POLUEIDES

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:59:00 -0400

I have neglected this poor blog for some time. It began as a blog for a course I was teaching at Denison University several years ago. Then it became something else. Then I began teaching at Marymount Manhattan College and blogged here. Now I won't be blogging for awhile. I've left NYC and am working in Research & Development at Griffin Technology in Nashville. Very fun--getting to make things and influence the future of digital media rather than just studying it!

Testing Dashblog

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 7 May 2005 20:02:00 -0400

Maybe I'll get back to this neglected blog!

Boiiiiiiiiing!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 22:18:00 -0500

Whoa, just found this when I went to do a google search. MS search launches tomorrow (Thursday)—talk about stolen thunder!

You probably never notice the large number that appears in tiny type at the bottom of the Google home page, but I do. It's a measure of how many pages we have in our index and gives an indication of how broadly we search to find the information you're looking for. Today that number nearly doubled to more than 8 billion pages.... The documents in Google's index are in dozens of file types from HTML to PDF, including PowerPoint, Flash, PostScript and JavaScript. Together these pages represent a good chunk of the world's information.

[Google blog]

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 04:50:00 -0500

This is a Decision Tree I Can Live By!

Helpful guide for the ethical, but not duped, digital music lover:

Should I Rip This?:
This flow chart might come in handy the next time you face that insanely complex modern ehtical dilemma: whether to rip a CD or not. (Or, you can just look for a little (cc) Some Rights Reserved and skip all this fuss.)
(Via Serendipity.)

(Via [reblog] Eyebeam reBlog.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 04:17:00 -0500

Weblogg-ed is now Podcasting

I got props from Weblogg-ed, and for giving advice on podcasting no less! If you haven't checked out this blog before, you should. Add it's feed to your aggregator—it is THE blog on pedagogy and blogs, and other new media. Oh, and you might just want to add its feedburner feed to your podcasting aggregator.

The Power of Creating Content: "This Podcasting thing has really piqued my interest for now, especially since I was actually able to figure out how to do one without too much sweat. I even got the RSS feed for any future Podcasts up and running via FeedBurner thanks to an e-mail from Dave Gilbert (who by the way has a class blog up and running...check out the "Study Guide Blogs" in the right hand column.) This just keeps on getting more and more fun.
"Every tool should have a way to publish."
So I've started listening to Podcasts as a part of my multitasking life, and there is some good stuff out there. (Adam Curry's presentation at Bloggercon III is downloading as I write this.) And as today's EnGadget Podcast was playing this morning, one of the hosts said "Every tool should have a way to publish." I basically stopped in my tracks. Now how cool would that be? Publish right to your blog or to a classroom site with one click in Word or Powerpoint or Photoshop. Or send the latest movie of your kid winning a trophy in his first BMX race to Grandma via a click to RSS feed in iMovie. Or...
And the best part of this all is that this content creation stuff just keeps getting easier to do. I think I babbled on about this in my Podcast yesterday, but the potential of the read/write Web is just going to keep growing as the barriers to access keep getting lower and lower. And while I've been writing and thinking and talking a lot about the whole digital natives and immigrants thing lately, what I'm realizing is that gap may actually be able to close more quickly and more easily than I've thought. At some point, even the teacher-immigrants are going to be able to do all of this. I mean only a couple of years ago, most of these technologies were WAY out of reach for most people. Now, even my seven year old gets it.
That's cause for optimism, and excitement. The more people thinking and experimenting and doing, the more great ideas that will follow. The more great ideas, the more people will be willing to think and experiment and do."

(Via Weblogg-ed News.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 04:09:00 -0500

The Uber Map

These are the best maps I've seen of the election results. Even better than the "purple" maps. Definitely worth a look.

Measuring the Vote: "These maps show the 2004 presidential vote adjusted to reflect the population size of the states and counties, including Travis.... (via Monkey-brained Musings)"

(Via Austin Bloggers: Austin Meta-Blog.)

This Denison Life: Podcast #2

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 6 Nov 2004 17:40:00 -0500

In the spring of 2004 I taught a class at Denison University in Ohio in "Oral Performance." My students learned how to interview, structure oral narrative, and mix and master with Garage Band. Their final project was to produce web radio shows. I will be posting and podcasting two of these a week--about a dozen total.

Some students used semi-pro recording gear, others made do with substandard stuff. Overall they are, I think, pretty good, and they give an uncensored, unexpurgated account of bits of student life on a small liberal arts campus. Love, lust, substance abuse, frustration, hope, friendship, and growth--all part of life at Denison....

This Denison Life: 2nd in a series.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:29:00 -0500

Zeitgeist Heads-Up: Podcasting

I have recently discovered "podcasting." Wow! Podcasting is a way of location- and time-shifting your reception of audible media. It's a new method of delivery, a democratic and supremely flexible alternative to broadcasting. Basically, podcasting uses web syndication, specifically RSS 2.0 (An Atom feed can be jury rigged with Feedburner [see below]), to deliver a media file as an enclosure in a blog feed. If you have iTunes, you can use a special aggregator (my fav is iPodderX) that has a script that will automatically place any new mp3 files into an iTunes playlist. Sync to your iPod (or other player), then you can hop a train or a bike or foot it and you can dig on some fresh, time-shifted homemade radio!

Rather than elaborate, I'll just point you to the Wikipedia entry for podcasting, which has a full explanation and some great links.

From my experience playing around for the last few days, and researching how to do this, here's some advice: If you want to syndicate some home brew content of you own, the easiest way to get started is with Feedburner. Get a free account, and then follow these instructions to set up your own podcast feeds. You can link them right off your Blogger or Typepad blog.

This is going to be BIG. Podcasting will do for radio what blogging has done for print journalism.

My first foray will be to post--at the rate of two a week--the web radio shows my Denison students produced last spring. And then I plan to produce some fresh content with friends here in NYC.

This Denison Life: Podcast #1

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:52:00 -0500

This Denison Life: 1st in a series.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 18:27:00 -0400

Blogs and 18th Century Pamphleteers

Glenn Reynolds take:

PAJAMA PEOPLE in the 18th Century: I've often said that the rise of the blogosphere represents, in many ways, a return to the late 18th century environment of pamphleteers, numerous small ideological newspapers, and coffeehouse debates. And I have to say that this passage from Larry Kramer's new book, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review, could describe the reaction of some in today's haut-commentariat to the rise of blogs and other alternative media:
After the adoption of the Constitution, most Federalists had expected to amicably govern a quiescent population content to follow their wise leadership. Instead, they were shocked to find themselves wrestling with an unruly, rambunctious democracy-in-the-making. Between the burgeoning newspapers, raucous parades, partisan holiday celebrations, and disrespectful debating societies, the people out-of-doors seemed literally to be taking leave of their senses. Suddenly, everyone apparently felt entitled to express an opinion -- more, felt that "constituted authorities" should be listening to their views. . . . Federalist leaders were caught flat-footed, unsure how to cope with this confusing new world.

[via Instapundit]

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:55:00 -0400

Frank Rich on Target

Will We Need a New 'All the President's Men'?: "Like the Nixon administration before it, the current White House has kneecapped with impunity any news organization that challenges its message."

(Via The New York Times > Most E-mailed Articles.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 03:26:00 -0400

"Bush's no-nonsense, bull-rushing offensive style was simply smothered by a surprisingly strong Kerry."

Is the title above my assessment of the last debate? Sort of. Actually, it's how one Las Vegas boxing rag assessed the first Tyson-Holyfield fight. But it think it fits—I just switched the names. Sound ludicrous? Bear with me.

Many Big Media pundits covered the presidential debates with the argot of boxing, which is of course traditional. It's in fact a tradition that goes back to the beginning of democracy, to classical Athens. Several ancient writers make this comparison, including Plato who has his dramatic character Socrates describe arguments with sophists in pugilistic terms. The term "stasis," a term of art in Greek and Roman rhetoric (Cicero made much of it), refers to the specific issue on which a debater chooses to clash with his opponent; the term originated in Greek boxing, where it was a term of art indicating the stance a boxer took when the fighting began.

It's taken me a while to understand what sort of fight this has been. Kerry clearly had a strategy that spanned the three debates. While Bush approached each debate like it was a different bout, trying out different strategies in each, Kerry looked like he was fighting three, albeit long and grueling, rounds. And he stuck to his game.

The whole thing, all three debates taken as one, reminds me of that 1996 title bout between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, where Holyfield took the WBA Heavyweight belt. In the rematch, you'll recall, a frustrated and deranged Tyson bit the top of his opponent's ear off, summarily disqualifying himself, and more or less ending his career. But the first fight was the really interesting one, and it bears some similarity to what we've seen over the last couple weeks.

At the time of the first fight, Tyson had never had to go more than 10 rounds in a single bout. Like Bush, he was a no-nonsense straight ahead figher; and like Bush, he was used to winning. But on that November night in Las Vegas, things changed. Holyfield, a boxer with a good record but hardly an exciting fighter, and not an especially charismatic media figure, changed things.

In 1996 it was easy to like Mike. And in some ways it's easy to like W., who is similarly capable of childlike, or childish, moments of self-revelation which under some circumstances are not hard to find endearing. But this should not lull us into forgetting that both fighters, Tyson the boxer and Bush the orator, bring a focused brutality to bear in their respective arts.

Bush's "you can run but you can't hide" is pure bull-rushing braggadocio, and his ad hominem attacks—"can't trust him," "has no credibility," "most liberal senator in Washington," etc.—are the stuff of a brawler. You could see Bush crouching, waiting for Kerry to convolute himself with some sophisticated combination, or open himself up gangly-like with another phrase like "global test," so that Bush could rush in and uncoil some of those sharp, patriotic uppercuts.

But when Bush came charging, Kerry managed to tie him up, and even push him around a little bit. The pundits wanted to see a knockout, a brawl, and certainly if things had gone that way Bush would have won. Bush is a debater who thrives on aggression, which is why, when he's being outclassed in the ring, he reverts, as he did even tonight in many of his answers, to the emphatic epithet, when more artful combinations are not landing. Much has been made of Kerry's "serenity" in these debates, his "Zen-like" demeanor. And that again reminds me of Holyfield, who didn't allow Tyson to drag him into a brawl, who didn't take the bait, who fought a smart, if unglamorous, fight—a fight to win.

Holyfield the boxer knew he had better stuff, and he knew that his opponent would bluster and charge. He respected Tyson well enough to know that he needed to stay crisp, nothing too fancy, and tie him up on the inside. Kerry the debater was equally skillful, workmanlike, and he didn't indulge in sustained circumspection, respecting his opponent's facility for cutting into slack or indulgent rhetorical gestures. It paid off. Glamorous? No. Satisfying to Big Media bloodlust? No? But maybe just good enough to garner the, let's hope undisputed, title three weeks from now.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:24:00 -0400

More Human Rights Violations

Yet more troubling news about they way the government is dealing with "detainees."

Another Bush Triumph for the Rule of Law:
Great news from Human Rights Watch! Your constitutional republic at work spreading the Rule of Law around the world!
U.S.: Detained al-Qaeda Suspects ‘Disappeared’ (Human Rights Watch, 12-10-2004): At least 11 al-Qaeda suspects have “disappeared” in U.S. custody, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. U.S. officials are holding the detainees in undisclosed locations, where some have reportedly been tortured.
The 46-page report, “The United States’ ‘Disappeared’: The CIA’s Long-Term ‘Ghost Detainees,’” describes how the Central Intelligence Agency is holding al-Qaeda suspects in “secret locations,” reportedly outside the United States, with no notification to their families, no access to the International Committee of the Red Cross or oversight of any sort of their treatment, and in some cases, no acknowledgement that they are even being held.
“‘Disappearances’ were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their ‘dirty war’ on alleged subversion,” said Reed Brody, special counsel with Human Rights Watch. “Now they have become a United States tactic in its conflict with al-Qaeda.”
Oh goodie, the US joins the proud company of the USSR and fascist latin dictatorships. We are so proud.

(Via Discourse.net.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:44:00 -0400

Our First Cyborg President

More "Bush is wired" speculations, with new pictures.

Earpiece: "Salon has another story on Bush's possible earpiece, including a new picture with the alien symbiote attached to his spine.

Oddly, I've long thought Bush was wired, though I haven't found the "hump" to be convincing evidence of this. Some odd verbal gaffes, a few strange audio hiccups, and especially his "pause. speak. pause. speak." speaking style seemed to suggest it. But, thinking it isn't proof and I don't claim there is any.

But, in truth the real question is not if Bush has an earpiece but what he does with it. It seems pretty reasonable for the CiC to have an earpiece for various reasons, such as discreet access to information in case of an emergency situation. Since the technology makes this more than possible now, I wouldn't mind at all knowing that there's instant access to the presidential ear in time of crisis. But, tt isn't reasonable to use it as an audioprompter for speeches, press conferences, and debates. That would be a scandal."

(Via Eschaton.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 07:18:00 -0400

Dialog on Economics: Keynes vs. Supply-Side

[J's comments in red; mine in black.]

W has reported Dave's opinion that no reputable economist subscribes to supply-side theory. Here's a link to the homepage of Robert Mundell, whose biography describes him as "a pioneer of the theory of the monetary and fiscal policy mix, the theory of inflation and interest, the monetary approach to the balance of payments, and the co-founder of supply-side economics." In 1999 Mundell received the Nobel Prize in economics in recognition for his having "established the foundation for the theory which dominates practical policy considerations of monetary and fiscal policy in open economies." Mundell was a colleague of the better-known supply-side advocate Arthur Laffer at Chicago. It's not surprising that university economics departments should have a leftist and statist bent, and this makes it the more remarkable that "the co-founder of supply-side economics" should receive international recognition for his work on the fiscal and monetary policies that sustain economic growth in open economies.

first of all, i never said that "no reputable economist" is a supply sider--rather that there are few left, especially after 1) david stockman and other reagan ideologues repudiated the doctrine in the mid-80's, a time when even reagan raised taxes; and 2) 8 fat years under non-supply-side clinton.

as far as mundell goes, rather than inundating you with the opinions of the majority of peer-reviewed macroeconomists, many of whom you might be ready to dismiss as liberal ivory tower statists, i'll just direct you to the nobel prize site itself, where you can read for yourself WHY mundell got the prize. let me spoil the surprise for you: contra the WSJ, it has nothing to do with his supply-side research that appeared in the autumn of his career, but with his well respected and ahead-of-its time analysis (begun in the 60's) of the globalization of investment capital and how monetary policy would have to change when money moved from country to country in response to interest rates and other factors.

What you said this morning is that the only place supply-siders can be found is in "cushy, ideologically driven think tanks" (which gives me license to disregard anything you ever forward from Brookings, etc.). In fact, the fellow who's half of the brain power behind supply-side theory is at the top of his profession. So perhaps we can get back to arguing the theory rather than citing how many experts support mine vs. yours.

Stockman was never a supply-sider, he was a deficit hawk. He grew disillusioned with Reagan when the old man persisted in the conviction that cutting tax rates was needed to revive the economy even if Congress couldn't be persuaded to cut spending to compensate for the initial revenue loss. When pushed to by deficit hawks in Congress, Reagan increased taxes but not income tax rates, however, which he continued to pull down, lowering the top rate from 70% in 1981 when he took office to 50% in 1983 to 28% in 1988. (Chief among the congressional hawks was Bob Dole, who ran as a tax cutter in 1996, and lost in part because this was clearly political opportunism on his part -- and in part because he was the worst Republican candidate since Alf Landon.) How many genuine supply-siders can you find who "repudiated the doctrine in the mid-80s"? Not Jack Kemp, e.g.

In 1997, Clinton cut the capital gains rate from 28% to 20 and eliminated taxes on home sales up to $500,000. Let's see -- were the stock and housing markets and federal revenue up or down after 1997?

I will be happy to get back to arguing theory with you, but I do think it is significant that there are very few professional economists on your side. From Aristotle to Cicero and beyond it has been perfectly acceptable when arguing about public matters, policy matters, to make arguments that appeal to authority on an issue—to logicians it may be a fallacy, but Aristotle and everyone after him in the rhetorical tradition considered such appeals to be a perfectly acceptable part of practical reasoning. Especially since you and I are not professional economists, it is important to pay attention to sources of authority on the matter when evaluating claims, and your sources are suspect. You and I both have a stake in the open, peer-reviewed system of knowledge discovery that is academia. I'm sure we would both be a bit suspicious of a medical journal that was sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Many of your supply-side experts are on the payroll, in one way or another. And don't try to make a straw man from my earlier hyperbole. I know that you can point to a handful of independent professional economists who are still supply-siders—but there are precious few of them, and that, I think, is significant.

Supply-siders would like to believe that their theory is the product of academic study. But it's not. It was born in partisan political magazines, not professional journals. While there are many professional economists who support tax cuts, few of them do so on supply-side grounds. Instead, most of them fall into the category of those who want government to be smaller, and don't believe, as supply-siders do, that by cutting taxes the economy will grow to such a degree that tax revenue will rise to levels that will match or exceed levels under a higher tax scheme. Even Bush's own economic advisors are not naive enough to believe in supply-side theory. N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist who is currently chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, described Reagan's supply-side advisers as incompetent and unscrupulous. And the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was chosen by Bush, reported last year that spending cuts would be needed to offset lost revenue from Bush's tax cuts: in other words, no supply-side effects would compensate for the cuts. Finally, there's Irving Kristol, who in 1995 admitted that he supported supply-side theory because of its "political possibilities," even though he doubted its "economic merits."

Now to the Reagan years. The problem with looking at the growth under Reagan as proof of supply-side theory is that the data don't show that Reagan's tax cuts had much to do with it. The test is whether the tax cuts produced more growth in the economy than occurs during a normal business cycle recovery. Between 1979 and 1989, the growth rate was 3%. But between 1973 and 1979 the growth rate was...(drum roll)...3%. Hard to find confirmation of supply-side theory there.

Okay, now to Clinton, since you brought him into this. Here's the part of the Clinton story that's the relevant one for testing supply-side theory. 1989 the top 1% of families were taxed at the rate (federal taxes) of 28.9%. By 1995, under Clinton, that rate had risen to 36.1% With such an increase in the marginal tax rate on high-income tax payers, supply-siders predicted doom. But of course what we got was lower unemployment, a budget surplus, and a rate of growth in productivity not seen in decades.

The point is not that tax cuts are bad--they can do some good things including stimulating demand, since more people with more money in their pockets can buy more stuff. But supply-side theory, which as I understand it states that if top marginal tax rates are reduced then the potential loss of tax revenue will be offset by growth in the economy, is at best a theory that the data don't support, and at worst an ideological dogma which tries to pass for a credible economics theory (eg. Keynesian theory) in the eyes of intelligent and reputable people like yourself.

Our exchange reminds of a quip: "Chemistry came from alchemy, astronomy came from astrology -- what do you suppose will ever come from economics?" I note a site that complains (from the left) that academic economics "has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world" and advances a corrective approach; supply-side theory could be described as a comparable protest from the right. It's the creation not of politicians but of two academics, Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer. It's not their fault that politicians found the theory persuasive and so moved to implement it, rather than waiting for academic economists to impartially consider the theory in learned journals (fat chance -- one might as well wait for the JFK School of Government to endorse the Bush pre-emption doctrine). Not that supply-side hasn't received academic support against the grain, as the column I'm forwarding indicates, citing the International Monetary Fund and Nobel laureate Robert Lucas (Univ. of Chicago). Mundell's basic paper on supply-side dates from 1962; just so we're clear, Mundell's argument about the effects of lowering tax rates dates from the same period as his Nobel-winning work and isn't something he came upon in his dotty retiirement. The problems he tends to look at concern the effects on capital of shifts in exchange rates (which lead to flows of capital from country to country) and monetary and fiscal policy (which affect the value of the return on capital put at risk).

Mundell and Laffer advanced a corrective to Keynesian economics that can be summed up in three words as "Individual incentives matter," including the incentives created (intentionally and unintentionally) by the tax code. The insight they worked out was already nicely stated in 1946 by Henry Hazlitt (called by H. L. Mencken "one of the few economists who could really write"): "When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only fifty-two cents of every dollar it gains, and when it cannot adequately offset its years of losses against its years of gains, its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those that are attended with a minimum of risk. People who recognize this situation are deterred from starting new enterprises. Thus old employers do not give more employment, or not as much more as they might have; and others decide not to become employers at all. Improved machinery and better-equipped factories come into existence much more slowly than they otherwise would. The result in the long run is that consumers are prevented from getting better and cheaper products to the extent that they otherwise would, and that real wages are held down, compared with what they might have been.

"There is a similar effect when personal incomes are taxed 50, 60, or 70 percent [the top bracket when Hazlitt wrote]. People begin to ask themselves why they should work six, eight, or nine months of the entire year for the government, and only six, four, or three months for themselves and their families. If they lose the whole dollar when they lose, but can keep only a fraction of it when they win, they decided that it is foolish to take risks with their capital. In addition, the capital available for risk-taking itself shrinks enormously. It is being taxed away before it can be accumulated. In brief, capital to provide new jobs is first prevented from coming into existence, and the part that does come into existence is then discouraged from starting new enterprises" (ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON, p. 38).

Modern economies are hugely complex, and so is the effect of government fiscal policy on them. I can see all sorts of argument about the effects of a particular change in income tax rates. What I can't see is ignoring the effects on incentives that Hazlitt describes. Considering such effects in the formulation of fiscal policy is what supply-side theory calls for. So if you have an economy yielding $10 billion of annual personal income and a presidential candidate proposes to cut taxes from 50% to 25%, a static Keynesian analysis will warn that thus reducing tax rates will cut government revenues by half. A supply side theorist will point out that since the individuals earning the income will now keep 75% of their earnings rather than 50%, they will have an incentive to produce more, and this increased productivity will offset the amount of revenue that is lost when the rate is lowered. In the event that the economy doubles its output to $20 billion, the government will lose no revenue from the income tax at all (since 25% of $20 billion yields the same $5 billion that the government heretofore extracted from a $10 billion economy).

Peer review is a function of Kuhn's "normal science" and tends to ensure that contributions to learned discussion don't neglect the conventional wisdom of a discipline (the regnant paradigm, in Kuhnspeak). When a disciplinary revolution occurs and an alternative is proposed to the paradigm that defines normality, the reaction of entrenched interests is an unreliable indicator of the value of the proposed paradigm shift. So it's not surprising if economists developing a fifth-generation Keynesian paradigm don't rush to embrace a radical alternative to it, and I don't think that circumstance tells us anything much about the model's validity. I would suggest there's a moral case for the policy as well as a "green eyeshade" defense: if government expenditures can be funded by a less intrusive levy than currently exists in a society (one that empowers the government less), it's in the interest of individual liberty that the state begin to do so. I would think a guy with a libertarian streak vis-à-vis banned substances etc. would see the desirability of this. Maybe if it were someone besides Jack Kemp and me arguing for it.

It is not a matter of controversy that when people are taxed too much they don't invest. That's common knowledge, even among Keynesians. If THAT is supply-side theory then anyone with half a brain must be a supply-sider. The issue is whether marginal tax cuts, by spurring investment, will generate enough revenue to pay for themselves. And that is what the data have not shown. I'll be generous here: there are a lot of variables involved, and just because the data haven't shown it yet doesn't mean they never will. But until they do, I'll remain, like the majority of academic economists as well as President Bush's most important economic advisors (e.g., N. Gregory Mankiw and Douglas Holtz-Eakin), a skeptic.

On to the Laffer Curve....

No one denies that what the Laffer curve shows is true, that at both extremes of the curve--at a 0% tax rate and at a 100% tax rate--the government collects no money! The basic concept is nothing new--it was pointed out by the classical French economist Frederic Bastiat in the 19th Century (and as you mention by Henry Hazlitt in 1946, and by others). What is under dispute at any given moment is the rate of taxation at which maximum revenue can be generated (known as "the optimal tax rate"). During the Reagan years when supply-siders rose to prominence, many congressional Repubs as well as, yes, Dems also, believed that government was taxing on the right side of the curve--the region to the right of the optimal tax rate, where higher tax rates result in lower tax revenue. Even at the time, when there was something of a congressional consensus about this, there were also many skeptics including the vast majority of professional economists in addition to, as we learned later, some of Reagan's own advisors (e.g. Stockman). Several careful studies that appeared at the time argued that, on the basis of analyses of historical tax rate data, the government was in fact taxing well on the left side of the curve.

In researching for this email I found this interesting anecdote: In the 1980's, Nobel prize winning economist Paul Samuelson noticed that there was a consensus among professional economists that the optimal tax rate was no higher than 80%, and so speculated that Reagan's embrace of supply-side theory may have been a perfectly rational (though out-of-context) response to having been taxed (and having seen the effects of his peers being taxed) upwards of 90% during WWII. Worth pondering anyway.

And while Reagan, along with many of his advisors, was probably a true believer, I fear that supply-side theory is still used cynically by many conservatives in the way Stockman and Irving Kristol used it. Here is what Stockman said after he had broken with the other advisors: "The way they talked [Reagan's other advisors], they seemed to expect that once the supply-side tax cut was in effect, additional revenue would start to fall, manna-like, from the heavens. Since January, I had been explaining that there is no literal Laffer curve." Stockman admitted that he used supply-side theory as "a trojan horse for upper bracket tax cuts without economic justification." Stockman confessed that he painted an intentionally deceptive "Rosy Scenario" about tax revenues. Why? "The supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

A look at the founding fathers....

Here's what I have found out about the three inventors of Supply Side Theory (You mention Laffer and Mundell, though Wanninski I have found is just as important):

Laffer has a Ph. D. in economics from Stanford and served as an advisor to Reagan, but again, what I'm finding about Laffer is that his ideas weren't terribly original, and can be explained in terms of both classical and Keynesian theory. (To be fair, the supply-siders see themselves as recovering classical economic theory.)

Every source I can find says that Mundell won the Nobel for his work on fiscal policy and international exchange rates--the 1962 Mundell-Fleming model--not for his supply-side theories (see again the text of the Nobel announcement). And I can find no reference, outside of docs from the Heritage Foundation and similar sources, that the Mundell-Fleming model relies on or implies supply-side theory. (To be fair I have also learned that at his acceptance speech before the Noble jury Mundell did give a defense of supply-side theory.)

I've read a bit of online material about, and by, Jude Wanniski. Wanniski, as I've learned, who coined the term "Supply Side Economics" has never been a professional academic economist. He was an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal for several years and went on to found an online school in 1997, which he still runs, called "Supply Side University." Hmmm....

Back to the issues....

What accounted for the big increases in non-corporate tax revenues during Reagan's presidency--besides the effects of the business cycle also seen in earlier decades (cf. my earlier email)--was an increase in payroll tax revenue, not an increase in income tax revenue. The government saw a big increase in payroll tax revenue following the signing of the Social Security Reform Act of 1983 which increased payroll tax rates. I'm asking honestly here, what do Cato / Heritage Foundation economists say in response to this? In my (admittedly perfunctory) search of both of their websites I can't find an answer. For now, I see no supply-side effects. (One more thing. It's hard to take these supply-side researches--like the ones I've now read from Cato / Heritage Foundation--as serious social science when they continually employ terms like "tax relief" in place of "tax cut." Isn't it usually conservatives who blame liberals for politicizing every field of knowledge?

Now to corporate taxes. Corporate tax revenues fell sharply after Reagan's early corporate tax cuts. They did surge later, but that was only after the passage of the 1986 tax reform law that broadened the base of what corporations were taxed on. The 1986 law closed loopholes, removed many tax-shelters, limited depreciation deductions, and eliminated the investment tax credit. Hard to see supply-side effects here either.

They way I see it, if you want to convince me (or any rational interlocutor) that supply-side theory is true, you still owe me the following:

1) An explanation of how tax revenue growth under Reagan can be attributed to supply-side policy in light of

a) what we know historically about normal business cycles,

b) the two major tax increases during the Reagan years that I detail above.

2) An explanation of how it is that both GNP and tax revenues increased at a higher rate under Clinton than under Reagan, despite increases in taxes.

3) An explanation of why Bush's tax cuts have not produced supply-side effects. (Supply-siders blamed the Fed [and Congress of course] for bad things that happened under Reagan, but this time around the Fed has supported Bush's policies. So what gives?)

Paradigm Shifts....

As far as your observation about Kuhn and paradigms goes, I accept in principle that it is difficult to determine how a scientific theory will fare when there are entrenched institutional players and professional stakes involved, but I'd be surprised to see a paradigm shift on account of supply-side theory. I'll be happy to be proven wrong. But historically most scientific paradigm shifts have been opposed by larger political forces, the Catholic Church for example. Supply-side theory is largely promulgated by the corporate plutocracy, and so seems not so much paradigm shifting to me as reactionary. The supply-siders themselves claim that their mission is to recover the supply-side orientation of classical economics (they cite both Smith and Marx). So it seems to me they are attempting, if you'll allow the analogy, a sort of pre-Copernican restoration.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 04:43:00 -0400

Shameless Reblogging

This is pretty much how I feel about the 2nd presidential debate:

A Lively Interpretation....

One of the many memorable and insightful shticks that the late great standup comic Bill Hicks was one he performed soon after the Rodney King-LA Police community relations encounter. His take on the trial of one of the officers involved, an Officer Koons, (on which Mr. Hicks commented, "I swear. I could never have invented a name like that."), went something like this:

Judge (J): "Mr. Koons. How do you plead?"
Officer Koons (OK): "Innocent, your honor."

The jury gasped. They shook in fear and astonishment. There were witnesses! There was a video tape of the beating! This man has such chutzpah! He needs a wheelbarrow to cart his cojones around! He has incredible balls!

J: "Innocent?! And how do you make this claim? We have a video tape! We have witnesses."
OK: "Well, your honor, it all depends on how you look at it."
J: "How you look at it? And how do you propose we should look at it, Officer Koooooons?"
OK: "Well, like I said. It all depends how you look at it. See, if you play that video in reverse, it looks like I'm helping him (Rodney King) up off the street, And then, you see, I'm helping him into his car. Heck, I'm even waving him off. See, it all depends on how you look at things.

The second presidential debates took place tonight. With minimal recall cells active in my head at this time of the night, only two things stuck out.

1) Dubya's need to have the last dig overwhelmed any of the proper and civil manners that his parents had tried to drum into him. At one point in the exchanges with John Kerry, when Bush had his last ALLOWABLE say on an issue, Bush, shaking with ill-concealed anger, strode to the center of the stage, ignored the moderator's (Charles Gibson) repeated instructions that his allotted time was used up, and garbled something in anger for 20-30 seconds. I wish I could recall what he'd said; at least to see if the verbiage matched the emotions and the issue at hand. Physical violence actually seemed possible.

2) What speechifying I did remember of the President was his interpretation of the release of the CIA's findings that there were no WMD's in Iraq, nor any evidence of any in the past 4-5 years. How he was able to say, with that tightly drawn straight face, to those "town meeting" folks that he welcomed the report since it proved his point about the future intent of Saddam Hussein, irregardless of any physical proof now would have made Bill Hicks choke on his cigarette. Regardless of what other folks may say, I think George Bush has improved in office. Perhaps not grown into the office; those shoes are just too big. But you have to give him credit in developing that fine art of political twisting.

Even Bill Hicks, wherever he is now, would have appreciated it. You know Officer Koons is wondering if he'll be receiving a consulting fee for that lesson.

Yep, it all depends simply on how you look at it.

(Via Verging on Pertinence.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 04:36:00 -0400

Yeah we do....

When he's 64: David Pescovitz: Happy Birthday. We miss you.

(Via Boing Boing Blog.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 6 Oct 2004 01:13:00 -0400

VP Debate (One & Only)

I just got back from Marymount Manhattan College where I watched the VP debate in the student union. Usually VP debates are more low-key, collegial even. This one was several degrees more antagonistic than that, but the sense of tension and gravity that attended upon last week's presidential debate wasn't there. Who won? I'd call it a draw. Tonight it was the CEO vs. the trial lawyer, and in both style and substance, the two mostly stayed in character.

Edwards smiled that big warm smile, made expansive gestures towards the camera—as if towards a jury—and used a lot of pathos. Cheney sat as if at the head of a boardroom table, gesturing close to his body, rubbing his hands together for most of the evening. When on the attack he peered over the top of his glasses sideways, drawing his mouth into a semi-snarl. His language was heavy with logos, and later ethos.

But it wasn't that simple. In fact, there were two moments when Cheney's humanity took center stage and there was a sort of air of deep "private man" pathos. One was when Edwards shamelessly mentioned that Cheney loved his gay daughter—an Oprah moment, only it was clear that the point was not pop therapy but politics. Cheney was given 30 seconds to respond, and all he did was thank the Senator for the kind remarks about his family. I don't know if we were supposed to read this laconic response as "can you, the public, believe that this asshole brought my daughter into this?!", or alternatively, as an expression of his refusal to repeat the Administration's talking points on an issue where he is clearly "taking one for the team." Or both.

The other moment came in response to the moderator's question about AIDS in America, which actually seemed to catch both candidates off guard. They clearly had been schooled on AIDS globally, not in the US, and at the end of his response, Cheney admitted that he didn't know about the disparity in AIDS rates between African-American women and their counterparts. Should he have known? Of course. But when the same question next went to Edwards, who had the benefit of an extra 90 seconds to prepare, he talked about the Kerry-Edwards healthcare plan again, barely mentioning AIDS, and when he did his language was so contorted that it sounded as if he were saying that "preventative medicine" could prevent AIDS. In other words, he didn't come off as someone sounding like he took AIDS seriously. Does he? Probably, but his adherence to his talking points hurt him. Cheney at least admitted ignorance, and showed a bit of shame for it.

Cheney, the CEO, is clearly the more commanding presence. He got more words in, and his arguments were more fully structured. He rarely stumbled and he moved from point to point rapidly, always seeming to know where the argument was leading. It wasn't that Edwards didn't make arguments—it's just that they were top-heavy with big splashy claims. It wasn't that he didn't support those claims, but not in the workmanlike way that his opponent did. Nevertheless, Edwards, the trial lawyer, is undoubtedly the warmer human being, and he came across as the one who fights for the little guy.

This is the only VP debate so I will not conclude by offering advice to the debaters; I'll just summarize. Neither debater ever had his opponent on the ropes; both seemed more willing to score small points with ad hominem arguments, trading jabs about such things as skipped meetings and decades-old Congressional voting records. Edwards followed up on Kerry's successful defense against the charge of flip-floppery, and doubtless foreshadowed how Kerry will handle domestic policy questions in the next presidential debate. At times, however, Edwards didn't seem as focused as Cheney, and a bit boyish by contrast. Cheney was competent and sharp, but couldn't conceal an abiding mean-spiritedness. At moments he showed something like genuine humanity—would have helped if there had been more of those moments. Finally, Cheney made the smarter arguments for the war that Bush should have made last week against Kerry. Too bad for Bush that Cheney wasn't speaking into that little earpiece that Bush might have been wearing.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 1 Oct 2004 00:28:00 -0400

My Take on the First Debate

I think both Bush and Kerry did pretty well, both had especially good moments, and I wouldn't call one a clear winner. Kerry surprised me, early on, with his focus and his eagerness. He was ready for the charges of flip-floppery, and he met them rather effectively. Later in the debate he started to fade. He reverted at moments, mostly later on, and in his closing remarks, to that long-faced hollow cartoon of a statesman whose body seems to break into several elongated polygons, each obeying some different keplerian principle of motion while his voice bobs up and down on predictable little waves of inflection, conveying equally predictable truisms.

[One wonders at those moments when Kerry goes "bland cartoon" whether there isn't some quick, Gallic intelligence that he is suppressing—some great ball of nuance, the knowledge of some inscrutable web of causality that he sees but knows, in his brain of brains, that he can't tell us about; because if he were to try, the good ole boy at the other podium would smirk, and then smash his opponent's little menagerie of subtle thoughts with the blunt instruments of "faith" and "resolve."]

But there were many moments when Kerry, alternatively, looked younger than I've ever seen him, and hungrier, and sharper. He will never have that good ole boy cache of course, but he broke down his responses into trenchant points, hitting them again and again, and at moments the president seemed to be reeling.

Kerry used much more action-oriented language, more verbs and less verbiage than I've ever heard from him. He seemed smart without seeming wonkish or pedantic (Al Gore). One thing seems certain to me—the American voters have never heard Kerry's Iraq position defended with this gusto, and at times he made Bush's critique of that position (the flip-flop charges) sound downright "political."

Kerry did indeed "charge the beach" as some had predicted. He took Bush to task on the very issues (strong on homeland security, on hunting down terrorists, on nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea) that Bush sees as his issues. At moments Kerry managed to make Bush seem less like a strong commander in chief, a notable feat. By invoking the current and formal generals and civilian officials who oppose Bush's way of waging war, including a reference to why Bush pere refused to go into Baghdad over a decade ago, Kerry made Bush fils sound, as my friend Jim just IM'd from Austin, like "it's just him and the Rove machine." And Kerry's line about how the president had "outsourced the job [of catching Bin Laden] to Afghan warlords" was a cheap rhetorical gut punch that even Rove must have admired.

Now to Bush. Bush started slowly, faltering and stopping to recover his place. We all expected this; doesn't usually hurt him in the view of his core audiences for reasons that are well known. I thought that his expressions while listening to Kerry were vintage "exasperated chimp." One wonders what goes through his mind. He looks incredibly vulnerable to me in these moments, but then he takes the floor and the language comes...haltingly, but it comes nonetheless, and he recovers his cadence and confidence.

I think he got stronger as the debate moved to its latter stages, and his closing statement easily trumped Kerry's. Even the "word searches" that Bush performed several times (pausing, looking down, awkward silences) don't seem to hurt him much. In fact, we hang on his every word because we don't know what's going to come next, or if he's going to be able to maintain coherency. Of course he usually does. While he's not capable of those nicely nested clauses that Kerry windsurfs across with his baritone warble, he does find a word that fits his purposes; and even if it's an alternative word that injures eloquence, it rarely does harm to his meaning.

Bush sounds sincere because it is sincerely hard for him to focus and produce connected sentences. The edges of his sentences and clauses are not well shaped and one suspects something similar of his thoughts. His arguments don't flow from premises to evidence to conclusions. He starts not with an assessment of the empirical data, but with a scrutiny of his own "heart"; or his "heart of hearts" where reside his "core beliefs." What arguments there are circulate around that heart.

Neither speaker can display empathy convincingly, like Reagan or Clinton. Kerry is smart to not even try. Bush tries, and he may score points with evangelicals for his conspicuous remark about praying with a bereaved widow, but he doesn't get any points for telling the story in a heartfelt way. It seems to me that Bush's heart, which he invokes often, is not the malleable heart of one who feels what others feel, but the resolute heart of a warrior who knows his cause is just. He is passionate, more so than Kerry (before tonight anyway), but it is a passion more apt to display sanguinity than sympathy.

My advice for Kerry for next week:: Keep up the pace and the focus (make that water a "smart" water—it's all clear in the bottle). And don't ever, ever, ever, give Bush ammunition like "pass the global test"! Using phrases like that plays to one of Bush's strengths. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo says it best:
Where he [Bush] was strong were those few times in which he mobilized what I think is one of his true strengths: an ability to keep his ears open to turns of phrase which can be used against his opponent, ones that allow him to cast himself as a no-nonsense tough-guy and his opponent as either feckless or weak. To me, it's an ear for the cadence of a rancid populism. But that's a subjective view. The relevant point is that it is a strength.
So again, don't give him the ammo!

My advice for Bush for next week:: Keep hitting the points about Kerry sending mixed messages to both troops and terrorists. Also, the public doesn't expect you to be perfect, but people do expect you to level with them. And the standard refrains of "the world is safer without Saddam," and "we must never forget the lessons of 911" (and variants of that), are not going to always satisfy the public's desire for argument and justification. There are smarter arguments for why you did what you did. Use them.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:47:00 -0400

NYC Protest

Well I decided not to march in the demonstration here today, because I just don't feel up to it, though I do support those who are doing so. And I've decided not to blog about the protests because there's not much for me to add. But I did just have a neat experience. I'm sitting, as I write this, on a bench in Central Park, on the corner of Park Ave. and 75th. St. A group of protesters just walked by and stopped to ask me about my laptop. I explained that I was pinching a wireless internet connection from across the street, and they began to ask me about news of the protest. I went to the NYT online and they circled around my laptop and we read about, well, them. They pointed to the pictures and gave me commentary, and they were very interested in the numbers of protesters (as of now the careful NYT has it only as "hundreds of thousands"). Very cool moment.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:52:00 -0400

I Made it to NYC, Finally

I've been living in NYC for two weeks now; I sublet an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan. I will be teaching Communication at Marymount Manhattan College (starting next week). I'm definitely looking forward to using the city as classroom / laboratory, as well for my own personal edification and recreation. C-ya Ohio, it was "real" and it was "fun," but....

Also, I will be posting more regularly again. I have been remiss in keeping up with my blogging friends. Please know that I have read ya'll consistently, and I'll soon start to address specific posts.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:06:00 -0400

Dialog on Kerry & Vietnam (Round 2)

[W's comments in gold; Owens (from NR) in blue; mine in black.]

The points made in this essay [Owens in NR] (several re-made from the previous one) seem persuasive to me; as yet I've seen nothing that contradicts them.... Or do we just disregard the evaluation of the nuremberg prosecutor?

"American atrocities in Vietnam were, with the exception of My Lai, committed by individuals or small groups. All were in violation of standing orders and rules of engagement that were, according to Telford Taylor, a critic of many aspects of U.S. Vietnam policy and formerly a prosecutor at Nuremberg, "virtually impeccable."

When Taylor concluded that standing orders and rules of engagement in Vietnam were "virtually impeccable" he was not paying them a compliment, but rather lamenting that international law had not evolved since Nuremgberg to deal with the realities of strategic bombing. As a careful student of the law, Taylor had to conclude that no Nuremberg principles were violated by official US policy, but he believed, stated, and passionately argued in writing that air strikes in "free strike zones"and the US military strategy of attacking southern villages were indeed "unlawful."

Though had to concede it wasn't "illegal," he called the 1972 bombing of Hanoi "immoral and senseless." He also believed that certain top US officials were guilty of war crimes: after returning from a trip to Vietnam to inspect bombing damage in the North, Taylor was asked by a reporter on national television if McGeorge Bundy (National Security Advisor) could be judged guilty of war crimes under international law. Taylor replied "yes, of course."

Again, as a careful student of the law, Taylor did not think that official US policy constituted a war crime, and he doubted that any domestic court could "reasonably be expected to pass judgment on the legality of our Vietnam policies" But he believed that some of those policies were immoral nonetheless. (Other scholars have argued, contra Taylor, that formal US policy did constitute war crimes under international law.) Finally, and especially damning to Owens' argument is that the book that Owens quotes from (Taylor's Nuremberg and Vietnam) was written before the illegal US bombings of Cambodia were revealed.

"As I observed in an article for the February 23 issue of National Review, the atrocity claims that served as the basis for Kerry's 1971 testimony have never been confirmed, and many have been disproved."

Wrong. While some testimony of the sort has been disproved, none of the Winter Soldier testimonies has been disproved, and the Nixon administration certainly had the motive to do so at the time.

[Owens quoting Lewy] "What about war crimes and violations of the law of war? "Using [the] Nuremberg guidelines, it is very difficult to support the claim that U.S. conduct of the Vietnam War was characterized by the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity. The U.S. action was generally within the guidelines of the positive law of war; excesses and violations were usually treated as such."

Yes, but as I referred to above in my discussion of Taylor, that says more about how the Nuremberg guidelines were woefully inadequate to deal with the realties of a Vietnam War than about the probity of US conduct. And it is doubtful that the majority of "excesses and violations" ever came to light in a court.

"Consider the old charge that the U.S. employment of firepower in Vietnam constituted a violation of the law of war. In fact, I have observed, "the use of firepower does not per se violate the law of war."

Straw man. Only pacifists made the argument that Owens calls "the old charge." Taylor and most Vietnam critics, including dozens of active and former high level military officers and former cabinet members, did not claim that firepower "per se" was the issue, but things like "free-fire zones," "body-count" reckoning, the use of CN, Napalm, Agent Orange, etc.

Owens repeats the claim that Kerry slandered his "band of brothers," but as I have pointed out in an earlier post Kerry's condemnation is directed towards the policies, strategies and tactics--not the ordinary soldier. As Gary J. Bass, who studies human rights and war crimes at Princeton put it, "He's fixing blame very carefully and very self-consciously on the political leadership at the highest levels." Bass explains further "He's not saying the problem is we just have a bunch of Calleys; he's saying these are good people who are being forced to carry out policies that drive you toward killing civilians. If you set up a policy of free-fire zones, that's a policy that's subject to abuse. It's a policy that has no standing in international law."

Owens states that Kerry contributed to the view of veterans as "dysfunctional losers." But I'd argue that the US government is responsible for that, by putting them into an immoral and confusing war, and then not adequately dealing with them when the returned en masse with problems. A recent report finds that 1/3 of homeless Americans are veterans, 1/2 of whom are Vietnam vets. And see my section below, "Soldier Morale."

**********

It is the Swifties who are opening up the can of worms, who are violating the uneasy agreement to leave the divisive questions of Vietnam alone. If Owens is correct in his assessment of their overall strategy, then the questioning of Kerry's heroism is simply a tactical prelude to a full bore attack on his 1971 Senate testimony. Kerry used his Vietnam service to argue that as one who served he knows better, is better qualified, to judge how, when, and under what circumstances to send men into battle. Military leadership and the demonstration of bravery on the battlefield have been important components of deciding political leaders since Pericles. That's hardly an invitation to debate anew the details of the Vietnam War. If anyone is trying to reopen the Vietnam wound again for political purposes, it's the Swifties, not Kerry.

Richard Holbrooke puts it all nicely:

"His personal saga embodies the American experience in Vietnam. First he was a good hero in a bad war -- a man who volunteered for duty in the Navy and then asked for an assignment on the boats that were to ply the dangerous rivers of Vietnam -- when most of his college-educated contemporaries (including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton) -- found easy ways to avoid Vietnam. Then, carrying shrapnel in his thigh, he became an eloquent but moderate member of the antiwar movement."

"John Kerry introduced his Vietnam record into his campaign because it is a central part of who he is. But stirring up the embers of our Second Civil War was not his intention. Younger people I have talked to tell me that this past week it seemed to them nothing more than a silly, irrelevant argument about a distant war; to a certain extent, I agree. All those who served in Vietnam put their lives at risk, and at this distance from the war they all deserve respect. Those of us who survived should show younger Americans that we learned something from the war; John Kerry clearly did, but the same cannot be said of his Swift boat critics. To have a sterile debate about the minutiae of his service, when the basic facts of his heroism are undeniable -- and while Americans are again in a war that seems to have no exit -- is particularly grotesque."

**********

THE VIETNAM WAR WAS SINGULARLY BRUTAL ON CIVILIANS

In WWI, the total number of Civilian Casualties was 10.74% of the total casualties (106,000 GIs died; 8 million civilians died).

In WWII the civilian casualties were approximately 410,000, or 50.62% of the total (400,000 GIs died; add to the civilian total the 8 million Holocaust; and add 17 to 60 million civilian causality estimates worldwide).

In the Vietnam War, civilian casualty estimate is 340,000, or 85.74% of total casualties (56,000 GIs died; 200,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died; 1,000,000 North Vietnamese soldiers died."

WAR CRIMES & LIES

General William Westmoreland once characterized the killing of Vietnamese civilians this way: "It does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn’t it?"

Here's Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton speaking in 1966:

"Destruction of locks and dams, however-if handled right-might . . . offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction doesn't kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after a time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided-which we could offer to do "at the conference table."

In September 1973, a former government official in Laos, Jerome Doolittle, wrote in the New York Times:

"The Pentagon's most recent lies about bombing Cambodia bring back a question that often occurred to me when I was press attaché at the American Embassy in Vientiane, Laos.

Why did we bother to lie?

When I first arrived in Laos, I was instructed to answer all press questions about our massive and merciless bombing campaign in that tiny country with: "At the request of the Royal Laotian Government, the United States is conducting unarmed reconnaissance flights accompanied by armed escorts who have the right to return if fired upon."

This was a lie. Every reporter to whom I told it knew it was a lie. Hanoi knew it was a lie. The International Control Commission knew it was a lie. Every interested Congressman and newspaper reader knew it was a lie....

After all, the lies did serve to keep something from somebody, and the somebody was us."

SOLDIER MORALE

"Fragging," a name for the killing of officers by subordinates, was so high that the Pentagon reported 209 instances of it in one year (1970). Several underground GI papers sprang up that listed "bounties" for fragging certain officers perceived to be especially brutal or reckless.

American B-52 pilots began to refuse to follow orders during the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong around Christmas 1972.

Deserters increased from 47,000 in 1967 to 89,000 in 1971. In that same year, 177 of every 1,000 soldiers were classified as "absent without leave." 563,000 GIs received less than honorable discharges. In 1973, 1 out of 5 discharges was "less than honorable."

INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

They're main findings are here. It was chaired by Bertrand Russell and included Sartre and other Lefty intellectuals so you can dismiss it if you like, but at least read it, since I've now read very carefully Mackubin Thomas Owens, who writes for NR, teaches at the Naval War College, and has a frightening haircut.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:52:00 -0400

Dialog on Kerry & Vietnam (Round 1)

[J's comments in red; mine in black.]

Here's a letter to National Review today by a Vietnam vet, documenting the sort of effect I expect the second Swift Vet ad (and the Kerry campaign's indignant response to the same) to have:

"Last night on a talk show…the Kerry spokesman said that the atrocities in Vietnam are well documented matters of record, and Kerry had every right to talk about them in 1972. My blood began to boil again.

"As a military lawyer, I knew of the atrocities being committed by Marines in Vietnam. The atrocities were isolated incidents, and they were punished by every level of command at the time and before it became trendy for the media to sensationalize the crimes. They are matters of record because the perpetrators were court martialed, and you can read about them in the court martial reports.

"Kerry's characterization of Vietnam atrocities as being widespread on a daily basis with the knowledge of all levels of command is a lie.

"The Kerry machine’s sending spokesmen out to attest to widespread atrocities in Vietnam multiplies the insult. Not only should Kerry apologize, but every spokesman from the nameless man I saw last night to James Carville should apologize. Until they do, I will support the Swiftvets with my money and with my voice."

Kerry represents a lot of warriors of his generation who fought out of duty and for the honor that young men have fought for since Homer, and like so many of them, from Thucydides to the WWI poet Wilfred Owen, he decided in the the belly of the beast, after having himself killed other men, that the cause was not worth the price, and that he and his comrades were, not by choice, but by the policies, strategies, and tactics imposed upon them, being reduced to something less than honorable soldiers.

I have a very different and less noble picture of Kerry: Ambitious young man with JFK fixation enlists in military and requests Swift boat duty (cf. Kennedy's PT boat) -- not especially hazardous duty at the time he requests it, but a change in policy under Adm. Zumwalt makes it so by the time he assumes it. He pushes for recognition of minor injuries as justifying a purple heart and ships out after four months rather than stay his full tour (unlike the majority of those thrice decorated).

And W. is superior in this respect how?

Returning stateside he runs for office and fails, then noting that the antiwar movement is picking up steam in the Democratic party he works with VVAW and publicly accuses the military of making war crimes the policy in Vietnam -- having never brought any atrocities to the attention of commanding officers when he was in theater.

I certainly don't blame anyone for not bringing atrocities to the attention of commanding officers while serving. I can't imagine what the pressures must have been. And the loyalty in combat is to one's own, has to be. It took a while for many vets to sort out their feelings about what they had seen and done. But what about the SBVT who had 30 years to sort out their feelings about what Kerry had done in combat, relinquish their own medals, and tell the "truth"? Why did it take them so long to get the story right, even contradicting their earlier accounts? Does that bother you as much as the several-month delay of a young man fresh from combat?

[Kerry] trades on his Vietnam experience for 30 years to oppose US action abroad. Preparing for a presidential run he votes to give the president authority to invade Iraq when the polls favor this, but when Dean surges in 2003 with an antiwar campaign, he votes against funding the troops he voted to send there. Trumpets those he served with in Vietnam as the best witnesses to his character but tries to silence those who raise questions about him. The man's an upwardly mobile tone-deaf windsock, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.

Here is Kerry's own explanation of why he voted for giving the president authority and against the funding bill:

"Before the war started, I repeatedly called on the President to build a genuine coalition to reduce the military and financial burden on the United States, to go to war only as a last resort, and to have a plan to win the peace. I voted to give him the authority to go to war only when he promised me and other members in Congress that he would do these things. He broke those promises."

Only 12 senators voted against the funding bill, so there was never any chance of our troops going into combat without proper equipment (not that they would have in any case), and Kerry maintained that his vote was a protest against the way Bush was running the war. Now this turned out to be a political mistake for him, but it doesn't make him a windsock. If he had really been a windsock he would have voted for the funding bill like most Dems did, because that's the way the political wind was blowing. Even if there is some credence to the Dean explanation, so what? Are we really to believe that the former Winter Soldier mouthpiece only pretended to oppose the way the president was handling the war?

**********

You may disagree that the Vietnam war was misguided, you may disagree with Nixon's decision to pull us out, you may disagree that tactics involving "free-fire zones," "body-count," "search and destroy missions" (and what was informally called "the mere gook rule" which thousands of soldiers knew and which held that "if it's dead and Vietnamese, it's V.C.") predisposed soldiers to brutality, but you can't blame Kerry for voicing his opinion--which was the opinion of thousands of other vets--in the way he did so in his 1971 speech. And if you go back and read Kerry's speech, you'll see that his tone is clearly respectful of the men he served with, even the ones who committed atrocities. Now if this is not an example of ethical oratory, in what specific way does it fail?

Jane Fonda's "Winter Soldier Investigation" was not exactly a model of rigor in standards of evidence, and Kerry' s testimony endorsed it without reserve as a truthful account of what happened in Vietnam. But according to the Wikipedia article you forwarded below, "Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon entered the Winter Soldier transcripts into the Congressional Record and asked the commandant of the Marine Corps for an investigation of the Marines that testified. Investigators were unable to confirm or refute the claimed atrocities, but identified one organizer (Al Hubbard) as never being in combat. Guenter Lewy in America in Vietnam says 'The results of this investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service are interesting and revealing ... Many of the veterans, although assured that they would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities.'"

Kerry testified that his band of brothers were responsible for "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." I don't see how one manages a respectful comparison of one's countrymen with Genghis Khan, as he went on to do. He also said:

"We can not consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia." [In fact in surveys a significant majority of Vietnam vets say they are proud of their service there.]

First, I see no contradiction between being "ashamed" of things one has been called on to do, and being proud of one's service, of having fulfilled one's duty. Let's also recognize here that by using "we" kerry implicates himself. He owns the atrocity, so to speak. Are we to believe by this use of "we" that Kerry admits to personally raping, torturing, murdering, to every crime he will detail? Not at all. And it's just as clear that he's not claiming, through his rhetorical use of "we," that all soldiers participated in all manner of atrocities.

I can understand someone saying, like the SBVT, "John Kerry does not speak for me." Kerry put himself into the position of mouthpiece for the Vietnam vet, and that takes us into the problem of who can speak for whom. But if one objects that "John Kerry does not speak for us," where "us" means Vietnam vet generic, then that is also a statement that puts the person doing the stating in the position of mouthpiece for the Vietnam vet. The "us" that the SBVT invoke seems to waver between the "us" very specifically and legally implied in the stack of affidavits, and Vietman vet generic. Either way, it's hard for me to fault them (the issue of their dubious combat stories is another matter). Who rightfully speaks for the Vietnam vet? John Kerry or John O'Neill? Lt. Col. Harold Moore in "We Were Soldiers" or Oliver Stone in "Platoon"? It seems to me that they must all take their turn. I'll just notice here that Kerry's speech took more courage than that of the SBVT.

"We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. [This famous quote by the way was a fabrication by Peter Arnett; the soldier recalls saying, ""It was a shame the town was destroyed," -- and it was the VC that destroyed it, not American forces; for Arnett's reliability, try googling for "Tailwind."] We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum. We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals."

Yes the quote was specious, we've all known that for a while. but nothing hinges here on the where the quote came from--it was already becoming part of the vocabulary of the anti-war movement by then, and Kerry doesn't even attempt to attribute it or to quote it verbatim.

" ...The bodies which were once used by a President for statistics to prove that we were winning that war [have now been] used as evidence against a man [Lt. William Calley, charged in the My Lai massacre] who followed orders and who interpreted those orders no differently than hundreds of other men in Vietnam."

True statement. And very generous in attributing the best motives possible to a man involved in a massacre.

"We are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam."

Again, he condemns the "accepted policy" not the man / men.

"A lot of guys, 60, 80 percent stay stoned 24 hours a day just to get through the Vietnam"

He's guessing at the percentage of course, but most every Vietnam vet I have known stayed stoned over there. An acquaintance of mine last week showed me a picture album of her dad in Vietnam. He and his buddies were smoking joints for the camera in several pics. Of course many had developed the habit before they were conscripted. But mass drug use in Vietnam is a reality that shouldn't be swept under the rug, and it doesn't disrespect the soldiers or vets to point it out.

"I hope no one ever speaks so respectfully about me!"

**********

As far as whether Kerry's claims about atrocities are true, I had thought they were now common knowledge, beyond controversy except among a few on the far Right. And I still think this is the case. When you boil it down the only people who want to continue to deny these are 1) Fox News, 2) a handful of bitter veterans, 3) a handful of prominent conservative journalists and bloggers. The swing voters that the Swiftys' ad is targeted at probably don't have an informed opinion on the topic. Did most Vietnam vets commit atrocities? Obviously, and thankfully, no. Did hundreds do so? Definitely. Thousands? Probably. Does this make them monsters? No, not most of them. They were decent Americans put into extrordinary circumstances for which they were not trained. Obviously, most of the men and women at Abu Ghraib, who were not trained for what was handed them, are decent Americans. Most probably did nothing wrong; a handful were monsters; and a not insignificant number of them were corrupted by lack of preparadness, fear, stress, and fatigue.

It's still a bit early to be definitive about Abu Ghraib, but I'm not prepared to exonerate anybody who engaged in sexual humiliation or caused serious injury to prisoners; the attitude of the grunts towards such is suggested by the fact that the people in the photos are referred to as "the seven morons who lost the war." Most reporting on this that I've seen (as well as grandstanding by senators) has confused the deplorable conduct that has resulted in courts martial with the measures appropriate for interrogation of persons suspected of being combatants (and there is of course uncertainty involved in determining who is a credible suspect, since the terrorists and insurgents don't wear a uniform -- much the same situation as the military faced in Vietnam). I'd note that the Schlesinger report finds that "No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred [at Abu Ghraib]. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities."

Well, the Schlesinger report also stated this:

"The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline.... There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."

This is delicately put, including in the way it states in the negative "more than the failure of a few." Would that mean "the failure of many?" Schlessinger himself, a former Secretary of Defense, is a Republican who supported the invasion of Iraq, and was authorized to investigate Abu Ghraib by Rumsfeld. What chance was there that he would conclude there was a "policy of abuse." Appointed by Rumsfeld and he would issue a report that would cost Rumsfeld his job? Fat chance.

In October 2003, the guard to prisoner ratio was 90 to 7,000. That's 1 guard per 78 prisoners, not even close to the ratio of American civilian prisons (California state prisons are about 1 to 10). And these soldiers were not trained prison guards. If that isn't a command decision that set up the conditions for abuse, I don't know what is. And the "policy" of treating al-Qaida prisoners as something other than prisoners of war is responsible for abuses at Guantanamo. Even the Supremes have rebuked Bush's policy of holding prisoners incommunicado.

So we have bad command decisions, bad policy, and indeed, a White House that violated the constitution. Abuse resulted.

**********

The Owens piece in NR online, in which I have already pointed out one flaw, is wrong about the Winter Soldiers testimony. I hate to "link dump" but here are several sources (1, 2, 3, 4) on the two books which Owens cites as well as stories on Vietnam atrocities in general.

You're mistaken about the consensus. The Toledo Blade series may show only that members of a unit can successfully conspire in committing atrocities and conceal the evidence long enough that it becomes difficult to assure a conviction; it probably also shows that in 1975 nobody in the Pentagon was interested in reliving Vietnam. But it tells us NOTHING about what official policy was in the theater in 1967-8, when the atrocities were committed, Here is the verdict on the larger question from the Blade story itself: "Academics have long disputed just how many unknown atrocities occurred in Vietnam, but most scholars [NB -- not just conservative pundits, bloggers, and guys who really should be writing on Romans] agree that the majority of soldiers in Vietnam did not commit war crimes. And no other single event of the war has surfaced to compare to the 4 1/2-hour rampage that occurred in the cluster of villages commonly known as My Lai." QED for me.

I've noted above that the Wikipedia article also indicates that the notion that atrocities were military policy in Vietnam is credibly disputed. All the Village Voice piece does is link the Toledo Blade story to tactics used in Vietnam, which are not themselves violations of international law nor evidence of systematic disregard of the same (see quotes from Lewy's history below). Moreover, the Voice is to the New Republic as Pat Buchanan's magazine (whatever it's called) is to National Review, and I'd respectfully suggest that anyone taking it and VVAW as objective sources of information stands outside the mainstream. If you'd like to join us here within hailing distance of the political center you might begin by looking at the following (note the publishers, and the Times's favorable verdict on Lind --these aren't Rupert Murdoch put-up jobs):

I don't think anything in that Village Voice article was outside the mainstream debate. As you say yourself, it links the Toledo Blade story to tactics used in Vietnam, mostly through referring to the work of historian Christian Appy, who has taught at Harvard and MIT. Appy's work is not beyond controversy, but it's hardly outside the mainstream. What the VV piece mostly does is link the Blade story to reports of atrocities in Iraq, citing the Washington Post, New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Guardian. Again (you might argue the Guardian), hardly outside the mainstream. Indeed, what in the VV piece specifically IS outside the mainstream? Okay, so the VV itself is. That's not much of a refutation of the piece, which, if you'll look at again, doesn't contain any claims out of hailing distance of the center.

[Source #1] Guenter Lewy's America in Vietnam (Oxford University Press) -- the history cited in the Wikipedia article you forwarded. Chaps. 7–11 treat of atrocities, war crimes, and the justice of the war's conduct. From an exhaustive survey of the evidence, Lewy concludes that "The American record in Vietnam with regard to observance of the law of war is not a succession of war crimes and does not support charges of a systematic and willful violation of existing agreements for standards of human decency in time of war" (p. 268); "VC terror was not a selective political weapon employed against a few corrupt officals but in fact cost the lives of many thousands of innocent people.

The American counterinsurgency effort, on the other hand, while often carried out in a self-defeating manner, generally did not violate international law, did not seek to destroy the civilian population as a matter of deliberate policy, and did not cause civilian casualties in proportions uniquely different from other wars of this century" (p. 305); "Some [NB] soldiers began to adopte the so-called 'mere-gook' rule. . . . Callousness toward the Vietnamese was also caused by the writings and pronouncements of many American journalists and politicians, who, while seeking to end the American involvement, for years exaggerated the faults of the South Vietnamese government and nation and gradually created an image of people not worth defending, if not altogether worthless, . . . though the acceptance of the 'mere-gook' rule has probably been exaggerated.

For each misdeed . . . unbiased observers in Vietnam could see examples of friendship and generosity. Individual American soldiers, and sometimes entire units, adopted orphans and other children and engaged in various aid programs" (p. 310); "The argument that certain 'tactical field policies,' as for example the stress on body count, created an atmosphere conducive to atrocities was certainly valid. Yet despite the pressure for a high enemy casualty toll most soldiers in Vietnam did not kill prisoners or intentionally shoot unarmed villagers. Violations of the law of war in this regard were committed by individuals in violation of existing policy" (p. 315); re: the approximately 200 Army and Marine courts martial of servicemen charged with homicide, rape, and other serious crimes against Vietnamese victims,"the rate of acquittal in the case of Army courts-martial was below that of American domestic cases, while in the Marine Corps the rate was about the same . . .

[T]he conclusion of an Army lawyer would therefore appear to be justified: 'If courts-martial behave pretty much like American juries . . . I find no corroboration for the existence of a "mere-gook" rule in the performance of American courts-martial'" (pp. 351-2).

This is from a Chicago Tribune article that questions a crucial Lewy source. And it makes the point that if any Winter Soldier testimony could have been proved false, the Nixon administration had every reason to ferret out the real truth. It concludes, sort of agnostically, that we can't know the full extent of the atrocities (I'm comfortable with some sort of agnosticism here, but I would continue to maintain that the policies, purposes, and conditions in Vietnam were more insidious than in previous American wars, and that in this light Kerry's speech is ethical):

'Kerry and other Vietnam Veterans Against the War members "were very careful to double-check" the accuracy of soldiers' accounts at the Detroit event, because prominent war opponents such as author Mark Lane had been heavily criticized for relying on spurious evidence of atrocities, said University of Waterloo history professor Andrew Hunt. "Kerry was involved in that. They really did their work."

Voices of Winter Soldiers

One by one, the veterans at the hotel stated their names and ranks, and, although they risked prosecution and personal shame, described immoral acts they had committed or seen firsthand.

Former interrogator Nathan Hale, a specialist 5th class with the Americal Division, testified that he was told by his captain to use any means necessary, including rifle butts and knives, to elicit information from prisoners.

Kenneth Ruth, a former E-4 in the 1st Cavalry Air Division, showed a slide of an interrogator yanking a rope tied to a prisoner's testicles.

There were also numerous accounts of rape.

The Nixon White House quickly launched an effort to undermine the testimony.

"The men that participated in the pseudo-atrocity hearings in Detroit will be checked out to ascertain if they are genuine Viet Nam combat veterans," White House counsel Charles Colson wrote in a memo.

But in the end, authorities offered no public challenge to the veracity of the allegations.

It was not until seven years later that the testimony was challenged, in conservative writer Guenter Lewy's 1978 book "America in Vietnam."

Lewy wrote that he had examined a Naval Investigative Service file that seriously discredited several of the Detroit veterans. Some were revealed by Navy investigators to have falsified their identities and weren't even in Vietnam, Lewy wrote.

Government officials today cannot verify that Naval Investigative Service report's existence.

"We have not been able to confirm the existence of this report, but it's also possible that such records could have been destroyed or misplaced," said Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul O'Donnell.

"I don't think Lewy is interested in presenting any of [the Winter Soldier testimony] as truthful," said University of Richmond history professor Ernest Bolt. "He has an angle on the war as a whole."

Bolt said it is impossible to tell whether Lewy fairly characterized the naval investigative report because no other historian had seen it. "He's using the points of their investigation that fit his purposes," Bolt said.

Oakton professor Stacewicz said it is possible that several imposters did testify among the 150 or so veterans in Detroit: "Could a couple of people have slipped through? Possibly. But does that impugn everybody else? Not in my view."

Truth can be elusive.

How prevalent were the atrocities described by the veterans in Detroit? The number is unknowable, historians say.

"They are the kinds of events that by their nature are unreported," Solis said.'

I'll conclude here with what veteran Sgt. William Doyle told ABC News last year about Tiger Force: "Murder was not uncommon. It was more or less the rule of the day." When he was asked if he was afraid he might be put on trial all these years later he said, "I could get found not guilty on temporary insanity on any one of them, because there's no way you can be in that situation and not be temporarily insane." Exactly.

[Source #2] Michael Lind's Vietnam: The Necessary War includes a chapter on "Vietnam and the Folklore of the Antiwar Movement" (pp. 140–185), in which according to the favorable review that ran in the New York Times (20 October 1999) Lind is "devastatingly hard on the antiwar left, whose arguments he slices up with a keen analytical razor"; see also pp. 245-250, which rebut the charges that Vietnam was a uniquely cruel war, as regards both infantry and the bombing campaign.

[Source #3] Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam (Simon & Schuster), chap. 5, notes in the course of a well-written defense of the justice of the action notes that "the proportion of civilian deaths was much lower in Vietnam than in Korea and roughly the same as in World War II" (p. 192).

I can't look at these neocon books in time to keep the debate hot. The two claims you present are interesting, but alone they are not enough to sway me. And even if they were true, they would not be enough. In addition to hippies and many regular grunts, a lot of top brass thought the Vietnam War was misguided. Here's an account from the Political Science Quarterly (v.101, #41):

"[Generals] Ridgway, Shoup, Gavin and other military leaders -- including Air Force General Lauris Norstad; Army Generals William Wallace Ford and Robert L. Hughes; Marine Generals Hugh Hester and Samuel G. Griffith; Rear Admiral Arnold True; and Marine Colonels William Corson and James Donovan (and there are more) -- testified before congressional committees, wrote books and articles, appeared on television and radio programs, and made the front page of American newspapers, always with the message that the Vietnam War was a political, strategic and moral blunder from which the United States should quickly disengage. As a group, the military brass who spoke out against the war gained the attention of millions of Americans, played an important role in the national debate over Vietnam, and . . . were arguably the most respected and influential military figures of their time."

Generals and other top officers speaking up publicly about how we are in a wrongheaded war? Sound familiar?

**********

Of course I can understand why the Bushies want to attack Kerry on his record of service and subsequent activism, since a recent Pew poll found that of those who know that Kerry won 3 purple hearts, a majority say they will vote for him. [Disclaimer: I can't find this poll online. I surfed past it last night but now I can't find it again. So I'll leave it in but stand open for correction.] The Bushies are panicked, and they should be. The whole Swifty campaign, with it's bitter, lugubrious heroes and contradictory testimonies, smells of desperation--desperation aided by old wounds and vetted by a bank of trusty old Republican lawyers who know how to take it to the edge of legality and let it hang there. Fine. That's the game. Let's call it the 527 game. The Bushies are losing. I lived in Ohio for three years until a few weeks ago, and I can tell you firsthand that those no-nonsense Ohioans are fed up with Bush's arrogance and with neo-con hubris. And the way Bush brandishes his Christian fundamentalism, while effective with southerners, doesn't play well at all with midwesterners. The Repubs in Florida better disenfranchise and / or scare as many black voters away from the polls as they can, because Ohio ain't voting for Bush this time.

Your last sentence is fever-swamp stuff, Dave. You should look at the dissenting report from the the US Commission on Civil Rights' investigation of Florida 2000 which documents the questionable process and analysis that race ideologue Mary Francis Berry's Democratically stacked commission to accuse . . . somebody in Florida of denying blacks their voting rights; her report is the only peg there is to hang that contention on, and it won't hold. (I have a pdf of the dissent if you'd like to see it.)

From the summary of the report:

Perhaps the most dramatic undercount in this election was the nonexistent ballots of the countless unknown eligible voters, who were wrongfully purged from the voter registration rolls, turned away from the polls, and by various other means prevented from exercising the franchise. While statistical data, reinforced by credible anecdotal evidence, point to widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights, it is impossible to determine the extent of the disenfranchisement or to provide an adequate remedy to the persons whose voices were silenced in this historic election by a pattern and practice of injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency. [my italics]

And the commission found that before the election, and even during, “state and county officials were aware of several key factors that ultimately contributed to the disenfranchisement of qualified voters.”

The commission concluded there was no "conclusive evidence" of conspiracy, but that Florida violated the Voting Rights Act nonetheless, and wrongly disenfranchised eligible black voters more than whites by 10 to 1.

The commission also found that state officials new that their method for achieving voter roll purges were based on an "error-laden strategy" and that state officials knew that eligible voters would be falsely identified as felons. The report notes that the state hired DataBase Technologies to generate the lists, and that a senior vice president of DataBase warned state officials that the method the state implemented would create a large number of "false positives."

And from more recent voting scandals in Florida, here's something from a recent op-ed piece from Bob Herbert of the NYT:

"The state's "felon purge" list had to be abandoned by Glenda Hood, the secretary of state (and, yes, former mayor of Orlando), after it became known that the flawed list would target blacks but not Hispanics, who are more likely in Florida to vote Republican. The list also contained the names of thousands of people, most of them black, who should not have been on the list at all.

Ms. Hood, handpicked by Governor Bush to succeed the notorious Katherine Harris as secretary of state, was forced to admit that the felons list was a mess. She said the problems were unintentional. What clearly was intentional was the desire of Ms. Hood and Governor Bush to keep the list secret. It was disclosed only as a result of lawsuits filed under Florida's admirable sunshine law."

Here we are in '04 with a secret purge list. The US Commission on Civil Rights report didn't seem to reform those negligent Florida officials at all. In fact their methods have gotten even more flawed--now they have been forced to abandon a system that disenfranchised blacks but not eligible hispanics. Hispanics in Florida being Republican voters mostly, kind of makes you want to go hmmm....

And then there's the issue of Florida officials' ongoing attempt to root out voter fraud in Orlando by sending state troupers into the homes of elderly black voters there, even after a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, reviewed by the Florida Division of Elections, found no evidence of fraud.

Fever-swamp stuff? If you think certain Repub officials in Florida haven't targeted black voters I've got some Florida swampland I'd like to sell you....

If the R's only gained power by fraud, how do you explain the historic gains by the party in power in 2002, including the comfortable re-election of Jeb Bush in Florida, whom Terry McAuliffe targeted for defeat and whom on your scenario an angry electorate should have bounced from the governor's mansion as payback for his role in stealing the White House for his brother.

I think that has to do with being the brother of a popular wartime president whose approval ratings were exceptionally high at the time. And well, the majority wanted Jeb to continue being their governor. I don't see conspiracies in every Democratic defeat--only where there's evidence.

**********

What on earth is illegal about the Swift Boat enterprise? Free speech means that I get to say what I think should be said politically -- EVEN IF IT'S UNTRUE (as it's not at all clear to me that the Swift Boat charges are -- on the two points I noted yesterday that Kerry has conceded, it's clear that he's been wrong and has corrected the record only under the pressure of the ads). Then my opponent is free to point out where I'm wrong, and the voters get to decide who's on the level. And if (for the sake of argument) the Swiftie campaign is illegal, then you'd agree that the 527's that have filled the air with anti-Bush ads for a year and have a revolving door employment policy vis-à-is Kerry's campaign are illegal, too?

Nothing is illegal about it. I said that they took it to the "edge of legality." What I meant by that was that they got help people who were involved in and around Bush's campaign without actually coordinating their efforts with the campaign. Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg and Air Force Col. Ken Cordier, both associated with the SBVT, have both resigned after it was revealed that had ties to the Bush campaign.

I have no problem with the SBVT from a legal perspective. As I said, let the 527 games begin. And not that this is material, but I remember when MoveOnPac was a grassroots movement that I and other friends supported through their website. I know it's a monster now, but it didn't start as one and it still relies on grassroots support to a great extent. SBVT was founded and financed from the top at the start.

I think you're dead wrong that Bush welcomes the Swifties' attacks on Kerry's service, though he is presently benefiting from it; Bush does not want to compare notes on what he and Kerry were doing in 1968, and there is of course no evidence of coordination with the campaign (the "people know people" business goes about 10X for Kerry and moveon.org). On the other hand, while still condemning the advertising by Swifties and all 527's, the Bush campaign has now (in a letter on their web site) criticized Kerry's 1971 anti-war activities. If the Swifties were a stealth arm of the Bush campaign, this would rather blow the stealth, no?

I just can't believe that Bush doesn't welcome the attack. If it goes badly for him he may regret it, but this was a carefully thought through strategy, however risky, that sprang from the brains of the people who brought us Willie Horton and the Dukakis-in-a-tank bobblehead. I think the Repubs are willing to take the risk, as I said earlier, because they are desperate.

I also think you're quite mistaken about which campaign is in despair. Kerry came off his convention with no bounce. Historically he ought to be up by 10 points if he wants to depose the incumbent, but instead he's dead even; in fact, he's behind in the LA Times poll announced this morning, 49-46, with Bush claiming 15% of Democratic voters and Kerry only 3% of Republicans -- and which candidate has the problem broadening his appeal beyond his base? Meanwhile, the only rationale we've been offered for Kerry's candidacy (aside from "Bush lied!") is now under serious challenge -- as Dole put it in the quote that didn't get play, "Instead of talking about his Senate record, which is thin, he's talking about his war record, which is confused."

Maybe we'll agree on this. Kerry's problem is he's a liberal who prevaricates because he fears he must follow Clintonian triangulation to win, but he's not good at it yet. And he knows his own voting record is not consistently New Democrat. Okay, now for the part we probably disagree about. It was easy for Bush to mouth platitudes about being a "compassionate conservative" in 2000, as you know, because he didn't have to pin it to much of anything substantial. His record as governor was so nondescript, taking his cue as he did from Bullock who set the agenda, that he didn't have a long and distinct record on military policy (obviously nothing here), taxes, healthcare, etc., that could be subjected to scrutiny. And his education initiatives, which he did trumpet, were in such an early stage of implementation when he ran for president that it was impossible to judge him by the results of that.

Kerry's response to the Swift Vet challenge was a pathetic attempt at pre-emptive legal action (continuing today, with the ludicrous request to Ashcroft open a criminal investigation) and he's been avoiding reporters since the first ad hit -- sounds like desperation to me! With the second Swiftie ad, it's now going to come into focus how thoroughly (and, it appears, opportunistically) Kerry trashed his band of brothers in 1971.

Granted, it was a ludicrous request. But I don't think it's desperation. It could turn in to that (don't think it will) but it's more like shock. Desperation takes time to build. We'll see how it plays out.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 24 Jul 2004 22:49:00 -0400

Lessig Challenges Bill O'Reilly

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig takes Bill O'Reilly to task for his treatment of former "The Factor" guest Jeremy Glick. The story, on Lessig's blog, includes links to all of the statements involved, including footage of the original O'Reilly-Glick interview.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:10:00 -0400

Bartolom Esteban Murillo Vs. Gilbert and George

I invite you to do a mental mashup of these two religious (Christian) artworks. Okay I completely stole this from the Liverpool Museum of Art, so go look at their site.

'Virgin and Christ Child in Glory' 1673

'Dangling' 1991