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Word for the day: Sphexishness

Saturday, June 6, 2015

If you’re a Paul Krugman fan, you have no doubt read more than one column or blog post about the fact that the right refuses to learn from experience. I think the latest example he cited is the failure of Sam Brownback’s Kansas “experiment”. That experiment has decidedly failed, but Sam and the rest of the right have learned no lesson, and continue to believe (or say they believe) that throwing money at the rich in the form of lopsided tax cuts will deliver an economic Nirvana.

I’m currently reading Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett, and was reminded of Krugman’s frequent complaint when I read Dennett’s description of the Sphex moth. (As a side note, Apple’s auto suggest feature knows all about “Sphexishness”) The moth feeds its young by paralyzing a cricket, bringing it to its nest, checking the nest to make sure all is well, dragging the cricket into the nest, laying its eggs, and then leaving the larvae to fend for themselves, with the still living, but paralyzed cricket as food. However, if someone moves the cricket by a few inches while the Sphex is checking its nest, it will move the cricket back to the nest entrance and re-check the nest, ad infinitum if one keeps moving the cricket. At least, that was the initial knock on the Sphex, until it was discovered that not all of them were quite that stupid. The liberals among them learned their lesson, while the conservatives among them never seemed to do so.

Now, at first glance it might seem that stupid Sphexes (not sure if that’s the plural) and Republicans are completely analogous, but that’s not really so, for reasons to which Krugman has alluded. It may be quite true that tax cuts for the rich don’t benefit the rest of us, but they do benefit the folks to whom politicians such as Brownback are beholden, so unlike the Sphex, the Brownbacks and their billionaire backers achieve their real objective with every seeming failure. The real Sphexes are the mass of people who keep voting for the Brownbacks of the world.

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Hillary tips her hand

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic candidates are vying for the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers. The fix is probably in, because the leader of the AFT is a Hillary supporter, but questions remain. Per usual, no one actually knows where Hillary stands on issues critical to teachers, such as the charter school (read “corporatization”) movement. As with TPP, Hillary is busy listening because apparently she hasn’t been around long enough to know anything about these issues.

But sometimes reality leaks through:

Ann O’Leary, the campaign’s top policy adviser, told the New York Times earlier this year that Clinton would be engaging with leaders on both sides of the debate more than [the] Obama administration has: “both the teachers union and the reformers will really feel like they have her ear in a way they haven’t. (Emphasis added)”

Here are the pertinent definitions of “reform” from my American Heritage Dictionary:

1 obsolete : RESTORE, RENEW
2 a) : to restore to a former good state : bring from bad to good

b) : to amend or improve by change of form or by removal of faults or abuses
c) : to put or change into a new and improved form or condition

3 : to put an end to (an evil) by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action or behavior
<~ the abuses of political patronage>
4 : to induce or cause to abandon an evil manner of living and follow a good one : change from worse to better

Notice a common thread there? Now, one could argue that the terms “reform” and “reformers” have been so misused in our times that they no longer necessarily have positive connotations. The press often dutifully calls someone a reformer if that person or entity calls itself a reformer. But the fact is that the word is used as a term of self description precisely because it still has a positive connotation. There’s an imbalance between the neutral (or, nowadays, pejorative) term “teacher’s union” and the positive term “reformers” that tells us all we need to know. Once Hillary is safely elected, Arne Duncan need have no fear that a Clinton presidency will try to undo his “reforms” or stop the corporatization of our public schools. It’s a bi-partisan push, and in this day and age, that’s all you need to know to tell you that you need to hide your wallet and duck for cover.

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Friday Night Rant

Friday, June 5, 2015

For one reason or another I’ve had no time for blogging this week, so the links to various items of interest (to me, at least) have stacked up on my Pinboard, awaiting comment. So, this post will be devoted to various and disparate hobbyhorses of mine.

First up, the folks at Disney are following in the footsteps of other great American corporations by using H-1B visas to replace American workers with lower paid and probably exploited foreign workers. You may recall that such visas are available only when American workers lack the unique and special skills the foreign workers allegedly possess. As is usual in these situation, the American workers were required to train their allegedly highly skilled replacements before they were shown the door. Only in America would this not be considered conclusive evidence that the program was being abused. But putting that obvious point aside, I believe in olden times (prior to 1980, let’s say) if an American corporation lacked workers with the skills needed for a specific job, that corporation would train the local talent to do that job. In any event, as Dean Baker has pointed out endlessly on his blog, if there really were a skills gap in this country, the price for in-demand skilled labor would be rising, but it isn’t. As with everything else in our economy, this is all about transferring wealth to the already wealthy.

Speaking of transferring wealth to the wealthy, our private pension system is quite busy doing just that. Those of us who must decide for ourselves which offered fund should hold our 401k money can be forgiven for getting fleeced; it’s built into the system and most of us are too busy trying to survive to make really informed choices, and even if we make the attempt we have no bargaining power. The money managers make their money on outrageously high fees, which we can’t avoid. But you would think that CalPers, the agency that manages the Californian Pension system would have both the smarts and the bargaining power to at least know what it is paying in fees for its investments in private equity. You’d think, but you’d be totally wrong:

But surely limited partners like private equity investor heavyweight CalPERS know what they are paying in contractually specified fees, namely the annual management fee and the so-called carried interest fee, which is a profit share (usually 20%) which usually kicks in after a hurdle rate has been met (historically, 8%), right?

Think again. Private equity firms simply remit whatever they realize upon the sale of a company, net all those lovely fees and expenses (which include hefty legal fees) and any carry fee they think they are entitled to take.

…

We’ve found it hard to convey how badly captured limited partners are, and this example hopefully provides a sufficiently vivid illustration. Here, CalPERS, supposedly the most seasoned and savvy investor in private equity, is flying blind on how much it pays in carry, while going through the empty exercise of meticulously tracking its woefully incomplete tally of visible charges. This is a garbage in, garbage out exercise as far as private equity is concerned. Moreover PE real (as opposed to visible) fees and costs are so high that it means that CalPERS claims about its fees and costs across its entire portfolio are rubbish.

via Naked Capitalism

So, the teachers and other public servants in California are slaving away to enrich private equity managers, who make money on their backs whether the underlying investments make money or not. People love to slam personal injury lawyers. But they only make money if the also make money for their clients. Not so with the people who are depriving American workers of a comfortable retirement. But then, as Jeb Bush would point out, who are we to think we should be able to retire.

Next up, religion. It seems that Hasidic Jews have become a majority of the citizens of Rockland County, New York. This may just be a sort of foretaste of what we have in store as a slightly different scenario plays itself out as the rent seekers suck the life out of the public school system:

There’s a scandalous division in the community between public schools and Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic schools (yeshivas). There are only 2 Catholic schools, and yeshivas outnumber Christian private schools about thirty to one. There are also four nonreligious private schools. When the Hasids were first building their community in the area there was some discontent that they were paying property taxes to fund public schools that their kids don’t attend– at the same time they were funding the yeshivas for their own kids. They started taking over the school board. 

Harvey Katz, an Orthodox Jew who served as a school board member, said, “Just because my children are not in the public schools doesn’t mean I don’t care about all the children. Children are our future, wherever they may be.” The district was one of five districts in New York State where more students were enrolled in private school than in public school due to religious reasons. But events didn’t indicate that the religious extremists did care about the future of non-Orthodox/Hasidic children. By 2005, when they took over the school board, they began reducing the budget and lowering taxes, much to the chagrin of the non-Hasidic members of the community. 

The reduced budgets, in fact, were draconian, forcing students to take five- and six-year graduation plans instead of four-year plans, and in 2010 the school board of the East Ramapo Central School District voted to sell its Hillcrest Elementary School, which they had forced it close with massive budget cuts, to the Hasidic Jewish congregation Yeshiva Avir Yakov of New Square. In an official response to an investigation of the sale, New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner stated that the East Ramapo board “abused its discretion by hastily approving the sale.” The 12-acre campus, assessed at $10.2 million (market value) by the Assessor’s Office of Clarkstown, was given only a $3.2 million appraisal by the school board’s own attorney, Albert D’Agostino. A year later, the State Education Commissioner halted the sale of the building, saying the board failed its fiduciary responsibility to the district when it approved the $3.2 million deal.

via Down with Tyranny!

Give the otherwise loathsome Andrew Cuomo credit: he’s trying to put the brakes on this budding theocracy. Give the wider Jewish community credit as well, as there has been a lot of criticism of the East Ramapo situation by the Jewish community, such as the Orthodox Jewish publication, the Jewish Daily Forward. Not that it excuses this attempt at instituting a theocracy in New York, but nothing the Hasids are doing is much different than what prevails virtually unchallenged in our Southern School systems, where prayers to Jesus are said before football games and teachers are punished for teaching that evolution is scientific fact and Creationism is taught as science, despite the clear (until Scalia gets his hands on it) case law barring such teaching.

Finally, I have nothing against the choices Caitlyn Jenner has made, but I agree wholeheartedly with this:
  
End of rant. A weeks worth of blogging condensed into one post.

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A novel idea: give the people what they want

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

So, it seems that Jeb Bush doesn’t know how many years the lower 99 have to work before getting their share of crumbs from the table, though he knows he wants to increase the number of years and decrease the number of crumbs:

If you missed Face the Nation on Sunday, you missed Jeb Bush proving yet again he’s not ready for prime time. In this case, following up on his idea that Social Security has to be cut in order to save it.

“But we need to look over the horizon and begin to phase in over an extended period of time going from 65 to 68 or 70. And that by itself will help sustain the retirement system for anybody under the age of 40.”

Jeb Bush, who would be president of the United States, doesn’t know that the retirement age already has been raised and that it isn’t 65 for anyone retiring anymore. Right now the age is 66. For people born in 1959 and later, it’s 67. What RJ Eskow says: “The retirement age is a fundamental part of American working life. If you’re running for president and don’t know what it is, you’re privileged and out of touch.”

via Daily Kos

Well, unless I am gravely mistaken, we don’t need to worry about Jeb in the White House, no matter how much money his PAC salts away. If he goes out with a bang rather than a whimper that’s all to the good, but either way will do.

But Jeb’s promise to impoverish retirees raises a broader question than his incompetence. Standard political theory would predict that in a party system, the parties would compete, and one way they would compete is by promising voters things that they want. Yet, such promises are oddly missing. True, the Republican Party promises its slack jawed voters that it will keep “them” in their place, but beyond that it offers nothing that anyone but billionaires actually want. The Democrats offer Republican light. Unlike Republicans they’re not totally against raising the minimum wage, but they’re certainly not interested in even promising to raise it to an acceptable level. Neither party raises anything but isolated voices against the TPP, although almost everyone in the country is against it. If there’s a small but devoted group of people (Jeb’s friends and supporters) who want to cut social security, their numbers, if not their cash, are more than offset by the vast numbers of people who would like to see benefits increased, retirement ages decreased, all paid for out of the swollen incomes of the 1%, thank you very much. One would think that one could harvest enough votes by promising that, as well as free higher education, etc. to at least partially offset the kleptocrat’s money advantage. The fact is that we haven’t had a politician running a national campaign promising to give the mass of people anything, except around the margins, since LBJ, or maybe the much maligned George McGovern. The major difference between the two parties is this: one can tolerate chipping away at government benefits slowly but ineluctably; the other would prefer to proceed full speed ahead, while blaming the other party when the electoral shit hits the fan. Given Democratic timidity, the Republicans are gradually delivering everything the plutocrats could want, while they are successfully changing the rules to make sure that only the slack jawed and the rich get to vote.

This has been going on so long that our national punditocracy doesn’t know what to make of it when a politician goes off the reservation. They are desperately hoping that Bernie Sanders will precede Jeb Bush into oblivion, but don’t bet on it. He doesn’t have much money, so he won’t have the world’s biggest megaphone, but he’s the only one selling what the people want. We may be in for some surprises.

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The Bronze Rule 

Friday, May 29, 2015

Many years ago I read an article in Scientific American that has stuck with me through the years. The thrust of it was as follows: If you want to change someone’s (or a group of someones, e.g., the Republican Party) behavior, the best approach is tit-for-tat. That is, neither the golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) nor the silver rule (Do not do unto other what you would not have them do unto you), however noble the sentiment behind them, is particularly efficacious. What works is what you might call the bronze rule (modeling ourselves on the Olympics here): do unto others what they have done unto you. No more and no less mind you. According to that long ago article, this strategy works, and the author, whoever it might have been, made a compelling case.

What brings this to mind is the recent actions of one of the more prominent riders in the Republican clown car:

There is just no way to square this circle. None whatsoever. After witnessing the serious destruction that major flooding just caused in his home state of Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz made an iron-clad promise to his constituents:

“Today, Texans are hurting. They’re hurting here in San Marcos. They’re hurting in Wimberley. They’re hurting in Houston. They’re hurting across the state.

“Democrats and Republicans in the congressional delegation will stand as one in support of the federal government meeting its statutory obligations to provide the relief to help the Texans who are hurting.”

It would be an eminently reasonable assurance to make, if only Ted Cruz were a reasonable man. But he’s not. We all know he’s not. When Hurricane Sandy wreaked even greater damage across the Northeast in 2012, Cruz told his suffering fellow citizens to get bent:

“This bill is symptomatic of a larger problem in Washington—an addiction to spending money we do not have. The United States Senate should not be in the business of exploiting victims of natural disasters to fund pork projects that further expand our debt.”

Cruz voted against Sandy aid, of course, but now that it’s his own backyard that’s under water—and not some wretched blue states half a country away—he’s all for federal disaster assistance. There’s absolutely no way to reconcile these two stances, even if you were to violate the laws of physics.

via Daily Kos

Now, unfortunately, in situations like this, Democrats and other reasonable people almost reflexively follow either the golden rule or the silver rule, doing unto others what they would like those people to do unto them, even knowing full well that those very people won’t do so unto them when the tables turn. Clearly the wrong way to go. This situation calls for some tit-for-tat. Our congresscritters could be snarky about it, perhaps, and tell the good people of Texas that they would hate to be complicit in making them compromise their ruggedly individualistic principles and lower them to the level of us addicted to federal funds northerners who still, by the way, manage to export a good deal of our tax money to the go it aloners down South. But they truly needn’t go that far. They could just filibuster the money until Cruz apologizes to the Sandy victims and admits that he was wrong. I would be willing to bet that the next time our region is hit by a natural disaster we wouldn’t be getting any more lectures from Cruz or his ilk. Obama, by the way, could probably achieve this on his own; he could, after all, simply refuse to designate the state as a disaster area until Cruz and Abbot make a request that includes language that amounts to a recognition that they were wrong.

Some might say that it is wrong to punish the people of Texas for the actions of their Senator and governor. At this point the proper response to that is to point out that the people of Texas voted for these people with the full knowledge of where they stood on issues precisely like this. They should be happy to get what they voted for.

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Asymmetrical false equivalency

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Today, at Hullabaloo, digby posts perhaps the 1 billionth blog post by a leftish blogger pointing out that the mainstream media (by which I mainly mean the Beltway media) has sacrificed truth to a false objectivity by claiming, against all the evidence, that the parties share equal blame for the dysfunction of the present American government. Her immediate point is that HIllary is entirely right in ignoring the mainstream press and taking her case directly to the people:

In the first place, it means that Hillary is entirely right in refusing to play by the traditional rules. The mainstream political press has itself rendered these rules obsolete by failing to report on the most important political story of recent years – the extremist conquest of the GOP. Reporters and commentators who refuse to report this reality as an objective fact about modern American politics cannot possibly also play the role of impartial arbitrators or objective journalists when covering a Democratic political candidate.

But we must not forget that the false equivalency ends when the press can get a Democrat in the cross hairs. By any standard all of the declared and undeclared Republican candidates for president are extremists, including Jeb Bush, who will always be portrayed as a moderate no matter his actual positions. They are extreme both in relation to the current majority of the American people and historically. Sure, they would fit in comfortably with lynching defending Southern Democrats of the 1930s or corporate stooge Supreme Court judges of the early 20th century, but one would hardly call either of those groups moderates. We will not see any of these candidates painted as extremists, certainly not explicitly, and if implicitly, so politely that no one will notice.

It is, however, a given, that Bernie Sanders will not receive like treatment. Despite the fact that he polls better than any of them (and yes, I understand there are fewer Democratic candidates. I am a fan of Mr. Arithmetic) he is already being marginalized. This despite the fact that his policy positions are fairly moderate by historical standards. For the most part, he’s at about the same place as your standard liberal would have been in 1968. The American people haven’t really moved to the right since that time, but the range of acceptable discourse in our Nation’s capital surely has. The reasons for that shift are a bit complex, but the Beltway media has certainly been complicit in that shift. So be prepared. There is an asymmetry at work when it comes to the “both sides” meme. In this country, there is no longer any such a thing as a right wing extremist, but anyone on the left who goes so far, for instance, as pushing for expanded Social Security benefits, is a dangerous radical, as Bernie will surely be painted. Whether the Beltway media can any longer influence the people is another question. Hillary is betting that they can’t, and I think she’s right.

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Paranoia Strikes Deep

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

I’m no psychologist, but I’m guessing that this sort of thing is caused by the fact that a lot of my fellow white people feel threatened and are just sure that now that there’s a black President, the country they think they used to run is out to get them:

A gathering of western Arizona residents, convinced they’re being contaminated by chemicals spewed by overflying aircraft, pressed repeatedly but futilely for a state investigation at a meeting convened by state Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City.

Although Ward billed Wednesday’s meeting in Kingman as an exchange about environmental quality in her legislative district, the audience was focused on so-called “chemtrails” and their effect on plant and human life.

via The Arizona Republic

Ward, by the way, is challenging John McCain in the Arizona Republican primary, so she’s eager to prove that she’s a bona fide crazy.

Apparently, the thinking is that the U.S. government is spraying the West with chemicals in order to–in order to…well, that’s not clear, but the government is up to no good. The scientists say it’s just the vapor trails from overflying jets, but what do scientists know, and anyway, they’re part of the conspiracy. Now, as paranoid fantasies go, this one doesn’t hold a candle to the one dreamed up by the good folks in Texas, who are convinced the U.S. government wants to invade Texas, while, in truth, Obama would probably welcome the chance to restore the Republic of Texas, thereby vastly improving the remaining 49. Nonetheless, it’s emblematic of what’s going on out there in the fevered minds of the threatened. The strange thing is that there are people out to get them, and they’re doing it in plain sight, yet these very same folks don’t feel threatened at all. Apparently, the thought of a government of the Koch Brothers, by the Koch Brothers, and for the Koch Brothers sits gentle on their minds.

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Irish Eyes are smiling

Monday, May 25, 2015

This is what comes of lazy blogging. All day yesterday I was toying with writing something about the Irish referendum. Of course, I know absolutely nothing about Ireland, but this being America, that doesn’t prevent me from having an opinion. In fact, this being America, that means my opinion is entitled to more deference than any “experts” that might be out there. If you don’t believe me on that, ask Ted Cruz.

Anyway, being a very devout former Catholic, my take was this: that while the typical Irish voter may have had no particular animus against gay people, the real motivation for the votes of many was something other than a belief in equality. This was a Declaration of Independence from the Catholic Church. That it came in the form of a vote for gay marriage was merely a happy twist of fate.

Not surprisingly, I woke this morning to find my totally uninformed opinion confirmed by the New York Times. However, I am not now in a position to say I told you so. The best I can do is say that I meant to tell you so, had I had the energy to do so.

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Krugman mostly gets it

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Blogging has been sporadic, inasmuch as my days have been spent writing at work, so by the time I get home, I can’t stand the thought of getting near a keyboard. Today was one of those days too, but I have one pathetic post in me, so why not.

I read Paul Krugman’s blog religiously. A day or two ago he grappled once again with the question of why certain right wingers can neither learn from their past errors or admit that their economic nostrums don’t work, and are, in fact, positively harmful to the majority of their fellow citizens:

“What’s it all about, then? The best stories seem to involve ulterior political motives. Keynesian economics, if true, would mean that governments don’t have to be deeply concerned about business confidence, and don’t have to respond to recessions by slashing social programs. Therefore it must not be true, and must be opposed. As I put it in the linked post,

So one way to see the drive for austerity is as an application of a sort of reverse Hippocratic oath: “First, do nothing to mitigate harm”. For the people must suffer if neoliberal reforms are to prosper.

If you think I’m being too flip, too conspiracy-minded, or both, OK — but what’s your explanation? For conservative hostility to Keynes is not an intellectual fad of the moment. It has absolutely consistent for generations, and is clearly very deep-seated.”

Via Paul Krugman’s blog

I’d like to offer an alternate explanation, one somewhat allied to Paul’s explanation, but with a bit different emphasis. In an earlier post I called it Billionaire Derangement Syndrome, but the billionaire’s lackeys can get it to, or at least enable it. It isn’t a question of hoping that neoliberal reforms prosper. That’s really beside the point, or at most, those reforms are merely a means to an end. It’s all summed up in that great line uttered by the villain in Superman III. This time, I’ll quote the whole thing:

You know a wise man once said, I think it was Attila the Hun, “It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.”

That’s what it’s all about Paul. This is not about a deluded belief in discredited economic nostrums or a refusal to mitigate harm. They know precisely what they’re doing and they intend harm. It’s a feature, not a bug. No need to add that last clause to that sentence. You’d have been more on the mark if you’d just written “For the people must suffer”.

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Crime pays

Sunday, May 17, 2015

So long as you steal enough. Not only does it pay, but if you reach the top of the profession, you don’t even have to worry about going to jail and, if you contribute money to NYU, you get an award.

But, I am beginning at the end, which means I’m forgetting the White King’s advice.

The immediate impetus for this rant is this piece at Wall Street on Parade, in which we learn that NYU is about to (or by now already has) honored John Paulson by giving him the Albert Gallatin Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Society. He appears to have earned this honor by giving a small percentage of his ill gotten gains to NYU, on whose Board of Directors he also sits. Beyond that it is not at all clear how society has benefited by dint of his existence.

Paulson is the guy, you may remember, who arranged with Goldman Sachs to have Goldman sell an investment vehicle to unwary investors, which investment vehicle was designed to fail. Paulson made a big bet against it, and made a billion dollars. He gave 5% of that to NYU and, for that, he was awarded the prize named after Thomas Jefferson’s Treasury Secretary, who was himself quite an estimable man, who can’t be blamed for the fact that the University he helped found has now become a prime example of the New Way in academia: large salaries for a few administrators, out of sight tuition for the students, and paltry pay for the “contract teachers” and adjuncts, most of whom make less in a year than a single student pays in tuition. As a comparison, in my student days, a professor surely made at least 10 times the full cost of a year’s room and board. Not exactly a recipe for academic excellence, but who cares about that?

What’s really funny is the way in which NYU describes Paulson’s criminal conduct:

In July 2010, Goldman Sachs settled with the SEC for a payment of $550 million. Fabrice Tourre was subjected to a jury trial and ordered to pay more than $825,000 in gains and penalties. John Paulson and his hedge fund skated and kept their profits.

This is when the power brokers at NYU seem to have taken their first interest in remarketing the villainous reputation of John Paulson into that of visionary businessman. The 2010 Spring/Summer issue of the Alumni Magazine of the Stern School of Business carried a glowing tribute to Paulson, noting that he had made a $20 million gift to the school. There is no mention of Abacus or shorting an investment designed to fail. Instead, the article tells alumni readers that “during the recent subprime mortgage crisis, Paulson developed a contrarian strategy that included shorting mortgage-backed securities. It turned into one of the greatest trades in Wall Street history.” (Emphasis added)

via Wall Street on Parade

Actually, the description is perfectly accurate. After all, isn’t all criminal activity just a “contrarian strategy”? At the very least we should do as Dean Baker suggests, and relieve these institutions of their tax exempt status unless they limit excessive compensation. At the same time we should make public universities free, so these “not so non-profit” institutions would have to compete. But back to Paulson, and to paraphrase Mel Brooks, “it’s good to be a crook”.

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