obvious incompetence that had grown so massively even the media couldn’t cover it up.
Felonius Monk
We have to start somewhere, so has Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned yet? If not, why not?
To paraphrase “He Who Will Remain Nameless”: “Heckuva job, Debbie!”
Chris
@Kay: ¨
I think when they stopped being able to rely on organized labor as a trump card, they compensated by running to the other pole (the rich) for funding and support (which they got, as the rich are always buying).
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
I would add partly because labor (parts of it) baulked at support for civil rights. Populist campaign strategies can quickly develop an ugly edge. I am not saying you are wrong, but I am always wary of populism because of the tendency of populist movements to be rather socially retrograde. Yeah, I come from the wonky side of the aisle.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
That is good news, thanks.
How are the zealots responding?
d58826
John Stewart, as usual, sumarizes millions of dead trees, tanker loads of ink and uncountable electrons
Marcion
@GregB:
The Middle East is imploding. Frankly I think it will destroy the Presidency of whoever takes over in 2016, if it doesn’t boil over before then. If nothing else than because trying to fight a major land war over all the world’s oil will not do good things to gas prices.
The Middle East has an advanced case of the rot we see setting in here – unaccountable elites, enriching themselves by extracting rents from the population, leaving mass poverty and misery. ISIS has gotten so far because 1) the elites in Syria and Iraq are Shia, which makes their genocidal bloodlust more popular for Sunnis with few options, and 2) ISIS counts many evils in its toolbox but corruption is not one of them. They tend to behead people for dipping into the trough. So they have a kind of legitimacy that the monarchies and dictatorships lack.
I worry sometimes that we are seeing there a vision of the future.
kindness
God bless Molly Ivins. How I selfishly wish she were still among us. On the other hand, she probably would have stroked out by now after what has happened to Texas and the nation since she left her mortal coil.
We are all poorer with her passing.
Felonius Monk
@Marcion:
As well as a replay of the past. The French Revolution comes to mind.
Belafon
@Kay: Labor is also always someone else’s problem. I don’t work at McDonald’s, therefore the only thing I care about is how much I have to pay them. The same thing at Wal-Mart and the other places.
Most people fail to grasp how the pay at McDonald’s affects your paycheck at Humongous Hospital. And for those that follow Ayn Rand, they don’t even want to try.
d58826
@MomSense: I always figured it was better to control Congress with the Blue dogs than maintain political purity in a GOP controlled Congress. Most of the blue dogs were still closer to core democratic values than their GOP replacements. In addition it allowed the democrats to control the legislative calendar.
Mandalay
This is Krugman’s bitchy response to a recent article in which Singer indirectly criticized Krugman:
So Singer wrote something mean about Krugman, and now Krugman is retaliating and writing something mean about Singer. BFD.
That said, Singer is the ultimate vulture investor. He has milked the governments of Peru and Congo, and is currently trying to do the same to Argentina. He reads the small print of governments loans very carefully, buys up bad loans for pennies on the dollar, and makes a fortune by winning against governments in court. He has also run a hedge fund for almost forty years with an average return of 14%. So whatever Singer’s failings may be, Krugman’s claim that he is one of the billionaires “who are clueless about economics” is just nonsense.
MomSense
@d58826:
In 2010 calls I would tell people to think of their vote for their blue dog as a vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. Nancy Pelosi gets her smash because of the district she represents. She would be very different if she represented a district in Arkansas.
Marcion
@Kay:
I’m 25. I have no recollection of organized labor ever being a major concern. I’m not sure what that would look like and neither does anybody my age. So how do we get it back?
The labor movement as it is appears to be a shriveled and insular remnant of what it once was. Unions seem to focus like a laser on their own interest at the expense of everyone else’s. That’s understandable to a degree, but when you’re focused on protecting yourself you have no time for anyone else. And a lot of unions seem to be set up to fuck management, before the managers fuck them. That is also understandable to a degree but it’s a pretty big PR problem and it can undermine the company. Was it always this way? And how are we supposed to build something decent from the wreckage?
Thoughtcrime
Here’s a much stronger weapon: Sarcasm
Chris
@Marcion: ¨
26. Likewise.
I think unions are at a point when they’ve gotten fucked so totally that it’s all about hanging onto what they still have rather than going on the offensive.
MomSense
@Belafon:
I have heard so many people say that it wouldn’t be fair to pay a Walmart worker $15 an hour because they only make $16 an hour and they are so much more skilled. When I tell them that their employer would have to pay them more to keep them–it’s like a whole world they hadn’t considered opens up. Then when we talk about all the currently low wage employees having a lot more money to spend creating a lot more demand and jobs–it’s like an even bigger and brighter world opens up.
d58826
@MomSense: True but politics is the art of the possible and I would rather split the difference between a moderately conservative blue dog democrat than with a reactionary republican. During the healthcare debate Nancy let the blue dogs vote no for political reasons. Fat lot of good it did them.
Tone In DC
To me, vulture capitalists like OvenMitt3000® and Singer are no better than sharks. As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t compare these guys to great whites and such, cuz it insults and demeans the damn fish.
I don’t care how much money he has, or how much he makes, Jay Gould made a lot of money (Gould said “I can hire half the workers out here to kill the other half”). As for Krugman’s response, I think it’s no less than Singer, or any other vulture, deserves. He has his way, the government of Argentina will tank. The vast majority of 41 million people will slide further unto abject poverty so this billionaire vulture doesn’t have to take a haircut.
This fucker makes Gordon Gecko look reasonable.
tobie
@Marcion: There are many reasons to be alarmed…and certainly the Democratic party needs to figure out what it can do at the local, state, and national levels. But as Betty Cracker suggested a few days ago, we shouldn’t overestimate the power of strategy. The Republicans didn’t have one. All they had was: I hate Democrats, I hate minorities, blue collar life is in danger because of the PC police. What the Republicans have in their pocket is the media. CNN breathlessly reports the stories that the RNC feed them and the frame that it provides. You should have seen the headlines on CNN the day before the election. One was “Breaking: ISIS kills 300 Tribals in Iraq.” There was no mass killing on Monday. This was pure propaganda meant to generate panic in the public.
How to break into this media environment is the challenge for Democrats. Most people vote straight party-line tickets these days, so making the national party toxic also makes the local party toxic. The Republicans learned this, which is why they don’t have circular firing squads. We need to learn this too.
MomSense
@d58826:
Right but they were always going to be the most vulnerable in a mid-term election regardless of that particular vote. Yeah, I would definitely take the blue dog over the “moderate” Republican because that “moderate” Republican is going to get worked hard to vote against the Dems and President whereas a blue dog will vote no but will also be able to vote with the party on many things.
Rex Everything
I really miss Molly Ivins. She’d be making this shit more tolerable.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Finance and investing are not the same thing as economics. At all.
FlipYrWhig
@MomSense: Yup. People conflate the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” Deanism with the “50 State Strategy” so that in their minds Howard Dean was the fighting populist who made Democrats the fighting populist party and then for no good reason They, led by Rahm Emanuel, blew it all up. No. The Democrats who were elected in 2006 were not fighting populists at all. There were a lot of Heath Shulers and John Barrows and Joe Donnellys in there. A Democratic majority pretty much by definition includes center-right Democrats, because left-of-center Democrats don’t have a lot of hope in states with K in their names: Alaska, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Kentucky, Oklahoma. (All right, New York is the exception.)
d58826
@MomSense: Agreed. But have to figure out a way to give them some protection so that the loses will be manageable. The progressive side has to learn some patience in all of this. As the old cliché goers Rome wasn’t built in a day. Social security wasn’t perfect right out of the box in 1935 and neither is Obamacare. But both are laws that can be built on.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
It’s going to be very hard to argue against the ruling of a three-judge panel, since you can’t say that one jurist went “off the reservation”, as it were. I don’t really expect a backlash, or an attempt to rewrite the laws around the ruling.
But it’s still only a very small step forwards for LGBT people in Malaysia. The BBC story notes that they continue to face an awful lot of official and unofficial discrimination; “conservative” societies like we have here are not known for tolerance towards those who are different and don’t hide it. I can still imagine one hell of an uproar if, say, a transgender woman tried to sit with other women during Eid-al-Fitri prayers at a mosque.
Marcion
@tobie:
But they do have circular firing squads. What was the government shutdown but the GOP version of some of the tantrums we see here sometimes? “Waaah, waah” said Ted Cruz, “That mean Mr. McConnell isn’t conservative enough! We have to show him and that lawless Kenyan!”
We need to provoke them into doing these things by any means we can. Lotta blue state GOP Senators up for reelection in 2016 that will want to play it safe… but the Tea Party is convinced the Thousand Year Conservative Reich is upon us. It will be interesting to watch the other side play the role of cat herder for once.
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay:
There is economics and then there is macroeconomics.
Singer may be a good practitioner of financial microeconomics that doesn’t make him a macroeconomics expert.
Mandalay
@Tone In DC:
You are right that Singer is an economic predator and a vulture, but the government of Argentina does not deserve any sympathy either.
Argentina issued some bonds, then said to the purchasers: “Fuck you suckers, we are not going to pay you what we promised, even though we could!”. Singer then bought some of those bonds very cheaply, and then said to Argentina: “Double fuck you! Pay up with interest!”.
Singer is exploiting the system, but Argentina was as well. Fuck both of them. The existing approach for handling massive loans to governments that allows situations like this to arise is completely broken.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Finance is a branch of economics. Expertise is in finance does not give you any expertise in labor economics for example. Like being a civil engineer doesn’t mean you can comment expertly about astronomy.
Belafon
@MomSense: And one of our problems is how many times we have to explain that.
Tommy
@Chris: I fear you are right. There are still picket lines by me. We are fighting but think we’ve lost. You are a lot younger than me. A lot of my family members were union members back in the 40s, 50s. 60s, 70s. I recall my father told me once if you use non-union labor your house might burn down.
gene108
@Kay:
CU money.
If you have time (I don’t at work right now) google Operation Red State from 2010. The GOP basically decided throw some cash at down ticket races, where cost to influence the electorate is cheap and they won big.
They probably did the same in 2014.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
That’s not the point. It is not all emotional. The “inflation truthers,” Singer included, have made their arguments, which can be examined and evaluated.
Speaking of which:
Singer made money, yes. He knows how to do that with the help of his friends. He also said the following recently in his news-letter:
If that’s not being clueless about economics, what is it?
Felonius Monk
@Tommy:
Yes, the unions could play rough when they wanted to.
JMV Pyro
@FlipYrWhig:
Seriously.
Dean’s strategy worked for the time it was in and we look on it with rose colored glasses because it was the last time we had an electoral blowout in Congress and states. That doesn’t mean the overall notion (building the party in every state from the ground up) is a bad one, but we need to realize that he’s not coming back. The future of the party is going to be with the people who have worked and continue to work in organizing, not some guy who’s been lobbying for half a decade.
And yes, that’s going to involve state legislatures and local races. Just as an example, the Democratic Candidate I worked for found himself outspent 4:1 and had virtually zero support from the party structure, being given campaign managers who were either hedonistic drug addicts or overworked via running multiple campaigns. The party has a serious problem with it’s local and state infrastructure compared to the GOP. This isn’t me being a Chicken Little, it’s simple fact.
Tommy
@gene108: They did it in my district. The RNC and PACs spent a small fortune here. I feel like I am beating a dead horse but for the first time in 70 years we elected a Republican. Nobody I know can explain it. Even the Republicans I know are confused. Mike Bost didn’t win by a little, it was a landslide.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Cervantes:
Knowing how to make money and knowing how to create a stable economy are two different things, and far too often, they end up in direct conflict, as those who wish to make the most either don’t give a shit if the economy burns behind them, or actively foment it so they can profit off the mess.
Tommy
@Felonius Monk: I am not remotely suggesting we burn down a house. But I think it was a time where unions were feared. Not sure that was a bad thing.
Kay
@Marcion:
I disagree. The last two interesting state-level actions liberals had were labor-led; Wisconsin and Ohio.
In fact, the one and only win last Tuesday was labor-led. The minimum wage referendums. Right now, the only thing “Democrats” are winning are things that labor promotes and funds. They’re doing minimum wage and sick leave right now. They’re going to win on sick leave just like they won on the minimum wage, too, because sick leave is popular.
This isn’t a one-off. Labor did the last big minimum wage push at the state-level, too, in 2006. They won most of those referendums too.
They’re not looking for members with the Fight for Fifteen campaign. They’re pushing a message. They spent 20 million dollars on Fight for Fifteen. Not one of those workers is a union member.
d58826
@Tommy: I remember the time when a threatened strike by the steel workers or the UAW got everyone’s attention. Today the reaction would be ‘oh do we still make steel in this country?”
And it was before my time but management never had a problem calling in the Pinker tons or the National Guard to break a strike and kill a few strikers just for good measure. Management could play rough also
tobie
@Marcion: I take your point, and encouraging Republicans to overreach is good. But I still think the larger problem is “our failed media experiment,” as the Balloon-Juice tagline puts it. I’m seriously worried about this. Corporate control of the media has meant that the 1% gets to shape the news. The general feeling of Americans that the economy is cratering, ISIS is at our border, Ebola will visit us like the Bubonic Plague, and that the protests in Ferguson are heading to a Walmart near you shows just how effective this operation has been.
The only one who seems to have figured out how to break through this propaganda based on grievance is Elizabeth Warren. Then again, she’s not yet treated as a national figure.
Another Holocene Human
It should be clear to everyone now that a certain tranche of white voters is looking to vote for a Black politician who tells them that racism is over. When Barack Obama was talking about hope and change, they thought he was talking to them. In fact, back in 2004 when Alan Keyes had a meltdown and accused BO of not knowing what it was like to be a Black man in America, and Barack just let him dangle out there without responding, Keyes lost some of his Republican base right then and there. They were tired of hearing about being Black in America. Barack Obama doesn’t talk about that. He’s our guy!
Tommy has been moaning about what happened in his district. Well, someone else in his district posted to RawStory the other day and said that he has heard older white guys in his district complain repeatedly that “Barack Obama made all these promises, but he didn’t deliver.”
Well, you know they weren’t talking about promises to the district, because what has Barack Obama NOT delivered to downstate Illinois. Fucken STL-CHI train for one thing. No, they’re talking about “racial transcendence” and just in case you don’t know what that means, it means no more talking about the past, no more guilt, no more demands for justice, no more attempts at moral suasion, no more “unrest”. Rather than blame the powers that be in Missouri for #Ferguson, they blame Barack Obama.
Republican voters eagerly vote for a Black politician who tells them that racism is over and they’re angry that Black voters won’t agree with them by doing the same.
shortstop
Is it wrong to have spent the second half of this week (outside of work) enjoying videos of otter pups learning to swim and porcupines fending off lion prides? I know I’ll live to fight another day, but goddamn, I’m feeling beaten down right now.
Bobby Thomson
@danielx: Taibbi is either grandstanding or doesn’t understand how DOJ investigations work. Those cases rarely go to trial because the consequences to private parties of a loss are tremendous. At the same time, DOJ has looming over their heads the threat of being too successful and sending the next Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy. I could see the argument that Holder settled too cheaply, but there’s nothing nefarious about a settlement in and of itself.
Felonius Monk
@Tommy:
I know you are not advocating arson. :)
I’ve lived through a few strikes, I know what some people do under those conditions.
Eric U.
the problem is that most of the lower 90% desperately need a union and have been propagandized out of valuing it. The janitors and other such workers at penn state have a union and they are the only ones getting raises regularly. But they are still relatively hostile to the union. The rest of us have been getting small or no raises and they just increased the health insurance by a large amount. I work with someone that was looking at union jobs and didn’t want to join the union even though it would mean a 20% raise. How can you fight that? They were trying to unionize the grad students a while back, it failed because the university caved to their demands.
@Kay: the thing about “fight for fifteen” is that it obviously will increase the wages people have to pay to union workers. There are skilled workers in this country making less than $10 an hour in jobs that are significantly less pleasant than fast food. Hard to believe, I know, but they are forced into seeking overtime just to pay the bills.
Kay
@Marcion:
The most popular campaign in this state (OH) in the last 5 years wasn’t a Democratic campaign. It was a labor campaign. They overturned a law by referendum. They got better than 60%. No Democrat wins this state at 60%. Democrats backed the campaign and the issue, but they didn’t lead it or fund it.
Tommy
@d58826: Yes I bet. The 7/11 like store up the street from me is owned by BP. The owner wanted to redo the parking lot. The owner is from Pakistan and really a nice guy. He has explained Cricket to me :). But he didn’t understand where he lived and used non-union labor. Picket lines formed. I will NEVER cross a picket line but I did to tell him it wasn’t a racist thing. It was just a “thing.” Walk outside and somebody will give you an estimate that is fair.
Bobby Thomson
@Marcion: Yes.
Mandalay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Parse all you like, but the charge that Krugman leveled against Singer was that he was “clueless about economics”, not that he wasn’t a macroeconomics expert.
Singer has been running a hedge fund that has beaten the market and all his competitors consistently for almost forty years. The notion that Singer is “clueless about economics” based on a single cherry picked quote is just lame. And it is obvious that Krugman’s attack on Singer was in direct response to Singer’s attack on Krugman days earlier, in an article that was all about macroeconomics.
Here is the complete paragraph containing the quote that Krugman ridiculed:
Care to refute what Singer is arguing? Does that paragraph truly illustrate that Singer is “clueless about economics”?
JoyfulA
@MomSense: I was part of the Fifty-State Strategy, and it was great! We had our own DNC person in our area, and she was constantly emailing and phoning with things to do, from waving little flags as the happy citizen background for a speech the Dem governor was giving, to caravanning 50 miles to be part of a clean up the town work-in a Dem congressional candidate was holding (he won in a GOP area!), to canvassing house to house to clean and update Dem voter rolls. It was all worthwhile, and it was fun!
Since then, nothing. I went to a few Obama campaign meetings in 2008, and they were impressively huge meetings, but I wasn’t invited to actually do anything. I did GOTV work some, but there was nothing after the election.
Oh, well, Joe Sestak has been emailing and calling about his 2016 rematch with Pat Toomey, and I look forward to being involved in his campaign.
shortstop
@Another Holocene Human: I think this is mostly dead on but would take it a step further. The people you’re talking about, and there are quite a lot of them, don’t want black politicians who pretend racism is over. Six years ago, they did, but it’s gone way beyond that, and now they want black politicians who constantly talk about how bad all other black people are and actively validate white racism. They want people who encourage their feelings of victimization at the hands of “dividers” like Obama — and they’ve got those people in Allen West, Ben Carson, Herman Cain and so on.
I thought it was bad when large swathes of white people pretended we were post-racial and just didn’t want to talk about race. It’s so much worse now that these assholes are casting themselves as the truly oppressed.
Marcion
@Kay:
Point taken. But I think they should have been doing this kind of thing over and over over the last few decades, and using it as a tool for membership drives.
Organized Labor seems to have gotten run over by the bus of automation and globalization. But in a service economy there are some things you can’t send overseas. Union leaders have succumbed to short-term-ism and ceded the long game to the corporations.
Cacti
@tobie:
CNN was apparently okay with having S.E. Cupp do media training for GOP candidates on behalf of the NRSC.
Link
Remember when MSNBC suspended and then fired Keith Olbermann for contributions to Dem candidates?
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: You bring up a lot of things. I will just say I want that train built. It keeps getting pushed. I so want a high-speed line from St. Louis to Chicago. I think I’d use it every month. Chicago is cool. But takes me six hours to drive there. I can get on a plane and go to other places.
Tone In DC
The World Bank, the IMF and the other institutions that engage in these agreements impose policies and restrictions that are not just onerous, they are disastrous and overwhelming for some countries.
As for Singer and his cronies, this is what I read a few months ago regarding this suit and the funds’ behavior.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/19/argentina_alleges_extortion_after_supreme_court
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay
I am not parsing, all I am saying is that understanding the laws of demand and supply doesn’t mean you understand monetary and fiscal issues governing the entire economy.
Running a successful hedge fund does not give Singer any expertise on predicting inflation. Singer is commenting or rather hyperventilating about hyperinflation, in an era where inflation has been low in general.
Its like saying since both mechanical engineers and astrophysicists use laws of physics, a mechanical engineer can also do an astrophysicist’s job.
I defer to Krugman’s expertise on macro, if you want to follow Singer’s lead, be my guest.
Ruckus
@Marcion:
And use that to build to the next level…
You solve problems two ways. First you have to understand the actual problem. Second you have to change/fix the root of the problem and work up from there. The war on crime is an example of how to do it wrong. No one has looked a why we had a bit of a crime problem, they just threw the easy answer at it, lock up anyone who looks like they might be a criminal, beat down on everyone else(at least everyone that looks criminal to racists). No look at how little work or opportunity there is for those not blessed with the “correct” parents. And once the “solution” was pursued, no thought that it might be in error and other reasons could be found/resolved. That’s not problem solving, that’s lazy stupidity. It’s like saying all taxes are bad, including the ones whose program I like(SS, Medicare, etc.).
Tommy
@Marcion: There is a book called the Millionaire Next Door. That was my mom’s dad. After serving in WWII he took a job at Snap-on. Worked there for 40 years. Frugal man. Never bought anything expensive. He would often use ketchup and water for a meal. I often think this was because his parents lived through the Depression and he was fearful of returning to those times.
When he passed away at 93 and we looked at his bank account we were stunned.Hundreds of thousands of dollars. The guy that was eating ketchup for dinner …..
Bill Arnold
@Mandalay:
Seriously? House prices deflated in the US 30% or more in 2008/2009. (He’s welcome to buy my house at 2007 prices.)
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay:
OK so this Singer does not like the answer, so he derides the assumptions in inflation calculations as subjective. May be so, but any CPI calculation is going to have to make some assumptions. Singer’s objections are pretty subjective as well.
ETA: Many US companies with healthy balance sheets have enormous cash reserves right now. I am talking about your Apples and Microsofts. If inflation was high ( a dollar today is worth more than the dollar tomorrow) as Singer claims they would invest it in other risky ventures, which is something they are choosing not to do.
Ruckus
@Marcion:
This is a grand idea. Except. The fix is already in, it takes big money to run a campaign, even a local one. That comes about by a number of issues, media costs, staff costs, etc. Yes, the bigger the office the larger the costs but the point is cost is almost always a major issue, even to lose. So where does the money come from, or better still how do we change that? Because both sides have to talk to the money people. You can try to be pure and most likely get your ass kicked or go for the gold. And the gold is running pretty much on the conservative side, always has been, always will be.
Kay
@Eric U.:
It’s more than that, though, They forced a discussion about wages. People care about wages. They’re not listening to round table discussions about the Earned Income Tax Credit.
It was real. Those people were standing in the street. They changed the debate to wages, and no one wants to talk about wages, because then we get into real questions about what people make and what we value.
It’s okay that Democrats can’t do it anymore, because Democrats still have labor to do it, but they can’t continue to outsource vital action and real events to labor and just retreat to DC to roundtable tax credits and food stamp funding. Democrats have to talk about wages too! :)
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Not talking about income inequality was the Democrats biggest mistake in my opinion. Most people are still feeling economic anxiety and it is ironic that the party of 1% has made the Democrats, the party of Wall Street in many people’s minds.
d58826
@schrodinger’s cat:
Given that the Obama DOJ has not sent any of the major fraudsters to jail but the Joe Sixpack’s of the country continue to lose their homes to foreclosure, the average voter might be forgiven if he thinks Democrat=wall street. I suspect that most voters long ago equated the GOP with Wall street.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I’m an older blue collar craft worker. I’m getting right at the end of my working life and I have to agree with you 1000%. Used to be plenty of people doing this work, but now, not even close to what it was 40-50 yrs ago. Yes we needed more better trained people then but there were people around. We always had apprentices and trained. Otherwise there would have been an even worse shortage. Now that shortage has come to full bloom. My boss can’t even find other old geezers like myself. He has to start a person on the bottom and wait to see if it pays off. And because we have seemingly abandoned math as a educational subject that’s a hard road.
Anyway, labor has had it’s ass kicked because it’s easier to offshore your needs, especially if you don’t care that quality costs no matter where you purchase it. The bottom line is the most important one, not the one’s above it, which is how you get to that bottom line.
We don’t make an investment in workers because they aren’t important. We don’t make an investment in government because it’s not important. Neither of these give short term bottom line improvements. So we not only don’t do them, we as a country fight them. The part that’s horrible is that a large portion of the country now seems to agree with this, even to their own demise.
Mandalay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Are you even reading what Singer wrote? Nowhere did he say that inflation was “high”. Singer stated “CPI inflation is being understated by some unknowable amount, which we estimate is between 1/2% and 1% per year”.
His point is not that inflation is high, but that it is consistently understated by the government. And he is hardly the only person making this argument.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Right, and that therefore any economic gains reported by the Obama Administration must be illusory, the result of inflation.
Right, Glenn Beck and his guests make this “argument” all the time.
So what?
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay:
If inflation is understated, that means “real inflation” is higher than the numbers CPI is giving us, isn’t it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes:
Buy gold and seeds, I suppose.
schrodinger's cat
The notion that hedge fund mangers are experts in everything from public schools to monetary economics is mind bogglingly stupid.
d58826
John Roberts gets a second bit of the apple to destroy Obamacare
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
You know these various news-letters from Republicans flogging the notion that terrible hyperinflation is going unnoticed because Obama is hiding it?
Someone looked at their subscription prices over the last decade or so. You’ll never, ever guess what they found.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Steady price increases?
Kay
@Ruckus:
My middle son works for a manufacturing company now as sort of semi-skilled labor. He just got accepted into a Labor Dept electrician program. He starts in January. He had to take a math test :)
The sad part is, he is the only person in this county who applied. He qualified as “underemployed” because he works for a Honda supplier and they lay off periodically.
The Labor Dept effort on training is (mostly) good, but no one talks about it.
Ned Ludd
@Mandalay: Sure, I’ll refute it. Inflation is a denominational phenomenon– it’s a persistent rise in the general price level of all goods and services in an economy. It’s a fairly straight-forward theoretical concept, but there are serious practical challenges to actually measuring it in the real world because you have to untangle the network of interdependent changes in relative prices that come from real effects. Singer’s superficially wonk-ish rant is just about the particulars of the methodologies used to address those challenges. He’s making the classic first-year student mistake of confusing increases in relative prices of certain goods (things he considers staples) for inflation. His critique is even more ridiculous when you point out that his “stapes” are luxury items for the super-rich.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
In one case — one of the louder hyperventilators — the cover price was unchanged over eight years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Even better.
Kay
@Ruckus:
I think Kasich will do RTW so Ohio might get lively. I think they’ll do better at opposition than Michigan did, just because I saw the last labor campaign here.
They don’t really need Democrats to get an opposition campaign going, although the political support is nice.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
If you want to build a bridge, you’re not going to hire an electrical engineer to design it because all engineering is the same. Finance and investing uses economics to make decisions, but it’s not at all the same thing as what someone like Paul Krugman does.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
No, as a mutual acquaintance once said:
And as for your other question:
No, being all smoke and mirrors, it illustrates nothing.
Ned Ludd
@schrodinger’s cat: “Finance is a branch of economics.”
No, Finance is better thought of as a branch of business admin. Economics is a behavioral social science whereas Finance is a field of practical application. A better analogy– Finance:Economics::Engineering:Physics.
Ned Ludd
@Cervantes: Shorter Peter Singer: “Math is hard so inflation estimates must be wrong. Obviously hyperinflation is around the corner because, have you seen the prices of Picassos and mansions in the Hamptons? Outrageous!”
Ruckus
@Kay:
I should have been a bit more specific. They can do basic math, but we use trig most every day at work. I have to explain it to people because they can work by example but have no background in the concepts. They get it when it’s explained, they are not stupid, just not educated. Hell they didn’t know what a scientific calculator does. They have to look up the sine on a chart. I stopped doing that at the end of the 70s. It seems to me (as it did in the 60s as well when I was in HS) that we are delaying teaching anything that is too hard for young minds to absorb until college. Of course there are exceptions, there always are, but in general is my point. And when we do that we lock out people from getting decent jobs without going to college. And when they do they have a harder time and have to take remedial classes to get through. I tutored math in college in the 70s and the lack of basics was very apparent even then. Am I missing something and it’s gotten better?
schrodinger's cat
@Ruckus: I don’t know what things were like at the end of 70s but most high school students who are taking introductory physics classes have trouble not just with trig but even with algebra.
They have little algebraic skill and solve equations in a completely brain dead manner. They are in a great hurry to put in the numerical quantities and display an obvious discomfort with using symbols.
ETA: When questioned further one of my students revealed that’s how she had been taught high school algebra. That her math teacher’s degree was in history and not math or science.
schrodinger's cat
@Ned Ludd: You cannot understand macro of today by leaving out the outsize role capital markets play.
@Mnemosyne: I think we are in agreement.
Cervantes
@Ned Ludd:
Yes.
@Ned Ludd:
Hilarious!
(Except Peter Singer is the moral philosopher; this troubadour is Paul, entirely unrelated.)
Ned Ludd
@schrodinger’s cat: “You cannot understand macro of today by leaving out the outsize role capital markets play.”
You’ve got it on its head. You cannot develop effective practice in finance without a solid understanding of how modern economies work at the macro scale. I’m not saying economists don’t study finance (just as physicists don’t ignore practical applications of their work), just pointing out that the financiers are not engaged in the kind of scientific inquiry that economists are.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
I imagine that the 70s were better. But then I have no evidence of that.
Teaching rote math or any subject really has been the norm for my entire life. Problem solving? What the fuck is that? Actual thinking? Too hard, makes my brain hot. I’d rather look at my phone and repeat what I see than think.
And yet not all is lost, there really are smart kids out there. Yes half of every one is stupider than the median, but the other half is smarter. We need to raise the median. Yes some will get left behind and need more help, but we don’t need to leave most everyone behind.
schrodinger's cat
@Ned Ludd: I never said financiers are scientists.
schrodinger's cat
@Ned Ludd:
This made me LOL, thanks!
schrodinger's cat
@Ruckus: I don’t think its the students fault but math is being taught in many cases by teachers who are intimidated by it.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I was taught math in the 1970s and it was total fail. I couldn’t even get through remedial algebra in college. I think there’s an assumption that since some math can be taught by rote, anyone can teach math, but it’s just not true.
(Part of the issue for me was the undiagnosed ADHD — rote learning is close to impossible for people with ADHD since it relies so much on memory and executive function while being really goddamned boring at the same time.)
Ned Ludd
@schrodinger’s cat: …because economists aren’t “real” scientists? Yeah, har-dee-har.
Anyway, I protest too much. You and I are on the same page WRT Mandalay’s defense of Singer. I just think (s)he’s even wronger.
schrodinger's cat
@Ned Ludd: Because they are more wedded to their theories and worldview rather than data and the world around them. This is true whether they work in econ departments or finance departments in business schools.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Just bear in mind that scientists, as you define the term, can behave in much the same way.
(As Tom Kuhn and others have observed.)
Ned Ludd
@schrodinger’s cat: This, as a rule, is total bullshit. Economics has a lot to offer. There are two problems:
1) As an input to actual public policy, it’s highly prone to capture. Reinforcing the privileged status quo is profitable, so you tend to get a lot of sell-outs who are willing to cash-out their credentials to provide that reinforcement.
2) Ignorant cynics generalize from (1) to taint the entire field.
There is also the tendency to get lost in the models– to mistake the map for the territory– but this is not unique to Economics and you’ll find it in a range of fields.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes:May be so, but if your theory does not agree with experiment than theory has to go. Einstein was unhappy about Quantum Mechanics but since it agreed with experiment after experiment, QM stayed, was expanded upon, despite Einstein’s objections.
Economists like to have it both ways, they will tell you it is a science but also tell you that their theories cannot be tested and they are just a road map. The idiots also like to compare the current state of econ to classical mechanics, if only. Current state of economics is more like Aristotle’s physics.
schrodinger's cat
@Ned Ludd:
What predictive power does economics have?How come your pet theories do not predict catastrophic events like the financial crash. Just because you guys solve Lagrangians and Hamiltonians doesn’t make economics, physics.
Ned Ludd
@schrodinger’s cat: So the guy pummeling a straw man is lecturing me about worldviews being out of touch with reality? Nice.
Look, economists face a sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle on steroids. Because we deal with the strategic, opportunistic behavior of “rational” humans, we have obvious problems conducting controlled experiments. Instead, we have to be creative with empirical methods and circumspect about the inferences that are drawn. That doesn’t negate the scientific nature of the endeavor.
Ironically, the biggest area of cross-over between Finance and Economics is in data analysis– young PhD candidates specializing in econometrics find that they can make a lot more money on Wall Street than in academia. Retaining talent is actually a bit of a problem. So it’s not that the economist’s tools don’t produce valuable results– they’re so valuable that they’re being siphoned off for proprietary profit seeking.
Seriously dude, you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Ned Ludd
@schrodinger’s cat: How come climate scientists can’t produce more precise forecasts of global average temperature trends? Must be pseudo-science.
Economics isn’t physics, it’s different in fundamental ways. Get over it.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
OK, so you accept that scientists sometimes “are more wedded to their theories and worldview rather than data and the world around them.” We agree, then, that scientists exhibit this behavior in common with economists and many other people, so that to criticize only economists for it is to paint a misleading picture.
Sure, but is it your impression that similar revolutions have not occurred in economics? Jean-Baptiste Say’s eponymous “Law” ruled economics for a long time. You might look into what happened to it, and why. Could it be that some economists noticed that it was contradicted by the data?
“Idiots”? You seem angry. I’ll ignore the anger.
About the impossibility of testing economic propositions, let me ask you two questions. There are folks who claim that the government should not give people money to help them make ends meet when they become unemployed; or that if money is given, then it should only be given for (say) N weeks and no more. I’m sure you can imagine the argument: the more we coddle the unemployed, the less likely it is they will look for employment. So, two questions: How would you respond to the argument? And how would you arrive at a reasonable, or humane, or efficient value of N? (For now let’s not worry whether your approach to these questions is “scientific.”)
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Is biochemistry a science? Is medicine a scientific endeavor? If you answered either question in the affirmative, then how do you reconcile all the conflicting “scientific” advice you’ve seen on the risks and benefits of consuming eggs, caffeine, wine, and so on? “What predictive power” etc.?
Is cosmology a science? Could it be that all those Lagrangians and Hamiltonians are a distraction from truth? Assuming there is a complicated real world, we must accept that our analysis of it — whether physical, chemical, biological, or economic — will never be as complicated or complete or real — and yet we make the effort, improving our models as we go. I guess I don’t quite understand your apparent hostility to the enterprise.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Well, that’s good. I must confess to being pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for the details, by the way. I hadn’t heard.
Sure. When, for example, accusations of “sodomy” per se no longer suffice to throw people in jail or exclude them from public life, then we can celebrate a little more.