David Broder's formula for failure:

From his op-ed:

Corrupt and inefficient as [the people running Kabul] may be, they are less of a threat than the Taliban would be. And so we must prop them up.

Especially since he also writes:

[While American troops are in Afghanistan] the Taliban can continue to exploit public frustration with the dysfunctional Afghan government, recruiting new fighters perhaps as fast as McChrystal can woo people away.

posted by Quiddity at 12/04/2009 03:45:00 AM

Obama's big joke:

From his remarks at the jobs summit:

... we heard from a broad cross-section of thinkers about the urgent need for more effective worker training. And Randall Stephenson from AT&T talked about a successful partnership with San Antonio community colleges to train workers for jobs that the company is committed to bringing back from India.

At what wages?


posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2009 09:45:00 PM

Fed chairman suggests dishonoring Social Security bonds:

In the news:

"Well, Senator, I was about to address entitlements," Bernanke replied [to Senator Bennett]. "I think you can't tackle the problem in the medium term without doing something about getting entitlements under control and reducing the costs, particularly of health care."

Bernanke reminded Congress that it has the power to repeal Social Security and Medicare.

"It's only mandatory until Congress says it's not mandatory. And we have no option but to address those costs at some point or else we will have an unsustainable situation," said Bernanke.
...
"Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money is, as he put it," Bernanke said. "The money in this case is in entitlements."

Bernanke has showed his hand. He's got to go.

UPDATE: More on Bernanke by Cenk Uygur.


posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2009 04:24:00 PM

Give the rich 2010:

The Washington Post argues, unpersuasively: (emp add)

Extend the estate tax

Congress should vote to make the 2009 levels permanent.

... the estate tax, having gradually dwindled, is set to be eliminated entirely next year -- only to spring back to life, full-force, in 2011.

The least bad, hold-your-nose alternative would be to set the tax permanently at its 2009 level, exempting the first $3.5 million of any individual estate -- $7 million for a married couple -- from taxation. At this level, 99.8 percent of estates are not subject to the tax. (...)

Making the 2009 level permanent would drain nearly $400 billion from the federal treasury from 2012 to 2021 compared with letting the estate tax revert to the rules in effect in 2001, when the tax was set at 55 percent with a $1 million exemption per person.

... the ordinary legislative inclination -- do nothing and let the tax expire in 2011 -- is also unsustainable. People are entitled to some stability for purposes of estate planning. Once the estate tax has lapsed, reinstituting it at any level will be portrayed as a tax increase, and good luck with that in an election year. In an era of increasing income inequality, at a moment of trillion-dollar deficits, it seems hardly too much to ask of the wealthiest that -- after transferring $7 million to the heirs -- they pay some tax on the rest.

What the Post does not tell you is what the 2009 rate is. It's 45%. "Doing 2009" is not simply a matter of 2001 with a higher exemption, but the Post is willing to let you think that's the case. Why is the Post not informing their readers?

Also, the "instability" that the Post is fretting about is hardly one that will bother estate planning. 2010 is a pure gimmie for the ultra-rich. Let them have it, and then take the schedule back to 2001 levels.

And the already-in-the-law reinstitution is, if anything, a Bush tax increase. The Post is of the mindset that even in these days of massive deficits, a tax increase for the wealthy is something that cannot be implemented, even if it's on autopilot. The Post would rather cut Social Security benefits or Medicare or something like that.

UPDATE: A bill along the lines of what the Post advocates, passed in the House 225 - 200.

Votes:

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Democratic	225	26		6
Republican		174		3

posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2009 04:26:00 AM

Bernanke blues:

From Naked Capitalism: (original emphasis)

Progress on “No on Bernanke,” Including Sanders Putting Hold on Confirmation

The efforts to block Bernanke’s confirmation are getting some traction.

First, Bernie Sanders of Vermont said he is putting a hold on Bernanke’s confirmation. A hold (in lay terms) is a threat to filibuster. This is actually pretty serious and seldom done. It takes 60 votes to beat one back, and there are enough procedural roadblocks that a filibustering Senator can throw so that it holds up Senate business for a few days, even if it is ultimately unsuccessful. And by current tallies, there are a few Senators on the right who are also vehemently opposed to Bernanke and would support this move.

Now so far, this is merely an obstacle to reappointment, but this is still much more serious opposition than anyone would have expected even a week ago.

Second, a Rasmussen poll (hat tip reader Andrew) released today found that only 21% of Americans favor Bernanke’s reappointment. This is significant not simply due to the lousy results, but that Rasmussen bothered to run the poll at all. This was not a client sponsored poll; Rasmussen thought this was newsworthy enough to run this on its own. Admittedly, a large proportion are undecided, but twice as many oppose a Bernanke reappointment as support it.

From Rasmussen: (emp add)

Ben Bernanke begins the formal process tomorrow for confirmation to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, but 41% of Americans think President Obama should name someone new to the post. (...)

Republicans are more strongly opposed to Bernanke’s reappointment than Democrats and adults not affiliated with either of the major parties. However, investors support a second term for Bernanke by more than two-to-one over non-investors.

Yeah.


posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2009 09:53:00 PM

Tiger Woods:

Man, that story is everywhere. National networks, local news, radio, Internet, etc.

Not just the bare story, but extended segments about dealing with infidelity, post-divorce settlements, how it will affect golf, other athletes in similar situations. One news program showed - in its entirety - that Taiwanese computer animated simulation of what "might have happened".

This is a prime motivator for taking a complete break from the news for a week. It had better be gone by then,


posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2009 07:55:00 PM

Fascism defined:

According to Umberto Eco:

Characteristics of fascism are as follows:

1. The Cult of Tradition,
2. The Rejection of Modernism,
3. The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake,
4. Disagreement as Treason,
5. Fear of Difference,
6. The Main Privilege is to Be Born in the Same Country,
7. The Followers Must be Humiliated by the Wealth and Force of their Enemies,
8. Life is Lived For Struggle,
9. Contempt For the Weak,
10. Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero,
11. Disdain for Women and Condemnation for Non Standard Sexuality,
12. Respect for the Majority and Disdain for Individualism,
13. Respect for Impoverished Vocabulary and Elementary Syntax in Order to Limit Complex and Critical Reasoning

There are allegedly 14 characteristics, but from the list provided it's not clear how that number is arrived at. Perhaps the last element is missing the Oxford comma and "Elementary Syntax ..." is a separate entry.


posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2009 05:20:00 PM

Do ya like a little Doom and Gloom reading?

Check out 14 reasons Obama's love of Wall Street will trigger the Great Depression 2 at Marketwatch.

It's a little overdone, but the overall theme is that in the last 20 years or so, the U.S. economy became seriously unbalanced and hasn't been rectified - yet.


posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2009 02:10:00 AM

What?

In an editorial about Nassau County elections and budgets, the New York Times writes this:

Mr. Corzine fell into a hole created by the reckless borrowing and tax-cutting of the state’s last Republican governor, Christine Todd Whitman.

Christine Todd Whitman was in office from 1994 to 2001. After a mix of governors and acting governors, Corzine assumed office in 2006.

Was the Whitman fiscal legacy so enduring? It may have been, but that's not been commonly associated with her. The Times surprises with it's charge.


posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2009 01:13:00 AM

An (80% bearish) view of the economic future:

Over at the Big Picture, a longish essay by John Hussman. Excerpts:

I should have assumed that Wall Street’s tendency toward reckless myopia – ingrained over the past decade – would return at the first sign of even temporary stability. The eagerness of investors to chase prevailing trends, and their unwillingness to concern themselves with predictable longer-term risks, drove a successive series of speculative advances and crashes during the past decade – the dot-com bubble, the tech bubble, the mortgage bubble, the private-equity bubble, and the commodities bubble. And here we are again.

Frankly, I’ve come to believe that the markets are no longer reliable or sound discounting mechanisms. The repeated cycle of bubbles and predictable crashes over the recent decade makes that clear. Rather, investors appear to respond to emerging risks no more than about three months ahead of time. Worse, far too many analysts and strategists appear to discount the future only in the most pedestrian way, by taking year-ahead earnings estimates at face value, and mindlessly applying some arbitrary and historically inconsistent multiple to them.

In part, the market’s increasing propensity toward speculation reflects the increasing lack of fiscal and monetary discipline from our leaders. Policy makers who seek quick fixes and could care less about long-term consequences undoubtedly encourage investors to embrace the same value system. Paul Volcker was the last Fed Chairman to have any sense that discipline and the acceptance of temporary discomfort was good for the nation.

In my estimation, there is still close to an 80% probability (Bayes’ Rule) that a second market plunge and economic downturn will unfold during the coming year.

posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2009 02:03:00 PM

James Fallows on Cheney:

I am not aware of a case of a former president or vice president behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan.

The "aid and comfort to the enemy" part was particularly objectionable.

Sullivan comments and asks this:

I might add that one wonders what the circumstances were in which Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei took a trip to interview Cheney the day before Obama's Afghanistan address. What was the news hook? Did Cheney summon them to transcribe his vile assault? Did they request a newsy interview the day before Obama's speech?

posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2009 01:56:00 PM

Very bad selection:

There's been a lot of talk lately about the "virtues" of stigma (in particular, relating to food stamps). A post at NRO celebrates stigma. It quoted Charles Murray, who had this to say:

First, stigma leads people to socialize their children in ways that minimize the chance that they’ll need help as they grow up. When children are taught that accepting charity is a disgrace, they also tend to be taught the kinds of things they should and shouldn’t do to avoid that disgrace.

Wow. Lots of times it's not something a person did or didn't do that leads them to accept charity. Health problems are the best example of that. But Murray still want's "accepting charity" to be a disgrace.

He continues:

Second, stigma encourages the right kind of self-selection. People in need are not usually in a binary yes-no situation. Instead, they are usually somewhere on a continuum from “I’m desperate” to “Gee, a little help would be kind of nice.” Stigma makes people ask whether the help is really that essential. That’s good—for the affordability of giving help, and for the resourcefulness of the potential recipients.

Murray is talking about selection of assistance by a potential recipient. That stigma leads said person to only accept help when the need overrides the "stigma barrier".

But there's another kind of selection going on in this scenario. There are many people who just don't care about stigma. They are typically boorish, rude, grasping, and not particularly nice. They would be first in line for whatever is being offered, while everybody else - those who wish to conform to social norms (aka "the good guys") shy away. That's what implementing stigma does. It is a form of selection that distributes goods in a way that most of us would find unfair. But conservatives are all for it.


posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2009 07:47:00 AM

Dick Cheney in "Fox News mode"

These remarks are straight from the Hannity / Fox Nation / O'Reilly talking points:

"Here's a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place ... and who now travels around the world apologizing," Cheney said. "I think our adversaries -- especially when that's preceded by a deep bow ... -- see that as a sign of weakness."

Apologizing!

Bowing!

Cheney is using code (sort of) but it's unlikely that anybody outside of the Fox viewership or right wing radio audience gets the message.


posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2009 07:33:00 AM