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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 11, 2012

These days I’m listening to music in my car, having given up audiobooks for a while. My iPod is connected to my stereo system, which is great, but finding music on the little display while driving is a bit difficult, so I tend to play something a little like roulette, spinning the dial until something that looks good comes up. Not entirely random, but close to it. A few days ago Lou Reed’s New York album came up. The album certainly evokes its time, but this song, it seems to me, has some continued relevance. The live versions I’ve found can’t match the pure anger that he projects in the studio version, but you can’t have everything, and this is still a good performance.

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Adventures in Semantics

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Front page headline (not on-line) from the Mystic River Press:

RTM tries new tact on budget

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Humpty Dumpty bested again

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Richard Mourdock, who just beat Richard Lugar, in the Republican Senatorial primary in Indiana:

Well, what I’ve said is that I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view. […] Bipartisanship means they have to come our way […]

As a practical matter, this has been the operative definition of bipartisanship in the beltway for years, but so far as I know it’s never been publicly acknowledged in this fashion.

The question now is: how long before this definition is totally out of the closet, and universally acknowledged by the pundits that are always demanding bipartisanship?

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The Day does good

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I’m a frequent critic of the New London Day, so it’s only fair that I give credit when they do something right, and they’ve done just that recently.

In my other life I spend a lot of time in housing court, and the subject of their recent exposé is not unknown to me. Zane Megos is a local landlord, who has apparently made quite a bit of money on the side by conning poor people out of money for apartments that never seem to become available, despite repeated promises on his part. The Day ran a long story about him recently, exposing his criminal activity, and today ran a followup:

Norwich police confirmed Monday that they are conducting multiple investigations into allegations that Zane Megos accepted cash deposits and advance rent payments for apartments that were condemned or never became available, while more would-be tenants continued to come forward.

There’s an old saying to the effect that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread”. A corollary is that police are trained primarily to look under bridges, in the streets, and in the markets (except for stock markets) for law breakers. As soon as I read the paragraph quoted above I just knew, having tried to interest the Norwich police in white collar crime of a different variety, that past complaints against Mr. Megos had been ignored. Not surprisingly, I was right:

[One tenant] said he filed a complaint with Norwich police at the time and plans to do so again now that police say they are investigating.

You can take it to the bank that were in not for the Day, Mr. Megos, unobstructed by the Norwich police, would be happily conning more poor people. The Norwich cops are not unique, of course. We have priorities in this country, and we’re far more interested in jailing the poor than in protecting them from predators like Megos.

So, congratulations to the Day for a job well done. Real journalism, which might hopefully lead to some real justice.

 

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Pity poor Dean

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I’m a big fan of Dean Baker. Every morning I check in to get his latest take on the sins of the press. It is his self appointed task to correct the economic illiteracy of the press and the punditocracy. It’s a horrible job, but someone has to do it. Still, it seems to me the poor guy should be spared the task of reading David Brooks. I personally, make a point of never reading Brooks, preferring to have him filtered through parody, scorn or vituperation. (Where do guys like Brooks come from, anyway? Has he ever actually done anything, or did he just start life as a conservative pundit who is wrong about everything? Even –shudder- Maureen Dowd had a productive former life as a reporter.)

Today, Baker vents his frustration at the typical Brooksian straw man argument. It goes something like this, and I will present the argument not as Brooks would, but as I might:

There are two kinds of people in the world: There are people who want to transfer all the country’s wealth to the very rich, and there are Democrats (or, to adopt Brooks’ formulation, “people like me”).

(I would then go on to prove that my position is sanctioned by God and is self evidently correct.)

Now, as you can see, there is sometimes a grain of truth in these dichotomies, though seldom in those advanced by Brooks. But even in my seemingly unarguable proposition, there are problems. First of all, there are in fact, many people who aren’t terribly interested in transferring wealth to the 1%, but that are still not Democrats (and, I like to flatter myself, not like me). There are people who believe in a wrathful god and want to subject us to the laws of Leviticus and return to the times of Abraham. There are racists who pine for a return to more recent yesteryears-say, 1860. There are gun nuts, climate change deniers, and all other manner of crackpots, none of whom are like me, none of whom are Democrats, and yet most of whom are also not much interested in transferring wealth to the 1%. There are, in fact, just a lot of people out there, so anytime anyone tells you that there are two kinds of people, you really have to get your bullshit detector out.

Now, my examples do Brooks too much justice, because despite the fact that they don’t hold up to even superficial analysis, at least there really are people out there who are interested in transferring wealth to the 1%, imposing Christian Sharia law, returning to the good old days of slavery, and arming each and every white person in the country at all times and everywhere. Baker’s frustration is with the fact that there are literally no people who fit any given “not David Brooks” side of Brooks’ dichotomies.

Dean, your frustration is totally understandable. Let me make an observation. There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who read David Brooks, and those who do not. Do yourself a favor, and join those of us in the latter group.

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Will they know it when they see it?

Monday, May 7, 2012

The IRS is grappling with a problem that only a lawyer, and a demented one at that, could take seriously:

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, the political ad-buying organization cofounded by Republican strategist Karl Rove in 2010, has officially submitted its first tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service, and as expected, the group is formally requesting that the IRS treat it as a nonprofit operating under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

…

The hitch is that the tax code says 501(c)(4) groups “must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare” — the promotion of which “does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

Rove depends on Crossroad GPS getting that 501(c)(4) status for one reason. Avowedly political groups, like Crossroads GPS’ sister organization, the American Crossroads Super PAC, have to disclose their donors; 501(c)(4) groups don’t (although that could be changing).

In order to promise anonymity to donors giving tens of millions — sometimes $10 million at a time — Rove and his colleagues called Crossroads GPS a “policy and grassroots advocacy” organization.

…

The big question the IRS will have to address, therefore, is whether the ads that Crossroads GPS and similar groups call “issue advocacy” ads are, in fact, “on behalf or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

…

That would include ads like one attacking Democratic Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine for being “Obama’s partisan cheerleader,” or one savaging Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who at the time was running for reelection, for having “sold out to Obama,” or one attacking progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for, of all things, siding with big banks.

…

The Federal Election Commission’s hair-splitting rules allow Crossroads GPS to make the argument that these sorts of ads aren’t exactly the same as campaign ads. According to the FEC rules, in fact, advertisements from outside groups are only considered reportable as “independent expenditures” if they are “expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.” For the FEC, that involves literally using one of the magic words such as “elect” or “vote against” in their ad.

This brings to mind the famous observation by Justice Potter Stewart, a perceived conservative at the time, but retrospectively a flaming liberal, who wrote the following in a case in which he was called upon to distinguish hard core (and therefore illegal) pornography from-well, from the other kind of pornography:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Now we shall find out if the IRS knows “direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office” when it sees it. Its job is far easier than Stewart’s. In order to win, Rove must prove that his attack ads are not about political advocacy. That’s equivalent to Stewart having made the hapless defendant in the pornography case prove his movies were not about sex.

 

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Yet another anti-corporate rant

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Yesterday my wife and I went to Best Buy to replace a dead cordless telephone. This led to a conversation about the fact that I’d recently read that Best Buy isn’t doing too well lately, and is trying to make sure it does not follow the trajectory of Circuit City. This, in turn, got us to talking about a contemporary mystery.

In the case of a Best Buy, as opposed, say, to Bank of America, et. al., there is no such thing as too big to fail. These folks operate on a narrow margin, and when the buying power of the American people declines (after all, how may Ipads can any one member of the 1% need), sales, particularly sales of discretionary purchases, must, perforce, decline. As Krugman and his liberal commie always right ilk keep telling us, the problem with the economy is on the demand side, and it seems to stand to reason that a demand problem would be most pronounced when it comes to products people can do without.

It follows, as the night the day, that it is in the interest of Best Buy, the corporation, to increase demand. And demand, in a recession, is increased, as everyone knows, by getting money into the hands of people who are going to spend it, i.e., into the hands of the poor and those who are fast becoming poor. That means government spending. You know, stimulus.

So, here’s the mystery: Why aren’t the Best Buys of the world, or at least of the U.S., lobbying hard for the type of stimulus spending upon which their very survival may depend? Even if their survival is not at stake (e.g., Apple) they could surely be making more money if more money was being spent.

Could it be that there’s a disconnect between the short term interests of the highly paid people who run these companies and the interests of the companies themselves? After all, if one is in a position to drain multimillions from a company over the course of a few years, as all of these CEOs are, one really has very little interest in the long term survival and growth of the company, and one certainly doesn’t care much how the stock performs once the options have been exercised.

Recently, digby wrote about the fact that Wall Streeters, feelings hurt and feeling misunderstood, are withholding money from Obama, who they have talked themselves into perceiving as someone who is working against their interests. She notes that a number of people have posited a number of reasons for this reaction, but concludes:

It’s always possible that it’s a combination of all these things. But what’s most interesting to me is that in all these cases, these people care nothing for the health of the financial system itself and only care about their own personal wealth, which they falsely believe has been stymied by government rather than the self-created systemic problems that caused the 2008 crash. That indicates that rather than being people who make decisions on the merits; we are dealing with irrational, irresponsible fools who are blaming the wrong culprits; indeed, they are blaming the very institution that kept the system alive so they could live to pillage another day.

I mostly agree, but I don’t think they are necessarily irrational. They are very rationally preferring policies that allow them to drain as much money from the swamp as quickly as they can, conditions left behind being totally irrelevant. That’s rational, provided one has a very crabbed conception of one’s self interest.

From a societal point of view the question is: how do we structure things so that we align the interests of these people with those of the corporations they run, if not with those of the society as a whole. That, it seems to me, could be done relatively easily. They make too much money too fast. If the corporations can’t keep compensation out of the stratosphere, that objective can be easily achieved by bringing tax rates back where they were in the 50s.

 

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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 4, 2012

A couple of songs by folks I’ve featured before, but both deserve the repetition, and both are in the news lately.

Bob Dylan is getting the Medal of Freedom. Fifty years late, some might argue, but better late than never, and the world knows he deserves it more than some of the half baked people who’ve gotten it from Republican presidents. This is one of the songs that earned him the honor, performed last year at the White House.

Yesterday was Pete Seeger’s 93rd birthday. A man who survived McCarthyism and never lost faith. Here he is singing an absolutely appropriate Dylan song.

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Both sides do it, whether they do or not

Friday, May 4, 2012

Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, entrenched members of the punditocracy, and therefore very serious people, have just written an opinion piece in which they announce to a startled world that it is the Republicans who are responsible for the present state of our dysfunctional government. This bombshell revelation, exposing a fact previously known only to every blogger to the left of Attila the Hun, and Paul Krugman, has struck wonder and amazement among beltway denizens.

Will they be forced to abandon their narrative that both sides do it, and the truth always lies in the middle, in the face of Ornstein and Mann’s persuasive argument? The facts seem to support Ornstein and Mann, but, on the other hand, the Republicans say…

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Wall Street repaying Scott Brown

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Looks like the financial industry has found a way to funnel piles of money to Scott Brown without the mess and bother of donating directly to his campaign fund, to which, in any event, they are limited to a mere pittance. The Boston Globe reports that they’ve been funneling money through a special RNC committee, to which they can donate far more:

US Senator Scott Brown, who played a critical role in the battle over the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul, has used a joint fund-raising committee to collect $2.9 million in political donations over the last year, nearly half of which came from the nation’s financial sector.

A Globe analysis of the money raised by this joint committee, which was launched without fanfare or publicity in March 2011, indicates that this sector’s deep reservoir of support for the Republican senator extends far beyond the contributions made to his campaign committee.

The Scott Brown Victory Committee, a joint venture between the senator and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, can receive donations of up to $30,800 per donor each election cycle, compared with the $5,000 limit for regular campaign committees. According to the reports, Brown receives about 15 percent of the funds, while the Republican senatorial committee receives the rest.

The joint committee’s reports are replete with generous donations from deep-pocketed venture capitalists, bankers, and leaders of some of the country’s largest investment firms who are eager to see Brown defeat his likely Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, a consumer advocate. Their donations totaled $1.275 million or 44 percent of the total raised by the committee through the end of March.

Surprisingly, the article throughout tells it like it is. Brown is a Wall Street tool, and the Globe makes that clear, even exposing his claim that he voted for Dodd Franks as disingenuous, since the price for his vote was some critical pro-Wall Street changes.

Last time I looked, Wall Street was in New York, but of course Brown makes no attempt to square his willingness to take this money with his criticisms of Warren’s out of state contributions. But apparently, that’s because there’s a crucial distinction. Let Brown’s campaign speak for itself:

“Professor Warren’s fundraising continues to be mostly out-of-state money from extremely liberal donors and special interests that are trying to influence the Massachusetts election,” said spokesman Colin Reed.

Brown’s contributors, on the other hand, while also “mostly out of state”, are, apparently, totally above the fray, and totally uninterested in “trying to influence the Massachusetts election”. Really, it’s just loose change that happened to fall out of their pockets and land in Scott Brown’s war-chest.

The Globe did good work today. It also has a good article about Romney’s non-plans when it comes to regulation of the financial services industry. Actually, as the paper implicitly reports, he does have a plan: repeal the somewhat effectual Dodd-Frank and replace it with nothing. But then, the article only confirms what any thinking person would assume.

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