Diary of a Republican Hater

The Fascinating Life and Untimely Death of Michael Hastings

2013-06-19T13:47:00.001-07:00

     Let me admit that I was not familiar with him before Rachel Maddow discussed him last night. I was not aware of the tragic way his girlfriend died in Iraq and his epic book of sorrow and anger about her untimely demise, I lost My Love in Baghdad.

     http://www.amazon.com/Lost-My-Love-Baghdad-Modern/dp/B004JZWSZC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1371673928&sr=8-3&keywords=michael+hastings

     He was an amazing investigative reporter who argued taht he had proved that it's possible to do real journalism while maintaining access with the people of influence you need to really be an investigative reporter.

    Yet, what took me aback even more was the revelation that Rachel did the show because of his death in a car crash a day ago at the age of 33.

    "Hastings, who was also a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, was perhaps best known for his candid Rolling Stone interview with General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, that eventually led to McChrystal being relieved of his command.
He was also the author of two books about America's wars: The Operators, detailing the flaws of the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, and I Lost My Love In Baghdad, about his experiences as a war correspondent in Iraq during his mid-twenties."

     "Hastings joined BuzzFeed in April 2012 to cover the presidential election. He is survived by his wife, Elise Jordan."

     "We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone," BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold. Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague and a joy to work with."

     "Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana also remembered Hastings' uncompromising, aggressive reporting style. "Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity," Dana said in Rolling Stone's obituary, "the sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there's no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I'm sad that I'll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won't be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours."

     "Hastings' dedication to journalism shines through in ten pieces of advice for young journalists that he shared on Reddit last year. "Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it's more important to you than anything else in your life--family, friends, social life, whatever," he wrote."

    What I find even more arresting though, is that nobody seems to be even belaboring the circumstances of his death. Nobody seems suprised and nobody really gives much detail-certainly neither this short piece by Huffpo or Rachel's piece last night. I mean doesn't anyone wonder how he just came to 'hit a tree at high speed?' It's funny how everyone just takes this part of the story so matter of factly?

    He also wrote a number of other great books and of course it was his interview that got General McCrystal relieved of his command.

      http://www.amazon.com/Panic-2012-Terrifying-Campaign-ebook/dp/B00AR48WB8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371673928&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+hastings

    Another book is a fascinating look at the 2012 Obama campaign which, yeah, I've already brought through Kindle Cloud Player-note, I don't have a Kindle, Amazon gives me the Cloud Player, so if you want to get this-or any other low priced book immediately you can get it too.

Market Sells Bernanke's Talk of Winding Down Stimulus

2013-06-19T13:26:00.002-07:00

     Rick Santelli demanded to know this morning what Bernanke is so afraid of-why won't it wind down its unprecedented bond buying?

     http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-19/rick-santelli-rages-what-bernanke-so-afraid

     This afternoon, Santelli got his answer-who knew it would be this quick?

     "Stocks accelerated their selloff in the final hour of trading to end near session lows Wednesday, after the Federal Reserve said it will maintain its bond-buying program, though Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted that the FOMC plans to moderate purchases later this year."

    "They don't tie themselves officially into anything but it's clearly what they're going to do," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. "I think he's more clearly said today than at any other time that he's going to taper before the end of the year, and there's a possibility he could be done by the middle of next year."

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/100827876

     The Dow ended up down 200 points, a 1 percent drop. We live in a strange world right now where the market sometimes sells seemingly good news in the fear that the Fed will end the bond buying sooner rather than later. Bad news, on the other hand is often a buy as it means it will continue.

     "Fed policymakers said in a statement the Fed would keep buying $85 billion in bonds a month and modestly raised its expectations for GDP growth for 2014, from 2.9 to 3.4 percent to 3.0 percent to 3.5 percent. But in a press conference, Bernanke said if the economy continues to improve the asset-purchasing program could start winding down towards the end of 2013 and wrap up in 2014.
Interest rate hikes however, he said, are a separate issue and "still far in the future."

    "Wall Street traders expected exactly what the Fed delivered today: slight forecast improvements while providing a crutch to continue with its aggressive monetary policy measures," said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner at LandColt Capital. "Interestingly, the language in the statement provides a mulligan on the recent 'tapering' comments. But Wall Street has already 'traded out' those statements and bulls will now focus on the comments about the likelihood of an increase in rates not occurring until 2015. Keeping rates low indicates a continued bull run in equities for the foreseeable future."

    "Treasury prices fell after the announcement, with the benchmark 10-year yield hitting its highest level since 2011."

     Of course, it's not clear these days whether falling Treasury prices are a bullish or bearish sign.

      Meanwhile the market is also concerned over the 'uncertainty' about who Obama will appoint as the next Fed Chairman.

      "President Barack Obama added to uncertainty about Fed policy on Tuesday, when he gave a press interview in which he suggested that Bernanke would leave at the end of his term in January. Obama said Bernanke had "already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to."
But Bernanke refused to address questions about his future at the central bank."

     "(Read More: Bernanke Is 'the Ultimate Lame Duck': Langone)"

     "Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen is widely seen as the leading candidate to replace Bernanke, but there are other possibilities, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Yellen's views are viewed as similar to those of Bernanke."

      I wonder if the fiscal multiplier is still zero according to Sumner if Yellen is appointed.

Has the President's Approval Rating Been Hurt?

2013-06-19T13:04:00.004-07:00

     There are a number that suggest yes, including liberals like Jamelle Bouie who base this on a few polls that show Americans have lost some of their trust in government following all the scandals and pseudoscandals we have lately been treated to.

     "The combination of all of this has led to declining trust in government. According to a recent NBC/WSJ poll, 55 percent of Americans said the IRS scandal made them doubt the “overall honesty and integrity” of the White House. Likewise, in a Fox News poll released after the NSA revelations, only 48 percent said that the president was “honest and trustworthy.” And at the same time as all of this, Obama’s approval has taken a slow dip in the Gallup tracking poll — it’s at 47 percent, the lowest since he was reelected"

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/18/is-obama-losing-the-publics-trust-very-possible/

     Super pollster, Nate Silver, argues that the recent furor over the NSA wiretapping may have hurt him largely because of all the liberals and Democrats criticizing him. The theory is that independents are responsible for a drop in his popularity and independents are reasoning that if Democrats are critical of him then he must have truly done something wrong.

     http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/is-democratic-criticism-on-n-s-a-hurting-obamas-approval-rating/#more-40444

If this is true, this is just one more example of why independents are given far too much credit in terms of their reasoning and discernment. In truth, nonpartisan Americans are less informed and their opinions are not somehow wiser because they are not formed under partisan impressions.

     However, there's actually reason to question that Obama's approval has been hurt so much. While he is down to 47% on Gallup, this is actually still not so bad as only 44% disapprove. Indeed, Gallup has a piece today that shows that he's actually doing better relative to Americans' assessment of the overall economy than any President since Reagan.

    "President Barack Obama's job approval rating thus far in 2013 has averaged 24 percentage points higher than Americans' satisfaction with the direction in which the country is going. This gap is typical for the Obama presidency, but represents a much greater presidential job approval premium than most other presidents since Ronald Reagan have enjoyed."

    "More specifically, so far this year, an average of 50% of Americans have approved of the job Obama is doing as president. At the same time, an average of 26% have been satisfied with the direction of the country. Similarly, since the start of his presidency in 2009, Obama's average job approval rating has been running 26 points higher than Americans' average level of satisfaction with the nation, and has ranged from 22 to 30 points higher each year."

     "By contrast, the average gap in approval vs. satisfaction for George W. Bush across the eight years of his presidency was 12 points. For Bill Clinton and for Ronald Reagan, it was 10 points. The only other president who consistently logged much higher job approval ratings than the prevailing level of U.S. satisfaction was George H.W. Bush during his one-term presidency from 1989-1993. However, even his average 21-point job approval premium falls short of Obama's."

     http://www.gallup.com/poll/163139/obama-job-approval-easily-outpaces-satisfaction.aspx

      So what could explain his relative-small-decline is an economy where consumer confidence is slowing a little right now and has actually still absorbing the very unnecessary and troublesome sequester.

      If you factor in the opinion of the nation's drift, Obama is very popular. Obama is also light years more popular than Congress. While the President is always much more popular than Congress Obama's gap is still considerably wider than usual-the only exception was the first Bush during the Iraq war.

     "Obama is also faring better than Congress in the court of public opinion, as his overall job approval rating averages 35 points higher in 2013 -- 50% vs. 15% -- and 30 points higher since 2009.
Obama's yawning advantage over Congress in popularity compares favorably with George W. Bush's 12-point lead between 2001 and 2008, an 18-point lead for Clinton from 1993 to 2000, and a 13-point lead for Reagan between 1981 and 1988 (with no congressional ratings in 1984 and 1985). In this case, however, George H.W. Bush's lead over Congress in job approval -- 39 points -- exceeds Obama's, a finding that can partly be attributed to Bush's surge in popularity around the time of the 1991 Gulf War."

     Gallup puts it in context:

      "President Obama's job approval rating has been sagging of late, consistently registering below 50% in Gallup Daily tracking in June. Nevertheless, it is well above Americans' overall satisfaction with the direction of the country, now in the mid-20s, and remains far ahead of Congress' job rating. All of this suggests Obama does not receive the full brunt of Americans' blame for the nation's economy and other factors that may be contributing to their general dissatisfaction with the country's direction. Obama's "likability" could play a role, in that his favorable rating is averaging about five points higher than his approval rating, potentially lifting it. However, at 55%, his current favorable rating is not unusually high for recent sitting presidents. Perhaps more important may be Obama's ability to appear above the fray of the intense partisan debates that have defined Washington in recent years and that appear to be tarnishing the image of a politically divided Congress."

     Meanwhile, that CNN poll that there was such a rush to use to argue that his popularity has been mortally hurt if flatly contradicted by a new Pew poll-as it is contradicted by the Gallup article.

      "A new survey from Pew Research Center released Wednesday indicated that President Barack Obama has largely weathered the controversies that have consumed the country's attention as of late — a far cry from a survey released earlier this week that showed his approval rating had dipped sharply."

      "The Pew poll showed that 49 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing while 43 percent said they disapproved. Those numbers are virtually identical to Pew's poll in May, when 51 percent said they approved of the President's job performance and 43 percent said they disapproved.
But Pew's latest runs counter to a CNN/ORC International poll released on Monday that found an 8-point drop to Obama's approval rating in the last month. The CNN/ORC poll also showed that Obama's support among Americans under the age of 30 had plummeted by 17 points since May.
While some pointed to the CNN/ORC numbers as evidence that Obama had been weakened by news of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups and the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance programs, others such as polling expert Mark Blumenthal cautioned that the poll may have exaggerated the President's actual decline."

     "According to Pew, Obama's approval rating is seven points higher than George W. Bush's in June of 2005 but five points lower than Bill Clinton's in June of 1997."

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/in-contrast-to-cnn-poll-pew-shows-stable

      While all the Obama bashers are trying to make heavy weather of the CNN poll, there's little to show that he has been mortally hurt and it will take a lot to make him as unpopular as say Mitch McConnell.

Paul Krugman Takes on Structural Reform

2013-06-18T13:34:00.001-07:00

     Krugman makes a great point here about this overused shibboleth, structural reform. It can mean many things but usually it just means cutting the safety net and making the job market harder for workers.

    "I promised in an earlier post to say something about why these days I tend to get annoyed when I hear the phrase “structural reform”, especially in Europe."

    "Part of the reason is that the phrase sounds good, but could mean lots of things. In many cases “structural reform” is code for eliminating worker protections and/or sharply cutting social benefits. Sometimes this may be necessary — let’s face it, France has made it much too attractive to retire at 55 — but such things should be called by their proper names, not wrapped in vague language that conceals the nature of the pain."

    "That brings me to a second problem: whenever some catchphrase becomes part of what Very Serious People say because it sounds Serious, it’s time to stop using the phrase, to force the VSPs to talk about what they really mean. In the US context, “entitlement reform” is VSP boilerplate — I mean, who can be against reform? But there’s a world of difference between trying to move away from fee for service medicine — a reform I support — and, say, raising the Medicare age, which would be a terrible policy. These things should not be lumped together."

    "But the main thing about “structural reform” in Europe is the role it plays in discussion of macroeconomic policies. Instead of reflecting on the fact that Europe is sinking deeper into depression five years into the slump, and clearly needs less austerity and more aggressive monetary expansion, the usual suspects start talking about the need for structural reform. And my sense is that this talk of reform has, in practice, become less a real demand for specific actions than an excuse for not facing up to the reality of macroeconomic disaster, and a way to avoid discussing the responsibility of Germany and the ECB, in particular, to help end this disaster."

     http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/structural-excuses/

     There's a few issues here. On the one hand is 'structural probelms' lets us ignore the real macro problems as Krugman says, it's just away of not facing the real-demand side-problems.

    On the other hand there are perhaps real structural problems in the economy that the VSP who tsk tsk don't have in mind: like the argument that Krugman, Jared Berstein Joseph Stiglitz and others have made that the recent technology revolution-the Internet, the digital revolution, etc.-have actually left many workers worse off for a long time-there are far fewer good, white collar jobs since 2000.

    This is something that is worth discussing-it's ignored by most mainstream economists who still remember the recession of 2001 as 'short and shallow.' No it wasn't. It actually permanently depressed the job market in ways that we haven't come back from yet.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/luddites-or-digital-optimists.html

     To have a conversation about this, though we must reclaim the word and fight its misuse.

     P.S. Will you look at that-I got 4 posts out in an hour and a half. Reason to be optimsitic.

     For background to what I'm talking about see here.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/alan-west-cliff-from-cheers-and-moment.html

Silly Season for GOP War on Women Gets Even Sillier

2013-06-18T13:20:00.002-07:00

     Mitch McConnell is warning Democrats what will happen the next time he's Senate Majority Leader.

     McConnell issues threats over 'nuclear option'

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-makng-threats-mitch-mcconnell-puts.html

     I don't think the Dems should worry so much partly because I think it's going to be much longer than McConnell seems to think before they take the Senate back. It's already been 7 years. McConnell says that if the Dems were to end the filibuster on judicial and executive level nominations that would justify the GOP taking it away for everything next time they're in.

    Here's the catch 22 though. The only way they're going to get in again any time soon is if they vote down the Amendment that gives women the vote. However, while I think a GOP simple majority Senate would vote for that in a minute, they can't get it without somehow getting the women of America to put them in again. Hopefully we don't have too many women that clueless these days.

   The GOP just keeps getting worse. Recently we've looked at some of their crazy ideas on abortion like that for some reason rape victims can't become pregnant.

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-war-on-women-or-case-against.html

We now have the best reason yet, for opposing abortion: turns out some genius GOPer is concerned because he thinks male fetuses already masturbate.

   "Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) said in a late-Monday night House Rules Committee hearing on a bill prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks that the procedure should be banned because even at as early as 15 weeks a male fetus "may have their hand between their legs" and "feel pleasure."

   "This is a subject that I do know something about,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN, during the House hearing first reported by RH Reality Check. "There is no question in my mind that a baby at 20 weeks after conception can feel pain. The fact of the matter is, I argue with the chairman because I thought the date was far too late. We should be setting this at 15 weeks, 16 weeks."

   "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” Burgess continued. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?"
This bill is scheduled for a House vote Tuesday afternoon.

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/rep-burgess-abortions-should-be-banned-because-male

     Yet, the Far Right Marsha Blackburn thins that science-of all things-is on the GOP's side.The party of Creationism.

    "Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) defended legislation Tuesday that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, saying that "science is on our side and public opinion is on our side."
The legislation is slated to be voted on Tuesday and is expected to pass the GOP-controlled House, but fail in the Senate."

    "We are incredibly concerned about the well-being, safety, the health of these women. The life of women. And these babies. That is why we are doing this," Blackburn said in an interview with Craig Melvin on MSNBC. "The trial of Kermit Gosnell, the information that has subsequently come from other state, public opinion said something needs to be done about this. So you know, Craig, this is one of those issues where science is on our side and public opinion is on our side."

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/rep-blackburn-on-abortion-ban-bill-science-is?ref=fpb

    I think what she says about their concern is half true: I think in their own distorted way, they do think they're concerned about the unborn. I don't think they care a whit about the women who they see as just human receptacles for their husbands or some such arcane ideas. But to claim that they care about science. That is some chutzpah.

In Making Threats Mitch McConnell Puts Cart Before the Horse

2013-06-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

     He's trying to discourage Harry Reid from 'going nuclear'-ending the filibuster for executive and maybe judicial nominees by the spectre of what he'll do when he's Senate Majority Leader.

     "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday starkly warned Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) not to eliminate the filibuster on presidential nominations, threatening to end the 60-vote threshold for everything, including bills, if he becomes the majority leader."

     “There not a doubt in my mind that if the majority breaks the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate with regard to nominations, the next majority will do it for everything,” McConnell said on the floor.

     "With at least half a dozen key judicial and cabinet nominees pending, all of whom Republicans have problems with, Reid has threatened to invoke the so-called nuclear option to change the rules of the Senate and eliminate the filibuster on nominations — but not anything else."

      "Backed up by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who echoed his warnings in a floor colloquy Tuesday, McConnell said his hypothetical majority would take it a step further."

      “I wouldn’t be able to argue, a year and a half from now if I were the majority leader, to my colleagues that we shouldn’t enact our legislative agenda with a simple 51 votes, having seen what the previous majority just did,” he said. “I mean there would be no rational basis for that.”

      "The minority leader sketched out what a Republican-led Senate would do with 51 votes. Job No. 1, he said, would be to repeal Obamacare. He also mentioned lifting the ban on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, approving the Keystone XL pipeline and repealing the estate tax (which he called the “death tax”)."

     “These are the kinds of priorities that our members feel strongly about, and I think I would be hard pressed,” McConnell said, “to argue that we should restrain ourselves from taking full advantage of this new Senate.”
“From the country’s point of view, it’s a huge step in the wrong direction,” he said

     http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/mcconnell-reid-nuclear-option-filibuster.php?ref=fpa

    I'll give McConnell that-that entire GOP wish list would be a-very-huge step in the wrong direction. Still, I hope Reid and the Democrats don't let McConnell scare them off. Actually, I'm not so sure the filibuster shouldn't be gone for everything. I'm not at all persuaded that there is anything democratic about the filibuster; historically it's always been used for the wrong reasons. It tends to impose unpopular ideas on the majority. The etymology of so much of the allegedly 'august' Senate procedural rules were just a means to enabling the old slave holding South to dominate the country for 60 years and then enabling the South to maintain segregation for 100 years.

   You can argue that in principle it can be used for less sordid means-like stopping the repeal of Obamacare or the GOP voting to repeal Roe v. Wade-yet historically its usage has been sordid. In reality the whole Senate system was crafted to be undemocratic; the filibuster but even the way each state receives 2 senators regardless of the state's population; it goes back to the Missouri Compromise and the 3/5 of a man compromise.

   Maybe we should try it without the filibuster at all. On the other hand, McConnell in speaking of when he becomes Senate Majority Leader assumes facts not in evidence like when exactly he thinks this will happen. In truth he looks like he may just be in a life and death struggle to even hold onto his seat.

    Let's hope the Dems stay the course. That McConnell's idea of negotiating is yet again threats of blowing up the world if he doesn't get his way-like all GOPers the only song he knows is My Way or the Highway!-actually underscores how badly the nuclear option is needed.

   Indeed, Greg Sargent now argues that with Senator Frank Lautenberg's passing-currently filled by a temporary GOP Chris Christy pick-the Dems may have a very close margin for error in passing the nuclear option-the votes may be there but it's close and it could entail Vice President Joe Biden casting the tiebreaker. The White House has assure Reid he has their support. However, it does underscore the precariousness of going for it now.

   Still, the Dems need to be strong here. What Lautenberg's untimely death has done is accelerated the level of bluff and brinkmanship. The Dems can't afford to blink first if they want this. And they have to want this-otherwise the GOP can throw a monkey wrench in the President's agenda.

    "Lautenberg’s passing means Dems now only have 54 votes in the Senate. (His temporary Republican replacement can’t be expected to back rules reform.) Aides who are tracking the vote count tell me that Senator Carl Levin (a leading opponent of the “nuke option” when it was ruled out at the beginning of the year, leading to the watered down bipartisan filibuster reform compromise) is all but certain to oppose any rules change by simple majority. Senators Patrick Leahy and Mark Pryor remain question marks. And Senator Jack Reed is a Maybe."

    "If Dems lose those four votes, that would bring them down to 50. And, aides note, that would mean Biden’s tie-breaking vote would be required to get back up to the 51 required for a simple Senate majority. That’s an awfully thin margin for error."

   "But the mere fact that Biden’s potential role as tie-breaker is being discussed underscores just how precarious the push for a change in the rules really is. And this makes things very tricky for Dems right now. They need to escalate the threat level in order to force Senate Republicans to drop their unprecedented opposition to Obama’s nominations. Currently they are expected to filibuster Obama’s pick as Labor Secretary and his choices to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Environmental Protection Agency, and they are threatening to oppose his three nominations for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. All of these are key to Obama’s ability to move his agenda forward. But the numbers are such that we simply can’t be sure whether Dems can make good on the threat to change the rules by hitting the nuke button. This could embolden Republican obstructionism further."

    "On the other hand, Democrats really may be able to muster that 51 votes, particularly since Biden is presumably available as a tie-breaker. And if Republicans do conclude Reid can’t get the votes and call his bluff by continuing with their current levels of obstructionism, Dems will have no choice but to try to change the rules — an effort that could sill succeed."

    "All of which is to say that while Lautenberg’s passing has put the Dems’ ability to change the rules in peril, it has also increased the potential for more brinksmanship — and more miscalculation. Anyone who is telling you they know how this is going to end is lying to you."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/17/do-senate-dems-have-the-votes-for-the-nuclear-option/

      So McConnell's threats are part of the staring contest. This is not the time for the Dems to blink.

Alan West, Cliff From Cheers, and Moment of Levity

2013-06-18T12:17:00.001-07:00

     I'm in the mood for some levity right now as I just finished my second day at the Long Island home improvement company I mentioned. Second day and I got my first lead, which best of all actually got led to an immediate sale. It was a good list I had today though-yesterday they gave us bad leads.

    This one was of people who have done home improvements in the past. The woman I got had done many thousands of dollars with us in the past. She just said she wanted a new railing for here patio stairs and the sales guy sold her on a new roof so presto! I had a $10,000 sale-as I get 1% of sales that's an extra $100 in my pocket right there.

     If I get any more sales like this, maybe I can finally take out my benefactor, Nanute, for lunch soon-rather than the usual where he takes me.

    Nice second day. No question the light at the end of my tunnel is coming into better focus. Still the only down side is I got much less time than I used to write at Diary. I'm on the break between the new morning job-9-2 and the evening job at Slomin's which is 5 to 9. We'll see how many I can get done during a 2 hour layover.

    I just came across a story that gives you the ultimate in levity: You remember Cliff from Cheers? Turns out that his real name is John Ratzenberger and even more embarrassingly he's one of Allen West's biggest fans.

    "Conservative actor John Ratzenberger, who is best known as the character “Cliff” from the television sitcom Cheers, on Friday called for former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) to take “something from his gene pool” and “put it everywhere across this great country.”

     "Ratzenberger was introducing West at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference. He also called West a “real American.”

    “We should really take something from his gene pool and put it everywhere across this great country,” Ratzenberger said. “A real American hero, my friend, Allen West.”

      http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/14/cliff-from-cheers-wants-allen-west-to-spread-his-gene-pool-across-america/

     This is amazing as when I imagine the quintessential conservative in my mind, this fellow looks a lot like Cliff Clavin.

      HT John Connors at his blog, Motor City Liberal.

     For some reason this library over at Island Trees, Levitown never allows me to visit Motor City Liberal here. It's a blocked site-who knows why? It may be because this area is pretty Right wing. So I couldn't link him here. When I go home tonight I will.

In Arizona vs. Inter Tribal Council Clarence Thomas Sets 'Unprecedent' of Bush v. Gore

2013-06-17T13:45:00.002-07:00

     Many Americans remember the SJC's taking up the Bush v. Gore case and making a decision that through the election to Bush as one of the darkest days of the Republic. It struck many Americans as a partisan vote where the Court stepped egregiously outside its bounds in deciding an election.

     Everything we've seen since suggests that the SJC itself doesn't look upon that decision as it's best work. It was more or less made clear that the case was make no precedent-that it would never be applied to any other case for any other reason.

    This view was underscored recently when Sandra Day O'Connor-who infamously at the time was quoted as crying 'this is terrible' when she heard that initially the election had been thrown to Gore-before Florida turned-wondered if perhaps they made the wrong choice after all. She wondered if maybe the Court should have refused to hear it at all, and most would agree with her in retrospect.

    Today, however, Clarence Thomas broke new ground by using Bush v. Gore in his dissent from a 7-2 court ruling against Arizona's voter id law.

    "Monday marked the first time ever that Bush v. Gore was cited by a Supreme Court justice in an opinion since the controversial 2000 decision that settled the presidential election."

     "Justice Clarence Thomas cited the case in his dissent in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, a case involving a voting law in Arizona. No other justice joined his dissent. Here's what Thomas wrote in his footnote:

The NVRA’s “accept and use” requirement applies to all federal elections, even presidential elections... This Court has recognized, however, that “the state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing [presidential] electors is plenary; it may, if it chooses, select the electors itself.” Bush v. Gore, 531 U. S. 98, 104 (2000)

     "The citation was caught by Pepperdine law professor Derek T. Muller and amplified in blog posts by court watchers Josh Blackman and Rick Hasen -- the latter two observed that no Supreme Court justice has ever cited Bush v. Gore since the case."

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/supreme-court-cites-bush-v-gore-for-first?ref=fpb

     It's fitting that this dishonourable decision should be used to buttress another dishonorable law; the intent of both were to disenfranchise Americans.

     Sobering after we were just discussing Iran's desire to blot out the 2009 election which was also believed by many to have been stolen. We wish the Iranian people luck with their new moderate President-they and he will need it as the system still gives uneven power to the clerics.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-big-victory-for-moderates-in-iran.html

    It's rather arresting that our 226 year old democracy just had our one 2009 so recently.

    P.S. This was my first day at my new job I mentioned last week-a home improvement company out in Melville. It works out well in that it's not too far from my night job. However, the challenge will be how much time I get for posting during the week.

    The hope is 3 posts a day during the week with considerably more on Saturday and Sundays, but we'll see.

A Big Victory for Moderates in Iran

2013-06-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of unhappiness with the Far Right domination of the country for some time-I've actually spoken with Iranian citizens about this playing Internet chess, where I was told that most people were very unhappy with Ahmadinejad. In the recent election moderates have their biggest victory yet which is being seen as a rebuke to extremism and as vindication after it was widely felt that the 2009 re-election of Ahmadinejad was not legitimate, keeping out the popular former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Initially, moderates and liberals had been demoralized, after Rafsanjani was kept off the ballot this year.

"Wild celebrations broke out on Tehran streets that were battlefields four years ago as reformist-backed Hasan Rowhani capped a stunning surge to claim Iran’s presidency on Saturday, throwing open the political order after relentless crackdowns by hard-liners to consolidate and safeguard their grip on power.

“Long live Rowhani,” tens of thousands of jubilant supporters chanted as security officials made no attempt to rein in crowds — joyous and even a bit bewildered by the scope of his victory with more than three times the votes of his nearest rival.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/iranian-reformists-celebrate-as-rowhani-wins-presidency.php?ref=fpa

To be sure, this doesn't mean that change and reform are going to be here overnight.

But in Iran, even landslides at the ballot box do not equate to policymaking influence.

"All key decisions — including nuclear efforts, defense and foreign affairs — remain solidly in the hands of the ruling clerics and their powerful protectors, the Revolutionary Guard. What Rowhani’s victory does is reopen space for moderate and liberal voices that have been largely muzzled in reprisal for massive protests and clashes in 2009 over claims the vote was rigged to deny reformists the presidency."

Speaking of reopening a space for moderates and liberals. Rowhani declares:

“I’ve never been an extremist,” Rowhani said on state TV shortly after the official results were announced. “I support moderation.”

“I thank God that once again rationality and moderation has shined on Iran,” he continued. “This is the victory of wisdom, a victory of moderation and a victory of commitment over extremism.”

It also may lower the temperature with Western countries and Israel.

"His emphasis on outreach could sharply lower the political temperature between Iran and the West — including Israel — and perhaps nudge the ruling establishment toward more flexible approaches in possible renewed nuclear talks with the U.S. and world powers. Rowhani also has added leverage with his political godfather and ally, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was blocked from the ballot but now can exert significant influence from the wings."

"The White House congratulated Iranian voters for “their courage in making their voices heard” despite clampdowns that included severe restrictions on the Internet, a key tool of Iran’s opposition. Washington urged Tehran’s leadership to “heed the will of the Iranian people and make responsible choices,” while noting the U.S. remained open for direct dialogue with Iran."

Still, Rowhani's power over foregin policy is limited by the cleric dominated system-it's a complicated system that while technically a democracy, is really a theocracy in important ways. He has more power over the economy but there, the fly in the ointment are U.S. sanctions set to take effect in July, six weeks before he comes into office.

In any case, his improbable come from behind victory at least opens up a much more open, liberal dialogue-an important precursor to real change.

Nick Rowe on Austerity or What's in a Word?

2013-06-15T21:48:00.001-07:00

One of my most read posts ever was the time I wrote about Nick Rowe simply leaving a comment on my blog. That was heady stuff. To say I was excited, is an understatement.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/nick-rowe-answers-my-post.html

Technically, it's the third most popular though since I had my web consultant do a little touching up on my layout, where they gave me a 'popular post' list, that Nick Rowe post has more than doubled in all time views and keeps rising. However, my second most read post is An Anatomy of a Scott Sumner Post and it too has been growing by leaps and bounds.

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/04/anatomy-of-scott-sumner-post.html

At the rate they are both being read now, it seems that soon Nick's post will be second as my current all time most read post Erin Burnett's Fact Checking Flop hasn't gotten read much since the the addition of the popular post list, though it's listed at the top. Incidentally, what put my Nick post on the map was that Delong put it on his Twitterstorm-he clearly read it as well and loved my referring to Nick as a 'monetary rock star.'

However, if anything, this is headier stuff, as a question I poised to Nick in a recent post on the issue of austerity has inspired a post of his own. Actually the post is largely a direct quote of what he said in a comment to my original post.  I initially had asked him about his position on austerity.

"not all the Market Monetarists seem to be trying to justify austerity. Nick Rowe doesn't seem to at all as best I can tell. Nick, if you're reading maybe you can elaborate your position."

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.ca/2013/06/marcus-nune-salim-furth-and-case-for.html

He went on to do just that. Again, he basically made a post out of the comment he left so I'll quote his entire-very short-post here.

"Words matter. You can't have an intelligent discussion about fiscal policy if you use loaded and misleading words to describe fiscal policy."

"Cancelling or postponing a government investment project might be a wise decision. Or it might be a foolish decision. But it is not "austerity".

"Implementing or preponing a government investment project might be a wise decision. Or it might be a foolish decision. But it is not "profligacy".

"Real economists talk about "tightening" or "loosening" fiscal policy. They don't talk about "austerity" or "profligacy". Not when they are talking among themselves. Or they shouldn't. They don't even talk about "fiscal stimulus", which is another loaded question-begging word."

"Austerity" and "profligacy" are perfectly good words to describe the consumption decisions of a household. But they are bad words to describe the consumption and investment and taxation decisions of a government. Because public finance is not like household finance."

"Economists are supposed to understand the difference. So they shouldn't use words that obfuscate the difference."

"There is one important exception, where economists should talk about "austerity". And it's an exception that proves the rule."

"It would be perfectly correct for economists to say that the UK government in the Second World War had a policy of "austerity". Because the purpose of that policy was to drive down household consumption as low as it could reasonably go. So it would free up as many resources as possible for the war. Yet at the same time the government ran very large deficits. Fiscal policy was extremely "loose". "Austerity" does not mean "tight fiscal policy".

"(They implemented austerity by a mixture of: rationing consumer goods; persuading people to save by buying war bonds; and directly controlling the supply-side, so that firms that used to produce consumer goods were told they had to produce weapons instead.)"

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2013/06/austerity-vs-profligacy.html?cid=6a00d83451688169e201910364f98d970c

Now I could grouse that he could have mentioned my post that inspired his question. I know, a tacky concern. for my own self-promotion., though I never said I was above self-promotion... He does mention me in the comments section.

"The "own goal" has been scored by those who have used the word "austerity" as a name for the position they oppose. I wrote this post becausesomeone asked me, quite unironically, what my position was on "austerity". By that he meant, what was my position on running deficits in a recession. Or read Gizzard's comment above, where he says that cutting government investment projects is austerity, because it reduces the consumption of those households employed in those investment projects. This just invites the reply: "You mean the government has to keep on spending money it can't afford just for make-work projects?"

"The "Austerians" have won, because even their opponents have adopted their language. "Austerity" now simply means "let's have balanced budgets, even in a recession".

So I get mentioned in the comments section at least-but of course it was way down and how many readers get down that far? Ok, enough with my tacky concerns. Though another proud day for me was when Nick's friend and fellow Market Monetarist, Lars Christensen, did mention me in a post, actually wrote a post about a post of mine. That was heady stuff too.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/01/31/christensens-postmodernist-mind-fuck/

Overall, I must say, that while I question them on fiscal policy, I have nothing but good things to say about most of these Market Monetarist guys, personally. I mean they've all been very good to me-with the exception of Sumner, himself. However, Lars, Marcus NuNines, and Nick have all ready my blog-clearly Nick and Marcus at least read it quite often-and David Glasner always has thoughtful and fairminded comments for just about all commentators on his blog.

Scott himself, has and taught me a lot, but has never been a fan of mine and often gets quite unpleasantly snarky when questioned. It's been my feeling that he's gotten worse in this regard, He did agree with me there to his credit. And I have learnt a lot from him in all fairness.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/scott-sumner-has-now-written-2001-posts.html

Ok, how about some actual substance on what Nick is saying? Whether he's right or not about the term austerity it can be asked what do we gain if we were to listen to him and adopt his definitions and never speak of austerity but fiscal tightening?

Whether you call it austerity of fiscal tigthening, I still object to insisting on balancing the budget during a bad recession. I certainly agree with him that public finances are different than individual finances which is something that the austerians never admit: they talk about how a 'the government finances are like a household's. You can't live beyond your means and neither should the government.'

I'm still not sure about this distinction that austerity only applies to household consumption. Keynesians believe that fiscal tightening leads to a drop in household consumption by depressing demand. The British program of the 40s-which Nick believes is a rare case of genuine government austerity-wasn't even meant to cut net spending but to simply redirect it. If one goes with national income accounting, is total spending decresaed? No, it's redirected. In the U.S. it's widely believed that WWII spending was what finally ended the Great Depression. After all, if GDP=C+I+G+NX, then in the case of Britain, C decreases in favor of G, but the net GDP or output doesn't change. It seems to me that what critics of austerity have in mind is that the fiscal tightening will lead to a drop in net spending in the economy-or Sumner's NGDP. I notice that the distinction between NGDP and GDP gets confusing. It's like the Diary of a Republican Hater reader Greg says. GDP is measured in nominal terms to begin with.

Yet, whether we agree about the correct use of austerity or not will it change the contours of debate? I don't see why. Those who want fiscal tightening will still want that and those who want loosening will still call for that.

UPDATE: Nick actually elaborates his position more in the comments section of this analyzed post.

"I think I would object to the word "Austerian" too. I would prefer: "the nutters who think that because central banks have screwed up and let NGDP fall below trend therefore we all have sinned and must punish ourselves". Or if Determinant can come up with something catchier and theological?"

"BTW, my own post on "How can we spot a boom?" was my version. There is something irrational in the belief that because we are worse off now than in the past, that past must have been an unsustainable illusion for which we are now paying the price. Economists who complain about "Austerians" should instead try to figure out how we can spot a boom, and think about Milton Friedman's plucking model."

"In the right circumstances, Austerity is a good thing. And in the right (often very different) circumstances fiscal surpluses are a good thing too. We don't want to discredit these ideas."

If so, they're definitely not good things right now. If there is ever a time for a budget surplus, now is not the time. I see that Nick's reader, Determinant took up Nick on a new term.

"Flagellants (as caricatured by Monty Python and the famous board-knocking) were a real sect, and disclaimed as heretical and crazy by everyone."

"Fiscal Flagellants, perhaps? Except they're never Auto Fiscal Flagellants as they always want to cut other people's benefits, not their own."

Technology Displacement: Luddites or Digital Optimists?

2013-06-15T09:45:00.003-07:00

I've done a couple of posts the past 2 days which use the word "Luddite' in the title. I employ this word somewhat tongue in cheek. I certainly don't think either Krugman or Jared Bernstein are Luddites. However, they have been treating a theory- that the digital revolution has displaced many American workers-with respect most mainstream economists tell us is the Luddite Fallacy.

For my part I love the digital revolution and do think that humanity is already richer for it in all kinds of ways. However, I do believe that over the last 12 years it has displaced many American workers. Yes, in tme many do finally get new jobs. However, the unheralded story is how much we've seen white collar workers displaced as burger flippers or Wallmart cashiers. This is a really unappreciated story and I'm very gratified that Krugman and Bernstein-two highly talented economists with gravatis within the profession are talking about it.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/jared-bernstein-joins-luddites.html

As Krugman says, the skills theory in explaining the loss in jobs has taken a beaten over these 12 years as white collar workers have become vulnerable to downsizing, outsourcing, etc. as well. This was not the case in the 80s and 90s where it was much more plausible to make the case that education is the key and will solve the problem of displaced workers.

The 1991 recession was actually a very historic one. Superficially this Bush the First recession it was very short and shallow as seemed the Bush the Second recession of 2001. In both cases superficial appearances were quite wrong.

The 1991 recession was really the first white collar recession we'd ever seen, It was something brand new and unexplainable. However, the 90s saw the full explosion of the Internet boom and huge bull market and that was forgotten as a misnomer. In the 2001 recession the same characteristics showed itself but this time it was here to stay.

In the above link I spoke a little of two writers Bernstein linked to who have done more work than anyone on the idea of the digital revolution leading to a long term hit to the job market. Here are some excerpts from the book which show how important and provocative their work is:

"We wrote this book because we believe that digital technologies are one of the most important driving forces in the economy today. They’re transforming the world of work and are key drivers of productivity and growth. Yet their impact on employment is not well understood, and definitely not fully appreciated. When people talk about jobs in America today, they talk about cyclicality, outsourcing and off-shoring, taxes and regulation, and the wisdom and efficacy of different kinds of stimulus. We don’t doubt the importance of all these factors. The economy is a complex, multifaceted entity."

"But there has been relatively little talk about role of acceleration of technology. It may seem paradoxical that faster progress can hurt wages and jobs for millions of people, but we argue that’s what’s been happening. As we’ll show, computers are now doing many things that used to be the domain of people only. The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications. Perhaps the most important of these is that while digital progress grows the overall economic pie, it can do so while leaving some people, or even a lot of them, worse off."

"And computers (hardware, software, and networks) are only going to get more powerful and capable in the future, and have an ever-bigger impact on jobs, skills, and the economy. The root of our problems is not that we’re in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind. So it’s urgent that we understand these phenomena, discuss their implications, and come up with strategies that allow human workers to race ahead with machines instead of racing against them."

http://raceagainstthemachine.com/excerpt/

They look at the why of it:

"Why are computers racing ahead of workers now? And what, if anything, can be done about it? Chapter 2 discusses digital technology, giving examples of just how astonishing recent developments have been and showing how they have upset well-established ideas about what computers are and aren’t good at. What’s more, the progress we’ve experienced augurs even larger advances in coming years. We explain the sources of this progress, and also its limitations."

Implications:

"Chapter 3 explores the economic implications of these rapid technological advances and the growing mismatches that create both economic winners and losers. It concentrates on three theories that explain how such progress can leave some people behind, even as it benefits society as a whole. There are divergences between higher-skilled and lower-skilled workers, between superstars and everyone else, and between capital and labor. We present evidence that all three divergences are taking place."

Their Prescriptions and Recommendations

"Once technical trends and economic principles are clear, Chapter 4 considers what we can and should do to meet the challenges of high unemployment and other negative consequences of our current race against the machine. We can’t win that race, especially as computers continue to become more powerful and capable. But we can learn to better race with machines, using them as allies rather than adversaries. We discuss ways to put this principle into practice, concentrating on ways to accelerate organizational innovation and enhance human capital."

However, they conclude on an optimistic note"

"Conclusion: The Digital Frontier

"We conclude in Chapter 5 on an upbeat note. This might seem odd in a book about jobs and the economy written during a time of high unemployment, stagnant wages, and anemic GDP growth. But this is fundamentally a book about digital technology, and when we look at the full impact of computers and networks, now and in the future, we are very optimistic indeed. These tools are greatly improving our world and our lives, and will continue to do so. We are strong digital optimists, and we want to convince you to be one, too."

So we need to work with the machine ultimately rather than against it. Ie, their project really isn't Luddite at all, actually the opposite.

It's certainly very thought provoking. If it's true-and it seems very plausible to me-this could mean that while Stiglitz was ridiculed for arguing that worker displacement from agriculture had a lot to do with the Great Depression he may have been write too and therefore what we're are seeing now has a historical antecedent.

I think that at the very least this dimension should be added to the cyclical discussion and the discussion about taxes, regulation, offshoring, and outsourcing.

Certainly we can already see lots of ways the Internet has improved our lives-certainly our intellectual and cultural lives; also personal and entertainment. If you can believe it they now say that 25% of married couples met online.

It's what's enabled me to do this blog which is such a focus of my passion and hopes. I'd say the rise of liberalism starting in 2006 would not have been possible without the Internet-that might seem strong but what about the Arab Spring which was organized on Facebook?

Jared Bernstein Joins the Luddites?

2013-06-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

We looked at Krugman's great piece about the question of whether the tremendous technological progress we've seen in the Internet Age has led to a drop in employment or a rise in inequality.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/krugman-joins-luddites.html

Jared Bernstein points out however that inequality and a rising unemployment are not wholly mutually inclusive-though they are certainly not wholly mutually exclusive either; in truth they are somewhere in the middle though I tend to think closer to to the inclusive than the exclusive side.

"But my question has more to do with jobs, and we've seen periods of growing inequality with pretty robust job growth, i.e., the 1980s (I'm talking job quantity here, not quality), and periods with growing inequality with lousy job growth, i.e., the 2000s."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/technology-full-employment_b_3444406.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Of course, as liberals you have to be concerned about job quality as well. If we get 3 million new jobs but they are mostly making the minimum wage that is very different from 3 million new jobs that actually pay a livable wage.

Bernstein puts the central question here well:

"One of the more important economic questions of the day is the one I pose, but alas, do not answer here: Is an acceleration in labor-saving technology displacing workers in a historically unique and problematic manner? Will the increasing presence of robotics and AI software make it harder to achieve full employment?"

Again, as I suggested yesterday, I tend to say yes, as I remember the start of the 2000s where over night it became much less easy to nail down a good white collar job.

Part of me hates to make the argument for a couple of reasons.

1). Nobody loves the technology revolution we've seen over the last 20 years more than me.

2). I'm well aware that most economists feel that this argument is the 'Luddite fallacy.'

In this sense, I feel better broaching this question with Krugman and now Bernstein broaching it. In late 2011, Joseph Stiglitz was ripped to shreds for suggesting this.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-stiglitz-guilty-of-lump-sum-of-labor.html

However, while a Scott Sumner would likely rip my own reasoning as merely anecdotal, the interest that Krugman, Stiglitz, Bernstein, et. al. are showing in this question I feel validates my own interest that was largely inspired initially by anecdotal reasoning. Bernstein notes that most economists-most neoclassical economists?-find it hard to believe that technology innovation and progress can displace workers at least for very long:

"Most economists say no, because they're all hung up on evidence and history -- imagine that. Of the evidence, it's mostly anecdotal, as per these guys, who've certainly influenced my thinking on the issue. On history, as I always stress, the past is littered with the prediction that technology is replacing workers in a lasting way."

That is true. We can think of all kinds of dire economic predictions that seemed very plausible at the time and yet came to nothing-like Ricardo's fear of over-population finally bringing human civilization down.

Technology displacement has often been predicted yet in retrospect these fears have looked unfounded. Stiglitz in that fateful Rolling Stones piece-and even more in his book-talked about the idea that a large cause of the Great Depression was technology displacement of a largely agricultural economy to an urban economy-Americans went from being mostly agricultural workers to urban or suburban workers. Of course, that in the long term the transition was very successful doesn't prove Stiglitz is necessarily wrong.

One reason the 'Luddite' theory doesn't seem very persuasive historically considered is that productivity and employment have largely run close together.

"In this regard, the anti-Luddites -- those who argue that history has been unkind to the argument that technology displaces workers (which is subtly different than "it lowers their relative wages") -- point to the long linkage between productivity growth and job growth. If technology were increasingly labor saving, these lines should diverge. They don't, so goes the argument, because of the intervening variable of demand, which increases as we become more productive thus absorbing those who would suffer technological unemployment back into the workplace."

However:

"Except for since around 2000, the lines don't converge. The figure below plots full-time equivalent employment against productivity, and the anti-Luddites to whom I've showed this find it a head-scratcher. On the other hand, it makes sense to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, the authors of Race Against the Machine (see link above), and on alternative Wednesdays, to me."

However, the 'Luddites' can't necessarily explain everything either:

"On the other hand, Dean Baker points out that productivity hasn't much accelerated over the period of the split, which you'd expect if labor saving technology was a key factor. More wonkishly, the growth of capital inputs into total factor productivity has considerablydecelerated over the last decade, the opposite of what a Luddite might expect. That just means that there's been a slower rate of capital spending feeding into growth relative to earlier periods. (But wait--if labor's share is tanking doesn't that mean capital's share must be rising? Yes, but interestingly, not because of accelerated investment but because of a higher return on capital -- and lower return to work -- see "spectator sport" point above.*)"

"All of which is to say is that we just don't yet know the extent to which tech is displacing workers. One way to think about it is to ask yourself "in terms of job growth, are we at the cusp of a period that will resemble the 1990s expansion or the 2000s expansion?" The latter sucked for job growth; the former was strong in that regard."

"Me, I fear that the path back to full employment is looking very steep, and I suspect accelerated labor-saving technology is one reason for that. So I'm keeping my powder dry and my spreadsheets open."

I admit, I continue to find this argument very compelling whether it's 'Luddite' or not. I also think that it's important to have some measure of job creation quality as well as quantity. My guess is that since the 2001 recession, the quality of job creation has been abysmal.

You really should check out Bernstein's 'these guys'-the writers of Race Against the Machine. Here is a little blurb review of it that says it all:

”We’re entering unknown territory in the quest to reduce labor costs. The AI revolution is doing to white collar jobs what robotics did to blue collar jobs. Race Against the Machine is a bold effort to make sense of the future of work. No one else is doing serious thinking about a force that will lead to a restructuring of the economy that is more profound and far-reaching than the transition from the agricultural to the industrial age. Brynjolfsson and McAfee have hit the ball out of the park on this one. It’s a book anyone concerned with either business, or more broadly, the future of our society, simply must read.” – Tim O’Reilly

http://raceagainstthemachine.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319117135&sr=1-1

Marcus Nunes, Nick Rowe and the Latest on the Austerity Debates

2013-06-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

In my post about Marcus Nunes and Salim Furth I asked questions of both Marcus and Nick Rowe regarding fiscal policy. They both gave me comments. I appreciate that. I appreciate honestly having two such auspicious readers and whatever disagreements I may have with either of them I do admire their work.

It's possible to agree with someone very much on Issue A and disagree very sharply on Issue B as we can see with Reinhart-Rogoff. While they have given a lot of aid and comfort to the austerians and I think that's to their very considerable discredit, on the other hand they were as right as rain in their 2009 book It's Different Now. I often see that book misconstrued, incidentally. The point of the title is not to mock those who always think it's different now but rather that in 2009 it really was different. Financial crises are different and take longer to get over.

Actually I totally agree with Nick in the advice he gave as an economic expert in Canada in 2009:

"At the beginning of the recession the PM asked a couple dozen Canadian economists to speak for 5 minutes each and give their advice. I advised him not to cut spending or raise taxes or try to balance the budget during the recession. I said it was OK to run a temporary deficit. I stand by that advice. The Canadian government also temporarily increased (or maybe preponed) investment spending. I think that was the right decision too."

"But Canada is not the US. Canada entered the recession with a fiscal surplus, and I am reasonably confident our political system will eliminate the deficit (inflation-adjusted) as we exit the recession. You republicans have a different system of government, and you had a deficit even during the good times."

"And fiscal policy isn't just about macro and aggregate demand. Micro matters too. There's a good micro reason for increasing investment when real interest rates are temporarily very low."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/marcus-nune-salim-furth-and-case-for.html

I couldn't agree more with all of that, except maybe that the U.S. was different in 2009 due to teh deficits. It seems to me that even with a deficit during a recession you still want a recovery which won't happen by trying to balance the budgets as tax revenues plunge.

Of course Keynesianism-perhaps what Lars Christensen-calls 'paleo Keynesianism- say during a bad recession we should deficit spend. Even NKers say we should spend during the recession. One difference may be that NKers might ask that it be paid for in the long run whereas 'Old Keynesians' prefer it not to be paid for but rather legitimate deficit spending.

Nick does make a great point about good reasons to increase investment being micro with such low interest rates. I mostly agree then. However, here is Marcus' latest post on the austerity debate. He argues that both the austerians and anti-austerians miss something esential. At this point it sounds very much like Scott.

"Krugman comments on a post by DeLong:

He’s referring to calls for the Fed and other central banks to raise expectations of future inflation as a way to get some traction in a liquidity trap — which is certainly something I and others support. But there are two crucial differences between us and the expansionary austerity types.

First, our expectations argument is a hope; theirs is a plan. I want the Fed, the Bank of Japan, etc. to target higher inflation, in the hope that it might help, but it’s a hope, and meanwhile we need to fight demands for fiscal austerity and even push for stimulus. The expansionary austerity types, on the other hand, are (or were) actually counting on the supposed rise in confidence to avoid what would otherwise be nasty recessions, which have in fact materialized.

Which brings us to the second point: those of us hoping to summon the expectations imp want to do so with policies that are at worst harmless, such as expanding the monetary base under conditions where this has no direct inflationary impact. The austerians, on the other hand, have pushed directly destructive policies — fiscal contraction in depressed economies — in order to achieve their hoped-for shift in expectations.

So this is the difference between “Let’s try this possibly ineffective remedy, it might work and in any case won’t do any harm” and “Let’s do the opposite of what standard analysis says we should be doing, just trust me”.

"So you see, Krugman barely pays lip service to monetary policy. It´s only a hope and likely ineffective, so why bother?"

http://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/krugman-and-the-austerians-a-tiresome-and-misguided-debate/

So he's upset with Krugman for using the word hope? It's true enough that he doesn't have the level of confidence in unconventional monetary policy that Scott or Marcus have.

"Krugman bashes the austerians, and vice-versa, because their respective agendas are diametrically opposed. The market monetarist´s don´t have a political agenda behind their arguments, but if their proposals were tried and succeeded, they would prove Krugman wrong in saying that without fiscal stimulus (more government) the economy would remain subdued. In order to discourage something like NGDP level targeting to be even tried Krugman says it´s like ‘chasing rainbows’, or an ‘impossible dream’.

"I´ll try to show that it isn´t an ‘impossible dream’. In doing so, I´ll argue that neither ‘fiscal austerity’ implies at all times a drop in economic activity or that ‘fiscal stimulus’ implies a strengthening in the economy´s performance."

Notice though that while he seems to be saying the austerians and Krugman are both wrong-Krugman for opposing austerity they for advocating it that's not really what he is saying. He's saying that if monetary policy as effective as he believes it can be then we can do all the fiscal austerity-or as Nick prefers 'fiscal tigthening'--the Republicans want and Keynesains shouldn't raise a peep. If he's right then Krugman is wrong, but the austerians aren't wrong too-they're actually right as they can have all the austerity they want.

However, as Nick says, there can be 'micro'-does he mean supply side?-reasons for doing stimulus right now anyway.

At the end of the day, teh relationship of Scott and Krugman is not symetrical. Krugman says do both monetary and fiscal stimulus, Scott insists we should do only monetary. Now Marcus judges Krugman's support of monetary policy as wanting as it's not confident enough, but at least he supports it. Scott claims though that he's not as doctrinaire about this as it may sound just that he's got the long view in mind:

"As for whether my arguments are “callous” I think it depends whose making them. I happen to think that fiscal stimulus does a modest amount of harm, in a couple ways. It increases the level of future distortionary taxes, and it makes it less likely that effective monetary stimulus will occur, by muddying the waters. But I also recognize that lots of people who are smarter than me (Krugman, DeLong, Yglesias, Avent, etc) disagree."

"Here’s my bottom line. If I was someone like Abe, I’d look at the intellectual dispute and make the same pragmatic decision that FDR made; try a little of everything. So I agree with Garcia that it would be “callous” of policymakers to ignore any tool with widespread support among economists. That doesn’t mean they must do everything recommended by economists, but at least they should give the argument serious consideration, if widely held. (Even if I disagree.)"

"My role is different. I’m not a policymaker; I’m inside the academic debate. I see my role as telling the truth as I see it, and let the chips fall where they may. If my arguments convince other academics and pundits to come over to my side, that’s great. If not, then I’ll just be one small input into a vast policymaker apparatus, which is as it should be."

"I’m playing a longer game—hoping that if my view eventually prevails then in the future we will DEMAND that central banks stabilize the expected path of NGDP. My fear is that if we use fiscal policy today, we’ll have to use it in the future. But the best outcome is an expected NGDP growth path where fiscal policy isnever even called for. That’s my long term goal, and it’s why I maintain my “purist” stance. (Which given that I favor employer-side payroll tax cuts, is actually not all that pure.)"

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21821#comments

Of course, it's more mud in the eye for Keynesians that his favored fiscal stimulus is regressive-a tax cut for wealthy employers. It's obvious that he wants to influence the debate for the long term. I too am very interested in this. I still at this point don't take his point. So I'll have to continue to raise questions.

He has two core beliefs it seems:

1). It's preferable that monetary policy handle 100% of demand management. To use fiscal policy in this way is to employ the wrong tool.

2). Monetary policy can in fact handle 100% of demand management.

At this point 2 is just a conjecture. We lack as usual in economics a natural experiment. These come but rarely. This is the beauty of all those GOP Governors and state legislatures rejecting Medicaid funds from the government and dragging their feet on implementation. We will get a real natural experiment between the states that do it properly and those that don't.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/jan-brewer-saves-obamacare-in-arizona.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29

I must say though that Sumner has never provided what I find a persuasive case for 1 either. Why is fiscal policy the wrong tool? I don't buy that we'd rather avoid an increase in public debt for the reason Nick mentioned-we have record low interest rates right now.

We have the history of the huge public debt after WWII that we never consolidated fiscal spending to pay. Yet it didn't strangle us and we paid for it over a period of 25 years through higher GDP and revenue.

As to distortionary taxes, there are two ways of looking at it.

1). The New Keynesians argue that thanks to consumption smoothing any ill effects of future taxes to pay for the stimulus will be largely mitigated.

2). The 'Old Keynesians'-I'm more in this camp-don't think you want to 'pay for' stimulus anyway. The best benefit is from deficit spending rather than 'balanced budget' spending. Again, like after WWII we should see debt cone down as a percentage of GDP-remember as Krugman always says that in the debt to GDP ratio there's a denominator as well.

UPDATE: HT to Tom Brown who pointed out that Nick's comments on the use of the word 'austerity' has become a post. It's word for word what he wrote in the comments section. The question though is that even if we use 'fiscal tightening rather than 'austerity' does our terms of the debate or our understanding change? I'm not clear on that.

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2013/06/austerity-vs-profligacy.html

Krugman Joins the Luddites?

2013-06-14T08:22:00.002-07:00

This piece by Krugman is excellent, actually, as it touches on something that I have thought for a long time. When Joe Stiglitz had a Rolling Stone piece back in 2012 where discussed the idea that the rise of the Internet Age may have displaced workers he was accused of committing the lump of labor fallacy.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-stiglitz-guilty-of-lump-sum-of-labor.html

It's clear that among establishment economists-Neoclassical economists in other words-this is a great economic error. Changes in technology can cause jobs to be lost within an industry or maybe even more than one industry but not the economy as a whole.

Nick Rowe who just recently honored Diary with a comment on the austerity debates spoke out against this as an elementary economics error that Stiglitz had made.

"Stiglitz: "The cities weren’t spared—far from it. As rural incomes fell, farmers had less and less money to buy goods produced in factories. Manufacturers had to lay off workers, which further diminished demand for agricultural produce, driving down prices even more. Before long, this vicious circle affected the entire national economy."

"That is precisely where he goes wrong. That is just really bad macroeconomics. If I put my Keynesian hat on, it's still really bad macroeconomics."

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/nick-rowe-again-checks-in-about.html

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2011/12/the-gizmo-theory-of-the-recession.html l

Actually I believe Nick argued that it's also wrong based on the-Keynesian-national income accounting model.

However, the fact is this. While I respect the work of economists and do my best to understand and analyze their theory, at the end of the day it's clear to me that something has really changed in the economy thanks to the Internet age. Now me going on what I observed in my own personal experience in 2000 and 2001 may seem unscientific to economists. Still I was in the labor market in 2001 and remember it changing more or less over night.

Krugman, a man who knows theory well, now gives voice to my own personal experience. He admits that even if you buy into the rather Panglossian world of the economists, there are still valid problems to raise:

"In 1786, the cloth workers of Leeds, a wool-industry center in northern England, issued a protest against the growing use of “scribbling” machines, which were taking over a task formerly performed by skilled labor. “How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for their families?” asked the petitioners. “And what are they to put their children apprentice to?”

"Those weren’t foolish questions. Mechanization eventually — that is, after a couple of generations — led to a broad rise in British living standards. But it’s far from clear whether typical workers reaped any benefits during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; many workers were clearly hurt. And often the workers hurt most were those who had, with effort, acquired valuable skills — only to find those skills suddenly devalued."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

It's easy to say that displaced workers should learn another trade-today it's get another degree-however, who feeds their families or pays the bills in the mean time?

"So should workers simply be prepared to acquire new skills? The woolworkers of 18th-century Leeds addressed this issue back in 1786: “Who will maintain our families, whilst we undertake the arduous task” of learning a new trade? Also, they asked, what will happen if the new trade, in turn, gets devalued by further technological advance?

"And the modern counterparts of those woolworkers might well ask further, what will happen to us if, like so many students, we go deep into debt to acquire the skills we’re told we need, only to learn that the economy no longer wants those skills?"

Usually the rise of inequality is explained in the inequality of education. Those with higher educations get the good jobs and the worker security those who don't have education lose out. As Krugman notes this is a comforting narrative: all we need is education. Yet it's not so any more. What we see now is that even those with lots of education can find themselves out of work or in jobs well beneath their degree, Then they still owe the college lenders 6 figures.

"Until recently, the conventional wisdom about the effects of technology on workers was, in a way, comforting. Clearly, many workers weren’t sharing fully — or, in many cases, at all — in the benefits of rising productivity; instead, the bulk of the gains were going to a minority of the work force. But this, the story went, was because modern technology was raising the demand for highly educated workers while reducing the demand for less educated workers. And the solution was more education."

"Now, there were always problems with this story. Notably, while it could account for a rising gap in wages between those with college degrees and those without, it couldn’t explain why a small group — the famous “one percent” — was experiencing much bigger gains than highly educated workers in general. Still, there may have been something to this story a decade ago."

"Today, however, a much darker picture of the effects of technology on labor is emerging. In this picture, highly educated workers are as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and devalued, and pushing for more education may create as many problems as it solves."

"I’ve noted before that the nature of rising inequality in America changed around 2000. Until then, it was all about worker versus worker; the distribution of income between labor and capital — between wages and profits, if you like — had been stable for decades. Since then, however, labor’s share of the pie has fallen sharply. As it turns out, this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. A new report from the International Labor Organization points out that the same thing has been happening in many other countries, which is what you’d expect to see if global technological trends were turning against workers."

Here Krugman describes my own experience and my own instinct on the matter-that labor has been hurt in recent years by technology and the Internet. In the 80s and 90s the education theory was much more plausible as the workers being downsized and displaced were mostly blue collar with little education. However, since 2000 we've seen that white collar, educated workers are no longer safe.

I don't know if pointing this out makes one a Luddite, however, if it does then a Luddite I am and so is Krugman.

Krugman ends his piece with a question:

"So what is the answer? If the picture I’ve drawn is at all right, the only way we could have anything resembling a middle-class society — a society in which ordinary citizens have a reasonable assurance of maintaining a decent life as long as they work hard and play by the rules — would be by having a strong social safety net, one that guarantees not just health care but a minimum income, too. And with an ever-rising share of income going to capital rather than labor, that safety net would have to be paid for to an important extent via taxes on profits and/or investment income.

"I can already hear conservatives shouting about the evils of “redistribution.” But what, exactly, would they propose instead?"

If this is Luddite economics how do you explain what we've seen since 2000? Where education doesn't make you more secure and may well leave you deep in debt? Do you deny that the character of inequality has changed since 200o-previously it was competition among labor but now labor as a whole has fallen behind capital?

Polls in Crayon or How You Know GOP Hasn't Learnt Anything

2013-06-14T06:41:00.001-07:00

It strikes me that the GOP's silly dismissal of the poll that shows Gomez down by 12 in Massachusetts is yet another tell that the party has learnt nothing from its defeat. It's still up to the same old tricks. Still passing violently anti female legislation with all these horrible new state laws making women have forced vaginal ultrasounds, unnecessary medical procedures-Ohio even wants them to pay for them out of their own pocket. They are also setting themselves up for another fall in their obsessive opposition to Obamacare which will only get more popular as the law is implemented.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/jan-brewer-saves-obamacare-in-arizona.html

Then there is all the scandal mongering where they have been overreaching as usual with a recent example being Darrell Issa's baseless attempts to claim that Obama had something to do with what's going on at the IRS. Happily the Dems are doing a good job of calling his bluff there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/13/calling-darrell-issas-bluff/

However, for a more mundane example how about the GOP dismissal of a poll in Massachusetts which shows Ed Markey leading Gabrielle Gomez by 12 points?

"The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) on Thursday brushed off a GOP poll showing Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) breaking away in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election, dismissing the survey as amateurish."

"An automated survey from fledgling Republican outlet Harper Polling on Wednesday showed Markey claiming a 12-point lead over Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez. Brock McCleary, a pollster for Harper, wrote succinctly that "Gomez trails because there are more Democrats than Republicans in the state." Harper was launched in December to rival Democratic-leaning robo-pollsters like Public Policy Polling.

"But Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the NRSC, told TPM in an email that he isn't sweating Harper's findings."

"It might as well have been written in crayon," Dayspring said of the poll. "Ed Markey and his Democratic friends in Washington aren't outspending Gabriel Gomez 7:1 because they are confident. Ed Markey isn't begging Bill and Hillary Clinton to save him because he thinks he's doing well."

"The PollTracker Average currently shows Markey with a nearly 9-point lead in the race."

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/nrsc-gop-poll-showing-markey-up-12-might

So they haven't even gotten over poll denial. Just like Romney did, they still seem to think that the facts don't matter. If you like a poll it's true if you don't it's written in crayon-even if it's a Republican firm. Yet, if nothing else surely the GOP learned the folly of this last November?

Apparently not. Meanwhile Nate Silver doesn't even consider the Mass special election a close call or anything like it-'Not really that interesting a race.' He puts Gomez's chances at 10 percent or possibly as low as 5 percent.

https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/status/345276464746336258

Jan Brewer Saves Obamacare in Arizona

2013-06-14T04:41:00.001-07:00

I'm taking some license but I love this title as I know she would most certainly not like it. However, you have to hand it to her-she has done a great job. If anything she proves that it takes a GOPer playing hardball to stop GOP obstruction. She basically told them that she would pass nothing they sent her till they approved the Medicaid expansion.

"The Arizona governor aggressively promoted the Medicaid expansion since taking her surprising public stand earlier this year. Brewer assembled a coalition of health care interests and business groups and worked alongside Democratic legislators in addition to campaigning across the state in service of extending health coverage to hundreds of thousands of poor Arizonans using Obamacare funding."

"Brewer played hardball with Republican legislative leaders in the state to get her way, earning their ire in the process. She followed through on her threat to veto any bill not addressing the Medicaid expansion last month. On Tuesday, she raised the stakes by calling a special session and forcing the temporarily adjourned legislature back to work on Medicaid and the state's budget."

"Republican legislative leaders and conservative lawmakers have bristled at Brewer's embrace of the expansion, a key component of Obamacare, andobjected to her calling a special sessionwhen the legislature was scheduled to reconvene later in the week anyway."

"I'm deeply and profoundly disappointed at the manner in which this came down," said Senate President Andy Biggs, before voting against the measure Thursday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/arizona-medicaid-expansion_n_3430371.html?1371159023

This now brings to 29-plus the District of Columbia-the states that have approved the Medicaid expansion. During their relentless opposition to Obamacare since its inception-and before-the GOP has claimed that the more people hear about ACA the less they like it. More likely it's the more confused they get with all the misinformation out there the less they like it.

However, the more they actually have experience with Obamacare itself, the more they will like it. It's like other government programs. In 20 years no Republican will admit to wanting to gut Obamacare-they'll be trying to save it like they're always trying to save Medicare and Social Security.

The idiotic recalcitrance of state GOP Governors and legislatures is actually giving us the opportunity to what we don't get too much in economics-natural experiments. Effectively GOP opposition will create a two-tiered healthcare system among the states.

States who insist on turning down this free gift to the states will earn the ire of their constituents at some point

"Arizona is among the 29 states and the District of Columbia with chief executives who support expanding Medicaid under Obamacare to anyone who earns less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $15,282 for a single person this year. Majority-Republican legislatures in a number of states have stymied expansions endorsed by their governors, including Florida's Rick Scott (R), Ohio's John Kasich (R), Michigan's Rick Snyder (R), Missouri's Jay Nixon (D) and others."

"This is a big deal because Arizona and Gov. Brewer are very conservative," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a consumer advocacy organization that supports the health care reform law. "It shows that at least for this governor and this state, practicality and common sense has prevailed over ideology and partisanship," he said. "This is a reflection of what we're going to see over time in many other states across the country."

"But about a dozen Republican governors, including Rick Perry of Texas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, remain opposed to broadening the program, citing opposition to Obama's health care law and the expense of the expansion. The Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law last year gave states the right to opt out of its Medicaid provisions."

"Under the law, the federal government will pay the full cost of the Medicaid expansion from 2014 through 2016, after which the federal share will gradually decline until it reaches 90 percent in 2022 and beyond. Currently, the federal government covers an average of 57 percent of Medicaid costs and the states pay the remainder."

Greg Sargent was talking about how the GOP keeps losing it's 'rebranding' message.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/13/the-morning-plum-house-gop-stomps-all-over-republican-rebranding/

The trouble is that the rebranding is just skin deep anyway-of course the House GOP messes even that up. My guess after the election was that they relaly wound't learn anything and certainly not what they need to learn. Seeing them in the first 6 months this new year nothing has changed. They have only two plays.

1. Impede and obstruct

2. Failing that Investigate and impeach

As I said in a post yesterday, their opposition since 2009 has been remarkably unprincipled as they have taken the stimulus funds they refused to vote for, etc. Yet what's even worse is their true principles. They have been showing us that the GOP War on Women is far from being a figment of anyone's imagination, very real. Judging by what they've been doing postelection especially at the state level, it's a wonder any woman ever votes GOP.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-war-on-women-or-case-against.html

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-front-lines-of-gop-war-on-women.html

On Obamacare they are also poised to take a very unpopular position. Conservatives often boast about the GOP Governors and state legislatures, however, opposition to Obamacare which will likely only get more popular with the passing of the next few years after being fully implemented will actually be the way for them to lose all these states when the contrast with the blue states with the Medicaid expansion and which cooperates fully with ACA becomes clear.

The modern GOP has always gotten its red state voters by a certain Faustian bargain. But while they like the GOP's reactionary social agenda as being showcased in the GOP states with abortion, even red states don't like being deprived of government benefits. Oppostion to ACA is how they'll lose even their White, bigoted base.

Marcus Nunes, Salim Furth and the Case for Austerity

2013-06-13T11:37:00.002-07:00

I see that Marcus has given me an actual answer to my point about Market Monetarists as advocating austerity. In the past he has seemed content to just lash out without providing the substantive case.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/marcus-nunes-has-suggestion-for-new.html

He gave me a link to a new piece by Furth who tries to strike back at Senator Whitehouse-who was just brilliant in questioning him in the Senate recently. It's no surprise that Furth is trying to come back from that meeting.

"On Tuesday I testified to the Senate Budget Committee about the effects of the debt on our country’s growth expectations. These tend to be dry, academic affairs, but this one had a bit of drama."

"At one point, Rhode Island’s junior senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, rose to question my numbers and to call me meretricious, which is an SAT word for lying. Turns out the mistake was on his part, though I won’t question his honesty and will instead chalk up his error to an obvious unfamiliarity with economic data.

Senator Whitehouse, to put it simply, badly misread an OECD report."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350528/senator-whitehouses-austerity-mistakes-salim-furth

Well, it's a good thing that for once it was more than a dry, academic affair. After all, these questions are life and death for the people who suffer in a poor economy or when the government implements savage budget cuts because folks like Furth love them so much. It shouldn't be dry so that he's able to spread his austerity agenda unquestioned.

The supposed errors of Senator Whitehouse go back to the same argument that Austerians have been trying to make ever since this budget hearing. That Whitehouse didn't know what he was doing and looked at the wrong data.

"The main reason our numbers did not match was that they pertain to different time periods. We were debating over whether European countries have engaged in fiscal consolidation, and whether their consolidations have been composed of mostly tax increases or spending cuts. The OECD data I used to examine the fiscal adjustments reflect what has already happened since 2007, the actual record. His numbers ignore the spending governments added in 2008 and 2009, and consider data from 2010 to 2015, relying mainly on promises of future spending cuts."

Steve Landsburg made this same arugment in much more colorful language last week-Sumner was impressed by this and feels that Krugman's intellectual honor is at stake and that he must respond to it.

"There are a couple of legitimate reasons why Furth’s and Whitehouse’s numbers don’t agree. The first is that they’re for different time periods. Furth’s are for the years 2007-2012, while Senator Whitehouse’s are for the years 2009-2016. That’s right, 2016. Which brings us to the other reason these numbers differ: Furth’s come from the historical record, while Senator Whitehouse’s come from somebody’s ass."

http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/06/07/lies-and-lying-liars/

Again, Sumner quoted this approvingly while claiming that Krugman's problem is that he is, as Reinhart-Rogoff are always whining, 'remarkably uncivil.'

First of all, Furth and his defenders are quite willfully misleading on the importance of forecasts and projections. They are not illegitimate and certainly don't 'come from somebody's ass.'

Furth's numbers are misleading because he has years 2007,2008, and 2009, which are before austerity started-they were during the time when there was some stimulus used in EU countries. It's like saying that the recession we've had hasn't been so bad by including years 2005-2007 in your GDP and employment data.

What this is really about is that for whatever reason Sumner and Marcus are trying to legitimize austerity. They don't argue for it but they criticize anyone who criticizes austerity and they seem to oppose ending the Republican sequester-or at least they oppose anyone who wants to end it.

Marcus, if you're reading this can you explain why this is?

BTW, not all the Market Monetarists seem to be trying to justify austerity. Nick Rowe doesn't seem to at all as best I can tell. Nick, if you're reading maybe you can elaborate your position.

David Glasner has admitted there's no reason to make the kinds of categorical claims Sumner makes on what he calls the 'Keynesian multiplier.'

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/david-glasner-fiscal-multiplier-could.html

Sumner, for his part, has a piece today that claims that he's not an absolutist about fiscal policy.

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21821#comments

One problem is that maybe it's just coincidental-though I'm skeptical of coincidences-but Sumner's preferred fiscal stimulus is a regressive tax cut. As for the worry about future taxes, that depends on whether we insist on paying for it or not. Ideally, we want deficit spending rather than spending now that's paid for later-though there may well be something to the New Keynesian argument that tax smoothing mitigates the impact of any future higher taxes.

It seems to me that Sumner can relax. We've had no fiscal stimulus in 4 years. Obama and his team were certainly wrong about the chances of going back to Congress for more. If I were Sumner I wouldn't lose any sleep that there could be more fiscal stimulus. All Keynesians are saying is why not get rid of the sequester? Why does Sumner and Marcus have a problem with Keynesians who make this argument?

P.S. I have no doubt that Sumner is playing a longer game. The question though is whether or not I like this game. The continued defense of austerity-the latest being claiming that the U.S. did more-so austerity must work-is making me skeptical.

Americans With Mixed Message, Feelings on Snowden

2013-06-13T10:30:00.002-07:00

This is the first I've commented on this story, partly as I wasn't sure what I felt about this whole saga myself. I think that Josh Marshall is largely right: while for some this is a clear case of good vs. evil-they see Snowden as a hero-for many people its more ambiguous or ambivalent.

A new poll suggests that most Americans feel ambivalent about Snowden:

"A majority of Americans support Edward Snowden's decision to leak classified information on the National Security Agency's surveillance programs but a roughly equal share believe the 29-year-old former government contractor should be prosecuted for his actions, according to a new poll released Thursday.

The latest poll from TIME found that 54 percent of Americans say Snowden did a "good thing" when he leaked the top secret information, compared with 30 percent who believe otherwise."

"But the same poll showed that 53 percent believe Snowden should be prosecuted for the leak, while just 28 percent disagree."

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/poll-majority-says-snowden-did-good-thing-but

If anything I might differ on both items. I'm less convinced that I think what he did was a great thing but I don't know about prosecuting him either Marshall has some great analysis. A lot of readers are upset that he hasn't come out 100% for Snowden and 100% against the NSA.

"Like the OJ Simpson trial almost twenty years ago, there are some public events which not only divide people but divide you against people you didn’t expect to be divided against. As a Republican you may be used to disagreeing with Democrats and vice versa. But with these other kinds of public events you have the shock of realizing you had very different sets of assumptions or even values than people you were used to agreeing with. I’m not sure of how TPM Readers in general feel about the Snowden story. But there’s no question that a lot of readers are surprised and in many cases angry about what I’ve written on the subject."

"That’s fair. It goes with the job. But it’s led me to try to think through what those different assumptions and values are that makes people react to this so differently. I think the key issue is how different people understand their relationship with the state (in this case the US government) and the national political community as a whole and the relationship between the two."

He does a great job of describing the two relationships. While many left-liberals see Manning as a hero and martyr, he doesn't see it this way at all.

"When I first heard about the Manning case - or first understood that Manning was the likely source of the Wilileaks trove - I was frankly surprised that anybody saw him as a whistleblower. Perhaps due to the novelty of the Internet we don’t really have a lot of past analogues for the Manning type. We’re used to spies who give secrets to foreign governments, either because of ideology or money. But mass and fairly indiscriminate public disclosure is sort of a new phenomenon. In any case, back to the issue at hand. Pretty early I realized that to his supporters Manning was a whistleblower who was being persecuted by the government, almost like a political prisoner or prisoner of conscience."

"Again, to me that’s a total nonsequitur.

"I’m a journalist. And back when I did national security reporting I tried to get leaks. So I don’t think leaks are always wrong. I think the government and journalists both have legitimate interests that point in very different directions. In fact, leaks are an absolutely critical safety valve against government wrongdoing and/or excessive secrecy. But when someone in government leaks classified information they’re breaking an oath and committing a crime. That’s a big deal. Sometimes though the importance of what’s leaked justifies the act morally if not legally. That is often the case. And that’s one reason that while I think the laws against disclosure should be in place I also think it’s imprudent for the government to try too hard to enforce them. I do not see how you can’t prosecute Snowden since he’s revealed himself publicly. And leaks should sometimes be investigated. But in most cases it’s not worth snooping on journalists to try to find the culprit. The costs outweigh the gains. Because of that, it’s really impossible to say leaks are good or bad in general. It’s also true that people can leak information for petty or even evil reasons but the leak still serves a positive public purpose. Leaks are complicated. I think we know that. And being morally right doesn’t necessarily get you off the hook for committing a crime."

"Coming from this perspective, it’s hard to see any justification for what Manning did, which is basically downloading everything he could find and giving it to a foreign national (Assange) with the expectation that he’d just dump it into the public. There were a couple clear cases of wrongdoing revealed in his documents. But the vast majority were fairly mundane diplomatic cables, military records and so forth. What on Earth do you think is going to happen to a soldier who almost literally breaks every rule in the book and dumps the country’s email files for the world to see?"

"Soldiers get in huge trouble for going AWOL, even though one individual soldier abandoning his post seldom does much damage to a country or an army. This is a far graver insubordination with incalculably more widespread consequences. And yet, again, some people see him as a hero who should be celebrated rather than tried and punished."

He argues it comes back to how you see government:

"Here is I think the essential difference and where it comes back to what I referred to before - a basic difference in one’s idea about the state and the larger political community. If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor then really anything you can do to put a stick in its spokes is a good thing. Same if you think the conduct of US foreign policy is fundamentally a bad thing. Then opening up its books for the world to see is a good thing simply because it exposes it or damages it. It forces change on any number of levels."

"From that perspective, there’s no really no balancing to be done. All disclosure is good. Either from the perspective of transparency in principle or upending something you believe must be radically changed."

"On the other hand, if you basically identify with the country and the state, then indiscriminate leaks like this are purely destructive. They’re attacks on something you fundamentally believe in, identify with, think is working on your behalf."

"Now, in practice, there are a million shades of grey. You can support your government but see its various shortcomings and even evil things it does. And as I said at the outset, this is where leaks play a critical, though ambiguous role, as a safety valve. But it comes down to this essential thing: is the aim and/or effect of the leak to correct an abuse or simply to blow the whole thing up?"

"In Manning’s case, it’s always seemed pretty clear to me that the latter was the case."

"Let me put my cards on the table. At the end of the day, for all its faults, the US military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does. I think a military force requires a substantial amount of secrecy to operate in any reasonable way. So when someone on the inside breaks those rules, I need to see a really, really good reason. And even then I’m not sure that means you get off scott free. It may just mean you did the right thing."

That's where the American people seem to be: maybe he did the right thing and yet still needs to pay the consequences.

"The Snowden case is less clear to me. At least to date, the revelations seem more surgical. And the public definitely has an interest in knowing just how we’re using surveillance technology and how we’re balancing risks versus privacy. The best critique of my whole position that I can think of is that I think debating the way we balance privacy and security is a good thing and I’m saying I’m against what is arguably the best way to trigger one of those debates."

"But it’s more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it’s clear he’s trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes. The fact that what he’s doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don’t think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he’s not just opening the thing up for debate. He’s taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that’s a betrayal. I think it’s easy to exaggerate how much damage these disclosures cause. But I don’t buy that there are no consequences. And it goes to the point I was making in an earlier post. Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who’ve been elected democratically - for better or worse - to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law?"

"Speaking for myself, the kind of balancing I’m describing is critical. But for a lot of people, again, there’s really nothing to balance since transparency is always better or because change is so necessary that spilling the beans has to be a good thing. That just doesn’t fit with my way of looking at these things. That’s why I’m taking this story as it unfolds. And I’m very skeptical of the notion that what Snowden did is awesome just because leaking state secrets is always a heroic act."

I think Marshall is right that for many left-liberals, they simply see any act that hobbles the state as a good thing in principle. The laws against this kind of disclosure are clear. It seems that for many because they think Snowden is right morally that the law shouldn't apply to him. Do they hold that all disclosure is good including turning U.S. secrets to the Chinese for example?

"If not then what they're saying is that when someone breaks these laws for a reason they agree with they shouldn't be prosecuted. Actually there is a standard in the law of civil disobedience. Where is the line between egregious law breaking and civil disobedience?"

"For now, I guess I'm just going to stay with the undecided camp and see what more we learn as this thing develops."

P.S. The one thing that isn't hard to decide is that we truly are living in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Truth truly is stranger than fiction in this Internet Age.

"The young girl in question goes by the pseudonym "CyFi" to protect her identity and is from California. Around January 2011, bored with waiting for to farm-type games, the young hacker pondered how to get around the long hours required to "grow" something like cabbage."

"Speaking to CNET about an hour before her presentation at DefCon Kids, CyFi said, "It was hard to make progress in the game, because it took so long for things to grow. So I thought, 'Why don't I just change the time?'"

"Many games will detect and block this kind of manipulation, but CyFi said that she discovered some ways around those detections. Disconnecting the phone from Wi-Fi made it harder to stop, as did making incremental clock adjustments. The devices she tested ran both Android and iOS operating systems."

fj has not revealed the specific games with security flaws, so that the game developers have a chance to fix the security breach. But, let's be honest, it's not difficult to guess.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20090085-501465.html

No, it's not hard to guess. (If it is for you, it's Farmville.) It's just amazing what a little girl like CyFi knows. It's just surreal how much the human race continues to learn and do.

Conneticut Passed Homeless Bill of Rights

2013-06-13T08:49:00.001-07:00

With the many draconian anti abortion laws being passed by GOPers at the state level-they want it at the federal level too, the GOP House just passed a 20 week limit on abortions-down from the current 24-but it's thankfully DOA in the Senate it's good to see that one state is doing something other than passing reactionary and legally very questionable new bills. For the astonishing attack of the GOP on women see here.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-war-on-women-or-case-against.html

Connecticut is a state going the other way. They've just passed a 'homeless person's bill of rights' which disallows discrimination against someone who is homeless.

"Connecticut is on the cusp of enacting a major new law to protect people who are homeless from discrimination."

"Last week, Connecticut lawmakers passed the “Homeless Person’s Bill Of Rights” at the literal 11th hour — 11:30pm on June 5th, one half hour before the legislative session ended. The bill, SB 896, a landmark piece of legislation to protect homeless individuals’ rights, adds homeless people as a protected class who can’t be discriminated against in employment, housing, or public accommodations. It also includes protections for homeless people to move freely in public spaces, such as parks and sidewalks, without being singled out for harassment by law enforcement officers."

"Here are the bill’s seven protections:

(1) Move freely in public spaces, including on public sidewalks, in public parks, on public transportation and in public buildings without harassment or intimidation from law enforcement officers in the same manner as other persons;

(2) Have equal opportunities for employment;

(3) Receive emergency medical care;

(4) Register to vote and to vote;

(5) Have personal information protected;

(6) Have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her personal property; and

(7) Receive equal treatment by state and municipal agencies.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/12/2139181/connecticut-homeless/

Actually, we could use something like this everywhere. Just last week I ran into what clearly is discrimination against someone with no car-my car was repo'd in 2011.. I had an interview last week for a morning job-to go with my evening job- and I got a little delayed. I called in and let someone know and said I'd be in soon. However, he called back and said it was too late-even though I was pretty close as it turns out-I didn't realize it at the time.

I explained that it was my first time out and I got a bit lost. As it turns out I shouldn't have mentioned this but I did tell him I was on the bus. Right away he seized on this as why I may not be right for the job, he seemed to feel that I couldn't therefore be counted on to get to work on time every morning with no car. Finally he said I should call him back when I get my car going He said 'call me next week.' I called him this week and said I had my car going-of course I have no car-but in principle employers shouldn't be able to discriminate against not having a car anyway. Many of us don't these days and if you're able to get there on time why should an employer just decide he doesn't trust people without cars?

Anyways, I start this coming Monday so I may soon have two part time jobs which amounts to one full time. So I may have to for the time being bulk up more on posting on weekends and maybe won't have time for as many posts during the week as I like to.

My goal will be for 3 posts during the week and more on Saturday and Sunday. No doubt, that's an ambitious goal but that's the goal. Then a lot more on weekends. We'll see. One way or the other you can count on Diary of a Republican Hater being a voice out there you can rely on.

Congratulations to Connecticut. It's amazing how deep the blue-red state divide is these days. In red states they are forcing women to have ultrasounds against their will and some like Ohio plan to make them pay for them an unnecessary medical procedures. In Connecticut, the civil rights of the homeless are being recognized.

The War on Women or the Case Against Gabriel Gomez

2013-06-13T08:15:00.002-07:00

No doubt to many I may seem a partisan hack. That's what the leftists at Firedoglake or Naked Capitalism think as does Sumner and his Market Monetarists on the Right. I'm an Obama man and for the most part I'm not interested in going after him. I don't think he's above criticism but I mostly feel like this is such a toxic environment that even legitimate criticisms of him have to be put in context. He faces such a determined and unprincipled opposition that I just feel like for the most part even legitimate criticisms mostly just serve the ends of this unprincipled opposition rather than ideally, some constructive criticism of Obama. I guess I see most of it as destructive even if the specific criticism has merit.

For just how destructive the GOP opposition is check out the New New Deal by Micheal Grunwald. I wrote about his great book yesterday. This book also makes the point against Obama's vociferous leftist critiques that in point of fact his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) actually is by far the largest fiscal stimulus designed for that purpose-as opposed to WWII-in our Nation's history.

I know, it does seem like FDR did a lot between the CCC and the PWA, etc. However, as a total percentage of GDP the net of what he did didn't come to the level of pure fiscal stimulus of the ARRA. In fact, FDR was no Keynesian and had actually run under an austerity plaform-balancing the budget. He actually took his campaign promsies much less seriously than Obama-thankfully-as once in office he did spend money when the economy clearly needed it. Even so, he believed that any spending should be paid for in higher taxes at some point-he was opposed to deficit spending.

As to Obama's Right wing opponents they have no shame-as opposed to his Left wing opponents who merely have no perspective.

The GOP celebrated after the stimulus was passed too-why? Because not a single GOPer voted for it. From pgs. 246-57

"For Republicans, the main political lesson the Recovery Act was the upside of resistance to Obama. For the first time in ages, their base was fired up. And independent voters seemed to be responding to the politics of austerity."

"Once we voted no, we started hearing cheers, and we were like, 'Hey, this is great! Life just got better!'" Tom Cole says. "We didn't have a convincing message yet. We were just against Obama. But we stood up, and we didn't get overrun."

Pg. 241 Arlen Specter:

"A lot of Republicans thought the stimulus was necessary," Specter says:"They just wanted it to pass without their fingerprints.I was all so partisan. You had the sentiment: 'We're going to break Obama.' "
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/nihilist-gop-still-looking-for-agenda.html

Of course, even worse than the unprincipled nature of their opposition-Obama had the opposite attitude. His premise was that what's good for the country and the at the time cratering economy would be good electorally at least in the long run-are their actual GOP principles. The GOP War on Women is very real and far from ending or slowing down is intensifying across the country. Each GOP run state is in competition to see who can come up with the most mean spiritedly draconian anti abortion measures.

North Dakota GOP Governor,Jack Darlymple would seem to be in the lead here.

"Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed legislation Tuesday that that would make North Dakota the nation’s most restrictive state on abortion rights, banning the procedure if a fetal heartbeat can be detected – something that can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy."

"The Republican governor also signed into law another measure that would makes North Dakota the first to ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome, and a measure that requires a doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-front-lines-of-gop-war-on-women.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29

Now you might ask aren't these measures illegal-what about Roe v. Wade? Well in many states the GOPers have passed laws that aren't legal. Darlymple understands that what he did is legally questionable:

"North Dakota's governor positioned the oil-rich state Tuesday as a primary battleground in the decades-old fight over abortion rights, signing into law the nation's toughest restriction on the procedure and urging lawmakers to set aside cash for an inevitable legal challenge."

"Minutes after Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed three anti-abortion measures – one banning them when a heartbeat can be detected, which is as early as six weeks into a pregnancy – unsolicited donations began pouring into the state's lone abortion clinic to help opponents prove the new laws are unconstitutional."

"Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade," Dalrymple said in a statement, referring to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion up to until a fetus is considered viable – usually at 22 to 24 weeks

There's tax dollars at work, Women in North Dakota are not only having their basic civil liberties violated but are paying for the legal defense of this violation. This from the same party that threw a party for voting against ARRA in 2009.

For those of you who are scandalized by me saying that I hate Republicans,, why don't you open up your objections right here? Tell me why I shouldn't hate people who do things like this? You sing their praises only after you acknowledge what they believe in. Like I said that the party is entirely unprincipled is bad enough. However, the principles of this party are the worst of it.

However, Darlymple may not even win out among the most violently reactionary GOPer in the country. In Iowa the Governor there wants women to get his personal permission to have any abortion procedure. However, the Who's the Most Reactionary of Them All prize may go to the Wisconsin GOP.

Yesterday they passed a GOP favorite-the forced ultrasound. However, the violence with which they cut off debate yesterday suggests the violence of their assault on the women of their state an the GOP's assault on the women of America.

"The Wisconsin State Senate passed a controversial abortion measure this morning after Republican leaders abruptly called for and forced a vote after only two Senators had a chance to speak their minds on the issue."

"Yesterday Senate Democrats blocked a final vote on SB 206 by objecting to suspending the rules to permit the third reading of the bill. By Senate rules that meant the vote had to be taken the next day. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) called the lawmakers back in session at 8 o’clock this morning."

"Over the loud objections of Democratic senators standing to be recognized, Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) pounded his gavel over and over and screamed at them to sit down and not interrupt the roll call vote."

"Sen. Fred Risser (D-Madison), the longest-serving state legislator in the nation, called this morning’s actions by the Republicans the worst abuse of power he has experienced in his more than 50 years as a legislator."

http://www.progressive.org/wisconsin-gop-rams-through-anit-abortion-bill

And remember how they rammed through the anti collective bargaining law in 2011!

“The Republican majority is afraid.” Risser said. “They were afraid that they would lose some of their own members who were less than enthusiastic about the measure. They were afraid that they were losing the debate publicly so they had to ram the bill though so the public wouldn’t find out what they are really up to and who they are beholden to. They’re afraid of what’s going to happen in the next election, and they should be afraid.”

"After the vote this morning, a friend who I shall refer to as Princess School Dropout posed the question, "Who swappedThe Handmaid's Tale for Atlas Shrugged in the Republicans' playbook?" Indeed, it seems the Wisconsin GOP's ideological wires have been crossed, shorting out the libertarian strand in favor of the authoritarian."

That's a good point by Princess School Dropout. Here's my theory: there is no tension between the allegedly 'libertarian' and 'authoritarian' sides. They are both two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

Ohio, however may have Wisconsin beat as they not only force women to have unnecessary medical procedures but to pay for them.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/13/2148541/ohio-republicans-omnibus-abortion-bill/

This brings us to the reason to oppose Gabriel Gomez against Ed Markey. We can debate the various positions of the candidates. The fact that Gomez is Hispanic and has an inspiring personal story may make him seem more attractive for some Mass liberals who buy the argument that we don't want one party rule.

When you look at Mr. Gomez's positions he's not so different than other GOPers. However, it's not even about his personal positions. He's a Republican. That's enough cause to vote against him. He's part of this GOP machine in Washington that will help Mitch McConnell intensify his filibuster everything 'agenda.' Tom Cole admitted they had no convincing message back in 2009. Things sure have changed...

So I oppose Gomez as if he's Jack Darlymple or Mitch McConnell; what I decidedly do not do, is consider him individually. Some polls suggest it's less close than others do. Lets hope 'some polls' are right.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/gop-poll-shows-markey-up-by-12-in?ref=fpb

If you want to in any way slow down this assault on women's reproductive rights-and their health; state GOPers are shutting down health clinics that offer abortion as just one among many health services-you have to vote against GOPers, period. Beating up Obama over NSA sure snit going to help with this.

This is why I do largely say My President right or wrong. My party right or wrong. Or as Thaddeus Stevens put it: Principles indeed! Betray your principles and stand with your party!

Put another way, there are two basic reasons I won't vote even for a 'reasonable Republican.'

1). There aren't any

2). Even if they were any, a vote for them is not for them but for forced ultrasounds and taxpayer money going to lawsuits defending the right of the government to take away women's civil liberties and civil rights. Also it's a vote for Mitch McConnell's filibuster.

Nihilist GOP Still Looking for an Agenda After All These Years

2013-06-12T13:55:00.001-07:00

The GOP 'agenda' has never been about anything more than attacking the Preisdent in 5 years. Many-like Greg Sargent-have spoken of the party's policy nihilism. What's pretty sobering is when you look back on what GOP Congressman Tom Cole was saying in early 2009 just after the stimulus was passed-without a GOP vote in the House and just 3 in the Senate. From Micheal Grunwald's The New New Deal:

The GOP celebrated after the stimulus was passed too-why? Because not a single GOPer voted for it. From pgs. 246-57

"For Republicans, the main political lesson the Recovery Act was the upside of resistance to Obama. For the first time in ages, their base was fired up. And independent voters seemed to be responding to the politics of austerity."

"Once we voted no, we started hearing cheers, and we were like, 'Hey, this is great! Life just got better!'" Tom Cole says. "We didn't have a convincing message yet. We were just against Obama. But we stood up, and we didn't get overrun."

Pg. 241 Arlen Specter:

"A lot of Republicans thought the stimulus was necessary," Specter says:"They just wanted it to pass without their fingerprints.I was all so partisan. You had the sentiment: 'We're going to break Obama.' "

It was the ultimate game of 'heads I win, tails you lose.' Mtich McConnell set new records for cynicism frankly telling his members that after all, there was no downside to voting no. After all, if the stimulus failed then it was on Obama and the Dems. If it worked, then most Congress critters would be reelected on the better economy whether they voted for it or not.

So you had all those GOP Governors against Obama while they won re-election thanks to the stimulus funds that helped their states, and phonies like Paul Ryan opposing it every step of the way then quietly applying for them once it passed.

The GOP 'agenda' hasn't moved forward one yard since Cole's gloating words of 2009. They still don't have a convincing message. Why would they bother to get one now?

On the Front Lines of the GOP War on Women

2013-06-12T13:33:00.002-07:00

Republicans have tried to push back on this narrative for the last few years. One not very effective strategy during the election was for Romney to whine that the Democrats shouldn't be discussing crazy comments by the likes of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock about 'real rape' and how rape victims almost never get pregnant do to some natural ways for her body to 'shut it down' that is news to the medical world.

They insisted, in any case, that Akin and Mourdock spoke 'inelegantly' and made ill considered comments that shouldn't be used to tar the entire party. However, we have another GOPer making 'inelegant' remarks about rape and abortion-he too believes that raped women don't get pregnant:

"Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) claimed Wednesday that the rate of pregnancy from rape is "very low" during a House Judiciary Committee mark-up of his legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

"The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said, as quoted by theWashington Post."

"When you make that exception, there's usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours," he said. "And in this case, that's impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that’s what completely negates and vitiates the purpose of such an amendment."

"The Arizonan was referring to an amendment by Democrats to add an exception for pregnancies that result from rape and incest. The GOP-led panel rejected that amendment."

"Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) called Franks' remark "astonishing" and lacking in scientific basis."

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/gop-congressman-pregnancy-rate-from-rape-is-very?ref=fpb

This underscores that while Akin and Mourdock were hung out to dry by the GOP leadership last year, in fact they were articulating the party's vision about women-birth control, abortion, rape-none of it was 'misspeaking.'

Nor are these boneheaded comments to be taken as not indicative of the party's genuine policies. Indeed, what we've seen in 2013 is far from the GOP being in any way chastened, they've intensified the war on women showing that the claim is not neither wrong nor overstated.

Right now the House stands ready to pass the '20 week abortion ban.'

"The GOP-led House of Representatives is set to vote next week on legislation outlawing abortions later than 20 weeks into pregnancy after Republicans passed it out of committee Wednesday by a vote of 20-12."

"The Judiciary Committee marked up the bill by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), an ardent foe of abortion rights, and approved it. The current threshold provided by the Supreme Court for a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy is 24 weeks."

"A version of the legislation last year applied the 20-week abortion ban only to the District of Columbia. This year Republicans are invoking the case of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell — the Philadelphia abortion doctor who was convicted last month of first-degree murders of three babies born alive — to argue for a nationwide ban on late-term abortion."

“The terrifying facts uncovered during the course of the trial of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, and successive reports of similar atrocities committed across the country, remind us how an atmosphere of insensitivity can lead to horrific brutality,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-TX). “Delivered or not, babies are babies, and they can feel pain at least by 20 weeks. It is time to welcome young children who can feel pain into the human family. And this bill, at last, will do just that.”

"Franks likened late-term abortion to a human rights issue on the scale of slavery and genocide."

"The bill is expected to pass the House and then die in the Democratic-led Senate, while winning the praise of anti-abortion voters whom Republicans rely on and incurring the wrath of reproductive rights advocates. While the Republican Party’s ongoing focus on curtailing legal abortion will energize social conservatives, it’s also likely to cost the party with women voters, who already prefer Democrats by considerable margins."

“The idea that the Republican men on this committee think they can tell the women of America they have to carry to term the product of a rape is outrageous,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

"Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), echoing his Democratic colleagues’ arguments against the legislation, called it “misguided, cruel and unconstitutional.”

"There is not conclusive scientific evidence that fetuses can feel pain at 24 weeks of gestation. Just 1.4 percent of abortions involve fetuses older than 20 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — many of which are to protect the mother’s life or health."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/house-republicans-20-week-abortion-ban.php?ref=fpb

At the very least this is only theatrics as the GOP House has no ability to see any of its wild eyed misogynistic laws actually take effect as long as they have just one House in Congress and the White House is safely in Democratic hands.

At the state level, where GOPers hold real power they have passed some of the most reactionary anti abortion bills in memory since Roe v. Wade has become law. In Wisconsin, GOP Governor Scott Walker wants to sign forced vaginal ultrasounds into law for women considering abortion.

"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has thrown his support behind an anti-abortion measure that’s currently moving through the state legislature, saying he will sign the bill into law if it makes it to his desk. SB 206would require women to undergo an ultrasound before getting an abortion — which would mandate an invasive transvaginal probe for some of the women who seek early abortions in their first trimester — and force one of the state’s last abortion clinics to close its doors."

"I don’t have any problem with ultrasound,” Walker told reporters on Tuesday in Milwaukee. “I think most people think ultrasounds are just fine.”

"Forced ultrasound bills mandate a medically unnecessary procedure that would otherwise be left up to the discretion of a woman and her doctor. Medical experts, including the largest national group representing thousands of OB-GYNs across the country, are opposed to this type of legislation because they say it interferes with their work and compromises their relationships with patients. “All of a sudden, the Senate is full of doctors,” Wisconsin Sen. Tim Cullen (D) said in reference to SB 206′s advancement.

"And, even though the lawmakers who push for mandatory ultrasound measures sometimesdeny it, these laws also require many women to undergo an invasive transvaginal probe. Before 12 weeks of pregnancy, a transvaginal ultrasound is the only way to detect a clear image— and, since the vast majority of women in the United States seek abortion services in their first trimester, those women must submit to an invasive probe in order to comply with these burdensome laws. Over the past year, reproductive rights advocates have repeatedly decried transvaginal ultrasound laws as “state sponsored rape.”

"SB 206 doesn’t stop there. The proposed legislation also includes a provision that would imposeadditional restrictions on abortion clinics, which would ultimately force a Planned Parenthood clinic to shut down. Since there are only four health clinics in the entire state of Wisconsin that currently provide abortion care, SB 206 could end up severely limiting women’s reproductive access."

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/12/2141521/scott-walker-abortion-clinics-ultrasound/

Yes, it's good to know that Governor Walker has 'no problem' with forced ultrasounds. How many actual female persons feel the same way? I haven't heard any. If there were any the GOPers would be showcasing them. The trouble is that no one but GOP men seem to 'not have a problem' with forced ultrasound-you like how he leaves out the forced nature of these ultra sounds he wants.

Similar laws are being pushed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and have been passed in Mississippi. In Iowa, there's a bill that would make every abortion performed in the state up to the discretion of the GOP Governor.

If only I were joking. Meanwhile, some of these GOP laws go so far you wonder if they pass constitutional mustard.

Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed legislation Tuesday that that would make North Dakota the nation’s most restrictive state on abortion rights, banning the procedure if a fetal heartbeat can be detected – something that can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

The Republican governor also signed into law another measure that would makes North Dakota the first to ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome, and a measure that requires a doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges.

http://www.1800politics.com/gop-governor-signs-harsh-anti-abortion-measure/

Darlymple goes into this fully aware that it may well be declared unconstitutional:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/north-dakota-abortion-ban_n_2956552.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

I'm not fond of the GOP economic message as anyone who's read a post or two must know. However, it's things like this that makes it simply impossible for me to ever consider voting for anyone in this party in a million year. If you want to know 'how I can hate anyone' I'd say look at people who would like to force women to carry the rapist's baby to term or go to prison.That there's a gender gap is not surprising. What's surprising is how small it actually is.

You may not think of 'shock jock' Howard Stern as a political philosopher but he got it right years ago when he said that any woman who votes for this party should just mail her uterus to the GOP.

Sumner: Macro is No Place for Finance

2013-06-11T09:08:00.001-07:00

I will say this in Sumner's favor. He writes a lot. He's engaged. Now you may think he's wrong or don't like him-I know many Keynesians including a number of my readers don't .However, you got to give him that. He's also nothing if he's not shrewd. He's very interested that the right lessons be learned from this crisis.

It's been my sense that Krugman has been writing less lately-he has been every since last Summer. I don't know what the reason for that is-I've wondered if his wife, Robin Wells has anything to do with it-'Paul there is more to life than blogging'-but I don't know that. Actually she's an economist too and they write textbooks together so who knows? The conservatives have a theory that she's made him more liberal; they account for him being considerably more liberal today than in the 90s with Ms. Wells. Blaming the wife is a old game going back to Lennon.

No doubt Krugman is more liberal now-in the 90s as Larry Summner said he criticised the more conservative Clinton Administration from the Right while criticizing Obama from the Left. If she is responsible for him being a more 'partisan liberal Democrat' then she has my gratitude. However, not so if she is responsible for him blogging less. He often lately has written things like 'sorry I won't be blogging much in the next few days, real life is intruding.' Yet, what is 'real life' to the future of the nation's economy and society! What right does he have to a life?! Ok, I'm joking.

Still, this is a war and a big part of it is writing the textbooks. Krugman and his wife do write the textbooks, which is good. However, what are the history books going to say about this crisis. It seems to me that Sumner has thought a lot about this. I have seen some hints that Krugman gets that the needs to fight back directly with Sumner's Market Monetarists and I applaud this.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/some-differences-between-krugman-and.html

Today, Sumner is now turning his sights on a gloss of the MMTer-that a big weakness if not the biggest of 'modern macro'-post-Lucas macro-is that it keeps out finance. Sumner makes the point that to his mind this is a very good thing.

"I saw this in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, under recommended reading:

Claudio Borio asks “The Financial Cycle and Macroeconomics: What Have We Learnt?” “The financial crisis that engulfed mature economies in the late 2000s has Learnt?” “The financial crisis that engulfed mature economies in the late 2000s has prompted much soul searching. Economists are now trying hard to incorporate financial factors into standard macroeconomic models. However, the prevailing, in fact almost exclusive, strategy is a conservative one. It is to graft additional so-called financial “frictions” on otherwise fully well behaved equilibrium macroeconomic models . . . The main thesis is that macroeconomics without the financial cycle is like Hamlet without the Prince. In the environment that has prevailed for at least three decades now, just as in the one that prevailed in the pre-WW2 years, it is simply not possible to understand business fluctuations and their policy challenges without understanding the financial cycle.” Bank of International Setttlements, Working Paper #395, December 2012. At http://www.bis.org/publ/work395.pdf.

"First a bit of history. In the 1920s the standard view among elite macroeconomists was that the business cycle was a “dance of the dollar,” to use Irving Fisher’s metaphor. Then came the 1930s, and monetary policy got pushed to the sidelines. This oversight eventually led to a series of mistakes which culminated in the Great Inflation. Only then was money rediscovered, and AD brought back under control."

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21705

See how he's always very sensitive to any new econ trends that he doesn't like? This is a preemptive strike against finance coming back into finance. His history is also interesting in what it doesn't say. He believes that they were right in the 20s, that the business cycle is 'the dance of the dollar.' The dance of the dollar is not discredited because of 1929 according to him anymore than it is discredited for 2008.

Still what we can say is that the two biggest crises in our history came on the heels of errors where the business cycle was explained by the dance of the dollar.

Krugman has had his differences wit the MMTers. Yesterday I wrote a post where I argue that Randal Wrey was a little too optimistic of where Krugman stands on MMT.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/is-krugman-turning-mmt-sumner-vs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29

On the other hand Krugman does follow the MMT point that the flaw in the macro models is their omission of finance. Steve Keen wrote a very dismissive piece to a paper Krugman wrote with Gauti Egertsson back in 2010 but at least he acknowledges that finance should be in future models. Sumner knowing this, and knowing Krugman's clout, is trying to kill the baby in the crib so to speak.

For Keen's rough critique see here

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/03/04/%E2%80%9Clike-a-dog-walking-on-its-hind-legs%E2%80%9D-krugman%E2%80%99s-minsky-model/

Sumner is on a mission-a quixotic mission at that:

I’m begging the economics profession to avoid another long and fruitless detour into non-monetary theories of the business cycle, although even as I type these words I know I will fail. The average reader will be far more impressed by Brad DeLong’s long and thoughtful post, than this puny post.

There is nothing in the slightest way mysterious about the current recession. If in 2007 you told the world’s elite macroeconomists what the path of NGDP would look like over the next 6 years, most of them would have predicted a deep recession and slow recovery in the US, and a deep recession, slow recovery, and then double-dip recession in the eurozone. And that’s exactly what happened. Adding finance won’t improve that story one iota.

He argues as he always does that 'there's no record of a CB trying to inflate and failing.' What he never really tells you is how many times have CBs actually tried to inflate and succeeded? The usual examples are the Wiemar Republic's hyperinflation, FDR's gold devaluation and Zimbabwe.

Yet, MMT also disputes that 'hyperinflation' is simply the result of CB that wanted high inflation and 'went too far.'

If you look at these three examples they are all highly unusual and scarcely repeatable events. What led to Germany's post WWI hyperinflation wasn't the design of the CB but rather of the huge World War I debt that Keynes had warned about.

What happened in 1933 is barely repeatable either. Obama isn't going to devalue the dollar-there'd be no reason for that, this was done as a way to deal with the harm the gold standard was inflicting, to get around the cross of gold.

The MMT idea that money printing doesn't cause hyperinflation but is rather a dependent effect of it then has something to recommend it. Sumner believes that explaining the business cycle as anything but the dance of dollars has been discredited by the Great Inflation. If this is true, why isn't the dance of dollars theory doubly discredited thanks to the Great Depression and today's Lesser Depression?

Is Krugman Turning MMT? Sumner vs. Randall Wray

2013-06-10T11:34:00.003-07:00

Before we even start, I have to say that my best, most educated guess is no, as much as I hate to agree with Sumner.

"As you know, Paul Krugman has been inching inexorably toward MMT. The last stumbling block has been those Vigilantes. Krugman and Brad DeLong have argued that we don’t need to worry about them, now, in the depths of a liquidity trap. And now that we know that the magic 90% debt ratio of Rogoff and Reinhart was a figment of their poor empirical work, Krugman knows that there’s no trade-off of rising debt for low economic growth."

"The sticking point has been “crowding out”—the idea that once we get beyond the liquidity trap and return to a more “normal” ISLM world, government deficits will push up interest rates. And that will then reduce private investment, which tends to lower economic growth. Higher interest rates plus lower growth means the government’s deficit and debt ratios grow beyond “sustainable” levels."

http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/05/06/by-jove-hes-got-it-krugman-finally-adopts-mmt-and-so-does-summers/

In addition, Wray thinks that Larry Summers is coming around too!! Again, I tend to doubt it. I would say that Krugman has known that there is 'no magic at 90% debt levels' for a long time. The recent errors by R-R have validated him on this but he's been making this pont for 3 years. However, would Krugman agree with this?

"But as I explained last week, the short term rate is completely within the control of the Fed. See here: http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/05/01/reconciling-the-liquidity-trap-with-mmt-can-delong-and-krugman-do-the-full-monty-with-deficit-owls/. Long term rates depend on the state of liquidity preference plus expectations of future Fed policy. But in any case, the Vigilantes cannot force Treasury to issue long term debt. It can stick to the short end of the maturity structure and then pay whatever rate the Fed targets."

"The real danger is not that the Vigilantes go all vigilant on Uncle Sam, but rather that the Fed decides to do a Volcker (raise the overnight rate to 20%). Congress can stop that by legislating that the Fed cannot act like a Vigilante. Or, alternatively, Treasury can stay on the short end. Both of these are policy choices, completely outside the influence of Vigilantes."

Now I'll be honest and say I'm not entirely sure who's right here though what I like is that in Wray's model, we don't have a Volcker disinflation. To be sure, even if Wray's right, it would take some radical changes in Congress and the Fed to bring us to conducting Fed policy this way.

Still, I'd be shocked if Krugman now believes this. What it amounts to is that Krugman, Delong, Summers and New Keynesians in general believe that fiscal policy ought to be countercylical. We should have high deficits and higher debt levels right now however, when we're in the boom part of the business cycle we should make sure deficits come down then.

Here is Sumner's post. I think he's right about this one. Krugman only approves of deficits during a bad downturn.

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21550

Some Differences Between Krugman and Delong

2013-06-10T10:49:00.002-07:00

"Krugman says he's surprised to strongly disagree here with Delong on a few points:

But here’s where I think Brad is getting something wrong now: when he says that

It is unfair for Keynesians to be making fun of the people who call for austerity by saying “confidence fairy” when they are making similar expectational-shift arguments themselves.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/the-confidence-fairy-the-expectations-imp-and-the-rate-hike-obsession/

It's surprising that Delong would waste time defending the confidence theory. The big trouble of course is that the confidence fairy has been demonstrably a false worry, with record low interest rates for all countries who can print their own currency. I don't get why that isn't worth laughing at.

Krugman also differs with Delong's taking the concerns about raising interest rates to damp down on booms seriously:

"One other thing: Brad takes fairly seriously the calls for higher interest rates to avoid bubbles, or something, essentially because low rates create moral hazard for the financial sector. Can we say that those moral hazard problems would have to be incredibly severe to justify contractionary monetary policy in a depressed economy?"

"And I can’t help noticing that the people now demanding that we raise rates to curb hypothetical bubbles are the same people who, a while back, were demanding that we raise rates to head off inflation. (I often make fun of Allan Meltzer for his inflation warnings, but had forgotten that Feldstein was doing the same thing at the same time). In other words, I don’t think we should ignore the evidence that some people always want higher rates, and just keep changing the justification."

Here I think Delong may mean that we should have higher interests during booms which is at least a plausible theory-a lot of people share it-as long as he doesn't think we're in anything like a 'boom' now.

Some of the Post Keynesians like Randall Wray argue for keeping rates low always-and basically devolving the Fed's duties into the Treasury.

http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/05/06/by-jove-hes-got-it-krugman-finally-adopts-mmt-and-so-does-summers/

Interestingly, Wray thinks that Krugman is 'inching inexorably towards MMT.' Sumner says he's going to 'help' Krugman by arguing that he has done no such thing.

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21550

Interesting as both mean to praise Krugman. On the other had, Sumner claims that Steve Landsburg has a 'serious' criticism of Krugman that he needs to respond to.

Speaking of Krugman, he really needs to address this criticism by Steven Landsburg, linked to by Greg Mankiw. If he doesn’t, look for people like Rogoff to say “I told you so.”

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21736

Reading Landsburg, I'm not as impressed as Sumner is. Landsburg clearly has a bee up his bonnet due to the surgical way that Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse took apart the Heritage Foundation's Salim Furth's claim that the EU had done less austerity than the U.S. This is what Landsburg's criticism amounts to:

http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/06/07/lies-and-lying-liars/

Whoa! Comes from somebody's ass?!! I thought Sumner said this validates R-R who had called Krugman 'remarkably uncivil.' I guess Landsburg is showing us that only the Right wing guys are civil.

Actually what this outburst shows is that this testimony in Congress really hit a nerve-the strong way that Whitehouse questioned Furth. The Democrats are getting it. Krugman always worries that economic knowledge never makes it to the policymakers. Clearly Whitehouse has done his homework and that explains the outburst of both Landsburg and Sumner. Of course, Sumner can claim he had no outburst he was just linking to Landsburg who had the outburst.

But clearly he's not happy as Krugman and Whinehouse have clearly hit him where he lives as well. He's been talking up this angle lately: the U.S. has done the austerity. The EU has been profligate.

http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/krugman-takes-on-sumner-austerity-myth.html

I've been arguing Krugman should engage Sumner and push back for a while. This was a case where he really nailed it. In Zizek's terms, the 'purloined letter reached it's intended destination' this time.

What really is driving Sumner and friends crazy this time is that Congressmen actually picked this up and got it right.

P.S. The trouble with Furth's number is that it lumps in 2007-09 when there was EU stimulus and the last 4 years where they got out too soon: