Reservoir Dogs and the GOP Primary

Here is a movie clip which captures the current GOP primary perfectly.  This thought came to me as I read this article from New York Magazine (via Charlie Pierce).

The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology, however. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist. The result has been a party divided along the lines of culture and class: Establishment versus grassroots, secular versus religious, upscale versus downscale, highfalutin versus hoi polloi. And with those divisions have arisen the competing electoral coalitions—shirts versus skins, regulars versus red-hots—represented by Romney and Santorum, which are now increasingly likely to duke it out all spring.

Yoda's advice: Good for Luke, Bad for America

Yoda, in one of his famous Zen-like koans, advises Luke "You must unlearn what you have learned."

This may be good advice to an aspiring Jedi or Tibetan Monk but it isn't such great advice for America's economists and economic policy decision makers.

Paul Krugman bemoans in this post that the field of economics has seemingly lost many of its hard-won insights of the past eighty years.

I’ve been arguing for a while that much of the economics profession has lost its way, recapitulating old errors because it made a point of unlearning what Keynes taught. But it’s not just economists who willfully threw away hard-won insights.

While Krugman  outlines a series of theories as to why this is so, I don't think he has embraced the one I find most interesting.  The documentary of the 2008 economic collapse "Inside Job" directed by Charles Ferguson exposes the corrupt link between Wall Street and our nation's leading business and economics departments.  Here Ferguson confronts Columbia University Business School Dean and former George W. Bush economic adviser Glenn Hubbard about potential conflicts of interest between his teaching and the exorbitant consulting fees he is paid by Wall Street banks and corporations.






It is so rare to see people like this called to account; one must simply relish the look on this guy's face when he is confronted with his shameless shilling for corporate robber barons.  These are the people, or in this case one of the servants of these people, who have led us in to the abyss.

We must not only remember what Keynes taught us eighty years ago, but also not forget eighty years from now what led us astray in 2008.  For surely once the economy recovers and we begin to rebuild from the ashes of this crisis there will be a new generation of "Glenn Hubbards" ready to lead us in to the inferno while they happily line their pockets at our expense.

Sisyphus and Krugman

This profile of Krugman was written almost ten years ago. Could have been written yesterday.

...among those journalists and politicos who enjoy his column, it's not uncommon to hear the comment that Krugman might be a little more effective if he were just a little less rabid. "It is considered the appropriate thing to say at a dinner party that, while Krugman is very bright, he's just too relentless on Bush," drawls James Carville. "Because to accept Krugman's facts as right makes the Washington press look like idiots."

Chutzpah or Mad Genius?

This courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

As the economy slowly improves, the GOP’s effort to recalibrate its message for the 2012 elections continued Sunday as rising star and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels took to arguing that the recovery is too slow and the economy remains “pathetically weak.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves: this is the worst recovery ever from a serious recession, and history says the deeper the down, the sharper the up,” Daniels said on CNN’s State of the Union. “It should have been a very vigorous one. Hasn’t been.”

This is coming from the man who was President George W. Bush's Budget Director from 2001 to 2003. His presided over turning a $236 billion surplus to a $400 billion deficit. He predicted the Iraq War would cost $50 to $60 billion (It is approaching $1 trillion).

But this shouldn't be a surprise since Governor Mitch Daniels is the former CEO of Eli Lilly and a self-described propagandist.

“It is another sign of the importance P.R. tactics play in American politics,” Nyhan wrote. “The OMB director — once a budget expert — is now an operative chosen for his political skills, particularly his ability to sell the administration’s economic proposals in the media.

“In August [2001], Daniels admitted as much, telling the Wall Street Journal that ‘[t]o the extent I bring anything … to this job, maybe it’s an ability to think about how a product, whether it’s Prozac or a president’s proposal, is marketed.’ Predictably, he has displayed a disturbing tendency to make dishonest claims for political advantage on federal budget issues.”

But maybe Mitch Daniels is really a genius because if I hear much more of his asinine critiques of the President I think I, along with any sane thinking American, will probably need to obtain a prescription for Prozac. His party is looking like it is going to go down in November 2012, at least in the interim his Eli Lilly stock may go up.

Weekend Musical Stylings

As much as we might want to think our politics are arrived at by pure reason and logic it is possible our conclusions are merely an aesthetic sensibility. This thought entered my mind after I became addicted to the band The Civil Wars. An addiction to a new musical group is nothing new, we all experience from time to time, but how many are turned on to a musical group by their favorite economist and political commentator? I know I'm a political junky but even this feels like a little much. C'est la vie.

So without further ado here are two videos by The Civil Wars courtesy of Paul Krugman.

GOP Unhappy with Conservative Economic Recovery

President Obama's polling numbers are up concerning his handling of the economy.

As TPM points out this is bad for Mitt Romney:

Thursday morning brought the news that weekly jobless claims were down to their lowest level since March 2008. General Motors, which survived only because of a government bailout (that Romney opposed), posted its largest annual profit in history. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data this week showing that new housing starts are picking up, moving away from the December slowdown. True, the economy is far from fully healthy or at full recovery, but continuing good economic news will make Romney’s message a harder sell.

And despite GOP protestations that the nation is being led by a Kenyan, atheist, communist, anti-colonialist the recovery is actually conservative in nature. As Matthew Yglesias incessantly points out the entirety of job growth is coming from the private sector while public sector employment (teachers, police officers, firefighters) continue to contract.

Paul Krugman takes this analysis one step further and points out that if the federal government simply helped state and local governments keep their employment numbers constant with population growth that would be tantamount to one million to three million more jobs.

This suggests to me that we could put well over a million people to work directly, and probably around 3 million once you take other effects into account, without any need to come up with new projects; just transfer enough money to state and local governments to let them return to doing the essential business of government, like educating our children.

Gleefully Cliche

I like the TV show "Glee." I often tell my students that they should not feel the need to leave high school to experience the "real" world. For better or worse high school is part of the real world and it's best not to delude oneself otherwise. (If anything college is not the real world, but that is for another post.)

Glee has proudly positioned itself as the champion of the outcast, the downtrodden, the bullied. But it is frustrating because its depiction of the different groups that fall within these categories is so uneven. Glee is rightfully admired for its compassionate, subtle, nuanced and bold depiction of the plight of the gay teenager. The character Kurt Hummel is arguably Glee's biggest breakout and best character. Episode after episode tackled issues rarely touched by network television: coming out to your parents, being bullied because of your sexual orientation or one's first romantic experience.

But when the show strays from this story line to tackle issues of other characters whether they be Asian or obese or pregnant the show stumbles in to cliche or delusion. The Asian characters Mike Chang and Tina Cohen-Chang get their turn in the spotlight in the episode "The Asian F." But the show turns on an old Asian stereotype; the overbearing Asian parent who considers anything other than A pluses and medical school to be self indulgent and trite. This storyline isn't even very original seeing as it was done with a WASP twist twenty years ago in "Dead Poets Society."

The depiction of the life of a pregnant teenager, as seen in the story of Quinn Fabray, also fails to illustrate anything remotely connected to reality. On this topic Glee can't hold a candle to MTV's "16 and Pregnant" or "Teen Mom." But not only does it not do a very good job of wrestling with the reality of being a teenager in high school and pregnant but it manages to paper over the issue like it was really no big deal since Quinn puts her baby up for adoption, and after a brief period of lame rebellion, returns to school with her position on the Cheerios and the Glee Club restored. The baby story line seemed like a plot device that had served its purpose, become inconvenient, and needed to be discarded. It seems a pregnancy story line is manna to writers throughout Hollywood who then seem incapable of dealing with the consequences of a baby in the subsequent plot. It's like these writers need a television writer's version of birth control.

Of course a newborn baby that can be written out of the script and ignored is about as far removed from reality as one could get. But Glee and Quinn Fabray's are not alone in their dalliance with a TV show pregnancy. They have joined legions of other network TV hits who found a pregnancy story line much more interesting that the baby it produces such as 80's classics Family Ties and Growing Pains. (Of course I'm a child of the 80's so I'm sure there are many more recent examples to choose from.) Having a baby might threaten Happy Days "jumping the shark" as the new sign of the impending decline of a once enjoyable series.

But no story line was as disconnected from reality or shallow as its portrayal of the obese student Lauren Zizes. Lauren was written as a sassy, overweight girl whose attitude would rival the most callous prom queen. And this attitude seemed to pay off as she eventually attracts the attention of Noah Puckerman, the show's resident not-so-bright jock, who eventually serenades her with Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls." But does Lauren's character ring true in any way as compared to the way Kurt Hummel's does?

There is certainly plenty of territory for Glee to explore concerning the plight of an overweight student in high school. The epidemic of eating disorders, cutting and depression testifies to this fact. It appears that Glee is either incapable or unwilling to go there. And not only does Glee not go there but they seem to have unceremoniously dumped the Lauren Zizes character for season three.

In the end the fat character was dumped just like the baby.

In a political debate, far, far away...

In preparation for taking my son to see the release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 3D I was perusing the original reviews at Rotten Tomatoes to verify if my horrible reaction to that movie was shared by the critics at the time. Unfortunately it was as bad as I remembered, seeing as it garnered a 38% rating from top critics.

As I scanned the views I was particularly intrigued by critics who liked the film. Lo and behold one of the movies defenders was none other than neoconservative extraordinaire John Podhoretz of the vile "Weekly Standard."

Is it any surprise that anyone who can say this:

ENOUGH with the whiny movie critics complaining about the new 'Star Wars'' movie. Like them, I was fully prepared to hate the thing when I arrived at the screening, but that prejudice was overcome by the movie's wondrous look and by its fascinating, multilayered plot. 'The Phantom Menace'' takes twists and turns you don't expect.

Can also say this:

Nothing would both surprise me, please me, and make me revisit a great deal of my thinking over the last couple of years, than if Barack Obama chooses to strike the Iranian nuclear program. I would revisit most of what I think about his foreign policy and his approach to the world. But that the United States would take military action against Iran – that seems almost science fictional to me at this point.

All that being said I'm still taking Sammy to see the rerelease of The Phantom Menace in the theater. Count on me to resist war with Iran but please don't ask me not to take my son to see a rerelease of a Star Wars film, a man can fight only so many battles.

Demography is destiny, for better or worse.

Demographic trends contain nothing but good news for those of us who are eager to see gay men and women have the right to marry whoever the hell they want. Additionally Democrats are eager to point to national demographic trends that identify hispanics, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, as the fastest growing group in the country. It is hoped that they will soon help usher in a national Democratic governing coalition that will rival the FDR/New Deal coalition that dominated U.S. politics and policy from 1932 to 1980. These two charts summarize the demographic trends phenomenon nicely.

But sometimes when one lives by the sword one dies by the sword and there is an accompanying demographic trend that threatens liberal interests that is less talked about. While we may welcome the replacement of a generation of people who are homophobic and xenophobic we are simultaneously losing a generation who remembers an America before Social Security. Liberal or conservative, odds are if you are over the age of 65 you support the Social Security program.

One can argue that support for Social Security changes as an individual gets older but it is also plausible that support for Social Security falls as the country as a whole loses its collective memory of a country when intolerable numbers of seniors lived in poverty.

Our structural deficits are caused by three programs, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and the Military. For those of us who would like to see the lion's share of those cuts come from the defense sector we must remain vigilant that those who know best the critical importance of a strong social safety net are leaving us. It will be a tragedy if succeeding generations are allowed to forget this fact.