Taxes

Recently we had a "debate" about allowing the Bush-era temporary tax decreases to expire. Conservatives and others insisted that you cannot raise taxes, especially on the rich, in a recession because of jobs. Right now as we speak Conservative Gov. Walker here in Wisconsin is planing of taking a chunk of money from the approximately 300k public employees and, as a fillip, destroying their unions.  How is it, I wonder, that taking a big chunk of money from folks who own homes, buy cars, consume groceries, and, in general, see to it that consumer goods get consumed and, one assumes, play an important role in keeping the economy going is okay but raising their taxes isn't.  It's almost like the whole argument is full of baloney and what the Conservatives really want to do is, you know, reward rich people and shove the rest of us into increased poverty.

Shark!

Why did Russ Feingold lose to an inarticulate dolt with no ability to articulate his policy preferences? Sharks, that's why.

Voters have great difficulty judging which aspects of their own and the country’s well-being are the responsibility of elected leaders and which are not. In the summer of 1916, for example, a dramatic weeklong series of shark attacks along New Jersey beaches left four people dead. Tourists fled, leaving some resorts with 75 percent vacancy rates in the midst of their high season. Letters poured into congressional offices demanding federal action; but what action would be effective in such circumstances? Voters probably didn’t know, but neither did they care. When President Woodrow Wilson—a former governor of New Jersey with strong local ties—ran for reelection a few months later, he was punished at the polls, losing as much as 10 percent of his expected vote in towns where shark attacks had occurred.

New Jersey voters’ reaction to shark attacks was dramatic, but hardly anomalous.

This time, of course, the sharks' bite was 30 years of failed neo-Liberal, Reganite, Thatcherite, and Libertarian policies.  Which is to say, stuff over which Feingold had less control that Wilson did sharks.

The idiotic sharks attack therefore I won't vote for the incumbent dynamic explains why this dust up between Glenn Greenwald and Larry ODonnell is so embarrassing for  O'Donnell; he, after all, blamed policies when its was sharks.

Here In Wisconsin

Ron Johnson, who is a manufacturer, accountant, and lucky in his wife's family's business acumen, is running for US Senate in the great state of Wisconsin, home to the House on the Rock, was quizzed recently on his plan for the middle class.  He said, in part, nothing. When not saying nothing, he promoted the policies that failed for the past 30 or so years as the policies he, as an accountant and manufacturer, would put in place.  Ron Johnson follower of failed policies wants a chance to watch those policies fail yet again.

Glibertarians

Tyler Cowen writes concerning the fire department kerfuffle:

They wouldn't even let him pay up ex post.  David notes that this is a government-run fire department and thus the story is not much of a moral reductio on the market.  Arguably a private company would behave the same way, sometimes, but it 's odd to claim that government failure reminds you market failure is possible and so let's damn the market.  By the way, markets do pretty well at setting up schemes with a penalty for late payment; that's how my mortgage works.

The reason this failure by a state agency is used as a "moral reductio on the market" is that the state agency was acting like a for profit enterprise when it collected subscriptions for service, instead of acting like a state agency funded by an equitable tax on all those who potentially need protection from fire.

It is odd for proponents of smaller states and market solutions for the provision of social goods to insist that the results of smaller states and market solutions for the provisions of social goods aren't the fault of smaller states and market solutions for the provision of social goods. Kind of like the Dilemma of Franklin's Pickle, if you are too blinkered by your idealization of smaller states and market solutions for the provision of social goods that you can't see that smaller states and market solution for the provision of social goods leads to having your house burn down when you haven't paid the subscription,  idealization of your argument has blinded you to the the implication of your argument.

Let's call this one the Glibertarian Conundrum.

Free Riders

Everybody in the known universe has weighed in on the case of

Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground.

And, as is often the case, various morons have tried to defend fire departments not putting out fires because of a failure to pay 75 dollars on the grounds of glibertarian nonsense, I'd just like to remind the world, who might think we Americans have lost our minds, that a truly great American once argued that

Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction that goes on? I don't want $15--I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.

He then went on to win WWII over the objections of right wing nut jobs who hated democracy. Were he alive today and were he confronted with the stupidity of a fire department on the scene refusing to put out a fire and, it seems, allowing dogs and a cat to die, his response is easy to imagine. That anyone anywhere defends the fire department's failure to act is a condemnation of their commitment to real America.

UPDATE:
Read the whole of the link for FDR. It really very good.

Jonah Goldberg Still Dumb

Recently, Goldberg attempts to make sense of the relationship between Liberalism and the failure of American Education.  He claims that

[i]n 2008-2009, the  District of Columbia spent $1.3 billion dollars on 45,858 students. That is slightly less than the entire GDP of Belize. In 2007, 8 percent of DC eighth graders were able to do math at the eighth grade level. Clearly what’s needed is more money!

According to this

 the DC Public Schools gross budget for fiscal year 2008 as of October 1, 2007

was $949,087,062. Goldberg doesn't provide a link for his claim so  maybe there is another number out there, but he appears to have misplaced a decimal or so.

He continues

Yes, yes, the horrid state of American education is an American problem, and to that extent we’re all to blame in some abstract sort of way. But is there another major area of American public policy that is more screwed up and more completely the fault of one ideological side? 

 In 1980 Milwaukee began an experiment with charter schools, vouchers and all that right wing gobbledygook. The system created redundant schools, drained funding from the public schools, and more generally, sought to use market-based reforms to fix something that isn't a market.  The net result? Vouchers and the rest don't work.  How many school districts have had to deal with this kind of nonsense day after day? How much of the Conservative rage about education has funneled itself into this specific set of policy prescriptions? All of it.  The news that vouchers et alia didn't work led long timer supporter, Diane Ravich, of vouchers and similar reforms to conclude that these kinds of reforms don't work and are actually undermining successful reform efforts.

Ravich also argues that

Teachers feel, with justification, that they are being scapegoated and blamed whenever test scores don't go up. My book appeared at a time when there was only one narrative about school reform, which privileged the views of businessmen, lawyers, politicians, foundation executives, and government officials who are imposing their ideas without regard to the wisdom and experience of those who must implement them.

While Goldberg frets that 

[i]n the last few presidential elections I’ve heard more from Democrats — by far — complaining about leaky school roofs, cracking paint, and the need for more computers in the classroom than I’ve heard about the fact it’s easier to find and train a brontosaurus than it is to fire a horrible teacher.

It really is all the teachers fault and we need more market based solutions.

He then fumes that

I’m sure not that many people follow the DC education controversy, but in a nutshell: Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his reelection bid in large part because he tried, through Michelle Rhee the education chancellor, to fix the schools over the objections of the teachers’ unions. Fenty’s opponent and the liberal black establishment turned it into a racial issue (surprise!) and now education reform in DC is seriously in doubt. 

Rhee's favored solution was firing teachers.  The Teacher's Union, indeed any union, has as one of its main priorities protecting its members from being fired.  Goldberg seems not to have paid attention to the past 30 years of American history, during which the lessons of PATCO went unlearned by "centrists" while movement conservatives sought to destroy more unions, deregulate more industries, and, in the end, succeeded in screwing up the country.

He concludes with anguished cry over the unfairness of it all.  Because  if

you listen to these endless seminars and interviews on NBC and its various platforms, I never seem to hear Matt Lauer or David Gregory ask “Isn’t the education crisis a failure of liberalism?” After all, liberals insist all social problems can be reduced to root causes. Well, they’ve been in charge of the roots for generations and look at the mess they’ve made. Look at it.
Largely because of the Iraq war,  Katrina and Bush’s unpopularity,  a host of liberal intellectuals pronounced conservatism to be dead. The decrepit state of American education is a far more sweeping, profound and lasting indictment of the very heart of liberalism and yet the response from everyone is “Let’s give these guys another try!”

Actually, no. The problems we face today are  the result of the Neoliberal, Reaganite, Glibbertarian, and Thatcherite crap that has dominated policy making for the past 30 years. Starve the state of revenue, destroy unions, blame workers, traduce the state's ability to do what it has been doing successfully for since at least 1933, and deregulate.  What has this led to?  Look out your window.

In a sign of their seriousness about tackling education reform, when a recent study came out that showed that Head Start made little or no difference in academic achievement, Conservative demanded its immediate dismantlement and used as a stick to beat the stupid Liberals and the Liberal Liberalness.  Of course, they missed the fact that individuals who had the pleasure of Head Start did better by other measure, time in jail, etc, than their peers who did not benefit.


Can we all do better in the process of continuing to reform our educational system?  Yes we can.  Does this require jettisoning Neoliberal, Reaganite, Glibbertarian, and Thatcherite critiques of a by and large successful system?  Yes, it does.  We cannot afford to let these flying monkeys back into power. No, we can't

And as a bonus, remember that Yglesias wants the same market-based, Olive-Gardenesque reforms and thinks that firing teachers is the first step to nirvana.  It ain't.


UPDATE:
Goldberg's claim about 8% is in error.  In their self assessment DC schools have a 48% in "elementary math" on a nationally administered test they have, for 2008-09, 11%.  They did, it's true, have 8% on the nation test in 2007-08, but they improved their scores.

Remember "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance"

Aha

Via TPM come this is which an outraged Fox newsbot feels the pain of those making over 350,000 per year only hang onto .50 per 1.00 over 350,000, which isn't true but still means that if you get to phenomenally rich and have your garbage picked up.  Plus taxes are socialism and being the first into the trough is merit.

Aha

Via John Cole

Jonah Goldberg Still Dumb

In the LA Times, and for all I know elsewhere, Jonah Goldberg argues that news of a civil war in the Republican Party is overblown although

[t]ime will tell which side will lose that debate [on the wisdom of running crazy people for office], but one thing is already clear: The tea parties won

the non-existent civil war, I think he means because the debate isn't yet settled. Furthermore

[i]t takes two to tango, and it takes two to fight a civil war. What seems lost on a remarkably diverse group of observers and political combatants, on the left and the right, is that there are no worthy Republican opponents to the tea parties.

Why is this the case you ask? When Tea Partiers like

Rubio and Toomey chased moderates like Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter clear out of the Republican Party. And now Miller has pretty much done the same with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who in a sad attempt to cling to power announced that she will run as a write-in candidate come November. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, immediately moved to excommunicate Murkowski, stripping her of all her seniority and leadership positions.

In all three cases the "establishment" has said to the moderates, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." And how have they responded to the allegedly barbaric, uncouth, tea-fueled hordes storming the Beltway castle? "Lower the drawbridge!"

See?  It isn't a civil war between crazy people and "moderates" in the Republican Party, the Tea Party domination is really just the last episode in a purge of the Republican Party of rational people by crazy people, which is entirely different.

UPDATE:
As per usual Goldberg is wrong, Murkowski was not stripped of her leadership position.

[link added]

Causal Connections

Christine O’Donnell, who once wanted to be like Willow, sued a Conservative movement organization; consequently, John Fund, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, took her to task from being insufficiently Conservative, what with her trying to use the Federal Government to protect herself.  Fund also insists that

So they did fire her. They fired her for cause. I’m not saying it was true, I don’t know, but they fired her for cause and they also fired her for going to complain to the EEOC.

Which is it?  Fired for cause or for seeking protection from gender discrimination? Or is it the case that trying to protect yourself from discrimination is a violation of the right of employers to do whatever the hell they want?

Tour Guides

You know why regulating tour guides is worth the effort?  Because the people who make use of their services are, generally speaking, from out of town and are not going to be in a position, more often than not, to wait around and file complaints and then come back to testify at the trials of those who have engaged in "abusive practices."  This means, it seems to me, that the abusive practices will be in play for much longer than they ought, if not forever.  If the regulators are underfunded, regulations rarely enforced or badly written this is an argument for funding, enforcement, and rewriting not for babies and bath waters.

Furthermore, it seems to me that if you want to make the argument that neither the state nor the tour guide industry has an interest in seeing to it that visitors to the seat of the Federal Government in these United States are not screwed, blued, and tattooed by incompetent tour guides, you might maybe want to consider the importance of visiting the seat of the Federal Government in these United States as it concerns continuing education in matters of some relevance, to say nothing of the blow to the Federal Government of these United States' reputation by those who were screwed, tattooed, and blued as well as those they related the tale of being screwed, tattooed, and blued.

You might also consider that, oddly enough despite their general failure to be like Olive Garden, our non-Olive-Garden institutions of higher education have been busy training individuals in public history for lo these many years, almost as if these institutions of higher learning were aware that there was a need for individuals trained in providing accurate, assessable, and interesting histories of the various sites of historical interest scattered hither and yon.

Granted, of course, that if the tour guide industry were to set about recruiting well-trained and well-educated tour guides their bottom lines might suffer, which is to say it might not be economically efficient to hire well-trained and well-educated tour guides, but, then again, having well-trained and well-educated tour guides might prove to be a boost for the tour guide industry. And, additionally, when did economic efficiency become the be all and end all of life on earth?  1976? 1980?

Attacks on regulatory regimes that rely on the "universal acid" arguments of Cato, AEI, etc, legitimate the universal acid of Cato, AEI, etc. The topic under consideration here is the need and ability of the state to intervene in the market to reduce abusive, incompetent, or dangerous practices and, in so doing, protect workers as workers and citizens as consumers. Should an industry capture the state, which oddly enough seems almost never to result in regulations that provide protection for either workers or citizens, then -- by golly -- let's rewrite the regulations.

Then again in a Ygelsian world retrospective prosecution is better than prophylactic regulation because the free market might work and if it doesn't other underfunded enforcement agencies might maybe prosecute. Unless, of course, they have been captured by the wealthy and the powerful, which -- of course -- won't happen.

And, relatedly, economic efficiency is not the proper measure of the rationality of having more than one, two or even three quality quarterbacks or nearly anything else of importance.  Consider, for example, the Pittsburgh  Steelers or poets. Indeed, it is possible to argue that focusing on economic efficiency when it is inapt, which it almost always is, is a Neoliberal, Reaganite, and (perhaps) Glibertarian attempt to convince folks that all issues are best debated and understood in terms of economic efficiency when, in fact, many, if not all, issues large and small have nothing whatsoever to do with economic efficiency. Consider the death penalty or whether your butt looks big in those jeans.

A Man of Principles.

A short while ago, a very-rich man complained about being insufficiently rich and was roundly derided for being a whiny, very-rich man. Today if you click the link to his original lament you get a 404 Error and a search for the term super rich fails to turn up the malodorous post.  So, for those of you interested, here's the Google Cache version.  Do you think he took the post down because he was winning the argument?

Definite Article

The use of the definite instead of the indefinite article is sometimes revealing.  After defending his industry getting a bazillion dollars in bail outs, this crazed maniac argues

Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.

Because

[t]here’s danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, ‘My life is a little harder than it used to be,’” Munger said at the event, which was moderated by CNBC’s Becky Quick. “At a certain place you’ve got to say to the people, ‘Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.

You might think that he has in mind a specific culture dying form the specific mistake of giving money to people who, through no fault of their own, cannot find work.  And you'd be wrong.  Giving money to the bankers and etc would've have saved Weimar Germany.  Leaving aside that this is most likely wrong, Weimar Germany also didn't give money to people who couldn't find work through no fault of their own but Charles Munger is okay with that..

What he means is that if you give people the money they need to survive the catastrophes created by efficient markets, profit maximization, and financial innovation the culture of not giving money to people who aren't Charles Munger or his ilk will wither and die. Therefore to ensure that the culture of giving money to the creative class, that is the the class that created the catastrophes through their worship of efficient markets, financial innovation, and profit maximization, and not to the parasites, that is the people who do all the work but were fooled by all that efficient market, financial innovation, and profit maximization stuff , endures you must give the money to Charles Munger and not the tens of millions of unemployed.

One wonders what, exactly, he'd like us to suck in.

Gottcha.

A Little Deregulation Never Hurt Anyone

Recently a pipeline blew up in California and it has come to light that from

a consumer advocacy group [that] has discovered that the company that operated the faulty pipeline, Pacific Gas & Energy (PG&E), had classified it as “high risk” and failed to utilize the funds it had collected from a rate hike to repair it. The Utility Reform Network (TURN) has obtained documents detailing the energy giant’s request to the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for a rate hike in 2007. PG&E asked the PUC for permission for a $5 million rate hike to “replace a section of the same pipeline that blew up in San Bruno.” The PUC approved PG&E’s request, allowing it to hike its rates so that it could repair the line in 2009.

Yet the energy giant failed to go through with its scheduled repairs. And in 2009, it once again requested a rate hike from the PUC, again for $5 million. In its request, PG&E warned that if “the replacement of this pipe does not occur, risks associated with this segment will not be reduced. Coupled with the consequences of failure of this section of pipeline, the likelihood of a failure makes the risk of a failure at this location unacceptably high.” Despite these admitted risks, the company could only promise to make its repairs by 2013.

There is considerably more skulduggery available at the link.  One might wonder why the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) didn't intervene and force the PG&E to fix the damn pipeline. It couldn't be because for the past 30 years or so all the cool kids having screaming like a bunch of flying monkeys that regulation of industry is unnecessary, stupid, and wasteful.  Could it?  It couldn't be because if you shout that kind of stuff loud enough and long enough regulators become ever laxer. Could it?

UPDATE:
More Neoliberal, Reaganite, and (possibly) glibertarian complaints about regulation

Coburn's office said Wednesday the senator will object to bringing up the bill if his concerns aren't addressed. His objections are a major blow to supporters' chances of passing the legislation this year.


The legislation would give the agency more power to recall tainted products, require more inspections of food processing facilities and require producers to follow stricter standards for keeping food safe. Currently, the FDA does not have the authority to order a recall and must negotiate recalls with the affected producers. The agency rarely inspects many food facilities and farms, visiting some every decade or so and others not at all.

As Tom Scocca, from whom I found out about this, puts it

This is just hostage-taking. Coburn's concern about the deficit is one-sided—he's not asking for taxes to go up to cover the cost of the bill, which is a scary-sounding $1.4 billion, or a considerably less scary $4.67 per American citizen. Taxes are bad. He is expressing the political opinion that removing disease-ridden feces from the food supply is a responsibility that the government should not take on. This is what Tom Coburn stands for: he believes that, on top of everything else, you can actually go eat shit.

If they are not tired, why all the lying around?

Reps. Joe Barton, Marsha Blackburn and Michael Burgess argue that the "ban," which really isn't a ban, on the sturdy and patriotic incandescent light bulb has led to the loss of some 200 jobs. The job loss results, they assert, because the more energy efficient compact florescent light bulbs "can't be produced cheaply enough in America so we’ve turned to China" from whence come virtually all of the compact bulbs. This is further evidence, as if any was needed, of the dangers of government interference in the great free market.

This and some other American-based manufactures of compact bulbs might tend to disagree about the impossibly high cost of making the bulb in these United States. And sensible people might suggest that the 200 jobs are just the latest casualty in capitalism's long war on everybody as its acolytes pursue the goal of profit maximization.

Matthew Yglesias: Glibertarian Gibberish

Ygleasias eats lunch with some glibertarians and comes away livid that tour guides are required to prove that they are competent to be tour guides.  He doesn't, please not call for the reform of the regulations, reduction of the cost, the scope of the exam, or anything like that because

[y]ou don’t need a license to be a tour guide in Boston and as best I can tell everything’s fine. I’ve taken tours in Boston, and I’ve heard of any time of people visiting the city without incident.
Customers there are protected by the general laws against fraud and other forms of criminal misconduct as well as whatever discipline the marketplace and people’s concern for their reputation provides.

If the past 30 years have proved anything it is that an unregulated market is a recipe for disaster, even the glibertarian in chief figured that out. His Yglesias' glibertarian friends are going to sue DC because " the government is not allowed to require people to get a license in order to talk.”  The government can and should, however, act to ensure that people peddling their expertise are, in fact, at least moderately competent, which is what tour guides do.  If you want to stand on the corner and misinform people go right ahead. if you want to claim to know enough to be a tour guide the state has every right and an interest in ensuring that you aren't a mountebank.

There is a larger point here, regulatory regimes have a history and a purpose.  It is not the case that regulators are, as Yglesias suggests, busybodies who unfairly unnecessarily interfere with genius of the market. When Philadelphia was developing its regulations regarding tour guides, it was to end this kind of disinformation

[t]hey'll stop saying that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln once dined together. Or that Ben Franklin had not one, but 69, illegitimate children. That basement kitchens had outdoor exits so as to spare the furniture should the cook's skirts catch fire. Or that a house would be left to burn if it didn't display an insurance company fire mark.[link added]

Now I'll grant that Yglesias may have had a great time in Boston, but how on earth would he know that what heard is or isn't true. And how on earth can it be "bad for visitors" to DC or any city to be assured that their tour guide is able to score 70, which is a low C- at best, on test concerning the city's history?

Matt Yglesias: Against Neoliberalism and Reganite Solutions Except When He Isn't

Matt Yglesias,points out that states run on Conservative principles are less economically successful than those run along some other lines, although he is unclear about which lines.  He then instances the really crappy postal service in the Confederate States of America, no really he does, and mentions that

[s]omewhat awkwardly for the purposes of the polemical point I’m trying to make here, I’m open to postal privatization in the contemporary United States along the lines being implemented (PDF) in Europe.

He is quick to point out that the mail no longer really matters so letting private enterprise get its hands on it isn't a big deal, because?  Because he says so.

To sum up, he wants to deregulate industries about which he knows nothing, thinks that city planing ought to be managed by the market, and is convinced that we could have better health and educational delivery systems if only both would abide by the great god of maximizing profits by skimping on quality, because -- after all -- the endlessness of the pasta bowl makes up for the crappiness of its contents.  He is, in other words, definitively against Conservative methods of governance and definitively in favor of some other undefined method of governance, which I dub Yglesiasism.  This ism enacts Neoliberal, Reaganite solutions and methods of governance but isn't, some how or another, Conservativism.

He concludes that the foregoing "is all just to say that investment in infrastructure and public services is important and always has been." See? Unless it is spending and investment he doesn't like or public services like regulating business, creating zoning restrictions, providing non-skimped education, or developing licensing regimes he hasn't bothered to research, Yglesias is a full on liberal lion.