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Serial Liar

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

One of the rules of American politics is that we are not supposed to remember things, at least we are not supposed to remember bad things about Republicans or disparate treatment meted out by the “liberal” media based on the political affiliation of the person being treated. Some of us do remember, though, and one of the things I remember with some bitterness is the press’s insistence on branding Al Gore a liar based on the flimsiest of evidence. Exhibit 1, you may recall, was his claim that he invented the internet. The fact that he never made such a claim was deemed of no importance, inasmuch as it ran contrary to the meme created by the people who spread the lie in the first place.

Now we are engaged in yet another election, and we have a candidate running on the R side of the ledger for whom lying is the default response whenever it suits his purposes. It allows him to say one thing to one audience, and then to deny he said that very thing when he must justify his statements to the rest of the world, without a bit of real blowback from the press. Consider this latest:

Mitt Romney caused a stir in Jerusalem by suggesting Israel’s economic superiority over the Palestinian territories was a product of “culture” and “providence,” but the Republican candidate insists that he was misunderstood.

FOX News’s Carl Cameron grilled Romney on his remarks, which top Palestinian officials immediately denounced as “racist,” in an interview from Poland on Tuesday. The Obama campaign also accused Romney of needlessly inflaming tensions in the region.

Romney responded that he “did not speak about the Palestinian culture or the decisions made in their economy,” while adding broadly that a nation’s “choices” affect their outcomes.

…

Romney’s insistence that he was not addressing Palestinian culture seems at odds with his lengthy and detailed speech at a fundraiser in which he offered up a direct comparison between the per capita GDP of Israel and the Palestinian territories before launching into an explanation of why he thinks culture and perhaps a little divine help are so important to the stronger Israeli economy.

“I was thinking this morning as I prepared to come into this room of a discussion I had across the country in the United States about my perceptions about differences between countries,” Romney said at the time. “As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality.”

…

“Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.” One of the additional factors he cited was “the hand of providence.”

(via Talking Points Memo)

Now, Romney’s denial was not an exaggeration, or dubious but somewhat plausible spin. It was, as the article makes clear, an absolutely direct lie about something that happened the day before the lie was uttered; not long enough for Romney to even plausibly claim forgetfulness, unless he lives in the eternal now.

So, eager Democrats with memories want to know: where is the meme? When will the Romney as liar narrative come front and center as it did with Gore? After all, this time the meme is true. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?

Addendum: Romney's GDP figures were wrong too, whether, in this instance, because he was lying or just making things up (pretty much the same thing, really) is not clear.

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Scalia: don’t blame me, the founders were crazy

Monday, July 30, 2012

Has there ever been a Supreme Court justice quite as crazy as Scalia? Maybe. Has there ever been one that just sort of made it up as he went along quite like Scalia does? I really rather doubt it. Yet the man truly thinks he has some mysterious power to get into the heads of the mostly reasonable founders and extract insanity therefrom. Now he pronounces from on high that the founders quite obviously intended that the right to bear arms means one has the right to bear any arm that a single person could carry:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Sunday said that even “handheld rocket launchers” could be considered legal under his interpretation of the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

In the wake of a massacre in Colorado that left 12 dead and 58 wounded, host Chris Wallace asked Scalia if the Constitution would support assault-type AR-15 rifles and 100-round clips.

The justice explained that under his principle of originalism, some limitations on weapons were possible. Fox example, laws to restrict people from carrying a “head axe” would be constitutional because it was a misdemeanor when the Constitution was adopted in the late 1700s.

“What about these technological limitations?” Wallace wondered. “Obviously, we’re not now talking about a handgun or a musket, we’re talking about a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute.”

“We’ll see,” Scalia replied. “Obviously the amendment does not apply to arms that can not be carried. It’s to ‘keep and bear’ so it doesn’t apply to cannons.”

“But I suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to — it will have to be decided,” he added.

(via Hullabaloo)

It is not immediately clear why cannons are excluded. Perhaps Scalia is actually attempting to be intellectually consistent (a first for him), for, having read the introductory clause out of the amendment, he can’t use it to justify the right to bear cannons. For, in fact, some well-regulated militia did have cannons.

I won’t belabor the almost obvious point that this “originalist” school of legal “thinking” is merely a cover for reactionary, almost precedent free decision making. Hamilton and Madison joined together on the Federalist Papers and then never agreed again. They were both original, but which do we follow? Scalia opts to follow neither, for neither of them was so insane as to even consider sanctioning a right for any individual to acquire a rocket launcher, just because it could be carried. By Scalia’s logic, I guess if you can fit an a-bomb in a suitcase, everyone has a right to have one.

But I’m intrigued. I didn't know it was a misdemeanor in those far ago days to carry a head ax, whatever that is. Isn’t the obvious lesson that the founding generation was perfectly comfortable with regulating the private ownership of weapons, or is there some implied distinction between firearms and other, less destructive arms, that those of us who can read only English can’t see?

 

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A close legal question-only in 21st century America

Sunday, July 29, 2012

I read Dean Baker’s blog religiously. One can argue that he is repetitive, but I think he rightly feels that he must keep repeating himself, since what he has to say, usually so obviously true when you read it, never seems to sink in. It’s not just him, of course. It’s the same for Krugman and like minded economists-you know, the ones who recognized the coming disaster before it happened.

Not a week goes by that Baker doesn’t lament our broken patent system, or in which he fails to point out that our long term budget woes are almost solely attributable to the far higher costs imposed upon us by our broken health care system.

Here’s a story in which those memes collide:

It would seem a business executive’s dream: legally pay a competitor to keep its product off the market for years.

Congress has failed to stop it, and for more than a decade generic drug makers and big-name pharmaceutical companies have been winning court rulings that allowed it.

Until this month. On July 16, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia issued a decision that the arrangement is anticompetitive on its face. It potentially sets up a confrontation before the United States Supreme Court. If it were to accept the case, the outcome could profoundly affect drug prices and health care costs.

The Philadelphia ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals conflicted with decisions from at least three other federal circuit courts, giving the Supreme Court a strong reason to hear the case within the next few years.

“The Third Circuit has rebalanced the issue and teed it up for the Supreme Court,” said Eleanor M. Fox, an antitrust expert and professor at the New York University Law School. The agreements between generic and branded drug manufacturers “are cases of competitor collaboration, which the Supreme Court has called ’the supreme evil of antitrust.’ ”

The stakes are enormous for brand-name drug makers, which would face lower profits, and for pharmacies, insurance companies and patients, who could benefit from the savings.

In the case of Cipro, a powerful antibiotic with annual sales exceeding $1 billion, Bayer paid $400 million to a generic drug maker, Barr Laboratories, and other companies. In exchange, the generic makers said they would withhold their own lower-priced generic versions of the drug until 2003, when Bayer’s patent on the brand-name drug expired.

(via New York Times)

Now, if the market works as advertised, this must mean that the price of this drug, already at monopoly levels, will be increased by an amount, in the aggregate, greater than the generic manufacturer’s could make if they refused to take these payments. So, rather than forcing prices down, the existence of the generic manufacturers, who are basically now not manufacturing but getting by on bribes, results in an increase in already swollen prices in an amount greater than the savings would be if the generics were truly competing.

Why is it not surprising that the Congress has done nothing to stop this? Why, after years of court packing by Republican presidents, with only nominal pushbacks by the Democrats, is it not surprising that until now every court in the land has ruled in favor of a practice that on its face is monopolistic, price fixing behavior? Is it any surprise that the only surprise is that one court has seen the obvious?

I’ll be shocked if this ruling is upheld. It’s such a quaint throwback to that brief moment in history when this country was not a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.

 

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Top 20

Sunday, July 29, 2012







A few days ago the Apple blogs to which I go were abuzz about the fact that Time magazine chose Steve Jobs as one of the 20 most influential Americans of all time. Apparently, the criteria excluded those whose influence was evil (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, who would otherwise be right up there).

Of course, this sort of list is always highly subjective. My first reaction when I scanned it was amazement at the fact that Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark all made the list (separately, not as a group). The definition of influence must be rather strained, as, if memory serves, the broader public never heard of Sacagawea until years after the expedition, when the Journals were finally published. I'm not picking on her necessarily, though the choice is almost glaringly PC, because it's also really hard to make the argument that either Lewis or Clark deserve to be on the list.

The list says more about its compilers than it does about who was or wasn't truly influential. What I found interesting was the fact that there was not a single literary figure among the 20. Neither Thoreau (who influenced both Ghandi and Martin Luther King, the latter of whom justifiably made the top 20), Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman, Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Poe, Dickinson, Stowe (the “little lady who started [that] big war”) nor any other writer made the list, so we are to believe, I must assume, that none of those worthies was as influential as Louis Armstrong, who I admit, played a mean trumpet, but…well, but ..top 20? Really?

Nor, for that matter, did any other artist make the list, other than the aforementioned Armstrong. No painter, no dramatist, filmmaker, or, perhaps more justifiably, journalist. No one, except two scientists (who inhabited a different intellectual realm than the people to whom I refer), whose primary influence was in the world of ideas.

What are we to make of this? Has America really been so untouched by the ideas of its intellectuals and artists that not one has been more influential than a boxer? Is it really the case that their works have been so unimportant that not a one deserves placement on such a list? I think we can safely say that the answer is “no”, and that the self appointed list makers at Time just weren't up to the task.

Addendum: for the record, I'm a big Apple fan, but I don't think Jobs should be on the list either.


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Still worth signing, but where’s their priorities?

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Okay, I signed the Daily Kos open letter to the people of Britain, which you can read and sign here. I mean, why not? Anything that might conceivably hurt Romney is worth doing. But I must take issue with this part of the letter:

Additionally, we do not share the opinion which Romney expressed in his 2010 book, No Apologies, that “England [sic] is just a small island,” and that “with few exceptions, it doesn’t make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy.” Please continue sending us your many wonderful products, especially the upcoming third season of Downton Abbey.

Now, I like Downton Abbey as much as the next guy, but what were they thinking? We can live without Downton Abbey if need be, but Doctor Who is another matter.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, July 27, 2012

I sort of wracked my brain trying to think of a song about someone (think Romney) who keeps putting his foot in his mouth, but couldn’t come up with anything, but I finally found this, which is somewhat apropos. The fact that the first comment on youtube was to the effect that it would be a perfect song for the Romney campaign clinched the deal.

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Hey Paul, over here!

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Paul Krugman, perceptive as always:

Just a quick note: one thing I don’t think has been sufficiently emphasized as we stare a euro disaster in the face is the amount of damage this will do to the overall European political landscape. Across most of the periphery, both sides of the usual political divide have been roped into the policies of austerity and internal devaluation — sometimes in governments of national unity, sometimes with normal party rule but with both parties following much the same line.

So if the policies fail disastrously, which is getting close to a certainty, the effect is to discredit the entire political center, leaving radicals right and left as the only people who aren’t tainted.

It’s hard to know how this ends. But Europe a few years now may be a very different place from the nice alliance of democratic nations we all know and love.

(via New York Times Blogs)

Well, it hasn’t been sufficiently emphasized, but it was emphasized here.

Update: link fixed, thanks Fred.

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One small part of the Romney Plan

Monday, July 23, 2012

They truly have no shame:

Over a four years period from 2008 to 2011, Corning Inc. was one of 26 companies that managed to avoid paying any American income taxes, even though it earned nearly $3 billion during that time. In fact, according to Citizens For Tax Justice, the company received a $4 million refund from 2008 to 2010. That didn’t stop Susan Ford, a senior executive at the company, from telling the House Ways and Means Committee this week that America’s high corporate tax rate was putting her company at a disadvantage:

American manufacturers are at a distinct disadvantage to competitors headquartered in other countries. Specifically, foreign manufacturers uniformly face a lower corporate tax rate than U.S. manufacturers, and virtually all operate under territorial systems which encourage investment both abroad and at home.

Ford told the committee that Corning paid an effective tax rate of 36 percent in 2011, but as CTJ notes, she is counting taxes on profits earned overseas that haven’t yet been paid and won’t be unless the company decides to bring the money back to the United States. Corning’s actual tax rate in 2011, according to CTJ’s analysis, was actually negative 0.2 percent.

(via Thinkprogress)

I wrote about this newest tax meme being spread by the right a few days ago. Once again, they’ll not stop until they get what they want and once again, it’s a tax plan designed to move money upward . It would bring us into line with a number of other countries, which only tax corporate profits earned within their borders. Except it wouldn't really, because it lacks the safeguards other countries have implemented to prevent tax avoidance. Naturally, it's a centerpiece of Romney’s tax plan. The US does, in fact, have a high nominal corporate tax rate. But, in typical American fashion, it has a low effective corporate tax rate (as the Corning example proves) by dint of the generous loopholes that corporations are able to buy so cheaply from Congress. It’s actually quite convenient for them, as it gives them something about which they can endlessly complain, secure in the knowledge that the corporate media will never bother to call them out about it, giving them cover from within which they can lobby for ever more ways to shift their low remaining real tax burden to the American people.

 

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Friday Night Music-Romney’s Song

Friday, July 20, 2012

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The Future of Education?

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Kevin Carey of the Washington Monthly suggests that it's time to rehabilitate an age old educational scam:

Deep in the recesses of my spam filter, among phishing lures and ads for unregulated “enhancing” pharmaceuticals, vaguely named online universities occasionally promise to transform my valuable personal and professional accomplishments into a convenient and inexpensive college degree. The pitch has been around for decades, quickly migrating from one form of cheap, marginal media—matchbook covers, the back pages of men’s magazines—to another. “Credit for life experience” is well-understood shorthand for “sketchy diploma mill that could get you fired from a real job in twenty years if you’re not careful.”

It may also be a great idea whose time has finally come.

The U.S. economy desperately needs more Americans with college credentials: by 2018, more than 60 percent of U.S. job openings will require some form of post-secondary education, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Unfortunately, our existing system of colleges and universities doesn’t appear up to the challenge. …

…

Which is why more people are starting to ask: Is there a way to get students legitimate college credit without the college itself?

Enter “credit for life experience,” or, to use the currently popular phrase, “prior learning assessment.” Legitimate organizations are increasingly offering innovative ways of assessing the skills and knowledge that prospective students, especially working adults, already have between their ears—the human capital they’ve accumulated though past schooling, work experience, or independent study—and building on this preexisting knowledge base with carefully tailored coursework.

(via The Washington Monthly)

What this represents is an abdication of our responsibility to provide an education for our young people. This sort of thinking represents a lot of what is wrong with so-called progressives. The right-wing demands, and when it doesn't get its way, it continues to demand until gradually, and lately inevitably, it gets its way. One of those demands is the destruction of public education, and slowly but surely that is happening. Too many of us, on the other hand, see such changes taking place, and rather than demand, as we should, that the cost of education be borne by all, we seek to accommodate by buying into proposals like this that, no matter how well intentioned, will inevitably further widen the distance between the elite and the masses. One system of education for our masters, one for the rest of us. (The article actually speaks approvingly of degrees conferred by Wal-Mart on its employees: “The process will include granting credit for work experience and on-the-job training earned in various Wal-Mart job categories”.)

Another point: There is a distinction between education and training. That is not to denigrate training, but it does not confer the tools one needs to think critically, and that is the area in which Americans are woefully deficient. Education should be about more than job skills, the process should create thinking citizens. If we thought critically, we’d be voting right, and we wouldn’t need degrees for life experience, because we would not have allowed the conditions to develop that seem to justify them. We would have, as we once did, free or cheap public universities, with a middle class that can afford to pay what should be reasonable education costs. We don’t have that anymore, and this proposal assumes we never will. It’s an abject surrender to the right wing. I’d rather go down fighting.

 

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