Abraham Lincoln said that, “I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it,” but this also nails what religion should be:
H/t IMContrary at the Shortskoolbus BBS.
Category: Philosophy
A Must Read on Obama and the 3rd Way
Daniel De Groot at Open Left pulls a comment by sTivo and it may be the clearest explanation of both Barack and 3rd way politicians yet given:
When Barack Obama made his famous remarks about Ronald Reagan being transformational, it was misinterpreted as being political, an attempt to reach out to the other side. It actually was, as some feared, philosophical. It really did mean, sincerely, that except around the edges, he thought that Reaganism-Thatcherism was irreversible. Just as Bill Clinton does, just as Tony Blair does.
The Third-Wayers are serious about this. Seriously deluded, perhaps, but dead serious. There was never an attempt to triangulate the “independent center”, those who still believed in Reaganism but were distressed by the partisan cultural meanness. That was sincere. Those who were played were the Democratic base. They would have to be satisfied with corporate-style knockoffs of social-democratic ideas (health care being the most obvious example). Labor reformers would have to be mollified with “we don’t have 60 votes”. And symbolic gestures devoid of content like inviting Pete Seeger to the White House.
(emphasis mine)
Occam’s razor seems to mitigate toward this explanation.
Go read the rest.
H/t Atrios.
One of Life’s Deeper Questions
Are they Nazi zombies, or zombies who were formerly Nazis?
My New Philosophy
No clue as to the source, but it’s funny, and NSFW, as hell.
F*ck It – watch more funny videos
(on edit)
It appears to have come from the Dave Chapelle show.
Putting Descartes Before the Horse
Not entirely safe for work
It’s not entirely safe fow work, but it is very, very funny.
Me, my philosophy is driven by Marxism, not Karl, but rather the Marx brothers, most notably the brother who never appeared before the camera, though he was on stage, Gummo.
Why do I follow Gummo Marx?
Because if I didn’t who else would.
I will note that I have an affection for Zeppo as well, since he was actually involved in engineering and manufacture, bring the man behind the Marman Clamp, so he is a fellow engineer, after a fashion.
H/t The Big Picture.
Quote of the Day
Kevin Drum’s take may very well be accurate:
Here’s the good news: this record of progressive accomplishment officially makes Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. And here’s the bad news: this shoddy collection of centrist, watered down, corporatist sellout legislation was all it took to make Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. Take your pick.
I’m a glass half empty kind of guy myself.
Deep Thought
Victor Stenger, noted atheist, has come up with the following ad for London buses.
Speaking as someone who is religious, I wholeheartedly agree: science does fly you to the moon, and religion does fly you into buildings.
Whatever benefits an individual, or a society, might derive from religion, there are real dangers associated with people assuming that a supreme being sanctions their actions.
I would also add that the socialist critique of religion, that it is used to maintain the power of the powerful, Karl Marx said that, “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” is yet another concern.
I would argue that most of these problems are more an artifact of religion than they are of private and personal faith, and, interestingly enough, the majority of the founding fathers, including George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, would wholeheartedly agree on this point.
Motivation, and What Works
It Sounds good, but is it true?
I know that American, or more accurately Anglo-Saxon, management styles suck. We have no better examples than the economic meltdown, the collapse of 2 of the big 3 auto makers, BP, etc.
The overpaid masters of the universe model is a failure, and I would argue that it was eminently foreseeable.
Certainly the ideas and techniques suggested here are worth a try, and in any case, the cartooning on a white board is worth the 10 minutes 48 seconds.
H/t The Big Picture
Why We are a Sick Nation
I don’t mean mentally ill, I mean generally unhealthy.
A study has been done, and it shows that countries with more equitable wealth distribution are healthier, even amongst the wealthiest in society:
……
Links between bodily and economic well-being are far from straightforward. In the related area of socioeconomic inequality we’ve already become aware of unexpected influences through the work of Professor Richard Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham.
In his 2009 book The Spirit Level, co-authored with Kate Pickett, he summarised a raft of research all pointing in more or less the same direction. In countries where there is a big earnings gap between rich and poor, life expectancy is lower while mental illness, obesity and drug and alcohol abuse are all more common.
The real surprise is that it’s not only the poor who suffer. The population as a whole do less well if the gap is wider. The nations with the smallest wealth gap and the lowest incidence of health and social problems are the Japanese and the Scandinavians. The countries with, respectively, the greatest and highest are America, Portugal and Britain. The biological explanation for this is uncertain, but possibly mediated by the hormonal effects of perpetual anxiety about status and position, or loss of them. Economics affects health but not always as you might expect.
In our accommodating the insatiable desire of the people at the top for, “Another yacht to water ski behind,” we are shortening, and worsening, the lives of everyone in our society, both among the haves and have nots.
The economists or social scientists might have a more complex explanation for this phenomenon, but as for me, I will keep the lesson simple, “Evil is bad for you.”
A Marxist Analysis of the Financial Meltdown
It’s kind of like watching a dinosaur walking down main street
There is some things here that are right, and some that are wrong, and the hard part is determining which is which, but the white-board cartoons make it entertaining. (11:10)
To be true, I’m not sure just how “Marxist” the lecturer, David Harvey is.
I really don’t know him, and this lecture really sounds a bit more Fabian Socialist than full blown Marxist, but in any case it is a new way to look at what happened, and heterodoxy is what is needed here.
H/t Felix Salmon.
A Brief Survey of the Flavors of Libertarianism
A Contemptible Excuse for an Educator…
And a contemptible excuse for a human being.
And no, I am not referring to DC schools chief Michelle Rhee, who by all indications subscribes to a similar policy, but rather New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein, because all he thinks that all that has to happen to fix schools is to make teacher’s jobs crappier:
Klein told Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute last week that the D.C. contract is marvelous and in fact ground-breaking. ‘This deal slayed The three dragons. Seniority. Lockstep pay. Tenure. It got them all.’
(emphasis mine)
I understand that management does not like labor unions, and does not like the protections that union contracts afford to workers.
So I can understand how an administrator might see a weakening or destruction of a labor union as a step on the road to school improvement, or at least a step on the road to making his job easier.
That being said, what Mr. Klein is saying here is that crappifying the teacher’s working conditions is The Only Thing that is required to fix schools. That is what he is saying when he talks about the three dragons.
School reformers view education like investment bankers, and other chief executives, view their jobs: They have no obligation to work for the stake-holders, children and teachers for schools and the shareholders and employees for businesses, they simply have to work for their own personal benefit.
It’s not about education, it’s about making things more convenient for administrators, you see.
I can’t speak to whether or not Michelle Rhee holds the same opinions as her one time mentor Joel Klein,since she hasn’t explicitly stated that she holds this view, as Klein clearly has.
My guess is that she holds these views, particularly since she went out of her way to ensure that millions in private funding for the DC schools was dependent her continued employment as the Chancellor. (Scroll down past the snark about her fiancee.)
This is why, when I hear people like Rhee and Klein talk about accountability, or when I hear someone like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sing the praises of charter schools (which, by the way don’t outperform public schools), I roll my eyes.
The culture of American management for the past 30 years or so has been to maximize personal gain at the expense of both the enterprise the society as a whole, and I guess that this is just a reflection of this warped value system.
While it is a revolting and reprehensible development as a nation-wide trend, it’s just plain evil when our children, and their ability to become thoughtful citizens to the alter of executive expedience.
Found on the Internet
I do not know who came up with this, but they are a genius:
Economic Quote of the Year*
Paul Krugman finds this quote from Adam Posen of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee regarding people who think that somehow the European Central Bank is not “Chaste” enough in matters of fighting inflation because it is engaging in quantitative easing (printing money) in the form of buying bonds:
Cultures which make a public fixation of virginal maturity, of a stylized maiden’s reputation, tend to be backward superstitious cultures that impede people exercising autonomy and making responsible choices.
Word up.
*So far.
Alabama Primaries, and Thoughts on What It Means
Parker Griffith, the Blue Dog Democrat turned Republican, just lost his bid for the Republican nomination to Mo Brooks by 18 points, which is generally known as a shellacking.
So, this is the 2nd party switcher with the backing of the national party, Arlen Specter being the other who has lost the primary.
In the other race on interest, Artur Davis got destroyed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Alabama, and it was another run away, with 62%-38% to Ron Sparks, where Davis was consistently ahead in the polls the entire time.
Hell, the day before, CNN was writing as if his nomination was a done deal.
Interestingly, in Alabama, the numbers appear to indicate that the margins were the same both in predominantly white, and predominantly black areas, despite the fact that Davis is black, and Sparks is white.
So why did black voters walk away from a black candidate in what could have been a historical race?
Well, they looked at Mr. Davis, and found that he had been running hard to the right, looking at November, because he thought that the primary was a “Slam Dunk.”
Among other things, he:
- Pointedly disassociated himself from the black community and black organizations in Alabama, refusing to even meet with them, and these organizations came out for Sparks, who actively courted them.
- Voted against the Obama Healthcare bill. (And was the only member of the CBC to do so)
- Cozied up to the “cultural conservatives”, which in the USA means people who use code words for, “I want to keep the n*gg*rs down.”
I think that a part of this is a mark of maturity of the black political establishment in Alabama, they looked at policy and character, and decided that pigment did not matter.
I think another part is that Davis pointedly took the black vote for granted, and no voter, regardless of skin color, likes that.
It should be noted too that Artur Davis went to law school with, and was a friend of, Barack Obama, which should have given some more pull with voters.
Actually, this is a more general point, with Specter and Davis on the Democratic side, and with Griffith on the Republican side, and it is that base voters are no longer willing to be taken for granted, not even for a “friend of Barack”.
When they are, and told to suck it up and vote for the party approved candidate, they either vote for the other guy, or they stay home, and my guess is that it is the latter.
To the degree that either party is playing the , “Suck it up and vote for us card,” they will lose.
Unfortunately, while the Republicans have been throwing red meat at their base for the past 2 years, Barack Obama has been studiously cock-punching the DFHs* because he wants to look “post-partisan”.
Unless Obama realizes that compromise in the interest of appearing bipartisan creates both bad policy and bad politics, November will not be pretty.
I have come to the conclusion that Karl Rove’s real genius in his political work was not his completely amoral methods, but an understanding that, except in extreme circumstances,† motivating out the base wins elections.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
†A pointless war, “Heck of a job, Brownie”, Congressmen hitting on under pages, Terri Sciavo, and corruption and venality that just buggered the mind.
Hoisted from the comments
In a discussion of raising marginal tax rates, reader DJ wrote:
Interestingly enough, raising taxes on the rich does not result in prosperity either, it only serves to drive the economic activity out of the country derived from the holdings of the rich. The 90% tax rate in the depression only served to drive milliona[i]res out of the country.
Note here, that on the basis of his comments, DJ knows what he’s talking about and has a good grasp of the facts.
The fact that he made this comment is an indication of the truth of the old Mark Twain quote, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.“
DJ has assumed that self serving statements from people who don’t want their taxes raised actually have a basis in reality.
The myth that rich people did, and will again, “go Gault,” is just that, a myth.
First, and most importantly, the 90+% tax rate was not implemented until 1944-1945 (and then again in 1951-63, not times of slow GDP growth).
Second, there is no evidence that millionaire’s fled the country during the depression. The case is generally made that the recession of 1937 was caused by this, but only by people like Amity Shlaes (who is not to be trusted, see below) in her execrable book The Forgotten Man.
They suggest that because Roosevelt pursued tax evaders, it triggered the recession of 1937, because they went “Gault” and withdrew their money from the economy and put it in their mattresses.
Of course, the fact that neither Keynes, who blamed the tightening of fiscal policy by the government (which did include a tax hike) nor Friedman who blamed the tightening of monetary policy by the Fed, viewed this argument with anything but scorn, and this is the alpha to omega of honest economic thought.
Additionally, in order for people to flee the US income tax (after the first $91,400) you have to renounce your citizenship, which also precludes the ability to make campaign donations, which makes the regulatory arbitrage that generates this income, particularly in finance, which is where most of the tax rates increase would fall.
Essentially, if they leave the country and renounce their citizenship, the government guaranteed infinite ATM that they have goes away, because the Congress will no longer feel compelled to do their bidding.
I would also note that while the top 1% of earners account for 23.5% of income (2007), they account for less than 20% of spending (2008, they do quintiles, so it’s an approximation, and I don’t want to tease it out any further), so a dollar going to a rich pig™ is much less stimulative than a dollar going to a dollar going to someone in the bottom 4/5 of the population.
There is a legitimate question as to whether or not we should raise taxes on the rich today because we are still in a depressed economy, though I favor it.
That being said, many of our long-term structural problems come from the fact that income distribution is increasingly unequal, and the the use of high marginal tax rates is one of the best ways to change this.
I would also note that if the “geniuses” at Lehman, Bear Stearns, and Citi withhold their ideas for “financial innovation” as a result, we are all the better for that.
As to Amity Shlaes, who is typical of the people supporting the “going Gault” hypothesis, and arguably one of the most prominent proponents:
- She has no background in economics (degree in English)
- She is in idiot who lets her ideology dictate the facts (she was fired by the Financial Times for repeatedly submitting stories about the heroism and competence of Bush and His Evil Minions™ during Katrina).
- In order for her to justify her conclusions about 1937, she states as fact things that are unequivocally false.
Deep Thought
This is an interesting take on the Star Wars story.
Of note, the changes that George Lucas has made since the original has come out have had the effect of dehumanizing the troops of the Empire, in the original cut of Episode IV, you had Stormtroopers screaming as the fell, but now they are just a bunch of clone automatons.
I think that his idea was to make it more family friendly,* but what it has really done is to remove any element of the basic costs and immorality of war from the story.
Now all the damage is done to robots and clones, who, after all, aren’t people.
This is why dumbed down child friendly pap is frequently not only, not child friendly, but actually immoral.
</Rant>
*Much like he did in the infamous Christmas special.
True Dat
I don’t know why it takes a comedian to tell the truth
Following the passage of (admittedly tepid) healthcare reform, the Republicans are now saying that they won’t cooperate with the Democrats.
Of course, there was exactly 0% cooperation before, so we should not worry.
In any case, Bill Maher (at about 2:55 on the vid) says it with his characteristic aplomb:
New Rule: You can’t use the statement “there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year” as a threat if there was no cooperation in the first half of the year. Here’s a word the president should take out of his teleprompter: bipartisanship. People only care about that in theory, not in practice. The best thing that’s happened this year is when President Obama finally realized this and said, “Kiss my black ass, we’re going it alone, George W. Bush style.”
Two months ago, conservative Fred Barnes wrote, “The health care bill is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.” Well, if it’s dead, you just got your ass kicked by a zombie named Nancy Pelosi. Seriously, the last time a Democrat showed balls like that John Edwards’ girlfriend was filming it. Make all the botox jokes and she-shops-too-much jokes you want, but this is the biggest political victory a woman has ever achieved in America. Yes, Nancy Pelosi likes nice clothes. So does Sarah Palin. The difference is Nancy Pelosi pays for hers.
This should be the policy on financial reform too.
The Democrats should break out the parts that they can demagogue, and dare the Republicans to vote against. Make the Republicans vote against the sound bites, just like the Republicans did to the Democrats.
Deep Thought
H/t Driftglass.
Greece
Well, it looks like the issue with a possible default by Greece has been resolved, for a while at least, by a joint action of the EU and the IMF.
I think that this puts to rest the idea that Greece will leave the Euro, for a while at least, but the real problem is that the Germans have structured the Euro with the goal of furthering their mercantilist export driven goals, much as the Chinese have with the Yuan, and the solution here is not to kick the Greeks out of the Euros, but to kick the Germans out of the Euro.
Simply put, the German desire for new export markets has made them push aggressively for countries to join the monetary union before it is prudent, and to encourage them to do so by providing economic aid and by overvaluing the sovereign currency.
Unfortunately, this creates asymmetries that are creating the problems that we have now, and it will be a tough thing to avoid something like the downfall of European Exchange Rate Mechanism that occurred when George Soros, “Broke the Bank of England.”
The problem is that, absent the labor mobility that exists in the United States, where one need neither a work permit nor to learn a new language, these asymmetries will persist.
This has been further reinforced by the efforts of Europhiles to jump-start the mechanisms of European integration through direct and indirect subsidies to entice new members to join prematurely.
Damn ………… I gotta make this a longer form, and submit it to Marketplace as a guest editorial.