JustOneMinute

Undercuts?!?

The NY Times appraises the impact of the Veterans Administration debacle on Obama:

For a president who came to office hoping to restore public faith in government as a force for good in society, the mess at the Department of Veterans Affairs threatens to undercut his reputation for effectiveness.

"Threatens to undercut his reputation for effectiveness"? What about "Cements his reputation for ineffectiveness", which is really the theme of the rest of the piece:

But [the VA problem] also underscored the more fundamental danger to Mr. Obama as he once again finds himself on the defensive over issues of basic management of the federal government. 

...

And combined with the health care affair, it calls into question Mr. Obama’s mastery of the government he oversees.

“The conclusion that people are drawing now is that he’s inept and can’t govern his way out of a paper bag,” said Peter H. Wehner, a former adviser to President George W. Bush. “If this happened in isolation, that might be different. But the fact that this comes after so many other mistakes just makes it that much harder.”

For Mr. Obama, it raises again a comparison that vexes his aides: Mr. Bush’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, which did lasting damage to the public’s faith in his effectiveness. Once a perception sets in, it is immensely difficult for a president to change it, especially in the second term, as Mr. Bush found.

Obviously, Katrina didn't happen in a vacuum; by late 2005 the haphazard planning for the post-liberation of Iraq had been revealed as near-criminal. I think Katrina, like the VA, reinforced rather than created an image of ineptitude (Of course, I am setting aside the fact that the VA was in Obama's hands while Katrina required a combined response from Bush, a Democratic governor, and a Democratic mayor.)

Back To The Big Speech

Capt. Ed notes the media consensus around Ohaha's Big FoPo Speech, but my fave reax comes from FP's David Rothkopf:

To borrow from the baseball metaphor the president offered up on his Asia trip when he spoke of a foreign policy made up of singles and doubles rather than home runs, this speech was a dribbler into the glove of the first baseman.

Ouch. And for Red Sox Nation, double-ouch.

Michelle Versus Science And Reality

Michelle Obama takes to the Times to battle science and politics. Her topic is her "Let's Move" campaign and she includes this teeth-grinder:

WHEN we began our Let’s Move! initiative four years ago, we set one simple but ambitious goal: to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation so that kids born today will grow up healthy.

Opposing healthy kids would be like opposing hot dogs and apple pie motherhood and the flag baseball. However:

To achieve this goal, we have adhered to one clear standard: what works. The initiatives we undertake are evidence-based, and we rely on the most current science. Research indicated that kids needed less sugar, salt and fat in their diets, so we revamped school lunch menus accordingly. 

Ahhh! Fine, salt may be problem, but for my money this is like saying that kids face a health crisis from measles, polio and poison ivy. High salt consumption is probably a marker for high consumption of fast food and processed food, which tend to be high in sugar and other carbs; take out the salt and you still have unsalted crap.

And fat? Please give me a scientific break - the 2010 USDA guidlines were questioned by Dr. Willet, our Harvard savant, when they came out and have since been undermined by yet another huge meta-study.

Sugar and refined carbs are the problem; BS will not be the solution.

Speaking of BS, Michelle tackles Big Stats head on with this dubious claim:

Today, we are seeing glimmers of progress. Tens of millions of kids are getting better nutrition in school; families are thinking more carefully about food they eat, cook and buy; companies are rushing to create healthier products to meet the growing demand; and the obesity rate is finally beginning to fall from its peak among our youngest children.

Whether that reported drop merited the breathless headlines it generated or was merely a statistical blip remains a Frequently Unasked Question.

Michelle wanders into the field of politics with this claim:

But unfortunately, we’re now seeing attempts in Congress to undo so much of what we’ve accomplished on behalf of our children. Take, for example, what’s going on now with the Women, Infants and Children program, known as WIC. This is a federal program designed to provide supplemental nutrition to low-income women and their babies and toddlers. The idea is to fill in the gaps in their diets — to help them buy items like fresh produce that they can’t afford on their own — and give them the nutrition they’re missing.

Right now, the House of Representatives is considering a bill to override science by mandating that white potatoes be included on the list of foods that women can purchase using WIC dollars. Now, there is nothing wrong with potatoes. The problem is that many women and children already consume enough potatoes and not enough of the nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables they need. That’s why the Institute of Medicine — the nonpartisan, scientific body that advises on the standards for WIC — has said that potatoes should not be part of the WIC program.

The Evil House, probably backed by the Evil Koch Brothers. Left unmentioned - the still Democratic controlled Senate recently fell in line and put pototoes on the approved list:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The ubiquitous white potato has scored another victory on Capitol Hill.

House and Senate panels this week endorsed the inclusion of fresh white potatoes in the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. The Agriculture Department doesn't allow them in the program because they say people already eat enough of them. Other fresh fruits and vegetables are allowed.

The potato industry has aggressively lobbied for inclusion in WIC, saying it's not as much about sales as perception that potatoes are less nutritious than other vegetables.

The Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday adopted an amendment by Maine Sen. Susan Collins to an agriculture spending bill that would include white potatoes in WIC. That followed House subcommittee approval of its version of the bill earlier this week, also allowing potatoes into the program.

Susan Collins is a moderate Republican and servant of Big Potato, but Dems still control that committee.

I wonder how Michelle overlooked that.

I Love The Smell Of Burning Straw In The Morning

The text of Obama's Big Speech; the White House should have included a "Hazardous - Contains Flammable Strawmen" alert.

CUE MY EVIL CHORTLING: From the Times coverage:

In the future, when the United States is not directly threatened, “the threshold for military action must be higher,” Mr. Obama said. He presented the choice in binary terms, suggesting that his critics want to use force to solve many of the world’s troubles.

In some ways, that was a straw-man argument, since even his fiercest opponents do not advocate American ground forces to counter Russian intervention in Ukraine or to stop the civil war in Syria. But some critics say Mr. Obama seems to have grown more allergic to American power since his own intervention in Libya yielded a messy outcome.

And from the Times editors:

President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left.

However, they offer an upbeat conclusion:

This was far from Mr. Obama’s big moment. But since he has no office left to run for, what matters ultimately is his record in the next two and a half years.

In other words, talk is cheap, especially coming from Obama.

 

Bring On The Pretty Words

Obama will reset his foreign policy today at West Point.

Classic Krugman

Krugman delivers an instant classic with yet another paean to the glories of Europe in general and France in particular. His gist - careful cherry-picking of statistics while standing on one foot and hopping leads to the conclusion that Old Europe is a jobs dynamo. Really:

SINTRA, Portugal — I’ll be spending the next couple of days at a forum sponsored by the European Central Bank whose de facto topic — whatever it may say on the program — will be the destructive monetary muddle caused by the Continent’s premature adoption of a single currency. What makes the story even sadder is that Europe’s financial and macroeconomic woes have overshadowed its remarkable, unheralded longer-term success in an area in which it used to lag: job creation.

And why is this a Tale Untold? 

What? You haven’t heard about that? Well, that’s not too surprising. European economies, France in particular, get very bad press in America. 

If only somewhere in America were media outlets sympathetic to Big Government and progressive programs. Instead, we poor and huddled Americans are subjected to a steady diet of right-wing rags like, well, the NY Times with this sort of Franco-bashing titled "Young, Educated and Jobless in France".

But wait! We should deplore this false notion that youth unemployment among recent college grads, as described in the Times, is a problem. Back to the Earnest Prof:

But Northern European nations, France included, have done far better than most Americans realize. In particular, here’s a startling, little-known fact: French adults in their prime working years (25 to 54) are substantially more likely to have jobs than their U.S. counterparts.

Youngsters have better things to do.

Now, young French citizens are still a lot less likely to have jobs than their American counterparts — but a large part of that difference reflects the fact that France provides much more aid to students, so that they don’t have to work their way through school. Is that a bad thing?

Well, let's see. This capitalist tool, the Christian Science Monitor, describes some recent French labor market "reforms" from 2013:

Businesses in France have long faced a hostile environment at home, with the country’s rigid labor laws among their chief complaints... So it may have seemed like progress last month when France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, forged a labor reform pact between his government, a majority of France’s trade unions, and the employers’ organization. Yet it can hardly be considered a success. 
  
Instead of introducing needed flexibility into France’s rigid labor market, the agreement merely tinkers around the edges. Moreover, labor laws aren’t the only reason why France trudged through 2012 with zero percent growth. French economic policy operates under a destructively myopic view on business that underlies France’s economic stagnation. 

A sampling:

First, firms still cannot lay off workers to improve competitiveness when the business is healthy; they can only make economic dismissals to preserve competitiveness when already in financial straits. In France, it ought to be legal to fix small problems before they become big.
  
Second, businesses remain obligated to assist laid-off employees in finding other jobs and in retraining them for their new positions – a distinctly French phenomenon. For businesses with more than 1,000 employees, this limbo period before dismissal can last from four to nine months.
  
Third, reform merely reduces the period for laid-off employees to legally challenge their dismissal from five years to two. Some progress! Not only does 1 in every 4 French employees bring a case to court, but French labor courts are the least business-friendly in Europe, with employers losing 75 percent of cases, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The agreement also increases taxes and fees for hiring workers on temporary contracts. This hits businesses hard because 8 of every 10 new hires are on these contracts, according to French Labor Ministry estimates. This was a union demand to discourage the use of temporary work, which is a competitive threat to union-protected permanent contracts.

The upshot - firms hire on a temporary basis but are reluctant to offer what amount to jobs for life. Hence, the inability of young people to get a permanent job.

The FT had more:

Structurally, France faces severe challenges. As in many other European countries, youth unemployment is running at some 25 per cent. But the employment rate among those aged 55 to 64 is also among the lowest in the EU at under 50 per cent. Long-term unemployment is at more than 41 per cent of the total.

In the face of these issues, business has demanded a significant relaxation in some of the restrictive features of the labour regime, widely regarded as one of the most rigid in Europe, offering strong protection for those in jobs but tending to shut out those trying to get in – especially those with low qualifications.

Much attention is focused on the near-disappearance of long-term contracts for new workers. Largely because of employers’ fear of not being able to reduce numbers in a downturn, 90 per cent of new jobs are instead on fixed term contracts.

Some 21m fixed term contracts were signed in 2012, including 14m of under one month’s duration, according to Eric Heyer, an economist at the French Economic Observatory think-tank. Many of these are not renewed, he says. “Flexibility exists in France, but it all falls on short-term and interim contracts.”

Even where employers do take people on, the rules tend to discriminate against the inexperienced.

“You have to employ people with ready-made skills who you are sure will fit straight into the job,” says Mr Malenfer. “You can’t afford not to. It is a colossal hindrance to hiring youngsters.”

The Koch-owned (OK, Bezos) Washington Post dropped the Euro pom-poms for a different angle:

Why the U.S. has a lower rate of working women than Europe does

Their answer - more generous maternity leave in Europe has promoted female workforcer participation, with a downside:

But the United States doesn't falter in every work-life area. Blau and Kahn found that much of the participation difference between the United States and other countries is attributable to higher rates of part-time work in Europe relative to the United States. Their numbers showed that 13.1 percent of American women work part-time, compared with a non-U.S. average of 26 percent. And while the incidence of part-time work is falling in America, it's rising slightly abroad. Overall, Blau and Kahn found, 55 percent to 65 percent of the job gains prompted by more generous family leave policies are in part-time work. Given that part-time workers are often paid less and have fewer benefits than full-time labor, that's a significant caveat.

American women are also far more successful than their foreign counterparts in attaining positions of authority in companies. Men and women are equally likely to be managers in the United States, the researchers found, but women are half as likely to fill that role in other countries. In all countries, women are more likely than men to hold "professional" positions as doctors, lawyer, and so forth, but the gap is wider in the United States than elsewhere.

Had Krugman looked he might have found that part-time clue buried in this BLS survey of international labor markets at Chart 2.7. Krugman lauds The Netherlands and links to a chart which lists Switzerland at the top and The Netherlands near it in workforce participation among the 25-54 set; mssing is the info that in the Netherlands, 18 percent of men and 46 percent of women counted as part-time workers in 2010; the comparable figures in the US are 8 and 18.

Krugman's effort might have been interesting if he had identified the particular policy prescriptions that have made France so worthy of emulation. Should the US try to boost employment among the 25-54 set by making youngsters unemployable? Would encouraging age discrimination and raising the unemployability of the 55-65 group be a good step forward?

Instead he closes with a faith-based prayer:

The truth is that European-style welfare states have proved more resilient, more successful at job creation, than is allowed for in America’s prevailing economic philosophy.

ELSEWHERE IN THE TIMES: Someone forgot to tell the French they are coming up aces. 

Happy Memorial Day

What would a Memorial Day be without some words from our leader? This is an Obama flashback from the 2008 campaign trail:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

They've fallen but they can get up! And we thought that was the Easter story...

Sunday AM

Away we go.

Saturday Morning

Tyler Cowen assesses the Pikkety data problem. His gist - the new issue is just one of several major problems. But IMHO none will derail the narrative.

More On The VA

Shorter Politico: Obama has a pen and a phone but no clue.

Compare And Contrast

I doubt I will be working through Ta-Nehisi Coates 15,000 word essay making the case for slavery reparations, or a conversation about reparations, or something.

However, I can take a few quick hits and cheap shots. From an excerpt at Legal Insurrection let me pick up on this:

The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge—that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it….

"Fear masquerading as laughter"? Substitute "hope" for fear and BINGO! Ten years ago I was hoping Al Sharpton would shatter the Democratic Party with his reparations message, so now I am Keeping Hope Alive - no time like the present for Mr. Coates and the Dem Dream-On Team.

And as to the notion that "white supremacy is... a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it", we need to alert the NY Times editors, who let this piece run just a few months ago:

What Drives Success?

A SEEMINGLY un-American fact about America today is that for some groups, much more than others, upward mobility and the American dream are alive and well. It may be taboo to say it, but certain ethnic, religious and national-origin groups are doing strikingly better than Americans overall.

Indian-Americans earn almost double the national figure (roughly $90,000 per year in median household income versus $50,000). Iranian-, Lebanese- and Chinese-Americans are also top-earners. In the last 30 years, Mormons have become leaders of corporate America, holding top positions in many of America’s most recognizable companies. These facts don’t make some groups “better” than others, and material success cannot be equated with a well-lived life. But willful blindness to facts is never a good policy.

Jewish success is the most historically fraught and the most broad-based. Although Jews make up only about 2 percent of the United States’ adult population, they account for a third of the current Supreme Court; over two-thirds of Tony Award-winning lyricists and composers; and about a third of American Nobel laureates.

The most comforting explanation of these facts is that they are mere artifacts of class — rich parents passing on advantages to their children — or of immigrants arriving in this country with high skill and education levels. Important as these factors are, they explain only a small part of the picture.

Today’s wealthy Mormon businessmen often started from humble origins. Although India and China send the most immigrants to the United States through employment-based channels, almost half of all Indian immigrants and over half of Chinese immigrants do not enter the country under those criteria. Many are poor and poorly educated. Comprehensive data published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2013 showed that the children of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese immigrants experienced exceptional upward mobility regardless of their parents’ socioeconomic or educational background.

Take New York City’s selective public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, which are major Ivy League feeders. For the 2013 school year, Stuyvesant High School offered admission, based solely on a standardized entrance exam, to nine black students, 24 Hispanics, 177 whites and 620 Asians. Among the Asians of Chinese origin, many are the children of restaurant workers and other working-class immigrants.

Merely stating the fact that certain groups do better than others — as measured by income, test scores and so on — is enough to provoke a firestorm in America today, and even charges of racism. The irony is that the facts actually debunk racial stereotypes.

There are some black and Hispanic groups in America that far outperform some white and Asian groups. Immigrants from many West Indian and African countries, such as Jamaica, Ghana, and Haiti, are climbing America’s higher education ladder, but perhaps the most prominent are Nigerians. Nigerians make up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in 2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry; over a fourth of Nigerian-Americans have a graduate or professional degree, as compared with only about 11 percent of whites.

I guess those we devil whites can distinguish Nigerians from natives, or something, and don't object to yellow skin despite our nuking of Japan and our unpopular wars in Korea and Vietnam. Baffling.

Well, I would say that. Half my family tree came from Ireland in the early 1900 and were closer to being slaves than owning them. The other half of the family tree had quite a few limbs pruned fighting for the North in the Civil War, but whatever - I can't wait to find out what size check I should write to some recent immigrant from Jamaica.

Nobody's Home

Ron Fournier takes on Ezra Klein and declares Obama to be the 'Superhero of Excuses'. Which provides an excuse for a song about "some insects called the human race".

When You've Lost The Times...

Michael Shear of the Times covers the VA debacle:

Obama Faces New Test in Mismanagement at Veterans Hospitals

A new mismanagement test? Obama has already proven his ability to mis-manage.

WASHINGTON — Growing allegations of mismanagement at veterans hospitals across the country are threatening to engulf President Obama in another scandal that brings into question his ability to make government work.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama denounced delays and poor care for veterans at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs and vowed that his administration would fix the backlogs and dramatically improve care for those returning from the battlefield.

In a speech in 2008, Mr. Obama pledged to build “a 21st century VA” and promised to confront what he called “the broken bureaucracy of the VA - the impossibly long lines, or the repeated calls for help that get you nothing more than an answering machine.”

But five-and-a-half years into his presidency, Mr. Obama has once again found himself exposed to political danger by a bureaucracy that seems out of his immediate control.

Fortunately Obama has time to keep up on the news, since he and his staff seem to have embraced a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

And the NY Times spends three paragraphs on Jon Stewart's reaction, so perhaps Sasha and Malia can become an important source of breaking news for Barack as well.

MORE AND BETTER BASHING at Hot Air. Jay Carney really cited as praise an American Legion statement blasting "business as usual" at the VA? Wow. As Ron Fournier wonders, "How Dumb Does Obama Think We Are?" Dumb eough to elect him twice, anyway...

Since It Is All About Hillary...

Doesn't the bungled ouster of Jill Abrahmson at the NY Times make their inevitable endorsement of Hillarity in 2016 a bit awkward?

Back in 2008 the editors pretended that "firstness" didn't matter when they sparked a newsroom revolt by going for the NY state Senator rather than Barack. What are the editors going to pretend in 2016 - that they are all in favor of pushy broads as long as they aren't at the Times? 

They'll think of something.

Sunday Afternoon

Here we go again.

What Could Go Wrong?

Joe Nocera of the Times covers the latest progressive fantasy on campaign finance reform. The gist - the Senator who brought us Sarbanes-Oxley is back with a plan to level the campaign playing field by empowering small donors:

For decades, the answer for those in the campaign finance reform movement had always been to try to limit the amount of money any one person could contribute. Although individual contribution limits per candidate are still on the books, that general approach is clearly not viable in the age of the Roberts court.

So Sarbanes and other reformers began to come at the problem from the opposite direction: magnifying the role of the small donor, rather than trying to diminish the role of the large donor. In February, Sarbanes sponsored a bill that tries to do just that, at least for congressional races.

It has three main components. First is a $50 tax credit per donor per election cycle. Second is a voluntary matching fund system. People who donate up to $150 to a candidate who has agreed to lower contribution limits and the full disclosure of all donations will have that donation matched 6 to 1 with federal funds. If the candidate agrees to take no contributions higher than $150, the match rises to 9 to 1. And finally, it allows candidates to raise additional matching funds in the last 60 days of the election if the candidate feels he needs it to ward off a last-minute advertising blitz. (The bill has disincentives to keep that additional money from being used unless it is really needed.)

“There is a general consensus that the way to go is a multiple matching system,” said Fred Wertheimer, the head of Democracy 21 and one of the grand old men of campaign finance reform. For one thing, it engages small donors in the political process — and gives them an incentive because their money is being maximized. But Sarbanes also likes it for another reason: It forces members of Congress and would-be members of Congress to actively solicit the money — and thus the views — of their constituents.

Eventually Mr. Noccera informs us that this bill has 149 Democratic co-sponsors but only a lone Evil Stupid Republican. I wonder why?

As a starter, the text of the bill includes this puzzle:

Sec. 504. Qualified small dollar contributions described

...

(2) 

The contribution is made by an individual, either directly or through an intermediary or conduit (as described in section 315(a)(8)), who is not otherwise prohibited from making a contribution under this Act.

I am not a campaign finance lawyer (further evidence of a merciful G*d) and there are lots of bills with a Section 315, but the relevant links seems to lead us to this:

(8) For purposes of the limitations imposed by this section, all contributions made by a person, either directly or indirectly, on behalf of a particular candidate, including contributions which are in any way earmarked or otherwise directed through an intermediary or conduit to such candidate, shall be treated as contributions from such person to such candidate. The intermediary or conduit shall report the original source and the intended recipient of such contribution to the Commission and to the intended recipient.

My gloomy Republican reading is that any PAC relying on small donors, with special emphasis on union PACs, can, with a bit of accounting effort, qualify a huge portion of their donations as eligible for a 6 times Federal match. So a union with 1000 members can raise $150,000 directly from its members and their favored candidate will get another $900,000 from the Treasury. Small wonder Dems like it.

That said, there is a bit of a 'careful what you wish for' wrinkle here for progressives to ponder - in the twilight struggle between the wealthy Mr. Bloomberg and the numerous NRA, who benefits from this bill, hmm?

But enough about what's legal! Although we live in a country with no discernible voter fraud (or at least, none discernible to progs) it seems likely that some candidate somewere will engage in some quid-pro-quo fundraising. Supporters will be encouraged to write a check/present a credit card for $150 and get $150 cash back. Or $200 - why not, the campaign can afford it out of the 6-1 matching funds.

The text of the law has some stiff enforcement in Sec. 512 - people have to promise not to do that. Hey, that might work. Or not.

Sec. 512. Qualifying requirements

...

(b) Requirements relating to receipt of qualified small dollar contribution

Each qualified small dollar contribution—

(1) may be made by means of a personal check, money order, debit card, credit card, electronic payment account, or any other method deemed appropriate by the Commission;

(2) shall be accompanied by a signed statement (or, in the case of a contribution made online or through other electronic means, an electronic equivalent) containing—

(A) the contributor’s name and the contributor's address in the State in which the primary residence of the contributor is located, and

(B) an oath declaring that the contributor—

(i) understands that the purpose of the contribution is to show support for the candidate so that the candidate may qualify for financing under this title,

(ii) is making the contribution in his or her own name and from his or her own funds,

(iii) has made the contribution willingly, and

(iv) has not received any thing of value in return for the contribution; 

This seems like a good moment to deplore the racism and insensitivity of the bill's sponsors. In defiance of common sense and public opinion the Democratic Party is united around the idea that certain ethnic groups are incapable of organizing their life to the point of getting a Voter ID card. Yet now small donors must have a bank account or credit/debit card? What's up with that? When did money stop talking, and what happened to Annuit Coeptis?

I assume that will be fixed later.

Saturday Morning

Away we go.

Funny, In A Terrifying Sort of Way

Times columnist Roger Cohen ponders the nuclear talks with Iran; he simultaneously terrifies and amuses with this:

WASHINGTON — Unreasonable optimism surrounds talks between Iran and major powers that resumed this week with the aim of moving beyond an interim deal to a long-term accord that ensures a limited Iranian nuclear program that can only be put to civilian use.

An agreement would be the best outcome by far. The other options are a continuation of the relentless build-up of Iranian nuclear capacity seen over the past decade or war. As Jessica Mathews put it in The New York Review of Books, “The price of an agreement will be accepting a thoroughly monitored, appropriately sized enrichment program in Iran that does not rise over 5 percent. The alternatives are war or a nuclear-armed Iran.”

That choice may sound like a no-brainer. The perfect must not be the enemy of the good. But the distance between the parties is huge.

If the "alternatives are war or a nuclear-armed Iran", then the alternative is a nuclear-armed Iran. Does anyone anywhere think Obama will be leading us into a war with Iran? Let me ask that a different way - can anyone keep a straight face while trying to imagine Obama leading us into a war? The world drew that red line, not him.

As to the news that "[u]nreasonable optimism surrounds" these talks, that seems to be part of the posturing prior to a new round of talks. The WSJ recently ran a story titled "Optimism Grows for a Comprehensive Iran Nuclear Deal" but the third paragraph emphasized that the growth was from a low baseline:

"People are less pessimistic than they have been in the past--certainly, " one European official said. "There are certain areas where some kind of consensus" is emerging. "But in certain areas, there is still a huge gulf."

I guess "Pessimism Shrinks On Comprehensive Iran Nuclear Talks" was less grabby.

The CSM also covered the 'not so fast' spin provided by Mr. Cohen, but added a contemplation of the political background:

Why the effort to squelch the optimism that has grown in recent weeks as the interim agreement reached last November has been implemented and talks among technical experts have progressed?

Part of the explanation is diplomatic realism. The reality is that the talks involve a long list of very complex issues and varying perspectives – everything from the number of uranium-spinning centrifuges Iran would be allowed to how quickly the sanctions gripping Iran’s economy would be lifted.

But other reasons are more political.

On one hand, the Obama administration wants to project an image of toughness to counter Republican critics who doubt President Obama’s resolve on Iran. Officials repeat that the administration prefers no deal to a bad deal that leaves the door open to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Yet failure to reach an accord in July after so much optimism – and only months before the US midterm elections – would be a blow to Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pursuits. It would very likely revive partisan assertions that the talks did nothing but allow Iran more time to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

The interim deal reached last year between Iran and six powers – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany – does allow the July 20 deadline to be extended by six months. But the midterm elections would make an extension a potential political liability for Mr. Obama and the Democrats, some political analysts say. 

Uh huh. Obama will prefer no deal to a bad deal up until the moment that a bad deal is all he can get.

Cat Bites Dog

Here's a cat heroing-up to protect a child in the family. Who knew they had it in them?

Don't Dream It, Be It

This will become the story of the century, not to mention the centerpiece of the collapse of Western civilization.

At Mark Steyn's Suggestion

Michelle Obama notwithstanding, Mark Steyn is not convinced that whimpering softly and carrying a big hashtag will BringBackOurGirls from Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Here is the White House contribution:

I think Mark Steyn would prefer this:

Up in New Hampshire that would be hashtagged "Bring Back Our Girls Or Die", but we are looking for baby steps from the White House.

TO WHICH I SHOULD ADD: I am sure the White House is reluctant to get drawn into this Nigerian kidnapping nightmare for a couple of reasons. First of all, although we are sending advisors to support the lesser thugs of the Nigerian government, unleashing Jack Bauer or Rambo (or both!) to solve this unilaterally is fun to imagine but not a realistic option for the Reality-Based Community. More importantly (from their perspective), it clashes with their messaging of a Republican War on Women by reminding people what a real war on women looks like. And do let's add, there is a Hillary Embarrassment Factor with Boko Haram, so Dems really need to Move On.

Unless and until Team Obama can establish a link between Boko Haram and the Koch brothers this will be pushed towards the back burner.

Sunday Morning

Happy Mother's Day, all.

OK, That Was Kidding

Sarah Hoyt gets a tip from Eugene Volokh:

FROM EUGENE VOLOKH: The linked-to article is at New Study Reveals 89% Of Nation’s Food Stamps Squandered On Junk Food and a bunch of things don’t quite check out — the Malbeck Data Institute doesn’t seem to have a Web page, the author’s supposed books don’t show up on Amazon, and the quotes in the story have that made-up feel to them, if you know what I mean.  In any case, I wanted to flag this just in case. — It’s quite possible I’ve been taken.  It agreed with my internal prejudices and the fact that ebooks you give away for free always get terrible reviews!

Hmm. Here is how the author is described at American Thinker:

Jane Agni, who writes satirical pieces for the National Report...

Well, yes. Here is a list of her recent articles, whose titles include:

Kate Bush Tour Sells Out In 15 Minutes Inciting Riots Worldwide

Oregon Town Using Fetal Tissue To Power Small Community

Animal Rights Activists Fume – Midwestern Man Insulates Barn With Hundreds Of Dead Wolves

Portland, Oregon Deemed “Most Racist” City In The United States

I haven't been to Portland but I've been to Boston. The Portland story cites the nearly web-invisible "Oklahoma Symposium of Racial Studies". The story does get a mention here as originating from "a satirical site".

Wikipedia says this:

National Report (nationalreport.net) is a satirical website devoted to often subtle parodies of real news which convince the unwary. It is published by Allen Montgomery.^[1]

Bazinga.

Man And Satan At Harvard

Classic college scene today: a Harvard group will host a Black Mass but not with any intention of giving offense:

The group, the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, says its reenactment of the so-called black mass Monday is intended as an educational activity to provide history, context, and the origin of the ritual as part of a student-led series that explores different cultures. The group said the event is not designed to insult religious traditions.

Who among us cannot admire these heroes of free speech and deed? In fact, this is sort of like the admiration we all felt when Yale University Press boldly decided to print a book about the controversial Mohammed cartoons but, well, omitted the cartoons themselves. To avoid offending offense-takers, you see.

It goes without saying that if a Harvard campus group wanted to host an event mocking Muslims, women, gays, or most ethnic groups, well, heaven would have to help them because no one in the campus administration would.

Fun With Numbers, Education Testing Division

The NY Times has fun with some new state test proficiency results. This headline and lead are a nice setup:

Connecticut Students Show Gains in National Tests

High school seniors in Connecticut performed better last year on federal math and reading tests than their counterparts did four years earlier, but New Jersey and most of the nation remained flat in both areas, according to exam results released on Wednesday.

Eventually we get more detail:

Thirty-two percent of Connecticut seniors were proficient in math last year, up from 29 percent in 2009, and 50 percent in reading, up from 43 percent.

In New Jersey, math and reading proficiency rose by two percentage points each, to 33 percent and 41 percent, a change considered insignificant from 2009.

So Connecticut went from 29 to 32 in math, which was significant for statistical and headline purposes; NJ went from 31 to 33 in math (beating CT in both years) that is a statistical Nada whoch leaves them among the also-rans. Whatever.

The Times also offers this little math puzzle:

In reading, 38 percent of seniors across the country achieved proficiency last year — compared with 40 percent in 1992, the first year for which data on seniors was available. The lack of progress was striking since elementary- and middle-school students have shown some growth during that time, as have graduation rates, suggesting that learning gains were wearing off in the high school years even as more students were earning diplomas.

Early onset-Alzheimers' might be one answer. But for the numerically inclined (which excludes most reporters but not James Taranto), it might be worth considering the possibility that if graduation rates have gone up (good!) then drop-out rates have gone down. That is also good, but... if, as seems probable, high-school drop-outs are more likely to be among the less academically oriented, then a lower drop out rate will lead to depressed test scores for 12th graders (how many kids have dropped out by 8th or 4th grade?).

Do the math.

OK, THIS IS SCARY: The Times was recycling some astute analysis from the Bright Lights at the DOE?

"Despite the highest high school graduation rate in our history, and despite growth in student achievement over time in elementary school and middle school, student achievement at the high school level has been flat in recent years...."

Oh, brother. 

GRIST FOR THE MILL: The WSJ provides some numbers and context amidst the hand-wringing:

Lower expectations for what graduates should study and know are part of the problem, Ms. Orr said. Meanwhile, more students are staying in school: The graduation rate was about 81% in the 2011-12 school year, up from 74% in 1991-92, according to the Department of Education.

And later:

The latest 12th-grader test scores showed ethnic and gender gaps remain, with non-Hispanic white students outperforming blacks and Hispanics in both reading and math. Some experts point to a demographic shift as an influence on the average scores. Among the test takers, the percentage of Hispanic students rose to 20% in 2013 from 7% in 1992, while the share of white ones fell to 58% from 74%.

Average scores by ethnic group are available, as is that trend over time. As a 'fun with numbers' matter of arithmetic it is possible that all three groups mentioned above are showing improvement even though the "average" remains flat. However, at the NAEP website where the data by subgroup is available, there is a lot of flatlining of the reading scores since 1992.

 

The Next Big Gun Case?

Exploit any tragedy to advance the agenda! The NY Times is at it again with an outrage from Montana:

In Youth’s Death, Some See a Montana Law Gone Wrong

The story writes itself, at least in the Times newsroom - those wacky Montanans have far too lenient self-defense laws and now a teen is dead.

Only the pesky facts undermine their narrative - the shooter has been (IMHO, correctly) charged with homicide and the author of the lenient law, although avoiding the specifics of this case, does not describe it in a way that could suggest the defense has a real hope of success.

On to the Times coverage, which jibes reasonably well with the Marcus Kaarma police complaint: 

MISSOULA, Mont. — Teenagers call it garage hopping. The goal was to sneak into an open garage, steal some beer or other items and slip away into the night. It was dumb and clearly illegal. It was not supposed to be deadly.

Around midnight on April 27, a 17-year-old exchange student from Germany named Diren Dede left the host home where he played Xbox and drained cans of Sprite to set off with a friend through his dark hillside neighborhood. They passed a home whose garage door hung partially open. Using a cellphone for light, Mr. Dede headed in.

Inside the house, motion sensors alerted Markus Kaarma, 29, to an intruder’s presence. Two recent burglaries had put Mr. Kaarma and his young family on edge, his lawyer said, and he grabbed a shotgun from the dining room and rushed outside. He aimed into the garage and, according to court documents, fired four blasts into the dark. Mr. Dede’s body crumpled to the floor.

While Mr. Kaarma has been charged with deliberate homicide, Mr. Dede’s death has set off an outcry an ocean away in Germany, exposing the cultural gulf between a European nation that tightly restricts firearms and a gun-loving Western state. In his defense, Mr. Kaarma is expected to turn to laws enacted in Montana five years ago that allow residents more legal protections in using lethal force to defend their homes.

I should add that per the complaint, the couple had live video from the garage and could see one man; also, the wife followed the husband outside as he investigated, leaving the ten-month old baby inside. Terrified? Really?

The laws, as eventually explained by the Times, don't seem to offer the defendant much hope. But first we get the expected NRA-bashing:

In Montana, which has one of the country’s highest rates of gun ownership, the killing has renewed criticism of the state’s “castle doctrine” laws, which allow residents wider latitude to use force to defend their homes.

Nearly every state has a law on the books giving residents the legal right to defend their homes, but Montana is among several that have gone further. With backing from the National Rifle Association and the support of the state’s Democratic governor, Montana passed a stronger law in 2009 that placed the burden on prosecutors to rebut claims of self-defense.

And on to their description of the law:

Under the old laws, residents were justified in using force only if an assailant tried to enter their home in a “violent, riotous or tumultuous manner.” The new law eliminates that language and makes it clear that residents can use force if they reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent an assault on themselves or someone else in the home.

Here is a statement from the defendant. Their garage had been robbed twice recently (they leave the door open so they can smoke cigarettes or, says the Times and others, maybe marijuana), but what was the basis for his belief that the third time around the garage invasion would lead to a dangerous home invasion?

Back to the Times:

His lawyer, Paul Ryan, says Mr. Kaarma feared for his family’s safety and panicked that night.

“He doesn’t know who’s there, what they’ve got, anything,” Mr. Ryan said. “He just didn’t know what was going on. Then he started to shoot.”

I don't think panicked ignorance reaches the leval of reasonable belief and apparently the local prosecutor concurs. The shooter had a video feed and a baby monitor to observe the garage; awaiting developments inside his home was not an option? Going outside (with his wife!) and shooting into a dark garage struck him as the safer play?

The defense attorny raised his game in a public statement:

Ryan says Kaarma ran towards his front door, grabbed a shotgun sitting nearby, and went into the driveway in front of his unlit and dark garage.

He then fired four shots into the garage, two striking Dede in the shoulder and in the head.

He says, "Markus believed that the intruder posed an imminent threat to himself and his family." Ryan goes on to describe what happened after he realized Dede had been shot-- Pflager called 9-1-1 and attempted life saving procedures on Dede.

Whether Markus believed there was an immient threat is one thing; whether the belief was reasonable is quite another.

Complicating the defense is a police witness with a tale to tell:

A hairstylist named Felene Sherbondy told the police that Mr. Kaarma had come into the Great Clips salon three days before the shooting and talked about how he had been waiting up with his shotgun for three nights “to shoot some kid.” Ms. Sherbondy told the police that Mr. Kaarma was being “extremely vulgar and belligerent,” according to court documents.

Here is the relevant snippet from the complaint:

 

The Times offers an additional seven hand-wringing paragraphs about the daft laws in Montana but doesn't spend any time looking for an expert to tell them that self-defense is going to be laughed out of the courtroom. Well now they know.

A Woman Of Infinite Jest

NY Times columnist Gail Collins derails my train of thought by leading with my personal fave among the great misquotes of screen and stage:

Alas, poor J.D. Winteregg. We knew him ... um, actually not very well at all.

Alas, poor Ms. Collins - she doesn't know her Shakespeare, either, although she is familiar with the common misquote. Of course the line is "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio". 

The rest of the column seems to be bashing some Tea Partier who just lost a primary to John Boehner, or wacky viral videos, or something. It's possible she has a point, but what are the odds? And who wants to risk eyeburn by reading on to find out? Not I!

 

Play Ball!

"This Date in Baseball" caught my eye:

1917 — Babe Ruth of the Red Sox allowed two hits as he outdueled Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators 1-0. Ruth knocked in the winning run with a sacrifice fly.

 

Playing Poker With Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman is chock full of advice on how to curb Putin and save America and the world. One key - a better energy policy for America. With that set-up, let me steal his punchline:

Obama should summon the congressional leadership to Camp David and put his own plan on the table: Offer the Republicans the Keystone XL pipeline, expanded oil drilling and fracking (but only at the highest environmental standards) and, in return, demand a revenue-neutral carbon tax, a national renewable portfolio standard that would require every utility in America to gradually introduce more renewable power, and a national California-level home building code for energy efficiency. I would also toss in incentives for expanding the share of nuclear power in our energy mix.

So Obama should give the Republicans today what they will be winning at the ballot box in this election cycle or the next, in exchange for ideas that are DOA. That would require leadership skill and political talent Obama has yet to demonstrate. That said, it would also require a level of Republican stupidity that is well within their range.

Let me add - respected Republicans such as Greg Mankiw have proposed a revenue-neutral carbon tax. I love the concept, but my suspicion is that "revenue neutral" is a phrase which masks a lot of heartache and complexity. Let me reach back to 2007 for this excerpt from Prof. Mankiw:

Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor and middle class.

But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.

Retirees who drive or heat their homes will see their taxes go up but won't benefit from a cut in the payroll tax, so I suspect the AARP will look for a different type of revenue neutrality.

BONUS STRAY PUZZLE: I recall reading that the carbon footprint of Sunbelters running their air conditioners is much less that that of New Englanders and Northerners heating their homes. A carbon tax which increased that price differential would presumably prompt even more migration to the Sunbelt and the South. Would the transplants bring their Socialist views with them? Or would Blue Staters who truly fear guns and bitter-clingers stay North and leave it to the adventurous to migrate? Time will tell!

Post-Nuclear Winter In The Senate

After abolishing the filibuster for Senate confirmations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid figured he would have smooth sailing for Obama's judges. Unfortunately for Harry, freeing Obama has put the Democratic Senators in a box:

Judicial Nominee’s Memos on Drones Stirring Bipartisan Concern in the Senate

By JEREMY W. PETERS  MAY 5, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s choice for a powerful appeals court appointment is in peril from both the left and the right, highlighting how the fraught politics of an election year are threatening the president’s agenda even among his allies on Capitol Hill.

The nomination of David Barron, who was a Justice Department lawyer at the start of the administration and is now a Harvard Law School professor, is mired in a maw of contentious issues. Republicans object to what they say are his radically liberal views on the Constitution. Democrats in conservative-leaning states, especially those who are up for re-election, are wary that a vote for him might backfire with voters at home. And members of both parties say they are disturbed by Mr. Barron’s authorship of legal memos that justified the United States’ killing of an American citizen overseas with a drone.

The American Civil Liberties Union wrote to all 100 senators on Monday urging them to put off a vote on Mr. Barron’s confirmation until the White House allowed them to read all of his writings on the drone program.

Oh, dear. Can't blame this one on obstructionist, filibustering Republicans funded by the Koch brothers.

The wariness of Democrats, and the willingness of some to buck their president, began to surface publicly on Monday.

Two Democrats who are up for re-election in states where Republicans have a political edge — Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana — are said to be unsure if they will vote yes on Mr. Barron.

A court has ordered the administration to release some of Mr. Barron’s legal work as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. But White House lawyers have not done so while they weigh whether to appeal. Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who is in a tight race, said Monday that he would vote no unless the White House released what the court ordered.

“Unless the White House complies, I cannot support David Barron’s nomination,” he said.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and one of the senators who have voiced deep concern over the secrecy of the administration’s drone policy, said Monday that he had agreed that the vote on Mr. Barron should not move forward until senators could see more of the secret legal opinions that the nominee produced at the Justice Department.

Mr. Wyden added that he was also not committed to voting yes.

 

Preemptive Props To Piketty

Let me offer premptive props to French professor Piketty, whose instant classic on Capital is all anyone can talk about.

Messr. Piketty is on the verge of a major success in helping to bring down inequality in his home country. Based on these old but not hopelessly dated stories, the wealthy French are leaving France in droves to flee higher taxes. This high-earner exodus will bring down Piketty's tax-based income figures when they are finally available in a few years, and champagne will flow freely as France celebrates its triumph over inequality (or at least over a rising trend). That is, the champagne will flow freely if there is anyone left to pick up the tab; otherwise we will be looking at table wine and tap water.

But still, congrats in advance.

TO BE FAIR, BUT NOT REALLY... Piketty does call for a global wealth tax, presumably informed by experience. But he is hazy as to whether this global tax should be collected by unicorns and enforced by dragons or vice versa, so I just can't take it seriously.

Not That Vampires Exist And Were On To Anything...

These times demand the Times:

Young Blood May Hold Key to Reversing Aging

Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.

“I am extremely excited,” said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “These findings could be a game changer.”

The research builds on centuries of speculation that the blood of young people contains substances that might rejuvenate older adults.

So what is in youngster's blood that is lacking in old-timer's blood?

To pinpoint the molecules responsible for the change, Dr. Wagers and her colleagues screened the animals’ blood and found that a protein called GDF11 was abundant in young mice and scarce in old ones. To see if GDF11 was crucial to the parabiosis effect, the scientists produced a supply of the protein and injected it into old mice. Even on its own, GDF11 rejuvenated their hearts.

It also gave a boost to skeletal muscles and some parts of the brain.

This is all wonderful news for aging mice. But will the idea work in humans?

But scientists would need to take care in rejuvenating old body parts. Waking up stem cells might lead to their multiplying uncontrollably.

“It is quite possible that it will dramatically increase the incidence of cancer,” said Irina M. Conboy, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “You have to be careful about overselling it.”

 

Inventing ET

Stephen Hawking et al present an intriguing Artificial Intelligence metaphor:

With the Hollywood blockbuster Transcendence playing in cinemas, with Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman showcasing clashing visions for the future of humanity, it's tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction. But this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake in history.

Where might AI go?

Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains. An explosive transition is possible, although it might play out differently from in the movie: as Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a "singularity" and Johnny Depp's movie character calls "transcendence".

One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

So, facing possible futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the experts are surely doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome, right? Wrong. If a superior alien civilisation sent us a message saying, "We'll arrive in a few decades," would we just reply, "OK, call us when you get here – we'll leave the lights on"? Probably not – but this is more or less what is happening with AI. Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing to happen to humanity in history, little serious research is devoted to these issues outside non-profit institutes such as the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the Future Life Institute. 

Fascinating. I for one welcome our new computer overlords, since they will have been made in America, or at least, Earth.

But one wonders - what would a man-made AI machine actually want? With all this vast power, what goals might it pursue?

Per Darwin (or, not to diminish his effort, common sense) any earth species that did not harbor a drive for propagation would not survive. And in larger organisms, propagation includes a self-survival instinct. It seems reasonable to presume that any visiting aliens from a distant world would have, at some point, been subject to a similar biological imperative.

But what fundamental urge might prompt a machine to care about its own survival, or anything else? Sci-fi typically answers this by asserting that the fictional super-machine du jour re-programs itself to assure its own continuance in order to pursue whatever it considers its primary mission. Or the super-machine, originally a military device, was initially programmed to emphaisze its own survival. Ooops.

One wonders what visiting aliens able to conquer interstellar travel could possibly find sufficiently interesting about humans that they would stop by and oppress us. OTOH, I can go to the zoo and see animals we consider interesting.

But what would a machine want, anyway? To what end would it oppress or enrich mere humans?

Tax Cut Denialism, With A Freudian Slip

Paul Krugman explains that he was right and Evil Righties were wrong about the response to the financial collapse of 2008. But the Times delivers a lovely correction of a Freudian slip, and Krugman continues to wear his Big Government blinders in contradiction of his own earlier analysis.

Slips first:

Correction: May 2, 2014 

An earlier version of the web summary with this column pointed out that few economists saw the fiscal crisis coming. The crisis should have been referred to as a financial crisis.

It was not now, has never been and never will be a fiscal crisis! Fears that out-of-control spending will put us on the road to Argentina are soooo 2003 and subsequently sorta-kinda repudiated.

Let's switch to Krugman's ongoing tax-cut denialism of the logic of his own arguments. From the recent column:

...since the fall of Lehman Brothers, basic textbook macroeconomics has performed very well.

...

In what sense did economics work well? Economists who took their own textbooks seriously quickly diagnosed the nature of our economic malaise: We were suffering from inadequate demand. The financial crisis and the housing bust created an environment in which everyone was trying to spend less, but my spending is your income and your spending is my income, so when everyone tries to cut spending at the same time the result is an overall decline in incomes and a depressed economy. And we know (or should know) that depressed economies behave quite differently from economies that are at or near full employment.

For example, many seemingly knowledgeable people — bankers, business leaders, public officials — warned that budget deficits would lead to soaring interest rates and inflation. But economists knew that such warnings, which might have made sense under normal conditions, were way off base under the conditions we actually faced. Sure enough, interest and inflation rates stayed low.

And the diagnosis of our troubles as stemming from inadequate demand had clear policy implications: as long as lack of demand was the problem, we would be living in a world in which the usual rules didn’t apply. In particular, this was no time to worry about budget deficits and cut spending, which would only deepen the depression. When John Boehner, then the House minority leader, declared in early 2009 that since American families were having to tighten their belts, the government should tighten its belt, too, people like me cringed; his remarks betrayed his economic ignorance. We needed more government spending, not less, to fill the hole left by inadequate private demand.

What Krugman can't bring himself to write is that cutting taxes can serve as well as increasing government spending. The gist - if the tax cuts are spent, then it represents a government funded boost to demand; if they are saved, they help repair household private sector balance sheets by substituting public for private debt.

In earlier writings Krugman has acknowledged the private sector balance sheet problem:

Why is recovery from a financial crisis slow? Financial crises are preceded by credit bubbles; when those bubbles burst, many families and/or companies are left with high levels of debt, which force them to slash their spending. This slashed spending, in turn, depresses the economy as a whole.

And the usual response to recession, cutting interest rates to encourage spending, isn’t adequate. Many families simply can’t spend more, and interest rates can be cut only so far — namely, to zero but not below.

Does this mean that nothing can be done to avoid a protracted slump after a financial crisis? No, it just means that you have to do more than just cut interest rates. In particular, what the economy really needs after a financial crisis is a temporary increase in government spending, to sustain employment while the private sector repairs its balance sheet.

To be fair, Krugman resisted the notion in the quoted piece that cutting taxes could lead to balance sheet repair, so his denialism is consistent. he provided more on the private debt problem here:

Unfortunately, the economy didn’t come roaring back. Why?

The best explanation, I think, lies in the debt overhang. For the most part, even those who correctly diagnosed a housing bubble failed to notice or at least to acknowledge the importance of the sharp rise in household debt that accompanied the bubble

...

And I would argue that this debt overhang has held back spending even though financial markets are operating more or less normally again.

Yet tax cuts that helped reduce that private debt bubble wouldn't speed a recovery?

Oddly, when the political jockeying for the 2009 stimulus was underway, Krugman briefly favored some tax cuts. This is Jan 6, 2009:

How much do tax cuts and spending raise GDP? The widely cited estimates of Mark Zandi of Economy.com indicate a multiplier of around 1.5 for spending, with widely varying estimates for tax cuts. Payroll tax cuts, which make up about half the Obama proposal, are pretty good, with a multiplier of 1.29; business tax cuts, which make up the rest, are much less effective.

But by Jan 11 "pretty good" had changed to "ineffective":

First, Mr. Obama should scrap his proposal for $150 billion in business tax cuts, which would do little to help the economy. Ideally he’d scrap the proposed $150 billion payroll tax cut as well, though I’m aware that it was a campaign promise.

Money not squandered on ineffective tax cuts could be used to provide further relief to Americans in distress — enhanced unemployment benefits, expanded Medicaid and more. 

Whatever. I puzzled over Krugman's notion that temporary tax cuts don't spur permanent long-term demand but temporary increases in spending do back in the day. A week later I scratched my head over his insistence that putting more money in people's pockets by way of a helicopter drop (or, heaven forbid, a tax cut) could not be stimulative but extending unemployment insurance could be. And (IIRC, after some emailing to intermediaries) Krugman got pushed back to a modest endorsement of payroll tax cuts.

Left unaddressed is the mix of spending versus saving when the Feds hand out money to the states to boost demand. Krugman is confident that tax cuts to "the rich" will simply be saved rather than spent and hence provide little stimulation. But economist John Taylor of Stanford found that states and municipalities tried to save today to smooth their budget problems over the next several years:

Individuals and families largely saved the transfers and tax rebates. The federal government increased purchases, but by only an immaterial amount. State and local governments used the stimulus grants to reduce their net borrowing (largely by acquiring more financial assets) rather than to increase expenditures, and they shifted expenditures away from purchases toward transfers. Some argue that the economy would have been worse off without these stimulus packages, but the results do not support that view.

More on that here:

The money sent to the states, meanwhile, didn't really increase infrastructure spending. If a state already had a light-rail project under way, it just borrowed less and used some of the federal money instead -- you didn't see more light-rail projects.

Manipulating fungible cash amongst varied short and long term accounts is a bedrock of state and municipal finance in this country; the ideas that sending Federal money to a state (even with earmarks) will force them to spend "that money" on a project rather than re-jiggle all their other accounts so that they spend and save as they want is naive.

 Hmm. The dog barks, the day passes...

Game of Thrones, Now With A Laugh Track

The NY Times covers the latest "news" from the entertainment world:

For ‘Game of Thrones,’ Rising Unease Over Rape’s Recurring Role

From its very beginnings, “Game of Thrones” has been riddled with sexual brutality. The franchise, which started as a series of fantasy novels by George R. R.Martin about a bleak, feudal world, has at various times included a warrior king who claims his child bride on their wedding night, and the gang rape of a young woman by “half a hundred shouting men behind a tanner’s shop.”

These scenes and others have raised concerns, but this discussion was confined to readers and critics of fantasy fiction.

Or, as a brother-in-law said, there is a lot to like about the book series if you can ignore the author being a sex-obsessed perv. Of course, in Hollywood that is a feature rather than a bug, but now the series is so popular that a bit of a backlash is brewing:

Now the debate about the series’s sexual violence has spilled into the mainstream and grown vehement, fueled by the explosive growth of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series. In its fourth season, the show, which airs on Sunday nights, averages more than 14 million viewers and has become its cable network’s most watched series since “The Sopranos.”

In the latest episode, women held captive in a wintry shelter are sexually brutalized. In the deeply controversial episode that preceded it, a scheming noblewoman in an incestuous relationship with her brother is forced to have sex with him, despite her cries of no.

Rape is often presented in television plotlines, where it has far-reaching and lasting consequences for the affected characters. But critics of “Game of Thrones” fear that rape has become so pervasive in the drama that it is almost background noise: a routine and unshocking occurrence.

That obviously doesn't jibe with the current push to root out "rape culture".

George R-Squared Martin was available by email for comment:

In response to email questions, Mr. Martin wrote that as an artist, he had an obligation to tell the truth about history and about human nature.

“Rape and sexual violence have been a part of every war ever fought, from the ancient Sumerians to our present day,” said Mr. Martin, 65, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

“To omit them from a narrative centered on war and power would have been fundamentally false and dishonest,” he continued, “and would have undermined one of the themes of the books: that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.”

Humans have a worse history than orcs and Dark Lords? Sure, on this planet! But he can only say this because orcs and the Dark Lord are (spoiler alert!) FICTIONAL! And do let me add, if Mr. Martin is (unexpectedly) taking a veiled shot at Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, well, he can pack his dragons and his rapists and sail back to Westeros. Tolkien packed the best and worst of human qualities in various non-humans in order to emphasize his themes. Sort of like the dragon and the White Walkers of Game of Thrones, if the author ever gets around to explaining whither TF the various plotlines are going. Hmm, maybe Martin's point is that humans built a seven hundred foot wall of ice to keep the White Walkers out, but accidentally kept the more fearsome enemy, themselves, in. I can hardly wait...

And speaking of waiting, yes, I have read all five of the very long books, a project which I undertook against my better judgment. As a very casual fantasy fan my impression is that every author has two goals: bang out a swords and sorcery epic eclipsing Lord of the Rings, and create a franchise assuring lifetime employment and a healthy bequest to the heirs. This goal is pursued by employing the trick popularized by Scheherazade, spinning a yarn that never ends, but finally comes to a halt with the author's death, after which the estate organizes his notes and bangs out a wrap-it-up book or two (I say this as a regretful reader of Unfinished Tales).

At this point we have been given five Game of Thrones books; Mr. Martin has said this will be a seven book series unless he changes his mind but I see through that as well - what was meant to be Book Four became a two-thousand page sprawl that was eventually published as books Four and Five, and instead of narrowing the scope new characters and plotlines were introduced. What are now conceived as books Six and Seven will eventually be published as books Six through Ten, if we all live that long, and Alzheimer's doesnt overtake us. For myself, I was paging through the books recently and remember so little of what is going on that reading Boox Six will be a waste of time.

All of that said, the HBO production seems to be fabulous. I am not actually watching it, but this scene of Arya and The Hound is a YouTube classic of the "Make My Day" genre. The Hound is a fearsome but disaffected fighter for the King; Arya is a deeply wronged, deeply vengeful, tomboy of the rebellious Stark family who may have value as a bride or as ransom. The Hound is holding her prisoner to collect a ransom, but adventures await...

I DEPLORE THE LACK OF DEPLORING: This crowd reaction to the above scene at a bar in socialist Burlington is not as PC as some might have hoped. 

If You Like Your Employer-Sponsored Health Plan You Can Keep It. Unless...

A new report described at The Hill, the NY Times and McClatchy describes the next shoe to drop on ObamaCare. From The Hill:

The Affordable Care Act could save some of America’s largest corporations hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, according to a market analyst group.

According to a report by S&P Capital IQ released Thursday, S&P 500 companies will likely move their employees from employer-provided health insurance plans to the healthcare exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, saving employers nearly $700 billion through the year 2025. If current healthcare inflation stays constant, those savings could be greater than $800 billion, researchers found.

Corporations are expected to start out by dropping low-wage and part-time workers from their employer insurance plans since they are able to reap the benefits of government tax subsidies under ObamaCare, leading them to pick up new plans under the healthcare law. Eventually, the burden of healthcare coverage will shift from employers to employees.

The idea of dropping low-wage and part-time workers goes in the No Kidding file (with a 'Now They Tell Us' cross-tab). Dropping higher paid workers, for whom the tax shield provided by the current treatment of employer-sponsored coverage is valuable, is more surprising to me:

However, change is not expected overnight. The report says corporations will likely start of by shifting entry-level college graduates, low-wage workers and part-time workers to health insurance plans through the ACA since they are most likely to benefit from the new healthcare model first. Eventually, higher paid workers will likely be given stipends from their employers to pay for ObamaCare. But as they will not be able to keep up with healthcare inflation, the stipends will become part of their wage.

The report draws an interesting parallel to the decline of private pensions:

The report compares ObamaCare to the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974, which led to the creation of Individual Retirement Accounts. The result was employees took ownership of their pension funds, leading employers to stop using their corporate pension structures and instead become contributors to the employees' pension plans.

To whoch I would add - I am not a tax laywer, but my recollection is that pensions were one of the few (if only?) tax-deferred savings schemes by which a company could, in effect, "pay" a worker today and deduct the compensation expense without the employee having to report the income. IRAs and 401(k)s were introduced as a complement, but eventually became a replacement.

From which one might infer that pensions were offered as a response to the tax code and decliend when the tax code changed; the ideas that they were popular, traditional, or a nice perk were secondary. Viewed that way, employer-sponsored insurance could go the same way, with employer-sponsored medical savings accounts leading the way. Consult your own tax advisor before relying on this:

Employee health savings accounts are employer-sponsored plans in which an employee puts money into the plan each pay period and can access the money only to pay for health care needs.

...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there is no federal law limiting the amount an employee may contribute to her health savings account over a year or over a lifetime. However, individual employers can limit the amount of contributions employees may make to their plans.

If the only limit is that imposed by the employer and if the account can be used to pay health insurance premiums (per Wikipedia and the IRS, insurance premiums that should be allowed), a company can easily kick all of their employees onto the Obamacare exchanges and give them a tax-shielded payment to cover some or all of the premiums.

HMM: The Fiscal Times also covered this, employing the stale "dropping shoe" cliche but including a cool chart.

Burnishing The Clinton's Apple

The NY Times Upshot, meant to be their data-crunching replacement for the lost and lamented Nate Silver, delivers a howler of economic innumeracy. The theme is Bill Clinton's attempt to redeem his legacy; his message is that he prioritized prosperity above income inequality; and the laugher is this:

Voters generally have a rosy view of the 1990s: Median family income increased to $48,950 in 1999 from $36,959 in 1993. 

Really? Despite all this talk about stagnant middle class incomes we have a Times writer (and editors, maybe) who think that family incomes rose by 32% during the Clinton boom? Without looking I can promise that we are not being presented with inflation adjusted numbers.

With a minor bit of looking I can find that yes, inflation adjusted median household income has in fact been nearly flatlining for decades (unless sensibly adjusted for things like employer-sponsored health insurance).

A bit more poking indicates that Ms. Chozick is presenting the numbers that reconcile to the Census Bureau No. HS-25 as of 2003 with median family income in current, rather than constant, dollars. Adjusting for inflation, median family income grew (in 2001 dollars) from $44,586 to $51,996, or 17%. The current report (H-6) for median family income presents different historical figures for 1993 and 1999 in current dollars

Left unanswered - why did she drop the year 2000, when Wild Bill was still President and unadjusted median income in current dollars was even higher at $50,732? Send better acolytes.

Hillary 2016 makes me think we can't get to 2017 fast enough. Three more years of this BS?

Not A Cover-Up, A Strategy

The NY Times puts a toe in the swirling waters around Benghazi:

Email Suggests White House Strategy on Benghazi

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR  APRIL 30, 2014

It's nice to think they had a strategy.

WASHINGTON — A newly released email shows that White House officials sought to shape the way Susan E. Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations, discussed the Middle East chaos that was the context for the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

The email dated Sept. 14, 2012, from Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, to Ms. Rice was obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request. The subject of the email was: “PREP CALL with Susan.”

That email was sent ahead of Ms. Rice’s appearance on several Sunday morning news talk programs three days after the attacks that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including J. Christopher Stevens, the ambassador to Libya.

Mr. Shear then describes the controversy:

Conservative critics of President Obama have long contended that political considerations at the White House were the reason that Ms. Rice attributed the Benghazi attacks to spontaneous protests sparked by an anti-Muslim Internet video. Critics have said she downplayed the idea that the attacks were linked to terrorism because it would undermine the notion that Mr. Obama was winning the war on terror.

The email from Mr. Rhodes includes goals for Ms. Rice’s appearances on the shows and advice on how to discuss the subject of the protests that were raging in Libya and at other American diplomatic posts in the Middle East.

Hmm, was she sent to explain the protests that "were raging", or the attack that had resulted in four dead Americans on the anniversay of 9/11? Jay Carney explained:

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, dismissed the new email as irrelevant, saying that the subject of the advice from Mr. Rhodes in the email was not about Benghazi, but rather about the protests that were taking place across the Middle East at the time.

Uh huh. And last night the NBA coverage was about the ongoing playoffs, not the Donald Sterling fallout. Wait, you mean there is an overlap?

 

CBS has a fair and balanced piece. They remind us that there was a State Department cover-up for Hillary which may have pre-empted any White House coverup, and that emphasis on the video may have been wishful thinking rather than outright deception:

 

Finally, there are countless references in the Judicial Watch documents to the video that have nothing to do with finding an explanation for the attack in Libya. The video is at the center of administration fears of a regionwide conflagration. There is a frantic effort to distance the U.S. government from the video and the violence that officials think is associated with it, and of course to show that the president is on the case. Rhodes writes: "[W]e've made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence. And we are working to make sure that people around the globe hear that message."

This brings to mind the old story about a man who wants to take a nap, but he can't because kids are playing in the street. To disperse them, he concocts a completely fake story. He opens the window and tells them there are fresh, free oranges being given away down at the dock. The kids run off to get the delicious treats. The man settles back into his bed but finds he can't sleep. He can't stop thinking about how he's missing out on those free oranges.

Could the White House have created the fiction about the video and then been consumed with managing the fallout from the video at the same time, like our man with the oranges? Perhaps, but there is also evidence in the documents for another explanation. The administration was practicing garden-variety self-deception: Administration officials, who came into office on a wave of skepticism about the quality of CIA intelligence, believed what their intelligence agency told them and what was in the president's best political interest to believe.

Incompetence or deceit? I reject these false choices!