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Friday Night Music

Friday, September 25, 2009

I am ashamed to admit that I thought of this song because of Tom Delay. I saw some footage of him making a fool of himself on a TV dance show, which he was doing to this tune.

This song is arguably the greatest song by any one hit wonder. At least I think the Troggs were one hit wonders. I dimly recall that they might have had a follow up minor record, but really this was it.

Imagine my surprise to find that they are still alive, kicking and performing, with this 2005 version being the only live version I could find on youtube. I’ve added a version from the 60s, which probably qualifies as a proto-music video.

Wild Thing (2005)

Wild Thing (1960s)


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Last word on Acorn and the decline of reason

Friday, September 25, 2009

For a variety of reasons I’ve had occasion recently to write a lot about the Acorn situation, both here and in a letter I recently wrote to the Day, though I really think the whole thing is sort of trivial and another right wing tempest in a teapot. Still, the recent “exposé” raise some interesting questions about our ability to carry on a rational national conversation. We have three news networks, each of which has plenty of time to actually probe below the surface of things, but that’s really a rare occurrence. This story has been covered as if it really establishes something important about Acorn, when a bit of casual reflection would convince any reasonable person that it doesn’t. Unfortunately, it’s the adjective before the word “person” in the previous sentence that causes all the trouble.

There’s a good discussion here, at a blog called Anonymous Liberal:

I suppose that’s to be expected when the storyline is driven by footage of people saying very questionable things. Just play the video and move on. But there’s something very problematic about how all this went down. Consider for a moment the premise of these “stings.” O’Keefe and Giles, who look like they just walked out of a Young Republicans chapter meeting, walk into various ACORN offices dressed up as a pimp and prostitute (or at least as they imagine such people might look). They then ask a bunch of totally off-the-wall questions to unsuspecting (or in some cases suspecting) low-level ACORN employees and record the responses. As Jack Schafer correctly notes in his otherwise far-too-credulous piece at Slate, this is not a sting; it’s the equivalent of a Sasha Baron Cohen sketch.

…

What O’Keefe and Giles are doing isn’t quite entrapment, but it isn’t remotely the equivalent of a sting either, unless you assume that ACORN employees are routinely confronted with fake-looking pimp and prostitute duos who come into the office asking for advice on how to set up a prostitution business. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that real pimps and prostitutes don’t usually wander into the offices of community services organizations and explicitly ask for help in setting up their illegal businesses. It’s a safe bet that none of the employees filmed surreptitiously in these videos have ever encountered a situation like this before. So all these videos really show are people’s instant reactions to a situation far removed from their everyday experience and training.

That’s why the comparison to Sasha Baron Cohen is so apt. When confronted by very unusual behavior or unusual situations, people have a tendency to be agreeable and to play along. Most people don’t like confrontation and will instinctively go to great lengths to avoid it. If you doubt this, go watch Borat orBruno or any episode of the Ali G Show. It is this same human tendency that serves as the basis for all of Cohen’s comedy. He specializes in getting people (often famous people) to say things that they would not normally say.

…

The people caught in these videos were not engaged in deliberative activity, they were merely reacting to unusual provocation. The real test of their judgment was not what they said on the fly but what they did afterward, when the filmmakers had left the premises and they finally had a moment to process the encounter. Unfortunately, that moment is not on the tapes. We do know, however, that at least one of the employees captured on the video reported the duo to the police after they left the office (he was fired anyway). In another instance, the two were actually asked to leave and a police report was filed. Others undoubtedly concluded that it was a prank, either during the encounter or after having the chance to think about it for a while, and therefore shrugged it off and took no further action.

The whole post bears reading. The situation is really illustrative of the way in which we conduct our national discourse these days. Everything is surface. The whole story doesn’t really smell right, but that doesn’t matter- we merely disregard the smell, because then we don’t have to get into that nuance stuff. Better to assume the worst, defund the agency for the snap misjudgments of a few (while continuing to shovel billions toward the rechristened Blackwater, which quite deliberately engages in criminal activity) and move on. There’s every possibility that there are plenty of Democrats that know better, but they lack the spine to stand up to the right (the vote was taken with no hearings; the facts were deemed irrelevant), so Beck gets another scalp, a few hapless lives are destroyed and we all move on.

The Acorn thing is a minor matter, but it is not atypical of the way we deal with issues in this country. Sooner or later, probably sooner, our inability to deal honestly with the issues that face us will do us in. At the moment we have one party that traffics in lies, and another that traffics in cowardice, leaving truth and reason bruised, beaten and cowering in the corner. We’re seeing it in the health care debate. As Paul Krugman pointed out this morning, we are about to see it on the global warming issue. The Republicans may be able to persuade the gullible that there is no problem, or as Krugman predicts they will argue, that addressing it would destroy our way of life. (When you think about it, they’ve made both of those arguments about the Health Care issue) But whatever delusion we prefer to adopt will not change the reality, which will get us in the end.

This is a terribly asymmetric situation. The lying, the misrepresentations, the scaremongering and the racism are coming from one side only. Democrats might not always be right about everything, and there’s no one that can deny that some of them see the world through lobbyist colored glasses, but they do tend to stick to the issues. Perversely, and ominously, that leaves them at a terrible disadvantage vis a vis the liars, since lies make good copy, proving again that Mark Twain was right- that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. In the fullness of time things like the Acorn incident get put into perspective, but by then it doesn’t matter, because memories are short and the damage has been done.

This country, it should be remembered, was founded by men (women were encouraged not to apply) who believed above all (including above God) in reason. Our constitution is based on the implicit understanding that it would work only if people act reasonably. The Senate rules were written by Thomas Jefferson, who assumed that the privilege of unlimited debate would not be unreasonably misused. There are a lot of things the founders could not have predicted, but they could have predicted that the death of reason would spell the death of their system. Indeed, they expected that it would break down at some point. They were wise enough to know that nothing lasts forever. The situation we face at present would surely depress, but not surprise them.


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The Big Dog Writes to Me

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

And a lot of other folks of course. The email found its way to my inbox this morning. Here’s the gist:

That’s why we need your help. Giving to the DSCC will allow us to recruit great candidates, build winning campaigns and make sure President Obama has the votes he needs to enact the policies that will make a real difference in the lives of all Americans. And if you give by Sept. 30, every dollar you give will be matched.

He doesn’t say who’ll do the matching. Maybe Health Care industry lobbyists.

Now, this is not a knock on Bill. But if there is any organization in the world that I am less inclined to support at the moment, it’s the DSCC. We have 59 senators. We’ll have 60 in a few days. We will be no closer to controlling the Senate than we were when the Republicans were in charge. How many do we have to elect? Exactly what has the Senate done recently to help Obama pass his policies. Seems to me the Democrats in the Senate are far more willing to oppose this president than they ever were to oppose Bush.

And when we, those who care about progressive (dare I use the “L” word?) policies, fund the campaigns that produce these new Senators, the first thing they do to establish their bona fides in the Village is to demonstrate that they don’t listen to a damn thing we say. Even Obama, who benefitted immensely from the blogosphere, recently went out of his way to paint all blogs as irresponsible purveyors of misinformation.

Why should I contribute to elect another Max Baucus, or Blanche Lincoln? They neither walk the walk NOR talk the talk. At least the Republicans walk the right wing walk, as ataxic as the resultant gait may be. All we’re asking for is a little bit of rationality, what we get is senators like Mary Landrieu opposing the public option because it might hurt the insurance companies.


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Equal justice under the law

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A Republican/conservative activist illegally films an idiot at Acorn giving absurd tax advice. Acorn loses its federal funding, the conservative is hailed on Fox, and no one suggests that the heavy hand of the law should reach down to punish the only real illegality uncovered-the filming. Another conservative illegally tapes a phone conversation among a group of people at the National Education Association. There is no outcry against the illegal taper.

Return with me now to the thrilling days of yesteryear, when John Boehner and other Republican thugs were illegally, with apparently no malice aforethought, taped by a California couple using a store bought scanner. They handed the tape over to Representative James McDermott. The contents of the tape were damning, but were those contents the story? Indeed no. McDermott’s alleged wrongdoing was the story. The Florida couple were criminally charged by the United States Justice Department and paid a fine. Boehner sued McDermott for his heinous offense. The history of that litigation,and the smell of Republican judges cooking the books, isn’t pretty.

What’s that you’re not hearing? Why it’s the sound of John Boehner not condemning the right wing for engaging in precisely the sort of activities for which he sued McDermott.


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The Jackie Robinson Effect

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Yesterday, Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly, commented on the fact that while Obama is making the rounds trying to talk about health care, the media is more interested in his answers to their questions about whether race is a factor in the opposition to his health care program, and everything else he tries to do, including telling kids to stay in school.

Obama is downplaying racism as a factor. As Benen points out:

Keep in mind, race is an issue the White House isn’t talking about, and would prefer to avoid. The talk is entirely the result of reporters’ questions, and this morning, it’s the angle news outlets have decided is the most important element of the debate.

One wonders whether any of those reporters are pointing out something that is painfully obvious, that Obama has no choice but to deny that race is a factor in the opposition. He is the first black president, and like Jackie Robinson, the first black ball player, he has no choice but to absorb the racism. In Robinson’s case it was an explicit part of the deal that he made with the Dodgers. He and they understood that he had no choice but to stand silent in the face of racism, both overt and covert. It wasn’t fair, but it was a practical reality.

Obama faces the same dilemma. If he were to acknowledge the obvious he would hamper his own ability to get anything done. The right would go crazy, as well at it’s lapdog media. So Obama and his official family must say what he knows to be untrue and absorb the racism. Just look what happened when he stepped ever so slightly over the line when Henry Louis Gates was arrested.

That doesn’t mean that folks on our side, like Jimmy Carter, can’t acknowledge the obvious. We have come this far at least, that racists no longer feel comfortable openly acknowledging their racism, so it sets the Limbaughs and Becks off when you point out the obvious. Everyone understands why Jackie Robinson maintained his silence, but we honor folks like Pee Wee Reese who came to his defense. As a practical matter, this is our fight, not Obama’s.

As for Obama, we’ll have to wait until he writes his memoirs to find out what he really thinks.


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Friday Night Music-Mary Travers and friends

Friday, September 18, 2009

It’s an unfortunate fact that I often get inspiration for this feature from the obituaries.

This time it’s Mary Travers, who died a couple of days ago. Mary is the Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary. It’s not easy to explain how important this folk group was for a few very critical years. They sort of bridged the period between 1960 and the Beatles. They were present at the creation, so to speak, introducing most of us to the music of Bob Dylan, from which they took the hard edge of his voice, replaced by their own sweet harmonies. By 1967 or so they had become somewhat anachronistic, having been swept away by the rock explosion of the late 60s.

They brought politics to the world of mainstream pop. They were there with the Civil Rights Marchers and they remained true to their principles, and active in support of them throughout their careers. Mary was beautiful, with a beautiful voice. I was a bit surprised at the paucity of decent video clips from early in their career. There’s nothing acceptable for their biggest hits-If I Had a Hammer, or Blowing in the Wind. But there are a few good ones of songs featuring Mary’s voice. The first song I thought of was 500 miles, since she’s pretty much solo in it. I picked this Japanese version because it has better audio than the same clip without the Japanese subtitles.

And here’s one that’s a bit more obscure, There is a Ship, again featuring Mary.


and finally, one from the whole group, the first version of The Times They are a Changin that most of us ever heard.


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Extra Fuzzy Math

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Not only is Max Baucus’s Health Care Bill a massive subsidy for the insurance companies, it is a massive attack on the poor, almost guaranteed to make the poor poorer in many and sundry ways.

Today, Ezra Klein highlights a provision that he, probably justifiably, asserts is the stupidest proposal in the history of man:

Baucus’s bill retains the noxious “free rider” provision on employers. Rather than a simple employer mandate that forces every employer over a certain size to provide health-care insurance or pay a small fee, the free rider approach penalizes employers for hiring low-income workers who are eligible for subsidies.
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The penalty itself is a bit confusing, and if anything, even worse than one might imagine: The employer will pay the lesser of A) the average subsidy in the exchange times the number of subsidized workers or B) $400 times the total number of workers. Two examples should clarify this:

Baucus Corp has 100 employees and does not offer health-care coverage. Thirty of the employees receive subsidies on the exchange. The average subsidy that year is $5,000. Baucus Corp woulds pay $400 times 100 employees, as $40,000 is less than $150,000 ($5,000 times 30 employees). Each of those low-income employees is costing Baucus Corp $1,333 more than an employee who didn’t need subsidies.

Now imagine that Baucus Corp. only has five employees who need subsidies, and the average subsidy that year is $5,000. In that scenario, Baucus Corp would pay $25,000 rather than $40,000, because $25,000 is less than $40,000. Each low-income worker now costs Baucus Corp. $5,000 more than a worker who doesn’t need subsidies.

So in the scenario where Baucus Corp. has a lot of low-income workers, they cost a huge amount overall because they’re multiplied against the total number of workers. In the scenario where Baucus Corp. has a few low-income workers, they cost a huge amountindividually because they’re multiplied against the average subsidy cost. No matter how you look at it, the policy makes it profitable for employers to discriminate against hiring low-income workers.

Klein’s overall point is valid, though he doesn’t really explain it well. The cost per subsidized worker is not really the issue. The issue is the overall cost to the employer for all workers. If his rendition of the statutory formula is correct, then an employer has a clear incentive to not offer health care and not hire subsidized workers if the employer can avoid it. But many employers will not avoid hiring such workers, because the fine is capped at a certain point (basically once you exceed one subsidized worker out of twelve).

Say I run a corporation called MacRonalds. I don’t want to offer health insurance. I also don’t want to pay the fine. If I hire middle class teenagers who have health insurance through Mom and Dad, then I can avoid paying any fine, if none of them are receiving a subsidy, because zero times $5,000.00 is zero. Now, suppose I run a corporation called Bal-Mart, and I hire workers who are all eligible for the subsidy. The government is subsidizing them at $5,000.00 a person, but my fine is only $400.00 a piece, so long as more than about 1 in every twelve workers is eligible for the subsidy. Why should I pay for Health Care at thousands of dollars a year if it only costs me $400.00 an employee to shift the burden to the taxpayer? So the bill piles on perverse incentives. For those who can do it, avoid hiring subsidized workers all together. In Klein’s example, the employer is better off if it keeps the total number of subsidized workers under 8. For those who can’t keep their numbers down that far, because they pay so little, hire plenty and your “fine” is a bargain as opposed to actually paying for Health Care, and anyway, if you’re Bal-Mart, you can recover the extra cost by keeping pay down and making your employees work overtime for free. Meanwhile, of course, the actual employees will all be legally required to go out and get crappy health insurance with those insufficient taxpayer subsidies. Another perversity inherent in the formula: Employers who have large proportions of non-subsidized workers are probably benefiting from the fact that other employers are doing the right thing, and providing insurance for the spouses or parents of those workers. Responsible employers will be essentially subsidizing those that provide no benefits. The bill promotes a race to the bottom for employee benefits.

So far as I know, there is currently no law that forbids an employer from discriminating against a potential employee based on family income. It is ordinarily not a criteria an employer would tend to use. This bill creates an incentive to use it, and even if it outlaws such discrimination, it will be impossible to effectively enforce.

Of course, this is yet another example of why the employer based system makes no sense at all. This system can be gamed, and for the honest employer it presents a record keeping nightmare. But, since all sensible systems were taken off the table from the start, we are left with these absurd proposals intended to preserve and sustain, and allegedly improve, a private system that is fatally flawed.

It would seem elementary that legislators should take a look at any proposed system and ask themselves: how would I game this if I were subject to it? In this case, if I were an employer, how would I behave in response to this. Can anyone believe these fines would encourage a Bal-Mart to insure its workers, when it costs next to nothing to pay the fine? As Klein suggests, the perverse incentives would be abolished, or certainly minimized, if Baucus had simply provided for a substantial fine for each uncovered worker, rather than providing for discount pricing once the proportion of subsidized workers grows large enough.


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Recipe for success

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

From the Economist:

CLINICAL depression is a serious ailment, but almost everyone gets mildly depressed from time to time. Randolph Nesse, a psychologist and researcher in evolutionary medicine at the University of Michigan, likens the relationship between mild and clinical depression to the one between normal and chronic pain. He sees both pain and low mood as warning mechanisms and thinks that, just as understanding chronic pain means first understanding normal pain, so understanding clinical depression means understanding mild depression.

Dr Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

This explains a lot. I used to think that I was just basically a failure, but I now am proud to say that I have a highly advanced unattainable goal detection ability, what I’m going to call my “donkey sense”. Examples abound. How well I recall my competitive swimming career, when halfway through just about every race (just about? I lie. It was every race) my donkey sense would kick in; I would realize that the goal of winning, placing or showing was unattainable, and I would settle for the attainable: last place. But my donkey sense has really shown its stuff in my political endeavors. When I was very young I aspired to be president of the United States, but my highly evolved unattainable goal detector would have none of that. By successive applications of mild depressive states I subsequently realized that the presidency, the Senate, the Congress, the Town Council, The Board of Education, and finally, a seat on the Groton Representative Town Meeting, were all unattainable. I am currently fixing my sights on a position on the Water Pollution Control Authority, although as I write these words I am beginning to get mildly depressed.

Now, you may wonder why I call this highly evolved personal trait my “donkey sense”. It is, of course, in honor of the Democratic Party, which has a collective “donkey sense” that makes my feeble talents look like overachievement. Take Health Care as only one example. Why, less than a year ago-can you believe it?-the Democratic Party, including even Max Baucus, was promising us a Universal Health Care system with a strong public option and strong restrictions on insurance company abuses. Well, it took me almost a lifetime to spiral down from the presidency to the Water Pollution Control Authority, but the Democratic Party, with its highly advanced collective ability to detect the unattainable took only 10 months to descend to the attainable. Realizing that it only controlled the United States Senate, the House of Representative and the Presidency, but that it was without influence among brain damaged racists, our elected Democrats, our “brain” so to speak, became mildly depressed and quickly realized that a good health care bill was unattainable. The Republicans meanwhile, who have failed to evolve these advanced unattainable goal detection genes, went right ahead and pursued their goal of killing the bill. The result is that our highly superior party has readjusted its goal to the point where it will now consider it a success to pass a private insurance profit enhancement act, an eminently attainable goal, even without Republican help.

Thank heavens for evolution. Thanks to its beneficent working, the Democrats are able to recognize that achieving true Health Care reform “is a waste of energy and resources”. Just wait until they turn their collective attention, and their collective donkey sense, to the financial industry.


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Dodd on the comeback trail

Monday, September 14, 2009

The Daily Kos poll has Chris Dodd within four of Simmons and ahead of Foley, both of whom are largely undefined to most Connecticut voters. Three of the four Republican candidates are raising big bucks, so we can expect some bloodletting to take place on that side before the big show takes place. Gabe Rosenberg (whose emails I get since I’m a member of the Dodd Squad) says it’s a statistical tie with Simmons, since the numbers are within the margin of error. But that cuts both ways, Dodd could actually be even farther behind.

In any event, there’s every reason to think that the winner of the Republican primary will be a weaker candidate for the experience. Those guys, as we know, play rough, and there’s no reason to think that Simmons’ opponents won’t be beating him up on a regular basis. I could be wrong, but I think it’s going to be a contest to see who can tie the other guy most closely to George Bush.

By the way, I really don’t expect there to be much be way of fireworks on the Democratic side. Could be wrong, but I don’t think so.


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I’m beginning to see a pattern here

Monday, September 14, 2009

FromBloomberg news:

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize- winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

…

“It’s an outrage,” especially “in the U.S. where we poured so much money into the banks,” Stiglitz said. “The administration seems very reluctant to do what is necessary. Yes they’ll do something, the question is: Will they do as much as required?”

In almost every area the pattern repeats itself. Take a problem, any problem. Propose a halfway measure to deal with it, then compromise from there to make Susan Collins happy. Oh, and give a gratuitous kick to your own supporters as you’re doing so.

Imagine this country 20 years from now, when we’ll be able to say we did something about the health care crisis, just not enough to make a real difference; and that we did something about the economic system, just not enough to prevent another, and worse, meltdown; and that we did something about the energy crisis, just not enough to actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil; and that we did something about global warming, just not enough to keep the waters from inundating our coasts. Now that’s change we can believe in!

Consider this: if Obama had been president in the ’30s, Social Security would be the privatized system Bush tried to impose.


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