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A Mystery

Friday, February 7, 2014

Here's something that has me completely bolloxed. I learned today that:

Medicare is paying “grossly excessive” amounts for vacuum erection systems, informally known as penis pumps, which are generally used by men who fail to cure their erectile dysfunction problem with drugs such as Viagra.

via Talking Points Memo

This actually has me bolloxed on two fronts. First, I thought that penis pumps were fictional devices that only existed in spam emails. This truly is an age of miracles and wonders.

But my bolloxment on that front, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a mere 1, while it is a full 10 on another front.

Read the quote again. Our tax dollars are going to pay for devices that serve only one purpose. As Mike Huckabee should be saying: “These men are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription for penis pumps because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.”

The thing is I'm sure that Huckabee is saying such things, and I'm sure that the entire right is similarly outraged about taxpayer dollars being shelled out in massive amounts just so men can-not to put too fine a point on it-fuck. Not only that, these are men who are directly opposing the will of god, since if he wanted them to “stand to” as the Bard put it, He would have stiffened their resolve, so to speak, quite naturally.

The thing is, I'm sure the right is incensed about these sex crazed men who are trying to frustrate god's will. Why is the liberal media refusing to cover their complaints about this shameful and immoral waste of taxpayer dollars? It's a mystery, for sure.

Filed in American Life, Hypocrisy | | Comments (0)

Utah: Stupid and proud of it

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Yesterday I noted that Utah was in the anomalous position of leading the nation in one measure of sanity: it has the lowest smoking rate in the country. This is an example of the stopped clock effect. It's a state controlled by a religious sect, so for the most part the people there are bat shit crazy, but they don't believe in smoking, so like a stopped clock…

Anyway, Utah has now proven beyond doubt that the smoking measure was an outlier; that it does indeed belong firmly in the camp of the stupid. It has done this not just statistically (we'll get to that later), but in a legal brief filed in a federal court, opposing gay marriage.

In their opening brief in support of Utah’s appeal of a ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriages is unconstitutional, the Beehive State’s lawyers argued Monday that one reason to avoid marriage equality was the “correlation between genderless marriage and lower birthrates.” […]
It is also striking that fertility and birthrates tend to be markedly lower in nations and states that have embraced same-sex marriage. For example, the birthrate in states (and Washington, D.C.) that have adopted a genderless marriage definition is significantly lower than the national average. In fact, the six lowest birthrate states have all adopted that redefinition, while none of the nine highest birthrate states have done so.
In a footnote, the attorneys reference the Centers for Disease Control’s National Vital Statistics Reports – Births: Final Data for 2012, which identified the six states with the lowest birthrates in that year were Connecticut (10.2 live births per 1,000 estimated population), Maine (9.6), Massachusetts (10.9), New Hampshire (9.4), Rhode Island (10.4), and Vermont (9.6). The states with highest birthrates in that report Texas (14.7) and Utah (18.0).

via Daily Kos

Now, I think we can all concede that it is vitally important that people be born, but it is not at all clear that they should be born at quite the rate at which they are born in Texas, particularly because the people born in Texas, for the most part, grow up to be Texans. But even the Texans are outdone by the people of Utah, who are inflicting new Mormons on the world at a pace that is truly worrisome.

Once again, we sane people lead the way. We are replacing ourselves, but prefer not to inflict surplus people on the world, and those we do inflict are likely to be …well….smarter than those inflicted on a long suffering world by the people of Texas and Utah.

It should come as no surprise that, while the correlation Utah's lawyers cite exists, it is not at all clear it has anything to do with whether gay marriage is legal or not. It once again appears to more closely correlate along red state/blue state lines, with our fair New England once again at the top of the sanity pack. Why am I not surprised?

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The pattern persists

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

This morning we learned that CVS will stop selling cigarettes in October. In the course of the article in the Times, some statistics:

Some 18 percent of American adults smoke, down from 42 percent in 1965. In places like New York City, which has used a combination of steep taxes on cigarettes and bans on smoking in most places to discourage smokers, the decline is even greater, down to 14 percent.

via New York Times

So this got me thinking. “Gosh”, I thought, “I wonder if there's a disparity among the states so far as smoking goes, and I wonder if it fits the typical pattern of the South leading the pack in dumbness”. Well, okay, I confess, I didn't really put it that way, because once I posed the question I knew what the answer would be, but there are some surprises.

First of all, neither Alabama nor Mississippi lead the pack in dumbness, though, of course, they're close. Somewhat surprisingly, the winner is Kentucky, not usually at the top of the pack (though close to it, I'll concede) in dumbness.

Also, continuing a disturbing trend that first appeared in our discussion of schools teaching creationism, Indiana and Ohio repeat as Northern outliers in the ranks of the stupid.

Some surprises among the leaders. Utah is number one, presumably because the state is well stocked with Mormons. They have to believe a lot of absurd things, but they do have the benefit of a smoking ban. So, although they do lead the pack on this one, it's not because they're smarter, it's because they're brain dead, but in a good way in this one small respect.

It's no surprise that New England has four states in the top ten, with our fair state pulling in at number 10. (We really should be doing better)

There may be some way in which the red state crazies beat us in something we can all agree is a good way. I'll keep looking, but I don't really expect to find anything.

Filed in Red States/Blue States | | Comments (0)

All Hail, FDR

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

If I had to summarize my problems with Barack Obama, I think it would boil down to this:

He had the chance to be an FDR and chose to be a Herbert Hoover.

If I had to summarize my problem with the modern Democratic Party it would boil down to this:

The Democratic Party takes every opportunity to distance itself from its own alleged beliefs and refuses to actively advocate for a government role in addressing social and economic problems. This one needs a little unpacking. It's not that they are against using government, it's that they are apologetic about it rather than upfront and aggressive. That's no way to win an argument, especially against the modern Republican Party.

FDR, the guy who “welcomed their hatred”, didn't back down and didn't apologize. We need more like him. But, as Beverly Bandler at Consortium News Points out (read the whole thing), the Democrats have largely abandoned FDR, though historians have not:

These days, the Democratic Party acts more like an enabler of the Republican Party as it seeks to poison the memory of the 32nd president and bury the significance of what FDR accomplished. Instead of highlighting Roosevelt’s remarkable legacy, today’s Democrats seem afraid to argue the point that government is vital to a successful society. They shy away from that debate despite the fact that the lessons of Roosevelt are central to solving the problems that the nation faces in 2014.

Besides the mainstream Democrats and their timidity, many average Americans suffer from “terminal historical amnesia” and appear oblivious of the history of FDR’s era. Too many who came of age in the years of Ronald Reagan (and after Reagan) bought into his idiom that “government is the problem” and his prescription of ”trickle-down economics” (giving massive tax cuts to the rich and trusting that their investments and spending will spill over to raise the living standards of working- and middle-class Americans).

For some Americans, it doesn’t even matter that Reagan’s nostrums have failed miserably, as today’s rich have amassed huge wealth – and the power that goes with it – while pretty much everyone else has stagnated or lost ground.

Still, an appreciation of FDR’s accomplishments and a recognition of Reagan’s mistakes are alive among serious historians. When 238 participating presidential scholars took part in the Siena College Research Institutes Survey of U.S. Presidents in 2010, Franklin Roosevelt ranked as the top all-time chief executive. Ronald Reagan was not even in the top ten.

If only that awareness could penetrate Official Washington’s conventional wisdom. Though President Barack Obama has highlighted the problem of income inequality, which Roosevelt ameliorated and which Reagan exacerbated, Obama has shied away from making the forceful argument that Reagan was just a skillful front man for the same forces of “organized money” that Roosevelt fought.

Obama also has failed to dislodge the resistance to activist government that is represented by Republicans, the Tea Party and the Right – and some analysts wonder if Obama and the Democrats really want to do so.

Economics professor Richard D. Wolff says ”Obama and most Democrats are so dependent on contributions and support from business and the rich that they dare not discuss, let alone implement, the kinds of policies Roosevelt employed the last time U.S. capitalism crashed.”

via Consortium News

Amen to all that. No one ever said that the best defense is a good defense, but that's what we always play. Regrettably, there are no FDRs out there. If there was a god, I'd be praying for relief from a Hillary Clinton candidacy, but it appears that our doom is sealed on that front. Far preferable would be an Elizabeth Warren or a Sherrod Brown, but the stars are not properly aligned. We have, at best, another seven years of Democratic spinelessness to endure.

Filed in Democrats, History | | Comments (0)

Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it?

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Only the American media can turn good news into bad, and it comes as no surprise that in doing so they are carrying water for Republicans. The CBO says that as a result of the Affordable Care Act, some ordinary Americans will have the opportunity to work less and still have health insurance, to the tune of 2.6 million job equivalents.

Now, most people with even an elementary grasp of economics would think somewhat along these lines. If an elderly person in poor health can retire early because he or she doesn’t have to work in order to maintain health insurance then that frees up a job for some presently unemployed worker to fill. After all, we must assume that elderly person was performing a needed function and the employer will want that function filled. Given our present oversupply of unemployed, isn’t this a good thing.

If enough people choose not to work, then it may even put some upward pressure on the wages being paid to all of us peons, and it might, in some microscopic way, reverse or at least slow the flow of money to those at the top.

So, this is really all good news, but the media spins it as bad news. Doing so is in the interest of only one group in this country, or make that two: Republicans and corporate fat cats, the latter of which still run the Republican Party.

I swear I came to these conclusions before I read Dean Baker’s post to similar effect, but I was glad to get confirmation of my initial reaction.

By the way, I stole the title of this post from John Lennon, who stole it from Harry Nilsson.

Filed in Good News, Media | | Comments (0)

A reasonable suggestion

Monday, February 3, 2014

 

Filed in Crazies | | Comments (0)

What secular stagnation means to me

Saturday, February 1, 2014

I have been reading a lot about secular stagnation recently, but I confess I didn't really understand the concept until I read Paul Krugman's column in the Times Friday morning. Now I think it's clear:

You may or may not have heard that there’s a big debate among economists about whether we face “secular stagnation.” What’s that? Well, one way to describe it is as a situation in which the amount people want to save exceeds the volume of investments worth making.

When that’s true, you have one of two outcomes. If investors are being cautious and prudent, we are collectively, in effect, trying to spend less than our income, and since my spending is your income and your spending is my income, the result is a persistent slump.

Alternatively, flailing investors — frustrated by low returns and desperate for yield — can delude themselves, pouring money into ill-conceived projects, be they subprime lending or capital flows to emerging markets. This can boost the economy for a while, but eventually investors face reality, the money dries up and pain follows.

via The New York Times

I'd like to offer a translation of sorts. As I understand it, secular stagnation refers to a situation in which A very limited number of people have more money than they know what to do with, so they either do nothing with it, in which case the economy suffers, or they gamble with it, secure in the knowledge that they'll be bailed out, but ultimately wrecking the economies of one or more countries. Meanwhile, there are lots of people who have far too little money, and would , if they had some of that excess, invest it in things like food, clothing, and manufactured goods that would improve economies everywhere. The obvious solution would appear to be that the governments of the world, particularly ours, should adopt policies that would relieve these poor rich folk of the excess money they can't figure out how to spend and direct it toward people who don't have to think twice about what they need to spend money on.

It strikes me that the state of affairs Krugman describes is somewhat akin to that which prevailed in the Dark Ages and Medieval times. At least toward the end of that period the folks with the excess took to buying art, rather than derivatives, so we at least have something to show for it, but the “stagnation” was certainly real for the 99.9% back then. An argument can be made, I think, that in order for this state of affairs to continue, we must also endure a prolonged period of intellectual stagnation, since any engagement with the realities of the system is contrary to the interests of those holding the excess. That was doable in the Middle Ages, when the only people that suffered were witches and heretics, but given issues like climate change, it' s not at all clear that we can survive a prolonged period of enforced ignorance.

Filed in Economics | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music

Friday, January 31, 2014

Well, this weeks choice should be no surprise. Pete Seeger died this week, so he’s the obvious choice. The folk craze crested just before I became musically conscious. I got my transistor radio when I was about nine, but if they weren’t playing it on the Big D, I didn’t hear it, and they weren’t playing Pete, since at the time, he was fighting contempt of Congress charges and they weren’t going to play his music, though they were playing plenty of other people playing his music. The first song of his that I really recall hearing was Little Boxes, but the song that I most associated with Pete (not knowing he had at least partially written We Shall Overcome, and had wholly written If I Had a Hammer, was this gem, which made an irrefutable argument against the Vietnam War in just a few verses:

For good measure, here he is singing If I Had a Hammer, way back in 1956.

It’s great that he outlived the people who tried to hunt him down in the fifties, and he’ll live on in our collective memories while they will live in infamy. One thing that comes through in all of his performances is how genuinely nice he was.

By the way, there’s a petition out there to have the new Tappan Zee bridge named after Pete, who spearheaded the drive to clean the Hudson. It’s unlikely that barely Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo will agree to do it, but it can’t hurt to add your name.

Filed in Music | | Comments (0)

Yet another chapter of “What Could Go Wrong?”

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Wall Street’s latest trillion-dollar idea involves slicing and dicing debt tied to single-family homes and selling the bonds to investors around the world.

That might sound a lot like the activities that at one point set off a global financial crisis. But there is a twist this time. Investment bankers and lawyers are now lining up to finance investors, from big private equity firms to plumbers and dentists moonlighting as landlords, who are buying up foreclosed houses and renting them out.

via The New York Times>

There is absolutely nothing that distinguishes this particular scam from the one the banks pulled the last time. If anything, this will encourage even worse misbehavior on the part of all concerned. Start with the reasonable assumption that the people writing these loans won't give a damn if they are ever repaid. Add to that the fact that the people taking out the loans will also not care if the loans are ever repaid, so long as they can drain as much money as possible from these properties while they let them rot. For, unlike the last time, the individual actors will be safely ensconced behind corporate shields; when the properties go into foreclosure the only entity owing any money will be an LLC. These people have learned their lesson all too well; when this all blows up in their faces they will be well protected on our dime, and in the meantime they can skim money out of the economy while once again adding no value to it. This time the nation will be left with yet another crash and crumbling housing stock to boot.

One added feature, which some small minded people might call a bug: this hastens the feudalization of the United States of America. It won't be long, I suppose, before they drop the “land” and just ask us to call them “lords”.

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (1)

Banking going postal?

Thursday, January 30, 2014

I mentioned a short time ago that I was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit. I'm not still reading it. I'm not that slow. One thing I was interested in was the fact that both TR and William Howard Taft advocating postal banking, i.e., allowing people to open savings accounts at post offices. It was a way of allowing people to access banking services without accessing banks, which were unavailable to many in any event. I can't recall Goodwin actually saying that the bill passed, but apparently it did, for according to the folks at Naked Capitalism, the post office was in the banking business, to a limited extent, from 1911 to 1967.

A couple of times I've advocated for a state bank here in Connecticut, much like the state bank in (of all places) North Dakota. It would be a public option, so to speak. Well, apparently there's a movement to bring limited banking services back to the post office. Not only would it bring banking services to underserved communities, but it would also get some money to the post office, which Congress has legislated into a permanent state of bankruptcy. Apparently, the post office at least arguably has the statutory authority to do this without having to go through our dysfunctional Congress.

Still, I can't help but think that we have come to a sad state of affairs when the progressive folks at Naked Capitalism are encouraging their readers to support this plan, part of which involves the post office getting into the payday loan racket. Granted, compared to the highway robbery of the payday lenders, the effective rate of 28% it would be charging is a “screaming bargain”, but it's still about 27 percentage points more than I get for lending my money to my bank, and far more than the world's biggest deadbeats, the big American banks, pay Uncle Sam to borrow money to finance their crimes.

Filed in Economics | | Comments (0)