On Stiglitz Part Three

Given Mitt Romney's recent comments, I think it's time to get back to Stiglitz. The next section in his book, The Price of Inequality, is called Markets and Inequality. His basic premise here is that even though market forces are real, every law, every regulation and every institutional arrangement has been made to benefit those at the top and to the disadvantage of the rest. Simply put, it is the government's fault! They create the problem by making rules that benefit the wealthy and then they do little to change the fall out.

He faults the government's reaction to the technology boom, for example, as being quite poor when one considers that education at that time should have been shored up in a sort of GI bill type of way. The steel industry, for example, now operates with a quarter of the workforce because of technological advances. What are the remaining three quarters supposed to do now that their services are no longer required? Train for a new profession. Of course, this isn't usually easy and it can be expensive.

That's where the issue of stagnant wages comes in. Stigiliz accurately points out that from 1949 to 1980, productivity and real hourly compensation rose together. After 1980, they began to drift apart. Why? Because the government began to make policies that benefited rent seekers at the top of our society. This is where these two premises

• Taxing the top at higher rates reduces incentive
• Helping the poor means more poverty because they then don't want to work

are inaccurate and no longer apply. Because of the large amount of inequality, people have less of incentive to work. They are essentially hopeless so why bother? Stiglitz asks, "How seriously would incentive be weakened if we had a little bit less inequality?" The problem here is that the Straw Man Machine gets to work and labels folks like me and Stiglitz as wanting no inequality. That's simply not true and no one is trying to do that.

Further, incentive pay for wealth execs isn't really that.

Under incentive compensation schemes, pay is supposed to increase with performance. What the bankers did was common practice: when there was a decline in measured performance according to the yardsticks that were supposed to be used to determine compensation, the compensation system changed. The effect was that, in practice, pay was high when performance was good, and pay was high when performance was bad. (Bebhuck and Fried, Pay Without Performance) 

In fact, they were so embarrassed by this that "performance bonuses" was changed to "retention bonuses." Executives were (and still are) allowed to set their own compensation schedules which has effectively separated pay from performance and misalign incentives, as Stigliz correctly notes.

Countries that have large financial sectors typically have greater inequality. Deregulation along with hidden and open government subsidies distort the economy and make it easier to move money from the bottom to the top. As Stiglitz notes, "We don't have to know precisely the fraction of inequality that should be attributed to the increased financialization of the economy to understand that a change in policy is needed." Indeed. The banks are simply too big right now and need to be broken up. I'm happy to see that many on both the right and the left are calling for this to happen.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service confirms much of the information above.

The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. 

However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.

I highly recommend reading the entire report. It is loaded down with data that supports Stiglitz's assertions.

The other big part of this chapter is a discussion on the free mobility of capital and the free mobility of labor. It is here where he and I part ways. He rightly criticizes the MNC's and financial institutions for some of the problems they have caused the Global South. However, he completely ignores the fact that the average age of mortality in Africa, for example, has doubled in the last fifty years and it's largely due to Global North investment and direct aid.

He seems to be calling for a return to trade restrictions and tariffs placed on imports that would, in turn, benefit labor in this country. I think that's a giant mistake. We have progressed for the last 70 years towards liberal and free markets. This was done to prevent world wars which were very costly in many ways (the biggest of which is human life). To go back after all the progress we have made in the Global South is very short sighted.

What we can do in the age of free mobility of capital is use that money to further educate our workforce and make the more competitive in the world. Labor around the world is very cheap right now and those without college degrees simply can't compete which is the main reason why we have a large number of people unemployed or underemployed. These people need to get college degrees and that's going to mean sacrifice by everyone...colleges, universities, professors, bankers, and many more of the very wealthy.

All of these people are going to have to step up to the plate, whether it is in the form of lower tuition, lower salaries for professors, higher taxes for the wealthy, or more private grants...A LOT MORE PRIVATE grants. Remember, the 1 percent can't enjoy their money without the support of a strong middle class.

With education, comes strength.

The Rumble Is a Fox Fumble

Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly are going to have a debate in October. They're calling it a rumble, but it looks like a Fox fumble.

The debate posits that Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart are intellectual equals. It admits that Fox's true competitor is not the 336 hours of weekly programming broadcast by MSNBC and CNN, but the one hour of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert shown Monday through Thursday. Ultimately, it concedes the fact that Fox News is not a real news outlet, but is merely another entertainment outlet of the same caliber as the Comedy Channel.

Sadly, the same thing is true of the other cable news channels, MSNBC and CNN, and most local news broadcasts. But the truth is, if you want real news you don't watch television. There are quality news shows on TV (mostly on public television), but something about the commercial medium aimed at the broad public has in recent years diminished TV news to the level of tabloid journalism or worse.

The network evening news broadcasts used to be quality journalism, similar to what you get these days in public broadcasting, but now they're about puppies and grandchildren and only the elderly watch them (you only need to watch one commercial break to become acutely aware of that). Most everyone else gets their news and opinions from cable channel food-fights, right-wing talk radio, and Internet blogs. A few odd ducks like myself read newspapers and listen to public radio.

The common thread in the satire that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show have been doing for the last decade has been the devolution of news broadcasting to infotainment and propaganda factories. It's crazy, but the few million Americans who watch the "fake" news on the Daily Show are better informed than the several million who watch "real" news on Fox.

The reason is simple: the Daily Show is about satire and questioning authority, while Fox News is the official propaganda organ of the Republican Party, run by the former head of the RNC.

The core of this truth was revealed accidentally by Ann Coulter in a frustrated outburst of spite and venom during an appearance on Sean Hannity's show last month. (This was brought to my attention by the Daily Show, of course.) Coulter was tearing into Andrea Saul, a Romney spokeswoman who was responding to an attack ad about a steelworker fired by Bain:

Her response was not that it was despicable, not that Bain… that Romney had left Bain five years earlier or the woman died five years after the plant closed and didn’t even get her insurance from her husband, her response was, ‘Well, if she had lived in Massachusetts with Mitt Romney’s health care plan, she would have had health insurance.’ Anyone who donates to Mitt Romney, and I mean the big donors, ought to say if Andrea Saul isn’t fired and off the campaign tomorrow, they are not giving another dime, because it is not worth fighting for this man if this is the kind of spokesman he has… 

There’s no point in you doing your show, there’s no point in going to the convention and pushing for this man if he’s employing morons like this. This ad is the turning point and she has nearly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat! She should be off the campaign.

Yes, Ann Coulter is telling us that the entire purpose of Hannity's show is to push Republican candidates for office and that the people who really control Romney's campaign are the "big donors."

Mittie the Moocher?

So, Mitt Romney believes that half the people in the country are lazy worthless unmotivated scum who will never vote for him. Exactly where do those people live? Mostly in states that are solidly Republican.

According to a story in the Washington Post, Romney will probably get 95 electoral votes from moocher states and Obama will only get 5.

As the original article points out:

According to the latest IRS figures for 2008, a record 52 million filers—36 percent of the 143 million who filed a tax return—had no tax liability because their credits and deductions reduced their liability to zero. Indeed, tax credits such as the child tax credit and earned income tax credit have become so generous that a family of four earning up to about $52,000 can expect to have their income tax liability erased entirely.

So, according to Mitt, the biggest moochers in this country are people with lots of kids. That is, Mormons and Catholics he's hoping will vote for him.

No wonder he's not being specific about what he'll cut to make up for those gigantic tax cuts for the rich.

A Complete Ignorance of Facts

Well, Mitt Romney has really stepped in it now. Take a look at this video.



There are many levels in which his statement is completely wrong.

The 47 percent of which he speaks (it's actually 46.4 percent) has to be examined more closely. Of those 46.4 percent, 28.3 percent pay a payroll tax while 18.1 percent pay no payroll tax. This remaining 18.1 percent does pay other taxes (sales tax, state tax, city and local taxes) so to intimate that they aren't paying taxes and are freeloading/dependent is ridiculous.

It's also important to note here that the majority in the 18.1 percent are on EITC are on it for less than two years. This is not a permanent situation for these people as many of them are working. In fact, Mitt here (along with the many others on the Right) are under the mistaken impression that people on government assistance aren't working. Most are. In fact, the working poor rate (calculated through 2010) is at its highest since 1987.

It's also very dishonest to place so much emphasis on poor people which brings me to a recent conversation at the gym with a very wealthy (and very conservative) acquaintance of mine. He owns a manufacturing concern in Minnesota that supplies equipment for people with disabilities. He corners me constantly to yell about Obama and how he is __________ (you can fill in whatever you like here). Yet a few simple questions put to him reveal that he himself is a massive rent seeker who pays very little in the way of income tax or corporate tax due to the amount of money he makes and the nature of his business (obviously, heavily subsidized by the government).

Ironically, he is part of the 47 percent of which Mitt speaks! He made $2, 178, 866 in 2011 so he paid no federal income taxes. And he's certainly not going to vote for the president. In looking at who else comprises Mitt's 47 percent, we see the other main reasons why Mitt's comment is completely wrong (and, politically, very dangerous for him).

Many of these dependents are elderly who worked their whole lives (paying into Social Security and Medicare) and are now collecting their benefits. In addition to not being freeloaders, many of them are going to vote for Mitt Romney. At least they were:)

Many of the very poor in Mitt's 47 percent hail from red states.Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of people who pay no income tax, eight are solid red states. In fact, blue states like Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, Massechussits, and my home state of Minnesota that are on the bottom of the list have taxpayers that are essentially paying for those folks in red states. That's OK with us, though, we don't have a problem with social welfare programs:) Here's that study from the Times again that backs this up.

Are the people in these eight red states going to vote for the President? Some will, obviously, but some won't because of abortion or other faith issues. Again, I wonder how many of these folks will change their vote based on this comment.

One can also look at government employees, soldiers, veterans, people who have gotten Small Business Administration loans, people who work for government contractors or companies the government bailed out (like banks and GM) are at least somewhat dependent on government. GE paid no taxes in 2010. Are they part of the 47 percent? How about defense contractors? How about oil? They get subsidies and are obviously dependent on the government for increase profit yet no one complains about them. Nope, it's just the poor people who are all lazy, don't work and sit around playing Xbox and eating Cheetos all day long.

Now, ol' Mittens was obviously trying to convince some fairly deep pocketed folks that he can win so maybe we should give him a break.  After all, he was telling them what they wanted to hear. No one really knows if he believes what he is saying but what he is saying is a complete a total myth. There are not 47 percent of Americans who pay no income tax and those 47 percent are not all going to vote for Barack Obama.

To me, the larger discussion is much more interesting. In breaking apart this myth, we can clearly see the integral role that government plays in our society. Those who want to lessen the role of it seem to completely ignore the clear benefits that it provides, not only in their lives but the lives of millions of Americans. The practical application of such an exercise (shrinking government) seems much more unrealistic given the facts listed above.

Simply put, our economy is bigger than it was at its founding so our government has to be big as well. There's nothing wrong with this and it's certainly not communism, fascism or socialism. It's what we have always done and done very well, given the challenges.

Welfare capitalism.

Uh Oh

What Are They Going To Think About This?

Nearly everyone thought that Mitt Romney's religion was not going to be an issue. But then he went and defended the "values" of the people who made the trailer for a film that may not even have been completed which set the Middle East in an uproar and now he might be screwed.

Remember, that we originally thought the film was produced by an Israeli named Sam Bacile but then the Israeli Foreign Ministry said no person exists. Now we find out that the film was made by a Coptic Christian named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula who has been convicted of fraud and drug distribution. His spokesman is a guy named Steven Klein who founded Courageous Christians United, which holds protests outside abortion clinics but also outside Mormon temples.

When asked whether he had any regrets about participating in a film that led to the death of an American ambassador, Klein replied: "Do I have blood on my hands? No. Did I kill this guy? No. Do I feel guilty that these people were incited? Guess what? I didn't incite them. They're pre-incited, they're pre-programmed to do this."

Check out their page for their views on Mormonism. Here are a few sample questions from their table.

Question: Did Christ die for all sins? Mormonism: Christ did not die for all sins. Christianity: Christ did die for all sins

Question: Baptism for the dead? Mormonism: Baptism for the dead is required. Christianity: Baptism for the dead is not required

Question: Are there other Gods? Mormonism: There are many Gods for worlds and each God is equal to the God of this world. Christianity: There is only one God for all worlds

Question: Can humans become Gods for other worlds as God is God for this world? Mormonism: Humans may become Gods for other worlds as God is God for this world. Christianity: Humans cannot become Gods for other worlds as God is God for all worlds

Question: Does God need a wife to become God? Mormonism: God needs a wife to become God Christianity: God does not need a wife to become God.

None of this bothers me as people can think and believe whatever they want to believe. But I have to wonder how the majority of conservative Americans would feel about this stuff if they knew it. After all, they are the one who think the Barack Obama is in some sort of kooky religion.

What would they think about this?

Nice

Get used to seeing more of this..

.

Irate Republicans and Muslims: Not So Different after All

These days Mitt Romney and the Republican spin machine are sanctimoniously defending the right of some idiot to make a slanderous film about Mohammed, a film that ultimately cost the lives of four American diplomats and has launched attacks against American and other western embassies across the Middle East.

And most every conservative complaining about the attacks goes out of their way to mention that these protesters are also burning the American flag!, an act which seems to anger them even more than the killing of Americans.

But for decades Republicans have been fighting to amend the constitution to ban flag "desecration," using it as a hammer against Democrats. The House and Senate have voted on such an amendment numerous times in the last 20 years, the most recent of which failed by only one vote in the Senate in 2006.

Conservative outrage against flag burning is every bit as primitive and wrong-headed as Muslim rage against America for a video that an expatriate Egyptian Copt is apparently responsible for creating.

Why are people so completely unhinged by satire or criticism of religious figures like Joe Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, Mohammed, Christ and God? Are the egos of these supposedly supreme and immortal beings really that fragile? How could the creator of the entire universe be harmed by a mere mortal taking His name in vain? How could God's one true Prophet be diminished in any way by some dork with a video camera?

How can the institutions of United States, our Constitution and our way of life possibly be threatened by some moron burning a flag in the streets of Cairo or Benghazi, or even Washington or New York? And how can you possibly call it flag "desecration" when the American flag is not the sacred symbol of a religion, but the physical banner of a temporal government? A banner that we plaster liberally on cakes, cars, towels, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and even underwear?

Every time the nitwits at Fox News rail about the "War on Christmas" they prove that they are just as intolerant, socially stunted and civically underdeveloped as they view the protesters around the American embassies in the Middle East.

The Question No One Is Asking

The question no one seems to be asking Mitt Romney is this: what are the values the president is "apologizing" for? Values that directly contradict respecting someone else's freedom to worship as they choose without fear of punishment? Values of a man who has been convicted of fraud and selling drugs? Values of mouth foaming bigotry?

These values that I mention are the ones inherent in the maker of the anti-Islamic video that started all the problems we have right now at embassies in the Middle East. This is what Mitt Romney is defending? I don't get it.

In addition, Mitt Romney seems to be living in some sort of time warp, as eloquently explained by Andy over at electoral-vote.com.

What Obama didn't say is that Romney's model of the world no longer holds. In the past, wars and attacks were governmental affairs. Country A invaded country B and then country B could send its army or air force to wreak havoc with country A. But like so many other government functions, in parts of the world, war has largely been turned over to the private sector. Al Qaeda, other terrorist groups, and jihadists who killed the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, are all private sector organizations, not government ones. As a result, you can't just bomb them because you can't find them. 

Mr. Romney lives in either 1958 or 1985. I can't tell which, to be honest.  He has very little understanding of what the world is like today and, so naturally, it must be (cue Made Up World) the president that really doesn't understand. Yeah, that's it...

I get why Governor Romney is saying what he is saying. His guys are telling him the only way he can win now is to go hard right and get out the base. They loathe the president to the core and will believe anything that is said about him. The bigger the lie, the more they believe.

It makes me sad because I wish we would have had a country where this would have happened after this horrible tragedy.

"Imagine if Romney had called President Obama, asked how he could be of assistance in this time of crisis, offered to appear at his side at a press conference to demonstrate that, when American lives are at risk, politics stop at the water's edge." Romney would have appeared presidential and Obama's equal at a joint press conference. Instead, he appears to be trying to profit from a tragedy. 

Wishful thinking, I know. But that's what you get when you have to deal with juveniles. 

The Apology Canard Again

Yesterday, Mitt Romney illustrated once and for all that he is completely incapable of handling the foreign policy of this nation.

He accused the president of giving sympathy to the protesters in both Libya and Egypt. His basis for this was a memo sent out by the US consulate in Cairo BEFORE the protesters showed up. I thought he might soften his stance a little after US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed but, instead, he doubled down, falling back on the "Obama is always apologizing" meme.

I don't get it. It's enormously frustrating to discuss this because it's so far from the truth that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Honestly, I'd like to do both because what Romney said was in such poor taste given four people had just been killed. Couple this with the omission, from his acceptance speech in Tampa, of the word "Afghanistan" or any sort of salute to the troops and it's very clear that he has no clue whatsoever in the international political realm.

The president's words and actions, however, demonstrate that he does know what he is doing and has certainly never apologized for this country. His entire life, for crying out loud, is a testament to American exceptionalism. In fact, it's exactly what the GOP want people to be like...come from nothing, work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and make a lot of money.

To show how ridiculous this accusation is, take a look at this, reprinted in its entirety here from the New Yorker.

4/4/09: Barack Obama: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.

8/20/10: Mike Huckabee: His worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we’ve had … To deny American exceptionalism is in ­essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.

9/20/11: Obama: Michelle and I, we’re only here because somebody passed on this incredible notion, this exceptional American idea that it doesn’t matter where you come from, it doesn’t matter who you’re born.to.

10/8/11: Rick Perry: Those in the White House today don’t believe—they don’t believe in American exceptionalism. 1

1/12/11: Mitt Romney: We have a president right now who thinks America’s just ­another nation. America is an exceptional nation.

11/30/11: Obama: America is great not just because we’re powerful, but also because we have a set of values that the world ­admires … We don’t just think about what’s good for us, but we’re also thinking about what’s good for the world … That’s what makes us exceptional.

1/26/12: Newt Gingrich: If you are for ­American exceptionalism, you’re us. If you’re for European socialism and Saul Alinsky radicalism, you’re with Barack Obama.

3/8/12: Sarah Palin: Our president is not in this to unify America and to solidify our place as the exceptional nation in the world. He is trying to divide us.

3/31/12: Romney: Our president doesn’t have the same feelings about American ­exceptionalism that we do. 

4/2/12: Obama: My entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism.

4/30/12: John Sununu: It goes with ego. The man doesn’t understand that other ­presidents have made equally difficult decisions … He’s trying to make himself exceptional. Lou Dobbs: In embracing, if you will, ­American exceptionalism. Sununu: That is exactly right. That’s the last and only place he acknowledges it. 

5/23/12: Obama: The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs. It’s one of the many examples of why America is exceptional.

5/27/12: John McCain: This has to do with a foreign policy led by a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism.

6/7/12: Obama: There are a set of values that make this country extraordinary, that make this country exceptional.

6/26/12: Condoleezza Rice: I’m pretty certain I don’t see that same level of willingness to assert this, that the United States is indeed exceptional.

7/14/12: Obama: What makes us exceptional—it’s not just how many skyscrapers we have; it’s not how powerful our military is. What makes us special is this idea that in this country, if you are willing to work hard, if you’re willing to take responsibility for your own life, then you can make it if you try.

7/17/12: Romney: I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success. I want Americans to welcome and to celebrate success and to encourage people to reach as high as they can … It’s the people of America that make America the unique nation, the exceptional nation it is.

Seriously, what reality does these people live in?

Robbing the Sick and the Dying

Even though Americans absolutely despise the constant haranguing of telemarketers, we're still the most generous country in the world, according to the Charities Aid Foundation. So it's truly disgusting to find that there are companies out there betraying that generosity to rip off donors and charities like the American Heart Association, Diabetes Association and Cancer Society.

An article on the Bloomberg site exposes the fraud being perpetrated by one such company, InfoCision Management Corp.:

Just 22 percent of the funds the association raised in 2011 from the nationwide neighbor-to-neighbor [American Diabetes Association] program went to the charity, according to a report on its national fundraising that InfoCision filed with North Carolina regulators.

But when call center workers (who often identify themselves "volunteers") contact potential donors they frequently lie on instructions from their boss:

According to documents obtained through an open records request with the Ohio attorney general, the Diabetes Association approved a script for InfoCision telemarketers in 2010 that includes the following line: “Overall, about 75 percent of every dollar received goes directly to serving people with diabetes and their families, through programs and research.” 

Yet that same year, InfoCision’s contract with the association estimated that the charity would keep just 15 percent of the funds the company raised; the rest would go to InfoCision.

Who's behind this fraudulent company? A man named Guy Taylor, who got his start raising money for evangelical preachers. In addition to stiffing legitimate charities like the American Lung Association and Diabetes Association he has also screwed over conservative causes:

The telemarketer was as stingy with Citizens United as it was with some of the charities: It kept $12.4 million, or 84 percent, of the money it raised for Citizens United, according to InfoCision filings with North Carolina. InfoCision has also worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Taylor is an ardent opponent of the Federal Do Not Call registry. He said:

The most pressing issue, without a doubt, is excessive governmental regulation. It seems that the politicians and regulators are ignoring the significant benefits we provide through job creation, economic growth and the goods and services we cost-effectively market for our clients.

This guy has hit the trifecta of conservative buzzwords: "excessive governmental regulation," "job creation" and "economic growth."

The "excessive regulation" was enacted to stop him from lying to potential donors and prevent him from harassing people who no longer wish their privacy to be invaded.

The "job creation" is in minimum-wage dead-end call center jobs that have extremely long hours and have a 70% annual turnover rate.

The "economic growth" is totally his own: he gave the University of Akron $3.5 million to start the Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing (which has to be the most disreputable academic institution in the nation). He paid $10 million for naming rights for the university's stadium. And he owns three golf courses.

But his employees get paid squat and the organizations he claims to represent receive only pennies on the dollar—if anything—from the millions Taylor collects from unwitting donors.

Guy Taylor is a thief and a con man, stealing money from sick and dying people. Yet this the kind of "entrepreneur" that conservatives want to let loose on this country by removing the shackles of "excessive government regulation."

An Awful Reminder

Yesterday, the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with 3 other members of the US staff during an assault on the US Consulate in Bemghazi, Libya. Apparently, there was some sort of assault on the compound and, as Ambassador Stevens was trying to get people out of the building, he was killed from automatic weapon fire. The attacks here (and the violent protest in Egypt) was the result of a short documentary film made with the support of preacher Terry Jones, the man who wanted to burn Korans as a protest awhile back.

This terrible tragedy should serve as a reminder of how the forces of religious extremism can fly quickly out of control in an instant. This is particularly true in the modern age where a YouTube video can be seen as representative of an entire nation.

Further, this event is illustrative of just how far we have to go in that part of the world. Arab spring may be in bloom but there are clearly some who do not understand what it truly means to have freedom of speech. It's going to take a long time...perhaps an entire generation...for them to understand the concept of disagreeing with someone vehemently and yet still be willing to die for their right to say it.

Mad About the Wrong Thing

It always confounds me how my dad can heap all this country's woes on lazy welfare queens and illegal immigrants, but is completely unfazed by egregious stories of abuses by the wealthy. Two juxtaposed stories in the news today reminded me of this.

The first one recounts how a whistleblower got a $104 million reward for exposing tax evasion that resulted in the Swiss bank UBS AG paying a $780 million fine. This is the sort of tax scam that Republican president candidate Mitt Romney may well have gotten amnesty for, considering his "investment strategy" using Cayman Island and Swiss banks. But since he won't release his tax returns for those years we can't know for sure.

The second story on tax fraud hits closer to home, as the perp lives in the same suburb I do.

A onetime Shakopee businessman has been sentenced to the workhouse for diverting nearly $1 million in taxes due to the IRS from his company over a time when he earned a healthy six-figure annual income and collected vintage cars and motorcycles. 

Stephen P. Clough, 65, of Minnetonka, was sentenced in federal court in St. Paul to four months in the workhouse, three years of probation and fined $25,000 for failing from 2003 to 2010 to pay federal income and employment taxes from workers at Gamma Vacuum, which makes industrial pumps and vacuums.

Clough's long-running crime resulted in losses to the IRS totaling more than $944,000. He pleaded guilty in May, and the company paid the employment portion of the total. 

In arguing to the court for prison time, prosecutors noted that Clough's personal wealth grew to more than $2 million and his income at Gamma was about $500,000 for each of last three years he worked there. He also owned two homes, several vintage cars and motorcycles and had a personal cash reserve.

Clough's defense countered in a presentencing motion that Clough should receive home confinement because his crime was motivated by trying to keep the company viable. 

His argument is that he had to commit $1 million worth of tax fraud to keep his company afloat while earning $1.5 million in salary. Didn't it ever occur to him to reduce his own compensation and that of his management team to make up the difference? He could have paid those taxes all by himself and still took home $160,000 a year, more than three times the median salary of the average American household.

A million dollars worth of tax fraud here in Minnesota, a few billion there in Switzerland, pretty soon we're talking real money. The IRS estimates that it loses more than $300 billion a year to tax fraud. This country has a huge debt, due in large part to all those wars we've been fighting in the Middle East and the Bush tax cuts, which mostly benefited people like Clough, Romney and other wealthy people who deposit their money in Swiss banks.

Clough's story is emblematic of what's wrong with American business. Though most execs don't blatantly cheat on their taxes, many — GE and Apple, for example — are abusing the system and pay next to nothing in taxes. But like Clough, when their companies are hit by hard times, it rarely occurs to them to take a cut in their multimillion-dollar paychecks. Instead, they slash employee wages, fire workers and close plants to prove to shareholders that they've got balls. And then they take home a big fat bonus.

That's what my dad should be getting mad about.

Are We Normal?

Eleven years after the 9-11 attacks, I'm wondering if we are normal again.

Obviously, we have severely incapacitated Al Qaeda's ability to carry out large scale attacks. Every week brings news of yet another major figure killed in an airstrike. Osama bin Laden is long gone and it really seems like most of the things we were told were going to happen (suicide bombers in shopping malls, WMD attacks) have not come to pass.

I have to admit that I feel pretty satisfied with how national security issues have been handled in the last four years. In fact, I think we owe a big part of how secure we are to everyday people who, since the attacks on September 11, carry with them a built in awareness that was not there before the attacks. This is particularly true in New York City. 

In this sense, we are normal because paying more attention to the details around us has become part of our daily lives...although people at the gym still think I'm nuts when I point out large, unattended black duffel bags. I suppose my time in Paris in the late 80s/early 90s will continue to have an effect on me. So, I suppose normal is a relative term.

Still, I can't help but feel an enormous amount of frustration and sadness on this day which, honestly, I think is going to continue for every subsequent September 11. This recent article details a level of incompetence that ended up costing lives and not just on 9-11. The conspiracy theories have gotten to be so outlandish and, quite frankly, in very poor taste that I have Facebook friends now making fun of people who don't believe in them. Worse, they poke fun at the relatives of the victims of the attacks simply because their self-righteous paranoia won't allow them to admit fault. And then there are the people who simply ignore this day and continue focusing on their shallow and vapid existence...I don't get it....

I guess I sound bitter but that's the taste that this day has always brought to my mouth. We're not normal but maybe we never have been. And, unlike they teach us kindergarten, sometimes that's not a good thing.

A Stag Party!

After the DeMatha Stags football team, from Hyattsville, MD, won their season opener in North Carolina Friday night, they had a real stag party. They hired three hookers and brought them into the hotel at 5AM. Five players have now been removed from the program.

Some commentators are shocked that it's so easy to contact prostitutes through web sites and cell phones. I'm not. This is old news.

No, the thing that really galls me is the reaction of the parent who reported the incident to the Washington Post:

My concern is where were the coaches and chaperones and how did this happen? These are boys, you should have been on them, knocking on their doors. . . .Why are there [18] coaches at this hotel and kids are able to sneak three prostitutes in at 5 a.m.?

In fact, the chaperones had done a bed check at 1:30 AM and were monitoring the hallway at 4:00 AM. The players had just figured a way around the security checks.

Do parents expect the players to be shackled to their beds? Forced to wear handcuffs? Uh, I guess not. That would be standard hooker hardware...

Do they think the coaches should sleep in the same room with these kids? Uh, I guess not. Not after Jerry Sandusky...

How can parents possibly blame the coaches for the behavior of their own kids? These punks committed a crime. Coming down on the coaches for this is a ludicrous abdication of parental responsibility.

People keep blaming teachers and the school system and the government for the failures of their children, but these kids have to be held responsible for their own behavior, and parents should be held responsible for their failure to inculcate morality and ethics in their children.

The President Gets A Boost

Now that the conventions are over, it's time to take an assessment of the race thus far.

Mitt Romney didn't get any bounce from the GOP convention. Maybe that's because no one can remember what he said but they do remember Clint Eastwood and the empty chair. I also seem to be the only one questioning how wise ti was to hold the convention the week BEFORE Labor Day. No one in America was paying attention.

The Democrats, however, put on a much more polished and effective convention and, as a result, the president got a decent bounce (and no, I'm not talking about pizzeria owner Scott Van Duzer (left) who lifted the president off the ground at a recent campaign stop). Take a look at the latest polls to the right of this post over at Electoral-vote.com.  If the election were held today, the president would win 347-191.

Take a look at the president'a approval ratings.  When Rasmussen has you at 50-45, that's a real bounce. Gallup had him at 52-42 over the weekend but there is something wrong with their methodology. For the truly wonky, Nate Silver's 538 blog on nytimes.com is great. The propeller on his head is larger than all the rest and for the latest on the state of the race, his site is a must.

Now, the question is will this bounce last? Most people think no but let's see what happens next week.

Both campaigns have now admitted that it's come down to nine states. They are: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The Romney campaign has all but given up on Michigan and Pennsylvania. With the president outraising Governor Romney in August $114 to $112 million, they have to spend their money wisely. Privately, the GOP are admitting that the president has the advantage at present. 

If you take these nine states out of Andy's number above, that puts the numbers at 237-191. Essentially, the president has to get 33 EVs and he wins. Governor Romney has to get 79. Obviously, it's an uphill task for Mr. Romney and we've already seen him pivot (out of political necessity) to the middle slightly yesterday with his statements on keeping parts of the Affordable Care Act...the popular parts, of course. Folks like Mr Van Duzer are registered Republicans but they are voting for the president because the GOP has moved too far to the right.

Further, Mr. Romney is going to have to get more detailed about exactly what his plan is for the economy. The remaining undecideds aren't going to respond well to bloviating straw men arguments about socialism, Kenyans, and anti-colonial rage. Mr. Romney now says (yesterday on Meet The Press) he is not going to cut taxes for the wealthy and will remove some of their loopholes. Great. Which ones? And isn't that now the same thing the president is saying?

I'd like to see a plan for exactly how Governor Romney is going to stimulate demand. If not from the government, then from where? Since he has said, "We can't cut our way to growth" how do we get to growth? Recall, his tax plan was completely blown apart by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center for being vague and leaving several key points blank. He's going to have to fill in those blanks in the next two months or he has no chance at all. Why?

Because he's maxed out the part of his supporters that aren't so much supporting him but voting against the president. The only people left are the ones who need to be convinced to vote FOR Governor Romney and not against the president. In addition to getting specific about what he's going to do, he has the debates to possibly turn it around.

Can he?

A Frivolous Lawsuit?

Jesus Christ Files Lawsuit Against GOP For Slander

“For years Republicans have proclaimed their love for and loyalty to Jesus, yet their actions are highly contradictory to what Mr. Christ preached. Instead of helping the poor and the sick GOP instead punishes the poor and the sickly."

“Mr. Christ is entitled to his opinion, however the GOP believes that the underlying message in the Bible is that giving tax cuts to the wealthy is the true path to happiness. I don’t know where Mr. Christ thinks the Bible says to help the poor and the sick, but that sounds awfully socialistic to me, and we are not a socialist country.”

According to the suit “images that inaccurately depict Jesus Christ, who was born in Middle Eastern country, as a Caucasian man with light skin, can no longer be displayed by political officials who claim they understand the Bible.” 

Not In A Million Years

When you live in a world that begins and ends with material gains, generally speaking, you ascribe that perception to others. Take, for example, the erroneous notion that the anger directed at the wealthy of the world is based on envy. It usually brings people like this out of the woodwork.

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain," she said in a magazine piece. "Do something to make more money yourself -- spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

Yes, that's right. All poor people just laze around all day smoking and drinking. What an idiot.

I think I speak for many when I say, Gina, that there is no fucking way that I am jealous of you. I wouldn't trade places with you in a million years. To begin with, your physical appearance is a mirror image of your personality-mean, ugly, and obese. Further, your words are the living embodiment of sloth and greed so it's really not surprising you think the way you do.

And getting to be the richest woman in the world must have been hard work., eh? Oh, wait. No, it wasn't as you inherited all your wealth. According to her, though, "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. Become one of those people who work hard, invest and build, and at the same time create employment and opportunities for others."

So why are people still poor?

Rinehart blamed what she described as "socialist," anti-business government policies, and urged Australian officials to lower the minimum wage and cut taxes.

Oh, right...that:) Playing the victim card again, are we?

People like Gina Rinehart fail to grasp the very simple notion that there many people who don't live for material gains. It's never bothered me that people have more money than I do. I have a great wife, wonderful children, great friends and , most importantly of all, good health in my family. Obviously, one needs a stable job and some money for a rainy day but beyond that, life is about so much more than having material things.

The failure of the Right to see that they are projecting their own perceptions of greed, envy and pettiness onto others is truly one of the finest examples of cognitive dissonance in modern times.

Subdued, Not Soaring

After three days of ridiculously awesome speeches, President Obama took the stage and delivered a good speech. Compared to his previous speeches, it was just alright. After all, he did set the bar fairly high on convention speeches in 2004 so it's understandable, given current circumstances, that it wasn't the level of stellar that we normally expect from him.

It's those circumstances that I believe drove him to give a more subdued speech than he could have given. The economy is sluggish and there are many people that are still unemployed. Does the country really need to hear soaring rhetoric right now? (btw, I'm sick of that word..."soaring"....far too overused...barf). The other speakers handled that job quite well.

The president did hit some notes that I thought were great. "This election wasn't about me. It was about you" was the line of the night and very illustrative of what his presidency has been like for the last four years and what it will be like should he be re-elected. The Right has a real hard time understanding this which I find amusing.

His comments on foreign policy clearly show his complete command of that arena and Mitt Romney's gargantuan naivete. How times have changed....:)

The most poignant line of the night, however, was this one.

While I'm proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, 'I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.

Presidents can generally be divided into two categories: those that are alright and those that are awful. There is no such thing as a great president, really, if you think about it. By the time a problem gets to the president's desk, it's usually so FUBAR that whatever choice he makes is going to be bad for some people. That's what Lincoln meant when he spoke those words and Barack Obama, being the president, understands those words far better than Mitt Romney does right now.

In looking at both conventions, the Democrats clearly did a better job. They simply made better choices with speakers and timing. If you think I'm biased, does anyone remember what Mitt Romney said? Or do they remember Clint Eastwood and the empty chair?

Now, it's on to the debates and the general election!

You Are What You Eat

There's always a tendency for people to use scientific studies to justify their preconceived notions. Such is the case with the recent Stanford study that found that organic food doesn't provide any more nutrition than conventionally produced food. Writers like Roger Cohen of the New York Times call it the "Organic Fable."

There's a lot of hype about organic food, but no more than any other product. Reasonable people buy organic food not because they think it has more nutrients (though the study actually did find some organic food to be consistently more nutritious), but because organic food contains fewer contaminants and poisons.

The study found that conventional vegetables and fruit contain many more pesticides, while conventional meats contain hormones such as BGH and antibiotics used solely to increase weight. Similar studies have found that simply keeping animals in clean environments increases weight by just as much. The problem with using antibiotics in healthy animals is that it's creating superbugs, undermining the most powerful tool in our arsenal against disease. In fact, the Stanford study found:

[O]rganic meat contained considerably lower levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than conventionally raised animals did, but bacteria, antibiotic-resistant or otherwise, would be killed during cooking.

And since cooks never touch the meat they're preparing, and everyone loves their steak well-done, it's impossible to be infected by such bacteria. Right?

Cohen falsely claims that the Stanford study found the level of pesticides "safe." The study only found pesticide concentrations to be within federal guidelines. Whether those federal guidelines are really safe is a different question. Cohen trusts that government regulators, who  are constantly under pressure by farmers, politicians, and lobbyists from the pharmaceutical, agriculture and chemical industries, have made all the right decisions. But unlike the authors of the study, regulators do not make decisions based solely on the science: they take into account production costs and accept that a certain number of deaths, diseases and deformities are inevitable.

Thus, there's a great deal of reasoned debate whether those federal guidelines for pesticide levels are too high, especially for pregnant women. Developing fetuses are extremely sensitive to environmental contaminants, especially herbicides like atrazine, which mimic sex hormones and can cause reproductive system deformities.

There are many other reasons to prefer organic production. Genetically engineered crops are modified to improve their resistance to pests or herbicides. There is evidence that such genetic modifications can jump to other species, specifically the weeds that herbicides are intended to kill. Insects and weeds also evolve resistance to pesticides and herbicides very quickly, even without cross-species pollination. These conspire to force the production of new and stronger chemicals, which present significant risks when these toxins are consumed by humans and animals.

Organic foods are typically produced in many varieties, including "heirloom" varieties. Most conventional tomatoes, for example, are a monoculture engineered for color, shipability and delayed ripening. Selecting for these characteristics often comes at the cost of taste and nutritional value, producing the infamous cardboard tomatoes. The use of a wider variety of plants in organic agriculture means that the risk of an entire crop being wiped out by disease is lower.

Conventional agricultural practices are extremely energy-intensive, using vast quantities of oil for tilling and fertilizers. Many organic practices are based more on traditional farming methods.

The question really is: would you rather eat food produced with minimal contaminants, or food that contains widely variable levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, pesticides, drugs and synthetic hormones that ultimately have unknown effects on your body and the bodies of your children?

Perplexed

I don't understand why the Right is up in arms over the disagreement over whether or not the word "God" should be included in the Democratic Party Platform. Or the disagreement over whether or not Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Huh?

It's a surprise that there are people in the Democratic party who believe God is a fairy tale for infant minded people? Heck, there are people in my comments section that think that.

It's a surprise that the Democratic party has Muslims in it that feel that the Palestinians have been treated unfairly by the Israelis? Perhaps here there is a hope that some undecided voters will be scared off by the Moose-lems!

Or is it a surprise that Democrats don't march in lockstep on an issue?

I guess my initial thought is that it's none of those things and the Right is simply doing what they always do...not taking responsibility for something (their own truly awful platform) and bloviating, "Well, their's is worser and stuff!!!!" in typical juvenile fashion.

I really don't get it. What's the dig supposed to be?

Hauling The Fucking Nail

The 42nd president took the stage last night at the DNC and reminded everyone why he has a 69 percent approval rating. Bill Clinton's speech, which can be seen in its entirety below, illustrated in detail the great job President Obama has done in his first term.

The Big Dog also showed what happens when you rip his party: you get taken out to the fucking shed. As I watched him completely demolish every single Republican talking point from the last four years, I couldn't help but wonder why the current administration has been out to lunch on this for the past four years. They've been putting out too many campaign surrogates (Axelrod, Plouffe, Cutter) and not enough elected leaders (Castro, Patrick, Strickland). Bill Clinton is proof positive that this is how the rest of the campaign should be run.

Two things stood out for me from President Clinton's speech last night...the first very serious and the second, not so serious but eerily familiar. His quiet moment describing what is going to happen to Medicaid if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have their way with it was seriously depressing. The "pro-life" party was shown to be the complete lie that it is as many families  will lose a very valuable resource in caring for those loved ones who cannot care for themselves. What is the GOP answer to this?

The second was my favorite quote from the night (which was extremely tough, given there were so many from which to choose).

When Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as “the biggest, coldest power play,” I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Key cuts that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of medicare savings that he had in his own budget. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.

Dude, that's the exact story of every political discussion I've had for the last 10 years! (see: Heading Off At The Pass). I still can't figure out if they do this on purpose or not but I do know that it's a vain attempt to make up for the fact that they have no substantive plans of their own.

There is no doubt in my mind that this speech will go down in history as one of the greatest political speeches of all time. Every high school speech and/or debate club should be using it as a shining example of perfection.

Uh....

And that would be why they call him the Big Dog...

Remember George Bush?

Remember George Bush? He's the guy who's responsible for this mess:

American senators visiting Iraq warned the Baghdad government Wednesday that it risked damaging relations with the U.S. if it is allowing Iran to fly over its airspace to deliver weapons to Syria.

An Iraqi government spokesman responded by saying Iran has told Baghdad the flights to Syria are only delivering humanitarian aid. He said the onus is on the U.S. to offer up proof that Tehran is shipping weapons.

Senator Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, said Iraq’s failure to stop the flights could threaten the long-term relationship with the U.S. as well as aid Iraq could receive as part of a 2008 strategic pact between the two nations.

Come to think of it, Joe Lieberman was also one of those guys who pushed so hard to invade Iraq on the pretext that they had weapons of mass destruction and were involved in 9/11. Turns out they were dead wrong on every count, got almost 5000 Americans killed, tens of thousand crippled for life, and perhaps hundreds of thousands affected by traumatic brain injuries.

Iran and Iraq used to be bitter enemies before Bush and the neocons orchestrated the 2003 invasion. Now they're best buds. Turns out that the entire case for the invasion came from a phony informant named "Curveball," a guy the Germans had warned us was lying. And it turned out that the Iraqis pushing the US government to invade Iraq were led by Ahmed Chalabi, who was an Iranian spy. And the worst thing: the neocons that were behind that invasion are the same guys giving Mitt Romney foreign policy advice.

Republicans today are asking "Are we better off now after four years of Obama?" A better question is, "Are we better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain or any Republican?"

According to John McCain, if he had been president for these four years, he would still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq. He would be still be "surging" in Afghanistan instead of winding down. He would have sent ground troops into Libya, and that would have mushroomed into a major conflict. He would have started an air war against Syria, and we'd be well on our way to sending in troops. He would have either greenlighted an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, or had the USAF do it for them, starting us down a fifth war in the Middle East. And we would pay for all these wars by cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Mitt Romney had been parroting the McCain line on the Middle East, but they're recently been mum on foreign policy because it involves bombing anyone who looks at us sidewise.

Except for Ron Paul, Republicans have never met a war they didn't like. Is it because all their pals are defense industry lobbyists? Do they have daddy issues? Phallic dimension disorder? Or they really think that bombing people back to the Stone Age spreads democracy?

Can They Outdo Themselves?

Compare the first night of the Democratic Convention to the first night of the Republican convention. Notice any differences? I sure did.

The first one was apparent immediately: energy level. I don't think the conservative base is all that enthusiastic about Mitt Romney. In contrast (and despite "liberal media" reports), the democratic base is very enthusiastic about the president.

We heard President Obama's name mentioned several times throughout all the speeches. The keynote address by Julian Castro, for example, talked about the strength of Obama's accomplishments whereas the keynote at the GOP convention, by Chris Christie, barely mentioned Mitt Romney at all.

And can anyone look at the two speeches delivered by Michelle Obama and Ann Romney and not wonder why such a poor job was done writing the latter? Ms. Romney did a great job delivering her speech but she still had to work with the words which were very short on content. She insisted that her husband understood the middle class but didn't really share, as Ms. Obama did, the stories that illustrate that.

Deval Patrick's speech was the best of the night. He hit on all the reasons why I am a Democrat.

The question is: What do we believe? We believe in an economy that grows opportunity out to the middle class and the marginalized, not just up to the well connected. We believe that freedom means keeping government out of our most private affairs, including out of a woman's decision whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy and everybody's decision about whom to marry. We believe that we owe the next generation a better country than we found and that every American has a stake in that. We believe that in times like these we should turn to each other, not on each other. We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody's life but in helping people help themselves to the American dream. That's what Democrats believe.

Fucking A right!

Mr. Patrick, on the president's accomplishments.

This is the president who delivered the security of affordable health care to every single American after 90 years of trying. This is the president who brought Osama bin Laden to justice, who ended the war in Iraq and is ending the war in Afghanistan. This is the president who ended "don't ask, don't tell" so that love of country, not love of another, determines fitness for military service. Who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land. This is the president who saved the American auto industry from extinction, the American financial industry from self-destruction, and the American economy from depression. Who added over 4.5 million private sector jobs in the last two-plus years, more jobs than George W. Bush added in eight. 

It remains to be seen whether the rest of the convention will go as well as last night. With Big Dog going tonight and the president tomorrow night, can the Democrats actually outdo themselves?

I think we can safely say, though, that they will do a better job than the Republicans.

A North Carolina Primer

It's the Democrats turn this week and you can be certain that you will hear a lot about how we are better off now than we were four years ago. Here's why, with the most current information.

• The government reported Thursday that Americans spent at the fastest pace in five months in July, and personal income rose as well.
• Home prices rose in the first half of 2012 for the first time in nearly two years. Sales of both new and previously occupied homes also are up. 
• Employers added 163,000 jobs in July, the most since February. 
• U.S. exports, retail spending and factory production are all up.

Something else I hope the Democrats will highlight is this. 

Applications, a proxy for future work, rose to an 812,000 annual rate, exceeding the highest estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and the most since August 2008. “Housing is one of the bright spots in the economy,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

This simple fact alone shows that the economy is turning around and the president has helped our country towards that end.

Expect to hear more about these facts throughout the week.

Back To Stiglitz

Being that it is Labor Day, I thought we'd jump back to my analysis of Joseph Stiglitz's book, The Price of Inequality. And, before I get to the next section (Chapter 3), I want to detail the four myths (per Stiglitz) that are perpetuated by the Right regarding inequality. These are pretty important to look at before we continue.

First, the Right argues that when inequality is examined, it is done so in a snapshot sort of way. If one looks at lifetime inequality, then it's not so bad. People start off poor and then they get rich. In fact, the opposite is becoming increasingly true. Chances are if you are born poor, you are going to stay that way the rest of your life. Lifetime inequality is, in fact, very large and it's almost as large as it is in each moment of time.

Second, the Right says that our poor must not have it that bad because they have Flat Screen TVs and X Box. That may have been a measure of wealth in 1980 when those items weren't made cheaply in China and sold at Costco but it's certainly not a measure by today's standards. As at National Academy of Sciences panel pointed out, one can't ignore relative deprivation. Rural India, for example, has enormous poverty but they have access to television and cel phones. How would selling a TV or cel phone provide for long term needs like food, access to decent health care and education? The value of these things aren't really that great in today's world.

Third, the Right likes to pick nits about statistics. They say that inflation may be overestimated and growth in income underestimated. Yet Americans are working longer hours and sometimes two or three jobs just to make ends meet. These jobs aren't very secure either. Details like this aren't really measured in quantitative analyses and that's why those studies must be juxtaposed with qualitative work. Clearly, the problem is growing worse as we saw in the latest Census report in 2010: poverty went up from 15.2 percent to 16 percent.

Finally, (and this is what is going to tie into my post about Chapter 3), the Right insist that it is moral for society to be unequal, even at ever increasing levels. Doing anything would "kill the golden goose," as Stiglitz puts it. This argument has two sides and both are wrong. The first is that if we tax the higher rate folks they will lose their incentive to work and tax revenue will drop. As Greg Mankiw (one of Mitt Rommney's main economic advisers), the Laffer Curve proved to be inaccurate. The second part of this argument states that helping the poor will only lead to more and increasing poverty. They too will not be properly incentivized. The poor have only themselves to blame, right? Why should they take away the "hard earned money" of the wealthy?

We aren't going to get anywhere with addressing these issue of inequality until we dispense with these four myths. They are not rooted in fact nor are they rooted in evidence. Moreover, they are detrimental to solving the problem of lessening inequality, the result of which (as Stiglitz notes) will create a more dynamic economy.

Well, It Had To Happen

I saw this one coming from a mile away.

Now, when we don't like facts, we attack the people that relate them. Then there is a big argument over bias that ultimately results in a lot of wasted time and before you know it, the actual debate over the issue is gone and replaced with a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

It's almost as if they can't admit fault and have no real solutions of their own....hmm....

Creatures of Hollywood

The Republican Party has long pretended to disdain Hollywood, alternately blaming it for the decline of American moral standards and filling children's heads with a communistic concern for the environment.

Republicans have decried frivolousness of Hollywood celebrities, implying that their party is too serious and substantial for fluff. But Republicans have elevated Ronald Reagan, a total creature of Hollywood, to godhood. Reagan, a former Democrat and union president, was apparently already suffering from Alzheimers in his first term when he told Yitzhak Shamir in 1983 that he helped free Jewish prisoners from concentration camps, though he never left Hollywood during WWII. He made a movie about it, so it must have been true.

Republicans love to rewrite Reagan's history. These days when they tell the story of his inauguration day they say that the Iranians released the hostages from the US embassy because Iran was afraid Reagan would nuke Tehran (which would have, of course, killed those same hostages). They neglect to mention that Reagan secretly exchanged seven hostages for hundreds of TOW missiles with the Iranians in 1985 and 1986 (Israel helped too), while at the same time publicly supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. They neglect to mention that after the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 299 American and French servicemen, tough-guy Reagan pledged never to back down, but within a few months he ordered American forces out of Lebanon.

And though they disparage celebrity endorsements, Republicans constantly coo about John Voight, Ted Nugent, Clint Eastwood and Jenna Jameson's endorsements of Mitt Romney.

And the "special guest" at the Republican convention? Clint Eastwood, talking to an empty chair.

Starting in Reagan's first term the Republican Party completely dispensed with reality, replacing it with fanciful Hollywood scripts: supply-side economics is a Christmas fantasy in which Santa collects lower taxes but receives more revenue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a Bob Hope Road pic that paid for themselves with the scads of oil money the Iraqis would repay us for liberating them. The global recession was a Mel Gibson conspiracy flick in which the entire world economy was intentionally destroyed by Barney Frank and several thousand black people who got adjustable-rate home loans they couldn't pay back.

The ethical basis for Paul Ryan's budget was created by Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre and Hollywood script writer. In the pre-Reagan age this atheist crusader against altruism and ardent supporter of abortion rights would have been roundly denounced by Republicans as a cold-hearted, selfish, self-serving bitch.

Finally, the selection of Mitt Romney himself is the ultimate Hollywood Republican script. Nobody, except maybe his family, actually wants Mitt Romney to be president. All the Republicans hate him because he's a closet liberal, he's the godfather of Obamacare, he's a Mormon, his dad was born in Mexico. You get the picture.

But Romney is the guy from central casting that looks like a leading man, so he beat out terribly flawed character actors like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Rick Perry. Now that the Romney script gone through several rewrites—from Mormon draft dodger in France, to heartless executive at Bain, to savior of the Olympic games, to moderate governor of Massachusetts—Republican script writers have finally retooled the robotic Romney character into a T1000 Terminator that can morph into any shape required to win the election.

But in their heart of hearts Republicans all know what happened to that T1000 at the end of that movie. And they expect Romney to tank in November like a bad sci-fi flick.

Open Mic Night

Well, the GOP convention has come to a close and it's time for the post mortem? What were the highlights? The lowlights? The good, the bad, and the ugly?

Mainly, I thought that it was not very well done. Compared to 2008, it really sucked. At least in that year, we saw good speeches that stayed on message with no real head scratchers. Sarah Palin may have been (and still is) not intelligent or competent but she gave a great speech and hadn't flopped yet.

This year, however, seemed like open mic night for 2016. Chris Christie's keynote address was awful. He didn't even mention Mitt Romney until the very end of his speech. And it didn't contain any of the colorful attitude that he has displayed previously in public. He looked too restrained. Several new stars (Kelly Ayotte, Rick Santorum, and even Paul Ryan) seemed to be there for their own purposes, not Mitt's.

Speaking of Ryan, he wasn't the only one lying his ass off this week. John Thune said


The big-government bureaucrats of the Obama administration have set their sights on our way of life. Instead of preserving family farms and ranches, President Obama’s policies are effectively regulating them out of business. His administration even proposed banning farm kids from doing basic chores!

Obama's also building an army of killer robots with the express purpose of stealing our luggage! The Washington Post has the truth on this (ahem) issue. 

Rob Portman also had this ditty

Then you have Barack Obama, who never started a business — never even worked in business.

Not true.

He worked briefly at Business International Corp. in New York after college, and then also was an associate and a partner at a law firm for 11 years.

Now, Paul Ryan's private sector experience is very minimal and has been a life long politician so I'm not sure why he brought this up.

And then there was the weird. First up, Clint Eastwood....WTF??!!?? I love the guy but perhaps he should have talked about how, as a senior, Mitt was going to help him with his benefits while the president wouldn't. Instead, we got the empty chair. I love Clint and all his films (even the ones with the monkey) but seeing an old man scold an empty chair pretty much sums up the demographic of the GOP in 2012.


Another weird one...I had no idea what Mike Huckabee was talking about when he ripped Deb Wasserman-Schultz. Her VOICE is irritating? Really? And then to follow it with "bless her heart"...good grief...

If there was any good to be found, I thought the Ron Paul folks really made it known that they are the future of the party when the geezers sail off into the sunset. Ann Romney's speech was great. Why isn't she running? Condi Rice brought a touch of class to the week that was sorely needed.

Otherwise, though, I thought it was terrible. The placing of the non white convention goers in the most prime camera spots was hilariously illustrative of how the GOP is really shitting themselves over their demographics problem. Time is indeed running out...

Lyin' Ryan

Paul Ryan unleashed a giant load of wordy squirts last night that truly bring new meaning to breaking the ninth commandment. From FactCheck.org

• Accused President Obama’s health care law of funneling money away from Medicare “at the expense of the elderly.” In fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law “substantially improves” the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings. 
• Accused Obama of doing “exactly nothing” about recommendations of a bipartisan deficit commission — which Ryan himself helped scuttle. 
• Claimed the American people were “cut out” of stimulus spending. Actually, more than a quarter of all stimulus dollars went for tax relief for workers. 
• Faulted Obama for failing to deliver a 2008 campaign promise to keep a Wisconsin plant open. It closed less than a month before Obama took office. 
• Blamed Obama for the loss of a AAA credit rating for the U.S. Actually, Standard & Poor’s blamed the downgrade on the uncompromising stands of both Republicans and Democrats.

And this is they guy who the right thinks is thoughtful and intelligent?

Well, at least the "liberal" media has decided not to fall asleep on this one.

"Special"

Language is funny. Sometimes words become euphemisms for their opposite. Case in point: special. Special used to mean exceptional or superior. For example, "Special Agent Fox Mulder." But now special has come to mean something completely different, particularly when pronounced that special way.

Last May a special-education teacher in Winona, Minnesota was charged with slapping a student. She has now pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, resigned her job and will be on a year of non-supervised probation. What exactly happened?

According to a criminal complaint, a classroom aide told Winona Senior High School principal Kelly Halvorsen late last school year that [teacher Theresa] Kersting had slapped a 19-year-old male special-education student in early April after he grabbed Kersting’s glasses and threw them on the floor. Halvorsen subsequently contacted the Winona Police Department, which initiated an investigation. 

According to a police report, the boy is not verbal and was not able to give an account of the incident.

Huh? Why is someone who can't even talk in high school? He's "special."

Special-ed students cost almost twice as much as regular students: in 1999-2000 it was about $12,474 as compared to $6,556 for regular students, which amounted to $50 billion in the United States.

Don't get me wrong: I'm down with wheelchair-accessible schools, extra tutoring for dyslexic kids, ESL classes, free breakfast, whatever it takes to get the little buggers to learn. But "mainstreaming" kids who just don't have the mental capacity to learn at grade level is a waste of everyone's time and money, especially when these kids are extremely disruptive and require their own full-time classroom aide to constantly baby-sit them.

Special ed and the IDEA act used to be a favorite whipping boy in conservative circles, especially in the South, since it was aimed at the problems of disadvantaged minority children. But Sarah Palin's big splash with her Down Syndrome son Trig has muted conservative criticism.

Conservatives like Rick Santorum want to ban prenatal testing for such conditions and force women to bear children who have severe mental and physical deformities. They don't say, however, where people are supposed to get the money for the huge medical bills, the time for all the special care required, and the courage to deal with children who will never grow up, never have a job, never have children of their own, and will ultimately die young, often suffering excruciating pain their entire abbreviated lives.

But dumping these kids in public schools should not be the solution. Don't saddle taxpayers and the public education system with a problem that education can't solve.

I Wonder What Would Happen...

...if a supporter of Barack Obama or the president himself owned a boat and flew the flag of another country.

Seriously, Stuff Like This Is Still Happening?

What does it say about the Republican national convention that the following incident occurred there?

Two people were removed from the Republican National Convention Tuesday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.”

Sure, there are bad apples in every bushel. But when the party's candidate continues to make jokes about the president's birth certificate, and the Republican propaganda machine continues to lie about recent changes to welfare that the Obama administration allowed states to make in order to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness?

This is supposed to be the most tightly controlled party convention in the history of party conventions. Everyone is supposed to be on message that Mitt Romney is a human being that doesn't bleed greenbacks when he cuts himself shaving.

But some Republicans aren't having it. Ron Paul delegates are furious with the high-handed tyrannical  tactics the Romney people are using to prevent them from speaking. Some Paul supporters were so disgusted with the treatment they have received that some of them shouted, "Romney cannot beat Obama!" on the convention floor.

Was this just frustration with the lousy treatment the Oberst-Gruppenführer running the convention was giving them, or is it one of those accidentally-told-the-truth moments?

Four Biggies Out of Tampa

FactCheck.org has a new page up with four very blatant lies that have come out of Tampa so far this week. They are:

• A misleading statistic about women’s job losses that has grown so stale it is now wholly false. 
• More bogus claims about “raiding” Medicare and the doctor-patient relationship under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. 
• A completely false claim that more than half of the younger generation is unemployed. (Actually, 86 percent who want work have it.) 
• More false claims that Obama blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline. Construction has already begun on the southern leg of the project, and the company says it expects approval for the Canada-to-U.S. leg early next year.

It's pretty sad that they have to lie to such a great degree like this. Why don't they talk about their accomplishments?