Democrats in the Senate held hearings on contracting abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a woefully under-reported topic in our media. Some of the companies operating in Iraq have a deplorable record of over-charging the government, providing sub-standard and possibly even dangerous services to our soldiers, and abusing Iraqi civilians. Some of these companies make the war profiteers form the Second World War and the Civil War look like pikers by comparison.
The video for the hearings can be found here.
April 29th, 2008
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General, Politics, Economics, Iraq, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
no comments
Today is tax day, and that means that we’re bound to be “treated” to all sorts of anti-tax libertarian blog posts today about how horrible it is that the government rapes us, steals our money at gunpoint, takes “half” our money, etc., etc., whine whine whine, bitch bitch bitch. Now the part that these taxophobes don’t ever want to talk about is that while everyone hates paying taxes, people generally like most of the things that taxes pay for (unpopular wars aside). But I’ll let someone else write about that aspect. What I want to talk about, instead, is how horribly the anti-tax crowd exaggerates how much we’re actually taxed.
To counter that, without revealing too many personal details, I’m going to post a summary of my tax situation, and challenge the anti-tax folks to do the same. No specific numbers, just the generalities that I’m listing here.
To that end, for the tax year 2007: (Below the fold)
April 15th, 2008
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Politics, Economics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
29 comments
OK, so Amazon.com offers these “Daily Deals”, right? They pick some item, discount it, and sell a certain number of that item on a given day at the discounted price, until they run out.
Recently they offered a deal on an item that, by coincidence, I had purchased not long before at the regular Amazon price. This annoyed me, because I thought I had been getting a good deal at the regular price (well below MSRP), but they were now selling the same thing for about $20 less than that. I wanted to get in on the really good deal, not just the regular good deal - but of course there was no point in my buying one now, since I already had one.
Then a brilliant plan occurred to me: I could buy one at the discounted price, wait until they had sold out, and then sell it at the regular Amazon price on eBay - thus earning the difference between the sale and regular prices, and essentially reducing my own previously-paid price to equal the sale price, after the fact. But then an even more brilliant plan occurred to me: I could buy a whole bunch of them, wait until the sale was over, sell them on eBay at the regular Amazon price, and earn 20 bucks per unit profit.
So, not to be greedy, I ordered 5 units at a cost of close to $300, and sat down to wait to start shipping them out and earn mass profits. At some point I discovered that I had misremembered my original purchase price; the price differential was actually only $14, not $20, but still, I stood in the way to earn a cool 70 smackers, and that ain’t hay. And at any rate, I knew I had a guaranteed market at that price, since that’s the price they were currently selling for (non-discounted) on Amazon. What could go wrong?
Well, the first thing that went wrong, in fact the moment I clicked the “Buy” button on Amazon, was that I began to feel like a dick. Yes, it’s cool to find deals and it’s the American way to buy and sell schlock merchandise like a bazaar barker in desperate pursuit of the most minimal cash payout, but I realized that I was essentially taking advantage of Amazon’s discount offer to make a profit for myself - and because the discount sale quantity was limited, in doing so I was blocking someone else from getting a good deal who probably only wanted it to enjoy the item for themselves. You can argue that that’s just capitalism at work, but it’s (in a very, very tiny way) one of the ugly things I object to about the way capitalism works - that the constant grinding pursuit of self-interest in every way and form overrides even the most minimal sense of generosity toward others’ welfare. And here I was behaving like an oil company in a nature preserve, just to get 14 fucking dollars out of somebody who wasn’t fast enough to get the discount. So as soon as I had thought about it, I went back to my Amazon account to cancel the order - and found that, in less than 15 minutes, they had already begun processing the order and it couldn’t be canceled. So not only did I feel like a dick, but I couldn’t undickify myself.
So, I sat down again to wait, feeling guilty and wishing I wasn’t in this mess. I began to wonder if I should donate the profits to a charity or something.
Eventually, a big box arrived with 5 identical items in it, all duplicating the one already sitting on my shelf at home. I stashed it away guiltily and didn’t deal with it for a couple of weeks.
Big mistake.
Eventually, I entered 5 identical sale notices on eBay and sat down to wait some more, because it takes a week for the auctions to end. Now, I’m not stupid, right? - before I began this whole adventure I had checked sale prices on eBay and confirmed that they were doing a brisk business in this item, at prices roughly approximating the Amazon non-discounted price. In part because I had only previously sold things on eBay once or twice and didn’t really know the system, in part because I wasn’t sure it would help, I hadn’t specified a minimum sales price on the auctions - but what difference would it make? The going market price was well above my purchase price, so my profits were secure.
After entering my items for sale, I checked a few similar listings just to re-confirm that the market was strong. And then made a sickening discovery.
Somehow, in the intervening couple of weeks between ordering the items and placing them on eBay, the bottom had dropped out of the market for them. eBay sale prices were now running well under the Amazon non-discount price; “Buy It Now” offers at the Amazon price were going totally unclaimed, and some auctions were actually ending below the discounted price that I had paid! And because I hadn’t specified a minimum price, I could potentially lose almost everything I had paid! But I couldn’t do anything about it - if I waited longer, the price would probably just drop further, and I had to get as much of my $300 investment back as I could. So I left the auctions up and hoped I was just seeing a momentary aberration in sales prices.
I forced myself not to monitor the auctions more than once every day or so for the next week, but on the ending day I was mortified: every single auction had ended within a dollar or two of the Amazon discount price that I had already paid, and most of them had ended well below that - in one case almost $10 less! The total combined sales of all items was $25 less than I had paid for them at the discounted price! Luckily, I had specified a $10 flat shipping fee, thinking it would cost less than that, so I had some buffer room, but it wasn’t looking good.
And of course, three of my buyers were from the midwest - not cheap to ship to - and the rest were all from California - as far away as it’s possible to get in the 48 States. And then PayPal took about $2 off the top of each order they processed, and eBay itself charged me more than $3 per order in fees . . .
End result, after splurging on a bulk purchase of a highly popular item at deep discount, selling into a strong, virtually guaranteed market with demonstrated demand almost $20 above my break-even price point, and paying all associated transaction fees (including the cheapest possible shipping method, even at the risk of not keeping my promises regarding shipping dates, because every other alternative was a disaster): I still felt like a complete dick and I lost $18.81.
Which, paradoxically, had the effect of making me feel a lot less like a dick. Instead of elbowing out others’ discount purchases for my own benefit, I actually wound up subsidizing my buyers’ discounts to the tune of an average of $3.76 below my own purchase price - which would have been a substantial savings for any Amazon customer who had not paid for “free” Prime shipping privileges, and at worst no more than $2 above discount (and as much as $10 below) even for those who had. So I did shift the market from Amazon to eBay, which is not what Amazon wanted, but from the broad perspective the only real loser (in various senses) in this scenario is me. So I’m really a kind of altruist.
Great.
April 7th, 2008
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General, I do too have a life, Economics, Math, Fiasco, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
6 comments
There is a lot of talk floating around about whether or not Edwards is going to endorse before North Carolina’s primary. It doesn’t appear that he is going to — he seems to like both Obama and Clinton for different reasons and is having a hard time deciding. If I was him, I would tkae the same route that Gore has taken and not endorse anyone.
Al Gore has turned himself into the Democratic Party’s resident wise man on climate and environmental issues. Gore is very well liked within the party and has built himself a reputation for knowledge and insight about environmental issues that is unrivaled in official Democratic Party circles. That combination of popularity and knowledge has put Gore in a unique position: for the rank and file, his position is the least acceptable position for a national Democratic politician to take. People can go farther than Gore, but no one with national aspiration can dismiss his positions on the environment. His position has become the default position of the party. But that only works becasue he is not seen as an active player in the quest for office. If Gore were to come out for someone, then the other condidate would be compelled to minimize or even attack Gore’s positions and the followers of the non-endorsed candidates to take sides: him or their choice for national office. Instead of a unifying force, he becomes a divisive one.
Edwards has the opportunity to follow much the same path. He is well liked among the Democratic base. Like Gore, he is the leading champion of an issue where the rank file membership is more progressive and fart-thinking than the current Democratic leadership. Like Gore, he has the knowledge, the mini-celebrity, and the financial base to create an effective platform for creating change. But all of that changes the moment he endorses. Gore, in fact, becasue of the last few years of goodwill he has built up, might actually be better positioned to endorse and come out of the process with his position as Democratic Environment Guru intact. Edwards has barely started on the journey. If he endorses now, then he throws away any possibility of becoming the Al Gore of poverty and economic injustice. I, for one, would hate to see that happen.
March 24th, 2008
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General, Politics, Economics |
20 comments
Peggy Noonan mostly praised Obama’s speech, and largely seemed to understand it, which puts her in a minority of conservative commentators. But she criticizes him, near the end of her article, for . . . wait for it . . . not understanding America. Yes, snotty Reaganite lickspittles who made a profession of courting racists and religious bigots with coded signals, demonizing “welfare queens”, glorifying death squads and Nazi war dead, excusing incompetence and ignorance at every turn, and obsessing over wayward blowjobs, now presume to tell candidates of the working-class party what the real America is all about.
March 21st, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Economics, Culture, News & Current Events, Fiasco, Torture |
9 comments
If you think predatory pricing and/or price gouging are bad, then you’re a dirty communist. Just thought you might like to know.
When you stop businesses from taking advantage of people and/or ripping them off, you’re destroying the American Way, comrade!
March 20th, 2008
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Economics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
21 comments
Commenter Stormy Dragon on 2007-09-18:
And in either case, while these foreclosures are no doubt excruciating for the families involved, I find it rather incredible to suggest that something affecting less than two tenths of one percent of the households in the US is going to crash the entire national economy.
I’m starting to think the housing bubble is this year’s ’summer of the shark’ story.
This weekend:
With a deal finally struck, JPMorgan Chase & Co. will embark on the tough task of absorbing Bear Stearns Cos., once among its biggest rivals on Wall Street.
As the assimilation proceeds, the financial industry wants to know exactly how badly Bear Stearns bet on mortgage-backed investments. Unwinding the nation’s fifth-biggest investment houses should provide some insight into what other financial institutions might have on their books.
JPMorgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns for the shockingly low price of $2 per share, or $236.2 million, occurred Sunday night, in a deal that was fast-tracked by the federal government to avoid a bankruptcy. A complete collapse of Bear Stearns might have completely crushed the already-dwindling confidence in the global financial system, which has frozen up after last year’s collapse of the subprime mortgage market.
Bear Stearns was the most exposed to risky bets on the loans; it is now the first major bank to be undone by that market’s collapse.
H/T: Commenter Ted, whose encyclopedic memory of such discussions is impressive.
March 17th, 2008
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Economics, News & Current Events |
no comments
Jared Bernstein:
Final snarky comment: isn’t it interesting to see how quickly these supply-siders become deeply committed Keynesians when they actually need to accomplish something useful?
January 22nd, 2008
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Politics, Economics, Humor |
11 comments
Some good conversation on that topic, mainly between frequent commenters digglahhh and Ted, here.
December 10th, 2007
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Bloggin, Economics |
no comments
It seems that the best way to feed starving nation is to ignore the free market fundamentalists at the World Bank:
But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.
In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.
Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.
Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.
The notion that the free market can solve every problem in the world is idiotic on its face. There has never been and I suspect that there never will be any one tool that is appropriate for every job you might face. It was clear that the soil in Malawi need replenishment, and it was also clear from watching Western countries that technical farming and the use o fertilizers can make an enormous beneficial impact on farm output. It was also clear that a country as poor as Malawi was going to need someone to step in and subsidize at least the first round of funding that would be required to provide poor farmers with fertilizer. It was a role perfectly suited for the government.
The World Bank knew all of this, and yet they still insisted that a hungry country stop growing food and start growing cash crops for export so that it could one day buy food from other countries. It was an insane idea on its face, and yet, because it adhered to the notion of capitalism uber alles, the Word Bank insisted on it. Their free market lead to starvation and privation. The government intervention lead to record crops, and end to famine, and even the growth of the economy driven by an increase in employee wages:
“The government has taken the bull by the horns and done what farmers wanted,” he said. Some economists have questioned whether Malawi’s 2007 bumper harvest should be credited to good rains or subsidies, but an independent evaluation, financed by the United States and Britain, found that the subsidy program accounted for a large share of this year’s increase in corn production.
The harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing wages for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan State University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run subsidy program in a sensibly managed economy “has the potential to drive growth forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the Malawian economy are currently caught.”
In a very real sense, the Word Bank’s insistence on a free market and an end to government intervention helped prolong starvation. Governments and free markets are human created tools, nothing more, nothing less. What matters is not which tool is used but rather which tool produces the desired outcome. You forget that and you get the World Bank, an organization religiously wedded to only one tool and insistence on the uses of the one tool in the face of all contrary evidence. You forget that and you get famines and near-famines that last longer than they should and kill people who should have lived.
December 2nd, 2007
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General, Politics, Economics, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
53 comments
The Shepherd Express, Milwaukee’s indie paper, has a good article on the importance of buying local:
A 2002 Economic Impact Analysis in Austin, Texas, was one of the first major studies to examine the impact of shopping at local businesses versus national chains. It found that for every $100 spent at a local bookstore or CD store, $45 stayed in the local economy. For every $100 spent at Borders, however, the local economic impact was only $13. A study in Maine the following year yielded similar results: Shopping local kept three times more money in the local economy than shopping at chains.
[Emphasis mine]
Something to think about the next time you’re headed toward Barnes & Noble.
(Unless, of course, you’re a libertarian, in which case, screw the local economy and buy what’s cheapest. In fact, buy from somewhere out of state so you can skate on sales taxes, too…)
November 29th, 2007
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Economics, Culture |
11 comments
I had another major computer disaster this past week, and still haven’t resolved it. I’ve lost days of work, and possibly completely tanked one important project. I finally completely lost my shit and awoke from a trance to find myself standing in my living room vigorously miming punching Bill Gates repeatedly in the face while making little grunting noises. (Tgirsch had some smart remarks to make about that but I think it’s perfectly understandable.)
So I took the plunge and decided to set up a Linux system - all the caveats notwithstanding. From what I know, the current Ubuntu distros are stable and offer a choice of usable GUIs. Still a few bugs in the system, but wireless Internet (Tgirsch’s concern) is not my current problem. My biggest worry was MS Word compatibility - I like Open Office despite its slightly weird interface, but it really only emulates Word about as well as any “emulator” does, meaning that formatting gets significantly futzed when you move files from one to the other, as I often have to do. But when Windows ate its own registry and refused to boot - and MS’s Web site confidently encouraged me to copy the old registry file onto the corrupted one to fix the problem, not stopping to realize that you’d have to boot the computer to do it!*, I just gave up. Anybody who wants to trust themselves to Word and the rest of Bill Gates’s demonspawn is welcome; I’m bugging out.
So I started looking around. A friend suggested to me Everex’s new $200 Linux computer - a decent system at an outstanding price. It retails through WalMart, whom I didn’t want to patronize, and also through an outfit called ZaReason, who build customized Linux systems at good prices. But when I checked ZaReason’s Website, I immediately got seduced by the slightly higher-priced systems they build themselves, which are much more powerful than the Everex. I couldn’t find quite what I wanted so I e-mailed their tech support address, and got a response (on the weekend!) from their CTO himself. (I suspect he’s actually the entire tech-support office, but that’s still awfully good service.) He made some useful suggestions and alerted me to an upcoming offer they were just about to release that would be an even better deal than what I had been looking at. I thought that was great, and got ready to order one.
By coincidence, however, while I was waiting for the new deal to show up on ZaReason’s Website, I stumbled across a discount ad from Dell. This week only, they’re offering $350 off any “Inspiron 531″ system retailing for $1,000 or more (go here, configure the system however you like, and enter discount code 4J1M7748R2RRV6 at checkout; you also get free shipping and a $100 gift card for future purchases). By judicious juggling of product options, I was able to put together a screaming system that far outpaces the ZaReason configuration and comes with a boatload of accessories and peripherals as well. Of course, it also comes with Windows Vista, and they won’t preinstall all the Linux OS and apps that ZaReason loads to your specifications for you for free. Too bad. But it’s got a huge hard drive, so I figure I can partition it and set up a dual-boot system, thus still being able to boot to Windows if I absolutely have to, but with lots of room for Linux as a main configuration. And, the 19″ flat-screen that comes with it is selling on eBay for over $150, and I already have a better monitor of my own, so, I see a way I can recoup almost a quarter of the expense of this system, coming out within $50 of ZaReason’s price for a much more powerful setup.
It also means I’ll have to install Ubuntu and all the apps myself, so if you don’t hear from me for a few days, send somebody by my apartment to make me stop shadowboxing and screaming “Torvalds! I’ll kill you! . . . “. But that’s not what I wanted to write about.
I actually felt guilty not buying the Linux vendor’s system, and I e-mailed the CTO guy back to thank him for his input and explain the special offer Dell was making, and ask if he thought I was overlooking anything by not buying from him. I assumed he’d give me some line about “build quality” or something, but in fact he wrote back and said flat-out that it was a good deal, and that if I thought I could handle the install myself, it was a better system than they were offering for the price.
I thought that was very honest and fair, and was impressed. After dithering around a bit more and comparing options, I finally bit the bullet and bought the Dell system - paying (of course) a good bit more than I’d originally intended, but coming away with a hell of a lot of computer for the money. Out of some weird sense of loyalty I wrote back to the ZaReason guy again, thanking him again for his input and explaining that I’d felt I couldn’t pass up the Dell offer, but that it had been a close call. I didn’t expect to hear back from him, but I wanted him to know I had regard for his company. I also didn’t expect him to care what one single customer did, or why.
Today I got another e-mail back from him, congratulating me on getting a good deal and suggesting a Website I could go to for help in doing the Linux installs! Yep - he wrote me a goodwill note for buying someone else’s product, just because I got a good deal, and then went out of his way to be helpful in getting it set up!
Now, that is just too goddam cool. Go buy something from them.
*No, I didn’t have a backup, or a boot disk.**
**Yes, I think installing and configuring a complete Linux system from scratch should be perfectly simple for someone with no experience who’s too dumb to make a Windows boot disk.
November 20th, 2007
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General, Economics, Technology |
5 comments
The Writers Guild is on strike. Some good info about the strike can be found here, and John Rogers explains the reason for the strike very well here. In essence, though, the studios don’t to give writers any share of the revenue from internet based distribution of television shows and movies. They want to keep all that money for themselves. That is frankly immoral and the best example of why we need unions. The studios would literally suck the writers of their creativity and not compensate them fairly for that creativity, despite the fact that the studios are selling, essentially, that creativity combined with the creativity of others. If there was no WGA, they could have simply imposed these rules on the writers in much the same way that WalMart imposes its working conditions on its employees.
Such imposition are not fair negotiations, by the way. Employees need the jobs to pay for food, clothing, shelter and health care and do not have the capital reserves required to wait out the companies in a negotiation. Corporations will always seek to keep wages as low as possible. Always. There is no incentive outside of unions and government regulation that will prevent them from doing so as the entire structure of a corporation is to wring as much money from the present with minimal regard to society or externalities. Strikes like these help prevent the erosion of the middle class and keep the economy and the job market healthier for all of us. The strike is about fairness for writers, yes, but it is also about fairness for the rest of us.
November 8th, 2007
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General, Economics |
24 comments
Who would ever have thought that bottom-dwelling conservative hack shop Regnery Publishing was sleazily ripping off its own sleazy authors? Not those authors, apparently. Now the moral beacons who brought us Swiftboating and various hack jobs attacking Bill Clinton and praising George Bush have suddenly discovered that the press that was low enough to publish their bilge was also not above stealing their royalties. Forgive me while I laugh my goddam ass off . . .
In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi [founder of the Swift Boat Vets], Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.” . . .
“They’ve structured their business essentially as a scam and are defrauding their writers,” Mr. Miniter said in an interview, “causing a tremendous rift inside the conservative community.” . . .
The press negotiated a standard advance fee/royalty package with the authors, but added a clause providing lower royalty percentages for books sold at discount. It then began selling as much as half their books at cost to its own subsidiaries, to use as incentive gifts or to re-sell at a profit. Because the books were sold at or just above cost, the authors got virtually no royalties on them, but the company got to keep the profits from the resale by its own subsidiaries. The authors got double-screwed because the giveaways don’t count in the standard industry calculations of sales volume, thus leaving them at a disadvantage when they later tried to negotiate deals with other publishers.
Now, that’s just straightforward fraud. But what’s delicious about it - aside from the fact that the authors so righteously deserved it - is that these writers seem so nonplussed that an explicitly conservative business operation would rip off the people who provide their saleable goods! What’s that? A privately-owned right-wing business is underpaying its workers and chiseling its contracted partners out of greed? There’s something about fuck-you capitalism that actually works to the disadvantage of the people under its thumb? That’s . . . amazing. Somebody should do something about this! Why didn’t anyone warn them?!
It really just sums up right-wing hackery in a nutshell. These tools, having made their careers on the fringes of the self-congratulation society that is right-wing “scholarship”, really believed that they’d be taken care of. They figured that the cushy deals and uncritical flattery that rain down on AEI think-tank lapdogs like Dinesh D’Souza would be guaranteed to them also, simply because they were equally willing to say what their overlords wanted to hear. They forgot that Regnery was a profit-making enterprise - and quite possibly they’d never been on the supply end of the profit equation before. Their dazed sense of injury is just priceless:
Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
Dude: because they can.
What a maroon. He actually believed they wouldn’t screw him if they got a chance. He really seems to think that capitalist companies don’t act that way - that there’s something unreal or cartoonish about it when they do. He stumbles to the obvious conclusion but still can’t bring himself to believe it: the company is making money off its workers and paying them as little as possible, just like critics of capitalism have always said they do. Somehow, he manages to call that a cartoon while simultaneously complaining that it’s really happening to him. He is obviously stunned that his preferred fairytale, in which companies gladly provide wealth and comforts to anyone who can build a better mousetrap for them, doesn’t actually work, but he shows no sign of abandoning that fairytale in favor of the descriptive narrative of capitalism that he himself provided, and which he himself states is actually true in this case, but he still implicitly insists is false. Well, he’s one step closer to seeing the light. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
November 7th, 2007
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Economics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, News & Current Events, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
7 comments
Rumor has it that telecom amnesty is working its way back into the telecom bill in the Senate. People who support the amnesty like to claim that the companies should not be punished for doing what the government asked of them. That is a terrible notion.
First, it makes no sense. The law is not what any particular Administration says it is. Companies as powerful and profitable as the ones in question have more lawyers than you can count in a day. It is not unreasonable to expect that such well defended companies would have the legal brainpower to realize that they were, in fact, being asked ot break the law. And break it they did, for years past the immediate emergency, mooting any notion that they were just trying to be good citizens in a time of immediate crisis. They were trying to curry favor with the Administration in power, their obligation to respect the laws of the land be damned.
Which brings us to the real problem with telecom amnesty. These companies were perfectly positioned to defend both themselves and the rule of law form the overreach of the Bush Administration. If we let these companies off the hook, if we say to them, well, it’s okay, the government asked you to, then we are setting a very dangerous precedent. One of the very few things that keeps corporations in line, outside of government regulation, is the notion that any particular bad act would be more costly to them in lost good will and at trial than profitable by itself. The amnesty would not only prevent future governments form criminally prosecuting them, but would also shut down ongoing civil cases. The public would never know the extent to which these companies betrayed thier fellow citizens and their would be no concrete punishment for that betrayal. If we allow that, then we have a created a situation where any Administration could ask a private company to violate any one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights for it and suffer no consequences, since it would be then established that no company should be punished for being a “good citizen” and doing as their government asks.
Your freedoms can be taken away by an employee of ATT just as easily as they can be taken away by a government employee. Telcom amnesty and the mainstreaming of the notion that a company should not be punished for doing what any given White House told them to do would essentially allow the outsourcing of the death of the Bill of Right.
November 6th, 2007
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Legal Issues, Economics, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
one comment
Joe, over at Evangelical Outpost, cites “Another example of the economic ignorance of Americans“:
close to 46 percent of those surveyed in a new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Thursday morning say the country’s economy is in a recession . . .
69 percent of black Americans questioned in the survey say the country’s in a recession while only 42 percent of white Americans feel the same way.
First of all, this isn’t evidence of economic ignorance - just of the difference between a technical definition and people’s common-sense understanding of the situation.
Joe quotes the technical definition of recession:
[T]he National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough.
[emphasis added]
That is, by definition the recession is over when things literally get so bad they can’t get any worse. Most people would think the recession was still going on at that point.
Most people understand “recession” to mean “economic bad times”, but technically it just meanst anytime economic indicators turn negative. If you think of the strength of the economy following a kind of sine curve, the popular notion of recession would be the period when the curve is below the middle point, either rising or falling, while the technical definition would be whenever the curve is falling, even if it starts from a high point.
So, by the technical definition, we’re kind of weakly out of the Bush recession - that is, some of the things that got so bad they couldn’t get worse have now started to get better. But by any reasonable understanding of the situation, things are in fact still bad in absolute terms. Joe thinks it’s “ignorant” to believe that.
Among other features of Bush’s “recovery”:
- he remains the worst President since at least Eisenhower in terms of average monthly employment gains over his term
- he remains the only President since at least Eisenhower to average negative monthly job growth
- his best month ever in terms of job growth still puts him behind 5 other recent Presidents considered on average over their entire terms (top three finishers: Clinton, Carter, and Johnson)
- even periods of “expansion” and of positive net job growth under Bush have always lagged population growth - there has never been a period under Bush in which more jobs were becoming available to the working population overall
- he is the only President in recent history to sustain continual lagging job growth, with respect to population, throughout his term
- the Bush recession officially “ended” almost two years ago - Bush has averaged a net 33,000 jobs lost per month during the “expansion” period
- Unemployment rates for both blacks and whites declined steadily under Clinton, and rose dramatically under Bush
- the gap between black and white unemployment rates narrowed under Clinton and has widened under Bush
- the black unemployment rate is more than twice the white rate (and would be three times higher if you include the larger percentage of non-imprisoned working-age blacks who are categorized as “not in the labor force” because they’ve simply been unemployed too long)
- GDP growth under Bush has been below the 10-year moving average for most of his term (contrast Clinton: both Bush and Clinton sat through “official recessions” lasting about a year in the first year of their terms - Clinton then not only posted record job-growth for the rest of his Presidency, but GDP growth above the 10-year average almost every quarter therein; George Bush, as we note, has put people out of work by the trainload, while also posting below-average GDP growth most quarters; the “Economic Snapshots” Website notes: “Historically, we have seldom seen real GDP growth this weak except when a recession was near”)
Re: real income, the Economic Policy Institute reports:
despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. . . . in 2006 [there was] an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was . . . about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household. . . .
Since 2000, the share of the population without health coverage has increased 2.1 percentage points, an increase of 8.6 million uninsured Americans. . . .
Reflecting the narrow extent to which the growing economy has been showing up in the paychecks of many working-age households, median annual earnings by full-time, year-round workers fell in 2006, for the third year in a row, down about 1% for both men and women. . . .
The unequal distribution of growth between profits and compensation is playing a critical role in this result. . . . the earnings declines among male and female full-year workers last year can be accounted for by a profit squeeze on wages.
Note also that this very weak wage performance has occurred while productivity growth increased 3% per year (2000-06). While economists and policy makers typically stress the positive performance of such indicators as productivity, GDP, or low unemployment, these earnings results clearly reveal that positive macro-conditions have not led to wage growth for typical full-year workers, as customarily had been the case.
So, yes, we’re technically in an “economic expansion” - one that has seen consistently increasing gaps between available jobs and needy workers, declining real income, increasing lack of health insurance, a widening unemployment gap between blacks and whites, record levels of net job losses, and recession-level GDP growth, all during this supposed “expansion”, and all arising uniquely under the Bush administration.
But Joe thinkd it’s a sign of “economic ignorance” that so many workers think they’re worse off only because they’re losing wages, benefits, and employment opportunities, and that blacks are more likely to think they’re worse off only because their unemployment rate is two or three times that of whites and they’re more likely to be counted out of the workforce entirely.
Corporate net profits are up, largely on the basis of those declining wage expenses, so anyone who thinks the economy is bad is clearly wrong. It’s only bad for for the people who do the work - you know, the little people, the ones who don’t count, the ones whose actual personal economic status has no bearing on the real economy, the ones who are “ignorant” for believing that they matter.
October 23rd, 2007
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General, Politics, Economics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
17 comments
So it seems that the Bush Administration apparently started spying on Americans without warrants before 9/11:
Mr. Nacchio said last year that he had refused an N.S.A. request for customers’ call records in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the agency initiated domestic surveillance and data mining programs to monitor Al Qaeda communications.
But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks.
The significance of the claim is hard to assess, because the court documents are heavily redacted and N.S.A. officials will not comment on the agency’s secret surveillance programs. Other government officials have said that the agency’s eavesdropping without warrants began only after Sept. 11, 2001, under an order from President Bush.
But the court filings in Mr. Nacchio’s case illustrate what is well known inside the telecommunications industry but little appreciated by the public: that the N.S.A. has for some time worked closely with phone companies, whose networks carry the telephone and Internet traffic the agency seeks out for intercept.
If this is true, and it does fit their history, there are a couple of points here aside form the Bush Administration’s strange and overwhelming desire to be remember as less competent imitators of Pinochet. All but one company went along with this power grab and 9/11 happened anyway. Obviously, the spying program did little good to protect the country. Which is expected. If you have read the 9/11 Commission report, the problem was almost never a lack of intelligence. The problem was that intelligence was not shared, out of professional jealousy and incompetence primarily, and we did not have enough trained analysts to review the intelligence we did have in time to prevent the attacks. So the next time someone on the right whines about how having to obey the Constitution means hat we are all going to die! die! die!, remind them that the Bush Administration has been ignoring the Constitution since before 9/11 and it did us no damn good.
The second important point in this story is that the telecom companies all bowed before the government, at least in part, because they were afraid of losing large contracts. Their economic well being demanded that they comply with spying on their customers and so they did. There may have well been other reasons for their capitulation, but it needs to be noted that when the government failed to provide strong oversight of their behavior, they ran for the quick buck, regardless of the effect of their actions on their customers, their fellow citizens, and their country. From the standpoint of business, it makes perfect sense. Which, absent strong government oversight, is why it will happen again and again.
Without a strong reason not to, telecom companies will almost always put their economic interests ahead of any other considerations; it is what corporations are designed to do. Markets cannot keep you free, because markets care only about profit and loss. The pressure to produce profit and avoid loss eventually means that, in an unfettered marketplace, the scrupulous will almost certainly be driven out of the market by the unscrupulous. When government oversight breaks down, as it did spectacularly in this case, the free market will chain you as fast as any government. They might, if they are very clever, even get you to pay for the chains yourself.
October 16th, 2007
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Economics, Terrorism, NSA, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
25 comments
Ezra throws down the gauntlet, and Malkin runs away. Twelve year olds, apparently, are more her level of competition. Though, frankly, I am not sure I blame her. Based on her comments in the Times article about the attack on this family, Malkin’s argument is basically that no one should get any help until they are completely destitute:
But Michelle Malkin, one of the bloggers who have strongly criticized the Frosts, insisted Republicans should hold their ground and not pull punches.
“The bottom line here is that this family has considerable assets,” Ms. Malkin wrote in an e-mail message. “Maryland’s S-chip program does not means-test. The refusal to do assets tests on federal health insurance programs is why federal entitlements are exploding and government keeps expanding. If Republicans don’t have the guts to hold the line, they deserve to lose their seats.”
In Malkin’s world, you should sell your business, sell your home and then when that’s not enough to pay your severely injured children’s medical bills, because it wont be, then and only then can we consider giving you some help. That wrong morally and practically. The Frost’s as a family have been exemplary members of our society. They have worked hard, tried to start their own business, own a home, and done everything they could to improve the lives of their children. They have done everything we have asked of them, and Malkin still wants to leave them destitute and homeless because of a moments bad luck.
Morally, that’s disgusting: you should not have to reduce a person to pauper-y and abject destitution before you deign to assist him. That reeks of viciousness and a clueless sense of privilege unworthy of even the Medicis. Taking away everything a person has, destroying the dreams they have worked for, and eliminating options and possibilities for their children is despicable, especially when the cost of help is so small and the rewards are so large.
As a practical matter, pauperizing people like the Frosts is equally stupid. They are hardworking people who contribute to our economy and our community. Destroying the financially only serves to weaken both for no good reason. If the private insurance market cannot serve these people — and there is no doubt that it cannot serve large swathes of the working and middle class in this country — then it makes sense for the government to step in. The amount we spend on that kind of insurance is a pittance compared to the benefits we receive in return. Families stay together, children get the help they need to lean normal lives, small business owners aren’t forced out of business, and the ranks of the homeless are not increased. When the middle class and working people are provided with the security they need to ride out bad times, they repay society a hundred times over through their contributions to the our economy, culture, and neighborhoods. Frankly, I find it hard to beleive that anyone could argue otherwise with a straight face.
If the choice is between destroying lives or spending a small amount to help people survive health related catastrophes, I think the choice is clear. So, too, does Malkin. Perhaps that is why she is running screaming from the thought of having to face down a health care expert like Ezra Klein.
October 11th, 2007
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Politics, Economics, Health |
25 comments
Via Sadly, No! we find that Michael Medved is trying to argue that slavery wasn’t so bad. No, seriously. Go Read the whole post at Sadly, No because, frankly, they are funnier than I am, and asshattery of this level deserves all the mocking that can be heaped upon it. I just want to point out three things:
First, Medved’s history is atrocious:
. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.
Year the British ended slavery throughout the Empire: 1833. Number of wars it took to do so: 0. Year the Spanish Empire ended slavery (except in Cuba, where the ban was not enforced by local governors until 1886): 1811. Number of wars to do so: 0. Year the U.S. ended slavery throughout the country and its territories: 1865. Number of wars it took to do it: 1, the bloodiest one in American history. In fact, all European powers abolished slavery before the United States did. So, no, dear Mr. Medved, we as a nation don’t deserve special credit for a bloody damn thing. We were below average, even by the standards of the day.
Second, and most soul-crushing, this is what Medved thinks is the most horrible aspect of slavery:
Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean.
Savor that quote, let it roll around your consciousness, admire it’s almost perfect inhumanity and complete and utter prostitution to the service of the notion that the measure of a man is the profit he produces. Michael Medved thinks that the “most horrifying” aspect of the Middle passage is that the ship captains were bad capitalists. You know those annoying people who are sunny and cheerful and optimistic all the time, the kind that think group hugs can solve anything and mugs with kittens hanging onto tree branches are an instant day brightener? Those people? Whenever one of them gets on your nerves, just read them this quote and point out that the author is not, in fact, in a mental institution or shunned by society. They wont be able to come out of their house for a week.
And here is the kicker: this is who Micaheal Medved is:
While focusing on the theme of Hollywood vs. America, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh interviewed Medved and then asked Medved to guest-host his talk show. Medved went on to serve as a regular guest-host for Limbaugh on close to thirty occasions. In 1996, Medved was offered his own local show on a major Seattle station. In his 2005 autobiographical book Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons, Medved says he welcomed the chance to escape “the movie ghetto” and to speak to a wider audience about politics and morality, which were a focus of his written commentary and books. Medved’s show was aired in Seattle and syndicated through Salem Radio Network.
His three hour daily show is now broadcast on 200 stations coast to coast and reaches more than 2.5 million listeners[citation needed]. For ten consecutive years, Medved has been listed by Talkers magazine as one of its “Heavy Hundred” most important American talk show hosts, and recently tied for eighth place in its ranking of talk hosts by audience size.[4]
Medved writes a regular column for USA Today and is a member of that newspaper’s Board of Contributors. He also writes occasional op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal and blogs daily at conservative website Townhall.com.
He is no outlier, no crazy racist uncle locked away in the attic. He is as mainstream a media figure as you can be. He is acceptable and accepted by our media elite.
We are not a post-racism society.
September 28th, 2007
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Economics, Culture, Race |
11 comments
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