Is D.C. becoming a one-party town?

Howie Kurtz is actually good today, writing about the Republican Machine (no, not Fox News). Actually, Kurtz isn't good, but he quotes very extensively from Nicholas Confessore's Washington Monthy story:

"Today, the GOP holds a two-to-one advantage in corporate cash. That shift in large part explains conservatives' extraordinary legislative record over the last few years. Democrats, along with the press, have watched in mounting disbelief as President Bush, lacking either broad majorities in Congress or a strong mandate from voters, has enacted startlingly bold domestic policies--from two major tax cuts for the rich, to a rollback of workplace safety and environmental standards, to media ownership rules that favor large conglomerates. The secret to Bush's surprising legislative success is the GOP's increasing control of Beltway influence-peddlers. K Street used to be a barrier to sweeping change in Washington. The GOP has turned it into a weapon."

AB

UPDATE: Roger Ailes, who's been really good of late, has the right take on Kurtz's piece: "Howie has also broken the story that cable news is covering the Laci Peterson murder a lot. A lesser scribe would have missed that story completely."

Feeding the Base

There's a nice NYT story today, Bush, Looking to His Right, Shores Up Support for 2004, describing how Right wing base is quite happy with Bush II. For example,

--David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: "In the first Bush administration, the conservatives were asked to be spectators — and it was hoped that they would applaud the action in the field. In this one, they have a president who wants them to be part of the team."

--"Just about every conservative is thrilled with a president who tells the U.N. to take a hike," said Nelson Warfield, a conservative strategist.

Also providing fawning quotes are Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA; Steven Moore of the Club for Growth is a bit angry over the impending prescription drug benefit, but otherwise quite pleased with Bush. The NYT has to go to the Libertarian Cato Institute for an honest assessment:

"His fiscal record is appalling — spending is out of control," said Edward H. Crane, president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization. "The fiscal record of the Bush administration makes Clinton look downright responsible."

And here's hoping that pride goeth before a fall:

"The Republicans are looking at decades of dominance in the House and the Senate, and having the presidency with some regularity," Mr. Norquist said. "So if this year the tax cut isn't the one we wanted — no biggie. There's a sense that we can afford to wait."

Take that, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.

AB

UPDATE: Speaking of Teixeira, he's got a blog now: Donkey Rising.

Sodomy and the Pledge of Allegiance

An unlikely connection, but here goes. One part of yesterday's ruling struck me as interesting:

(b) Having misapprehended the liberty claim presented to it, the Bowers Court stated that proscriptions against sodomy have ancient roots. 478 U. S., at 192. It should be noted, however, that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter. Early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit nonprocreative sexual activity more generally, whether between men and women or men and men. Moreover, early sodomy laws seem not to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private. Instead, sodomy prosecutions often involved predatory acts against those who could not or did not consent: relations between men and minor girls or boys, between adults involving force, between adults implicating disparity in status, or between men and animals. The longstanding criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy upon which Bowers placed such reliance is as consistent with a general condemnation of nonprocreative sex as it is with an established tradition of prosecuting acts because of their homosexual character. Far from possessing "ancient roots," ibid., American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century.

The implicit reasoning seems to be along the lines of if something is constitutionally questionable but it dates back to the American Revolution or thereabouts, then it's ok. But if it's constitutionally questionable and originated in the 20th century, then the court will strike it down. This logic suggests that this Supreme Court would be likely to uphold, by a 6-3 vote, the 9th Circuit's ruling that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, when the Pledge contains "under God", is unconstitutional, since "under God" was added in 1954. Of course the sodomy case was ruled under equal protection grounds while the Pledge case involves the establishment clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...").

AB

Old Racist Dies

I guess Billy Joel had it right: Strom Thurmond, dead at 100. I suspect that yesterday's Supreme Court ruling overturning sodomy laws was too much for him to take.

AB

Back to Normal

That was fun, now back to my regularly scheduled programming of not noticing the little f*ck's existence. BTW, if you run a Google search of "Michael Savage", the number 3 hit is Savage Stupidity, followed by Michael Savage Sucks.com. The #2 hit is also a parody site. The objective is to keep linking to these sites until they surpass notedjackass.com (that's not the URL, but I'm not linking to michaelsavage.com) as the top Google hit for "michael savage".

Also, I wish more--or even some--conservative bloggers had joined in. Seriously, most of us moderate lefties (and even the extreme lefties) vigorously repudiate ANSWER--can't some Righties do the same with Savage?

Finally, Via Blah3, here's the most comprehensive list of appropriators I've found, give them all a hand! And props to Neal Pollack for taking the initiative.

Angry Bear, Ann Slanders, Army Of Fun, Atrios, Bag Times, Big Picnic, Bitter Obscurity, Blah3, Bunsen, Bush Is A Moron, Deckie Holmes, Duckwing., For Freedom Century, Fengi, Haypenny, Genoan Sailor
I Am The Man Who Will Fight For Your Honor, Left Pedal, Liberal Media Conspiracy, Like Father Like Sun, Lisa Rocci, Matthew Tobey, Max Sawicky, Michael Savage's Only Official Website, Monkeytime, Mykeru, Nurse Ratched's Notebook, Off the Kuff, Pandagon, Rashomon, Rob Curran, Sam Heldman, Savage Ass Rape, Savage Cruel Bigots, Suckful, Shared Thought, South Knox Bubba, Ted Barlow, The Daily Harrumph, The Donkeypissonian, The Funny Farm, The Plunketts, Utter Wonder, Warblogger Watch, Yankee Pot Roast, and Yar's Revenge

AB

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

Remember, these graphs only go through 2000, so this is before the Bush tax cuts. Still, these wealthy people stand to lose a lot more from a crappy economy than they stand to gain from Bush's tax cuts--but when will they figure this out? Go read the whole NYT story. And hell, I pay an effective tax rate a bit over 20%, the same as 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid in 2000.

AB

Flood the Jackass Zone

I tend to ignore Michael Weiner (who you may know as Michael Savage) because anyone who would listen to him for more than two minutes is beyond reason or redemtion. My initial take when MSNBC hired him was to highlight the obvious:

"Michael Savage is a jackass...I guess that makes the decision-makers at MSNBC objectively pro-jackass."

Surprisingly, in spite of terrible ratings, to date MSNBC is maintaning its objectively pro-jackass stance.

A few things to note about Michael Weiner: 1. Changed his last name to "Savage", 2. Visits wax museums to get a photo of him touching Barbra Streisand's breast (it's true--check near the bottom of his homepage if you are so inclined), and 3. Is obsessed with phallic symbols guns. All of these can lead to only one conclusion: a chronic and severe inability to interact romantically with women, a condition exacerbated by a particularly virulent strain of Clenis^TM envy.

AB

P.S. If you are wondering why so many blogs have Savage/Weiner related posts today, click here and then here.

Here are the sites that are being sued: Take Back The Media, Michael Savage Sucks, and Savage Stupidity. Give them a visit and a buck or two.

UPDATE: Partial list of sites appropriating "Savage" for their own purposes: Ted Barlow, Neal Pollack, South Knox Bubba, Jesse, Atrios. Dwight Meredith has a brief explanation of why Savage deserves scorn, here.

Failing the Hillary Test

By now you have probably heard about the latest move by the Senate Rules Committee: passing, in a voice vote in which no Democrats were present, a measure proposed by Bill Frist to "provide for a series of cloture votes, where the threshold would gradually decrease until only a simple majority is required to overcome it [a filibuster of a judicial nominee]." Fortunately, as The Hill reports, "Under Senate rules, a two-thirds majority vote is required to overcome a filibuster of a rules change, giving a disciplined minority the ability to stop the GOP effort in its tracks." So the Democrats will have to filibuster the Republican's anti-filibuster measure in order to continue the Democratic filibuster of Bush's far-right nominees to the Appellate Courts.

So it's probably much ado about nothing, but the Republicans really are huffing and puffing over this issue. I suggest they take the Hillary Test^TM, which I believe was originally used in the context of the Patriot Act's substantial expansion of the Attorney General's power:

Would you want Hillary Clinton to have these powers if she were Attorney General?

I recommend that Republicans think carefully about this Hillary test:

Would you want to rule out the filibuster option if Hillary Clinton were Senate Majority Leader?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "No!"

AB

Recommended Reading

Highly recommended.

And CalPundit has a great post on income inequality (hint: it's increasing, and it's not being offset by increased mobility).

AB

If Only Nixon Knew you could do this with an Enemies List

In the too weird to not be true category:

Vanity Fair reported in the article that in 2000 [Michael] Jackson attended a voodoo ritual in Switzerland where a witch doctor promised that Spielberg, music mogul David Geffen and 23 other people on the entertainer's list of enemies would die.

AB

P.S. The title is only a reference to "Enemy Lists" and not meant to imply that Nixon wanted to kill anyone.

More on Web Page Seizures

Earlier, I commented on the Justice Department seizing (pre-trial) a web site that has information on how to pirate X-Box and PlayStation games, and then redirecting visitors to a DOJ site. A ZDNET commentary has a bit more:

That's why we should think twice before applauding this trend in police power. One reason is that the Justice Department's privacy policy allows it to hand over information it collects from people visiting seized Web sites to "appropriate law enforcement officials" for criminal prosecution.

It's possible to imagine a scenario where an innocent Web visitor becomes unfairly targeted by the Feds. It's legal to browse the Web for information about illegal drugs and even legal to read about bypassing copy-protection technology (though under the DMCA, researchers writing such papers may have cause for concern). But in a newly security-conscious climate, the Justice Department may not be terribly sensitive to Americans' First Amendment rights and may assume the worst about visitors to its collection of seized domains.

What's more, the Justice Department is able to review the search terms that people type in before connecting to the seized site from search engines such as Google or AltaVista. That's because Web protocols pass the search terms to the destination site in the Referer: header.

AB

Rate cut 1/4 point

To 1%, the lowest level since 1958:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Federal Reserve cut its key short- term interest rate Wednesday by a quarter percentage point to the lowest level in 45 years, expressing worry that the economy still isn't strong enough to fight off deflation.

Because the rate cut came in at the minimum level that people expect, it was already largely priced into the stock market, so don't expect to see much action there. It will help to keep finance rates around their current levels, continuing to prop up consumer durable goods and housing expenditures. Some of the effects will be attenuated by the fact that so many people expected a 1/2 point cut that those expectations will shift to expecting another 1/4 point rate cut at the next Fed meeting (in August)--so firms that might have borrowed now in response to a 1/2 point cut may choose to wait two months (for a second cut) before borrowing. On balance, it's a "hold the course" cut that, given the current course, seems a little timid. On the other hand, the Fed doesn't want to run out of bullets (it's got four left now).

AB

Press Still Turning

Still slowly, but in ways medium and small (not yet big), the press is continuing to be less sycophantic towards the administration (see posts here, here, and the initial post here). Josh Marshall picks up on this phenomenon in this post [emphasis mine]:

Actually, in my Wednesday morning column in The Hill I said that there really is no new debate or new scandal. It's really more that it's suddenly become acceptable to discuss what everyone knew for the last year or so: that is, that the administration was willfully misrepresenting the evidence both on WMD and a purported link to al Qaida.

I keep harping on this point because if the press turns on Bush then Kerry or Edwards has a decent shot in 2004.

AB

P.S. Yes, I left Dr. Dean out of the list of people with a chance in '04. (That's what the comments are for).

Quotas and Metrics

Rehnquist made the argument that Michigan's bonus point system is tantamount to a quota system, which was ruled unconstitutional under Bakke. Commenter Andrew wrote below that "There might be a distinction between quota or bonus-point affirmative action programs and a more subjective system, but I can't see it."

At first glance, there seems to be a substantial distinction: with a quota, a university does not know in advance how far down in the distribution of grades and test scores it will have to go to meet the quota. That is, under a quota, a university has to fill X slots with students from ethnic group Z, regardless of the academic performance of applicants from group Z. In contrast, under a bonus point system, the number of minorities admitted from each group can fluctuate from year to year, according to academic performance that year.

Moreover, consider the marginal white student—the one who was barely bumped because of affirmative action. Under a quota system, if the student does a little better, he could gain admission, but it would necessarily come at the expense of another white person, because the quotas bind. Under a bonus system, if the marginal white student had worked a little bit harder and gained admission, it could come at the expense of any student (i.e., at the expense of the lowest-scoring admitted student other than the student in question). So the bonus system is more flexible than a quota system and it's a bit disingenuous to equate the two.

That said, there are a lot of applications every year, meaning that laws of large numbers apply. If a school's Admissions Office has a target number of minorities to admit (a quota) in mind, they can readily infer what number of bonus points will achieve that target, give or take a few students. Metrics like Michigan's can be mapped into quotas with a pretty narrow range of error, so it's only "a bit" disingenuous.

AB

Slow News Day

Normal posting should be resuming now, but other than yesterday's batch of Supreme Court rulings, news is pretty slow. Iraq is still a mess (see this one, also). The economy is still in bad enough shape that almost everyone thinks the Fed will drop rates on Wednesday. The only debate is whether the cut will be 1/4th or 1/2 a point--my guess is one quarter.

AB

Good News Bad News News

Actually, it's on balance good news, at least compared to what the SCOTUS could have done: Affirmative action is constitutional. Using race-based bonus points is not. (Salon here and the NYT here). It was pretty easy to peg four of the votes on each side, and I feared that O'Connor would come out against, but I was wrong.

Now a university can't use quotas (Bakke) and can't use bonus points (today's ruling), so the rule seems to moving towards something like "no quantifiable race-based advantage may be given to any racial group but subjective favoritism is fine and dandy", which doesn't really make sense, but has the potential advantage of not leaving a paper trail. If there is no "system" then the system can not be unfair and there will be no grounds for lawsuits.

What would a system with only subjective/non-quantifiable racial preferences look like? Teaching colleges already evaluate applications on a number of subjective dimensions (experience, leadership, teamwork, creativity) and many presumably already consider diversity in the way now sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Implementing such a system at the major state colleges (like the University of Michigan) will be much more difficult. I'm guessing here, but Michigan probably gets at least 20,000 applications per year. Due to the huge the numbers, large state schools use objective measures to determing admissions--e.g., Michigan's infamous "formula" that takes into account GPA, class ranking, SAT score, whether the student is from certain poor areas of the state, and race. Switching to a qualitative system would be extremely costly for these schools.

The more likely outcome is that large schools will use quantitative measure based on GPA, class ranking, SAT score, and possibly a measure of the difficulty of the student's high school, to set two thresholds. Students above the top threshold would be in; students below the bottom one would be out. Students landing between the two would be subjectively evaluated by hand, and in that process race could be a factor. This seems likely to give admissions officers more discretion over how and whether to weight race. I can't decide if this is likely to be a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm leaning towards the latter. Not that I distrust admissions staff (I suspect they come from the ranks of educations majors and are on balance no less liberal than the population at large; likely they are more liberal). My fear is that universities can say "we consider race as a factor", but they can never say how they do so--if they can articulate it, then it's quantifiable, and therefore tantamount to quotas (Rehnquist's logic). Any system that is constitutional under the new standards will surely be a morass of uncertainty. In general, as an activity becomes more costly and entails less predictable results, people and institutions engage in less of that activity. I don't see a compelling reason why this will not apply to affirmative action, hence my pessimism.

AB

Meanwhile, in the background I hear some jackass on CNN, his name may have been "Jeff Block", doing interviews at the University of Michigan. His question for each minority he speaks to: "Are you here because of affirmative action?"

In other news, "A divided Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a Congressional mandate forcing the nation's public libraries to equip computers with anti-pornography filters do not violate the First Amendment, even though it shuts off some legitimate, informational Web sites." This is why the Democrats have to keep opposing, by any means necessary, Apellate Court nominees like Owens, Pickering, Estrada, and Pryor.

In the News

See O'Reilly's Online Spanking for some mocking of Bill O'Reilly by Kurtz, who quotes various bloggers. He manages to plug InstaPundit, Volokh, and Lileks, but no big lefties, unless you count Scott Rosenberg.

Katrina Leung, FBI employee and alleged double-agent, got bail today. If you didn't already know it, there would be no way to tell that she was, until her arrest, a major player in Republican fundraising.

And whoever ends up as the Democratic candidate will need something other than prescription drugs and health care to blather about. The environment is a good topic for Democrats, particularly because it has a lot of appeal in the suburbs and higher income brackets. In an effort to point this out to the Democrats--who are unlikely to figure it out on their own, or possibly could figure it out but are afraid to say anything--the White House is redacting a forthcoming report on the environment.

Gone is any mention that the 1990's are likely to have been the warmest decade in the last thousand years in the Northern Hemisphere. Gone, also, is a judgment by the National Research Council about the likely human contributions to global warming, though the evidence falls short of conclusive proof. Gone, too, is an introductory statement that 'Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.'"

AB

Traveling

I'll be traveling for the next few days, so posting might be light. In the meantime, I offer this for your consideration. It's a graph of Federal Revenue by year, on a deflated and per capita basis. To derive this, I took annual Tax Revenue (all sources) for 1980-2000, converted to constant 1996 dollars using the GDP deflator rather than the CPI, and then divided the constant dollar numbers by the U.S. population in each year. This should represent federal revenue over time, after controlling for inflation and population growth.

A few observations leap out: (1) Revenue declined after the 1981 tax cut. (2) Revenue did start increasing after 1983 (reflecting two things: first, some taxes were raised in 1983 and after; second, 1983 was when the first year shown in the graph without a recession. (3) After Clinton raised taxes, in 1993, federal revenue took off. This partly reflects the boom, but that didn't really get into full swing until 1996.

So, on balance, it looks like when you raise federal tax rates, federal tax revenue goes up (at least for rates under 50%), and vice-versa. Stunning. (click to enlarge)

AB

Ready to Laugh?

Click here. (via TBOgg).

AB

Alabama, Home of Progressive Politics

From the home state of 11th Circuit Court Nominee-who-must-be-stopped, Bill Pryor, also comes a plan to increase Alabama's overall state taxes by 14%, progressively. To wit, the proposed property tax "would mean an extra $93 a year in state taxes for the owner who lives in an $85,000 house, which is about the average value for Alabama; and an extra $706 for the owner who lives in a $300,000 house. The owner of a house worth $50,000 or less would pay no state property tax." Alabama's current tax system, based mostly on sales and property taxes, is very regressive, so it's unclear whether the new taxes would actually make the state's system progressive or just less regressive.

Oh, and Alabama Governor Bob Riley is a Republican. Still, he got the bill through the Alabama House and Senate by basically arguing that the alternative was massive cuts in programs, including education (the proposed plan will apparently cover the shortfall and increase education funding). Needless to say, Riley's party isn't happy with him. Riley's tax plan goes to the voters on September 9th, should be fun to watch.

And, of course, there is a blogger who is following this issue: Michael from A Minority of One.

AB

P.S. A lot of other states are facing budget crises, partly of their own doing (irresponsible tax cuts during the Clinton Boom Years), and partly due to the recession, cuts in Federal spending, and unfunded mandates. Increases in state taxes may cancel out, and certainly will attenuate, the stimulative effects of the Bush tax cuts.

UPDATE: Fixed the link to A Minority of One.

The Circle is Complete

Read this piece: Job Market Worst Since Early 1990s. When finished, click here and picture Bush qua Mr. Burns.

AB

Adding to the Chorus

This guy should really be kept far, far, away from the 11th Circuit Court, or any other Federal bench. Signorile's got a great overview of Pryor's views. In a nutshell, Pryor's view is that we need God--the Christian God--everywhere...In schools, courts, federal buildings, your office, your car, and, especially, your bedroom. The "so- called separation of church and state" must be eliminated. And, if you are having sex, stop it. Oh, and women have no choice on the issue of abortion. Gays? "A constitutional right that protects ‘the choice of one’s partner’ and ‘whether and how to connect sexually' must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia." I'm just guessing here, but he's probably not real big on minorities and women outside of the kitchen.

Given the nominees this administration keeps putting up (Owens, Pryor, Pickering, Estrada), about the only thing that would surprise me--and it wouldn't surprise me that much--is for Rehnquist to resign and Bush to nominate Ken Starr to the Supreme Court.

For more on Pryor go here and to see what you can do to oppose confirmation of this would-be theocrat, go here.

AB

P.S. Theocracy is bad for the economy, yet another reason to oppose Pryor.

Monkey See...

Again, today's NYT has a story that's mixed at best for the administration. In this instance, it's about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. Hell, the title of the story is "Tales of Despair From Guantanamo". But right near the beginning, in paragraph four, appears this phrase: "None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment." Based on this quote alone, the story could easily be written in one of two ways:

• Well-treated prisoners complain about conditions, or
• "conditions [are described] as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves."

This story is clearly written along the lines of the second example, which is a quote. In contrast, my subjective view is that both pre-war and during the war, almost every news piece was spun along the lines of the first example. Now stories appear to be increasingly written in a fashion unfavorable to the administration, as exemplified by the latest NYT story.

No, this is not liberal bias. It just shows that if three pieces tell a story in a given fashion, the fourth piece on the subject is almost sure to tell the same story--partly press stupidity, but mostly laziness. Of late, other journalists have written less-than-glowing articles about the war and Bush, so now Gall and Lewis (the authors of this Gitmo story) can do the same. What got the ball rolling? Possibly Kristoff last Friday, but it may date back to E.J. Dionne, who was the first to reclaim his spine at the start of 2003. (If I missed a predecessor, let me know).

AB

P.S. Morat's got more here and, particularly, here.

UPDATE: On the other hand, the intelligent bloggers at Not Geniuses bring us this.

Dueling Quotes

On Libertarians, I previously wrote that "now, if I could just make Libertarians realize that sometimes we're all better off when the government puts its hands in our pockets (you know: "form a more perfect Union"; "promote the general Welfare")". Now Amy Phillips comes at me with this quote from James Madison:

"If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every State, county and parish, and pay them out of the public Treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may undertake the regulation of all roads, other than post roads. In short, everything, from the highest object of State legislation, down to the most minute object of policy, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare."

Ouch! Direct hit! Quick, to The Federalist Papers!

...The SIXTH and last class consists of the several powers and provisions by which efficacy is given to all the rest. 1. Of these the first is, the ``power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." Few parts of the Constitution have been assailed with more intemperance than this; yet on a fair investigation of it, no part can appear more completely invulnerable. Without the SUBSTANCE of this power, the whole Constitution would be a dead letter.
--Federalist #44 (Madison)

Hamilton also argued in favor of a broad interpretation of "necessary and proper" (more quotes here). Amy's quote above was in reference to the 10th Amendment, the interaction of which with the "necessary and proper" clause has been the subject of debate from the earliest days of the Constitution to the present. Madison, Jay, and Hamilton were striving mightily to gather support for the Constitution. Against this were fears of the not so distant monarch, distrust of central authority, and the Anti-Federalists. Notwithstanding this challenge, Jay, Madison, and Hamilton viewed any loose confederation as doomed to fail, proposing instead that broad powers be vested at the Federal level. In The Federalist Papers, originally published as a series of essays in New York papers, they codified and systematized their arguments. So the quote enumerating the perils of unchecked federal government appears to be an argument to encourage the states to ratify the Constitution, by arguing that the 10th amendment ("...reserved to the states...") would prevent such incursions (This interpretation seems supported by Amy's source for the Madison quote).

Back to Madison, he immediately follows the second quote above with a discussion of alternative ways of assigning authority to the Federal government, rejecting each in turn, and concluding,

We have now reviewed, in detail, all the articles composing the sum or quantity of power delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, and are brought to this undeniable conclusion, that no part of the power is unnecessary or improper for accomplishing the necessary objects of the Union. The question, therefore, whether this amount of power shall be granted or not, resolves itself into another question, whether or not a government commensurate to the exigencies of the Union shall be established; or, in other words, whether the Union itself shall be preserved.
--Federalist #44 (Madison)

Many widely respected Founding Fathers were Anti-Federalists, notably Patrick Henry, but the Federalists--most famously, Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Franklin--carried the day. Punchline: Broad federal powers to provide for common defense and the general welfare. That said, absent a compelling reason, the federal government should stay out of lives and markets. Where it initially finds a reason to intervene, such as positive or negative externalities, it should frequently reevaluate whether continued interference is warranted.

AB

More Bad Press

Even Bob Somerby generally endorses the theory that the press are more lazy and stupid than conservative, per se. This, of course, excludes Fox News, The Washington Times, The New York Post, and the like. The laziness manifests itself via a herd approach to reporting the press's collectively received wisdom. Al Gore is a liar; George Bush is stupid, but honest, trustworthy, and compassionate; Everybody hates Hillary Rodham Clinton ["Rodham" is mandatory]...

As a number of bloggers, myself included, have noticed, Bush coverage has become a bit less fawning of late. And in particular, a "Bush Lied" conventional wisdom may be starting to take shape. Witness, for example, the two editorials cited in the previous post ("Becoming Sane"), though they stopped just short of using the word "lie". And today, there's another negative story, this time in the Washington Post: Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror. The aide, Rand Beers, rips the administration's tactics in the War on Terror as well as the War on Iraq, and with tenure at the NSC dating back to the Reagan years, he has some credibility. Beers held the same job that Oliver North held during Iran-Contra, Director for Counternarcotics and Counterterrorism; for more discussion, see Billmon's post. While you're there, make sure to take a look at his collection of pre-war WMD quotes.

Back to the media, Beers apparently left the NSC around March 14th, though the article doesn't give an exact date. Shortly after leaving the NSC, he joined John Kerry's campaign. My point: this story has been "out there" for about three months now. That it appears so shortly on the heels of a rise in negative press in general, is at least suggestive of a turning tide in press coverage.

AB

Becoming Sane

Read Kristoff's editorial and note how, as Josh Marshall points out, Kristoff waffles a bit at the end, writing "But it does look as if ideologues in the administration deceived themselves about Iraq's nuclear programs". See? They didn't decieve the public, or at least if they did do so, it was only because they themselves were deceived (by themselves). Here's Marshall's take on the issue:

There was an element of self-deception. A strong one.

If you simply insist on believing white is black, even when you can see it's white, then when you tell people it's black then, well, maybe you're sort of not really lying, right?

Here's an example from Kristoff's column of this doublethink in action:

It was a foregone conclusion that every photo of a trailer truck would be a `mobile bioweapons lab' and every tanker truck would be `filled with weaponized anthrax,' " a former military intelligence officer said.

Finally, here is Winston being tortured in the Ministry of Love:

"You are a slow learner, Winston," said O'Brien gently.

"How can I help it?" he blubbered. "How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."

We must try harder.

AB

UPDATE: Via Thinking it Through, another tough column--this time from the Chicago Tribune--for the administration.

Bizzaro World

What did I tell you? Two posts ago, I called the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page "just plain wacky". Six posts ago I recommended a fairly new libertarian blogger, Amy Phillips. Now Amy reports on more wackiness from the virulently pro-war editorial page of the WSJ: WSJ editorial writers are using the lack of WMD to attack anti-war politicians.

I know, it doesn't make any sense the first time you read it. There must be a typo, you think. So I'll say it again: WSJ editorial writers are using the lack of WMD to attack anti-war politicians.

The logic? Well, only the anti-war Democrats knew that there were no WMD. But they lied and said there were WMD, in a vain effort to scare Americans out of supporting the invasion. I'm not freakin' kidding! Here's an excerpt:

we can't help suspecting that war opponents knew better and deliberately misled the public in an effort to establish a pretext for keeping a mass-murdering dictator in power. In either case, [anti-war politicians] now face a yawning credibility gap.

The only explanation I have is that they are joking: making fun of calls for investigation of, e.g., Bush's false claims in the State of the Union speech, by calling for investigation of anti-war politicians. In fact, upon closer inspection, I'm pretty sure that is their intention. But don't hold your breath for a "just kidding" piece on Monday, and don't expect most of their readers to grasph the subtlety. In any event, Amy P.'s got a lot more and she finely shreds the editorial writers with their own words.

AB

Need to Get a Little Freaked Out before the Weekend?

Read this from South Knox Bubba.

AB

A Lucky Ducky Speaks Up

One of my earliest posts was on the subject of the "lucky duckies", deemed Lucky by the writers for the editorial page of the WSJ because they make so little money that they pay little or no income taxes, though they pay substantial payroll taxes.

Via The New Republic's Blog, &c, I see that a Lucky Ducky has offered to share his good fortune:

'LUCKY DUCKIE' INVITES EDITORS INTO HIS POND I am one of those lucky duckies, referred to in your June 3 editorial "Even Luckier Duckies" who pay little or nothing in federal income tax (at least by the standards of Wall Street Journal editors; $800 is more than a chunk of change to me). I am not, however, a stingy ducky, and I am willing to share my good fortune with others. In this spirit, I propose a trade. I will spend a year as a Wall Street Journal editor, while one lucky editor will spend a year in my underpaid shoes. I will receive an editor's salary, and suffer the outrage of paying federal income tax on that salary. The fortunate editor, on the other hand, will enjoy a relatively small federal income tax burden, as well as these other perks of near poverty: the gustatory delights of a diet rich in black beans, pinto beans, navy beans, chickpeas and, for a little variety, lentils; the thrill of scrambling to pay the rent or make the mortgage; the salutary effects of having no paid sick days; the slow satisfaction of saving up for months for a trip to the dentist; and the civic pride of knowing that, even as a lucky ducky, you still pay a third or more of your gross income in income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes and property taxes. I could go on and on, but I am sure your editors are already keen to jump at this opportunity to join the ranks of the undertaxed. I look forward to hearing from you. Pier Petersen Chicago

How about it, WSJ Editorialists? Put your money where your mouth is?

AB

P.S. Note that there's a big difference between the WSJ, which is a great source of news and analysis, and the WSJ Editorial Page, which is just plain wacky.

Consumer Sentiment Down

"University of Michigan's closely watched gauge of consumer confidence slipped to 87.2 in June from May's 92.1," Reuters reports. Gains in the stock market (it's about where it was a year ago, after being way down), and dividend tax cuts, cuts in the top marginal rates, and expansion of the 10% bracket, are apparently not enough to offset the fears caused by steadily increasing unemployment and ballooning deficits.

AB

A Little Late

Hopefully, Mr. McGruder won't mind. It's the perfect final take on the Franken/O'Reilly debate on CSPAN. (click to enlarge)

(

AB

Some Sanity?

From the NYT today:

Federal authorities said today that they planned to use stricter standards for identifying and locking up terrorist suspects in light of concerns raised in a recent report that hundreds of illegal immigrants were mistreated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

U.S. Citizen Mike Hawash remains out of luck, however. I have no idea if he's guilty or innocent, but he was held for five weeks without charges and judged in secret hearings, and apparently will remain in detention until his trial, currently scheduled for January 2004. Speedy.

AB

Libertarians

I'm always looking to link more opposing but reasoned views, but it's tough to do in good conscience with most of the righties. I've got Postrel, den Beste, Lileks, BusinessPundit, Jane Galt, Media Whores Online, OxBlog, Samizdata, and Volokh (one of these blogs is not the same). That's about all the righties I can tolerate.

Several or most of the blogs on the previous list would justly call themselves more Libertarian than conservative, which is probably why they made the list. I give Libertarians credit for wanting to keep government out of my bloodstream and out of my bedroom. Now, if I could just make Libertarians realize that sometimes we're all better off when the government puts its hands in our pockets (you know: "form a more perfect Union"; "promote the general Welfare").

In any event, say hello to two more non-lefties with blogs worth reading:

• Julian Sanchez
• Amy Phillips.

While you've probably seen Julian S. before, Amy P. is new. And we give her extra credit for disliking Bush's tax cuts.

AB

Living History

Even if you're not interested in reading it, you should probably buy it, just to anger some Republicans. And it has a second important use: it's a great wingnut-detector. Keep it on your coffee table when you have dinner parties and, by watching closely for visceral negative reactions, you'll know which of your friends secretly listen to Rush/Hannity/Savage/and the rest. In any event, for as long as the book remains on the bestseller lists, you'll probably see and hear the same nonsense repeated ad naseum. Liar, power-hungry, should have left him, ... Save yourself a lot of time, and just read Jesse's version instead.

AB

Dislike Margaret Carlson?

Or at least agree that she's annoying. See Bob Somerby thoroughly and incomparably^TM shred her here and here. A sample:

Some of her work is ugly and vicious, like her distortions regarding [Vincent] Foster. But most of her work is just numbingly stupid.

Somerby then goes on to back this conclusion up; it's not just invective, it's a dissection.

AB

UPDATE: Somehow, Somerby found the inner strength to read Carlson's drivel carefully enough to catch this:

Page 1: I learned quickly to dislike those who slight the weak or different or unlucky.

Page 102: It’s not hard to dislike Bush’s policies, which favor the strong over the weak. It is hard to dislike Bush.

Bad News for John Kerry

Higher Costs Send Heinz Profits Tumbling. Actually, it remains unclear whether Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, plan to use some of Teresa's $550 million in ketchup money--rumors swirled that she was leaning in that direction after Republicans used her to launched a few attacks at Kerry. On the other hand, there's this.

AB

Declining Fortunes

While the ongoing new jobless claims have not received much attention from the executive branch, this dour economic news surely will.

Seriously, if regressive tax cuts come at the expense of growth (either directly or because they foreclose some alternative and more stimulative policy) then they don't even help they rich. Or, more precisely, they improve the relative (to everyone else) wealth of the rich, but come at the expense of absolute wealth.

Another way of seeing this is to ask your rich friend which they would prefer: (1) Paying a marginal tax rate of 39.6% and having the economic growth of the Clinton Years, or (2) Paying a marginal tax rate of 35% and having the economic growth of the Bush Years (I or II)?

AB

X-Posted at It's Still the Economy

Fare Thee Well

It looks like Wampum is going on hiatus, possibly permanently. MB's posts were always insightful, informative, and done with style. I will particularly miss the laboriously compiled Flashback Fridays series. MB was also the creative force behind It's Still the Economy, Stupid!, a project that I've enjoyed being a part of and that will continue, hopefully with occasional contributions from MB. MB is an ethical person with whom I greatly enjoyed corresponding and collaborating. Good luck!

AB

UPDATE: While Wampum is currently down (as of 6/12/03), it's because of a problem with her ISP, not due to MB taking it offline. So it should be back soon, even if you only get to browse the archives.

Coral Calcium Update

A while back, I commented on an amusing informercial in which the makers of "Coral Calcium" made this claim:

"DNA can't work unless it's smothered in calcium".

Turns out, the FTC was reading Angry Bear:

The Federal Trade Commission is asking a U.S. court in Chicago to shut down an operation that sells Coral Calcium Supreme, a product advertised with one of the most widely run infomercials on cable television this year..."The danger here is using an ineffective treatment for a really serious condition. Calcium is good stuff; it builds strong bones, but it doesn't cure cancer."

Ok, maybe they noticed this somewhere other than Angry Bear.

AB

Pathetic Democrats

Previously, I speculated that the Republicans were adding an exta layer to the tax cuts by excluding the lower middle class. I wrote that "I figured the plan was to hit the $350 target, via the chicanery of sunsets, exclude popular taxes, and then force the Democrats and moderate Republicans to insist on inserting more tax cuts." To his credit, I suppose, Tom DeLay is opposing anything for the lower middle class.

AB

UPDATE: Max has more.

For Something Completely Different

Via Tom McMahon, take a look at Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics.

AB

More on Polls

Today, I received a "poll" from the Interfaith Alliance, an association that promotes the worthy goals of religious diversity and tolerance. The cover letter leads off with quotes from Jerry Falwell (blaming "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians" for 9/11) and Pat Robertson (on the necessity for women to subjugate themselves upon marriage), and then asks me to complete a poll and give them money. Like the GOP poll, the penultimate question even asks me, should I elect not to give, to submit $10 to cover the cost of processing and tabulating the survey. But at least there is not a box saying "No, I favor restarting the Crusades".

In another mailing, Bill Clinton sends me his regards, writing inter alia

Whatever qualms you might have about how strongly Democrats stand on this issue or that one pale in comparison to the across-the-board damage four more years of right wing Republican policies would do to everything we believe in.

and

Maybe you're not sure we can win. That was the conventional wisdom when I took on a President named George Bush...[we won and] our 1992 campaign helped launch an era of Democratic leadership and Democratic values in the White House.

Clinton then asks me to give to the Democratic Party's "Victory in 2004" campaign, which I will probably do. You can do the same here. This makes me realize another problem with the Republican ascendancy: it's costing me money. Sure, I'm saving a lot in taxes, but I'm giving a lot more to political causes than I otherwise would, which probably explains the ever-increasing number of solicitations I receive.

AB

More Red v. Blue

More subsidizing of the Red states, via Atrios.

AB

More on the Poll

I mentioned before that I am apparently listed somewhere as a Republican, causing GOP Chairman Marc Racicot to send me a letter. I asked my readers if I should fill it out with far-right (to pull the GOP further from the center) or far-left answers (to confuse them). Upon reflection and inspection, I don't think it matters. The "poll" does not have many questions that the GOP doesn't already know the answers that registered Republicans will give.

Instead, the poll seems designed to make people think these are potential issues to the GOP, drumming up a little bit of fear--fear that the Republicans will move left, but more importantly, fear that the things that the Democrats would implement the policies that the pollees clearly oppose. This fear likely encourages the polled Republicans to send the poll back to the GOP, which I suspect dramatically increases the odds of the pollee sending a check at the same time. Rather clever, actually.

Here are some examples, with a little Fisking (full poll here):

1.1. Do you support President Bush's initiatives to promote the safety and security of all Americans?
No, I'm sure 95% of Republicans polled are, like me, solidly against promoting safety or security, much less both.

2.3 Should small businesses be encouraged to grow and hire more workers?
No, this should be opposed at all costs.

3.1 Do you support President Bush's plan to make our schools more accountable to parents and to restore local control of education?
Schools accountable to parents? Nonsense!

3.2 Should students, teachers, principals and administrators be held to higher standards?
No, standards must be reduced as far as possible.

3.3 Do you agree that teaching our children to read and increasing literacy rates should be a national priority?
No, if they can read, they'll get an education and then be much more likely to vote Democratic.

5.1 Do you think U.S. troops should have to serve under United Nations' commanders?
Yes, this will lead directly to a One World Government, hastening the Apocalypse, and then the Rapture.

5.2 Do you think that the U.S. should modernize our national defense to meet the challenges of the 21st century?
No. Our air power is overused, we need more trench warfare.

6.1 Do you support the election of Republican candidates across the country and rebuilding our majorities over the next ten years?
I think this is the definition of a Republican.

And now for my favorite part of the poll:

6.3 Will you join the Republican National Committee by making a contribution today?

Yes, I support the RNC and am enclosing my most generious contribution of: $______

Yes, I support the RNC, but I am unable to participate at this time. However, I have enclosed $11 to cover the cost of tabulating my survey.

No, I favor electing liberal Democrats over the next ten years.

That's a nice dichotomy: give money now or you're in favor of electing liberal Democrats. It needs a nice picture juxtaposing Tom Daschle and Saddam Hussein, though.

AB

Grover Norquist

There's a pretty interesting piece in today's Chicago Tribune, Pipeline leads to White House, that centers on Grover Norquist's weekly meetings with conservative leaders and the interaction between Norquist's group and the White House. Norquist, as you may recall, recently said "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape". By that I suppose he meant that there's no point trying to act nice (the date) with Democrats when you've got something else entirely in mind. Here are a few highlights from the piece:

• "Senior presidential adviser Karl Rove, who is in regular contact with Norquist, always sends an emissary and sometimes personally attends the weekly meetings. George W. Bush sent a representative for a full year before he even announced he was running for president."
• "Norquist began pushing for Congress to pass annual tax cuts well before the White House said it would press Congress to do the same thing."
• "'The goal is to reduce the size and scope of government in half over the next 25 years', Norquist said."
• "Among Norquist's goals is placing former President Ronald Reagan's name on buildings across the country." [Note: oddly enough, presumably financed with tax money.]
• "...the White House asked Norquist for help in pushing Congress to confirm judicial nominee Miguel Estrada. Norquist used his national network of contacts to successfully push 10 state legislatures to pass resolutions calling for the nominee's confirmation."
• "Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy and a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, raised concerns in a speech about anti-American Muslim groups penetrating the White House...Norquist responded by sending Gaffney a letter denouncing him and demanding he apologize to the president and his staffers. He also banished Gaffney from the Wednesday meetings, which Gaffney had attended for the last five years."

That last one is to Norquist's credit. I don't have any particular problem with the Republicans having meetings like this and attempting to influence policy, as there seems to be a lot of transparency. I just wish they weren't so good at it.

AB

Happy 49th, No Sense of Decency!

From the NYT, today is the 49th anniversary of the beginning of the end for Sen. McCarthy, which started with Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy during the Senate-Army Hearings over McCarthy's attack on a member of Welch's law firm, Frederick G. Fisher. Said Welch to McCarthy,

"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

AB

Al, Bill, and Molly

I finally watched the CSPAN coverage of the book expo featuring Franken, O'Reilly, and Ivins, and I can genuinely say that the reports of its high entertainment value are not exaggerations. Franken did go long, but as he put it in response to O'Reilly's complaining, "I went long because I was getting some laughs" (he was). Sans producer and mute button, O'Reilly's level of discourse devolved to "Shut up! Just shut up!", "This guy's an idiot", and "we can have a bagel". I guess that if Franken were from Mexico or parts south, O'Reilly would have invited him over to swim a river. Or perhaps if Franken were black, O'Reilly would have invited him over to steal some hubcaps. The acrimony was actually greater than I anticipated. Franken was also great in a digression on Ann Coulter.

More substantively, Franken and Ivins are both really entertaining and I think either one could draw a nice talk radio audience, because they combine insight with humor. I wouldn't want them making policy; both a bit too left and too anti-corporate for me. But neither one is "out there", either. They would be great for exciting the proverbial base, yet entertaining enough to draw from outside the NPR audience.

AB

New Links

I'm discovering some pretty neat tools in my effort to gizmo up the blog. First, given that maps of blogs are popular lately, take a look at who is in my blog neighborhood. Continuing with the theme of me being a Republican, InstaPundit is one of my nearest neighbors! The others are all fairly reasonable: Talking Points Memo, MaxSpeaks, Rittenhouse, Eschaton, and a few I haven't seen but plan to take a look at. On balance, I'm keeping pretty good company, although CalPundit, Yglesias, Barlow, and a some other bloggers who I'd gladly have a beer with are not in my blog-neighborhood.

Also, I found a few glaring ommissions in my blogroll. Please welcome the following additions:

Body and Soul
Nathan Newman
Neal Pollack
Samizdata.net
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
South Knox Bubba
Thinking It Through

AB

BlogRolling

My links are now powered by Blogrolling.com, which means a few things: 1) The order has moved around--in particular, alphabetizing is by the first letter of the word, so for example, Matt Yglesias is under 'M', not 'Y'. 2) I may have inadvertently deleted someone from the list, so if this happened please email me. Coming soon: an Angry Bear RSS feed.

AB

UPDATE: I think I've successfully added the RSS feed.

I'm a Republican!

In this post, Kevin Drum talks about some of the problems the Democratic Party is having with its outdated database systems, concluding that

Like it or not, big, modern, centralized voter databases and marketing operations are the lifeblood of politics today.

But apparently there are some glitches in the Republican Party's database too. In my mail today, I received this from RNC Chairman Marc Racicot:

Dear Fellow Republican

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chosen to take part in the official Census of the Republican Party...

...your answers will represent the views and opinions of all Republican voters living in your voting district

...should the government be arable to continue discriminating against faith-based organizations?

...won't you also enclose a contribution of $500, $250, $100, $50, or even $25 to the Republican National Committee.

Later, I'll post a few of the questions. In the meantime, here's one:

Do you think U.S. troops should have to serve under United Nations' commanders?

Now the only question is whether I fill it out and send it in (without a check, of course). If I do send it in, should I fill it out with all extreme rightist answers, in an effort to push the GOP further away from the political center? Or should I confuse them and do my best to supply the answer Noam Chomsky would give?

AB

The Daily Show

You really should watch it. It's funnier than watching Fox News, and it doesn't make you want to throw stuff. From Thursday's show, here's Lewis Black on the latest upward-skewed tax cuts:

"Trickle Down Economics...Before we called it Trickle Down Economics, we called it Voodoo Economics, and before that we just called it Screwing the Oakies

That sounds about right.^TM

AB

NYT Editors Out

I'll give Raines credit for this:

"It's been a tumultuous month, 20 months, but we have produced some memorable newspapers." [emphasis mine]

Memorable! Not quality, excellent,outstanding, nor even just good. Now if they'd just take reporters Gerth and Bruni with them, and make sure Lelyveld really is only the "interim" executive editor then the grey lady might get back some of what she's lost over the last ten years.

AB

Where's he Been?

Back in the day, a comment from Sen. John McCain seemed like a mandatory part of every policy news story. But I haven't heard a peep from him in a while. He voted for the latest tax cut debt increase package, but had no widely publicized comments. In any event, he's apparently decided that media consolidation is too important to be decided on a 3-2 vote by the FCC, without Congressional input or approval:

"I have a long voting record in support of deregulation. But the business of media ownership, which can have such an immense effect on the nature and quality of our democracy, is too important to be dealt with so categorically [by a small group of regulators.]."

In general, I'm a fan of deregulation, particularly in markets where barriers to entry are not overwhelming (look what deregulation did for airline ticket prices and your long distance bill). But the mass media business does seem to have barriers to entry; as it stands, Viacom, Disney, AOL/Time-Warner, and NewsCorp probably produce around 70% of the content you see on cable. Newpaper ownership is also highly concentrated. So there is significant potential risk of further consolidation and the exercise of market power once the new rules are in effect. An issue this big really should be under the purview of Congress, rather than an appointed commission. Of course, even if the new rules do take effect, media consolidation will still be subject to review by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. On the one hand, that didn't do much to stop Clear Channel from assembling a radio empire (there were some negotiated spin-offs), but the Department of Justice did recently block the merger of Echostar and DirectTV.

AB

Mac Diva and Other Newbies

Make sure to take a look at this post, Blogospherics: Anger in the blogosphere from Mac-a-ro-nies.. Mac Diva is currently in the lead in N.Z. Bear's Microbes on Parade: The New Weblog Showcase--check out Macaronies and the other new blogs here.

AB

Milestone

If you will look to your left and scroll down, you should see a number above 20,000. Whoohoo! But that's page views, not unique visitors. On a typical day, page views are about 1.3 times unique visitors, so unique visitors will hit 20,000 by the end of the month, sooner if I get a few more big links. This is only slightly below expectations: based on the projections from the early days of this blog, the entire population of the earth should have viewed this blog by 3/14/2003.

AB

What Cave Does Will Rasberry Live in?

See yesterday's Incomparable^TM Daily Howler for a good laugh as Washington Post Columnist William Rasberry calls outspoken lefty Arianna Huffington "an outspoken conservative". Only it's not funny, because it's an example, albeit a particularly egregious one, of the laziness typical of lefties writing in the major OP-ED pages. And does anybody who knows anything about politics proofread these things?

AB

Disingenuity without Limit

Tom Delay in the NYT: "To me, it's a little difficult to give tax relief to people that don't pay income tax."

First, in all the stories I've read, most of the excluded are low income people who do pay income taxes. The current excluded group includes families making $10,500 to $26,625--the upper half of that range surely pays income taxes. Moreover, rampant deficit spending lead to the raiding of the Social Security "lockbox", so payroll taxes and income taxes are essentially fungible (they basically are, anyway). And everybody with a job pays "payroll taxes", though many of the working poor do not pay "income taxes". So DeLay, and Republicans in general, are always careful to preface "tax" with the word "income", whenever they talk about only being able to cut [income] taxes for those who pay them.

This is an important issue that everyone needs to be completely clear on, because it is widely used by Republicans to justify regressive tax cuts. Take a look at your pay stub. Everything that says something like "Fed Med" or "Medicare" or "OASDI" or "Social Security" is payroll tax. I'm fairly certain--commenters will fact check me--that nothing Bush has done in any tax cut plan has reduced payroll taxes. Payroll taxes are regressive, meaning that you pay less in percentage terms as your income goes up, because Social Security taxes are only applied to your first $85k of income. If you make $85k, you pay 6.2% of your income in SS taxes; if you make $170k, then you pay 3.1% of your income in SS taxes, and so forth. Back to your pay stub: look at the part with a name like "Federal Withholding". This, and only this, is the amount DeLay is talking about when he says "Income Tax". If you make under $40 thousand a year, depending on your family status, the part DeLay is not talking about (payroll) is probably bigger than the part he is talking about (income).

That said, I'm a bit surprised that he's holding out on this. I figured the plan was to hit the $350 target, via the chicanery of sunsets, exclude popular taxes, and then force the Democrats and moderate Republicans to insist on inserting more tax cuts. But, as the WSJ editorial page revealed last fall, it's important to keep taxing the poor, so that they will politically support further tax cuts.

AB

UPDATE: Jesse of Pandagon has more.

The End of Internet Explorer?

For those who thought the Browser Wars were interesting, or for those who like reasons to complain about Microsoft, or for those who think the government sold out in the Microsoft settlement, ZDnet has an interesting story alleging that MS plans to stop offering Internet Explorer as a stand-alone browser. The business logic for this is straightforward: 95% of web sites work on any browser, but around 5%, including some important sites, do not. I strongly prefer Opera, but I am forced to use IE when I post on Blogger, visit Matt Yglesias' blog, or do my online banking. If these glitches continue into the next generation of IE, then everyone will have to upgrade to the latest generation of Windows to get the latest browser, and Linux users will be out of luck. It's a beautiful circle for Microsoft: a near-monopoly in the operating system market allows them to attain a near-monopoly in the browser market, allowing MS to reinforce its position in the OS market.

You could lose a lot of money betting against Microsoft's execution of strategies like these (exception: MSN), but in this case, I'm not sure it will work. There is a substantial installed base of older machines that lack the hard drive space and RAM to run Windows XP, much less the next generation of Windows (codenamed "Longhorn"). A quick check of the stats for this blog shows that, in the non-random sample of Angry Bear readers, exactly 2/3 of my visitors are on Windows 2000 or XP. 15% are on Mac/Unix/Linux (which is how I know the sample is non-random). Online businesses simply cannot afford to cut off 15% to 33% of the market from full functionality on their sites, and so will have to update their server-side code to be robust to Opera, Netscape, and non-IE browsers. I basically agree with Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive of Opera:

"My take is that not distributing IE without Windows is good news for us. This means that a lot of companies are left with the choice between using Opera and paying Microsoft a hefty fee for a Windows upgrade that (makes obsolete) their computers. In the current market, many companies are trying to cut their costs, and a lot of them have no compelling reason to upgrade Windows."

Why is all of this even an issue? The internet was built around the idea of open standards (e.g., any OS with any Browser would work with any website, because they would all be speaking the same language), whereas Microsoft is built around closed and proprietary standards (only MS browsers, Windows, and websites running MS servers work well together). When MS successfully crushed Netscape, the internet took a big step towards closed standards, though it still remains by and large open--for the time being. Larry Lessig's blog and his book, The Future of Ideas, are pretty good on general open vs. closed intellectual property issues.

AB

P.S. As long as I'm being nerdy today, it looks like the inventors of Palm, who eventually left under unpleasant circumstances and founded Handspring, have come full circle.

Not sure what's going on

The Washington Post: Greenspan No 'Major Evidence' of Growth; Reiterates Concern Over the Threat of Deflation

The NYT: Greenspan Sees Possible Turnaround in U.S. Economy

AB

Transcript Wanted

So Al Franken, Molly Ivins, and Bill O'Reilly walk into a bar appeared together on CSPAN2 over the weekend. Yes, it does sound like the start of a good joke, but it really happened--and by all accounts it was amusing to watch O'Reilly without his mute button handy. Unfortunately, I missed it, and I can't find a transcript anywhere. If you come across one, please email me.

AB

UPDATE: It's definitely on this coming Sunday at 5:30 p.m. Eastern. Thanks, readers.

Whither WMD?

Since I'm citing Orwell of late, here's this from Josh Marshall:

My God, when they say down the memory hole, they ain't kiddin! There now seems to be a secret competition -- perhaps it was announced and I just didn't hear it -- for the Iraq-hawk who can come up with the most ingenious, Orwellian, up-is-down rewriting of the history of the year- long lead-up to the Iraq war. To this point, the strongest entries are those whispers out of the Pentagon, arguing that it was Colin Powell and the State Department who made them make such a big to-do about weapons of mass destruction. [more...]

AB

Liberalism and Growth

Recently, I said I would try to make the case that liberalism causes growth. Certainly, correlations suggest that this is the case. For instance, income is substantially higher in Blue states than Red states. The inability of the Soviet Union to match the productive output of the United States is another example. A more remote example was the lack of growth in Western Europe prior to the Reformation. I've even heard the case made that the reason China and the Middle East failed to capitalize on their respective technological leads over Europe going into the second millennium is that those countries never had similar reformations. China remained a dictatorship and the Middle East remained largely theocratic, preventing the emergence of capitalism.

In a recent book, The Free-Market Innovation Machine, widely respected (i.e., neither known as left nor right, just a really smart guy) economist William Baumol makes the case that over the long run, the important feature of capitalism is not that it leads to static efficiency, meaning supply equals demands and labor and resources are directed to their most productive uses. While those are important, the key distinguishing feature of capitalism is that it forces firms to compete on the dimension of innovation. Firms that innovate more consistently and prolifically outperform; those that are innovative laggards vanish by the wayside. Innovation has positive externalities, is fecund, and leads to economic growth. Ideas and knowledge fuel innovation and, in turn, education and an open society fuel ideas and knowledge.

This is where the connection between liberalism and wealth lies. A society that, for example, burns and bans books, will not be innovatively prolific. George Orwell, writing as Emmanuel Goldstein, expresses it well; Goldstein is describing the slowdown in innovation that accompanied the rise of The Party:

Science and technology were developing [before The Party took over] at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happened, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. [p. 193 of the 2003 edition]

Liberal societies are less regimented; within liberal societies, cities are generally the least regimented areas, which I hypothesize explains the Blue-Red income and wealth gap. The causal chain is that the receptiveness to new ideas that accompanies liberalism leads to the production of more ideas, leading to more innovation, leading to more growth.

AB

P.S. In another recent book,
The Rise of the Creative Class, Economist Richard Florida of Carnegie Mellon argues that "scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists, and entertainers" constitute a creative class (about 30% of the population) that generates most of society's new ideas. This class is drawn to cities, he argues, precisely because cities are most open to new ideas. Florida's arguments are generally strong, but unfortunately, I thought the writing was a bit burdensome. On the other hand, I wholeheartedly recommend Baumol's book to anyone interested in Capitalism, innovation, and growth.