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.