Presently Reading...

Robert Reich's Supercapitalism:

As Adam Smith first described clearly, individuals who pursue only their own narrow interests in a competitive system often inadvertently create widespread social gains. But not always. Unlike many of his modern disciples, Smith was keenly aware of the invisible hand’s limitations. Individual and social interests often diverge, he realized, and in such cases, greater competition makes matters worse. If a firm can cut costs by removing the filter from its smokestack, for example, it will feel greater pressure to do so when competition intensifies.

If our social ills are indeed rooted in increased competition, our only recourse, Reich argues, is to change the rules. Denouncing greed is simply wasted energy. If we want less inequality, we must make taxes more progressive. If we want cleaner air and water, we must adopt more stringent environmental laws.

Reich’s narrative begins with his account of the “not quite golden age” — roughly, the three decades following World War II — in which limited competition enabled large companies to earn high profits. High profits, in turn, enabled unions to bargain for high wages and benefits. Legislators, who were less influenced by corporate cash in those days, passed laws in the public interest.

Things changed when the Internet and other new communications and transportation technologies enabled the economy’s most able producers to extend their reach. Many established firms were swept away.

At about the same time, financial deregulation increased the influence of capital markets on corporate behavior. Wall Street’s message to chief executives was “Slash your payrolls or we’ll buy your company and hire someone who will.”

...The main thrust of Reich’s argument is right on target. Those who seize their opportunities in highly competitive environments tend to survive and prosper. “To confuse greed with opportunity,” he writes, “is to confound desire with availability.”

The point is that almost no one, with any power, advocates for citizens (i. e., the common good) and that this calls for more citizen-based advocacy and restrictions on activity like lobbying and corporate contributions to campaigns...

Bill Kristol Magnitizes Wankers Throughout the Noosphere

Via Crooked Timber.

Just For the Hell of It

The White Stripes:

An Early Progressive

You've probably heard of this speech before, but have you read it? Here is Teddy Roosevelt on the muckrakers:

It is about some of these that I wish to say a word to-day. In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.

In “Pilgrim’s Progress” the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.

There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.

Why Do They Make It So Easy?

A Republican Noise Machine instant classic.

Greg Sargent on Progressive Critics Making It Personal

Apropos of my recent post on progressive readers getting personal about journalists mistakes, this is Greg Sargent on Deborah Howell's recent article regarding a front page story on Obama:

Howell noted in her piece that there was no deliberate "smear job" intended towards Obama, as many readers alleged. And the editor of the piece, Bill Hamilton, had this to say about the whole affair: "Reasonable people can disagree on this. But the people I have heard from are not reasonable. What I find especially disheartening is the idea that our motives are simply assumed to have been malicious."

Look, let's not let a bunch of nasty emails distract us from the true nature of what really happened here. If people got a bit bent out of shape, it's because the piece seemed to capture a lot about what's wrong with the way journalism is practiced today. The real reason this episode touched such a nerve wasn't just about this one article. It triggered people's pent-up frustration with the larger failings of political journalism-as-usual.

It's really not too much of a stretch to say that the traditional media's mass and sometimes willful refusal to label falsehoods what they are -- false -- was largely responsible for bringing us the Bush era. The story's been told too often to rehash here, but there's no longer any real doubt that this press failing is one of the primary reasons George Bush was able to prevail in the 2000 and 2004 elections. When people read pieces like the Obama Muslim one, they quite properly worry that, you know, the same thing is well on its way to happening again. And this puts them on edge a bit.

Do some people overreact? No question -- after all, there's a lot to be pissed off about. But when editors complain about people sending them mean emails presuming bad motives on their part, they're just ducking the real issue here, which is one of execution. This isn't complicated: If something is false, say so clearly and directly-- and provide the necessary info to contradict it. No more euphemisms. No more timidity. No more averting your eyes when one side is lying. Tell your readers the truth. That's all there is to it.

Yup.

Don't Miss...

There's a really comprehensive picture of the modern conservative movement by Jim Sleeper up on TPM Cafe. It's a really big chunk to bite off and chew in one bite, but he's succeeds, I think.

If you at all doubt the importance of AEI, take a look at this ThinkProgress page.

Lawyerly Speechwriters Ride Again

Maybe Marcy Wheeler will have to write an Anatomy of Deceit II (Dan Froomkin):

Bush yesterday said he was only briefed about the new estimate last week.

But a close examination of his word choice over the past year suggests that he learned something around August that got him to stop making claims that were apparently no longer supported by American intelligence.

Instead of directly condemning Iranian leaders for pursuing nuclear weapons, he started more vaguely accusing them of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon.

As he did that, he and the vice president accelerated their rhetorical efforts to persuade the public that the nuclear threat posed by Iran was grave and urgent. Bush even went so far in late August and October as to warn of the potential for a nuclear holocaust.

Indeed, a careful parsing of Bush's words indicates that, while not saying anything that could later prove to be demonstrably false, Bush left his listeners with what he likely knew was a fundamentally false impression. And he did so in the pursuit of a more muscular and possibly even military approach to a Middle Eastern country.

It's an oddly familiar pattern of deception.

Examples of Unconnected Dots

Kit Seelye has been reporting on politics since 1992. But she thinks the American Enterprise Institute is "a nonpartisan group."

The fact that AEI is hardly "non-partisan" is basic. John Bolton used to be a Senior Vice President. The AEI probably put the "empire" into "we're an empire now." ThinkProgress has more.

Another example: Howard Kurtz has been the media reporter at the same newspaper as Walter Pincus since 1990. I am sure Pincus is familiar with the backstory of recent CIA intelligence failures--and the crucial role of the neoconservatives in that failure.

But during a chat session, Kurtz had the following to say:

Anonymous: New York Times, right now: "Breaking News 12:06 PM ET: U.S. Report Says Iran Halted Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003." This should be interesting.

washingtonpost.com: "Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure but is continuing to enrich uranium..." (AP, Dec. 3)

Howard Kurtz: I would just make a note about the attribution in the lead: "senior intelligence officials said Monday." They may well be right. But some intelligence officials were obviously flat wrong about Saddam's WMD.

But Kurtz, even though the right wing may have the chutzpa to make that argument, the neoconservatives are out. And the intelligence services are regaining their professional footing.

Couldn't Kurtz, some time over the past few years, wheel his chair over to Pincus's cube have a chat? Lunch with him in the WaPo cafeteria? I mean, Pincus's work is supposedly relevant to his job, considering that Pincus covered the whole Judy Miller fiasco.

I Do Sympathize

I get what this guy is saying, although he omits a ton of factors (such as Fox News and other shoutfest outlets, as Helen Thomas implies). But I do sympathize with this reporter.

I also sympathize--maybe more like empathize--with people who get personal about things. As Greenwald says, there's a lot that's gone down over the past six years, and people are very concerned.

But I try not to assign motives, really I do. I think it's usually that a reporter honestly (although perhaps ignorantly) doesn't connect some dots that should be connected. Or maybe an editor has something to do with it. At worst, it might be professionally inconvenient to connect the dots for a number of reasons.

But then I read something like this. Now what's up with that? It makes it easy to hatch conspiracy theories. Did the headline writer go here or something?

Yes, Regulation Has a Purpose

Krugman on the subprime mess:

[T]he innovations of recent years — the alphabet soup of C.D.O.’s and S.I.V.’s, R.M.B.S. and A.B.C.P. — were sold on false pretenses. They were promoted as ways to spread risk, making investment safer. What they did instead — aside from making their creators a lot of money, which they didn’t have to repay when it all went bust — was to spread confusion, luring investors into taking on more risk than they realized.

Why was this allowed to happen? At a deep level, I believe that the problem was ideological: policy makers, committed to the view that the market is always right, simply ignored the warning signs. We know, in particular, that Alan Greenspan brushed aside warnings from Edward Gramlich, who was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, about a potential subprime crisis.

And free-market orthodoxy dies hard. Just a few weeks ago Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, admitted to Fortune magazine that financial innovation got ahead of regulation — but added, “I don’t think we’d want it the other way around.” Is that your final answer, Mr. Secretary?

The word "conservative" is interesting. Some people who identity as "conservative" aren't really, but seem to feel entitled to that ideological label nonetheless.

Watch This Space

Scheduled at the William Kristol Imperial Vomitorium.

Reading the Heritage Foundation's Blog

...is about like watching paint dry.

Update: OK, this post is at least interesting. But for their "socialized medicine" propaganda to work, at the very least, their anti-socialist patron saint Friedrich Hayek would have to agree with them.

And evidently it would kill you to have comments. (Unlike other blogs.)

The F-Word

"The F-word" (for "false") actually makes a pretty good meme. We should use it copiously:

As Glenn Greenwald notes, the unwillingness of news orgs to challenge GOP lies by taking that extra step and using the F-word -- "false" -- is "one of the most significant problems in how our establishment media functions." And as Times proved yesterday, when this extra step is taken, the world doesn't get knocked off its axis. Yet WaPo's editors -- perhaps out of fear, perhaps for other not particularly admirable reasons -- simply refuse to label GOP falsehoods what they are.

Climate Change Issue Claims a Scalp

Climate change is the major issue behind John Howard's defeat both as prime minister and as a member of parliament:

John Howard has delivered economic growth to Australia throughout his lengthy stay in office. However, he too has been rather nonchalant about environmental matters. The prolonged drought in the Land Down Under has done much to raise questions in the minds of the electorate as to whether Howard is still the man in an era of heightened environmental concern. Just as Bill Clinton once said "It's the economy, stupid," what we may have here is "It's the environment, stupid" as environmental concerns trump economic ones--at least in the case of Australia where folks have become used to economic growth.

Via Slate.

Moyers on FDR

Moyers on FDR and ideology:

We can't revive the man and certainly we wouldn't want to revisit the times, but we can rekindle the spirit. There are 37 million people in this country who are poor; there are 57 million who are near poor, making $20,000 to $40,000 a year--one divorce, one pink slip, one illness away from a free fall. That's almost one-third of America still living on the edge. They need a friend in the White House. My father, with his fourth-grade education and two fingers with the missing tips from the mix-up at the cotton gin, got it when Roosevelt spoke. "I can't talk like him," he said, "but I sure do think like him." My father might not have had the words for it, but he said amen when FDR talked about economic royalism. Sitting in front of our console radio, he got it when Roosevelt said that private power no less than public power can bring America to ruin in the absence of democratic controls.

Don't think for a moment he didn't get it when Roosevelt said that a government by money was as much to be feared as a government by mob, or when he said that the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. My father got it when he heard his friend in the White House talk about how "a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor--other people's lives." My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny such as this. And my father listened raptly when his friend the President said, "The American citizen"--my father knew the President was speaking of him--"could appeal only to the organized power of government."

Heritage Blowing Smoke

More today on the relationship between movement conservatism and facts. The Washington Times today reported on the Heritage's study on congressional district voting patterns and wealth (the Times validating Heritage? you don't say). Greg Sargent did a takedown:

So 84 of 167 of the wealthier House districts are controlled by Dems. That's a hair over 50% -- supposedly proving that Dems are the new party of the "rich."

But here's what's funny about this. Right now, roughly 54% of all House districts are controlled by Dems. So in reality, the percentage of the wealthier House districts controlled by Dems is actually lower than the percentage of districts Dems control overall. What's more, the households where the median income exceeds the national average are hardly all "rich." So this chief data point just doesn't support the claim.

See also Paul Krugman and Andrew Gelman. It seems Heritage sliced and diced its numbers pretty carefully, so if you just so much as sneeze, its case blows away.

Why is this so predictable?

Endorsements

There's an old story about segregationist/proto-movement- conservative George Wallace when he spoke at Harvard. When he was boo'ed (which he repeatedly was) he'd say, "I accept your nomination!"

Well us "Moveon.org bloggers" (whoever we are--Moveon doesn't have bloggers) accept their nomination. Paul Krugman does too.

Brooks vs. Krugman

Steve Benen has a good rundown on the debate between Brooks and Krugman over the issue of race and the modern Republican party.

Harper's Ken Silverstein on the Washington Press Corps

Ken Silverstein defends his undercover reporting:

The decline of undercover reporting — and of investigative reporting in general — also reflects, in part, the increasing conservatism and cautiousness of the media, especially the smug, high-end Washington press corps. As reporters have grown more socially prominent during the last several decades, they've become part of the very power structure that they're supposed to be tracking and scrutinizing.

Chuck Lewis, a former "60 Minutes" producer and founder of the Center for Public Integrity, once told me: "The values of the news media are the same as those of the elite, and they badly want to be viewed by the elites as acceptable."
...
I'm willing to debate the merits of my piece, but the carping from the Washington press corps is hard to stomach. This is the group that attended the White House correspondents dinner and clapped for a rapping Karl Rove. As a class, they honor politeness over honesty and believe that being "balanced" means giving the same weight to a lie as you give to the truth.

I'll take Nellie Bly any day.

Interesting parallel--Nellie Bly reported on insane asylums...

Colbert on Cheney's New Fourth Branch

The best part is toward the end:

What Digby Said

For a while in the blogosphere, there's been a tradition of simply linking to a pseudonomous blogger named Digby, and just saying "What Digby said," because what was said was so eloquent, and true.

But who's Digby? We didn't even know Digby's gender.

Well, now we know:

Adam Curtis on the History of Public Relations

In this documentary, Curtis looks deep into twentieth century history and examines the ideas that influenced American public relations.

This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.
-- Adam Curtis

A Century of the Self:

Part 1, The Happiness Machines (the first few seconds did not make it into this video):



Part 2, The Engineering of Consent:



Part 3, There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads. He Must Be Destroyed:



Part 4, Eight People Sipping Wine:

Gore on Charlie Rose

Here is the best recent interview I've seen with Al Gore on his current book tour:



Speaking of Gore's book tour, there have been quite a few ironies that he's encountered, involving an oblivious media that seems out to prove his book's thesis for him.

Distilled Essence of Wankery

The editor at the Financial Times was snoring away:

Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority

Over at NRO, they can't get enough: "Wow...just, wow."

This just cries out for an Onion link.

H/T: Crooked Timber.

Art Rock Nostalgia Blogging

Back when Peter Gabriel was trying for the Frodo instead of the Gandolf look:

Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares

Some nice folks have been uploading the work of British documentarian Adam Curtis to Google Video. This is thoughtful television of a kind you're not likely to see in the US (even on PBS).

Curtis's work ambitiously strings together history and ideas (with help from the BBC archives) and tries to make sense of contemporary events. The documentary I'm putting in this post, The Power of Nightmares, takes on terrorism and the Neoconservatives. If you've read books such as Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, or George Packer's, Assassin's Gate, you'll recognize some of the themes and subject matter.

It's long, and part 2 drags a bit. But parts 1 and 3 are worth putting in the time, especially if you're not totally familiar with the subject matter (which wouldn't be surprising if you've been watching mainstream US media).

Part 1, Baby It's Cold Outside:




Part 2, The Phantom Victory:



Part 3, The Shadows in the Cave: