Anyway, here they are!

Spread the joy...

via MoveOn.org

And

from The Gothamist

Here are two things I see: history and causality. The debt graph reaches beyond the last news cycle to put recent contributions to the national debt in a 30+ year perspective. Cornel West goes back even further, reminding us of a heady debate during the LBJAdmin.

Ha ha, silly Cornel! No one cares about poverty anymore! The Reagan years saw to that. All that debt the old man racked up had nothing to do with fighting poverty — though he certainly demonized the poor like they were the enemy and not, say, fellow citizens. As Cornel’s sign implies, all that money was put into turning the U.S. military industrial complex into a ridiculously and unnecessarily huge force in the world economy and geopolitics. Meanwhile, the gap between the richers and the poors widened to banana republic levels, the middle class shrank in size and economic power, real wages stagnated, domestic manufacturing skipped town; while schools and prisons became much more alike, although I think prisons may have the edge in educational resources.

So, hey, for all you kids totally maxed on bitchin’ 80s nostalgia: try to remember they were not totally tubular, but totally grody. The shit we presently stand in flowed directly for that toilet decade. Enjoy that mental image!

Spread the joy...

Setting aside arguments about “too much” or “not enough” regulation, shouldn’t part of that lesson be about how to navigate the regulatory environment of your business? It would be unrealistic for anyone to establish a business without regard to the necessary permits and laws pertaining to that business. Just because they are kids doesn’t excuse them. When you teach a kid how to drive, part of that lesson is obeying rules of the road; the other part is preparing for the driver’s test and earning a license to drive a car. If you think the regulatory environment is too stringent, then you can always provide a valuable civics lesson by showing them how to advocate for changes in the law. That would be much more instructive than whining with extremist rhetoric about “government education camps.”

Spread the joy...

Our slow decline is a product of two inter-related problems. First, we’ve let our five basic pillars of growth erode since the end of the cold war — education, infrastructure, immigration of high-I.Q. innovators and entrepreneurs, rules to incentivize risk-taking and start-ups, and government-funded research to spur science and technology.

Not bad, Tom, not bad. We have heard you beat this drum before, but it’s a beat we can all dance to. From here you should elaborate on steps we should take to remedy these areas of neglect, argue why they are important, and suggest even a specific policy or two. It’s a lot for a single column, so maybe a series of columns on this topic. It’s huge, Tom. I hope you did your research.

What follows instead is bloviating on squandered opportunities following the end of the Cold War, and much hand-wringing over the public debt, with requisite wordy quotations from a Harvard economics prof Tom talked to. To be fair, it’s not all poppycock: “Until we find ways to restructure and forgive some of these debts from consumers, firms, banks and governments, spending to drive growth is not going to come back at the scale we need,” Tom concludes. This begs a lot of questions, the biggie being, Who will do the debt forgiveness? Almost a third of U.S. debt is owned by China, Japan, the U.K., and Brazil (thanks, Wikipedia!), and I doubt any of them are in a forgiving mood while our government keeps playing chicken with the global economy.

Yet what’s really strange is just as he pooh-poohs spending, Friedman throws together a few repetitive paragraphs collecting his vague policy prescriptions, among them being “to invest in the pillars of our growth, with special emphasis on infrastructure, research and incentives for risk-taking and start-ups.” Er, that requires spending, Tom. I’m glad you’re on board with the raising of revenues, it shows you’re not insane; the money we spend has to come from somewhere. But not all the growth is going to come overnight; it’s going to require contributions from more than just the high-IQ crowd; and the consumers caught in their own liquidity trap require the very social services and job programs and education programs that are on the chopping block of deficit hawks whose rhetorical traffic you play in.

Meanwhile, Tom completely fails to mention the enormous costs of our two failed wars — three, if Libya counts as a war that we are failing — and the bloated Department of War Defense budget. He doesn’t have to flog himself for supporting those ventures in the past, it’s just that we can’t have a coherent discussion of our fiscal problems without acknowledging thirty years of military spending at hundreds of billions annually or the trillions spent on wars that are still ongoing. Sadly, in this Tom is not alone. He’s got company in the White House.

Spread the joy...

But it’s still myopic to believe in a past glory of responsibility and shared interest motivating policy makers at the highest levels of government. Yes, they were certainly more competent in the old days; they had ways of balancing elite interests with the popular that did the poor and middle classes much more good than was we experience now. Yet our dire straits did not happen overnight. Wage stagnation, job insecurity, the debt-incurring costs of higher education, the terrible state of the rest of public education, attacks on the social safety net — all of these and so much more have been in the works since I was in elementary school in the 70s.

Blame the teabaggers all you want — they surely deserve much of it for accelerating our trip on the road to ruin — but they wouldn’t be so effective were not their rhetoric and policy preferences enabled by the elite business classes, the consensus ideology of corporate-funded centrists, and the pundits who routinely fellate them.

Spread the joy...

The very first sentence starts off with a bang: “Fears that the global economy could be slipping back toward recession….” Slipping back? Did it ever leave? Look, I know there are strict definitions about “recession” that economists favor; but two consecutive periods of negative growth does not begin to describe the persistently high levels of unemployment, mortgage default, deflation, homelessness, etc. the world has been suffering.

The same complaint can be lodged against the phrase “while the chance of another U.S. recession” thrown in a couple paragraphs later, the implication being the chance exists, it hasn’t happened yet. No, it has not stopped happening. It is ongoing.

Granted, I think the word “recession” itself is a euphemism of denial. I have already lived through several of them in my 41 years — an average rate of two a decade seems about right — and while a few might sit happily within the textbook definition, others seemed awfully closer to mini-depressions. Perhaps my view on this is skewed by having grown up in a Rust Belt town like Buffalo, NY, which lost good-paying industrial jobs that never came back, forcing workers to either pack up and leave town or to find work in the low-wage service sector. Either way, my hometown suffered decades of “negative growth” as a result. And it has not been alone: witness Detroit, parts of which look more like post-Taliban Kabul than a bummed out American city.

Anyway, here’s another marker of denial or delusion: “The United States’ recovery is stalling” appears in the second paragraph of this story. Again, what recovery? Who has recovered? Let’s jump over to Paul “Shrill” Krugman for a little perspective:

Yes, officially the recession ended two years ago, and the economy did indeed pull out of a terrifying tailspin. But at no point has growth looked remotely adequate given the depth of the initial plunge. In particular, when employment falls as much as it did from 2007 to 2009, you need a lot of job growth to make up the lost ground. And that just hasn’t happened.

Consider one crucial measure, the ratio of employment to population. In June 2007, around 63 percent of adults were employed. In June 2009, the official end of the recession, that number was down to 59.4. As of June 2011, two years into the alleged recovery, the number was: 58.2.

These may sound like dry statistics, but they reflect a truly terrible reality. Not only are vast numbers of Americans unemployed or underemployed, for the first time since the Great Depression many American workers are facing the prospect of very-long-term — maybe permanent — unemployment. Among other things, the rise in long-term unemployment will reduce future government revenues, so we’re not even acting sensibly in purely fiscal terms. But, more important, it’s a human catastrophe.

When you read phrases like “for the first time since the Great Depression” — and you can find those just about anywhere in economics reporting — that should be a signal to stop thinking in terms of quaint concepts like “recession” and more urgent realities that the D-word suggests. Yet it is this kind of denial/deluded thinking that pervades policy making around the globe, in particular in Warshingtun, where libertarians and flat-earthers have taken over the debates, while winning both legislative and ideological concessions from more sober minded folks who should know better. Or maybe they shouldn’t — maybe they, too, are incapable of seeing how bad things are, because they long ago drank the neoliberal Kool-Aid that a few policy tweaks here and there will bring things around, no need for fundamental changes or — heavens! — risking a rise in the deficit.

All of which brings us to the next phrase, again taken from the first sentence of this article (such a good sentence, so packed with meaning, intended and otherwise): “…economic and financial problems around the world fueling a vicious cycle that risks spiraling beyond the control of governments.” Let’s pair this one with a paragraph key to this whole terrible story:

Investors are increasingly afraid that the world’s leading governments, weighed down by debt and wounded by the last economic downturn, might not have the wherewithal to keep the emerging crisis in check.

Investors caught up with the rest of us: our governments are failing us. Ironically, it’s the very teabagger movement so happily endorsed by the Rick Sentellis of the investor class not so long ago that has made this failure a reality.

Edited to Add: Quoted later in this same article, here is a guy clued into reality. His breakdown of our problems should be put in bullet points in a memo sent to the White House and Congress, including that SuperCommittee that will be tasked with slashing gubmint spending.

“The whole debate over the debt ceiling sent four negative messages to the markets,” said Ethan Harris, chief North American economist for Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. “That we have a big debt problem, that we can’t fix it because we have a dysfunctional political system, that it’s okay to use the threat of default to achieve political ends, and that there’s no safety net if the economy goes into recession because we’re not going to have any more fiscal stimulus.”

Solving our debt problems without a safety net and a fiscal stimulus = dumb.

Spread the joy...

Marvel Comics recently announced that the Ultimate universe Spider-Man will be a working class nerd of black and Latino ethnic heritage. Miles Morales replaces Peter Parker, whom the Green Goblin killed.

So far the only break from tradition here is the ethnic heritage. Everything else carries on. Spidey is a nerd. He lives in a working class neighborhood in New York City. His name alliterates. He will probably be fighting the Green Goblin, once GG finds out that there is a new web-slinger in town. I hope that a new character will bring on new enemies, but it’s not as if Peter Parker took his rogue’s gallery with him to the grave. From a writer’s POV, it would be foolish to not exploit established bad guys who are well defined, bring instantly recognizable menace, and are no doubt fun to play with, creatively speaking.

Judging from common tater reaction to this story, Marvel will need all the continuity it can get. Breaking with the habit of casting white guys as superheroes is enough to twist the panties of whiny whiteys everywhere. Your laundry list of predictable reactions:

“Political correctness gone absolutely bonkers.”

“I am really getting tired of all of the racial stuff.”

“Captain America could become anti Afghanistan war, turn neutral and rebrand himself as Captain Switzerland.”

“And while we are at it, lets turn snow white to snow latino. LOL ”

“Do we still need to ram this ethnic diversity banter down our necks???”

“This is ridiculous! They probably killed him off to make him mixed-race. Who are they trying to please here?”

And so on. To be clear, there are many more comments arguing that diversity is good; the Marvel Universe is actually several dimensions to avoid continuity problems while marketing to different demographic profiles; that Peter Parker lives on in many of these dimensions, not to mention comic strip, Broadway and cinema incarnations. In fact, Parker is so iconic, there is no chance ever that he will be cast aside, any more than Bruce Wayne will ever stop being Bat-Man. Sure, they’re both ordinary mortals who dress up as critters to fight crime out of a mix of vengeance and duty; other obsessive psychotics could take their place when old age or untimely demise render them incapable of putting on the suit. But Parker, Wayne, et al. are the originators, the characters who define their superhero alter-egos, they are integral to the origin story. No discarding that.

All of which means white guys should shut up and chill out. No need to fear. Yet go to any news site featuring this story and the reactions are always the same. So some fair play turn-about: if making one incarnation of Spider-Man a mixed-ethnic character is a sign of PC Armageddon, then surely the heated knee-jerking off from white guys reflects the pathological insecurities that inform the teabagger assault on racial equality programs, social services, public employees, undocumented migrant workers (in racist parlance, “illegals”), public education and libraries, a mosque in your neighborhood, and the occasional census report documenting a higher mix of ethnicity in the country.

Obviously one Spidey out of multiple variations of the character not being a white dude is at the front lines of a coming race war. He’s probably a Kenyan Muslim Socialist!

Spread the joy...

“No Knock” calls bullshit on government promises for racial and social progress. Very funny, angry stuff.

“Home is Where the Hatred Is” is funky and full of disgust. Amazing.

“Pieces of a Man” broke my heart when I first heard it. Still does. Just about a guy getting a pink slip.

Yeah, forty years old, still relevant. Sorry to see him go.

Spread the joy...

Having said that, some other GOPer will prove me wrong and will seek to top that level of callousness. I can’t predict it, though. My brain doesn’t point in that direction, no amoral compass, as it were. Basic instinct for me is: see human suffering, seek to alleviate it. Not trying to be self-righteous — I think this is fairly common, despite evidence that certain segments of the electorate have lost their minds.

Sure, few political leaders will have the brazen stupidity of a Cantor, but his cost-benefit analysis is much more common among policy makers, despite their vague talk of doing the people’s work. Following the Democratic victory in NY-26, considered a litmus test of voter tolerance for Paul Ryan’s Medicare destruction plan, President Bill Clinton immediately warned his party against complacency. Something must be done! Medicare is in peril! We must not let this issue get away from us! His audience, it should be noted, were a choir what loves them some austerity preachin’ — so I don’t expect Clinton’s prescriptions for solving the Medicare “crisis” would be to raise taxes and give it more money. Sure, he will probably recommend a return to tax levels of his Presidency, but he will also urge some restructuring plan; raising the age of recipients or limits on benefits. It’s “welfare reform” all over again! And that’s the “playbook” Obama should work from, so says the chorus.

Sacrifices will not come from the top. They will come from you and me. The banking and finance officers who oversaw the destruction of our economy and gambled mortgages and robbed pension funds still enjoy their jobs or their golden parachutes. Meanwhile, librarians in L.A. are being interrogated by court-appointed lawyers to justify their work or else they lose their jobs — at least one having her blog used against her — as armed guards stand in the room. Public employees are losing the right to union representation. Social programs for the elderly, the poor, the mentally ill, the hungry, the homeless — the ranks of whom only grow as the economy continues to stagnate (or in the case of the elderly, time moves demographics along) — are all on the chopping block. Right wingers like Cantor expose the raw side of this ideology, but it’s one shared to varying degrees of harshness by his centrist colleagues. A democracy ruled by corporations does not give a shit about us; it protects its own.

Spread the joy...

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I’ve read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
-–Mark Twain

“I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”
–Ezekiel 33:10

“For all the people out there scolding each other for various emotional reactions, I have this to say: Stop it. There is no “right” way to feel. Americans were victimized by a horrible mass murder. A measure of justice has been dealt. People react how they react. Some people react with joy. Some with grief. Some with jokes. Some do all of the above. All feelings are just that, feelings. Stop trying to control it.”
–Amanda Marcotte

I have felt each of these throughout the twenty-four hours following the announcement U.S. forces finally found and killed Osama bin Laden. And that’s not counting the initial disbelief and laughter I expressed when my friend Patrick told me on the phone last night. Or the disturbingly quick partisan assessment I made that Obama is assured re-election (which upon further thought is not assured at all: witness Bush the Elder’s loss of Gulf War brownie points when he failed to take the recession of the early 90s seriously.) Today when Twitter turned into a debate about the sincerity of Rush Limbaugh’s remarks praising Obama’s role in taking bin Laden down, I decided I should just back away and throw up my hands.

I am glad bin Laden is no longer at large. I hope his demise does not make him a martyr, but seriously demoralizes his organization and all of the violent sociopaths he inspired. But don’t tell me justice was served. Too much blood has been spilled in the name of my country, with my tax dollars, at the sacrifice of my countryfolk and the uncounted deaths of thousands of innocent people around the world.

Edited to add the link to Megan Mcardle’s post on dubious MLK quote. Which just makes this that much weirder.

Spread the joy...