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
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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.