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The mind of a pundit

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

If you read Dean Baker’s blog, Beat the Press on a regular basis, you know that he regularly beats up on Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, especially when Samuelson offers up yet more reasons to eviscerate social security. Today Dean relates that Samuelson is upset that Obama has joined the ranks (if only rhetorically) of those arguing for an expansion of Social Security.

Dean relates the following:

Samuelson’s basic story is that the elderly are actually doing quite well; therefore, we should be looking to take money away from them rather than give them more. His main piece of evidence is a subjective question on well-being which shows the over age 65 age group consistently answers that they are most satisfied with their financial situation.

via Beat the Press

Dean goes on to give a number of quite plausible reasons for the fact that the elderly express satisfaction with their own financial situation, but I think he misses, or only glancingly refers to a rather glaring problem with Samuelson’s gripe.

Most people would be proud of the fact that our elderly feel satisfied with their financial situation. It is an historic achievement. A person from another planet, unfamiliar with our ways of thinking, would probably think that the next order of business should be to raise the satisfaction level of the younger generations. After all, isn’t the point to improve people’s lives? Samuelson’s solution to the disparity in satisfaction is not to improve the lot of the young, but to worsen the lot of the old. It is an odd sort of way to solve address the situation, the logic of which could only be apparently to a pundit safely ensconced in the Beltway..

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O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Sunday, June 12, 2016

I am constantly amazed at the extent to which so much of the press is uninformed about the forces that are shoveling our money to the .01%. Consider this article from our local rag, the New London Day, in which not a word is uttered about the outrageousness of what these “scientists” are proposing to do:

East Lyme — John Jasper and his collaborators may have hit on a discovery that will revolutionize the drug industry.

Jasper, founder and chief executive of Niantic-based Nature’s Fingerprint, will publish a paper next month in the leading scientific journal Pharmaceutical Technology that opens the possibility of essentially re-patenting existing drugs and extending their lives for up to 20 years through a new process known as molecular isotopic engineering.”

…

These new formulations, which would have the same effect on patients as previously approved drugs, could perhaps more easily pass muster with regulators, Jasper said, since they are only slightly different from treatments previously approved — meaning they are likely equally safe. Jasper noted that every lot of common medicinal products is slightly different when analyzed using isotopes, yet they all have the same basic effect on patients.

“It’s a novel way to protect products,” Jasper said. “I hope it will generate more business.”

via the New London Day

So, Mr. Jasper has found a way to extend patent protection, and therefore outrageously high drug prices, for an additional 20 years, without contributing any improvement on the drugs that would otherwise enter the public domain and be available as generics. The Day seems blissfully unaware of this; we are supposed to think that it’s just great that this man has found a way to transfer money from us to him without giving us anything of value in return. Apparently, we should all be delighted at this stroke of genius. 

In any rational world the Congress would take a look at this article and immediately pass legislation to prevent this robbery. But reason doesn’t have any lobbyists in Washington.

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (0)

A legal question

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Two federal judges have declared recent changes in Ohio’s voting laws unconstitutional:

Judge Michael H. Watson, appointed by George W. Bush, made his 120-page ruling May 24. He stated that the GOP-run Ohio legislature in 2014 had violated the U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act by cutting the period of early voting from 35 to 28 days. Lawmakers also got rid of “Golden Week,” a period when citizens could register to vote and cast an absentee ballot simultaneously. These moves disproportionately affected blacks, according to Watson, who pointed out in his ruling that African Americans took advantage of Golden week three-and-a-half times as much as did white voters in 2008 and five times as much as in 2012.

via Daily Kos

The other ruling involved absentee ballots, so is not germane to the point I’m about to make.

Ohio was not a Confederate state, and was not subject, so far as I’m aware, to the pre-clearance requirements of the late lamented Voting Rights Act. So this ruling must have been strictly on constitutional grounds.

I’m not quarreling with the judge, but what I can’t figure out is how Connecticut gets away with zero days of early voting, if it’s unconstitutional for Ohio to have only 28 days. I realize that the legislature can’t do much to change things, because someone had the bright idea of casting our voting laws in stone by putting them in the state Constitution, but state constitutions take a back seat to the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps the distinction is that while our voting laws merely have the (presumably) unintended effect of making it difficult for people, especially working people, to vote, Ohio’s changes were intended to make it harder for certain people, disproportionally minorities, to vote. Nonetheless, it still has to be easier for anyone to vote in Ohio than it is here in the Land of Steady (but not always particularly good) Habits. It probably wouldn’t be hard to prove that our one day fits all voting (except for absentee ballots, which you have to qualify to get) disproportionately dampens minority turnout, so the effect is likely the same in both states.

In 2014 the poorly informed electorate turned back an attempt to change our antiquated voting laws. Maybe someone should sue the state. The state could confess judgment and then we could modernize our voting laws.

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Come together

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

The time has come for us to admit what has been clear for a while. We can, at best, look forward to four more years of governance by corporate Democrats. Wall Street will remain firmly in control, and, even if some concessions are made to Sanders, control of the Democratic Party will remain firmly in the hands of the likes of Wasserman Shultz, Steve Israel, and Chuck Schumer. My only consolation is that my New Year’s prediction has come true in all respects:

As for the Dems, if you’re feeling the Bern
I’ve news that is sad, your affections must turn
For the Titans of Wall Street will allow no such frillery
The fix it is in, we must make do with Hillary

After that, as you know, it is still early innings
Clinton must work before collecting her winnings
From the press there’ll be questions on issues deemed critical
Like emails, Benghazi and motives political

But as they campaign neath the hot August sun
Some things we won’t hear, and I’ll tell you just one
Though the Earth it is warming in ways quite absurd
About climate change we’ll hear nary a word

Still in the end, when the votes are all cast
She’ll win when the race is over at last
If that’s not the case then I’ll sally forth
After packing my bags I’ll head straight to the North

Actually, the prediction has not yet come entirely true. It’s not August yet, but it’s a sure bet we won’t be hearing about climate change, unless you count Trump’s denials that it exists.

At the moment, it looks like Trump may be self-destructing, so I put the present chance of his winning as low, but you never know. Hillary could still blow it.

I’m toying with the idea of making a list of all the progressive positions that Hillary has appeared to have taken during the campaign, and keeping track of when she repudiates them, or it becomes sufficiently clear that she intends to do nothing about them. My prediction is that her opposition to the TPP will be the first reversal. Her people have already signaled that she wasn’t serious about that and it’s an issue her corporate sponsors feel strongly about. There’s money in it for them, and more powerlessness for us.

So, anyway, it’s time to come together. The march toward full scale oligarchy goes on, but under Clinton it will at least be at a slower pace.

Filed in Hillary Clinton | | Comments (0)

Truly loathsome

Monday, June 6, 2016

It’s a given that the Republican Party is chock full of loathsome politicians. In fact, it’s hard to find one that’s not loathsome. But we shouldn’t forget that we have our share of them too.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Democrats, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Trump’s logic: in the Republican tradition

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Donald J. Trump said Sunday that a Muslim judge might have trouble remaining neutral in a lawsuit against him, extending his race-based criticism of the jurist overseeing the case to include religion and opening another path for Democrats who have criticized him sharply for his remarks.

The comments, in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” come amid growing disapproval from fellow Republicans over his attacks on Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge in California overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University, whose impartiality Mr. Trump questioned based on the judge’s Mexican heritage.

via via The New York Times

It’s really sort of hard to know where to start on this one. The appropriate follow up question should be, but apparently was not: Would you agree that a black, brown, or Muslim defendant should be allowed to disqualify a white or Christian judge? We all know, of course, what the answer would be. It has also been observed that the very Republicans who are expressing “growing disapproval” of Trump’s attitude toward the judiciary are holding a Supreme Court seat hostage in the hopes that he will get to fill it.

But, I think it should be noted that Trump’s argument here is no different than that expressed by so much of the loony Republican base, which not only Republican politicians, but Republican judges have embraced. The basic argument is that bigots are a repressed minority; victims of political correctness. It’s most obvious in the patently absurd religious liberty claims that are getting so much traction these days. Trump is arguing that, as a racist (and presumably as a misogynist), he is entitled to be judged only by white male judges. There isn’t much difference between his argument, and that of the religious loonies, who argue that their right to practice their religion includes the right to impose their religious views on others. If I am against birth control, they argue, it violates my religious liberty rights if others have access to birth control. If I undertake to fill a governmental post in which it is my duty to issue marriage licenses, I have the right to withhold those licenses if I disapprove of the people who come to me for a license, so long, of course, as I dress up my objection in religious terms. To a certain extent, these arguments are winning. Witness the Hobby Lobby case where a corporation, no less, was allowed to deprive its employees of access to contraceptive services because of its asserted religious scruples. These “religious liberty” claims are certainly being embraced by Republican politicians, as the Kim Davis controversy proved. Trump is simply extending this logic. He is arguing that the merely bigoted are entitled to the same rights as religious bigots. In other words, bigots should be considered a protected class, whether their bigotry has a religious basis or not. So despite the official clucking of some Republican tongues, there’s not much doubt that Trump’s base is totally with him on this one. They can no longer claim superior rights merely by virtue of being white, but they can claim, along with Trump, that they deserve special treatment in light of their bigotry.

Filed in The Donald, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

A nomination for surrogate

Friday, June 3, 2016

Good article here about HIllary’s recent speech skewering Donald Trump. There is a silver lining, however alloyed it might be, in having Hillary as our candidate. The Donald doesn’t know how to handle strong women, and it is beginning to show.

I’ve said before that I really think Hillary should have a band of female surrogates going after the Donald. I really don’t think the Donald could handle it. I have a nominee for a member of the band, by the way.

I went to the Connecticut Democratic Progress dinner last night. I think that’s what they call it. You know, it’s the dinner that used to be named after a couple of racist presidents and a fairly unobjectionable machine politician.

Anyway, the featured speaker was Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan. She was great, and I’ve no doubt she could skewer the Donald quite effectively. The Democrats have never done surrogates very effectively, but this is a year in which they should definitely take it up with a vengeance. Not only would the surrogates be effective in going after the Donald, but they would draw fire that would otherwise be relentlessly aimed at Hillary. Trump has a short attention span, and he’s just going to go after the last person that attacked him. Granholm could more than hold her own. In fact, she might even be able to make the “small hands” charge stick. It’s truly a shame she was born in Canada. I’d rather she was the candidate than Hillary.

Filed in The Donald | | Comments (0)

Times to Donald: You hurt our feelings. When can we do it again?

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

The New York Times is taking a bit of heat (example, here ) about its article this morning, in which it spends several introductory paragraphs bemoaning how mean Donald Trump is to the media, while only hinting at, rather than explicitly saying, that he lied about his donations to Veteran’s groups. To my mind, the broader problem is embedded in the first paragraph of the story:

He called a news conference ostensibly to answer questions about his fund-raising for charities that benefit military veterans. But Donald J. Trump instead spent most of his time on live television Tuesday berating the journalists covering his presidential campaign in unusually vitriolic and personal terms.

via New York Times

He called a news conference, and they dutifully came, and put it on live television, as they always do when it’s Donald Trump. They’re at his beck and call. And lest you think they’re being even-handed:

MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN are so in the bag for Donald Trump that they ignored Hillary Clinton’s campaign speech in Las Vegas in favor of showing an empty podium before a Trump speech.

While Hillary Clinton was speaking to the United Food and Commerical Workers in Las Vegas about raising wages for working families and offering a rejection of Trump’s immigration policies[, the cable networks were showing an empty Trump podium]

via Politicus, USA

True, the whiners at the Times are of the print media, which by its nature can’t be as much in the tank as cable media, but they are fellow travelers, as the Times article shows. The story, as any reasonable person can see, is that Donald Trump is a liar. The story according to the Times is that if Donald Trump is elected president he intends to continue to beat up on them. Why should it matter? The press has already developed the full blown equivalent of battered spouse syndrome so far as Trump is concerned. Trump knows that the more he beats on them, the more free press they’ll give him. The Times article proves that, as it artfully dances around the central fact that Trump is a liar.

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We (apparently) don’t need no education

Monday, May 30, 2016

Apparently, that’s what our State Boards of Education, under Democrats and Republicans alike, seem to believe. It’s far more important to hand our educational system over the rent-seeking for profit (whether they call themselves non-profit or not), charter school chains.

In Pennsylvania, the charter schools call the shots and the public school system is being slowly destroyed. See here and here, for example, although apparently the New Democratic governor there is trying to stem the tide, but he’s running into headwinds due to the gerrymandered state legislature.

In California, they are stuffing charters down the throats of the people, regardless of their wishes:

This article provides an inside view of the charter racket in California.

If local districts oppose charter schools, it doesn’t matter. No matter what they say or how well the community organizes, the die is cast. State officials will approve the charter application, regardless of its flaws.

Rocketship charter chain wanted to move into the Mt. Diablo district. It had a federal grant to expand, and the chain wouldn’t let community opposition stand in its way. The district did not want Rocketship’s computer-based approach. It did not want a corporate chain whose headquarters was sixty miles away. Neither did the county board of education, which rejected Rocketship.

“This is the opposite of local control,” said Nellie Meyer, the superintendent of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, who called the proposal deeply flawed and was followed by MDUSD’s general counsel, Deborah Cooksey, who said Rocketship had collected its petition signatures “under false pretenses,” by telling people—including parents who were non-English speakers—their kids could get kicked out of school if they didn’t sign.

“This is going to be something that will divide our community,” said Gloria Rios, who has lived in the Monument Corridor near the northeastern Bay Area city of Concord for 20 years and has three children in the district’s public schools. “Our children will suffer the consequences, and these funds can be used for the schools we already have.”

Rejected by the local community and the county board of education, Rocketship went to the State Board of Education.

Slam dunk.

via Diane Ravitch’s Blog

We no longer have an interest in educating our children to think, at least not the children of the bottom 99.9%. We are mainly interested in manufacturing worker drones, who have been taught to believe that they live in the best of all possible worlds and they can’t really do much better than making $9.00 an hour working at Wal-mart. The charter school movement is designed to achieve that end, while shoveling money towards the top .01%.

The linked article points out that Rocketship has a 20% per year teacher turnover rate. That alone should disqualify it from consideration to operate a school with public funds. But charter schools have an interesting business plan. They hold that if you disempower teachers and pay them less you will get better educational outcomes, provided, of course, that money keeps flowing to the CEOs of the charter chains. This would be considered reasonable only in America, where 40% of us don’t consider climate change a serious threat, and a like amount of Americans believe God rolled his big sleeves up and a brand new world began. That means basically, that we start out with a base of 40% of the people who you can fool all of the time, meaning you only have to fool another 11% on any given issue. As I’ve said before, Lincoln forgot to note that you only have to fool most of the people most of the time to get your way.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Education, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Impressive stupidity

Friday, May 27, 2016

Ask yourself, is there a tax break that benefits the rich that is so overwhelmingly stupid that even the Oklahoma legislature would repeal it? Believe it or not, the answer is yes.

Last week, the Oklahoma legislature sent Gov. Mary Fallin a bill—at her request—eliminating just such a break: a state income tax deduction for state income taxes paid.  Oddly enough, Oklahoma taxpayers who happen to claim itemized deductions can currently write off their state income tax payments when calculating how much state income tax they owe.  This bizarre, circular deduction did not come into existence because of its policy merits (there are none), but rather because Oklahoma accidentally inherited it when lawmakers chose to offer the same package of itemized deductions made available at the federal level.

via Tax Justice Blog

Congratulations to Oklahoma, I guess, for sacrificing it’s whack job conservative principles on this one occasion. According to the article there are other states that have the same deduction as Oklahoma, which are apparently taking no steps to end it.

Actually, Oklahoma is not really sacrificing much by way of principle. The Republican governor and legislature, after years of cutting taxes on the rich, have suddenly found, to their (but nobody else’s) surprise, that they can’t meet state expenses. This particular break is so absurd that it was low hanging fruit, but it probably would have stayed put if the hole they dug themselves into wasn’t quite so deep.

Still, while one can see how the mistake leading to this deduction could have been made in Oklahoma and other states, it’s a mystery how any state could let it stay put once anyone pointed it out. Well, maybe not that much of a mystery:

Making matters worse, these purposeless tax breaks actually exacerbate the unfairness built into state and local tax systems.  According to an ITEP analysis, over half (58 percent) of the revenue lost through Oklahoma’s deduction flows to just the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers

Filed in Economics, Inequality | | Comments (1)