The time for emails to Obama is long gone

First, on issues like Social Security and Medicare, he is NOT Bill Clinton "triangulating" in the mid-1990s. He actually wants these cuts. That's one reason he has squeezed House Democrats out of the picture. (Take note, David Brookses of the world who critique his leadership style.)

More proof that he wants these cuts? Remember, the "Catfood Commission" was HIS commission and he has never disavowed its recommendations. Second, his knifing in the back single-payer national health care.

The health care issue also shows not just that Obama lied when he talked about how "open" his administration would be, but the degree of brazenness with which he lied.

And, yet, many people think that clicking a link from MoveOn will magically inspire Obama to "save Social Security."

Wrong.

Get it through your thick heads, people who still have Obama love affairs, bromances, unreturned infatuations. Grover Cleveland Obama doesn't care how you feel, unless you finally get a clue and tell him you're voting Green.

And, that you make that a reality, not just an idle threat.

The only things you accomplish by clicking a MoveOn link are encouraging online slacktivism and encouraging MoveOn to try to hit you up for money.

Google+ - blog followers and others with G-mail

If you're interested, this is me on Google+. I'm not yet "gung-ho" about it, and will probably be more active on FB first, but, we'll play it from there.

Democracy: An intrinsic good or "only" a utilitarian one?

A British philosopher of science, Philip Kitcher, makes the argument that in at least some science issues, and specifically that of anthropogenic global warming, it's clear that democracy's "good" in general is "only" utilitarian, and that in the specific case of AGW, it has, at least right now, no intrinsic good at all.

In other words, to put this bluntly, sometimes, as in this case, democracy is bad.

Do we need this, or Kitcher to tell us that, though? Probably not.

Stereotypes about it aside, specifics of how democracy was structured in Weimer Germany show it was utilitarianly bad, in the end. Ditto for the fledging socialist democracy of Russia between the two 1917 revolutions.

When democracy in a specific situation is bad for structural reaons, that doesn't mean other versions of democracy would be bad in that situation. The more stable-post WWII Germany democracy might well have survived Weimar. A different Russian leader than Alexander Kerensky, western democracies not threatening a loan cutoff if Kerensky took Russia out of the war, or both, would have increased the survival odds for 1917 democracy.

That said, those historical issues all center on matters readily understandable by laypeople. The average citizen, though, as the SciAm blog points out ... just doesn't get global warming. Or other science issues.

Now, as the article notes, Kitcher's proposed solution is both expensive and unwieldy. Beyond that, psychologically, as Chris Mooney and others have noted, many people reason and argue to strengthen in-tribe beliefs, and Kitcher's program simply isn't likely to overcome that.

So, in a place like the U.S., a nonparliamentary democracy where the use of executive orders has steadily expanded over the last decades, how much democracy should a president "sacrifice" if he or she is really ready to "go to the mat" on this one?

Let me add that, right now, I am reading Seth Mnookin's "The Panic Virus." Per statistics such as the fact that 18 states now allow loophole-ridden "philosophical exceptions" for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children, it's arguable that democracy kills people. No, not as often as dictatorships. But, this is a clear illustration of why, even if "intrinsic goods" exist a lot in the world, democracy doesn't have intrinsic worth.

I should add a bit about my philosophical inclinations, as part of why I think Kitcher has some good thoughts.

I'm an anti-absolutist in general, and specifically, somewhat related to this, an anti-idealist. So, I generally shy away from claims of things having intrinsic value, unless it's something like clear, evolutionarily-grounded questions of ethics.

At the same time, though, I'm not a utilitarian, certainly not ion the narrow philosophical sense, because utilitarianism has a boatload of philosophical problems, some of them ethical (as Sam Harris, probably unwittingly, demonstrated in "The Immoral Landscape.") What means are "allowable" to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number? If we decide, in dire emergencies, to "weight" needs of children vs. senior citizens, by how much do we do that? And who decide? How much of a supermajority, speaking of democracy, should be required for many "hedonistic" calculus" issues? Bentham, Mill and their followers, including Mr. Harris, basically ignore or dodge these and related questions.

So, really, my answer is that democracy doesn't have an intrinsic value, and that, in principle, we can never agree on how much utilitarian value most things in life do or do not have. That's kind of where Walter Kaufmann comes from on "Without Guilt or Justice" which pretty much demolishes Rawls, and by extension and indirectly, utilitarianism in general.

NYT op-ed roundup on freedom and America

The good Joe Nocera defends Cyrus Vance Jr. against Bernard-Henri Lévy. Why can't he write more op-eds like this?

Even David Brooks thinks the modern Congressional GOP is pretty stupid on its rigid no-tax stance on debt negotiations.

Meanwhile, one Senate Republican and two Democrats are pushing for Afghanistan withdrawal.

And the usually good Roger Cohen is, again, with a solid look at the present and future of Brazil.

Let's be fair, or, the gods were NOT crazy

The second half of the title of this post on fairness, and its deep roots in the human nature, come from the fact that the Kung! "bushmen" of the Kalahari desert are among the studied people who reinforce this.
Among the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa, a successful hunter who may be inclined to swagger is kept in check by his compatriots through a ritualized game called “insulting the meat.”
That said, note that societies with written "commandments," etc. all are post-agricultural revolution, with private property and all its attendant problems, started us down the road of today's hypercapitalism.

And, yes, there's a strong evolutionary past for sharing more:

As Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has pointed out, you will never see two chimpanzees carrying a log together. The advent of agriculture and settled life may have thrown a few feudal monkeys and monarchs into the mix, but evolutionary theorists say our basic egalitarian leanings remain.

Studies have found that the thirst for fairness runs deep. As Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich and his colleagues reported in the journal Nature, by the age of 6 or 7, children are zealously devoted to the equitable partitioning of goods, and they will choose to punish those who try to grab more than their arithmetically proper share of Smarties and jelly beans even when that means the punishers must sacrifice their own portion of treats.

Deeply evolutionary:

A sense of fairness is both cerebral and visceral, cortical and limbic. In the journal PLoS Biology, Katarina Gospic of the Karolinska Institute’s Osher Center in Stockholm and her colleagues analyzed brain scans of 35 subjects as they played the famed Ultimatum game, in which participants bargain over how to divide up a fixed sum of money. Immediately upon hearing an opponent propose a split of 80 percent me, 20 percent you, scanned subjects showed a burst of activity in the amygdala, the ancient seat of outrage and aggression, followed by the arousal of higher cortical domains associated with introspection, conflict resolution and upholding rules; and 40 percent of the time they angrily rejected the deal as unfair.

That first swift limbic kick proved key. When given a mild anti-anxiety drug that suppressed the amygdala response, subjects still said they viewed an 80-20 split as unjust, but their willingness to reject it outright dropped in half. “This indicates that the act of treating people fairly and implementing justice in society has evolutionary roots,“ Dr. Gospic said. “It increases our survival.”

That said, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and the Kung! behind it, aren't about Marxism post-dictatorship of the proletariat, either. Some hierarchy is normal:

Low hierarchy does not mean no hierarchy. Through ethnographic and cross-cultural studies, researchers have concluded that the basic template for human social groups is moderately but not unerringly egalitarian. They have found gradients of wealth and power among even the most nomadic groups, but such gradients tend to be mild. In a recent analysis of five hunter-gatherer populations, Eric Aiden Smith of the University of Washington and his colleagues found the average degree of income equality to be roughly half that seen in the United States, and close to the wealth distribution of Denmark.

I'd take Denmark over the U.S. any day.

And, stress that hypercapitalism is unnatural.

And, note that this shows a role for legitimate evolutionary psychology.
Other recent news has documented the role of anger in perhaps promoting human fairness; this only deepens that.

National Corruption Index

Fellow true liberals, add National Corruption Index to your bookmarks! It focuses on national security-related corruption.

George Barack Hoover?

Yesterday, in blogging about the need to start really considering if President Barack Obama is a neoconservative, I compared him to tight-fisted Grover Cleveland.

Before, I've compared him to Jimmy Carter: someone brainy, but with the wrong type of brains, and psyche, for this job.

I see I'm not the first on this, and maybe I've not been thinking outside the box enough on presidential comparisons.

Two years ago, a Harper's article called him Barack Hoover Obama. I think the general comparison is true ... brainy but by the book, even though in pre-presidential lives, these people had operated outside the book at times.

However, there's a difference. I think Hoover, more than Obama, recognized the magnitude of the problem facing the country at that time. And, pre-FDR, there was little template for boldness.

Harper's Baker thinks at least partially along those lines:

Why was Herbert Hoover so reluctant to make the radical changes that were so clearly needed? It could not have been a question of competence or compassion for this lifelong Quaker, who had rushed sustenance to starving people around the world regardless of their nationalities or beliefs. Ultimately, Hoover could not break with the prevailing beliefs of his day. The essence of the Progressive Era in which he had come of age—the very essence of his own public image—was that government was a science. It was not a coincidence that this era brought us the very term “political science,” along with the advent of “nonpartisan” elections and “city managers” to replace mayors. ...

Progressivism aspired to be something of a political science itself, untrammeled by ideological or partisan influence: there was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and all unselfish and uncorrupted individuals could be counted on to do the right thing, once they were shown what that was.

There were plenty of progressives, led by Teddy Roosevelt, who understood that bringing real change meant fighting to bust up trusts, regain public ownership of utilities, and secure rights for labor, women, and others. But the great national effort inspired by World War I softened memories of the bitter class conflict that had characterized much of American politics since the Civil War. ...

Hoover’s every decision in fighting the Great Depression mirrored the sentiments of 1920s “business progressivism,” even as he understood intellectually that something more was required. Farsighted as he was compared with almost everyone else in public life, believing as much as he did in activist government, he still could not convince himself to take the next step and accept that the basic economic tenets he had believed in all his life were discredited; that something wholly new was required.

Obama has the the advantage of seeing that template for activist government that FDR developed. He has the advantage of much more being developed in economic policy theory in 80 years since Hoover was president.

Baker could perhaps be partially excused for writing the following two years ago, in claiming "Obama was alone" with Democrats like Max Baucus and Evan Bayh in the Senate:

Obama’s lack of direction, his lack of accomplishments in his Hundred Days and counting, cannot be attributed solely to his illusions about the august body he just vacated. Obama, like Hoover in his time, is almost alone among politicians in grasping the magnitude of the crisis. In his masterful February speech before the joint houses of Congress, Obama explained to the country why we cannot afford to continue with a tottering health-care system that has left 46 million Americans uninsured and that impedes our exports by adding, for instance, $1,500 to the cost of every GM car; why it is that climate change has to be addressed now, and how by addressing it we can regain our industrial base and actually begin to make things again; why it is that our financial system could not simply be bailed out and patched up but must be fundamentally reformed and re-regulated. Above all, he explained the necessary interaction of all these reforms, of how they were not just some liberal wish list but the actions that the radical moment demanded.

And yet ... Baker needs no forgiveness, for already then, he recognized the reality of Barack Obama:

Speeches almost as powerful have followed, always linking these ideas together. But, like Hoover, Obama has been unable to make his actions live up to his words. Health care is being gummed to death on Capitol Hill. Obama has done nothing to pass “card check” provisions that would facilitate union organization and quietly announced that he would not seek stronger labor and environmental protections in NAFTA. He has capitulated on cap-and-trade in the budget outline and never even bothered to push for an actual carbon tax. Only minuscule portions of the stimulus bill or his budget proposals were dedicated to mass transit, and his indifference to the issue—what must be a major component of any serious effort to go green—was reflected in his appointment of a mediocre Republican time-server, Ray LaHood, as his transportation secretary.

Still worse is Obama’s decision to leave the reordering of the financial world solely to Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner. ... Just as Herbert Hoover could not, in the end, break away from the best economic advice of the 1920s, Barack Obama is sticking with the “key men” of the 1990s. ...

No doubt, President Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, would claim that by practicing “the art of the possible,” they are ensuring that “the perfect does not become the enemy of the good.” But by not even proposing the relevant legislation, Obama has ceded a key part of the process—so much so that his retreat seems not so much tactical as a reversion to his core political beliefs.

Of course, the reality is that Emanuel was and is as much a "time server" as LaHood. And, appointed by the same man.

And so Obama chooses to be "incremental" in change. Or, not even wanting real "change" in fiscal and economic policy, whether on taxation, regulation, or other issues.

Or, per Baker, in addition to Obama believing his own myth, he believes myth about Bill Clinton, too:

Just as Herbert Hoover came to internalize the “business progressivism” of his era as a welcome alternative to the futile, counterproductive conflicts of an earlier time, so has Obama internalized what might be called Clinton’s “business liberalism” as an alternative to useless battles from another time—battles that liberals, in any case, tended to lose. Clinton’s business liberalism, however, is a chimera, every bit as much a capitulation to powerful and selfish interests as was Hoover’s 1920s progressivism.

Clinton was the author of his own myth here. His claim that he was ignorant of how his whole "program" was going to be hostage to the bond market because of its worries about the national debt rang hollow even then, when one realizes how closely he palled around with financier Jackson Stephens when Slick Willie was governor of Arkansas.

So, in that sense, it's not fair to compare Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama. It's not fair to Hoover.

First, Calvin Coolidge never told whoppers like Clinton did to inflate his myth. Second, Hoover never would have believed them, anyway. Third, Hoover never wrote up his own myth, let alone inflicted it on a largely unwitting electorate.

Picture if Harry Truman had promised to veto Taft-Hartley, then backed off that promise after the House of Morgan gave him a secret slush fund, and you get the idea of where today's national Democratic leadership is at.

Another Obama enviro fail

Why is his administration fighting the EU's proposed carbon permits for airlines? Rather, if he really were an environmentalist, he'd back this and use it as leverage to try to get something similar, if m ore modest, done here in America while challenging American jet engine makers like GE and Pratt & Whitney, to do better.

Should we officially call Obama a neocon?

Will Obama snatch defeat from the jaws of debt talks victory?

That was the original title for this blog post, but I realized it had become something more ... the more that's the new title.

And, about that?

Answer at the end of this post.

Well, of course, would be the obvious example. If even David Brooks can find a blind-hog acorn by pointing out the problems with Obama's "consensus" style of what passes for leadership, you know this is a concern and not just inside the MSM.

On debt ceiling talks with the GOP, the L.A. Times nails it:

(E)ven if Obama were to gain all the tax-law changes he wants, new revenue would make up only about 15 cents of each dollar in deficit reduction in the package. An agreement by the Republicans to accept new revenue would be a political victory for Obama because "no new taxes" has been such an article of faith for the GOP.

That's just half the problem, though. Here's the bigger half:

Acquiescing to GOP demands would be the third major compromise for Democrats in the past year — a point of considerable frustration for the party's liberal base. Despite Democratic opposition, Congress voted in December to extend the Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and agreed this spring to steep budget reductions to avert a federal government shutdown.

Some Democrats believe Obama set the stage for the current situation by opening negotiations on deficit reduction this spring with a proposal that contained a 3-to-1 ratio between spending reductions and tax increases. Administration officials defend that move, saying the president began discussions at what one senior official called a "realistic starting point," not one designed to maximize his bargaining position.

Well, wrong, Preznit Kumbaya.

As with the stimulus package, you negotiated away the compromise in public before it was time to start compromising. And, this time, we can't even blame Rahm Emanuel for this. And, neither can you.

It's clear that you WANT to have "compromises" like this, Mr. Semiconservative, no longer even a neoliberal.

You're the same Preznit Grover Cleveland Obama who appointed all the members of that Catfood Commission, and never disavowed its work. For all we know, you're making a side deal with members of the Congressional GOP as we speak.

Seriously, shouldn't we start calling Obama a neoconservative? Given that he started from an affiliation with the "radical" reformer Saul Alinsky, similar to the left-wing roots of many of today's neocons, has connections to the University of Chicago, if not its economics school, has become boxed-in on his position vis-a-vis Israel and will probably shift further right, and is a clear global warmonger beyond the wet dreams of GOP neocons, we probably should.

I see I'm not the first on this ... two years ago, a Harper's article called him Barack Hoover Obama. I think the general comparison is true ... brainy but by the book, even though in pre-presidential lives, these people had operated outside the book at times.

However, there's a difference. I think Hoover, more than Obama, recognized the magnitude of the problem facing the country at that time. And, pre-FDR, there was little template for boldness.

Obama has the the advantage of seeing that template. He has the advantage of much more being developed in economic policy theory in 80 years since Hoover was president.

And yet ...

He chooses to be "incremental" in change. Or, not even wanting real "change" in fiscal and economic policy, whether on taxation, regulation, or other issues.

Why true progressives mistrust the MSM

Walter Russell Means, an allegedly liberal pundit/opinionator, shows how and why the MSM can be more anti-progressive in opinion pieces from the alleged liberal side of things than it can be on how it reports straight news.

This drivel of his can essentially be boiled down to the "shut up call" of, in essence, "we should all just learn to love neoliberalism."

Exxon still "spinning" on gobal warming

And, even suckering people who should know better.

It's all over the place that eXXXonMobil has gotten busted for giving past support to yet another anthropogenic global warming denier.

The "sucker," perhaps, too? Jamie Vernon, doing fill-in blogging for Chris Mooney at Discover, with this happy-dopey post about eXXXon's non-admission of guilt, taking off from a NYT blog which had some eXXXon spinning in it. Spinning like this, from Alan Jeffers, an ExxonMobil spokesperson who said:

“I am not prepared to talk about the individual grant requirements, but if their positions are distracting to how we are going to meet the energy needs of the world, then we didn’t want to fund them.”

To which, I said:

Jamie ... you're being naive (and maybe Chris is too). You said:

However, I was heartened by comments from Alan Jeffers, an ExxonMobil spokesperson who said, “I am not prepared to talk about the individual grant requirements, but if their positions are distracting to how we are going to meet the energy needs of the world, then we didn’t want to fund them.”

Note that eXXXon's Jeffers said zip, zilch, nada about AGW. He said eXXXon was worried about "if their positions are distracting to how we are going to meet the energy needs of the world."

In other words, for eXXXon, the bottom line is still the bottom line. IF the Soons of the world threaten its massive profits in trying "to meet the energy needs of the world," then they're a problem. If not, not.

Grover C. Obama

More and more, at times, Preznit Kumbaya, the current occupier of the White House, reminds me of his 20th-previous predecessor, Grover Cleveland, in his second stint, as our 24th president.

The continued iffiness of Congressional Republicans to do a deal on the national deficit, and the logistic difficulties of getting such a deal done by Aug. 2, are the latest reason why.

Cleveland showed leadership Obama didn't, it's true. He more deliberately sucked up to Wall Street and ignored the working class than Obama did. But the similarities are there.

Paul Krugman says President Obama never expected that the current GOP would play this level of hardball with debt-ceiling issues. That's why he was too dumb to link a debt-ceiling rise to his extension of the Bush Obama tax cuts.

Bear in mind that G.O.P. leaders don’t actually care about the level of debt. Instead, they’re using the threat of a debt crisis to impose an ideological agenda. ...

And the reason Republicans are doing this is because they must believe that it will work: Mr. Obama caved in over tax cuts, and they expect him to cave again. They believe that they have the upper hand, because the public will blame the president for the economic crisis they’re threatening to create. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.

But, is Krugman right? Maybe Obama wants to be forced into a new "compromise" on this issue. Maybe we have yet to plunge the depths of how far he is beyond neoliberal to straight up conservative wannabe.

Maybe John Wiley Price IS a shakedown artist

Boy, there are times I miss living in Dallas, not just for the cultural life, but for the news world fun.

Hearing that Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is under investigation by the FBI is indeed one of those times. Supposedly, the $100K found in his house might be related to ... some "gravy" from Kwanzaafest and/or the south Dallas County inland port deal, which hopefully this will kill deader than a doornail. (Some tax paperwork from Kwanzaafest is here.)

Of course, Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer is the go-to person on this, noting not only the "shakedown" angle that JWP tried to pull on Richard Allen and The Allen Group over the inland port, but about how the Dallas Morning Snooze is trying to pretend it's never kissed JWP's ass.

Here's the alleged "shakedown":

In 2005, Price led an effort to stymie development of a massive rail and shipping development called the Inland Port in the black part of the city. The Inland Port promised more than 60,000 well-paid jobs with benefits in an area of the city that has had a Third World economy since Reconstruction.

The main developer, Richard Allen, had just completed five years of land purchases, planning and permission-seeking from Dallas and other communities involved and was ready to start selling and leasing land. But Price decreed that the whole thing needed to be put on hold. He said lots more planning was needed before Allen would be ready for prime time.

This was just after Allen had shot down an attempt by four of Price's allies to get Allen to give them $1.5 million and a 15 percent cut of his family-owned company in exchange for their help making sure he didn't have any political problems with southern Dallas politicians.

Having lived in Lancaster during this whole time, I know people there and nearby were desperate for this to take off, even if it wasn't really viable. For Price allegedly to want to be handed a stake in Allen's company, including possibly some subcontracting jobs for best buds of his, at any cost, was beyond tragic.

Schutze is right. Here's my take on a butt-kisser from the Snooze back in 2009 (original article gone), specifically trying to soft-pedal JWP's "shakedown" attempt and what he said about it to Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. More of my blogging on this here.

Now, this all said, I still wonder what state Sen. Royce West's angle is in this. He's a much smoother person than JWP, but ... does he still strike me as an "operator"? Just one with a bigger, as well as smoother, swing? Well ... what do you think?

Of course, with the economic slowdown having killed low-cost logistics storage, The Allen Group declared Chapter 11 18 months ago.

Meanwhile, it looks like JWP is also creative in the world of land acquisition.