Comment No Longer Free

I was just over to Krugman's blog and, it seems, that in addition to the NYT 20 free limit, he no longer has comments
UPDATE
I had No Script set wrong

Always Be Closing

Most sensible people recognize this scene as an indictment of the winner takes it all economics of Neoliberalism:




However is a recent post, Matthew Yglesias assured his young readers that if they want to become writers they needed to write and engage in endless self-promotion while at university rather than learn. Indeed, he suggested that doing well among professional writers, who don't necessarily know what they are writing about, was more important than understanding the issues, events, and facts of the matter:

If you want to be a writer, then writing stuff that’s interesting and getting professional writers to read it is important. I got the worst grade of my whole college career in Theda Skocpol’s class on American social policy, and that’s never stopped me from writing about American social policy—nobody’s ever asked or cared whether professors liked my essays. 

It is a modified Baldwin in which creating a name for being "interesting" takes the place of selling old people time shares they can neither afford nor use. He was taken mildly to task for under emphasizing the importance of grades for future professional or academic success. Yglesias responded that while practicing writing was more important than practicing writing or, as he put it,

My point, however, is that people make decisions about how to use their time at the margin and if what you’re interested in doing is becoming a writer then you’re better off spending your time on writing and publicizing things than on giving your term paper another round of edits.

Writing is more important than writing, he seems to say, if the writing is relentlessly self-promotional. What does he mean by at the margin?[1] He does, however, sort of defend learning

None of that, however, is to denigrates Jonathan Bernstein’s point that actually learning things is extremely valuable. Knowing more is good, but (again, at the margin) it has a somewhat attenuated relationship to grades.

My question, at this point, is how does he know if what he has learned has any validity if he doesn't think that grades reflect mastery of a body of knowledge, the ability to analysis that body of knowledge and the skill to write a compelling text based on the body of knowledge that proves the analysis's persuasiveness? He got a link from Andrew Sullivan?

Why not just turn all of our educational systems into boiler rooms and have done with it. 


[1] It's an economic term design to simplify the analysis of complex decision making processes and, much like efficient markets, self-regulation, and related etc, it's nonsense designed to simplify the analysis of complex decisions by creating a fictional "reality" in which people act the way you want them to rather than the way the do.

A Fundamental Lack of Seriousness

Many who have looked at the Ryan plan think that it is insane gobbledygook with the sole purpose of ruining workers and enriching the rich. As Balloon Juice has documented, Andrew Sullivan isn't one of these folks largely because he isn't particularly bright. Recently, Sullivan argued concerning health care and the "inability" of giving it to all is

  where my Christian-informed conscience rears its benign head. As a human being, I find it extremely hard to deny another human being the ability and means to cure their sickness, if it is available.

Leaving aside the fact that to be human is not the same as being Christian, Sullivan ignores the Christian solution to the problem of scarcity and unequal distribution. John the Baptist told

 the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ⁹ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
 ¹⁰ “What should we do then?” the crowd asked.
 ¹¹ John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”
 ¹² Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”
 ¹³ “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.
 ¹⁴ Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
   He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

The argument here is pretty straight forward. You want to be saved? Take care of your fellow men and women and stop engaging in greedy behavior.

Christ was as explicit:

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

So if his "christian-informed conscience" really is rearing "its benign head" his concern ought not to be the political or economic difficulties associated with the equitable distribution of the things of this world but rather the vital necessity of the equitable distribution of the things of this world. To argue that worldly matters make it impossible to be a Christian is to admit that he isn't a Christian. Christianity isn't a noun; it's a verb. See also.

Monkeys and Rice

 Years ago somebody told me how to trap a monkey. The story was put some rice in a jar with an opening big enough for the monkey's open hand to fit in but small enough that when the monkey grabbed the rice it could not get its hand out. Monkeys, the story went, had one track minds and as the monkey hunter approached they would panic and try to run away only to realize that they had a hand full of rice they could extract from the jar. They would then focus on extracting the rice and forget about the hunter only to end up caught. Relatedly Kierkegaard argued that anxiety over choosing one thing over another was proof of free will. If you had no choice, he reasoned, you would have no anxiety. As people had anxiety choice existed.  His preferred solution was to accept Christianity and live by its precepts. In short, short circuit the anxiety of choice by letting go of the ability to choose by letting others choose for you. I would argue that these equally unsatisfactory solutions to the problem of choice structure Matthew Yglesias' thoughts on nearly everything with an added dose of misunderstanding and misdirection.

Like a monkey with a handful of rice, Yglesias continues to  argue that educational reform is an economic category. He suggests that

One of the most important things about the health care and education segments of the economy is that part of what customers want is attention. Parents like the idea of small class sizes, and patients like the reassuring face-to-face presence of a doctor with a good bedside manner. But personal attention has the pretty special characteristic of being immune to productivity enhancements.

Students and patients, he wants us to believe, are identical in being "customers." This is simply wrong. Students and patients are students and patients.  Medical care costs more because it is a for-profit enterprise, education costs more not because of profits but because of population increases that demand more teachers or larger class rooms. And important point is that an economically efficiency has nothing to do with effectiveness, safety, or what have you.

Despite his attempt to dismiss face-to-face teaching as an irrational desire for "attention" the fact of the matter is that smaller classrooms are more effective. Ask any teacher, as opposed to loud-mouthed, hard-charging pundits and other assholes, about classroom size. Smaller is better.

It is also clear here the he has shifted the terms of the debate from effective teaching to efficient teaching. One reason for this might be that all the market-based Neoliberal reforms, choice, testing, teacher bashing, etc, have been shown not to work and the only way to argue for continued Neoliberal reforms is to shift from doing something well to doing it cheaply.

 He claims that the current efficiency crisis

 creates the following trilemma as economy-wide productivity rises:

— One: The wages of teachers and doctors can fall relative to average wages, because teachers and doctors aren’t increasing their productivity as rapidly as the average worker.
— Two: Paying the salaries of teachers and doctors can account for an ever-growing share of national output, because the rest of our output is getting more efficient and teaching and treating isn’t.
— Three: The amount of attention provided by teachers and doctors to students and patients can decline.

Conflating doctors and teachers fundamentally distorts teachers' wages. There is also four: move funds from, say, defense to education. It is not the case that the world of state expenditure cannot be reallocated if the reallocation will create a world better suited to human beings happiness and well being even if profitability and economic efficiency have to take a hit.

Just as importantly, Ygelsias continues to misunderstand his source material. Specifically Baumol:

And if you think we need to increase the relative wages of teachers while further shrinking class sizes and sustain that policy over time, it’ll mean steadily increasing taxes, no one-off increase will undue the Baumol Effect. That’s one possible answer—America is lightly taxed compared to other rich countries—but you owe it to yourself at least to face up to that.

As I've mentioned before, the Baumol Effect, or Disease, isn't a law its an economist's intervention into a policy debate about urban decay and how to stop it. Baumol argued for unions and paying more for teachers. Treating Baumol's argument this way makes policy preference into laws, which isn't true. If you push something hard enough it will fall over, is a law testable both in theory and in fact. Arguing that tax revenue will never increase enough to cover the costs of hiring teachers and paying them a decent wage isn't a law, it's an assertion.

We can, to repeat myself, rejigger state expenditure, less on defense and prisons and more on education, infrastructure, and communication, which wouldn't require tax increases. We can increase taxes or decrease subsidies or close loopholes or we can more create jobs that pay decent wages by strengthening unions which would increase tax revenues without a tax increase.

In other words, Yglesias needs to face up to the fact that his single-minded focus on market-based solutions to non-market problems leads him into all manner of absurdity and he has to face up to the fact that his decision to accept ideologically based solutions to real world problems while ridding him of the anxiety of choice has limited his ability to think creatively.

Stop Telling Lies About My Bicycle

P.J. O'Rourke in a particularly silly and lazy anti-bicycle rant inadvertently, I suspect, revealed why Conservatives and fools more generally hate bicycling. And, in so doing, once again revealed that if your ideas are sound lying ought to be unnecessary.  His "argument," in part is that

maybe there's a darker side to bike-lane advocacy. Political activists of a certain ideological stripe want citizens to have a child-like dependence on government. And it's impossible to feel like a grown-up when you're on a bicycle if you aren't in the Tour de France.

How, one wonders, is a mode of transportation that hinges on individual effort like the bicycle able to create a sense of dependence? Remember the day when you first learned to ride a bike without training wheels? Or the time you helped a kid learn to ride a bike without training wheels? Remember the pure exhilaration and sense of freedom? How often, when you ride the bike to work or the store, does the feeling come back? For me it's often.

Think about the absolute independence of anyone on a bike, able to whiz here and there unconcerned with the fuel or oil levels; moving freely from the paved to the unpaved and back again.  Finding parking with no trouble; no need for pipelines, gas stations, or tow trucks. Think about the misery of car ownership, with its constant and continuous need for gas, oil, new tires, brakes, trained mechanics, costly electronic parts, road repair, highway construction, parking garages, limited parking spaces, and the equal misery of a car-centric universe in which all the stores are over there and "good" parking is hard to find and the traffic to work is terrible and etc. 

Which would you rather? The child-like joy and independence of moving yourself from point A to point B or the childish dependence of pasty-faced, self-limiting and expensive following of routes laid out by face-less bureacrats [1]?

One last point, in the course of being wrong about everything having to do with the independence of cyclist and the dependency of motorists, O'Rouke calls the bike, derisively, a donkey car without a donkey. Unknowingly, I assume, he's right. The basic idea behind the creation of a bicycle or, really, all the early human powered vehicles was to replace the expensive, filthy, and unreliable horse, donkey, and oxen with a clean and reliable machine that translated human power into motion. The bike is, in fact, one of the pinnacles of industrial design and techniques.

[1] I kid, road systems are great, although the constant pandering to motorists isn't, because of expert commitment to getting things right.

Say the Bells of Saint Martin's

Want to listen to every bicycle bell known to humanity? Sure you do.

What Could Possible Go Wrong?

Florida, it seems, wants to continue the radical Neoliberal agenda of creating ever more unregulated markets:

A controversial bill that would deregulate 20 professions and industries passed the House on Thursday by a vote of 77 to 38. The bill ends oversight for everything from auctioneers and interior designers to hair braiders, intrastate movers, auto repair shops, telemarketers and charitable organizations. Opponents say HB 5005 is a threat to consumer protection.

Not surprisingly, Matthew Yglesias thinks that this is "right on." After all, what could possible go with unregulated telemarketers acting as the agents of unregulated charities? It's not as if regulations rigorously enforced could stop crooks, sort of like lax regulation enforcement isn't in anyway responsible for the recent Southwest Airlines debacle.

Here in Wisconsin: Election Edition

Why did Madison vote Soglin in? I have no idea. Meanwhile some bufflahead over to the NRO argues that if you ignore the votes of many Wisconsonians Prosser would have won.  While true, it's not clear to me what the point is, other than the obvious: people with whom he disagrees ought not be allowed to vote. Kloppenberg had zero hope of winning just a few short weeks ago; Conservatives and the Right more generally want you to forget that Prosser was appointed with limited experience and that he actively asserted his lack of independent judgment as a qualification for continued service.

Here In Wisconsin: Relative Incompetence Edition

Yesterday, I learned that Scott Walker hired an incompetent for a key position in the State government. Today Walker, showing the extent of his integrity and commitment to merit, acted and

 announced that Brian Deschane would be sent back to the Department of Regulation and Licensing where he worked earlier this year as the bureau director of board services — a job that paid $64,728 a year.

Great, an incompetent boob has been removed from a position for which he has none of the necessary skills, abilities, or experience and replaced in a position for which he has none of the necessary skills, abilities, or experience.

What are these people thinking?

Chris Rickert: Missing the Point

In his column today, Chris Rickert furthered his reputation for missing the point and engaging in obfuscation. On the Cronon affair he writes:

The state Republican Party responds by seeking to comb through his university email account and suddenly everyone from the New York Times editorial page to The Atlantic magazine is condemning the request as a fishing expedition aimed at intimidating Cronon and his learned ilk from speaking out.
It was. But so what?

When one party to a dispute is engaged in wrong-headed behavior you criticized them for it. No one should, and as far as I know, no one has argued that professors ought never be subject to open records requests. For example, emails and other documents dealing with hiring, promotion, and tenure decision are, regardless of motivation, clearly legitimate. In this case, however, as Rickert understand there is no misuse of office and the Republicans are engaged in intimidation. He, and the WSJ more generally, ought to condemn this.

So he is a bit dim. But he is also dishonest. Remember It Happened One Night? Clark Gable played a sort of loud-mouthed know-it-all reporter who really didn't know it all. He was constantly saying he could write a book about, for example, hitch hiking even as he failed to get a ride. Rickert tries to engage know it all and cynical discourse and, of course, he fails to understand what is really at stake.  In the same column, Rickert writes:

A heretofore below-the-radar UW-Madison history professor named William Cronon writes a blog post saying that — surprise! — political parties sometimes take their cues from ideological organizations and seek to crush their opponents.

But here's the thing, Walker and his ilk, the real party of let them eat cake, represent themselves as independent voices for what Wisconsonians and Americans more generally really want. By linking their agenda to a shadowy group of ideological fanatics Cronon exposed this claim as a lie. Walker and his cronies and their political allies are, in fact, acting as the agents of outsiders who have dedicated their lives to advaning the interests of a tiny minority of extraordinarily wealthy men and women even though this means that they have to legislate against the vast majority of their fellows' material, moral, and political interests.

Much like Gable's character, Rickert, predictably really, fails to understand why the Republicans are so upset at Cronon: he exposed the men and women behind the Great and Powerful Oz. And he fails to understand the damage this does to the Republicans' claims of independence, honesty, and forth-rightness.

What is is about Neoliberals and their persistent inability to face reality?

Markets Don't Exist

I was watching the erstwhile cathode ray tube machine and an ad came on for fruit stuck on sticks and sent as a gift.  I said that should anyone ever send me such a thing, I would punch them in the throat. Today I read:

“To understand this enigma, we must discard the naïve notion that free-market prices reflect what consumers are willing to pay,” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said. “Otherwise, how else are we to rationalize the phenomenon of a human being willingly spending 84 bucks on 18 green apple wedges and a Mylar balloon?”

I think he is misusing the word "willing" when he means something like according to the rational agent theory of market relations this obviously insane act is supposed to be rational. If I recall correctly, Charles Fourier saw a bushel of apples for sale at, let's say, 4 francs in country side and when he traveled to Paris he say an apple for sale at 4 francs.  It struck him as impossible that merely moving the apples from one place to another could have increased their value so dramatically. Obviously, moving them didn't cupidity did.

First Kapanke Then Hopper

Both are Republican senators and the Democratic Party, or so the scuttle butt goes, has collected more than enough signatures for a recall. It's worth noting that Hopper left his wife for his girlfriend moved out of his district and Scott Walker gave the girlfriend a job, with a 35% pay rise, for which she never applied.

Here in Wisconsin: Meritocracy Edition

Scott Walker man of principle:

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.
Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.
How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team?
It's all in the family.
His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year's governor's race.

Unlike those nasty public workers, Deschane the Younger deserves his job because shut up that's why.

This is What Democracy Looks Like?

Punishment before conviction:

For nine months, Manning has been confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. During his one remaining hour, he can walk in circles in another room, with no other prisoners present. He is not allowed to doze off or relax during the day, but must answer the question “Are you OK?” verbally and in the affirmative every five minutes. At night, he is awakened to be asked again “Are you OK?” every time he turns his back to the cell door or covers his head with a blanket so that the guards cannot see his face. During the past week he was forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a “smock” under claims of risk to himself that he disputes.

Beneath Contempt

On the floor of the Indian House a crazed maniac ran on to the floor and shouted

I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.

Actually it was  Rep. Eric Turner (R). These loons are beneath contempt.

Leaving town for a day or two posting likely light all ten of you will have to wait for the words of nonsense.

Here in Wisconsin: Scott Walker Man of Limited to No Vision

As is well known, Walker angrily rejected 810 million dollars for high speed rail, which led to a burgeoning train industrial base decamping Milwaukee for parts governed by the less blinkered. In the paper today we find that he wants 150 million to upgrade the Milwaukee to Chicago tracks. Well and good. We should be spending more on rail but why, one wonders, is this set of tracks different from high speed rail? It's not in the online article but in the print version Walker argues that

[y]ou've got a proven commodity here, and we're making it better.

For years, Republicans and Conservatives more generally have been trying to destroy Amtrak and yet in those areas where it receives almost sufficient investment it does really well. Most thinking people would conclude that the answer is more investment and new sensible rail lines would lead to increased ridership and, as with the decamped train builder, new industrial sectors which could sell trains at home and abroad. But no, says Walker, instead we have to fire people, cut their wages, and see to it that no uppity university professors dare to criticize ALEC for trying return us to the thrilling days of 1890 when robber barons roamed the earth.

Here in Wisconsin: Press Blackout Edition

Today's Wisconsin State Journal has an editorial explaining why they haven't said word one about the Cronon Affair. Phil Brinkman's argument:

First, recipients of open records requests seldom welcome such intrusions. It’s invasive, it risks exposing them and others to embarrassment or worse.

This, obviously, doesn't hold true for Cronon. He tap dances a bit about the special problems in grabbing a professor's emails, because of chilling academic freedom and students' rights to privacy and then asks and answers the key question:

Is the party’s use of the records law in this case “nakedly political,” as Cronon asserts? Most assuredly.

The fact that the Republican Party is seeking to use a legitimate tool that promotes transparency to attack a critic even as their most recent anti-worker bill is under judicial scrutiny for violating the State's laws concerning legislative transparency isn't a story? No wonder newspapers are in trouble.

Brinkman is also clear that

So why not cover the debate itself? Over the years, this newspaper has made hundreds of records requests, many of them unwelcome and unpleasant experiences for the recipient. It would be hypocritical for us to suggest — and a story would suggest it — that some records requests are beyond the pale.

I just don’t believe that.

 This is just remarkably incoherent.  He accepts that the open record request is nakedly political and that the opr can or will have the effect of stiffling debate yet rejects that notion that political parties attacking citizens for engaging in criticism of the political party is a story worth covering. Amazing really.

Also Chris Rickert's (humorous?) suggestion that the UW-Madison fire random people is further evidence that the WSJ hates it's readers.

Robots

The guys that developed this



are almost assuredly not actively plotting humanity's demise, but still.

via

Libya

Juan Cole has been unabashed in his support for the invasion of Libya. In two recent posts, he explains why he thinks Obama's speech and actions were and are correct and he takes swipes at the "left" for its opposition.

I find this claim wrong-headed:

Leftists are not always isolationists. In the US, progressive people actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, forming the Lincoln Brigade. That was a foreign intervention. Leftists were happy about Churchill’s and then Roosevelt’s intervention against the Axis.

He goes on to castigate the 

fringe left adulation for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the grounds that he is ‘anti-imperialist,’ and with an assumption that he is somehow on the Left.

I've never met any of the latter but maybe all two of them exist. As to the former position, the reason non-pacifists of whatever political stripe aren't "always isolationists" is because calling someone an isolationist is a trope designed to slur and, consequently, ignore their reasons for rejecting this intervention/invasion. Except, of course, Pat Buchanon, who is a loon, there really are few isolationists[1]. It would be nice if we could avoid this kind of rhetorical trick and address the arguments against this intervention/invasion.

Cole actually does sort of do that when he argues that

[t]he proposition that social problems can never be resolved by military force alone may be true. But there are some problems that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the progressive forces.

I perfectly willing to accept that Ghadaffi was going to and will, should he get the chance, kill as many people as he could because he, too, is a loon and making life miserable for others is the hallmark of a loon. I don't know that there was any good option here. Obama's pragmatic moralistic militarized response to a looming and likely humanitarian disaster may well be right. However, given the scope of the destruction wrought by the humanitarian and tyrannical  bombs for either lives or continued tyranny, I wonder humanitarian costs of bombing for lives will be.

For me, the question is what's next. I understand that Obama and Co have promised cross their heart and etc, not to allow the mission to creep. I find this totally unconvincing. Plus and also I worry about what we do when or if infighting among the rebels/insurgents/freedom fighters takes place. Are we going to use our air superiority to stop that? Or will we send in NATO troops? And, as by the way, when we hand things off to NATO it's important to recall that we are a part of NATO.

While I understand Cole's position, I am remain unpersauded that this was the best way forward and, to the extent it matters, I would argue that this kind of rhetoric

I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya.

Isn't designed to persuade anyone of anything and smacks of the "I am seriously serious person and my opponents are blinkered morons" style of argument we lived through during the Bush years.

[1] Did you know that Gerald Ford was a member of America First? Not really the kind of guy you'd call an isolationist, is he? I mean, after all, if somebody stops having sex for week you wouldn't call them rededicating their life to chastity, in the word's contemporary meaning, would you?

What Africa Needs

Apparently it's more people, because more people means more entrepreneurs or something. And, who knows?, maybe in a world with limited amounts of stuff an increasing population is the right policy. (via)

Beligium Still Doesn't Exist

Belgium has set a record for governmentlessness, except, of course, it has a government the interim prime minster of which is doing a good job of running the country.

At this point, only one politician seems to be acquitting himself well — acting Prime Minister Yves Leterme, who has made his caretaker government almost as effective as a real coalition.

His Libya policy does, however, seem odd.

Maybe when the Republicans shut down the USA because poor people are still allowed we could appoint someone interim president, say Bernie Sanders.

Neoliberalism Also Hates the Truth

Ronald Reagan had difficulty telling the truth. Why? Because much of what he did was immoral and the rest idiotic. Take, for example, his violation of the Constitution.

"The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, that the United States undercut its allies and secretly violated American policy against trafficking with terrorists....  Those charges are utterly false....  We did not--repeat--did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we."
--President Reagan, television address, November 13, 1986

"... [I] was not fully informed on the nature of one of the activities."
--President Reagan, referring to the fact that money from weapons sales to Iran was diverted to the contras, November 25, 1986

"The simple truth is, 'I don't remember--period.'"
--President Reagan, responding to a question about when he authorized arms shipments to Iran, February 2, 1987
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages.  My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
--Reagan in a television address is forced to acknowledge "the facts and the evidence" uncovered by the commission that Reagan appointed to look into the matter, March 4, 1987
"I told you all the truth that first day after...everything hit the fan."
--President Reagan, June 11, 1987

Sure, he told the truth when he was caught lying. 

The same is true of his record of tax increases.  He couldn't face the fact that the Neoliberal economic theory didn't work; so he introduced the idea of "revenue enhancers" to replace tax increases. George Will actually approved of this sort of intellectual dishonesty.  Of course, Will aided and abetted Reagan's dishonesty.

More recently, Republicans have begun to accuse their opponents of doing what the Republicans are, in fact, doing. Cronon becomes a bully because independent news agencies and other take rightfully abject to their bullying of Cronon. As just one of the many examples.

Why do I bring this up? The other day, I suggested that Chris Rickert was an idiot. On further consideration, I have concluded that he is, in fact, someone with either a sketch grasp of reality or someone who, like Reagan, enjoys obfuscating and, like the Republicans, argues that black is, in fact, white.

A couple of days ago, in a column in which he insisted that the protesters are morally no better than the forces seeking to destroy workers, he wrote:

I admit I've been taking the protesters to task, though I don't necessarily oppose their aim. Mostly, I'm just temperamentally given to rooting for the underdog (in Madison, that would be conservatives), just as I suspect a lot of the louder protesters (especially those who don't belong to unions) are temperamentally driven by the need to be part of something bigger than themselves.

See what he did there? The protests aren't "liberal" Madison versus some besieged minority of Conservatives. Its workers versus Republicans dead set on destroying their incomes. He may "suspect" that a lot of the protesters are motivated by, what he sees as a base, desire to matter. But the fact of the matter is that almost all of the protesters are motivated by the desire to stop Neoliberals from destroying workers wages, which -- to be fair -- is "something bigger than themselves but that's actually a good thing.

In his column on letting the UW-Madison become part privatized and, I'd argue, eventually destroyed, he asserted

I say, let the cake-eaters have the UW-Madisons of the worlds. There are plenty of people out there like my wife who would succeed without them.

It's not clear who the "cake-eaters" are supposed to be, although the most likely candidates are the students, facaulty, and staff at UWM. The other referent here is, obviously, Marie Antoinette, who didn't say anything like that even though myth has it that she did. What he's done here  is to ignore that it is the Republicans who, in an orgy of salary cutting and budget slashing, are the the contemporary Marie Antionettes and the current students, faculty and staff the victims of their short-sighted budget slashing and related etc.

In just two columns he manages to recapitulate the worst of Neoliberal rhetorical flourishes. WSJ readers deserve better.

David Brooks: Fibber Magee

In today's NYT Book Review's Inside the List sidebar there is a description of David Brooks blather about his book on some tv talk show or another. He told the story of watching some social scientist's experiment in which waiting to eat something led to getting twice as much. Brooks insisted that in watching the video in which Oreo cookies were the food of choice, one of the children open the cookie and ate the filling in the hopes of fooling the scientists.  That boy, Brooks claimed, is now a senator.  That story, I now claim, is bullshit, in the Frankfurtian sense of bullshit.

Invasion: By Taking Sides We Have Become a Side

In conclusion to a long post on Libya, in which the most striking -- if not only -- fact reported is that there is no real Rebel army, Jon Lee Anderson concludes:

Can they do it? Not without many more air strikes, that is certain.

The Coalition has gone from protecting civilians from Gaddifi to being the leading edge of a non-existent rebel alliance. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to conjure up what comes next, does it?

The Market

Why market fundamentalism is wrong click to see how the free market turns lemons into lemonaid.