Yep

Oh, Snap...

Perhaps he was deprogrammed from The Cult...

Shouldn't Romney Be Ahead By Now?

The question above is the exact question that Roger Simon asks in a new post over at Politco. 

But what do the Great Gods of Politics, the opinion polls, show? They show a country that still likes Obama more than it likes Romney. And by quite a bit. As I have written for years, I have a simple — OK, simple-minded — way of determining who is going to win the presidency: The more likable candidate wins. Not always, but almost always. On Aug. 2, a survey published by the well-respected Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found Obama was leading Romney by 51-41 percent for the presidency, the eighth time in a row since January that Obama has led Romney by between 4 and 12 percentage points.

But more importantly by my Simple Simon standard of likability, Romney’s favorable/unfavorable rating was 37/52 compared with Obama’s 50/45. Which means Romney had a net unfavorable rating of 15 points while Obama had a net favorable of 5 points. 

Very true and nicely illustrated at our year end tennis party this summer. Two of my co-workers, both of whom voted for John McCain in 2008 (and one who is my supervisor and life long Republican), were completely confounded by Romney's statements on his recent trip abroad.

"That was just rude...what he said about London," my supervisor remarked. "What was he thinking? You don't do that. And he wants to be president?"

"Yeah," my other co-worker said, "Obama is going to wipe the floor with him in the debates. Romney's a complete idiot and I don't really like him. I am voting for Obama."

"I may actually as well," my supervisor said. "He's not as bad as everyone makes him out to be. He's done a good job. I like him."

The conversation completely torpedoed the notion that your average Joe doesn't pay attention to politics until after Labor Day. People are paying attention to what Romney is doing and they don't really like what they see. Will they ever?

Oh, and why is John McCain, who has seen all 23 years of Romney's tax returns, not calling Harry Reid  a "dirty liar?" I wonder why he hasn't really said much on the subject.

Could It Be ... Atheists?

Like Dana Carvey's Church Lady invoking Satan at every turn, Pat Robertson is now trying to blame atheists for the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

As with every hurricane that approaches the Florida coast, Robertson has to blame the tragedy on gays, or abortion, or atheists:

What is it? Is it satanic? Is it some spiritual thing, people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God? And they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God.

This was not the first shooting in a place of worship. Just three years ago a doctor was shot in cold blood in a Kansas church. That shooter, in case you're wondering, wasn't an atheist.

Now, why accuse Wade Page of being an atheist? There is plenty of evidence that he was a neo-Nazi, Jew-baiting, Obama-hating racist, so why not blame the Wotanists or the Folkish Asatru?

Robertson may not realize it, but atheists have much in common with him. Just like Robertson, they don't believe that Vishnu and Xenu and Odin and Zeus exist. They don't believe that Mohammed is God's one true prophet. They don't believe the angel Moroni give Joe Smith the Golden Plates. Many atheists are perfectly willing to accept that Christ actually lived, was crucified, got stabbed in the side on the cross, and got up again after lying in a coma for three days in a tomb. They may even find Christ's teachings admirable, and wish that more self-styled Christians actually followed them.

Mathematically speaking, the difference between Robertson and an atheist is the number one: Robertson disbelieves in n gods, while atheists disbelieve in (n+1).

So no, atheists don't hate God, or even the expression of God. They may hate how people like Robertson take money from old ladies to build their fancy buildings and run their big TV networks. They may hate how Osama bin Laden and the Taliban used religious fervor to recruit people to murder Americans as well as their own countrymen. They may hate how millions of people were burned at the stake for disagreements over subtle points of doctrine like the Trinity and transubstantiation. They may hate how church hierarchies have shielded child molesters and rapists for centuries. They may hate how organized religion so often allies itself with autocratic regimes. They may hate lies that make people do evil things. But hating God is like hating the tooth fairy.

People of belief seem to think atheists are amoral, nihilistic hedonists who live only for the moment. But the essence of atheism is rationality, discarding myths and illusions in search of the truth. If you're an atheist you realize that this is the only life you have, that your children, your works and other people's memories of you are the only forms of immortality that exist. There are no do-over reincarnations, no 72 virgins, and no sitting at God's feet bored out of your skull for the rest of eternity. Once you mess up this life, it's game over.

So if you're an avowed atheist, would you cap yourself after pulling such a catastrophically stupid boner like shooting up the temple of a religion that the vast majority of Americans have never even heard of?

If Wade Michael Page was an atheist, it had about as much to do with the commission of this crime as his preference for boxers or briefs. From what we know so far he was just another pathetic, drunken, failed, frustrated racist whack-job with a gun who wanted to achieve immortality in the most ignominious way possible. He won't get his wish, though: in the end he'll be forgotten by everyone except other racist whack-jobs. And bloggers who know how to use Google.

Free Pussy!

How the worm has turned. A mere 20-odd years ago the Soviet Union was an atheist country, its leaders calling religion the opiate of the masses. Now the first Communist country in the world has put three women from the punk performance art group "Pussy Riot" on trial for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." Ekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina have been in jail since February, and could face seven years in prison.

What constitutes "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred?" Singing a "punk prayer" called "Holy Shit" on the altar of Moscow's main cathedral. Pussy Riot (the actual name of the group, in English and not a translation from Russian) recorded their crime and conveniently posted it on the Internet for Moscow prosecutors:

The translation:

Mother of God, Virgin, deliver us from Putin
Deliver us from Putin, deliver us from Putin

Black robes, golden epaulets
All the parishioners are crawling to worship
The ghost of freedom in the heavens
Gay pride is sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order to avoid offending the Most Holy.
Women need to give birth and love

Shit, shit, Holy Shit
Shit, shit, Holy Shit

Mother of God, Virgin, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist

The church praises corrupt leaders
The procession of black limousines
The preacher comes to your school
Go to class -- bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyayev [the head of the Orthodox Church in Russia] believes in Putin
It would be better if he believed in God, bitch
The cincture of the Virgin is no substitute for protest
The Ever-Virgin Mary will be with us!

Mother of God, Virgin, deliver us from Putin
Deliver us from Putin, deliver us from Putin

Yeah, it ain't Bob Dylan. But does it deserve seven years hard time?

At a concert in Moscow Madonna showed her support for Pussy Riot by stripping to her bra and showing the group's name written on her back. Yoko Ono, Peter Townshend and other artists have also voiced their support for the women.

That this is all happening in front of the world, all over the Internet, shows how much Russia has changed since the days of the Soviet Union. That the Orthodox Church is letting an autocrat use them to oppress the dissent of three women shows how little organized religion has changed since the days of the tsars.

And That's The Problem

The recent shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin has been officially declared an act of domestic terrorism. Wade Page has been connected to various white supremacist movements and took it upon himself to rid the world of some non whites. Sadly, he was successful.

My first thought (as it always is) was that it won't be too long before we find out that he was taking an SSRI and suffered from some sort of clinical depression. After that, I rolled my eyes at the renewed calls for gun control as anyone with a brain can see that these incidents happen less often and violence is, in fact, continuing to drop every year. Remember, folks, the media likes to make money and they make this shit seem like it happens all the time and right NEAR YOU!!! Ahhhhh, look out!!!!

As I reflected further about this latest shooting and tried to make sense of all of it, I started thinking about Jared Loughner and how my thoughts at the time were off base. My main contention then was that people like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Michele Bachmann created a culture (through their words and actions) that led to Loughner going on his rampage. But that's not quite right.

Even if the police found Palin stickers and a Limbaugh radio subscription, they still wouldn't be responsible. Even if Loughner or Page came out and said, "I love Michele Bachmann and am a proud supporter. Her talk of Muslim infiltration and enemies of the state made me do it!" they still wouldn't be responsible. The ones that are responsible are Loughner and Page. But that doesn't let the Terrible Trio off the hook. Not by a long shot.

While it's wrong to say that their creation of a culture of hate and fear caused these shootings, it's absolutely correct to say that their backwards as fuck ideology (bordering on psychotic) doesn't help. 

And that's the problem.

Each of these people (along with many more like them) have a responsibility as public figures to serve the common good. When they talk about traitors and infiltration as opposed to working together and respecting everyone's rights and freedoms, the don't advance any sort of social cohesion. There may not be causation or correlation between their words and actions and this type of violence but it's continued practice and existence is divisive, not constructive. 

I know that folks like Limbaugh, Palin. and Bachmann are earning their livings off of panic mongering but ti shouldn't be at the expense of this nation. This is now true more than ever as the power in our world shifts to shared responsibilities. We have no time for secret plots, dog whistles, reverse racism and subtle intimations of non whites threatening our way of life. 

That is, of course, if we want to continue making money.

Hoo-Ra!

Is this Cool, or What?

The American Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a picture of the Curiosity rover as it landed on Mars last night about 12:30 AM.

Curiosity decelerated from 13,000 mph as it hit the Martian atmosphere to 2 mph in about seven minutes using a heat shield, a parachute and a retro-rocket that dangled the rover gently above the Martian surface and then cut loose at the last second. The rover landed a couple hundred yards from its intended landing spot after traveling eight months and 350 million miles.

People who keep saying that government in general is incompetent and can't do anything right don't know what they're talking about. The US military and NASA are perfect examples of government agencies that can accomplish the impossible with that old-fashioned can-do American attitude.

Even after getting hammered by the terrible human disasters of the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger explosion in 1986, the disintegration of the Columbia over Texas, and the loss of the Mars Polar Lander, NASA soldiered on, landing on the moon, completing the shuttle's mission, and landed three more rovers on Mars.

There's no reason why the rest of government can't have similar successes, if our politicians would quit using the people who work there as political whipping boys and just let them do their jobs.

On Stiglitz (Part Two)

In the second chapter of The Price of Inequality, Joseph Stiglitz discusses how an unequal society is created. From the outset, he discusses how this is allowed to happen.

Much of the inequality that exists today is a result of government policy, both of what the government does and does not do. Government has the power to move money from the top to the bottom and the middle, or vice versa.

Wow. What a commie.

He then goes on to discuss the concept of rent seeking and how people in power use it to manipulate the government into doing their bidding, hence the increased inequality. But aren't these people in power faced with a choice?

To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the time destroys value. 

Right. That's the erosion of consumer surplus of which I often speak. So how does the latter (taking away wealth) actually happen? Well, it starts with many wealth creators not being satisfied with their wealth. So they seek to monopolize or rent seek even further. We saw this with the railroad barons of the nineteenth century and I think we are seeing it again today. So does Stiglitz.

Why does this happen? Stiglitz submits that Smith's invisible hand doesn't apply to our financial sector because their interest are not aligned with societal returns. They are, instead, aligned with their own interests and that of other people in the one percent. It's not a zero sum game but a negative sum game, where the gains to the winners are less than losses to the losers. As Smith himself said

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

We saw this go on with the stock pools in the 1920s and the credit default swaps and CDOs in 2008. In fact, Stiglitz argues that private financial firms act to ensure that markets don't work well. Why? Because they can make more money. If markets are competitive, after all, profits above the normal return to capital cannot be sustained.

That is so because if a firm makes greater profits than that on a sale, rivals will attempt to steal the customers by lowering prices. As firms compete vigorously, prices fall to the point that profits (above the normal return to capital) are driven down to zero, a disaster to for those seeking big profits. 

He goes on to discuss how they teach students in business school to create barriers to competition and entry to a market as well as circumvent government regulation. Essentially, how to erode consumers surplus, make markets less efficient, and continue to widen the gap between the interests of the financial sector and the interest of society. In short, increase inequality.

Indeed, the financial sector has become quite adept at doing this. On pages 36-38, there is a section called  "Moving money from the bottom of the pyramid to the top" in which Stiglitz offers examples of how exactly this is accomplished.

-Taking advantage of asymmetries of information (selling securities that they had designed to fail, but knowing that buyers didn't know that)

-Taking excessive risk-with the government holding a lifeline, bailing them out, and assuming the losses, the knowledge of which, incidentally, allows them to borrow at a lower interest rate than they otherwise could

-Getting money from the Federal Reserve at low interest rates, now almost zero

And the worst, according to Stiglitz?

-Taking advantage of the poor and uninformed., as they made enormous amounts of money by preying upon these groups with predatory lending and abusive credit card practices. This took many forms...changing high interest rates, sometimes obfuscated by fees...the abolition of usury laws...circumventing regulations. Rent-a-Center, for example, claimed to be renting furniture but was really selling it and lending money at high interest rates. 

One poor person by themselves couldn't have done this. As there were so many, the amount of debt was astronomical. If the government had intervened in the best interests of social justice or concern of market efficiency, none of this would have happened.

Now there are many who think that it was the government, not the private sector, that drove this rush to lend to poor people through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. To put it bluntly, this is a giant load of shit. Here is one example of why that is.  And here is another.  And another. And another.  As we saw in House of Cards and Inside Job, this debacle originated in the private sector (specifically California) and happened simply because people in the financial sector (and then everyone else) wanted to make more money.

So, the financial sector was (and still is) more focused on circumventing regulations and exploitative activities than economic growth. As I have shown repeatedly, they don't contribute to our society in any meaningful way from an economic standpoint. Indeed, from Adam Smith's standpoint.

What other ways shift money from the bottom to the top?

-Those at the top have managed to design a tax system in which they pay less than their fair share-they pay a lower fraction of their income than do those who are much poorer. We call such tax systems regressive.

-The hollowing out of the middle class and the increase in poverty due to laws that govern how corporations interact with the norms of behavior that guide the leaders of these corporations and determine how returns are shared among top management and other stakeholders. If monetary authorities act to keep unemployment high (even because of fear of inflation), then wages will be restrained. 

And who is it that heavily influences those authorities?

Moreover, the very sharp attacks on unions have weakened have weakened the individual's power over the corporation. We currently have about 7 percent of our population that are in private sector unions.

Stiglitz concludes this section by stating that market forces combined with politics (both of which should work in a balance to lessen inequality) have actually joined forces to increase income and wealth disparity.

All in all, it's not a pretty picture and it continues to get worse. There are no words that I can use to express my frustration at the right who view this information as being "commie talk." I urge all of you to read the rest of Chapter 2 of Stiglitz's book as it details more ways (too lengthy to mention here) that the wealthy are rent seekers.

They May Not Like Big Government But...

Take a look at this poll conducted earlier in the year by Gallup.

29 percent of Americans are satisfied with the size and power of government. No surprise there. But only 30 percent are satisfied with the size and power of corporations. Americans may not like Big Government but they don't like Big Corporations either. Take a look at how the numbers break down by political ideology.

A couple of key numbers here...independents distrust corporations nearly as much as the government. And I was fairly shocked to see that Republicans are split on corporations. What do you suppose that means?

Amen

A Bad Week (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Harry Reid)

I've been pretty critical when it comes to the subject of Harry Reid. In the past, I've referred to him as several limp noodles on two slices of milk dunked toast.

But his recent indictment of Mitt Romney is a stark contrast to his previous persona. I think the thing I like about it the most is how much in common it has with statements made by the right on a daily basis. In other words, it's about fucking time a Democrat started saying things that may or not may not have any basis in fact but have absolutely everything being pissed off and pulling shit out of one's ass (sort of like how the government forced banks to loan to black people and Hispanics and that's why the economy collapsed).

We really don't know if Romney paid taxes or not but what's great about Reid's statement is how fucked Romney is right now. If he does not release his taxes, the "lie" is out there and people will doubt him. If he does release his taxes and they show that he did pay them over a ten year period, Reid has manipulated Romney (just as the right manipulates the left all the time) into doing something he doesn't want to do: release his taxes...which will undoubtedly show that Romney made a shit ton of money, has hid some of it offshore, was more involved at Bain during their layoffs and outsourcing, and paid less than Warren Buffet's secretary. Heck, even the National Review is calling for Romney to release his returns now. 

Of course, Romney's own tax plan doesn't help him at all. 

But what does the TPC analysis actually tell us–meaning us people who aren’t campaigning to be president–about the Romney tax plan? It’s well summarized by Figure 2 from the paper, above, which decomposes the bottom line conclusion that a revenue-neutral Romney plan would give generous tax cuts to the rich paid for with net tax increases on everyone else, into two parts: (i) how much the tax cuts from the tax rate reductions are skewed toward the rich; and (ii) how much the revenue offsets from (Romney-limited) base broadening are skewed toward lower- and middle-income households. Combined, we would end up with a revenue-neutral (relative to a business-as-usual, policy-extended baseline) and highly “regressive” tax reform, with relative and absolute tax burdens falling for “the rich” (defined here as households with incomes above $200,000–about the top 5%) and increasing for everyone else.

Seriously, are you fucking kidding me? What a massively stupid idea given the current perception of government and the economy. Yes, let's give the wealthy more breaks...that's going to go over well with the middle class, non college educated whites voting in the coming election.

Add all of this in with his stumbles on his recent trip abroad and it's understandable why Romney has lost ground in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.  With less than 100 days to go before the election, Governor Romney is going to have a very difficult time making up that ground. The Obama team has already pulled their ads in Pennsylvania to focus on other key swing states. In short, it's not been a good week for Mitt Romney.

And all of this just before he picks his VP...

Nope. No racism here. Please move along....

On Stiglitz (Part One)

I first heard of Joseph Stiglitz's new book, "The Price of Inequality," from a very conservative friend of mine on Facebook. His comment was...

How about stop focusing on making things "fair" and let the chips fall where they may? Kind of like....oh...I don;t know...OLD SCHOOL AMERICA? No, no, better to listen to the liberal commie fuck professor who never worked in the private sector and wants MORE taxes, rules and regulations to make things "fair." Fucking idiot.

Anytime I see this sort of mouth foaming, I know it must be something worth reading!

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be discussing Stiglitz's book and highlighting the parts of it that I think are important. Each post I put up will more than likely be on one specific point although not always as is the case with this first one.With over 100 pages in sourced information, there is going to be a lot to choose from and I want to make it clear from the outset that there is no way I can get to it all. This would be why I would recommend reading the book for yourself so you can study the full argument from the one who put in all the research that led him to a central and inevitable conclusion: the inequality in this country endangers our future.

Now, before we get started, I want to clear up an issue that came up in comments the last time we talked about inequality. I was tasked to come up with a number of what is too much inequality. As Stiglitz points out in the first chapter in the book, relying solely on a quantitative analysis isn't an accurate way of examining inequality.

On page 23, he discusses the Gini Coefficient and how it is used as a standard measure of inequality. A GC of 0 (in which the bottom 10 percent get 10 percent of the income, the bottom 20 get 20 etc) is the most equal. A GC of one (in which all the income goes to 1 person) would be the most unequal. In between 0 and 1 are where countries are measured. More equal societies have around 0.3 (Sweden, Norway, Germany) and less equal countries have 0.5 or above (African nations and South America). The US stands at .47, up from .4 in 1980. We are more unequal than Iran or Turkey and very much more equal than any country in the EU.

Yet, as Stiglitz notes,

Measures of income inequality don't fully capture critical aspects of inequality. America's inequality may, in fact, be far worse than those number suggest. In other advanced industrial countries, families don't have to worry about how they will pay the doctor's bill, or whether they can afford to pay for their parent's health care. Access to health care is taken as a basic human right. In other countries, the loss of a job is serious, but at least there is a better safety net. In no other country are so many persons worried about the loss of their home. For Americans at the bottom and in the middle, economic insecurity has become a fact of life. It is real, it is important, but it's not captured in these metrics. If it were, the international comparisons would cast what's been happening in America in an even worse light.

So, choosing a number shouldn't be the exclusive focus when you consider the multiple factors (some of which he mentions above) that make each country's economic concerns unique. Obviously, it's a starting point but it needs to be put into context with other, qualitative factors. An example of this would be the current economic situation in the EU. They may have 0 3 on the GC but isn't that equality an illusion considering what they are facing right now?

Further, is the GC even accurate? What are the factors that they use? Why? And why don't they leave out some factors, if any? The answers to these questions illustrate the flaws in focusing on one measure of inequality.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let's take a look at the first point Stiglitz makes in Chapter 1: the disparity in income. Stiglitz is quick to point out that he is looking at median, not average income, as that is more of an indicator of how the various income groups are doing. If you look at average income, it might seem like the lower groups are doing well since the upper groups are seeing their wages and wealth rise.

But if you look at median income, you see the following:

Median household income was actually lower in 2010 ($49, 445) than it was in 1997 (adjusted for inflation, $50, 123). Over the longer period (1980-2010), median family income essentially stagnated, growing at an annual rate of only .36 percent. Adjusted for inflation, male median income in 2010 was $32, 137. In 1968, it was $32, 844. (source and source.)

Add in the fact that the top one percent now earns 20 percent of the nation's income with the top 0.1 percent  earning 220 times larger than the average of the bottom 90 percent and the picture of gross inequality is stark and evident.

So, why does this matter? Page 85.

Moving money from the bottom to the top lowers consumption because higher income individuals consume a smaller proportion of their income than do lower income individuals (those at the top save 15 to 25 percent of their income, those at the bottom spend all of their income). The result: until and unless something else happens, such as an increase in investment or exports, total demand in the economy will be less than what the economy is capable of supplying-and that means that there will be unemployment.

Unemployment can be be blamed on a deficiency in aggregate demand; in some sense, the entire shortfall in aggregate demand-and hence the US economy-today can be blamed on the extremes in inequality. 

As we have seen, the top 1 percent earns 20 percent of the national income. If that top 1 percent saves some 20 percent of its income, a shift of just 5 percentage points to the poor or middle who do not save-so the top 1 percent would still get 15 percent of the nation's income-would increase aggregate demand directly by 1 percentage point. But as that money recirculates, output would actually increase by some 1.5 to 2 percentage points.

This kind of shift in income would decrease the unemployment rate from 8.3 percent to 6.3 percent. A broader redistribution, from the top 20 percent to the rest, would have brought down the unemployment further to a more normal 5 or 6 percent. 

This is at the heart of what the president and the Democrats are trying to do because they know it's what must be done in order to get the economy on track. Businesses aren't going to hire more people unless more people start coming through the door and buying their goods and services. We've seen that tax cuts don't spur hiring.

Eventually, the 0.1 percent, the 1 percent, and the top 20 percent are going to realize that if they want to continue to enjoy their wealth in a healthy society, this redistribution is going to have to happen. People like Warren Buffet and Nick Hanauer have already accepted this fact. Whether or not the government "forces" them to do so is irrelevant.

It's no longer a question of "if" but of "when."

Personally, I'd like the wealthy of this country to do it on their own. That way we can leave the sensitivity about the federal government (see: paranoia, hysterical old ladies) behind in the trash heap where it belongs. Obviously, this isn't likely but we have to do it. As Stiglitz puts it,

Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these countries, the poor know that their prospects of emerging from poverty, let alone making it to the top, are minuscule. This is not something we should be striving for.