Ezra Klein On The “Pain Caucus”

As I am also a member of that magical demographic, “the young,” I’m just going to reprint the bulk of his post. It’s a point which deserves to be shouted from the rooftops again and again until we’re all hoarse.

These are the benefit cutters and means testers and age raisers — folks who loudly champion a set of painfully austere entitlement reforms despite the fact that the government’s fiscal worries are a) not about Social Security and b) driven by health care spending, not Medicare promises. It is, in other words, an aesthetic posture more than a policy argument, but it’s utterly pervasive in Washington.

More On That Note

Jonah Goldberg responds to this post by Ross Douthat on the topic of “spreading the wealth around,” pointing out the difference between viewing such spreading as a necessary result of, or means to, good public policy, and viewing it as the actual aim of public policy – the latter coming genuinely close to a socialist worldview.

Indeed, Barack Obama made it sound like he thinks spreading the wealth isn’t the consequence of good public policy but it is in fact the chief aim of public policy. That was even more clear, I think, when he told Charlie Gibson that he would consider raising capital gains taxes for “purposes of fairness” whether or not they increased revenues. In other words, spreading the wealth is the public policy aim, not the regrettable byproduct of it.

It’s entirely possible this is largely a semantic as opposed to a philosophical thing, but I don’t think that’s the case, which is why I think so many people had an “aha” moment over this Joe the Plumber stuff.

Actually, I think a semantic rather than philosophic difference is precisely what we have here, and if the latest polls are any indication, that was the “aha” moment that wasn’t.

At any rate, I see no evidence that Obama views spreading the wealth as anything other than a necessary means to the end of good public policy. His positions on pork spending, his healthcare plan, and other positions seem to indicate that he does think there are good ways and bad ways to spread the wealth, which would imply he doesn’t view the spreading as an end in itself. I mean, maybe I’m wrong (and maybe Obama’s already said something on this), but if you’re looking for a major liberal politician who might be open to more means-testing, given his temperament I would think Obama would be it.

The Daily Show to Sarah Palin & Crew: Fuck You Right In Your Real American Ear

Yesterday’s The Daily Show was kind of remarkable. The entirety of the show’s non-interview material was dedicated solely to ripping Sarah Palin, her “real America” schtick, and the sentiment of small-town reverse-snobbery to ragged and bloody shreds. I don’t think I have ever seen the show dedicate an entire episode to such a singular and partisan purpose. Jon Stewart and crew must loathe her every bit as much as the folks at Saturday Night Live do.

And you know what? I don’t blame them in the slightest.

I spent the first few days of Palin’s emergence trying my damndest to keep a clear head about her. I thought her family weathered a level of scrutiny and a slew of jokes that were genuinely out of line. The negative reaction to her lifestyle among many commentators, and among many of my peers and friends here in Los Angeles, was off-putting. And I admire Palin’s decision to not abort a child with Down Syndrome as a noble act worthy of emulation.

Then came her speech at the GOP convention, and all that vanished right into thin air. The arrogance, lack of intellectual curiosity, and self-satisfied know-nothingism she put on display was quite simply epic. Her crack about being mayor of Wasilla sort of resembling the job of a community organizer, except for (snicker, snicker) actual responsibilities, was obscene. Forget the disrespect it showed to Obama the candidate, a disrespect he has never responded to in kind. She dismissed an entire field of people who work long hours for often meager reimbursement in order to help their local neighborhoods and better the local governments which respond to those neighborhoods. And by implication, she dismissed the concerns and struggles of every last person those community organizers attempt to aid. People who are overwhelmingly poor, black and urban, and whose situation in every way ought to secure our compassion. And hers.

Argument Is A Vulgar Impracticality

Will Wilkinson’s beef with all things Jacob Weisberg continues unabated:

The actually-existing system of institutions at any given moment is the result of a wickedly complex interaction of forces. In particular, the character of heavily government-regulated market institutions, like ours, is the outcome of set of bargains between public opinion-sensitive legislators in the democratic body, between competing ideological constituencies within regulatory agencies, between possible targets of regulation and legislators, and on and on and on.

This is in fact the system Weisberg seems to demands. He’s at least OK with it. His problem with the status quo apparently has nothing to do with the deeper structure, or the chronically unstable strategic character, of this system. His problem is simply that the wrong bargains sometimes get struck. Weisberg correctly notes, in the vacuous manner characteristic to this immensely popular but truly sophmoric conception of political economy, that the last disastrously bad set of bargains wouldn’t have been struck had the contents of the minds of key players been different in certain ways. Indeed. So… what? So when the bargaining outcome leads to instability and massive structural failure, the correct response is simply to attempt to ensure that, in the future, people who believe certain things are not key players. This is preferably accomplished by ensuring that, in the future, no one of significance believes those things at all.

Is there any reason to believe this is not Jacob Weisberg’s way of thinking? Is there any reason not to think it is monumentally stupid?

Whither Economic Populism?

Do we actually want a situation in which the free-market ethos held by Republicans and libertarians has been completely driven from the sphere of public debate, and the only remaining argument is over which government interventions in the market should ultimately win out? That’s the question Jonah Goldberg poses in his latest Bloggingheads with Peter Beinart. And like Beinart, I must deliver a hearty “Yes!” in reply.

Goldberg seems to assume economic populism boils down to nothing other than panders to certain demographics, and that its embrace by both parties would create a “race to the bottom to determine which groups should be the winners and the losers.” By his lights, economic populism holds to no substantive or objective principles, and so if economic libertarianism were ever destroyed as a counterbalancing force the result would be a divisive politics of interest group one-upsmanship. This may be the state of economic populism now, but there is no reason (and here I hit a drum Daniel Larison has been beating) that this should inherently or inevitably be the case. The reason economic populism (or per Larison, populism writ large) seems to have no coherent framework of principles could very well be that no one has bothered to give it any. And the reason no one has bothered with that project, at least in the last few decades, is the overwhelming inertia of the neo-liberal free market consensus.

My Bloody Blog Header, Take II

Why I picked the previous header image of the planetoid at nighttime, I don’t really know. This blog isn’t merely for the purposes of bloviation (though it is certainly that) but also a forum for me to work out and give structure to my own internal philosophic musings, which are usually built in some form upon the sentiment expressed in the Mark Twain quote. For whatever reason, I tend to associate philosophic musings with celestial imagery, hence the previous header.

Still, the picture never seemed to jive with a title that included the word “coward.” And a recent epiphany led me to conclude the best image to match that word would probably be found somewhere in a Calvin and Hobbes strip, preferably one dealing with the various reptilian, mutant, be-fanged things which live beneath Calvin’s bed. The new image comes from the cover of Something Under the Bed is Drooling, though I suspect even more appropriate pictures may be found in Waterson’s illustrations to his poem A Nauseous Nocturne. (“It says ‘coward,’ so what’s he doing with the damn suction dart gun?”) For the moment, I have been unable to acquire any of those drawings in a usable format.

It continues to be a work in progress.

More Old And Tired Liberalism, Please

I’m in agreement with Brink Lindsey that, contrary to Jacob Weisberg’s claims, the financial crash does not discredit economic libertarianism. (That said, Weisberg’s argument is hardly crazy, though this might be. And if anybody can come up with a way to finally and forever run economic libertarianism into the ground, I’d probably be for it.)

Lindsey does make one point I’ve heard before, and with which I take issue.

Here’s what I think, at least at this point. I think the whole system failed. Without a doubt, private actors succumbed to bubble psychology and perverse incentives, and their risk-taking grew increasingly reckless. Yet Weisberg’s simplistic morality tale that good prudent liberals were foiled by go-go free-marketeers doesn’t come close to mapping reality accurately. When exactly did Democrats try to arrest and reverse the steady relaxation of lending standards? When did they try to rein in the GSEs? Meanwhile, European banks are being battered by this crisis as well. Does anybody really think that European financial regulators are closet libertarians?

The point about Europe holds (though maybe we should start wondering if an entirely interconnected global financial market is such a good idea after all), but Democrats do not equal liberals just as conservatives or libertarians do not equal Republicans. Surely Lindsey must admit that, in so far as the Democrats acquiesced to the relaxation of regulation, they were in fact not acting as liberals. They were acting as Democrats who had been brow-beaten into supporting a neo-liberal economic consensus the more solidly liberal Democrats of decades past would have had nothing to do with. As Weisberg says, we were all operating on a “disbelief in financial regulation as a legitimate mechanism.”

Now, this probably wouldn’t change the damage done – with the Democrats’ approval – by Fannie and Freddie in encouraging the housing bubble.  But I think it does indicate that had the Democrats spent the last three decades acting more like, you know, liberals, the financial crisis would be substantially smaller than it is.

The Democratic Party Is Going To Eat Us All Alive

So, uh, apparently Obama’s campaign contributions for September are roughly equal to the budget of a Michael Bay film:

The Obama campaign announced this morning that it had raised a record $150 million last month, and had added 632,000 new donors to its total.

The amount shattered the campaign’s previous record from August. The McCain campaign also had a record-breaking month in August, but is now operating with the $84 million provided by public financing for the general cycle and assistance from the Republican National Committee under certain limits.

In announcing the Obama figure, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, said the average donation for September was less than $100. Mr. Obama, however, did hold several mega fund-raisers in September that pumped millions of dollars each into his coffers, including a Barbra Streisand-Hollywood event that alone collected a reported $11 million.

All counted, 3.1 million people have contributed to his campaign, Mr. Plouffe said.

Amateur Moral Theory – Proposition 2 Edition

As I am now a California resident, it seems I will have to begin paying attention to state politics. (Governor Schwarzenegger, you are on notice.) The LA Times editorial recommending a no vote on Proposition 2 is as good a place as any to start.

The egg industry is rife with cruelty to animals. Millions of hens in California are kept in cages so small that every natural instinct is thwarted: They cannot perch, walk or spread their wings. On some farms, cages are stacked and hens on the bottom live in waste.

All creatures, even those bred to provide food, deserve to be treated humanely. That’s the appeal of Proposition 2. It would require farmers to give chickens, pigs and veal calves room to turn around, walk or, in the case of chickens, stretch their wings

Ezra Klein points out even this doesn’t rise to the level of humane treatment, given that the animals are not required to receive natural feed, time at exercise or in the field, or even exposure to sunlight. Still, it’s certainly a step in the proper direction, so how does this turn into a “no” recommendation?

The brute fact is that treating animals humanely is expensive. Stuffing them into cages so small they cannot even turn around, in which they often live in their own waste, and must be constantly feed antibiotics to prevent infection and disease, is cheap. Cheaply treated animals mean cheaply produced eggs/veal/pork, which means a bigger profit margin for the farm in question.

Unhealthy Patriotism

A thought experiment.

You’re in a bar chatting to some guy over a beer, and suddenly, in a rash of frustration, he declares, “You know what? I’m the greatest person in the world, and I don’t think I should apologize for that.” Would you consider him to be an amiable and down-to-earth straight talker? I doubt it. Most likely you would conclude that he’s an arrogant and insufferable little shit.

I see no reason why this same logic should not apply when it comes to nations. It is a depressing and unfortunate thing when declaring that “America is the greatest nation on earth, and we shouldn’t apologize for it” becomes evidence that one is a morally solid American common man. All it shows is how deeply we have in fact sunk into hubris and self-satisfaction. And those are traits which always end in disaster.

I turn the floor over to G. K. Chesterton:

The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. (Orthodoxy, pg. 69)