An Equilibrium Moment

Oops, wrong book.

By all accounts we are beginning the jobful part of the jobless recovery.  Sufficient demand has accumulated and enough people's personal balance sheets have caught up with healthy corporate balance sheets to suggest that we are in for an accelerating increase in jobs.  Almost all recent monthly reports have been revised upwards with more perspective.

As someone out there on the Internets wrote: "Economists tend to underestimate job losses during the downturn and underestimate job gains during the recovery."  Anyway, my guess is unemployment will keep falling, though the complete flat-lining of construction makes me worry about the high school diploma/ten years of skilled construction work group.

But what really worries me are two things:

First, the GOP and the "50 Little Hoover" (aka America's Governors) are trying to squelch the recovery by shutting off government spending.  The fact that these cuts are unpopular and could hurt the GOP in 2012 will not matter if unemployment doesn't get below 8% by election day.  Not to mention it will suck for the people who are going to lose benefits.

Michael Moore - who we can reliably report is indeed fat - said something smart in Wisconsin today: "America is not broke.  We have a ton of money.  It's just all in a few people's hands at the top of the economic pyramid."  (Or something, I'm paraphrasing.)  Obama has not - to this point - impressed me with his ability to make clear distinctions between his positions and the Republicans.  When it comes to taxing the rich, he's going to have to do that.

Or else we're going to see a continued degradation of public services, combined with a further concentration of wealth at the top.

The second thing that worries me is oil prices.  When oil prices hit $4 a gallon in 2008, I was certain that it was Wall Street speculators trying to create another bubble in order to cover their losses on real estate.  I was derided by my friends who teach economics, but it looks like at least part of the increase was indeed caused by price manipulation.

Today, the "exterior" increase in oil prices - that is to say the "tax" we pay on a gallon of gas for reasons beyond supply and demand - is unrest in the Middle East.  Energy speculators are bedwetters, and they tend to spoke easily.  If Libya doesn't resolve itself and the House of Saud trembles... Here comes $5 a gallon.

Needless to say, that will put a crimp in the recovery by driving up prices across the board and spooking the Fed into raising interest rates to combat an inflation that is caused less by monetary issues and more by spooked oil buyers.

So we're at a tipping point.  The economy has reached the stage of recovery that can largely be self-sustaining, unless we get more shocks.  Slashing public spending, overheated oil prices... I guess we can add the PIIGS in there, too.

Optimism or pessimism?  Take your pick.

Daily Kos Is Getting Stupid Again

I was over at Daily Kos, which has done a really good job of following events in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The new website is spiffy and the crazy has been mostly contained.

Then I read this.

It's a screed, followed by a long series of concurring comments, about Obama going to Florida and praising the Bush family's long career of public service.  Praising your opponent's "public service" is literally what you say when you have nothing nice to say about what they actually did while serving in government.  It's what the victor always says to the vanquished opponent on election night.

But to the fevered Puritans at Kos, that represents a sell-out of the first magnitude.

It's nice to see that poutrages are a bipartisan phenomenon.

An Exception to Godwin's Law

My only Hitler pic...

Godwin's Law states that whenever someone compares their opponent in an argument to Hitler, they automatically lose the argument.

Also, there is a whole genre of Internet films that use a clip from the German film "Downfall" to make humorous points. The original, classic version dealt with subprime mortgages.

Herewith is the definitive version dealing with Scott Walker:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/now_were_talkin_1.php#more?ref=fpblg

Yes, Yes, A Thousand Times Yes

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/jon-stewart-nails-fox-news-hypocrisy-on-teachers-vs-wall-street-pay-levels.php?ref=fpblg

Jon Stewart nails the dismount.

Wall Street bankers can get away with anything.  Teachers have to suck on it.

Herr Professor Krugman Is Worth A Read

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/opinion/04krugman.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1299247324-qY69g5vMZ3Ol6t4VJ/nY8w

It's columns like these that make Krugman such a valuable voice in the national media.  Here, he looks specifically at the date about austerity programs and notes that they have failed.

I'm teaching about Nigeria currently in Comparative Government, and we've also discussed Mexico and Russia this year.  All three have undergone some form of IMF based austerity program or neo-liberal reform of their markets.

The end result for the peoples of those countries has almost uniformly been painful.  Babandgida's structural reforms devastated the Nigerian economy and set the stage for the deprivations of Sani Abacha.

Mexico's neo-liberal reforms - imposed at least in part by the IMF and World Bank - have created a huge number of millionaires, a band of relative working class wealth close to the American border, crushing poverty in the South (see Chiapas) and a continued flight of Mexican workers to find a living wage in the US (interrupted currently by our own economic weakness).

Russia's "shock therapy" led to insider privatization, the rise of the oligarchs, the discrediting of democracy as a form of government and the rise of Putin's authoritarian nationalism.

Liberal Democracy and economic liberalism are assumed to be similar systems, mutually reinforcing each other.  In fact, we need to acknowledge that it is increasingly the opposite.  Liberal Democracy requires the idea that "all men and women are created equal".  Economic liberalism requires that a few people win and a lot of people lose.  In many ways, capitalism and democracy are antithetical.

It's becoming increasingly clear we live in a capitalist society, but not a democracy.  When did that change?

Zombie Ant Fungus

There is a type of fungus that attacks ants and makes them behave very oddly before killing them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110302/sc_livescience/newzombieantfungifound

Oddly, at the end, the scientist says he's worried that climate change may eradicate one type of zombie ant fungus.  Because somehow we WANT zombie ant fungi?

Scientists are weird.

A Post on the NFL

The NFL labor situation in a nutshell...

A bit random, but I was wondering...

In the next few days, the owners will lock out the players.  The players are already decertifying their union so they can sue under anti-trust law.

I just had an interesting idea...

If the owners lock out the players, could the NFL reconstitute itself as a player owned operation?  Rather than go through the farce of replacement players or the discomfort of a lost season, why not simply create a brand new league, where the players own their own product?  You would still have a general manager, maybe a board of directors who ran the franchises, but the revenue stream would not be diverted to pay off the owners.

Think about the savings on tickets.  You could literally charge fans half of what they are paying now, if you took owners out of the equation.  Player committees could engage in player safety concerns, such as the 18 game schedule.  I realize there are potential conflicts of interest all over the place, but why would that be any different from what we have now?  Why are the owners necessary?

You might have problems where the owners own their stadiums, but honestly, isn't this a way around the lockout?

Them's Fighting Words

Herein, we see a brutal evisceration of my native region, long since abandoned.

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/03/03/chasing-smokestacks/

We see a brutal but unavoidable question in this: Does America want to be run like the South?  Since the GOP became the Southern party, they have managed to combine the Old Guard/McKinley/Harding/Coolidge wing of the party with the natural bassackwardness of the South.

So we have corporatists married to neo-confederates, in other words: The New Gilded Age.

But the question he puts forward within the current context: Does Wisconsin want to be be Alabama with crappy weather? is a fair one.  What about governance in the South is so great?  The outcome of public goods is across the board poor: crime is worse, teen pregnancy worse, life expectancy worse, education levels worse, income levels worse.

And the GOP wants to make the rest of the country like that.

(Oh, and Ed lives in my native state.)

Your Modern GOP At Work

Back to the Future!

The GOP House is urgently taking up jobs tax increases on the wealthy economic stimulus aid to education the war on CFLs.  Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs.

You see, there is a plan to switch over from the incandescent lightbulbs invented by Thomas Edison to CFLs. The reason is pretty straight forward.  CFLs last a lot longer and use a lot less energy.  Put another way: they are better freaking lightbulbs.

The plan is to get incandescents off the market.  There are currently about five and a quarter billion lightbulbs in US households.  Right now less than a third are CFLs.  If 100% of lightbulbs were CFLs, power companies - especially coal companies - would stand to lose $26,000,000,000 every year.

I can't do the math, but I would imagine that's approximately... carry the 3... take the square root of pi... a shitload of coal that isn't being burned into the atmosphere.

Global climate change is happening.  The only legitimate scientific question is: Is human activity causing climate change or simply making a cyclical event exponentially worse?

There is pretty good evidence that the political unrest roiling the Middle East has been spurred by food prices rising because of climate events (droughts in Russia, floods in Australia).

So, given the choice between carrying water for coal power or caring for the planet, guess which way the GOP jumps?


Source: http://washingtonindependent.com/105964/group-of-house-republicans-push-pro-incandescent-light-bulb-bill-that-would-net-billions-for-energy-industry

Rage On, Righteous One

The original Big Mac Attack.

I never felt that WikiLeaks release of State Department internal cables was that big a deal to the US.  In fact, I argued that it was a refreshing breath of fresh air into the stultified world on international diplomacy - or as it's known to most people: artful lying. (I just spend fifteen minutes trying to find what I wrote at the time, but I failed.)

Now, we have Anonymous.  Westboro Baptist Church are a bunch of evil, evil people.  Someone hacked their site.  WBC blamed Anonymous, who are a well known group of hackers who take on big institutions.  In a phone in show, one of the evil minions of WBC kept ranting about what Anonymous did - when someone else named j3st3r (jester) claimed credit for the hack.  The Anonymous member got so cheesed off at this nitwit that in the space of one her rants, he went in and crashed their website.  Took like ten minutes.

I love it when Hilarious and Awesome get married and have a kid named Justice.

I don't buy that Twitter leads to revolutions or Facebook ousts dictators.  But, while Julian Assange is a narcissistic jerkweed, what WikiLeaks and Anonymous are doing is really cool.

Ezra Klein has been wondering what will take the place of unions, as a 21st century economy renders them irrelevant.  Maybe the great democratic potential of the internet is finally beginning to be unleashed.

And if Anonymous has a contribution site, I will give them money.

A Zombie Post

It's been a while, but I saw this last night on Hulu and thought to myself, "Self, what the hell was THAT."

Is Starburst trying to win over the recreational drug user/zombie aficionado/Asian bagpipe enthusiast demographic?

Because if so, WIN!

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

About a week or so ago, I launched an... intemperate... attack on David Brooks for being an asshat. You can read it if you want.  Anyway, Brooks went further down Asshat Lane with his latest column that eventually winds up with real, actual death panels for the elderly.  Which Brooks somehow equates with being the moral thing to do because it would allow us to spend more of our limited government money on education.  The moral thing, in Brooks' mind, is to kill grandma to pay for little Felix's education.

Not raise taxes, mind you.  Kill Grannie.

Rather than elevate my blood pressure, I'll just re-direct you to Tom Scocca, who is one of the best reasons to read Slate.  OK, close to the only reason.

Seriously, read it.  It's classic.

Just. Kill. Me. Now.

Roy Edroso found this gem over at the National Review on why teachers need their salaries and benefits cut:

Most importantly, teachers have important non-financial compensation — working with children in a universally admired profession, etc.

Something named Matthew Shaffer is responsible for that.

So, here's where we stand: Everyone hates bankers, so they get a ton of money.  Everyone loves teachers, so they should work for spare change and bus tokens.

Once again, fisted by the Invisible Hand of the Market!

The Times Has a Poll...

So, there is a NYTimes poll out today.  Here.

They lead, of course, with the bad news for labor.  Labor unions are not that popular, though they are more popular than they are unpopular.  Interestingly, a plurality doesn't know enough about unions to offer an opinion.  Likely because for most people, unions are like unicorns. (See what I did there...)

The rest of the polls comes out very well for unions and public sector workers.  For instance, are salaries and benefits too high for public sector workers?  Well, 26% say TOO HIGH!  25% say too low.  36% say about right. The rest think magenta is a type of Italian food.  So, keeping score at home?  Fifty-one percent say public workers are either paid fairly or not enough.  Twenty-five percent agree with Walker-Christie-Kasich.

When asked whether wages and benefits should be cut to balance budgets, 37% favor cutting wages and 56% oppose.  When asked whether public sector workers should lose collective bargaining rights, 33% favor no collective bargaining, 60% favor collective bargaining.

Most interesting to me was what people thought should be done to balance state budgets. A plurality of 40% said raise taxes, 22% said cut public employees benefits, 20% said cut spending on infrastructure, 3% said cut education and 15% think fireflies are actually pixies.

What is striking about these opinions is how absent they are in most news coverage.  True, most news coverage is focused on Charlie Sheen at the moment, but when discussing budget woes at the state and federal levels, almost every conversation in the media outside of Rachel Maddow's show focuses on spending cuts - austerity.  In fact there is a lot of support for raising taxes.

Given the breathless coverage of Chris Christie - whom the self-same Times said had found the perfect villain in public service unions - it's interesting that what Dan Malloy is proposing in Connecticut - a combination of spending cuts and tax increases - is actually more popular than the knife-to-the-bone ideas of Republicans.

George Gallup once said he was amazed at how the American people could reach the right conclusions with the wrong information.  Here, they seem to have reached for the compassionate, judicious conclusion in the absence of any information.  As noted, the Sunday Gasbags shows had Christie and Daniels on, but only one union spokesman - and that was because of external pressure.  The attacks on public unions - and unions in general - was clearly seen as news, but only one side was given a megaphone.

That comes through in the final question of the poll.  Do you think labor unions have too much power in politics.  A plurality of 37% said yes, whereas 19% said too little and 29% said the right amount.  That makes 48% saying the right amount or too little, but how can anyone rightly say that unions have too much clout in politics?  Name the last major battle that unions won in the political arena?  Free trade agreements?  EPIC?  I can't remember the last time the unions got what they wanted from Congress.  Maybe the saving of GM and Chrysler, but the unions conceded a lot to make that happen.

Unions are still easily vilified, and the news media are happy to carry that water.  They always have, going back to the days of Terrence Powderly and the Knights of Labor.  Labor unions are assaults upon the bastions of wealth, and that can make the middle class nervous.  What if they aim for the Upper East Side and hit Queens instead?

But the fact that unions are enjoying solid support from the American people, despite being vilified consistently  since their very inception is a heartening moment for me.

What Are You Gonna Do? Except Doing Something...

Expect to see this jpg a lot more in the future...

So, Arkansas is being hit by earthquakes.  Here.

The reason for the quakes looks to be natural gas extraction techniques.  Here's the money quote at the end:

She said she and her husband had removed everything from the walls of their house, including family photos and television sets, because many photos had fallen in recent quakes.

"Other than that, there's really not much more you can do," she said. "It's Mother Earth. It's going to do what it's going to do. All we can do is wait for the big one and hope and pray it doesn't happen."

This is a great example of the American ethos.  The "Shit Happens" school of human society.  If, indeed, the earthquakes are caused by injection wells, then there really IS something you can do.  Stop with the injection wells.  But Americans have a unique sense of fatalism when it comes to preventable environmental disasters.  Mountain top drilling poisons a stream?  Not much you can do.  Toxic waste dumped in the water supply?  Not much you can do.

The amount of crap the average American will eat is really amazing.  That's why the Wisconsin situation has been so surprising.  Usually, we just sit and take our beatings from the Invisible Hand of the market and complain about Wall Street plutocrats while doing nothing.

It's refreshing to see people say, No, I CAN do something.  Be nicer if that ethos spread.