Dining With the Enemy

In this age of political polarization and partisan rancor, I often worry about the fact that I have no real Republican friends.  I did have one.  But when he began spouting Tea Party craziness seemingly overnight, we briefly dialogued and haven't seen each other since.  One wonders whether such profound disagreement on the very nature of society, and such unwillingness to understand the other side, can be overcome by old bonds.

Yet this sort of dialogue almost seems like the one thing that really matters anymore.  Large portions of the population have completely tuned out of all major media and are getting their news and views exclusive from a handful of right wing media sources which arguably cannot even really be considered to present actual journalism.  But if we aren't engaging these people, how else to bring reason back into politics?

Mark Kleiman (heroically!) sat down with a couple.

I just had dinner with.... an old and trusted friend with a sophisticated knowledge of public policy [and] a relative stranger with limited information – both of whom plan to vote for Carly Fiorina over Barbara Boxer this fall. For each of them, the Access to Care Act is an important reason. Their concerns were opposite; the stranger loves Medicare and fears that ACA will cut into Medicare spending, the friend has caught Peterson-itis and is convinced that Medicare is going to eat the GDP, and hates ACA for not cutting Medicare enough.

Similarly, the stranger thinks that extending the Social Security retirement age would be a crime, while the friend regards it as an obvious response to increased longevity.

The fact that they were voting for Fionina for opposite reasons didn’t bother either of them; the stranger has decided that all incumbents ought to replaced, and indeed offered John Boehner’s proposal to raise the retirement age as a reason to vote against Boxer. (All this while railing against “socialism.”)

Anecdote isn’t data, but the hint here is that the Repubilican strategy of obstruction plus obfuscation is, so far, working pretty well.

I can see this happening because while they both professed to care greatly about the ACA, it was really just a sort of partisan bludgeon: the opposition to Boxer stems more from a larger disgust with what she represents on many levels. So the obstructionist strategy creates a scenario in which everything the Democrats do is terrible and almost fascist (“ram it down our throats”). So the good in even something as conservative as the ACA – similar to historical Republican proposals – is denied out of hand, and fodder for further political anger.


The alternative would have been to work out a bi-partisan agreement, and been more honest about elements of legislation that their ideology is actually comfortable with (“government keeping its hands off medicare”). But that would have cost political capital. Republicans would have had to tone down their rhetoric considerably, and admit that they too believe in some government, some of the time. Of course, the right-wing media-fueled tea party has largely tied them into this sort of craziness, but at some point you need to have principles.

Lying About Bailouts

Republicans have made a lot of political hay over the claim that the bank bailouts never posed systemic risk.  They don't spend a lot of time providing an argument for this claim - most likely because it's so indefensible.  They just skip to the logical conclusion that anyone who supports bailouts wants to waste taxpayer money buy giving it to greedy Wall Street.  This also plays into the idea that Democrats don't want anyone to ever fail because they are, well, pansies. 

Of course, TARP was enacted by Bush, but he can be written off as not a "true believer".  The important thing is that future bailouts will never be necessary because there is no such thing as systemic risk.

Jon Chait argues that systemic risk would always require a bailout, and any sane administration - whether Republican or Democrat - wouldn't hesitate to come to the rescue.  Yet by sticking to the dishonest claim that systemic risk can't happen, Republicans get to have their cake and eat it too:

The only answer to the dilemma is to try to prevent systemic failure from happening in the first place, which is the purpose of financial regulation. But this is the genius of the "bailout bill" charge. You can't honestly promise that any regulation, however well-designed, can guarantee that no bailout will ever happen again. And when you try to address the "bailout bill" charge on its own loopy terms, you wind up lending it credence.

This is no different than the Republican tactic on most issues: take a false or dubious premise and run with it.

• Global warming - doesn't exist so Democrats are just trying to scrounge up tax revenue.

• Immigration - it's an existential threat so we need to limit rights and expend vast resources, and Democrats actually favor illegal immigration.

• Supply side economics - cut taxes on the rich and slash spending because the increased growth will ultimately increase tax revenues.

• The stimulus - Keynes who?, Democrats are recklessly spending and that's just what they do.

• The bailouts - institutions didn't pose systemic risk so bailing them out was simply a handout, a socialist takeover of the banking industry even.

So if the bailout was unnecessarily before, it will be in the future. This is an outright lie. And any Republican president in the future will bail an institution out in a heartbeat. But if you pretend there was no systemic threat, you can accuse Democrats of wanting to pay banks billions.

Republicans kind of lucked out on the timing of the crisis. Because TARP happened so close to the inauguration, they managed to sell idiots the lie that Obama was responsible for the bailout. If this had happened even a year earlier, it would have been a lot tougher.

Denial in California

A new Field poll has come out with numbers on what kind of spending cuts Californians would like to see.  It is no surprise really, but a majority of voters favor barely any cuts at all.  Out of 14 categories, the only two to eke out a narrow majority of votes are parks & prisons.

More interestingly however, is how it breaks down along party lines. 

Democrats unsurprisingly only agree to cut one major category

• prisons (by 61%).  

 Also no surprise is the GOP's endorsement of cuts in

• environmental regulation (70%)
• state parks and recreation (56%)
• public transportation (56%)
• public assistance programs for low-income families with dependent children (55%)
• child care programs (52%)
• state prisons and correctional facilities (51%)

Everyone agrees that the last thing to cut is education (20% all voters, 13% Democrats, 34% GOP).

But when you look at the state budget, many of these categories represent a very slight percentage of the budget.

Obviously these sorts of attitudes aren't sustainable, for either party, without an increase in taxes.  For Democrats, who would only like to see cuts in prisons, the only area of savings is going to have to come out of the prison budget, which is only around 7% of total spending.  As it exists today, it is faced with a number of problems, not the least of which is overcrowding. 

For the GOP, much more willing to make cuts, the overwhelmingly desired cut is to environmental regulation, which barely makes up 1% of the budget.  It's about evenly tied on whether to cut prisons, parks, public transportation, and child and family services, which do take up a considerable portion of the budget.

All of which spells out pretty well why we are a state in such dire financial straits.  The public is massively polarized over what types of services the government should be performing.  The Democrats and GOP are locked in a bitter struggle with deep roots in very different views of human nature and social development.

But with climbing deficits, and no other option than emergency program cuts, the state is literally being forced to follow the GOP's world view of what role the government should play in a modern capitalist society - with the possible exception of prisons being forced to release convicts early.  If Democrats want to see their vision of a government more actively involved in ameliorating what they view as a struggle for basic rights and equal opportunities, they must demand that Californians embrace higher levels of taxation.

A Real Republican Roadmap to Balancing the Budget

Paul Ryan, Republican congressman from Wisconsin and ranking member of the House Budget Committee, has introduced "A Roadmap for America's Future", his alternative budget proposal.  But unlike most other republican proposals, his actually balances the budget.  It does so mainly via steep cuts in social programs, namely a massive cap on Medicare spending.

The basic idea is to give seniors a voucher, which they can then use to purchase health care on the private market.  The way this cuts costs is that this voucher will be substantially lower than what what Medicare currently covers.  Although the program doesn't go into effect until 2020, the annual cost adjustment is far below expected actual increases in health care costs.  What is more, the age of retirement coverage will have risen, further limiting coverage.  What it all amounts to is massively rationing health care for seniors.

The amazing thing about the plan is its intellectual honesty.  It takes a philosophy of limited government - low taxes, low spending - and actually proposes implementing it.  The problem most Republicans face is that their rhetoric has over-reached their policy recommendations.   During the Bush years, tax cuts were made, yet without the painful cuts in spending that would pay for them. 

Republicans, now in the minority, and facing record deficits, seem to have rediscovered fiscal discipline.  Yet to complain about the deficit without proposing steps to actually balance it, is intellectually dishonest.  The ease with which this incongruent rhetoric is employed likely explains much of their current low approval rating.

Interestingly, the Tea Party movement seems to be tremendously popular.  Its main thesis would be very approving of the Ryan proposal.  Yet much of its rhetoric is even more extreme, if somewhat incoherent.  Aside from the demagoguery of Obama, a main theme seems to be the detestation of any form of socialism in government.  This has been largely directed at government involvement in health care - even if many of the Tea Partiers seem to be very attached to their medicare.  But one wonders how far the logic might really extend.  Public schools?  Libraries?  Ostensibly the objection might solely lie with federal government.  But how would state spending on social services be any different.  The same philosophical deference to individualism and markets would seem to apply.

To the extent that republican policy proposals have not adequately matched their rhetoric, they have been difficult to take seriously.  The Ryan plan is honest, and logically consistent.  That its Medicare provisions would not really begin taking effect for 10 years likely reflects the political impracticality of its acceptance.  But at least it is something with which to reasonably debate.

The Real Harry Reid Gaffe

So apparently in 2008 Harry Reid

"thought that Barack Obama could win the presidency because he was "light-skinned" and did not use a "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Aside from the clunky use of the term negro – I think the analysis is spot on. Not to mention something that you’d find general agreement with in any Black Studies department. Americans are racist, white supremacists straight up.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, and even as it is obviously not a good thing, it is understandable. The African American experience has, and continues to define us. It is an ethnicity that against all odds has persevered – holding on to its singular heritage, carrying with it both the dysfunction of genocidal brutality, and the wisdom and innovation of a people who have found ways to not only hold on to their identity but continually push the boundaries of what is culturally possible under centuries of oppression.
And America is what it is because of our racial history – both our greatest expressions of freedom and our worst savage excesses. Obama is an exemplar of this contradiction. He is what he is both because of and despite of who he is, and who we are. As a country we have been through so much, and from the beginning have reached for the highest rung despite it always being just beneath our grasp. As such our narrative has been one of epic triumph – and epic failure. The two define each other tragically. Even as we elect the first African American to highest public office, we have people casting the most vile and racist attacks – their seething hatred couched as it often is behind thin veils of humor.
As expressed in the words Obama himself reiterated, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, humanity is searching for freedom, even as it is far from there yet. There is no evidence that any such objective morality exists, but as defined by the basic human impulse to apply one’s own aspirations to those of his fellow man, our biological predisposition is indeed toward empathy and fairness.
Harry Reid is a leader of the party that, although having not always done so in the past, currently spends much of its time seeking ways to redress the imperfections of our past, expressed as they are in the social and demographic stratifications we see at present. Where its opponents see equality and freedom, it sees inequality and struggle. So it would stand to reason that he would see the historic achievement of Obama’s election in the context of a society still struggling to attain what it would ultimately like to see but presently finds itself incapable of adequately fulfilling.
Reid's remarks have been portrayed as out-of-touch, if not racist. Republican chair Michael Steele responded that

It's an old mind-set when you're using language in 2008 that harkens back to the 1950s and '60s...

Yet his own party almost unanimously holds the view that there exists little racism in American society today, and the little that does is irrelevant to the equality of opportunity that exists for all races. This despite the fact that we see large gaps in achievement between whites and blacks. What his party fails to do is distinguish the difference between the opportunity that exists and the means with which one is able to attain it. Therefore they make no distinction between the young boy growing up in poverty and the boy growing up heir to a fortune. That the two should be allowed by society to grow up and suffer two distinct fates is not perceived as an injustice as all by Republicans. Democrats on the other hand, see this as a grave misfortune, especially as it is a direct result of the immoral social arrangement of past generations.

And so the real gaffe here is not that of Harry Reid, intent as he is on creating a more just and equitable society, where all men are truly free to achieve their dreams. Instead it is the continuing gaffe of Republican thought that speaks of a hollow freedom in which all men are purported to be free, yet who in reality are born to live out lives of desperation and pain. It is a smothering gaffe that seeks to rewrite history while absolving guilt or responsibility.

As a fellow Democrat, Obama's response highlighted the difference:

I accepted Harry's apology without question because I've known him for years, I've seen the passionate leadership he's shown on issues of social justice, and I know what's in his heart.

Where Are the Conservatives?

photo: Pieter Dirk

My thinking has been thus for a while now: Modern conservatism is about as far to the right as communism is on the left. To communists, all business is bad; To modern conservatives, all government is bad.
What’s fascinating is how we got here. Where did the intellectual right go? Did they sell their soul for populism? Did a sort of fuzzy, emotional relativism get the people to follow – but then turn on the Svengalis in a sort of headless blood lust?
I’m wondering where the Christian right is in all this? I thought it was kind of ironic when the Stupac amendment ended up showing that the quickest way to outlawing abortion might just be through a single-payer system. I know there are two misaligned sides to the modern conservative coin, with Jesus on one side, and Ayn Rand on the other – a match certainly headed for trouble. But what gives?
And now with Obama escalating the conflict in Afghanistan, the Democrats have a liberal president who believes in using military force preemptively – at least in as Al Queda doesn’t seem to have any active training camps in Afghan territory.
The Democrats are firmly planted in the center, while the Republicans seem incredibly off-kilter.

Miss Anthropic

No, Tom Friedman, the problem is not that someone "slipped .... Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee". The problem is that Americans are fucking stupid. OK, not just Americans, we just happen to be pretty good at it. How else to explain Sara Palin's energizing of the McCain campaign? Putting aside the fact that there is a HUGE difference between the Republican and Democratic parties - not to mention what they supposedly stand for, who the fuck are these people who are now voting Republican because of the Alaskan Governor? White women, mainly, according to polls. One was interviewed on the news last night, and admitted she didn't really know any of Palin's policy stances, but liked her. You know, she's "one of us".

Didn't we try that 8 years ago? We elected "one of us"? Fucking asshole. What kind of dipshit votes for people this way? Go back to American Idol.

And Maurice Sendak is gay. Good for him. I don't know why. But good for him.

I guess I'm just cranky because our nation is going to shit, Tillie was up half the night throwing up, I got my kids way too giddy after recreating a Rube Goldberg device after reading Lights Out, meanwhile one of them wouldn't stop crying for his Mommy, and all the colored paper I ordered was the wrong size. And Sara Palin makes me want to throw up.

If McCain is elected I'm going to move to Australia.