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Sunday Morning venting

Sunday, December 8, 2013

I grow tired of this sort of thing. The Boston Globe reports that a number of political scientists got together to discuss ways of overcoming what they reportedly call a “democratic deficit” in this country. That deficit undoubtedly exists, and some of its causes, such as huge amounts of money from sources representing only one set of interests, and gerrymandered districts, were correctly identified. But, I cannot allow this to pass unnoticed:

No one suggested that democracy be replaced with some other system. But many urged that fundamental elements be reshaped to repair what they called the nation’s “democratic deficit,” aiming to make a Congress dominated by extremes better reflect the public’s more centrist viewpoint.

via The Boston Globe

Now, lets consider this. If Congress is “dominated by extremes” then it stands to reason that there is a powerful extreme right and a powerful extreme left. There certainly is a powerful extreme right. It is called the Republican Party. Where, I ask, is this extreme left that, presumably, would be to the left of the allegedly “centrist” views of the public? It would be helpful if the reporter sought to place any actual issues that are out there today on a left-right spectrum, and demonstrate how the public is allegedly in the “middle” between two articulated extremes. Rather, we are given a graph showing the distance between the “most liberal” and “most conservative” legislators, where we learn to our shocked surprise that Bob Casey is the most liberal person in the Senate. Thus, the “center” is explicitly defined as the mean distance between the most “liberal” (Casey?) and the most conservative member of each body, thus assuring that the “center” shifts ever rightward as the Republican Party grows more reactionary and the Democratic Party, at the behest of the Washington punditry and its Wall Street donors, grows ever more “moderate”.

Let's look at reality for a second. I’ll go with my favorite hobby-horse, Social Security. We all know that it is the fervent wish of the right to destroy Social Security root and branch. We know that they have been at it for years, ginning up a fake crisis, etc. We also know that Social Security has no short term problem, but in the long term, it will have to trim benefits if something is not done about its funding. The primary force driving that problem, by the way, is the fact that back in the 80s, when steps were taken to preserve Social Security's funding, the actuaries doing the math had no idea that income inequality would increase to the extent that it has. If incomes had been distributed as they expected (i.e., as incomes were distributed when the actuaries did the math), there would be no long term problem at all. Since so much income has been shifted to the top, and since those at the top only pay Social Security taxes on the first $100K of income, there is a long term funding problem.

The obvious solution is to raise or abolish the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. This would hurt no one but the rich, and it would be the merest of scratches, and mostly to their pride. It's a given that the Republicans would oppose such an increase. It seems to stand to reason that it is exactly what the “extreme” on the other side should be proposing, and proposing loudly and vigorously. And, according to our intrepid reporter, who feels honor bound to honor the “two extremes” meme, the public should be somewhere in the middle. And yet…

There are Democrats who favor this approach, but they keep their mouths shut, or speak only in whispers (the “radical” Elizabeth Warren excepted). The President, the leader of our extremes apparently, sees the solution in cutting Social Security, by enacting the chained CPI, which has substantial support in (indeed was first proposed by) the rightward extreme.

So where does the public stand?

The public is quite comfortable with raising the Social Security tax. This means that the “centrist” public is to the left of almost every member of Congress.

How about the chained CPI, the theory that as the general public gets poorer, the elderly should be dragged down with them? How does the “centrist” public feel about putting granny on a catfood diet? The Globe reporter might be surprised to learn that once again, they either agree with the leftmost members of Congress, or are to the left of them. Granted, it's a bit closer here, because the issue is less fully understood. But those with the most interest in understanding it oppose it the most.

Even on health care, when one drills into the numbers, the opposition to Obamacare is as high as it is only because there is a substantial portion of the opponents who think it does not go far enough toward the system of single payer care that we deserve. Opponents to the law are usually lumped together and placed in a right wing bag, but that is not the case in reality.

In any event, the fact is, that there is no one with a semblance of power in this country articulating extreme left, or even doctrinaire left positions. I put the word “radical” in quotes when I referred to Elizabeth Warren not as a knock on her, but because the supposedly radical positions she is taking are positions that would have been considered unexceptional until recently. Prime among them is her “radical” proposal to reenact Glass-Steagall, which 83% of the centrist public supports and which will go nowhere, because it lacks support across the spectrum in this Congress. So where, I ask, is the extreme left in our Congress? Where are the legislators demanding a return to 1950's tax rates on the rich? But that's fairly moderate. Eisenhower was fine with those rates. Where are the legislators demanding confiscation of the vast fortunes stolen from the rest of us by the bankers and hedge fund managers? Where are the legislators demanding socialized medicine, never mind single payor? Who is standing up for the unions? Where, we finally must ask, are the guillotines? People who understand the meaning of the word “extreme” in the political context want to know.

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Grade inflation at Harvard

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Boston Globe reports:

Harvard College is facing a new round of disapproval, and even ridicule, from some educators following news that the most common grade awarded is an A, more than a decade after professors pledged to combat grade inflation.

Critics say that making top grades the norm cheapens the hard work of the best students and reinforces the deluded self-regard of many members of the millennial generation.

via The Boston Globe

I'm having a hard time getting worked up about this one. Grade inflation is a problem in our high schools, and I'm certain it's a problem at some colleges. But, lets think about Harvard for a minute. There was a time when it was shot full of the pampered rich, and the “Gentleman's C” was, at least in legend, a common occurrence. But despite the preferences still given to legacies, things are a lot different at Harvard today. The average SAT scores at Harvard run from 700 to 800. It has a 6% admissions rate. Isn't it to be expected that the highest achievers in the nation will get A's? And in the case of Harvard students, while they may have a lot of self-regard (and believe me, they do), in their cases, is it fair to say they are “deluded”?

It would be profoundly unjust to grade these students on a curve. On a transcript, a Harvard C is worth the same as one from East Nowhere University. If you gave a C to the “average” Harvard student for work that would get him/her an A anywhere else, you would be essentially punishing him or her for getting into one of the best schools in the nation.

Turn it around. If the average grade handed out at Harvard were a “C”, wouldn't that engender criticism, likely from the same folks criticizing the school now.

Not that Harvard is perfect. In my own humble opinion, based on some personal knowledge, you can get a better education at any number of small liberal arts college, primarily because such places place more emphasis on education and less on the kind of networking that goes on at Harvard. But that doesn't change the fact that most Harvard students are there because they are very smart; have earned and deserved A's all their lives; and should be expected to perform well at Harvard or anywhere else they might have chosen to attend. It's just a shame so many of them go on to lead useless lives as consultants, bankers, or hedge fund managers.

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Crime bosses complain

Thursday, December 5, 2013

This paragraph from this morning's New York Times put me in mind of a complaint Dean Baker often makes. The CFTC is considering rules that might prevent criminal syndicates banks from fixing LIBOR rates :

And it underscores increasing worries by large banks in general that the rules and regulations that have come in response to the recent spate of scandals and crises — requiring higher cash cushions, for example, and hiving off bank trading arms — will cause unneeded harm not just to the banks themselves but the broader financial climate as well. “None of this is going to catch the next London Whale or A.I.G.,” said Stephen O’Connor, the chairman of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, one of the three groups that brought the suit. “What we really need is a common international approach to these rules.”

At its heart, the challenge reflects a broad worry among industry activists and conservative lawmakers in Washington that the trading commission, under its aggressive chairman Gary Gensler, who is soon to step down, has gone too far.

via The New York Times

Dean would say, I'm sure, that the Times can report on what the bankers say, but not that they “are worried”, particularly about the effects of the rules on anyone but themselves. In fact, anyone with half a brain knows that they rarely worry about anything other than their own profits.

But here's a thought experiment. Let's suppose, for instance, that a regulatory agency were considering some new money laundering rules. Would the Times use language like this:

And it underscores increasing worries by large criminal organizations in general that the rules and regulations that have come in response to the recent spate of crimes — requiring record keeping of large cash deposits, implementing procedures to make money easier to trace — will cause unneeded harm not just to the crime families themselves but the broader financial climate as well. “None of this is going to catch the next Al Capone,” said Michael Corleone, the chairman of the International Drug Dealers and Gun Runners Association.

There really is no distinction. The large banks are criminal operations pure and simple. Yet we genuflect before them and give credence to their pious posturing.

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Here’s why I can’t get excited about reelecting Dan Malloy

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Stuff like this.

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Zero brain policies being abandoned

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Just to show I keep my promises, I now present yet another installment of good news. The New York Times reports that school boards across the nation are re-thinking their zero tolerance policies. “Zero tolerance” is another way of saying that the adopting school boards have abandoned their obligation to use considered judgment in matters of discipline. The decision on punishment is made before the “crime” is committed.

I had some experience with “zero tolerance” during my brief service on the Groton Board of Education. The first defendant brought before us was a young boy who had brought a pocket knife to school. It was a tiny little knife. Nonetheless, it could have done real harm in the hands of a determined assailant, provided the victim fully cooperated. He said that he had forgotten he had it in his pocket, and we all believed him, but of course that was beside the point. It had been decided in advance that we were not to exercise any discretion whatsover in such cases. He had brought a “weapon” to school, and we were obligated to give him a ten day suspension (that's my recollection of the punishment; it may have been some other draconian penalty), whether the punishment fit the crime or no. After all, who were we to distinguish between a tiny little pocket knife and an assault weapon? That we must leave to god, I suppose, since people elected to exercise their judgment obviously should do no such thing. I don't recall anyone arguing that he deserved the punishment; only that we had no choice but to mete it out. None of the other cases we heard were much different; in none was there any indication that the boy involved had any intention of doing harm to anyone.

In a sane world our miscreant would have been required to stay after school, or pick up litter, or perform some other menial task that would have driven home the lesson that he should not do that again. Instead he received a punishment that did him no good, and no doubt taught him the lesson that he could not expect justice in this world. I suppose some might argue that was a lesson worth learning, given its truth, but I'd argue it's a lesson that is more profitably learned a bit later in life.

So, it's good news that zero tolerance is being zeroed out. Now, if only the voters would adopt a zero tolerance policy toward crazy, we might be able to improve things in the Congress.

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Nothing succeeds like failure

Friday, November 29, 2013

Who can ask for a better way to make a living than one in which repeated failure only improves your reputation? That's the world of Washington “experts” and pundits, today's example being one Michael O'Hanlon, who, in today's Times shares his expertise once again, explaining why the U.S. government should ignore Hamid Karzai's threats and continue with its plans to remain mired in Afghanistan.

You may remember Mr. O'Hanlon from the early years of the Iraq War, when he was one of those hawkish “liberals” that cheered on the Bush lie machine. In O'Hanlon's case, he then spent several years claiming that he did not say all those things he said, and take all those positions he took.

Well, O'Hanlon need hardly worry whether the Obama Administration will take his advice. Whether it calls Karzai's bluff or not, it will stay in Afghanistan. It would be nice if it would tell Mr. Karzai, who is surely, in actuality, frightened to death that the U.S. might leave (who would prop him up if we left?), that it totally respects his position and will leave, lock, stock and barrel as soon as it can. Give the Russians credit: they got completely out. We, on the other hand, prefer to remain enmeshed in an area that has been the death of Empires since the beginning of written history. It will all come to no good, as it always does, but what of that. No doubt a few years from now Mr. O'Hanlon will be telling us that he knew all along that we should get out.

As Paul Krugman has pointed out repeatedly lately, everyone makes mistakes and everyone gets it wrong sometimes. Problems arise when one refuses to admit one's mistakes; either by ignoring them, or by insisting, as did Mr. O'Hanlon, that one never made those mistakes in the first place. We learn from our mistakes only when we accept that they are mistakes.

But as we see in today's paper, it really doesn't pay for pundits to admit error. Chances are if O'Hanlon had done so, he'd never have gotten the chance to bloviate in today's Times. Nothing succeeds in Washington like repeated failure, so long as you never admit a mistake.

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Good news for the week

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Each of our political parties is under attack. The Republicans are besieged by ever growing numbers of voters of all hues, but most frighteningly, for them, those of a brownish hue. They have responded to the attack in a most simple and direct fashion: by depriving those voters of the right to vote. They have done this without shame and have done it aggressively. They have taken effective action against voters, shutting them out of polling places in red states and those blue tinged states in which they gained temporary power. They have been particularly effective and aggressive in those states, such as Texas, in which they fear the oncoming demographic brown tide the most.

The Democrats are under attack by the forces of reaction, led by rich folks such as the Kochs, backed by frightened, ignorant aging whites. What they lack in numbers they make up in money, and their chosen instrument for gaining power is the 501(c)(4) non-profit supposedly devoted to “social welfare” but which really devote themselves to partisan politics pure and simple. The administration, you may recall, beat a hasty and craven retreat when it was discovered that the IRS was slow walking requests from such groups for certification that they were in fact legitimate. The right claimed that it was being targeted because the IRS looked for words like “tea party” in an organization's name when deciding who needed special attention. It turned out that they were searching for liberal buzzwords too. No matter, the people responsible for this eminently reasonable course of conduct were obliged to resign.

So what, you may ask, is the good news? It looks like business as usual; Republicans using power to maintain power; Democrats cringing and allowing their opposition to run roughshod over them.

Except, maybe, the Democrats, at least some in the Obama administration, are growing a spine:

New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would clarify both how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofits are allowed to spend on it. The proposal covers not just television advertising, but bread-and-butter political work like candidate forums and get-out-the-vote drives.

Long demanded by government watchdogs and Democrats who say the flow of money through tax-exempt groups is corrupting the political system, the changes would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity by nonprofits.

The move follows years of legal and regulatory shifts, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, that have steadily loosened the rules governing political spending, particularly by those with the biggest bank accounts: corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

…

Under current rules, promoting social welfare can include some political activity, along with unlimited amounts of lobbying. Some of the largest political nonprofits — like Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative philanthropists Charles and David Koch — have used that provision to justify significant expenditures on political ads.

But under the new proposal, a broad swath of political work would be classified as “candidate-related political activity” and explicitly excluded from the agency’s definition of social welfare. Those activities include advertisements that mention a candidate within 60 days of an election as well as grants to other organizations making candidate-related expenditures.

“Depending on the details, this could be dramatic,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former chief of the I.R.S.’s exempt organizations division.

via New York Times

Of course, Republicans are already counterattacking, but my guess is that the Administration will stick to its guns. If the Democrats had any sense, they'd mount a propaganda campaign in support of this as noisy as the Republican’s incessant claims that we must eliminate voter fraud by eliminating voters. Once again, as is so often the case, the Democratic argument would have the virture of truth. These organizations are polluting our political system. There are ways to make that point take hold with voters. It is necessary in the first instance to be loud and proud about what you're doing. I’d be happy to see the odd progressive 501(c)(4) disappear if we can also get rid of, or at least hamstring, the Koch Brothers and ALEC. So here's hoping they won't back down, and that's the good news for this week.

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Stand with the nurses

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Our local hospital, Lawrence & Memorial has, of late shown signs of going down the path of corporatism. Part of that process is the Walmartization of its workforce. After all, if you pay your nurses a decent wage, it's that much harder for the hospital execs to get those inflated salaries (over $700k for the joker at the top). The nurses have been forced to go on strike. Read about it and sign a Moveon Petition in support here.

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What religion is Exxon?

Monday, November 25, 2013

We truly have come to a strange place in this country, even jurisprudentially speaking. In this morning's Times we read that the court is likely to take up the question of the “Religious Rights of Corporations”. It seems that the Hobby Lobby objects to providing mandated health insurance benefits to its employees.

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that corporations are creatures of statute. They exercise whatever legal rights, and operate within whatever legal framework the legislature pleases to set up. They could be abolished, or at the very least the right to form new corporations could be abolished, at the whim of the legislature. It always amazes me that this fundamental point is never made when the issue of the “religious rights” of corporations is raised.

Only one court has ruled in favor of granting such rights to corporations, with one judge ruling that it was a far easier call than that made in Citizens United because “A corporation exercising religious beliefs is not corrupting anyone". There are, in fact, sound reasons to grant corporations some free speech protections, for corporations do have to speak. What Citizens United did was demolish the ability of the state to put limits on the way that corporations speak, as well as equating spending money with speech. It was wrongly decided, but although one must strain, it is somewhat intellectually defensible.

A corporation is a legal fiction. It cannot in any intellectually defensible way, be said to either have a religion or need to exercise religious rights. If religiously minded people believe that forming a corporation will force them to behave in ways that they find objectionable, they have the right not to form a corporation. They do not, on the other hand, have a “right” to form a corporation. They have the legal privilege to do so on the terms set forth in relevant statutes.

I'm being optimistic, and I'm betting the Hobby Lobby loses 5 to 4, but I could well be wrong. If it wins, then it will be interesting to see how the court, (think Bush v. Gore) manages to restrict it to the facts. Which religious beliefs are entitled to protection. Years ago, a more rationale court ruled that an Amish employer (not a corporation, but a real person), could not refuse, on religious grounds, to withhold Social Security taxes for his employees. How is that case distinguishable from the Hobby Lobby case, except for the fact that the idea of a corporation with religious beliefs is a legal oxymoron? What does the court do if one of our corporations converts to Islam and seeks to impose …gaspp!…sharia law on its employees? What of the corporation that starts its own religion, which has dogma that just coincidentally has a beneficial impact on the bottom line, such as a moral aversion to paying taxes or a firm belief that God, when he gave us dominion over the earth, was imposing a moral imperative to pollute?

A favorable ruling for Hobby Lobby will by no means be consistent with the free exercise clause, but it will do irreperable harm to the establishment clause. In the case at hand it would grant special privileges to a “religious corporation” that would be denied to secular corporations.

The legal claim is bizarre, but what's even more bizarre is the fact that it has a decent chance of prevailing.

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Scum

Saturday, November 23, 2013

There is really no other word for the people who run American corporations. Some of the European corporations are at least throwing some crumbs at the survivors of the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh, but according to the Times American corporations, including Walmart and Sears, are refusing to donate a plug nickel.

A handful of retailers — led by Primark, an Anglo-Irish company, and C&A, a Dutch-German company — are deeply involved in getting long-term compensation funds off the ground, one for Rana Plaza’s victims and one for the victims of the Tazreen fire, which killed 112 workers last Nov. 24.

But to the dismay of those pushing to create the compensation funds, neither Walmart, Sears, Children’s Place nor any of the other American companies that were selling goods produced at Tazreen or Rana Plaza have agreed to contribute to the efforts.

via New York Times

The amount involved ($6,000,000.00 total) is so low that the Walton's lobbyists only look for tax breaks that small for practice. Typically, Walmart responds to questions about its stinginess with a mix of hypocrisy and gobbledegook.

After the International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy group based in Washington, wrote to Walmart to urge its participation in the compensation efforts, Rajan Kamalanathan, Walmart’s vice president for ethical sourcing, responded in an email that Walmart did not intend to participate. He wrote that “there was no production for Walmart in Rana Plaza at the time of the tragedy” and that the Walmart-related production at Tazreen was unauthorized.

In that email, made available by the labor rights forum, Mr. Kamalanathan made clear that Walmart was looking to the future: “Our focus is to positively impact global supply chain practices both by raising our own standards and by partnering with other stakeholders to improve the standards for workers across the industry. We will continue to invest our resources in proactive programs that will address fire and building safety in the garment and textile industry in Bangladesh to help prevent tragedies before they happen.”

via New York Times

Walmart can't spare the change because it needs it to hide its connections to the people that run its sweatshops that produce the crap that passes for clothing these days. As for the “proactive programs”, are there any suckers out there who would bet that Walmart will follow through with anything but self promoting PR? This is a corporation that is perfectly willing to let its American employees starve rather than paying them a living wage. It certainly isn't going to go out of a way to make sure that a few hundred Asians don't get fried every year or two.

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