Category: Wanker

If the Washington Post Were to Replace Richard Cohen with Pat Buchanan………

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No one could tell the difference, except that Pat is a more interesting writer.

So, it’s OK to stalk a black boy in a hoodie because he’s a black boy in a hoodie, just like when he said that it was OK for jewelers to refuse to allow black people into their stores.

He also decided that the Polanski child rape was no big deal, basically because he likes Chinatown.  (I would note that there are legitimate issues of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, which are serious issues, but Cohen, and the almost as awful Anne Applebaum, are just horrible human beings.)

I do not understand why Cohen is not sweeping floors for a living.

Back Loaded Bribery

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If you play ball with the monied people who want law and regulation structured to ensure that their wealth increases even more, then they reward you with lucrative jobs, like a high paid lobbyist, or, as in the case of Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, an absurdly lucrative speaking gig:

During his tenure as Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner was constantly dogged by the belief that he was spawned from Wall Street. This thinking was false: If you need a refresher, Geithner had actually spent most of his career in government, and none of it at a bank. When he left office this year, Geithner said that it would be “extremely unlikely” for that to change.

But as it turns out, Geithner is now being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by massive financial organizations. It’s just that he isn’t being paid to work on Wall Street; he’s just being paid to talk every now and then.

The Financial Times reports that Geithner, like countless former public servants before him, has hit the highly lucrative speaking circuit. He’s already made about $400,000 in just three engagements. And that tab is being footed by financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank and Blackstone, which paid him about $200,000 and up to $100,000, respectively.

No one ever explicitly told Geithner that if he protected the banksters, he woud get a payoff, but this is explicit in Washington, DC’s revolving door.

He knew that he would get rewarded, and he has not been disabused of this belief.

H/t Gaius Publius.

It’s Like a Slow Motion Car Wreck

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So, the little people will be required to buy health insurance under the PPACA (Obamacare), but the requirement for big employers has been pushed back a year:

Businesses won’t be penalized next year if they fail to provide workers health insurance after the Obama administration decided to delay a key requirement under its signature 2010 health-care law.

The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, the administration said today. Under the provision, companies with 50 or more workers face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee if they don’t offer affordable insurance.

The move addresses complaints from employer groups to President Barack Obama’s administration about the burden of the law’s reporting requirements. The decision pushes the issue past the 2014 midterm congressional elections, as Republicans have sought to make the health law a symbol of government overreach.

“In our ongoing discussions with businesses we have heard that you need the time to get this right,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, said in a White House blog post announcing the decision. “We are listening.”

The move may lead some employers to delay providing coverage to workers. The law’s individual mandate remains in effect, a provision that requires most Americans to carry health insurance.

You knew that this was coming.

When big business talks, they, “Are listening.”

When it’s civil libertarians, , the poor and elderly, advocates for financial reform, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, etc., it’s, “talk to the hand”.

H/t to my Dad, who sent me a link to a (subscription only) WSJ article.

Paul Ryan Calls the NSA Surveillance “Creepy”, and He is Right

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Look at those dead eyes, he knows creepy

Seriously, makeing Paul f%$3ing Ryan right on ANYTHING is the epitome of fail:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) expressed misgivings with the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs, suggesting on Monday that the activities “go way beyond the scope” of what the federal government has been authorized to do by laws like the Patriot Act.

 “It comes across as creepy,” the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee said in an interview with the Wisconsin radio station WJRN. “I understand FISA court orders to go after some known person, and their phone records and whoever they’re communicating with. But to do a blanket dragnet nationwide, that seems to go way beyond the scope of the law that I’m familiar with called the Patriot Act.”

The fail is strong with the Obama administration.

More than any sitting president I have ever seen, Obama seems to obsess over his legacy.

Well, this is your legacy.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever.™

I Think that We May Have Identified Why College is So Expensive

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And the truth from the most unlikely of sources, the New York Post:

City College President Lisa Coico’s Upper West Side home is just four subway stops from the Manhattanville campus, but Coico is chauffeured the two miles to work and back every day in a state-issued Buick.

Coico, whose salary is $300,000, is among nearly 70 SUNY and CUNY officials who enjoy the use of taxpayer-funded wheels and sometimes a driver. In Coico’s case the driver is a college public-safety officer.

In 2009, after The Post exposed the number of commissioners chauffeured to their jobs, the state cracked down on the practice, as well as the personal use of vehicles by agency heads. But the university systems set their own policies.

Both the SUNY and CUNY chancellors have cars and drivers. CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein valued the personal use of his car last year at $14,985, the highest in the state.

College presidents are entitled to cars, as well.

The Ivory Tower execs are joyriding while students are struggling to meet soaring tuition, after trustees in 2011 approved $300-per-student increases for five years for the state and city college systems. CUNY students now pay more than $5,000 per year.

This is kind of a classic result of anti-competitive cartels.

The top universities in the nation have been colluding on tuition, fees, and financial aid for decades, they started in the 1960s, when the alternative to college was the Vietnam war, and once they stopped competing on price, they bid for professors, they build gold plated housing, and they overpaid administrators.

This is what happens with a cartel. They continue to compete, they just no longer compete on price, which leads to more spending on non core “bling”, which increases costs, which increases tuition.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

It doesn’t help that the US government is playing banker for all this, and refuses to institute meaningful cost controls.

H/t Atrios.

Epic Fail

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John Sidney McCain III goes to Syria. He takes a picture with the noble freedom fighters. One small problem: it turns out that two of the guys are terrorist who kidnapped religious pilgrims :

Everything was going relatively smoothly following John McCain’s surprise visit to hang out with Syrian rebels this week until Lebanon’s Daily Star reported that one of the “brave fighters” pictured on the senator’s Twitter is “a known affiliate of the rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims one year ago.” If so, McCain’s office said, that would be “regrettable.”

 “According to families of the remaining captives and one of the released men, Anwar Ibrahim, one of the men standing alongside McCain in photographs released by the senator’s office, is Mohammad Nour, the chief spokesman and photographer for the Northern Storm kidnappers,” according to the Daily Star. “Ibrahim and other members of the kidnapped family said they recognized Nour, and another man affiliated with the group, also identified as ‘Abu Ibrahim,’ immediately after seeing the photos.”

So, John McCain thinks that he knows who the good guys are.

Here’s a thought, if you cannot tell who is the good guys are, it’s best not to choose sides.

The Stoopid!!!! It Burns Us!!!!!

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This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

In response to the collapse of I-5 bridge north of Seattle, Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt,(a Republican, of course) thought that the concerns were overblown, because, “11 of the 12 Sections of the Bridge Are Still Standing“:

In the wake of the I-5 bridge collapse, the progressive activist group Fuse put together an online petition, urging state legislators to “Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!”

 ………

 Hard to read that as a controversial request, unless, of course, you are state Representative “Angry Ed” Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on the house transportation committee. Via email, Orcutt responds defensively to petitioners, objecting to any effort to “leverage more tax dollars” in response to the Skagit River bridge collapse:

[I]t is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

Dude, it’s not a bridge any more, it is a f%$#ing pier!!!!

Or, to quote yet another movie:

Garry: The generator’s gone.

 MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?

 Garry: It’s “gone”, MacReady.

*What, you’ve never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.

Full letter after the jump:

From: “Orcutt, Rep. Ed”
Date: May 28, 2013, 12:23:47 PM PDT
To: XXXX
Subject: RE: Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!

 XXXX,

 Many people have misunderstood terminology used in the aftermath of the I-5/Skagit River Bridge collapse.

 This bridge is deemed functionally obsolete — not structurally deficient. Functionally obsolete basically means that the width of the lanes do not meet current design widths. In other words, if it were to be built today, it would need to be wider.

 Since the incident, I have been on a conference call with the Governor (which included WSDOT and WSP officials); two briefing calls with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials; and have met with NTSB officials on the deck of the bridge. From NTSB to WSDOT, it is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

 It is important to note also, that DOT has specifically stated that if a bridge were deemed unsafe, it would be taken out of service. So, when you approach a bridge and see that it is open, please know that DOT has deemed it safe enough for the traffic using it.

 I agree with you that we must maintain our infrastructure to assure it remains safe, but let’s not confuse this incident or try to use it to leverage more tax dollars when the cause of this collapse had nothing to do with the availability of tax dollars.

 Ed

 Representative Ed Orcutt
20th Legislative District

 Olympia Office:
408 John L. O’Brien Building
PO Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504

 * ed.orcutt@leg.wa.gov
( 360.786.7990

Narcissistic Twaddle from “Liberal Hawks”

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The Washington Post published an article about how the Liberal Hawks are cowed because of their failures in Iraq and Libya:

For interests on both sides of Syria’s civil war, this has been the week to increase the pressure. Hezbollah sent reinforcements to the troops of President Bashar al-Assad, and Russia reiterated its intention to furnish the regime with weapons. At the same time, Republican Sen. John McCain secretly visited rebels and promised to push the Obama administration to arm the retreating forces. The European Union allowed its weapons embargo to lapse as nations such as Britain and France appear increasingly eager to aid the opposition fighters.

But amid the burst in outside engagement, one influential group seems noticeably silent. The liberal hawks, a cast of prominent left-leaning intellectuals, played high-profile roles in advocating for American military intervention on foreign soil — whether for regime change or to prevent humanitarian disasters. They pressured President Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia, provided intellectual cover on the left for President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq and urged President Obama to engage in Libya. But even as the body count edges toward 100,000 in Syria and reports of apparent chemical-weapons use by Assad, liberal advocates for interceding have been rare, spooked perhaps by the traumatic experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and the clear reluctance of a Democratic president to get mired in the Middle East. Call them Syria’s mourning doves.

“Everybody has their own ghosts to deal with,” said Vali Nasr, a former Obama administration official and leading proponent of intervention in Syrian. “But those people understand that what is going on in Syria cannot go on indefinitely.”

Why the f%$# should we listen to these folks.

  • They were wrong about Iraq.
  • They were wrong about Libya (where Islamist rule, and ethnic cleansing of black Africans is the rule).
  • They have been agitating for a military strike against Iran, which would probably extend the rule of the mullahs by decades, as Saddam’s attack in the 1970s cemented their rule.

And now their feelings are hurt because people don’t take their push for military intervention seriously.

It’s just a no fly zone ……… Only a no fly zone is very clearly an act of war:

Kudos to Josh Rogin for breaking the news that “the White House has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a no-fly zone inside Syria.” But wouldn’t it be a more powerful story without the euphemism?

Relying on the term “no-fly-zone” is typical in journalism. But that is a mistake. It obscures the gravity of the news.

Here’s how an alternative version of the story might look: “The White House has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for bombing multiple targets inside Syria, constantly surveilling Syrian airspace alongside U.S. allies, and shooting down Syrian war planes and helicopters that try to fly around, perhaps for months.”

The term “no-fly-zone” isn’t analytically useless. It’s just that folks using it as shorthand should make sure everyone reading understands that, as Daniel Larison put it right up in a headline, “Imposing a No-Fly-Zone in Syria Requires Starting a New War.” That becomes clearer some paragraphs later in Rogin’s article, when he discussed Senator John McCain’s advocacy for a “no-fly-zone.” “McCain said a realistic plan for a no-fly zone would include hundreds of planes, and would be most effective if it included destroying Syrian airplanes on runways, bombing those runways, and moving U.S. Patriot missile batteries in Turkey close to the border so they could protect airspace inside northern Syria,” he wrote.

(emphasis mine)

I would also note that anyone who thinks that this operation would be limited to air and air defense assets should look at the Libyan intervention, where it turned almost immediately into direct close air support for the rebels.

This has disaster written all over it.

There is a reason that “Liberal Hawks” were described as “Useful Idiots” by Tony Judt.

We Do Not Need This Congressional Seat This Much

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I am talking about North Carolina’s 7th district, and its current incumbent, “Democrat” Mike McIntyre:

Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) told North Carolina television station WECT that he’s unhappy the Boy Scouts of America lifted its ban on gay youth.

“I’m very disappointed,” McIntyre said. “I know my church has a long history of producing Eagle Scouts including my son and I know that many organizations that sponsor scouting are quite concerned about that and did not feel like it was an appropriate step. I know I’m concerned about it and did not think it was an appropriate step.”

No surprise that it’s also a member of the Blue Dog caucus.

We do not need Democrats who openly endorse bigotry.

Hopefully, he gets a primary challenge, but I just checked out Act Blue, and right now, he is the only candidate.

Shoot Me Now!

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Well, this sucks:

President Obama held a private meeting with top national security journalists on Thursday afternoon following his national security policy address at the National Defense University in Washington, POLITICO has learned.

Present at the meeting were Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist; Gerald Seib, the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau chief; Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post; David Igantius, the Washington Post columnist; Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic correspondent and Bloomberg View columnist; and Joe Klein, the Time Magazine columnist.

Seriously.

This is like a rogues gallery of people who are wrong about everything.

Not a Surprise………

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The Washington Post has a must read article describing just how the “talking points” over Benghazi evolved, and the bottom line is that, in a response to some basic information from Congress a few days after the killing of Ambassador Stevens.

Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wanted some clarification on what was known, and what they could talk about, and then-CIA director David Petraeus, always looking for an opportunity to polish his public image, created a report that largely, and incorrectly exonerated him and the agency:

The controversy over the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attack last year began at a meeting over coffee on Capitol Hill three days after the assault.

 It was at this informal session with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the ranking Democrat asked David H. Petraeus, who was CIA director at the time, to ensure that committee members did not inadvertently disclose classified information when talking to the news media about the attack.

 “We had some new members on the committee, and we knew the press would be very aggressive on this, so we didn’t want any of them to make mistakes,” Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.) said last week of his request in an account supported by Republican participants. “We didn’t want to jeopardize sources and methods, and we didn’t want to tip off the bad guys. That’s all.”

 What Petraeus decided to do with that request is the pivotal moment in the controversy over the administration’s Benghazi talking points. It was from his initial input that all else flowed, resulting in 48 hours of intensive editing that congressional Republicans cite as evidence of a White House coverup.

A close reading of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies, reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee’s request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency.

 The information Petraeus ordered up when he returned to his Langley office that morning included far more than the minimalist version that Ruppersberger had requested. It included early classified intelligence assessments of who might be responsible for the attack and an account of prior CIA warnings — information that put Petraeus at odds with the State Department, the FBI and senior officials within his own agency.

(emphasis mine)

What a surprise.  A tragedy occurs, and the narcissistic preening peacock that is David Petraeus decided to leave no stone unturned ……… In the cause of polishing his own image.

What we know now is that the Benghazi consulate was almost entirely a CIA operation, and the f%$#-up was almost entirely a CIA f%$#-up, and, true to his history, David Petraeus’ response was one focused managing the public response, and not in creating an honest assessment of the causes and solutions.

This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

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I am referring, of course, to former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, who’s latest brainstorm is that Obama should appoint Kenneth Starr as a special prosecutor to investigate the latest ginned up faux scandals against the Obama administration:

Republicans are howling for President Obama to name a special prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups. The president should call their bluff.

 The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility. The list of candidates could start with Kenneth Starr, who chased down the scandals, real and imagined, of the Clinton presidency. It might include Patrick Fitzgerald, who was special counsel in the Valerie Plame affair, winning the conviction of Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and who has successfully prosecuted two corrupt governors of Illinois, one from each party.

This is batsh%$ insane.

It’s also ahistorical. Ken Starr did not pursue any real scandals, that was done by his predecessor, Robert Fiske, who uncovered significant corruption in Arkansas. Starr had no interest beyone his witch hunt.

Ken Starr???? This is beyond the wildest dreams of the writers for The Onion.

I cannot believe that anyone can be this obtuse.

Neither can the people reading his post.  The comments are nearly universally disparaging.

The stupid, it burns us.

*What, you’ve never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.

Charlie Pierce Speaks

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He observes that ABC reporter Jonathan Karl’s entire report on “talking points” regarding Benghazi is completely bogus. His source lied to him, and there was no effort made to protect the State Department (and by extension, Hilary Clinton).

Karl’s “apology” is a typical non-apology apology. He says that the story still stands, but that quote was the whole story.

Pierce’s analysis on this is spot on:

………If Jonathan Karl doesn’t like being called a hack, then he should stop being a hack. Here’s one way to do it.

Blow the source who lied to you and, therefore, lied to us.

Do that. Or be a hack.

There’s no third alternative.

An interesting fact that Pierce cites is that Karl’s entrée into “journalism” was was through a right wing organization founded by William F. Buckley, and currently run by the infamous right wing liar publisher Alfred Regenry:

Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses (Extra!, 9-10/91)—such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O’Keefe (Political Correction, 1/27/10). The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI’s first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery. Several leading right-wing pundits came out of Collegiate-affiliated papers, including Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry and Laura Ingraham (Washington Times, 11/28/04).

The Collegiate Network also provides paid internships and fellowships to place its members at corporate media outlets or influential Beltway publications; 2010-11 placements include the Hill, Roll Call, Dallas Morning News and USA Today. The program’s highest-profile alum is Karl, who was a Collegiate fellow at the neoliberal New Republic [TNR] magazine.

FAIR rightly calls him a right wing mole.  The Collegiate Network is not a journalist organization, it just plays one on TV.

I would also that between Glass, Shalit, Siegel, and now Karl, TNR under the ownership of Marty Peretz seems to be a petri dish for journalistic malfeasance.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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It’s a start

Fox News Host Megyn Kelly noted that people on her show were tilting too much toward Republicans:

Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks.

Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of the questions House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R-CA) had for the witnesses he had called, but the network cut to former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for reaction when Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MA) began presenting his questions.

Will wonders never cease.

This Is Corrupt

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It may not be enough for a review of his tenure, but the fact that, “Senior associate dean for executive programs and a professor in the practice of management at the Yale School of Management,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is calling criticism of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon a witch hunt without revealing that he was a paid consultant for JP Morgan. (See his Yale bio here, I was pointed to it by a commenter on his OP/ED.)

I wonder what the extend of his pecuniary interest is here.

Even if it’s a small fee, it would certainly help with his consulting sideline to shill for a CEO. Look at the list on his bio. It’s more than 30 big-name clients.

Maybe this is why he calls shareholder objections to Dimon’s performance a “lynch mob.”

My guess is that he is angling to get a gig at HP, because he also gushed about, “Meg Whitman to continue executing a brilliant turnaround strategy.”  (Gag me with a spoon)

When someone suggests that business management schools can manage their own ethics education, have them explain to you why, given the repeated undisclosed conflicts of interest in the field (and in economics departments as well), that we can trust them to get this right.

Wankitude from Bloomberg

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Yes, they are reporting about the panic in Japan because the aggressive action by their central bank has caused mortgage rates to skyrocket:

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s stimulus policies are backfiring in the housing market, where mortgage rates are rising even as the central bank floods the financial system with cash.

While 35-year home-loan costs rose one basis point to 1.81 percent this month from an all-time low of 1.8 percent in April, any increase will be undesirable for the BOJ, according to Mizuho Securities Co. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s monetary easing almost halved 30-year U.S. mortgage rates since 2008 to 3.35 percent on May 2.

Yes, one whole basis point (0.01%), and government debt rose by 4.5 basis points (0.045%).

Obviously, Abenomics, the idea of explicitly targeting increased inflation to attempt to defeat a decades long deflationary spiral, is a complete failure, after only 5 months, because interest rates rose by one basis point.

Anyone have a sense that this news organization has been determined to write this story since December, and used this as an excuse to push their agenda?

H/t Tim Duy’s Fed Watch.

Whiny Bitches

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Senate Democrats who are upset because some incumbent are catching heat because they completely caved on gun control:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aides met recently with staffers of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to warn them: Targeting vulnerable Democrats like Arkansas’s Mark Pryor on gun control could backfire on the party, several sources told POLITICO.

It didn’t work.

Ads from the Bloomberg-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns are going up soon in Alaska, Arkansas and North Dakota — three states with Democratic senators who broke with the White House on last month’s background checks vote.

The group is also moving as many as 60 field organizers into about a dozen states where senators — Democrats and Republicans — voted against bill, with the goal of building infrastructure and countering gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

………

Bloomberg’s group has made its choice: Its radio spots in Arkansas will target the state’s African-American community, “without which Mark Pryor doesn’t have a prayer of getting reelected,” said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

………

Pryor, first elected to the Senate in 2002, claimed he’s not worried about his poor poll numbers or possible challengers, including GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, or whether MAIG or other progressive groups dump money into the race.

Shades of the contemptible Blanche Lincoln in the final graph.

When progressives decided to go after Lincoln, she already was polling lower than a case of the Clap, but somehow the primary challenge is why she lost by 20 points.

To quote Harry S Truman, “Given a choice between a fake Republican and a real one, the public will choose the real Republican every time,”and that is what happened to Lincoln, and is likely to happen to Pryor.

It’s always the same refrain in the DC incumbent protection racket, “He’s a ratf%$#, but the Republicans are scary, so we need to waste resources on a politician who wouldn’t be worth it if he were polling well.”

We know why Pryor voted the way he did, because he was running scared, and the voters of Arkansas know that too, which is why they will not be inclined to vote for him.  The pander is too blatant.

Yes, I hang up on both the DSCC and the DCCC, because I do not trust them to support candidates who support Democratic Party values, and because they spend their money stupidly.

Niall Ferguson’s Apology for His Homophobic Screed Ignores Decades of Homophobic Screeds

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Niall Ferguson recently made headlines by equating John Maynard Keynes sexuality with his positions, and using his homosexuality and childless state to condemn his policies.

When a firestorm brewed up over this, he quickly apologized, and while this apology seems sincere, the fact that he has a long history of making this statement:

Earlier Cambridge Professor and economist Michael Kitson tweeted out that he had heard Ferguson make the comments in the past:

Niall Ferguson’s empty apology niallferguson.com/blog/an-unqual… These were not ‘off the cuff’ remarks. I heard him make the same over 20 years ago.
— Michael Kitson (@MichaelKitson) May 4, 2013


Niall FergusonHarvard professor Niall Ferguson kicked off a storm yesterday, after it was reported that he had linked John Maynard Keynes’ economic philosophy to a lack of concern for future generations.

 This was a result, Ferguson reportedly told an investment conference, of Keynes’ own lack of children and homosexuality.

 Ferguson issued a swift — and seemingly sincere — apology, but it may already be too late. Critics of the noted historian are now going over his history to find more evidence that he truly believes in what he has now admitted to be “stupid and tactless” comments.

 Earlier Cambridge Professor and economist Michael Kitson tweeted out that he had heard Ferguson make the comments in the past:

 Business Insider reached out to Kitson, who offered more detail (emphasis ours):

I was at history seminar given by Niall Ferguson over 20 years ago. I am not good at dates but I think it was around 1990/91. I am better at locations – it was held in the Rushmore Room at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Ferguson gave a paper, my recollection is that it was on German hyperinflation in the 1920s. But I remember distinctly his response to a question about Keynes: he stated that Keynes and his economics was completely short-termist and that he (Keynes) did not care about the long term or future generations because he was homosexual and did not have children. He elaborated at length on this point – it did not seem as off the cuff remark but a deeply held conviction. I remember being stunned at the time: because of the bigotry and because it showed a complete lack of understanding of Keynes’s work. So, it was with a sense of déjà vu that I read the comments that Ferguson has made recently about Keynes.

(Business Insider has asked Ferguson for comment on Kitson’s allegation. At the time of writing he has not responded.

Of course, Ferguson has a long history of being offensive, and being wrong about pretty much everything, so this should come as no surprise.

What is depressing that this guy has achieved an unusually level amount of professional credibility despite his record.

Dropped from My Blogroll

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Matthew Yglesias has been dropped from my blogroll.

He just wrote an article saying that it’s OK that all those people died in Bangladesh, it’s a choice made by “rational actors” to trade safety for jobs:

I think that’s wrong. Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it’s entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States.

The reason is that while having a safe job is good, money is also good.

Shades of Larry Summers suggesting that we ship toxic waste to Africa because they need the money.

The workers did not have a choice about safety. They knew that they, and their families, would face starvation if they got fired for not going into an unsafe building. The choice was made by their evil bosses.

This is a constant theme of his writing, and I am no interested in his faux liberal bullsh%$.

While there are people on my blogroll with who I profoundly disagree with because they provide insight into foreign view points.

Retired Maryland Republican hatchet man Joe Steffen, and Russian/Orthodox Christian Nationalist Stanislav Mishin are two such examples on my blogroll.

His view, which can best be described by the phrase, “Even the liberal The New Republic.”

It’s all about self-entitled white guys who never have to wonder about where their next meal is coming from play the Michael Kinsley counter-intuitive idiocy game in an attempt to prove how smart they are.

It’s dull, it’s predictable, it’s bereft of any real insight, and it’s off my regular reading list.