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"…the strange thing about the Kingdom of God is how those we tend to overlook and even denigrate (the..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:17:13 +0100

“…the strange thing about the Kingdom of God is how those we tend to overlook and even denigrate (the poor, the weak, the stranger, the disabled, the marginal, the outsider) become the most important. It’s the opposite of Social Darwinism which is, I think, the default value system of humanity.”

- Roger E. Olson

The Great Inequality

Thu, 24 May 2012 22:24:47 +0100

The Great Inequality:

It is appropriate at this point to ask why inequality matters. Schutz offers several compelling reasons. First, from the fact that the power that generates inequality is inherently undemocratic, it follows that societies that exhibit consistently high degrees of inequality, as is true of all capitalist societies, cannot be democratic. As inequality rises in the United States, even the formal democracy we do have becomes less meaningful. Is it not by now, for example, pointless to vote in national elections?

Second, inequality is also harmful to the formation of the social bonds so necessary for human well-being. It isolates us from one another; in effect, there are two worlds, that of the rich and that of the rest of us. The rich exert power over us and, by doing so, deny us our full humanity. Schutz says: “The concept of alienation clarifies both the extent and the significance of what is lost for those subordinated in social power structures. Not only is their full self-initiative denied…but the full development of their faculties and intentions in all other realms of life is thereby stifled and more or less permanently stunted. People…manifest behaviors ranging from withdrawal to social or intellectual incompetence, from distraction to aimlessness or apathy, from anger, confusion, depression and anxiety to obsession and neuroses and, in some, violence of one kind or another” (162).

Third, inequality is not good for the economy. As the working class loses ground, its members cannot spend as much money, and this can cause a reduction in the demand for many goods and services, which can dampen capital spending and employment growth. Growing inequality has reduced economic mobility, and this can lower the willingness of workers to put forth as much effort as previously. Fourth, inequality does great damage to the environment. There is no way out of our environmental crisis without a radical change in public policies. Yet, the more inequality there is, which is to say, the greater the power of the well-to-do over everyone else, the less likely is this to happen. Governments become more subservient to business and its growth mania, and they are less likely to combat the rampant consumerism that is the lifeblood of corporations; the more conspicuous and energy-wasting consumption there is; and the more the rich will seek individual ways to insulate themselves from environmental catastrophes.

"The increased political power of capital has harmed labor directly as well. We have seen a weakening..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 20:35:57 +0100

“The increased political power of capital has harmed labor directly as well. We have seen a weakening of all public programs that make working men and women more secure, from unemployment compensation and public assistance to social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Labor laws are evermore inadequately enforced, and proposals for better laws never see the light of day. Business-friendly courts gut the common sense meaning of laws that might benefit the majority of people. Antitrust laws have become a dead letter, which steadily eliminates any roadblocks to growing monopoly power, thereby making stronger the inequality-producing trends that weaken the power of workers.”

- The Great Inequality

Over-Promise and Under-Deliver

Thu, 24 May 2012 19:42:43 +0100

Over-Promise and Under-Deliver:

We’ve covered The Callousness of Siri before, but how about Siri’s accuracy? You’ve likely seen the Apple ad featuring Samuel L. Jackson using Siri1. If you’ve used Siri yourself, however, you know the disclaimer of “Sequences shortened” is more than an understatement. They’ve edited out the inevitable “No.…NO.…NO!” as well as significant quantities of exasperated sighs. After hearing Jackson say the word “hotspacho” for the umpteenth time, I decided to run a little test.

TL;DR: Siri sucks…

Why Nations Fail

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:46:56 +0100

Why Nations Fail

Obama spending binge never happened

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:54:13 +0100

Obama spending binge never happened:

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.

"Perhaps a story and some striking facts will serve to sum up the grotesque nature of our..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:08:24 +0100

“Perhaps a story and some striking facts will serve to sum up the grotesque nature of our skyrocketing income inequality. When I was a boy, I was amazed to learn in my encyclopedia how large a sum was one billion dollars. If a person spent $10,000 a day (my encyclopedia used $1,000 a day, but that was a long time ago), it would take 100,000 days to spend a billion dollars, just under 274 years. In 2009, Pittsburgh hedge fund manager, David Tepper, made four billion dollars. This income, spent at a rate of $10,000 a day and exclusive of any interest, would last him and his heirs 1,096 years! If we were to suppose that Mr. Tepper worked 2,000 hours in 2009 (fifty weeks at forty hours per week), he took in $2,000,000 per hour and $30,000 a minute. This means that he would have paid his social security tax for the entire year in about four minutes of his first workday. Today there are many individuals who, while not as rich as Tepper, make millions of dollars in a single year, enough money to secure them against any calamity.”

- The Great Inequality

Would Mitt Romney Be Another Bill Clinton or Another George W. Bush?

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:13:09 +0100

Would Mitt Romney Be Another Bill Clinton or Another George W. Bush?:

This is a bit surprising, as Mr. Clinton is a Democrat who was widely loathed by Republicans like Mr. Romney when he was in office. Moreover, Mr. Romney seldom mentions the last president of his own party, George W. Bush, often referring to him merely as Barack Obama’s “predecessor.”

From a nonpartisan point of view, this is not surprising. Mr. Clinton consistently governed as a fiscal conservative and Mr. Bush as a liberal. However, Mr. Clinton was not a conservative by today’s standards, but rather by those of an earlier generation.

That is to say, he actually cared about the budget deficit and was willing to raise taxes to reduce it – as Ronald Reagan did 11 times, and George H.W. Bush courageously did even though he knew it would probably cost him re-election.

Today’s conservatives oppose tax increases so strenuously that many were willing to default on the nation’s debt last summer rather than raise taxes by a single penny.

They overwhelmingly believe in a nonsensical theory called “starve the beast,” which asserts that tax cuts automatically reduce spending and tax increases never reduce the deficit because they invariably lead to spending increases.

The Clinton and Bush 43 administrations are almost perfect tests of starve-the-beast theory; the former raised taxes in 1993, while the latter signed into law seven different major tax cuts, according to a Treasury study. If there were any truth whatsoever to starving the beast, we should have seen a rise in spending during the Clinton years and a fall in spending during the Bush years. In fact, we had exactly the opposite results.

Mike Luckovich: Spending

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:47:00 +0100

Mike Luckovich: Spending

"We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:06:02 +0100

“We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.”

- Piotr Czerski

We Told You So

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:54:26 +0100

We Told You So:

Bubbles are endemic to capitalism, but in most of history they are not the major story. In the nineteenth century, agricultural price deflation was a larger problem. In the twentieth, industrialization and technology set the direction. It was only in the information technology bubble of the late nineties that financial considerations including the rise of venture capital and the influx of capital to the United Statesfollowing the Asian and Russian crises—came to dominate the direction of the economy as a whole. The result was capricious and unstable—vast investments in (for instance) dark broadband, followed by a financial collapse—but it was not without redeeming social merits. The economy prospered, achieving full employment without inflation. And much of the broadband survived for later use.

The same will not be said for the sequential bubbles of the Bush years, in housing and now commodities. The housing bubble—deliberately fostered by the authorities that should have been regulating it, including Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke—pushed the long-standing American model of support for homeownership beyond its breaking point. It involved a vast victimization of a vulnerable population. The unraveling will have social effects extending far beyond that population, to the large class of Americans with good credit and standard mortgages, whose home values are nevertheless being wiped out. Meanwhile, abandoned houses quickly become uninhabitable, so that, unlike broadband, the capital created in the bubble is actually destroyed, to a considerable degree, in the slump.

"The chief political concern of the Scriptures is for God’s wise and loving ordering of his..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:37:53 +0100

“The chief political concern of the Scriptures is for God’s wise and loving ordering of his world to be operative through humans who will share his priorities, especially his concern for the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. This concern was embodied by Jesus in his inauguration of ‘God’s kingdom’ through his public career and especially his self-giving death, which together set the pattern for a radically redefined notion of power.”

- N.T. Wright

After President Obama’s announcement, opposition to gay marriage hits record low

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:21:33 +0100

After President Obama’s announcement, opposition to gay marriage hits record low:

Overall, 53 percent of Americans say gay marriage should be legal, hitting a high mark in support while showing a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago, when just 36 percent thought it should be legal. Thirty-nine percent, a new low, say gay marriage should be illegal.

The poll also finds that 59 percent of African Americans say they support same-sex marriage, up from an average of 41 percent in polls leading up to Obama’s announcement of his new position on the matter. Though statistically significant, it is a tentative result because of the relatively small sample of black voters in the poll.

Jimmy Margulies

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:07:27 +0100

Jimmy Margulies

"It’s obvious to me that the powerful religious elite preferred to read scripture from the Top-Down,..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:51:27 +0100

“It’s obvious to me that the powerful religious elite preferred to read scripture from the Top-Down, meaning that they interpreted scripture in ways that would protect their societal and religious privilege. Jesus, however, employed a Bottom-Up method of scripture interpretation. He read scripture in ways that empowered those on the edges of society… the oppressed… the “unclean”… the forgotten. I’ve come to see this as the challenge of today’s theologians and ministers. I think there should be more of an effort to help people use scripture as a tool for empowering those who are being pushed to the Bottom. We need to start imitating The Master, even if it’s unpopular. Even if it’s inconvenient. Even when we’re afraid. Christianity has a reputation among the non-religious for being a hatred-producing propaganda machine because we have yet to master the art of using scripture in the way that Jesus used it. I hope this changes in my lifetime.”

- Crystal St. Marie Lewis

Our Mr. Brooks Goes A'Bain-ing for a Changeling

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:33:20 +0100

Our Mr. Brooks Goes A'Bain-ing for a Changeling:

The Obama attack ad accused Bain Capital of looting a steel company called GST in the 1990s and then throwing its workers out on the street. [Brief interlude praising a Wall Street Journal column omitted because the WSJ opinion page has been a monkeyhouse since 1980.] The company was in terminal decline before Bain entered the picture, seeing its work force fall from 4,500 to less than 1,000. It faced closure when Romney and Bain, for some reason, saw hope for it in 1993. Bain acquired it, induced banks to loan it money and poured $100 million into modernization, according to Strassel. Bain held onto the company for eight years, hardly the pattern of a looter. Finally, after all the effort, the company, like many other old-line steel companies, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, two years after Romney had left Bain. This is the story of a failed rescue, not vampire capitalism.

He’s drowning. Quick, throw him an anvil. What is missing from this touching story of Bain’s career as an EMT of last resort are, in no particular order: 1) what happened to the workers at GST?; 2) what happened to their pension money? and 3) how did Bain — and Willard Romney — make out on the whole deal. The answers are, in order: 1) Shitcanned; 2) Underfunded, and then used to soak the American taxpayer, and 3) they walked away with at least $12 million, not to mention $900,000 in “consultant’s fees.”

Research from around the world clearly confirms that companies that have been acquired by private equity firms are more productive than comparable firms. This process involves a great deal of churn and creative destruction. It does not, on net, lead to fewer jobs.A giant study by economists from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the University of Maryland and the Census Bureau found that when private equity firms acquire a company, jobs are lost in old operations. Jobs are created in new, promising operations.

Really? Where? Here? Also, “churn” and “creative destruction” are quasi-mystical terms of economic bunkum that generally mean, “bad stuff that happens to other people.” One man’s churn is another man’s $10-an-hour-no-benefits.

Nor is it true that private equity firms generally pile up companies with debt, loot them and then send them to the graveyard. This does happen occasionally (the tax code encourages debt), but banks would not be lending money to private equity-owned companies, decade after decade, if those companies weren’t generally prosperous and creditworthy.

Yes, it happens occasionally often with companies like Bain Capital, which piled $378 million in debt onto GST in two years. You mean the banks didn’t notice? One of them couldn’t say, “Hey, isn’t, you know, $278 million in debt seems a bit extreme?” Isn’t the difference between big banks and private equity firms merely the difference between Frank and Jesse James? Didn’t there used to be things called “labor unions” that stood up against this kind of brigandage?

In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign that embodied and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.

Because people got no jobs, people got no money. Of course, Mitt Romney is running on arguments that were stale and disproven by 1929, which is apparently more recent than 2000, when George W. Bush was pretending that conservatives cared about their struggling fellow citizens. Who’s working where when the “transformation” is complete? We can’t all park cars in Cleveland Park.

"The Rev. Wright became infamous for those angry sermons in which he called America to task for its..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 06:20:00 +0100

“The Rev. Wright became infamous for those angry sermons in which he called America to task for its moral failures—for its treatment of Native Americans and African Americans, for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, for all the myriad ways in which America—despite its self-identification as a Christian nation—has been decidedly unchristian in its approach to peace, justice, and economic equity. I am here today to testify that Jeremiah Wright was often both offensive and—theologically, biblically, doctrinally—right.”

- What if Jeremiah Wright is Right?

Mitt Romney's Bain problem: private equity has bad rap with public

Thu, 24 May 2012 05:05:23 +0100

Mitt Romney's Bain problem: private equity has bad rap with public:

A March poll by Bloomberg News asked the question, “Do you think private equity practices, which include investing money to take over companies with a plan to sell them later, are mostly good or mostly bad for the economy?” Some 52 percent of Americans said “mostly bad,” while just 27 percent said “mostly good,” and the rest were uncertain.

David Graeber and David Harvey in Conversation

Thu, 24 May 2012 03:48:38 +0100

David Graeber and David Harvey in Conversation

The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights

Thu, 24 May 2012 02:31:18 +0100

The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights:

The mainstream, and correct, history of the politics of civil rights is as follows. Southern white supremacy operated out of the Democratic Party beginning in the nineteenth century, but the party began attracting northern liberals, including African-Americans, into an ideologically cumbersome coalition. Over time the liberals prevailed, forcing the Democratic Party to support civil rights, and driving conservative (and especially southern) whites out, where they realigned with the Republican Party.

Williamson crafts a tale in which the Republican Party is and always has been the greatest friend the civil rights cause ever had. The Republican takeover of the white South had absolutely nothing to do with civil rights, the revisionist case proclaims, except insofar as white Southerners supported Republicans because they were more pro-civil rights.

One factoid undergirding this bizarre interpretation is that the partisan realignment obviously took a long time to complete — Southerners still frequently voted Democratic into the seventies and eighties. This proves, according to Williamson, that a backlash against civil rights could not have driven southern whites out of the Democratic Party. “They say things move slower in the South — but not that slow,” he insists.

His story completely ignores the explicit revolt by conservative Southerners against the northern liberal civil rights wing, beginning with Strom Thurmond, who formed a third-party campaign in 1948 in protest against Harry Truman’s support for civil rights. Thurmond received 49 percent of the vote in Louisiana, 72 percent in South Carolina, 80 percent in Alabama, and 87 percent in Mississippi. He later, of course, switched to the Republican Party.

Thurmond’s candidacy is instructive. Democratic voting was deeply acculturated among southern whites as a result of the Civil War. When southern whites began to shake loose of it, they began at the presidential level, in protest against the civil rights leanings of the national wing. It took decades for the transformation to filter down, first to Congressional-level representation (Thurmond, who Williamson mentions only in his capacity as a loyal Democrat, finally switched to the GOP in 1964), and ultimately to local-level government. The most fervently white supremacist portions of the South were also the slowest to shed their Confederate-rooted one-party traditions. None of this slowness actually proves Williamson’s contention that the decline of the Democratic Party in the South was unrelated to race.