Bergdahl

I have two articles to recommend on the Bergdahl business:

David Brooks takes a stand [OMG! David Brooks takes a stand on something!] in President Obama Was Right.

And the NY Times gives a good rundown on The Rush to Demonize Sgt. Bergdahl. The main stuff:

Four months ago, Senator John McCain said he would support the exchange of five hard-core Taliban leaders for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. “I would support,” he told CNN. “Obviously I’d have to know the details, but I would support ways of bringing him home and if exchange was one of them I think that would be something I think we should seriously consider.”

But the instant the Obama administration actually made that trade, Mr. McCain, as he has so often in the past, switched positions for maximum political advantage. “I would not have made this deal,” he said a few days ago. Suddenly the prisoner exchange is “troubling” and “poses a great threat” to service members. Hearings must be held, he said, and sharp questions asked.

[snip]

Republican operatives have arranged for soldiers in his unit to tell reporters that he was a deserter who cost the lives of several soldiers searching for him. In fact, a review of casualty reports by Charlie Savage and Andrew Lehren of The Times showed there is no clear link between any military deaths and the search.

And a classified military report shows that Sergeant Bergdahl had walked away from assigned areas at least twice before and had returned, according to a report in The Times on Thursday. It describes him as a free-spirited young man who asked many questions but gave no indication of being a deserter, let alone the turncoat that Mr. Obama’s opponents are now trying to create.

If anything, the report suggests that the army unit’s lack of security and discipline was as much to blame for the disappearance, given the sergeant’s history.

Thousands of soldiers desert during every war, including 50,000 American soldiers during World War II. As many as 4,000 a year were absent without leave for extended periods during the Iraq war. They leave for a variety of reasons, including psychological trauma, but whatever their mental state, it is the military’s duty to get them back if they are taken prisoner. That’s what the Obama administration did in this case, and there was a particular sense of urgency because a video showed that Sergeant Bergdahl’s life might be in danger.

But the critics seeking political advantage don’t care about the life or mental state of a particular soldier, or of a principle of loyalty that should provide comfort to any soldier in danger of capture. They live only for the attack.

Obama did the right thing, but handled the political end of it miserably.  We are talking about an American soldier here – a POW, for the love of Pete – and the Republicans are seriously suggesting we should have just left him there. If you can't win THAT fight, Barack, give us Hillary.

A Postcard from Screwtape*

Got an unusual postcard the other day:

"Wow!" methinks. "Only one percent of the Humane Society's budget goes to pet shelters? Where does the rest of it go? Oh, I know – into their pockets! Hah!"

Reading on, I see:

"You can be sure of THAT!" says I, and make a mental note to cross them off my charity list. Well, okay, I've never really actually given money to the Humane Society, but now I never would! That'll teach those skunks. Good thing there are folks keeping an eye on these crooks.

And then I forgot about it . . . until I got another postcard from the same people. And that's when the "You're Being Played for a Dummy!" alarm finally went off.

Wwwwaaaaaaiiiiiiiittttttttt a minute! Who's sending me these cards? Is supporting animal shelters the only way to help animals? Wouldn't that just be dogs and cats? Oh, yeah, and bunnies? What about horses? And cattle, hogs, and sheep raised for food? And before I got these postcards, did I really think the Humane Society's main mission was supporting local animal shelters?

The postcard says to go to the web site of something called HumaneWatch.

Google!

Oh, my! HumaneWatch turns out to be a front for the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is run by a person named Richard Berman. Mr. Berman acts, talks, and quacks like a libertarian. He says he is against the "nanny state".  And to demonstrate his noble displeasure, he raises millions from corporations to perform public relations hits on non-profits that are causing them trouble. 

According to a spokesman, John Doyle, the purpose of the CCF is to "draw attention to our enemies: just about every consumer and environmental group, chef, legislator or doctor who raises objections to things like pesticide use, genetic engineering of crops, or antibiotic use in beef and poultry."

Or, in the case of the Humane Society of the United States, organizations that are trying to improve the treatment of factory farm animals and keep sick animals from winding up in your steak or hamburger.

Some corporations, like Kraft and Pepsico, will have nothing to do with Mr. Berman. I guess they want their children to be proud of them – or at least not ashamed of them.

The same does not apply to Coca-Cola, Cargill, Monsanto, Tyson Foods, Outback Steakhouse (take a good look at that steak next time you're there), Anheuser-Busch, Phillip Morris, Davidoff (cigars), Overhill Farms, and Bruss Company (steaks and chops), all of whom have been named as donors to the Center for Consumer Freedom. Quite a rogue's gallery.

I never liked Outback, anyway.

* Screwtape

Net Neutrality

In case you missed the buzz, John Oliver did a bit on the FCC's plan to end net neutrality that managed to send so many commenters to the FCC web site that it brought down their server. To which I can only say: Good!

Another instant classic:



And while we're on the subject, if AT&T tries to convince you to give up your DSL and sign on to U-verse, politely decline. It is so bad I actually started googling to find a class action suit I could join. Although I am paying for speeds "up to" 6 mbs, I can no longer stream movies at night (or most days) because their infrastructure is so poor. And they knew it when they sold it to me.

The class action suit? Well, I certainly wasn't the first to think of it. But it seems there's something in that fine print of their contract that says if they commit fraud, I will not sue them, but will take it to arbitration.

Anyway, enjoy the John Oliver video.

The NRA and Gun Control

So it wasn't just my imagination. Once upon a time, in my life-time even, the National Rifle Association wasn't a bunch of wild-eyed paranoids. They were responsible people who promoted gun safety and advocated common sense gun control.

And did Ronald Reagan really say he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that legislation restricting it "would work no hardship on the honest citizen"?

My, how things have changed.

Fundamentals of Coaching Basketball

The Washington Post has a fascinating story up about bankruptcies among professional athletes.

The data on professional athletes are startling: Shortly after they retire, nearly four of five NFL players are bankrupt or under financial stress, according to Sports Illustrated. Joblessness and divorce are the main reasons. It’s marginally better in the National Basketball Association, where after retirement nearly two of three players are broke within five years.

Consider this chart:

It's really sad.

Timothy Geithner for Wonks

Once again, Jon Stewart makes "real" journalists look like uneducated chumps.

Here's a link to a 42-minute interview Stewart had with former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. (We couldn't get the embed to work.) I would say my attitude toward Geithner is about 51% positive. There's a lot about Stewart's approach to be critical of, like his tendency to cut off Geithner whenever he's trying to make a substantive point. But I've never seen a major media newsman as well informed and comfortable with talking about derivatives as Stewart is here.

I don't recommend this video if you're not particularly interested in the subject matter, but if you are, I think you'll find it entertaining.

The link is here.

The News Hour, India Style

While searching for results of the Idaho gubernatorial debate the other day, we inexplicably found ourselves directed to a link to an Indian program called News Hour (obviously not the venerable MacNeill-Lehrer offering). The segment was a debate concerning remarks the Pakistani Interior Minister had made about Norendra Modi, the newly elected Prime Minister of India, and Modi's remarks about a criminal Pakistan is harboring named Dawood Ibrahim.

When I was in junior high school, my mother subscribed to a weekly, 8-page news summary called India News (I think). I can't remember the background on how she came across it, but I'm certain that the subscription was intended to give my brother(s) and me a window to a different world. It certainly did. I read it occasionally, but not often enough to make sense of the cricket stories.

Since I was later a PolySci major, with some interest in international governments, and with this "deep" background in Indian politics, when the hour-long News Hour debate showed up, I thought, "Sure, why not?"

And wow.

Just see for yourself. Try to watch five minutes of it. It starts out slowly. The first person to talk is the moderator, for the love of Pete.



So I was pretty delighted to find that the Colbert Report's Jason Jones had discovered the state of Indian journalism, too, and filed this report (start it at 5 minutes, unless you want to watch the whole show).

The Idaho GOP

In reference to an earlier post about the Idaho GOP gubernatorial debate, the sentient reader might wonder how it came to be that two "non-normal" persons were included in the debate. It was, depending on how you look at it, a generous gesture of democratization by Idaho Governor Butch Otter, a brilliant political move by the governor, or a craven political move by a governor who had no respect for the voters in his state.

The background is that state Senator Russ Fulcher is going after two-term Governor Otter, on the basis that Otter is just not Tea Party enough, and challenged him to a debate. Otter agreed to the debate on the condition that the two other men who had qualified for the ballot be included, thus reducing by half the amount of time Fulcher would have to attack him.

The Idaho primary is today (Tuesday, May 20). It will be interesting to see what effect the exposure for Messrs. Harley Brown and Walt Bayes will have on the outcome. Stay tuned.

Another Reason to be Glad You Live in Minnesota

Earlier this Spring, we had the spectacle of an armed mob pointing guns at, and otherwise threatening, Bureau of Land Management employees in Bunkerville, Nevada.

The craziness is continuing in Texas, where a group calling itself Open Carry Texas likes to terrorize people in fast food restaurants. They do this by showing up en masse brandishing military weaponry it is allegedly their Constitutional right to carry anywhere they wish. When they showed up at a Jack-in-the-Box, Fort Worth police said, the store employees "locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear the rifle-carrying men would rob them."

THAT was such a good time for Open Carry Texas that they followed the visit up a few days later with a group trip to their local Chipotle. Make sure you scroll down on the link to that one, for pictures of our Constitutional scholars.

The GOP: Always Good for a Laugh

Don't miss the video of Wednesday night's GOP gubernatorial candidate debate. For a taste, here are the final five minutes, via Steve Benen:

Check it out here.

My money's on Harley Brown.

In Today's Mailbag

A letter I didn't finish reading:

Dear Robert,

As most of you know, it was my privilege to take office as the president of Coe College last July.

Some of me knows that, maybe, but not really most of me.

Kohawks: Am I correct in thinking that the legendary Signi would have kicked his butt?

Another Notch in the NRA's Belt

From this morning's Chicago Sun-Times:

Monday afternoon, a 14-year-old girl pulled a gun from her waistband, authorities said, and aimed it at Endia Martin to settle a dispute over a boy that started on Facebook.

When the teen pulled the trigger, it jammed.

She handed the gun to someone in the group she was with who fixed the weapon and handed it back to the girl, who then fatally shot Endia, also 14, in the back, prosecutors alleged.

The victim and the alleged shooter once were friends, one of Endia's cousins said.

[snip]

The gun used in the shooting, a legal .38-caliber revolver, was kept in the owner's car but was reported stolen April 14, [Chicago Police Superintendent] McCarthy said. Police departments don't let officers store their guns in their cars, but under the state's concealed carry law, individuals who are properly permitted can. [My emphasis.]

What happened, folks? For 150 years, concealed carry was considered a threat to public safety at best, and cowardly at worst. When was it, exactly, that we lost our minds?

John Oliver is Brilliant

A segment from John Oliver's new show. Did you know there's a big election going on in India? Probably not.

Good News for All But a Few Birds

I was glad to see this Kevin Drum link to a Bloomberg article about the danger of wind turbines to birds. The patter among some environmentalists is that they are responsible for massive bird kills.

Estimates from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Society don't support that.

What's amazing to me is the high number of fatalities caused by birds flying into buildings and windows. When I was working in downtown Chicago, there were mornings when I'd find 5 or 6 dead or stunned birds outside just one building. They saw nothing but blue sky and clouds in front of them, not realizing that they were flying into a glass building, and the sky was behind them.

Not many birds, it seems, die of old age.

Krugman on the Retirement Age

From Paul Krugman's blog:

I was pleased to see this article by Annie Lowrey documenting the growing disparity in life expectancy between the haves and the have-nots. It’s kind of frustrating, however, that this is apparently coming as news not just to many readers but to many policymakers and pundits. Many of us have been trying for years to get this point across — to point out that when people call for raising the Social Security and Medicare ages, they’re basically saying that janitors must keep working because corporate lawyers are living longer. Yet it never seems to sink in.

Maybe this article will change that. But my guess is that in a week or two we will once again hear a supposed wise man saying that we need to raise the retirement age to 67 because of higher life expectancy, unaware that (a) life expectancy hasn’t risen much for half of workers (b) we’ve already raised the retirement age to 67.

Exactly.

Taking PSA's in a New Direction

When I heard the usual suspects squealing about President Obama's appearance on the mock interview show, Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, I had to see it.

Turns out it's a Public Service Announcement for the Affordable Care Act, aimed at 20-somethings.

Let's see, we had Nixon doing "Sock it to me" on Laugh-in, and Dubya looking for WMD's under his Oval Office desk ....  I'd say it's quite a few steps above both.

A History of Slavery

The NY Times tells a fascinating story in today's edition about the history of slavery in Brazil. As Rio de Janeiro prepares for the World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, remnants of the city's slave port are being unearthed. This is leading to a reexamination of the role of slavery in that country's history.

Things that raised my eyebrows:

• It is estimated that 4.9 million slaves were imported by Brazil, which did not abolish slavery until 1888. 
• This compares to about 389,000 received in North America.
• Brazilian slaves came largely from the area of modern Angola. North American slaves came from further north (which makes sense – it's closer).

The article links to a worthy project at Emory University, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.  (The database can be confusing unless you download the 40-page guide.)

Jacqueline du Pré

Just now discovering cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Born in 1945; developed multiple sclerosis in 1971; retired from performing in 1973 (aged 28); died in 1987.

She was married to Daniel Barenboim.

According to Wikipedia, "She is particularly associated with Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, her interpretation of which has been described as 'definitive' and 'legendary.'"

Here's a taste:



Why has it taken me this long?

Ukraine

Kevin Drum lets us know what's going to happen with Ukraine, and he gets it just right:

1. Vladimir Putin will do something belligerent. (Already done.)
2. Republicans will demand that we show strength in the face of Putin's provocation. Whatever it is that we're doing, we should do more.
3. President Obama will denounce whatever it is that Putin does. But regardless of how unequivocal his condemnation is, Bill Kristol will insist that he's failing to support the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people.
4. Journalists will write a variety of thumbsuckers pointing out that our options are extremely limited, what with Ukraine being 5,000 miles away and all.
5. John McCain will appear on a bunch of Sunday chat shows to bemoan the fact that Obama is weak and no one fears America anymore.
6. Having written all the "options are limited" thumbsuckers, journalists and columnists will follow McCain's lead and start declaring that the crisis in Ukraine is the greatest foreign policy test of Obama's presidency. It will thus supplant Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, and North Korea for this honor.
7. In spite of all the trees felled and words spoken about this, nobody will have any good ideas about what kind of action might actually make a difference. There will be scattered calls to impose a few sanctions here and there, introduce a ban on Russian vodka imports, convene NATO, demand a UN Security Council vote, etc. None of this will have any material effect.
8. Obama will continue to denounce Putin. Perhaps he will convene NATO. For their part, Republicans will continue to insist that he's showing weakness and needs to get serious.
9. This will all continue for a while.
10. In the end, it will all settle down into a stalemate, with Russia having thrown its weight around in its near abroad—just like it always has—and the West not having the leverage to do much about it.

Sigh.

The Olympics

Haven't been much enthused about the Olympics this year. Snowboarding as an Olympic sport just doesn't make it for me, and everything seems tawdry. And how about those Cossacks? Reminds me of the alley scene from Cabaret.

Oh, well – to a wet philosopher, all is wetness.

Maybe my opinion is being influenced by the passage below from Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson, a recent book about the lead-up to American involvement in World War II.

People my age will remember Avery Brundage, who was president of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972. He was treated with such respect and deference. Speaking of an organization called America First, which tried to keep America neutral while Hitler was bombing London, Olson writes:

[America First's] leaders created some of their own problems by appointing to the national committee two men who were regarded as flagrantly anti-Semitic.

The first was Avery Brundage, a wealthy Chicago construction executive who was also president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. In 1936, Brundage had created a national furor as a result of his actions at that year's summer Olympic games in Nazi Germany. Not only did he reject proposals from American Jewish organizations and other religious groups to boycott the Berlin Olympics, he gave in to German pressure to prevent Jewish athletes from participating in the games. At Brundage's insistence, the only two Jews on the U.S. teams – both of them track and field athletes – were replaced just before the 400-meter relay race. Shortly after the Olympics were over, Hitler's government awarded Brundage's construction company a contract to build a new German embassy in Washington.

(Incidentally, the second "flagrant anti-Semite" on America First's national committee was Henry Ford, who was certainly that.)

Lest we be too miserable about the Brundage Olympics poo, Olson adds a footnote:

"One of the substitutes was Jesse Owens, the black track and field superstar who won four gold medals in Berlin, including one for the 400-meter relay."

The American Corporation Bill of Rights

Esquire's Charles P. Pierce has a great piece on the Supreme Court's decision to hear a case about whether the Affordable Care Act provision requiring large employers to cover birth control in their health insurance is a violation of an employer's freedom of religion.

I'll quote at length:

I say this as a lifelong Papist, this is what happens when you get too many ultramontane, Pius XII Catholics on the high court. The Church has been slug-nutty on birth control for 50 years, and the anti-choice people hate the form of birth control in question because it deprives them of clinic doors to which they can glue their heads. The principle at stake here is a joke; not even by the preposterous standards of this court as regarding corporate personhood, a corporation cannot reasonably be said to have a First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The people who run it certainly do, but they cannot reasonably argue that their freedom of religion is being curtailed because their employees can get their ladyparts medicine covered under the Affordable Care Act, unless your argument is that an employer has a right to subject employees to the employer's religious beliefs, which is an obvious contradiction, unless you're prepared to decide that an employer's First Amendment rights trump those of his employees. Wait. Forget I said that. This action should have been laughed out of the system two courts ago. Now, once again, common sense hangs on the weathervane that is Anthony Kennedy's intellect.

The obvious retort to this absurd cause of action is to ask whether or not the court would listen to a similar objection on behalf of a company owned by Jehovah's Witnesses that didn't want to cover blood transfusions for its employees. (Let us not even begin to get into Christian Science at this point.) However, members of this court, most notably Antonin (Short Time) Scalia, were notably unimpressed in 1990 when some Native Americans tried to argue that peyote was a vital to their religious rituals, pointing out that peyote had been an element in their liturgies for longer than bread had been a part of the Catholic Mass, and that, therefore, their use of it should not disqualify them from receiving benefits under Oregon law. There are people on this court who are more than willing to decide a case based on what is a real religion and what is not, and let's just say that none of them are Zoroastrians.

The entire piece is here.

Kitty Riot

I was amazed by these two young ladies from the Russian band called Kitty Riot. They've spent time in prison, and still have a sense of humor.

Colbert is obviously having fun.

If the videos don't show up here, look for them here.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

In paradisum

Lydia Vinour Miller 1916-2014

In paradisum deducant angeli;
in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam
    Jersusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suspipiat
et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere,
aeternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs receive you at your coming
and lead you into the holy city
     of Jersusalem.
May the choir of angels receive you
and with Lazarus, once poor,
may you have eternal rest.

REQUIEM, Gabriel Fauré

Hear it beautifully sung here.

A Powerful PSA

Virginia Ted sent me a link to a great economics/finance blog call The Big Picture. As I was perusing its offerings, I came across this powerful public service announcement from New Zealand. Please watch it.



This ad should be reproduced in the USA. Maybe the insurance companies can get together and finance it.

Books on Social Security

I'm embarking on a reading program of books about Social Security, and thought you might enjoy this little illustration of the dangers of believing the blurbs on the backs of books.

The book I'm looking at is called The Looting of Social Security, by Allen Smith.

The blurb on the book comes from Publishers Weekly and says:

Smith, a retired ecomomics professor, presents what is at heart a straightforward grievance: for more than a decade, political leaders from both parties have used various accounting tricks to shift the Social Security surplus into the general budget, in violation of federal law, and have lied about the nation's financial status, with the probably (sic) result, Smith says, that they'll run Social Security into the ground by 2018 ...

Checking the Publishers Weekly review, that truly is the first sentence of the review (minus turning probable into an adverb).

But the next two sentences of the review take a slightly different tone:

He propounds every point of that grievance over and over, even quoting the same speeches in separate chapters. The text is further padded by long excerpts from the Congressional Record, an entire AP dispatch about Smith's exploits driving around Florida in a "debtmobile" covered in slogans, even the complete transcript of a CNN appearance to promote his previous book (The Alleged Budget Surplus ).

I haven't started reading yet, but will try to give him a fair hearing. As an antidote, next up is Social Security: the Phony Crisis, by Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot.

Stewart Does Christie

A classic. Forget the text and just scroll down to the video.

You're welcome.

Addendum: If you're really interested in this issue, I recommend this interview with the mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, who should be considering becoming New Jersey's next governor.

I Must Have Been More Discreet Than I Thought!

A journal called Crime and Delinquency has published a study that finds that, by age 23, 49 percent of African-American males, 44 percent of Hispanic males, and 40 percent of white males HAVE BEEN ARRESTED for something other than a traffic violation.

Yeowie Zowie! Also:

While the prevalence of arrest increased for females from age 18 to 23, the variation between races was slight. At age 18, arrest rates were 12 percent for white females and 11.8 percent and 11.9 percent for Hispanic and black females, respectively. By age 23, arrest rates were 20 percent for white females and 18 percent and 16 percent for Hispanic and black females, respectively.

Does not look good on a resumé.

Do they still have resumés?

A Sign of the Times

Politifact finds it necessary to fact-check a wigged-out, right wing blog's claim that:

Obamacare Medical Codes Confirm: Execution by Beheading to be Implemented in America.

A Tip if You're Lost in the Woods (or Anywhere) with Your Dog

Latest research indicates that dogs poop in line with the Earth's magnetic field.

Now that's what I call Pure Science.

And aren't you glad!

Anybody with a dog ever notice this?

How to Talk Funny in Chicago

I answered 25 questions about what I call things and how I pronounce them, and the NY Times guessed I was from Newark.

My "hometown" is just 20 miles north of there.

Give it a try. And a tip of the hat to Paul Krugman (also "from" Newark; or Yonkers; or New York).

The alternate cities for me were Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

A Seasonal Item

How "It's a Wonderful Life" would be marketed today:

What did Chris Christie know, and when did he know it?

By now you've heard of Bridgegate, the New Jersey scandal in which a Christie appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey closed down several lanes to the George Washington Bridge, ostensibly as a "traffic study," but obviously – let's face it – to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie for reelection to governor. The lane closings resulted in 4-hour traffic jams. So the mayor of Fort Lee was not the only one being punished.

The guy who ordered the lane closings, David Wildstein, was a childhood friend of Christie's, but still ...  it is hard to believe that Christie himself would be involved in something so stupid.

Unfortunately, it's becoming less and less hard to believe as time goes by. This can't be good for Christie.

Imagine you are governor of New Jersey. Before you slash your wrists, think about what your reaction would be to learning – after the fact – that one of your political appointees had done something this stupid, punishing your own constituents. What would you do? Would you fire him? Would you demand full disclosure? I would. In a New Jersey minute.

Now compare that to Christie's reaction.

Mark Kleiman has this take on it:

The Wall Street Journal reports that both David Wildstein and Bill Baroni [another Christie appointee to Port Authority] have now “lawyered up.” If you’re Christie, that’s bad. The Journal also reports that they’ve both hired criminal defense lawyers. If you’re Christie, that’s worse.

Wildstein’s lawyer’s previous clients include Sharpe James, the appallingly corrupt Mayor of Newark replaced by Cory Booker, who wound up spending 18 months in a federal penitentiary. If you’re Christie, that’s just awful; Wildstein didn’t hire a top corruption-defense lawyer just to advise him on how to respond to subpoenas. He clearly thinks he’s in deep doo-doo, and probably in deep Federal doo-doo at that.

But the worst news – if you’re Christie – is that Baroni’s lawyer is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey named Michael Himmel.

In 2009, Mr. Himmel also represented Solomon Dwek, a former real estate investor who pleaded guilty to bank fraud and money laundering charges. Mr. Dwek became an FBI informant in a case brought by Mr. Christie that implicated dozens of elected officials in a widespread corruption investigation.

So not only does Baroni think he needs serious criminal defense, he’s hired someone with a history of making deals in which his client gets a break in return for implicating everyone else in sight. (The technical term is “cooperation.”) And the only person above Baroni in the pecking order – the only one Baroni can hope to save himself by snitching on – is Gov. Soprano himself.

 So it's time to pull out the "Watergate Warning" for Governor Christie, a former U.S. Attorney:

It's not the crime they get you for; it's the cover-up. Be careful.

When Chicago Was Chicago

I got this back in 1977, and have carried it with me since then. In Chicago, you never know when you're going to need it. I understand it can be used as voter identification.

By the way, this is the whole receipt. Nothing has been clipped off.

Sempringham, Through His Teacher's Eyes

Mr. Hartman had me pegged – right from the beginning of the 6th grade.

Omo Child

Warning: This is a plea for money.

A few days ago I pointed you to a NY Times article about the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, a telemarketing scheme devised by a Harvard Law graduate that raised $100 million and gave almost none of it to Navy Veterans. They were good at what they did; unfortunately, what they did was fraud, theft, and money laundering.

Keep that number in your head: $100 million raised, and almost none of it went anywhere good.

Now let me tell you about another charity: Omo Child.

It is hard to find an inhabited area of the world that is more remote than the Omo River Valley in southwest Ethiopia. A National Geographic article called it Africa's Last Frontier.

I stole this excellent National Geographic map from the Omo Child web site. I just couldn't find another nearly as good. Click on it for a better view.

The Omo Valley is home to several tribes, including (as you can see) the Mursi, Kara, and Hamar. Among some Omo tribes there is an unfortunate practice called Mingi. Simply stated, Mingi is the designation of some children as a curse on the tribe, children whose presence provokes evil spirits to withhold rain, cause illness or death, or otherwise wreak havoc on the tribe.

A child can be declared Mingi if his/her top teeth come in before the bottom teeth. Or if the child is born out of wedlock, or pregnancy occurs without the elders' consent, or if the child is a twin.

To remove the curse on the tribe, the Mingi child is killed, either by drowning starvation or by exposure.

Omo Child takes as its mission the rescue of these children, and "to provide a safe, nurturing home and quality education for Mingi children. Our hope is that these children will become future leaders in their tribes and communities." In addition, Omo Child is trying to end the practice of Mingi in the Omo Valley tribes. So far, they have been successful with one tribe, the Kara, who ended the practice a year ago.

Omo Child was founded by a member of the Kara tribe, Lale Labuko (the first of his tribe to receive an education), and an American businessman and photographer, John Rowe. Labuko is the man on the scene, and he and the organization's work are spotlighted in the December 2013 issue of National Geographic.

So far Omo Child has rescued 37 children. The children are being raised in a three-room house. They have loving nannies and the older children go to school.

Please explore the Omo Child website for more information.

Now, do you recall that number I asked you to remember?  It was how much money a sorry excuse for a human being stole from people who were trying to be helpful to others.

Right: it was $100 million.

In 2011, Omo Child had total revenues of $109,000.  Take a look at their financials. There is no fat there. There are no professional directors pulling in $500,000+ salaries.

Food for one child costs $42 a month. Nanny care for one child costs $38/mo. Sending a child to school costs $34/mo. There are other expenses, but you get the picture. It's pretty simple: a moderate contribution has a real impact because it goes to the kid.

If you're looking to get some bang for your charitable dollar, it's hard to see how you could do better than Omo Child. And the potential of these children to have a real impact on their communities and country some 20 years down the road is incredible. More bang!

Omo Child is currently conducting a year-end fundraising campaign. They are hoping to raise $30,000. Can you help them?

"It is not what we say or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do; or fail to do."

U.S. Navy Veterans Association

My brother, Mike – a Navy Vietnam veteran – wrote me of his own experience with the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, a telemarketing scam of which I wrote here.

Back in 2010 I was contacted by phone by someone representing himself as a member of the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. He knew all the right buttons to press and also told me that he was a retired Navy vet and that the association had done so many good things for he and his wife that he had given up his good civilian job to go work for the association. He said he was a Viet Nam vet and told a pretty convincing story about some incidents in DaNang of which I had some knowledge. In short he convinced me to make a donation.

After the call I started thinking about everything he had told me and became suspicious so I looked them up on Google and became aware of the less generous portions of the organization, as told by former sailors and civilians who felt they had been hoodwinked. I suspect that this is when the two reporters in Florida got wind of the story.

In short, I decided not to donate. Imagine my surprise when I got a call several weeks later asking me if I had forgotten about my promised donation. I started relaying some of the info I had uncovered to which the reply was that "there are always some dissatisfied people and that these stories were untrue" and the association's president was soon to expose the whole lot of them. I told him I would wait for the exposé before donating a penny to the association. I'm still waiting. Seems like they caught the ringleader.  For once no egg on my face but sadness for the Navy vets who lost out because of this bastard.

There is NO SUCH THING as a "Tactical Nuclear Weapon"

Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, whose dad was Congressman Duncan L. Hunter, has opined that we could use a "tactical nuclear device" in Iran. This clown was born in 1976, so he doesn't remember when Barry Goldwater wanted to use "tactical nuclear weapons" in Vietnam.

Congressman Duncan Doofus Hunter
(yes, it's really his picture)

Somebody needs to sit this boy down an' larn him some things.

You can create a nuclear "device" that will take out a block, say, or a neighborhood, and you can say that because it's impact is thus limited it is therefore a "tactical" weapon. You can say that if you want, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, but you'd be an idiot if you did.

The United States is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon on an enemy. It's always interesting to argue whether we should have, or whether we could have impressed Japan sufficiently by destroying some offshore island. It's a game of "what if ...", but the fact is that we used it.

We obliterated two Japanese cities. According to the unimpeachable Wikipedia: "Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day."

Surprisingly, this episode seems to have made an impression on the world, because in the nearly 70 years since, despite the Korean War, despite the Cold War, despite the Vietnamese War, despite the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and all the wars that other countries have fought that we've managed to stay out of, nobody has used a nuclear weapon again (although several countries went out and got themselves one).

And maybe that's the sad gift of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – that because of what happened to them, the world has seen the horror and for 70 years has had no stomach to repeat it. So all the thousands of nuclear weapons built by the United States and the USSR have mostly become disposal problems.

Now comes Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, who thinks we could use a nuclear "device" as though it were just some field weapon.

What Congressman Dum-Dum doesn't understand is that using a nuclear weapon of ANY size would have consequences far beyond the battlefield where it was employed. It would be a game changer. The BIG game! The STRATEGIC game. Pandora's Box would blow wide open and the furies would be released.

Other countries, seeing that the United States had legitimated the use of nuclear weapons for non-existential tasks, would feel quite justified to employ them in their own disputes. Who could tell them not to? Certainly not the United States. Things would fall apart pretty quickly.

Nobody knows where the dust would settle, or if it ever would.

A nuclear weapon, regardless of how limited or "tactical" its physical effect, is a strategic weapon of the first order. Handle with care.

"The Third Way," Indeed!

If you're a political junkie, you're probably familiar with The Third Way, an allegedly "centrist" group of alleged Democrats.

There's been a hoopla in the past few days about a Third Way op-ed in the hallowed opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, a place where the opinions of Suzanne Somers on the Affordable Care Act are considered worthy of publishing.

The op-ed, which you can read here,  is your basic sky is falling piece about Social Security. In 1980 or 1981 I debated a John Birch Society member on a Christian radio station about the exact same subject. The numbers proved, if I remember her correctly, that Social Security wouldn't be around in 10 years. Today it's not the wacko right I'd have to debate, it's the wacko centrists.

But who are these guys, really?

The most left-wing web site I visit is something called Daily Kos. They did the work, so we don't have to.

Cautionary Tales

First, a story about a "charity," from the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — BY all outward indications, the U.S. Navy Veterans Association was a leader in the charitable community. Founded in 2002 to provide support to Navy veterans in need, the charity recorded astonishing financial success. In its first eight years, it raised around $100 million in charitable contributions, almost all of it through a direct marketing campaign. The organization, headed by Jack L. Nimitz, boasted of 41 state chapters and some 66,000 members.  [My emphasis]

This would be a great story of charitable success, except for the fact that virtually everything about the association turned out to be false: no state chapters, no members, no leader with the name redolent of naval history. Instead, there was one guy: a man calling himself Bobby Thompson who worked from a duplex across the street from the Cuesta-Rey cigar factory in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa.

...[T]he money raised was real enough ... [b]ut little ever made it to the intended beneficiaries. In 2010, the scheme was unwound by two reporters for what is now The Tampa Bay Times, but not before Mr. Thompson had fled the state of Florida.

From June 2010, Mr. Thompson was on the run, the search for him hamstrung by the fact that no one had any real idea of who he was. Finally, on April 30, 2012, federal marshals tracked him down in Portland, Ore., finding him with a card to a storage unit containing $981,650 in cash and almost two dozen fake identity cards.

Earlier this month in Ohio, where the charity’s registration documents had been filed, the man arrested as Bobby Thompson was convicted on 23 felony counts, including fraud, theft and money laundering. Authorities have identified him as John Donald Cody, a former Army intelligence officer and Harvard Law graduate.

Read the whole story here. It's fascinating. Did you know there are about 59,000 charities in the country with the word "veteran" in its name?

If you're looking for a good charity where your bucks can make a real difference, consider Omo Child, about which I will write another time.

On another subject, via Kevin Drum I came across what I consider a pretty devastating piece about an outfit called GoldieBlox, by Felix Salmon of Reuters.

The company first came to public attention in September of last year, when it launched a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign which ultimately raised $285,881. Like all successful Kickstarter campaigns, there was a viral video; this one featured a highly-photogenic CEO called Debbie, a recent graduate of — you probably don’t need me to tell you this — Stanford University. And yes, before the Kickstarter campaign, there was “a seed round from friends, family and angel investors”. When the viral video kept on generating pre-orders even after the Kickstarter campaign ended, GoldieBlox looked like a classic Silicon Valley startup: young, exciting, fast-growing, and — of course — disruptive.

Not wanting to mess with a proven formula, GoldieBlox kept on producing those viral videos: “GoldieBlox Breaks into Toys R Us” was based on Queen’s “We Are The Champions”, and got over a million views. But that was nothing compared to their latest video, uploaded only a week ago, and already well on its way to getting ten times that figure. This one was based on an early Beastie Boys song, “Girls”, and deliciously subverted it to turn it into an empowering anthem.

Under what Paul Carr has diagnosed as the rules of the Cult of Disruption, GoldieBlox neither sought nor received permission to create these videos: it never licensed the music it used from the artists who wrote it. That wouldn’t be the Silicon Valley way. First you make your own rules — and then, if anybody tries to slap you down, you don’t apologize, you fight. For your right. To parody.

In a complete inversion of what you might expect to happen in this case, it is GoldieBlox which is suing the Beastie Boys. And they’re doing so in the most aggressive way possible. There’s no respect, here, for the merits of the song which has helped their video go massively viral and which is surely helping to sell a huge number of toys. Instead, there’s just sneering antagonism ....

I smell libertarians.

A Gleaning

Andrew Tobias relates this story, which he admits may be apocryphal:

Shortly after assuming the papacy — or perhaps as he was headed to the swearing in — the Pope was given a tour. A Vatican steward, [sic on that comma, Andy] opened the double doors of an enormous closet and gestured grandly to show his Holiness the raiments he would wear for the various holidays and occasions.  To which the Pope allegedly responded: “Close it up.  Take it away.  The circus is over.”

The Rest of the Story?

Remember the video of the Central Florida sheriff who had a press conference where he shared the names and photos of two early teen girls he charged with cyberbullying a young girl who had jumped off the town water tower?

Polk County prosecutors decided to drop felony charges against two girls in a September cyberbullying case that the police said contributed to the death of 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick, who jumped from a cement plant tower two months ago.

The decision was made by the Polk County state attorney’s office after weeks of investigation and an analysis of thousands of Facebook messages failed to turn up enough evidence to charge the girls, one 14 and the other 12.

While the messages revealed that the 14-year-old had insulted Rebecca and called her ugly names, the kind of bullying that some children could find emotionally crushing, the posts did not rise to the level of a crime, lawyers for the two girls said.

The rest of the NY Times story is here.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

I'm currently reading Don't Count on It! by John C. Bogle (see sidebar), one of the inventors of the index mutual fund.

The introduction has a quote I really like from a Rudyard Kipling poem. I hope I am not insulting you by mentioning that a copybook was a notebook used to teach penmanship in the 19th century. The student might copy important passages and quotations from classical literature to demonstrate his/her handwriting skills.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through relevant fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place ...
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

 I'm not sure what "relevant fingers" are, but anyone with pretensions of valuing the study of history can understand where Kipling is coming from.

Pufferfish

The real political junkies out there shouldn't miss The Hunt for Pufferfish, the story of the Romney campaign's vice presidential candidate decision-making. Pufferfish was the campaign's code name for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Based on their junk-food-saturated vetting diet, they called their undertaking Project Goldfish (after the crackers)—ultimately giving each of the VP finalists an aquatic code name. Myers’ plan was to have Project Goldfish completed by Memorial Day. In April she presented Romney with a list of two dozen names, which he whittled down to 11: Kelly Ayotte, John Cornyn, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Bill Frist, Mike Huckabee, Bob McDonnell, Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. 

Within a month, the vetters had assembled preliminary research books on the 11, which Romney perused and then rendered his short list: Christie (Pufferfish), Pawlenty (Lakefish), Portman (Filet o Fish), Rubio (Pescado) and Ryan (Fishconsin).

In the nine months since Christie’s endorsement of Romney in October 2011, Boston had formed a mixed view of the governor who George W. Bush had once nicknamed Big Boy.

Hate to say it (no, really, I do) but, if true, the code name thing is a pretty good indication of a low level of professionalism on Romney's staff.  Surprise, surprise.

Turns out Christie has a lot of baggage.

Worth Repeating

Krugman:

Has anyone else noticed how much the GOP position on Obamacare resembles the classic borscht belt joke about the two ladies at a Catskills resort? Lady #1: “The food here is so terrible, it’s inedible!” Lady #2: “And the portions are so small!” Republican #1: “Obamacare is slavery!” Republican #2: “And it’s so hard to sign up!”

Give 'Em Hell, Bill

Well, Obama seems to have cashed out on his second term. All his life he's been a compromiser, and the times call for a fighter. It's not bad to be a compromiser, but it's the wrong time, wrong place.

There are some people who understand this. One of them is a Congressman from New Jersey (!), Bill Pascrell, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. His district covers a good part of Bergen County (Teaneck and Tenafly, but not Bergenfield or Hackensack), and parts of Passaic and Hudson Counties.

Yesterday he ripped a new one in the House Republicans:



I like this guy!

Why isn't Obama talking like this? [Obvious answer: "Because he's not from New Jersey."]

Reparations

God, I love the New York Times.

Today there's an op-ed piece called "Confronting the Legacies of Slavery," in which the author, a history professor at Duke, advocates providing reparations to Haiti and the Caribbean islands for the effects of slavery on those nations.

Now, this is a delicate issue, and "the right thing to do" is far from obvious, from my point of view. Whatever the merits for the Caribbean, the discussion obviously leads to the question of reparations for slavery in the United States. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of many responses to the article, and the wide range of opinions. Some examples:

Oddly, the article never gets around to revealing how much Haiti actually paid France [to compensate slave holders for the loss of their "property"]. It was 90 million francs. While Haiti was paying France its 90 million francs, the international banking community was loaning Haiti billions of dollars, much of which the Duvaliers stole. In addition to the loans, Haiti has consumed billions in foreign aid over the past three decades. The United States has been servicing Haiti’s IDB debt since 2005. The world has contributed $2.4 billion of aid to Haiti since the 2010 earthquake.
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You don't hear the Jews asking for reparations from the Egyptians, but Holocaust survivors and their children have demanded and received various forms of reparations from Germany. The fact that expropriation of Jewish property was legal under the Nazis doesn't mean that it was "rewriting history" for the Jews to demand it back. And slavery in the Caribbean is much closer in time to the Holocaust than it is to slavery in ancient Egypt or Rome.
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Should the Romans pay the Brits because they took over the Isles way back when? How far back are you willing to go? People have misbehaved for centuries... should Germany start paying reparations to Israel, to the French, to the Russians,to... the Italians? Should the mostly black slavers in Africa pay reparations? Should Japan pay reparations to China? What about the European nations, and the US, that fought over China at the end of the 19th century.... The historical ledger can never be made even. Sometimes it's better to face the future. I agree Haiti needs help, but let's base it on today's world.
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Most Germans would agree that paying reparations to Israel, as the representative of the murdered Jewish people, was good for Germany. It could not erase the crimes, of course. But an attempt at their recognition was made, an attempt at penance and at a symbolic reconstitution of what was destroyed.

Of course money cannot restore a life taken, whether taken by murder or taken by slavery. But to pay it, and acknowledge and shoulder the guilt or responsibility (in the case of later generations), is the first step towards alleviation.
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I think the Caribbean slavery issue comes up because it is the closest chronologically to our current time, where we have the moral and economic space to consider the issue of reparations. This wasn't a conversation that would have been possible, or even contemplated, in any previous era.

So it's progress in a way that this issue is taken seriously; which ever way it falls out, I doubt it's going to materially hurt or help any of the countries in question.
------------

This all occurred a very long time ago. Isn't it time to let it go? Dredging up this sad situation constantly only deepens the wound and supports the hurt. In addition to exacerbating the problem it deepens the rift between races creating an us and them mentality. When will we realize that our ancestors all did reprehensible things and acted in their own best interest. I would hope we have grown from their examples and applied these lessons.

Obviously Not! Someone somewhere is bent on perpetuation of this stain on our history. Where will it stop? Even if every black in these "slave" states received a million dollars, it would be in the hands of the slick carpetbaggers in a matter of a few month. Things would return to the present state - only worse for the loss of that money.
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The reparations argument never goes anywhere because it's intellectually incoherent. The claims are ridiculously time-barred, to begin with. They are also hopelessly remote. Caribbean descendants of slaves shouldn't get reparations for the same reason Americans of Irish descent, or of Korean descent, shouldn't. The slowly evolving norms of a society are not the same as a compensable injury.

Dr. Dubois' argument about "undoing the divisions created by colonialism" and "ending racial discrimination" are especially ironic since none of her supposed "victims" are actually indigenous to the Caribbean. Whether African or European or Asian, the human beings living in the Caribbean today are newcomers. The native people were wiped out -- they're the ones who have a claim, if anyone does. This is just a terrible fact of history. But if you start awarding reparations to one group or another for their injuries, then you necessarily bring this fact into contemporary light. 

An Expert is Anybody Who Agrees with ME!

Guess who the Wall Street Journal considers an expert in health care policy!

Here's a hint for those old enough to remember:

Don't miss the "Corrections and Amplifications" at the end of the article.

Har, har, har! Har, har, har!

I'd say that about does it for the WSJ, now to be called the Wall Street Fox News. [Or is it the Wall Street Onion?]

Rupert Murdoch, take your bow.

Well, This is Unexpected ...

A recent poll in Kansas shows Governor Sam Brownback losing to Democratic challenger Paul Davis, 43 percent to 39 percent.

Of those who voted for Brownback when he ran for Governor in 2010, just 59% stick with him in 2014, and 25% defect to the Democrats. Though today Brownback leads 2:1 among Republicans, he trails 11:1 among Democrats. Independents split. Northeast and Southeast Kansas both favor the Democratic ticket; Western Kansas favors the Republican ticket.

Of those voting for Brownback today, 65% say their mind is made up, compared to 29% who say they may change their mind. Of those voting for Davis today, 69% say their mind is made up, compared to 26% who say they may change their mind.

Okay, the election is still a year off, and that's a long, long time in politics. But this is Kansas!

Addendum:

Though there have been lots of stories about future Tea Party challenges to Republican Congressmen who voted to end the shut-down, don't miss the stories about how the folks back home in Tea Party Congressional districts are disgusted with their Congressional representatives.

Don't Cry for JPMorgan

Jon Stewart – the best news analyst in America today – covers the JPMorgan settlement.

Taylor was Popular in North Dakota in 1994

The Washington Post brings us six decades of the most popular girls' names in the United States, state-by-state. It's really interesting to watch – sort of an attack of the zombie Jennifers.

Hat tip to Andrew Tobias for the link.

Crazy Is the New Normal

Have you seen this week's cover on Bloomberg Businessweek, with Ted Cruz as the Mad Hatter?

The cover says: "The Tea Party Won. Ted Cruz and his band of deadenders took the U.S. through the lookingglass. Now crazy is the new normal."

The guy really is creepy.

Krugman Reads Sempringham

Ah, would that it were so.

Perhaps you remember this post, in which I quoted Kevin Drum's observations about a Sean Hannity/Fox News hilarity.

Paul Krugman was as amused as Kevin:

The other day Sean Hannity featured some Real Americans telling tales of how they have been hurt by Obamacare. So Eric Stern, who used to work for Brian Schweitzer, had a bright idea: he actually called Hannity’s guests, to get the details.

Sure enough, the businessman who claimed that Obamacare was driving up his costs, forcing him to lay off workers, only has four employees — meaning that Obamacare has no effect whatsoever on his business. The two families complaining about soaring premiums haven’t actually checked out what’s on offer, and Stern estimates that they would in fact see major savings.

You have to wonder about the mindset of people who go on national TV to complain about how they’re suffering from a program based on nothing but what they think they heard somewhere. You might also wonder about what kind of alleged news show features such people without any check on their bona fides. But then again, consider the network.

Consider the network, indeed!

Maybe I'm wrong, but am I detecting a new willingness to take on the Tea Party zombies? Certainly not from the likes of Chuck Todd, of course, but maybe real newsmen/women? These clowns almost sent the country into default, and they're determined try again!

Tea Party Funders Freaking Out

‘Desperate’ donors tighten purse strings on right-wing groups and ‘self-immolating’ GOP (via Raw Story )

Hard times have arrived for the Republican Party and particularly for right-wing pressure groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, Heritage Action and the one-time lavishly funded tea party PAC, FreedomWorks. According to a report in Politico, heavyweight…

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Why Are the Democrats So Silent?

When you talk to people these days (I try not to, but sometimes I have to), you're very likely to hear the "government is too big" statement. More often than not, it's couched in something that sounds serious and thoughtful, like concern about entitlements. It's now conventional wisdom: government needs to be smaller.

This kind of stuff makes me want to scream. It's like people have some kind of fantasy that in the 21st century we can live like the pioneers. Or that left to their unregulated ways Exxon, Bank of America, the Koch Brothers, and all the rest would behave honorably, with the best interests of everyone in mind.

Come on. Let's get serious folks. We need a government that's big enough to do what we want and need it to do. No bigger, but just that big. And what the first three-quarters of the 20th century show is that putting our government to work on things has had some really good results.

Bill Moyers recently interviewed Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for Financial Times. The whole interview is worth listening to, and I recommend it, but I wanted to highlight the concluding comments.

BILL MOYERS: Would you agree that despite what happened this week and the political victory that President Obama seems to have won, would you agree that the conservatives have really won the argument about government?

MARTIN WOLF: I think that is true. What has surprised me is how little pushback there has been from the Democrat side in arguing that the government really did have a very strong role in supporting the economy during the post crisis recession, almost depression, that the stimulus argument was completely lost though the economics of it were quite clearly right, they needed a bigger stimulus, not a smaller one.

It helped, but it didn't help enough because it wasn't big enough. And they're not making the argument that government has essential functions which everybody needs in the short run. Well, we can see that with the national parks. But also in the long run the strength of America has been built, in my perspective, particularly in the post war period, since the Second World War on the way that actually the public and private sectors have worked together with the government providing enormous support for research and development.

It's been the basic support of America's unique position in scientific research. You look at the National Institutes of Health which are the most important medical research institutions in the world, these are all products of the willingness of the United States to invest in the long term interest. Then there's the infrastructure, think of the highway program, which was the most important infrastructure project under the Republicans interestingly.

And those arguments seem to have been lost. So I am concerned that the government that I think Grover Norquist once said he wants to drown in the bath. If you drown your government in the bath in the modern world, we don't live in the early 19th century, it's a different world, that the long term health of the United States will be very badly affected.

It's strange to me that a government which has obviously achieved very important things, think of the role of the Defense Department in the internet, has achieved such important things, that's just one of many examples, it should be now regarded as nothing more than a complete nuisance. And the only thing you need to do is to cut it back to nothing.

And it does seem to me that the Democrats have, for reasons I don't fully understand, basically given up on making this argument. And so in a way the conservatives, the extreme conservative position has won, because nobody is actually combating it. So it's only a question of how much you cut and how you cut it rather than, "Well, what do we want government for? What are the good things about it? What are the bad things about it? How do we make it effective? And how do we ensure that it's properly financed?"

The Moyers web quotes a citation of Martin Wolf as “the premier financial and economics writer in the world.” He certainly seems sane to me.

Speaking of Disintermediation ...

... as we did in the post below, here's a good example of how it works.

People who watch Fox News aren't particularly interested in facts; they're interested in hearing things that confirm their opinions and prejudices.

Which is convenient for Fox News, because they're not interested in facts at all; they're interested in advancing the zombie political agenda.

So we have things like this, highlighted by Kevin Drum:

This is hilarious in a pathetic kind of way: last Friday, Sean Hannity invited three "regular families" onto his show to relate their horror stories about premium hikes and business-killing regulations under Obamacare. Eric Stern decided to call all three of them to find out what was really going on.

Answer: nothing. One of them was apparently just lying, and the other two hadn't even checked the exchanges, where they would have found that they could get better coverage for considerably less than they're paying now.

That's just sad. Hannity runs a big-time show with well-paid producers, but they apparently couldn't find even a single true example of someone who got screwed by Obamacare. How hard can that be? Even liberals acknowledge that some people will end up worse off. But Hannity's staff couldn't be bothered. I guess he figures his audience doesn't really deserve any better.

 Personally, I think Drum gives Hannity far too much credit.