Oh, C'mon!

Via Balloon Juice, this nugget from NPR:

“The only good way to learn about writing is to read good writing,” says Chief Justice John Roberts.

That sentiment is echoed by Breyer, who points to Proust, Stendhal and Montesquieu as his inspirations. Justice Anthony Kennedy loves Hemingway, Shakespeare, Solzhenitsyn, Dickens and Trollope.

Justice Thomas says a good legal brief reminds him of the TV show 24. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says one of the great influences on her writing was her European literature professor at Cornell, Vladimir Nabokov — yes, the same Nabokov who later rocked the literary world with his widely acclaimed novel Lolita.

Shoot me...

Awesome....Er....Fabulous

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/06/14/they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms-open-thread/


Can you tell I'm on vacation?

Romney vs. The World

So, the usual horserace crap about who won last night's poo-flinging exercise officially known as the GOP debate is underway.  Romney won, because he's the front-runner and guys like Pawlenty wimped out in refusing to take him on.  Bachmann won because she stole the show, because she's MILFy or something.  Cain won because he was craziest.

I have no idea.  I was tired anyway, and the last thing I needed to do was watch the Fail Parade of empty suits explaining how high taxes were the cause of unemployment and defaulting on the debt isn't that big a deal.

But there is something interesting going on.  Usually the GOP field has an anointed heir.  Usually it's the guy who came in second last time.  Reagan in '80, Bush in '88, Dole in '96, McCain in '08.  Dubya didn't fit that pattern, but he was anointed the heir apparent anyway.

So, Romney is the Guy.  If he was a Democrat, we'd hear what a flip-flopper he is and how he has no principles, but since he's a Republican, he's "ideologically flexible".  But, like Dole in '96 and McCain in '08, I don't get the sense that anyone is really all the excited about him.  I double-dip recession might make all that moot anyway, but I still see the GOP reaching out for a White Knight, and I've said I think it will be Rick Perry.  It won't be Giuliani, because c'mon.  And it won't be Palin because I mean really.

Perry has a resume as "impressive" as Romney's without the Obamneycare baggage.  He's as right wing as they come and an evangelical nutball to boot.

But I thought Wes Clark was going to take the Dem nomination in '04, so don't listen to me.

This Is Awesome, Too

http://www.videobash.com/video_show/chatroulette-love-song-16728?utm_source=ph&utm_medium=traffic_trade&utm_campaign=ph_trade_secondary1_box1

And this, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfamTmY5REw

Required Reading

My Beloved talked me into a 13 mile bike ride today.  That would be 13 miles longer than I have ridden in about three years.  Turns out the exercise bike is to real bike as video games are to combat.

So, while I recuperate and moan ever so slightly, I give you this.

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/06/13/nothing-ever-changes/

The Twin Peaks Of Policy Evil

The Recession as measured by standard economic models has been over for months.  The "recession" as understood by millions of Americans - perhaps the majority of Americans - is still going strong.

The reason can be tied to two basic philosophies that animate not only the Republican party, but also DC conventional wisdom and much of the Blue Dog/DLC crowd.

The first False God is Randian economic philosophy.  This is really more a failing specific to the GOP, but we see it in the calls for austerity by the sort of "Serious People" that inevitably dominate the punditocracy.  Randian economics basically argues that anyone who relies on the state for anything is a parasite or moocher. Do you need Medicare/Social Security/Medicaid/food stamps/unemployment benefits?  You are a moocher, and your needs are unimportant.  It is your fault for not being rich enough to go without these important benefits.  True Randianism is even harsher than this, but its main expression in DC is the disregard that policy makers who are to the right of Ben Nelson have for the overwhelming majority of Americans who rely on these programs.

The second False God is supply side economics.  This one drives me insane.  Supply side HAS.  NEVER.  WORKED.  Never.  Tax rates can be high to the point where they can directly impede supply.  I willingly concede that.  When the top marginal rate was 93%, that impeded investment and growth.

But that is not the same as saying that supply creates its own demand.  And that is the orthodoxy among the tax cutters in Congress.

Unemployment remains stubbornly and frighteningly high.  The reason is a lack of demand.  Cutting taxes will not create that demand. The presence of large deficits has little effect on demand.  Yet, the GOP and much of the center in Washington seems obsessed with cutting taxes and cutting spending.  That's the only permissible debate.

Private sector hiring is slow, but it is happening.  A lot of the bump in unemployment recently has been because the Fifty Little Hoovers have cut spending and laid people off.  But, again, under the Randian philosophical system, teachers and other public servants are just another form of Moocher, so who cares?  Given that much of the unemployment is centered on high school graduates - many who in days of yore worked in manufacturing and construction - things like infrastructure projects would be essential to re-employing those looking for work.

It is difficult to calculate the damage that supply side economics, combined with the adolescent narcissism of Randian ideas, have had on our body politic.  The Bush tax cuts alone have done as much damage to our fiscal situation as any other event.

How do you kill a monster, when the monster is an idea?

I Called It!

Replace Barbour with Perry and he advances to the Irate Eight.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/09/sources-rick-perry-is-running/

So, I predicted Rick Perry would get into the race.  Although to be fair, I called him Mark Perry several times, so it's not like I'm a super-genius.

I also said he would win the nomination.  He's conservative enough - dude threatened seceding over HCR - and has that good Republican hair.  Sorry, I meant to say charisma, but have you noticed that the "charismatic" Republicans are always the ones with the best hair?

I think he has just the track record to appeal to GOP voters and lose to Obama.  But that's just me.

Interesting Idea

Fareed Zakaria has an interesting idea.  Create a national infrastructure bank.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-deepening-jobs-crisis/2011/06/08/AGKQZQMH_story.html

It would seem to meet a number of needs:

1) Our infrastructure sucks.  It needs refurbishing.

2) Our method of funding infrastructure - earmarks - is economically inefficient.  Powerful mandarins in Congress get their pet projects, while needy projects go wanting.  Compare the Hudson river train tunnel to the Bridge to Nowhere.

3) We need to find a way rebuild our country with limited funds.

Having said that, I have one big question.  If the USIB (as I will call it) is a Bank, how does it make its money back?  Who pays off the loans?

Otherwise, sounds great.

It SHOULD have bi-partisan support, but we all know that ain't happening.

As a closet Whig, I like the idea of a USIB.  But remember, too, the effect of the Bank of the United States on American politics.  Much of the appeal of Jacksonian populism was its attack on the Second BUS.  People hated the idea of all powerful economic magi running the show.  "Why" we can hear some future Nebraska politician ask, "Should the coasts get all the infrastructure money?  Where is our fair share?"

The dirty secret of GOP politics is that Red States feed off the tax dollars of Blue States.  If you had a USIB, that might change.  Which is one of many reasons why it won't happen.

Well Done, NYTimes

I bash them a lot, but hiring TNC for their Op-Ed page is a brilliant move:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/opinion/09coates.html?_r=2&hp

When was the last time a Times Op-Ed piece brought a tear to your eye?

Weiner's Weiner

So sue me.

I don't care.  I really don't care.

I don't care that Chris Lee made an idiot of himself on CraigsList.  I don't care that Bill Clinton screwed around.  I don't care about philandering.

To clarify:  I DO care about underage trolling like Mark Foley.  I DO care about using campaign funds to cover up an affair like John Edwards.  I sure as hell care about scumbag rapists like the IMF guy.

But unless you are actively selling yourself as someone with "traditional family values" and as someone who should be elected primarily BECAUSE you are a good family man, I really couldn't care less.

America needs therapy.  Our ideas about sex are so conflicted that as a nation we are pathological.

Great Depression 2.0

Dean Baker makes a depressingly good case here that we are setting ourselves up for a second Great Depression.  We forget that the Great Depression was a slow motion trainwreck, unfolding over two or three years of economic hardship before the final collapse in '32-'33.  We have avoided many of the same mistakes of 1929-30 with TARP.  We have avoided the Smoot-Hawley idiocy.

But - as with the Great Depression - we have adopted a premature orthodoxy on deficit spending and unemployment.  As I stated below, demand has to come from somewhere, and as state and local governments slash spending (the 50 Little Hoovers syndrome) and the federal stimulus dries up, it should not surprise us that unemployment numbers are getting scary again.

Of course, once we default on the debt, we'll all be living a financial apocalyptic nightmare anyway, so whatever.

Ignorance Is Bliss

The power of positive delusional thinking.

I can't exactly explain why I remain in a good mood during this grueling ordeal.  One reason might be that I don't get to see much news.

Today as I was getting my third cup of coffee, I saw that the House GOP leadership was "emboldened to hold the debt ceiling hostage because of the poor employment numbers."

There are few things that get me more irate than supply-side economics.

They don't work.  They've never worked.  Tax rate can be too high, and they can be too low.  But supply never creates its own demand.

The basic equation for demand is Demand=Consumers spending + Business investment + Government spending + (Exports-Imports).  D=C+B+G+(E-I)

If you slash consumer spending - as happens when there is high unemployment - then demand falls.

If you import more than you export, demand falls.

If business stop building new plants and creating new product lines, demand falls.

And if you slash government spending, guess what happens.

The "Fifty Little Hoover" - otherwise known as Americas governors - labor under balanced budget amendments and have to balance the budget.  This usually involves raising revenues and cutting spending.  Currently, it involves a lot of laying off government workers.

So, GOP nitwits, if you slash government spending when businesses aren't investing and consumers aren't spending, then guess the f*** what?  Demand falls.  Employment falls.  The economy declines.

I have no idea what leaders in GOP actually believe.  But which is worse?  That they don't believe in the basic equation of macroeconomics?  Or that they do, but don't care?

Day Two

Ran into my ol' Buddy Jeff, who invented the position of Assistant Table Leader.  ATLs don't exist, you seize the position to "undermine the seriousness of the reading" by keeping things light and a little goofy.  I don't think my job will be difficult given my table mates.

Gone Galt House

Teach your children well.

So, Day One is in the books.  

When teaching history to high school students, we inevitably get asked, "Do we need to know dates?"

And I always say, "You need to understand cause and effect, but specific dates are not important."

I need to stop saying that to my AP students.  I'm reading a question about resistance to immigration in the 1840s to 1850s and 1910s to 1920s.  You'd be surprised how many kids work Pearl Harbor in there.

Looks like a good week to be (sort of) away from blogging, as I really have nothing to say about Anthony Weiner's wiener.

I did see two things worth noting:

First, Moody's will downgrade the US bond rating in mid-July if there is no deal on extending the debt ceiling.  Good.  I would've preferred an earlier date to get the GOP to face reality.  But good.

Second, an international panel of political and economic experts have concluded that the war on drugs is lost. I guess that's been kind of self-evident to me for a few years, but whatever it takes.  

Louisville

Arrived in the nation's banking center for tobacco companies.  Hot as balls.

The AP readers are an odd group.  On the bus from the airport I sat with a guy who looks like he started teaching because JFK asked him to personally, but this is his first year reading so he's a rookie or "Acorn".  And then there are relatively young people like me.  Although as a "young" person, I am old.  Old enough to have just bought my first pair of progressive lenses.  Which give me a headache every time I put them on.

As I predicted the day after the exam, I will be reading the question I know the least about.  The question is:

Compare and contrast the ways that many Americans expressed their opposition to immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s with the ways that many Americans expressed their opposition to immigrants in the 1910s and 1920s.

I have worked hard over the years to fill in gaps in my knowledge about American history.  But the history of immigration is a gap that I haven't gotten around to yet and am in no hurry to do so. This question will be "answered" mostly by students who don't want to answer a question - they are being made to take the exam so that their school can tout the number of AP exams their students take.  So it will be a lot of non-answers, bad answers and the occasional brilliant essay from someone who really cares about the history of immigration in America.

The good news is that I might learn a little bit about immigration history.  But more likely I will hear a lot about the No-Nothing Party, NINA, the potato famine and if I'm lucky, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Gentleman's Agreement and the KKK.

As my reward for wading through four days of immigration essays, I get to spend the other three days with Dick Nixon.

Score!