As the Senate debate expired this summer, a longtime environmental lobbyist told me that he believed the “real tragedy” surrounding the issue was that Obama understood it profoundly. “I believe Barack Obama understands that fifty years from now no one’s going to know about health care,” the lobbyist said. “Economic historians will know that we had a recession at this time. Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.
It may be true that Obama “profoundly” understands what failing to address global warming means. Certainly I (and many others) thought that was true — until he basically punted on the issue without a serious fight.
The lengthy New Yorker piece, “As The World Burns,” however, suggests that if Obama did understand the transcendent nature of human-caused climate change, he personally didn’t try bloody hard to put together 60 votes for a bill.
The piece is well worth reading, although the conclusion, quoted above, just misses the mark. I don’t believe that in 50 years “Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.” Let’s set aside whether “everybody” (or even most people) in 2060 (or even today) would know what the “James Buchanan of climate change” means. For the record, Wikipedia notes:
A sort of goofy Kate Zernike article lumps Friedrich Hayek in with some much more obscure figures as a kind of forgotten man resuscitated by the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck. The reality, of course, is that Hayek is a very famous and broadly influential thinker.
Now that said, though I know many people who disagree, in my opinion The Road to Serfdom is basically a crank political pamphlet. And certainly Beck and others are putting it forward in a crank context. But to make a long story short, not only is the Obama administration’s policy agenda much more Hayekian than the policy agenda of the British Labour Party in the mid-1940s, the implementation of the Labour Party platform clearly did not lead to serfdom.
The shame of it all, though, is that if people were inspired to go out and read “The Use of Knowledge in Society” or other stuff on the socialist calculation problem, they’d really learn a thing or two. A great many people, for example, observe that China has a faster growth rate than the USA and also a more state-directed economy and therefore observe that China has a faster growth rate than the USA in part because its economy is more state-directed. If you understand Hayek than I think you’ll understand that this is likely backwards.
I do have to say, though, that I think Hayek is one of those historically important thinkers who in many ways it’s clearer and easier to read about than to read directly (similarly, I find Keynes’ actual writing incredibly confusing relative to a Krugman or DeLong explanation of one of Keynes’ arguments). The language is just kind of off relative to how you would talk about these things today, and in some ways deciphering the prose without a helpful professor to explain it to you may be more difficult than just reading a Wikipedia entry.
It hardly counts as a good reason to initiate wars, but I believe that empirically speaking wartime mobilization has often been a force for women’s equality and Elisabeth Bumiller reports that counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is no exception:
In their sights they could see the source of the blast: an Afghan man who had shot aimlessly from behind a mud wall, shielded by a half-dozen children. The women held their fire with the rest of the patrol so as not to hit a child, waited for the all-clear, then headed back to the base, survivors of yet another encounter with the enemy. [...]
As new faces in an American counterinsurgency campaign, the female Marines, who volunteered for the job, were to meet with Pashtun women over tea in their homes, assess their need for aid, gather intelligence, and help open schools and clinics. [...]
Here in Marja — which, seven months after a major offensive against the Taliban, is improving but remains one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan — the female Marines have daily skirted the Pentagon rules restricting women in combat. They have shot back in firefights and ambushes, been hit by homemade bombs and lived on bases hit by mortar attacks.
It seems worth noting that the restrictions on women in combat roles not only violates the spirit of modern egalitarianism, but seems to go against at least the rhetoric of COIN and a different kind of war.
An investigation by the New York Daily News finds that New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, a multi-millionaire real estate developer, promised to revive the economy of Buffalo by creating new jobs, received $3 million in state tax breaks to do so, but then pocketed the tax refunds while delivering very few jobs:
A Daily News probe found Paladino’s companies netted $3 million in tax breaks through a program called the Empire Zones – while producing a grand total of 25 new jobs.
To justify tax breaks in one instance, he sold a dozen vacant lots he owned to himself and claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in “real property investments.” Seven years later, these “investments” remain what they were – vacant lots.
His Empire Zone investments consisted mostly of renovating his own buildings – $19 million worth. He completed no new construction and brought no new businesses in any of his Empire Zone projects.
Instead, the Paladino companies such as the Ellicott Group mostly generate income through six big office buildings that collect millions of dollars in rent.
Ironically, Paladino claims his campaign is standing up for taxpayers. For instance, he wants to slash the state’s Medicaid spending by almost half because, he said, New York invites anyone to “come here and sit on the backs of our taxpayers.”
Speaking before New York business leaders this past week, Paladino pledged to cut taxes for the rich, including across-the-board cuts in corporate franchise taxes. “I will provide businesses relief from the onerous taxes and regulations strangling them today,” Paladino said. “I’m going to make our businesses competitive again.” But his own experience suggests that cutting taxes for the wealthiest is hardly the best way to jump-start the economy.
One of Paladino’s properties lost its Empire Zone tax credits during a state review last year, “with the state arguing the property did not create enough jobs to justify the tax breaks.” Perhaps the taxpayers should be telling Paladino: “Don’t tread on me.”
Really enjoyable movie. A welcome reminder that good acting, a good script, and good pacing can get you very far. It’s possible to create drama without anyone getting killed or anyone’s life ever being in danger!
For a true story, though, I caution you that a lot of it is made up. For example the facts about Mark Zuckerberg’s “relationship status” are wrong (though the made-up story is better than the true one) and the key issue in the Saverin lawsuit isn’t described right. There was, however, in my view a great deal of verisimilitude in depicting the atmosphere at Harvard circa 2003 where pathologically competitive people were thick on the ground. It’s too bad they couldn’t get permission to shoot on campus and show you the real Kirkland House (a house is basically a dorm) which is also home to such internet pioneers as Yours Truly and Dylan Matthews along with luminaries such as Pat Toomey and Thomas Sowell.
If you’re looking for Facebook-related political commentary, I think Larry Lessig shoots and scores on the oddity of taking a lawyer’s eye view of the situation. But I woud add that the fundamental message of Facebook and a lot of other digital-era firms has to do with the economics of networks where relatively small initial differences in quality or timing can lead to gargantuan differences in economic outcomes. These things happen in all kinds of fields, of course, but it’s especially pronounced in software.
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.
The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.
Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay. The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.
Obviously the more densely populated your town the less you’re going to want to sign on for this madcap experiment in quasi-privatized provision of government services. But part of what’s odd here is the mayor’s refusal to provide ex post firefighting services at any price. Since putting a fire out is much cheaper at the margin than rebuilding a burned-down house, it should be easy to set a pricing scheme that doesn’t entail any substantial adverse selection issues.
I think there’s a surprising amount of inefficiency in the world deriving from the fact that people with various competencies—fighting fires, organizing rock concerts, cooking tasty food—don’t really understand optimal pricing.
Last night, California gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman (R-CA) and Jerry Brown (D-CA) squared off in a debate hosted by Univision for Spanish-speaking audiences. During the debate, Whitman reiterated her commitment to cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. However, Brown noted Whitman has yet to even take any responsibility for her employment of Nicky Diaz Santillan — who came out this week saying Whitman employed her for nine years and knew she was an undocumented immigrant, but turned a blind eye:
WHITMAN: We have got to get our arms around illegal immigration and I’ve got a good plan. [...] We have to hold employers accountable, all employers accountable for hiring only documented workers. We need a better e-verify system. Three strikes and you’re out, pay a fine, and lose your business license. If we do not hold employers accountable we will never get our arms around this very challenging problem.
BROWN: Now talking about cracking down Ms. Whitman obviously didn’t crack down on herself. [...]
Meg, I didn’t want to hit you on this, but when you try to evade responsibility, you’re going around the state saying, employers must be accountable for hiring unlawful people. There ought to be raids on businesses. There’s no path to citizenship, no path. [...] Don’t run for governor if you can’t stand up on your own two feet and say, hey, I made a mistake, I’m sorry, let’s go on from here.
Watch it:
Whitman has flatly denied Diaz Santillan’s allegations this whole week, saying she stopped employing Nicky Diaz Santillan as soon as she learned of her immigration status. However, Diaz Santillan’s lawyer produced a handwritten note from Whitman’s husband from 2003 which suggests the family knew of Santillan’s status for years.
Irrespective of when Whitman discovered Diaz Santillan’s immigration status, Whitman has failed to reconcile her zero-tolerance immigration policies with her own, possibly honest, mistake. Brown noted that, instead, Whitman’s response to the controversy has focused on attacking him: “You have blamed her [Diaz Santillan], blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions, but you don’t take accountability and you can’t be a leader unless you’re willing to stand on your own two feet and say, yeah, I made a mistake and I’m going on from here.”
Besides cracking down on employers, Whitman indicated that she will not support comprehensive immigration reform or a path to legalization until “there are no more illegal immigrants coming across the border.” She additionally expressed her opposition to the DREAM Act, which would legalize young undocumented students, while also telling Univision’s audience that she’s the best person to fix the education system for Latinos.
Last month, a spokesman for Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul said that, if elected, Paul “will vote against and filibuster any unbalanced budget proposal in the Senate.” Not only can the budget not be filibustered, but Paul is going to make balancing the budget exceedingly difficult, as he is willing to extend all of the Bush tax cuts — including those for the richest two percent of Americans — without offsetting them with spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere, for a total cost of nearly $4 trillion.
This morning, on Fox News Sunday, Paul said that his focus in the Senate would be reducing the “mountains and mountains of debt.” But when asked to square that with his desire to spend trillions of dollars on tax cuts, he replied that, when it comes to extending Bush’s tax cuts, “I’m not seeing it as a cost to government”:
Q: You said at the very beginning, the first issue you mention was the national debt. If you’re so concerned about the national debt, how are you going to pay for a $4 trillion loss of revenue from the tax cuts.
PAUL: I think, first of all you look at whose money it is. It’s the people’s money, who earned the money; we give up some to pay taxes, so I’m not seeing it as a cost to government.
Watch it:
Paul later promised to “introduce legislation that will reduce spending,” but when Fox News’ Chris Wallace noted “there’s no way you’re going to get $4 trillion by spending cuts,” Paul simply reiterated that he would cut spending without laying out any specifics.
Of course, Paul is far from alone in this line of thinking, joining, among others, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “What are you talking about, paid for?” McConnell has asked. “You’re talking about current tax policy. Why did it all of a sudden become something that we, quote, ‘pay for’?”
And since Paul agrees with McConnell that tax cuts are either free or worth busting the budget to enact, maybe he also agrees with McConnell’s pronouncement that cutting taxes for the rich is deficit spending which Republicans wholeheartedly support?
Last month, a spokesman for Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul said that, if elected, Paul “will vote against and filibuster any unbalanced budget proposal in the Senate.” Not only can the budget not be filibustered, but Paul is going to make balancing the budget exceedingly difficult, as he is willing to extend all of the Bush tax cuts — including those for the richest two percent of Americans — without offsetting them with spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere, for a total cost of nearly $4 trillion.
This morning, on Fox News Sunday, Paul said that his focus in the Senate would be reducing the “mountains and mountains of debt.” But when asked to square that with his desire to spend trillions of dollars on tax cuts, he replied that, when it comes to extending Bush’s tax cuts, “I’m not seeing it as a cost to government”:
Q: You said at the very beginning, the first issue you mention was the national debt. If you’re so concerned about the national debt, how are you going to pay for a $4 trillion loss of revenue from the tax cuts.
PAUL: I think, first of all you look at whose money it is. It’s the people’s money, who earned the money; we give up some to pay taxes, so I’m not seeing it as a cost to government.
Watch it:
Paul later promised to “introduce legislation that will reduce spending,” but when Fox News’ Chris Wallace noted “there’s no way you’re going to get $4 trillion by spending cuts,” Paul simply reiterated that he would cut spending without laying out any specifics.
Of course, Paul is far from alone in this line of thinking, joining, among others, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “What are you talking about, paid for?” McConnell has asked. “You’re talking about current tax policy. Why did it all of a sudden become something that we, quote, ‘pay for’?”
And since Paul agrees with McConnell that tax cuts are either free or worth busting the budget to enact, maybe he also agrees with McConnell’s pronouncement that cutting taxes for the rich is deficit spending which Republicans wholeheartedly support?
Watch it before the copyright police take it down. And recall that strong IP not only enhances incentives for copyright owners, it also makes it much more difficult to create new works.
An 
