Soapbox: Prison, and "cruel and unusual punishment"

OK, it's time for me to vent about something that doesn't have anything to do with any particular current event, or something in my own life lately, or anything like that. In fact, that might be part of the problem with it, for prison rape pretty much never gets a mention in the news media. It seems to be accepted in U.S. society as just a constant in the background, something we pretty well know is going on, hence the surfeit of jokes and other alleged humour about it, but out-of-sight, out-of-mind, it never makes the papers.

For a rather unpleasant sample, there's a song by some Bob and Tom team called "Prison Bitch" (tasteless, disturbing YouTube video warning).

What I really loathe is how society as a whole seems to just accept this state of things in prisons, and treat prison rape as though it were merely part of a just and deserved punishment for the inmates. As Ezra Klein wrote a few years ago:

We've decided to tacitly accept rape in our prisons because we believe deeply and firmly in the guilt of all who enter -- this is just further punishment. Better yet, we're not the executors -- that such barbarism occurs behind bars is further confirmation that those we incarcerate are monsters. The assaults make us feel better, they vindicate our sentencing. And we can countenance them because we never face their horrors:...

However, we do, after all, have that pesky 8th Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" clause, after all. And, if one considered this part of the punishment, I'm pretty sure it would qualify on both counts.

I don't take much stock in playing which-is-worse oneupmanship, but if I had to pick the more vile between this and waterboarding alleged Al-Qaeda-linked persons, I just might call the prison rape system worse, largely because the "punishment" is completely uncorrelated to the crime for which they've been convicted. Indeed, the HRW report linked below suggests that the worse offenders (prior to incarceration) tend more often to be the rapists, and the victims tend to be those who've committed lesser crimes, along with a few other factors unrelated to the severity of their crime.

Related sites and articles:

• Just Detention International (formerly Stop Prison Rape)
• No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons from Human Rights Watch
• Ezra Klein, The American Prospect: Prison Rape
• There's nothing funny about prison rape, also by Ezra Klein as it turns out, L.A. Times

A Little Something More Serious

In reading on Dr. Tiller's death, a good and compassionate man murdered by a zealot, I wonder if these forced pregnancy people have any kind of empathy at all. Birth defects and fetal deaths are not uncommon, even in this day and age. Miscarriages aren't rare either, come to think of it. I really wonder what these people think...on second thought, no, no I don't. I wouldn't want to be in their soulless minds, picking on strangers to make themselves feel better, faking compassion and concern trolling abortion clinics so that they can prop up their fragile egos for a few more minutes.

People can think that abortion is murder. That is their opinion; they are entitled to their own opinions on things, though they may disagree with me. We will just agree to disagree. People can even be uncomfortable with the idea of abortion. What cannot be done, however, is curtail the rights of other people to obtain legal medical care. If we go down that road, there is nothing to stop your doctor from not treating you because you're overweight or obese, smoke, eat an occasional hamburger, or drink. Had a heart attack? Well, you rarely exercised and your primary care physician recommended it, so why should you get that bypass surgery or angioplasty? You should have thought of that before it became serious enough that you had the heart attack. Oh? You haven't had a check up in years? Well, tough for you. Maybe your doctor could have warned you that your blood pressure and cholesterol were high. Didn't think of that, now did you? Well, if you don't die, then you're just going to have to live with the consequences. Too late for you now.

And it's not just that part of it. The other part is medical costs. Abortion costs far less than pregnancy and delivery, in terms of medical care, even at later stages. And if we talk about high risk pregnancy, and throw in a very ill baby, then the costs can be huge. Let's say that abortion is outlawed. It's not cheap to keep a premature baby alive. And many, many things can go wrong during a pregnancy. What if the mother has a complication of pregnancy that led to a stroke and she's still carrying the child? They have to keep her on life support in the hospital. But then they notice something wrong with the baby and they have to do an emergency c-section...and the baby is premature. And they have the baby on life support as well, because the child is alive but just barely. If you think that all of this medical care for both mother and child is cheap, you're delusional. Oh, maybe they have insurance, even just catastrophic coverage, and with this scenario, they've pretty much blown through their deductible (if they had one) if not on the first day then at least in the first few days. And what happens if they don't have insurance and can't pay? If mother and child are in the hospital for a month, I'd expect that the claims for it would be very high. One high claim will not necessarily hurt a large group. But we are talking about forcing all women to go through complications (leaving out the emotional turmoil of fathers for a moment), regardless of insurance or ability to pay. If you have several women, even in a small group plan, and this happens every few years or so, the premiums will be astronomical. Actuaries calculate premiums based on the likelihood of particular diseases in classes of individuals/groups; one claim may not affect premiums greatly but repeated claims will. And that's not even counting the struggle that dad has - both baby and wife are confined to the hospital, and that's really heartbreaking. Worse, even if they live, they now have a lot of medical bills to pay, not just the hospitalization but also follow-up appointments, surgeries, durable medical equipment that may be needed (like oxygen tanks or monitors).

I may be a liberal but I'm not heartless bastard. Oh, yes, it's a tragic situation, but it would also cost more than angioplasty. Now, if the woman in question had aborted the child when it was necessary (even if the child is wanted and it's late in the trimester), if the doctor and the patient came to this very hard decision, the woman would not have the stroke and be hospitalized, dad would not have to go through the possibility of losing everyone he loved, and the expenses to them would be less. The insurance may not pick up all of the costs but remember - claims totaling $1 million are different than claims totaling $6000, especially for smaller groups.

The thing is, forced birthers don't care. They don't care about costs, they don't care about lives, they don't care about suffering, they just don't care. They have no knowledge of how anything works - medical care, pregnancy, insurance, compassion - and they think that they're morally superior. Which is the other thing that gets me angry about the forced birthers...

Dr. Tiller was murdered in church. A man who was compelled to help women in the most difficult time of their lives, a man of compassion and dignity, murdered in a house of worship. A person who went to work every single day knowing it could be his last day on earth, all because he felt it necessary to provide the best care he could to expectant parents facing such a tragedy. And he was killed in church. In my opinion, Dr. Tiller was more of a Christian than his murderer.

Forced birthers don't even care about their own religion. Their bible must be pretty thin, what with leaving out the words of the Jesus.

Who Let The Dogs In?

While I understand the drive for creating something, I do at least recognize that I can't do everything.

I had this inspiration of doing like a youtube/podcast thing playing a demon who works in Hell. I'm still thinking about it, and how I would go about doing this as to make it pretty believable (still working on the script!).

However, I at least have enough sense not to be a conservative rapper. Case in point:

I damn near died laughing. They should have a warning on this, like "May laugh yourself to death" or something. The lyrics? Totally awesome. I'm glad that "the youngins" are trying to uplift the very same party that stands for sexism, racism, homophobia, robber barons, and rapid depletion of natural resources as well as religious domination and war. Because what's cooler than bombing some brown people? Torture! And Jesus!

The lyrics are a laughfest. Really. I think that they need a little help.

Thank you Miss Cali for reminding us of marriage
Can't support abortion, and call yourself a Christian
I support life, you're a puzzled politician

Translation: I like to keep the bitches down, yo. That's where they belong.

So, since I'm feeling generous today, perhaps they could use this as a guideline:

I keep down the the bitches and hos
kickin’ liberal hippies in the nose
chilin wit’ my bros
pressin’ red buttons
blasting them desert hos
straight into the sun
you know you wanna join the fun
of being a Young Con
not “convict” son
conservative man
worshiping Ayn Rand
savin’ precious fetuses
for the Lord Savior Jesus.

See? Not that hard to take awful rap and elevate it to half-assed. Yo.

Bitter commentary

Much of the response to the recent assassination of late-term abortion provider Dr. Tiller puts me in mind of this bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I particularly have in mind the response from the likes of Michelle Malkin, about how we can't hold anti-choicers responsible for the act of this single lone gunman, and shouldn't take measures against future violence in the heat of the moment.

Please, please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who.

(Relevant section starts at about 5:04, key phrases at 5:48)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

Just a little note that I'm finally active again over at my other associated blog, Class Wargames. I'm taking a macroeconomics class, and blogging on subjects that come up during it over there.

On Means and Ends: Still Torture

In the midst of this also-otherwise-fine item from Juliet Lapidos of Slate, "There Are Four Lights! Revisiting Star Trek: The Next Generation's eerily prescient torture episode," is this key paragraph, as far as my own little obsession with means & ends goes:

The extended torture sessions take a toll not just on Picard but on his interrogator as well. The more time the Cardassian spends with Picard, the more he becomes fixated on breaking his prisoner. And so the supposed goal of torture—information—is sidelined, while the means by which the goal will theoretically be achieved—mental submission—becomes an end in itself. As Picard puts it, "Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders it is still practiced."

Cf. On Means and Ends: Torture

Best Email Ever

So I'm going through my email and cleaning out the junk box. For some reason, I'm on an email list for the Rev. Lou Sheldon at The Traditional Values Coalition. Most of the time I skip over those emails, as well as the ones from Wisconsin Right To Life (Right to Be Forcibly Pregnant, is more like it), but then this headline caught my eye:

Obamunist Nominee Gave U.S. Port To Communists

I had to see this article. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. There's only one line that address this issue. The first half or so of the article reminds us that Panetta worked for Clinton, and CLINTON HAD A BLOWJOB! DID WE MENTION THAT HE HAD A BLOWJOB? BECAUSE HE DID. No loony theories that China was going to take over the U.S., no speculation that Islamomarxofacist hoards are going to infiltrate the country. I really expected better.

Clark's Coincidence

OK, I usually steer clear of posting this kind of post, but it's time for some speculation, theorizing, hypothesizing, and rank rumourmonging.

It should come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog (if any) that I'm a fan of the idea of retired General Wesley Clark as Secretary of Defense, but knowing that retired military can't serve as SoD too soon after their military time, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing him in any of various other Cabinet positions. (He does have a degree in economics from Oxford, after all; potentially useful in these times.)

Then, there was that overblown dust-up about his remarks that McCain's Vietnam service & POW-hood were not alone enough to qualify him for the Presidency.

Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

After which, the Obama campaign Largely disavowed him and his words. After that, I had pretty much abandoned any such hopes for him.

However, a couple of recent news items have me rethinking that. The first one that caught my attention in this regard was the appointment of Samantha Power to Obama's transition team. As you may recall, back in March, she was reported to have said:

[Hillary Clinton] is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything.

(A brief aside: I find it interesting that reporters will grant off-recordness by default to Bush administration officials, but report things from Obama advisors that are stated as off-the-record in midsentence.)

After this came out, Power resigned from the Obama campaign. However, it was recently announced that she would be part of his transition team for the Department of State, after Hillary Clinton was leaked as the likely (since official) choice for Obama's Secretary of State. This seemed like an unsubtle enough way of provoking those who were jumping on his campaign for misstatements and inartful phrasing that it got me thinking that there might be room for forgiveness for Gen. Clark, as well.

However, there was the talk of current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates staying on for at least a time with the Obama administration, also since confirmed. Apparently, Obama wants to keep him around while we withdraw our forces from Iraq, preferably within that 16 month time period that Obama had described during his campaign.

At this point, I thought to myself, "hmm, 16 months after inauguration, that would be in May 2010. I wonder when Clark would be eligible for an appointment to Secretary of Defense?" So I double-checked my recollection that it was a ten-year waiting period (10 U.S.C, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 2, § 113, "A person may not be appointed as Secretary of Defense within 10 years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force."), and went to look up when Clark had resigned his commission. And what did I find?

Clark retired May 2, 2000; ergo, eligible May 2, 2010. The very same month that that 16 month period comes to an end. It could certainly be purest coincidence. But, as a famous presidential speechwriter once said, "Would it be irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!"

Light at the End of the Crazy Tunnel

You know, I'm getting kind of sick of the "bipartisan" call on behalf of Republicans and the Beltway.

Face it, suckers, you lost.

Real America voted for the Black Man as President because he was speaking our language: change from the status quo, infrastructure rebuilding, bringing back our civil liberties, not to mention fixing our communities. I was talking to someone the other day who admitted that he voted Republican, but was glad that Obama won. I was walking down the street to the mall, and there was a group of people just walking around yelling "Obama won!" and cheering for the sheer joy of it.

That's Real America, motherfuckers. Get over yourselves. You lost.

Even if the Presidental Limo gets outfitted with spinners and those air-freshener crowns in the back, I don't give a fuck as long as I get my tax cut and we get alternative energy spending. Spinners on a car have never bothered me one bit, some are actually cool, and as for those crowns, well, my 60 year old mother thought they were awesome. And we're white. So suck on it losers, we won.

This election was a referendum on Republican policy, and America bitchslapped it with a resounding "Hell, NO!" at the polls. If George Bush had a mandate in 2004 with a few thousand votes, Obama's got a SUPERMANDATE, and doesn't have to be bipartisan, bitches. Go on, grab at those straws, but it's still not going to erase the EPIC FAIL that is the Republican party, take your motherfucking ball and just go home. Your game was good for a bit, but someone who knew what they were doing came to the court and wiped your ass with it. Now you're just being whiny about it. You've lost your power, at our hands. And you damn well deserve that, what with all the destroying of our country you've done. And I will do what my parents did for me, and remind the youngsters of this time, so that they grow up and never vote for you depraved motherfuckers.

Young people voted, and do you think that they voted just for themselves? They see what trouble their parents are in, their grandparents, aunts, uncles...and they voted for someone who would make a reasonable stab at change, so that the hardships they see for their family members might ease up. Why on earth do people think that only old people vote for "the children"? Do you think those young adults are totally incapable of voting for a candidate that would make Mom and Dad's life better? Apparently, there are some people out there who don't know any young people.

We're all in this together, us and the whole fucking world. You can take your isolationism and and exceptionalism and shove it straight up your ass.

And your bipartisanship? Launch that into motherfucking space - I don't want to see that shit again, unless you're talking bipartisanship with socialists and progressives. You lost, fair and square, America has spoken, and we resoundingly said that we don't want to listen to YOU.

Election night prep

This is just a collection of links to the CNN election results pages for the races that seem to be of special interest, mostly for my own benefit, but feel free to follow along. Note that I'm extrapolating the likely URLs based on their 2004 results pages, so there likely will be dead links until the day, and might be even then; I'll update them if I find different URLs. And I'm publishing before all the names are filled in; I'll be completing it as time goes by.

• Presidential Election: Obama v. McCain
• Senate races:
  • Alaska: Begich v. convicted felon "Series of Tubes" Stevens
  • Colorado: M. Udall v. Schaffer
  • Georgia: Martin v. Chambliss
  • Kentucky: Lunsford v. McConnell
  • Minnesota: Franken v. Coleman
  • Mississippi: Musgrove v. Wicker
  • North Carolina: Hagan v. Dole
  • New Hampshire: Shaheen v. Sununu
  • New Mexico: T. Udall v. Pearce
  • Oregon: Merkley v. Smith
  • Virginia: Warner v. Gilmore
• House of Representatives:
  • Arizona: 8th: Giffords v. Bee
  • Colorado: 4th: Markey v. Musgrave
  • Florida: 8th: Grayson v. Keller, 21st: Martinez v. L. Diaz-Balart, 24th: Kosmas v. Feeney, 25th: Garcia v. M. Diaz-Balart
  • Minnesota: 6th: Tinklenberg v. Bachman
  • North Carolina: 8th: Kissell v. Hayes
  • Ohio: 1st: Driehaus v. Chabot, 2nd: Wulsin v. Schmidt, 15th: Kilroy v. Stivers, 16th: Boccieri v. Schuring

Update: Their URLs are inconsistent, and my predictions were wrong. Updating as I find what's where.
Senate races should all be updated now.
All links should be working now. Results are starting to come in.

Ayers, or ???

I just want to point out another overlooked but significant point about the alleged Obama/Ayers best-friendsness/acquaintance/heard-of-the-guy. What was the alternative, from Obama's point of view? Just ditch the committee, in effect saying, "well, fuck the poor, I can't work with this guy, so they're just going to have to suck it up?" What kind of character would have behaved that way?

On an unrelated note, I'd just like to say that one of the greater trivial annoyances (isn't that like "jumbo shrimp"?) of the past few days has been repeatedly having my nose rubbed in the fact that the English language consigns the verbs "pall" and "pal" (if you can even tolerate its having been verbed) to share identically spelled gerund forms. Curse them!!

Lipstick, pigs, & female dogs: Redux

They've gone and made the connection explicitly now. (Via Digby)

[Karl] Rove said he believed that Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment was a "deliberate slap at Governor Palin," saying it came too soon after the Alaska governor's pitbull comment not to be.

Like I was saying, especially now that they're making the connection to the pitbull remark, this really points out that she went there first. Just because she's a woman, doesn't mean she couldn't be sexist, or make sexist remarks. (I'm not seriously suggesting that hers was a sexist remark, but it was at least as much so as Obama's.)

Lipstick, pigs, & female dogs

And just a quick note about the lipstick thing: If it is supposed that Obama's comparison of McCain's economic policies to a pig with lipstick was somehow really about Palin, shouldn't somebody be bringing up Palin's insult to hockey moms, when she essentially called them pit bulls with lipstick? And you know what they call a female dog, after all.... Is this really the line of reasoning (if I may take liberties with the term) that they want to follow?

Yet Another Alternative

Another unfounded assumption I've noticed in the discussion of Sarah Palin. Everybody seems to assume she's lying now about having "said thanks but no thanks" about the "Bridge to Nowhere". But could she not have been lying when she claimed to support the bridge while running for Governor, instead? She might be completely honest about her position on the bridge, now!

Take that, liberal media!

How about a Greek middle school? Would that work?

OK, this is a bit of a puzzle yet, and explanations are entirely speculative so far, so I'm going with the one that seems fairly likely for the purposes of this post. Whatever the actual explanation, though, it can hardly be favorable to the McCain campaign, except inasmuch as everything is.

So, apparently, Candidate McCain chose to (or at least ended up) give his big acceptance speech, the highlight of the Republican Convention, in front of an image of a ritzy, dare-we-say elitist, North Hollywood middle school (not entirely dissimilar to an expensive McMansion, for that matter). Going with the reasoning of the Republicans and their pet pundits, that Obama's backdrop of Greek columns (much like George Bush's background when addressing the RNC, incidentally) was supposed to present him as a Greek god (so what was Bush going for? Roman emperor?), the only reasonable conclusion is that the McCain campaign chose a middle school backdrop to make McCain seem younger.

Kidding aside, it seems likely that it was a mixup due to the middle school sharing a namesake with Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I think it says something about the staffers of the McCain campaign that they would think it reasonable that Reed looks that beautifully kept up. It would seem to fit well with delusions that the Army's medical services are keeping things completely shipshape for our wounded veterans, not a speck of mold or anything, and no expense has been spared in keeping it lovely. If anything, it looks like we might have spent altogether too much on fancy architecture and groundskeeping! Except, of course, that it isn't. Just another notion based on fantasy.

There's a mavericky madness to his method

I have it on good authority from a senior adviser to the McCain campaign* that the Maverick's choice for a running mate was sealed last Thursday morning, when he found Sarah Palin's face in his sunny-side up eggs for breakfast.

*What? I can't help it if one of the ferrets claims to be a senior adviser!

An alternative explanation?

Much of the foofoora about John McCain's choice of running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, seems to have an underlying unstated assumption for which I haven't seen the justification yet: that she was his first choice for a running mate. I don't have any particular reason to think she wasn't, but it grates on me to see all this talk that seems to just make the assumption, without any evidence cited.

And it would be amusing to think that maybe Mitt Romney, Joe Lieberman, and Tim Pawlenty had all been offered the slot, and fled from him like the proverbial rats from the ship, until he finally found a sucker willing to run as the sidekick's sidekick.

A Modest Contradiction

Candidate John McCain spoke of his new running mate selection, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:

She's exactly who I need. She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of 'Me first and country second.'

And yet... notice to what his first sentence refers. Notice to what his second sentence refers. Notice which sentence comes first, and which one comes second.

I guess McCain is his own "same old Washington politics" which he disparages by implication.

Workin' it: Answered

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall asks:

When Mitt Romney says that it was "hard work" that got John McCain all those houses that he got for marrying Cindy Hensley, what does he mean exactly?

I believe George W. Bush said it best, during the Sep. 30 debate in 2004:

You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can.... I told her after we prayed and teared up and laughed some that I thought her husband's sacrifice was noble and worthy.

Incidentally, that was occurrence number eight of eleven that night, of the phrase "hard work". Just sayin'.

I'm Confused

From Sadly, No! comments, someone linked to this post at Pharyngula. Total Catholic Meltdown over someone "stealing" the communion wafer.

But I'm puzzled. Why on earth would you want to take one home? There's really nothing special about the taste. What was that guy thinking? "Damn, these are tasty, I'm going through the line again!!" or "Wow, I would like to taste that again!" If he fakes an illness for which he can't leave his house, he could call up his local parish and even have it delivered to his home! Complete with Mass!

Why? It just seems so odd. Granted, the people sending death threats have to chill the fuck the out. But as a Catholic myself (more culturally now than when I was younger), I'm more bemused at the idea than outraged. Why would you want to take with you a plastic-y wheat-tasting wafer?

If you really, really are longing for that taste, I suggest buying these instead. The wafer taste is very similar to the outer coating, and communion wafers completely lack the fun-filled sugar balls in the middle. Now those would be worth taking from Church!

Is It A Funny?

I really hope that this was meant to be a funny, and not, say, serious.

Under their belief-system, every single individual in the entire country can elect to be on drugs. What would our society look like if this happened? People's lives would be destroyed and their productivity in our society would be unarguably compromised. In essence, people will have the right to govern their bodies but our country will lose its ability to effectively govern as well. This will then jeopardize the freedoms of people everywhere.

Just because you can't handle your drugs, doesn't mean that other people can't. And being on drugs is possibly the only explanation for our embarrassment of a president, but last time I checked, he was a Republican, no matter now much the wingnuts claim he isn't.

Remember: Happiness and freedom are both protected under the constitution.

Where's my fucking pony?

Perhaps the most vexing element of Libertarian thought is their implicit (and often explicit) contempt for our government.

Because there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to have contempt for our government. No Siree, nope, no contempt here! I do agree that not everything should be a cutthroat capitalistic society because there are quite a few things that need government oversight, or should be provided by the government because I fucking pay taxes. Glam wars are not part of that equation.

That would be quite the concept: want to start your own war? Get a bunch of people together and go fight it in the name of [your entity here], personally funded by you and whatever delusional freaks you manage to swindle. Hell, it worked for Oliver North!

Awesomeness!

Fafblog is back! Yipee!

Bwah-ha-ha-hah!!!

This is just too good to pass up.

I'm a kind of sabot right now.

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn't notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn't recognize him. My guest was …

Read it, and find out!

Sec. Alphonso Jackson, still at it in HUD

Remember that Secretary Alphonso Jackson of the HUD that I have that grudge against? And my later follow up? Well, it looks like he's still at it.

After Philadelphia's housing director refused a demand by President Bush's housing secretary to transfer a piece of city property to a business friend, two top political appointees at the department exchanged e-mails discussing the pain they could cause the Philadelphia director.

"Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote about Philadelphia housing director Carl R. Greene.

"Take away all of his Federal dollars?" responded Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary who oversaw accessible housing. She typed symbols for a smiley-face, ":-D," at the end of her January 2007 note.

Cabrera wrote back a few minutes later: "Let me look into that possibility."

The e-mails, obtained by The Washington Post, came to light as a result of a lawsuit provoked by HUD's decision last September to strip the Philadelphia Housing Authority of as much as $50 million in federal funds. In December, it declared the agency in violation of rules that underpin its ability to decide precisely how it will spend federal housing funds. Kendrick was the official who formally notified the authority that she had found it in violation.

What a lovely group they do seem to have in that office. "Nice city ya gots there. It'd be a pity if something were to happen to it, know what I mean?"

Noted in passing

"Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president's policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts in the Centcom region," [suddenly retiring Centcom CINC Admiral William] Fallon said in a statement Tuesday in which he announced his resignation as head of U.S. Central Command, arguably the most important in the U.S. military....

"I don't believe there have ever been any differences about the objectives of our policy in the Central Command area of responsibility," Fallon said in his statement Tuesday, and he regretted "the simple perception that there is."

In keeping with one of my own pet peeves here, I would point out that their having the same objectives, doesn't mean they necessarily share views on how to achieve those objectives. The statement as is still leaves that possibility wide open, and military commanders don't really have any business choosing (big picture) objectives anyway; they're supposed to be figuring out how to achieve those objectives handed down to them. What we call the means to an end. So he's really not denying what he's trying to give the appearance of denying, here.

Furthermore, the second quoted paragraph there leaves open the possibility that there are differences in other areas. Not that I think there's likely much to that, but it does strike me as rather odd that he would specify and limit the policy in question that way. Why?

All told, he certainly seems to exude the air of somebody going out of his way to give the appearance of denying something, without actually denying it. Lying without lying, one might say.

Introducing Class Wargames

I've wrapped up a short piece introducing my alternative economics blog, Class Wargames. So now, I'm announcing it here. Go take a look.

Compare and contrast

Michelle Obama:

For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.

John McCain:

It's harder and harder trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan [Washington, D.C.].

Now, which one do you suppose gets called out by the media for not being patriotic enough? The one who just suggested our nation's capital is chock full of demonically possessed bureaucrats and legislators? Does he sound like he's proud of our country? Really proud?

Update 2008-03-20: Now that I've given it some time for the McCain quote to get out there, if it would, here's the current tally via Google News: Michelle Obama: 304; John McCain: 24. Any questions?

Hope springs eternal

Another apparently underreported bit of math I noticed last night: According to the CNN results, at least, all the Republican candidates put together got fewer votes (1,319,960; 100% precincts reporting) than even the lesser of the two Democratic candidates (Obama: 1,356,330; Clinton: 1,455,959; and that's with 99% precincts reporting, so there will be a few more). Granted, Republican turnout was probably somewhat suppressed by the presumption that McCain had things all wrapped up (which he now does). Still, this was in Texas! This could augur very well for the general election in November.

Added: I suppose I should compare the numbers in Ohio as well, for completeness. Their greater preference for Clinton meant Obama did get fewer votes than all Republicans combined. Republicans: 1,010,864; Obama: 979,025; Clinton: 1,207,806 (all 100% precincts reporting). Even there, the mean of the Democratic candidates' votes (1,093,415.5) beats the Republicans' total.

Updated 2008-03-06: This other possibility had occurred to me, but I didn't want to bring it up without at least anecdotal evidence, even if it does tend to support my own preferred candidate. At The Rude Pundit (shockingly profanity-free for once), there's talk of Texas Republicans not just staying home because McCain's the obvious winner, but getting out and voting in the Democratic primary for the candidate they think will be easiest to defeat in November, perhaps most often Clinton. "Republicans knew that McCain would win Ohio and since in Texas we have open primaries, the RNC, Texas Repubs and Rush had been telling all their zombies to vote Clinton because they think they can beat her. My own mother, who hasn't voted for a Democrat for 40 years, told me that she voted for Hillary because 'you know, I support McCain, so I voted for her like everyone else up here.' My mother wasn't our only contact to verify our suspicions." All things considered, while I certainly consider these counts a good sign for November, I'm certainly not expecting a 2-to-1 blowout in Texas then, either.

Hagee vs. Farrakhan

Just a note of something I checked out in this Obama & Farrakhan vs. McCain & Hagee dustup we've been hearing about lately. (Short version, if you haven't heard: Obama had to denounce and reject Farrakhan's support, repeatedly, during a live televised debate recently; McCain, on the other hand, warmly embraces the support of similarly radical (in degree, but he's Christian!) pastor John Hagee, and the media barely bats an eyelash) I thought I'd just do a quick comparison of Google News hits, and lo and behold: The Final Score (for now): Obama and Farrakhan, a numerologically significant 1,984 hits; McCain and Hagee, merely 459. Double standards, much?

The Trouble With Capitalism: Market Saturation

pp. 35 & 36:

Market Saturation

The increasing maturity of most consumer markets in the industrialised countries was becoming a noticeable constraint to economic growth in the industrialised world by the end of the 1960s. This meant that in addition to static demand for non-durable goods (food, drink and clothing) the markets for most durable products (automobiles, television sets etc.) tended more and more to be governed mainly by replacement demand rather than by the continuous opening up of new groups of first-time buyers, which had been possible throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Hence demand for goods generally began to grow more in line with population — which was in any case increasing more slowly than in the immediate post-war period — rather than at the rapid rates recorded up to the mid-1960s.

The result was that companies serving these markets were obliged to diversify into new products or services in their unavoidable quest for further expansion, especially as they were barred by anti-monopoly restrictions from taking over their competitors, at least within their national frontiers. One consequence of this was the emergence, particularly in the USA, of 'conglomerate' groups or companies with diversified activities ranging from telephone equipment manufacture to hotel chains....

One thing that I'm particularly sensitive to in reading this book, and elsewhere, is the idea that at least a significant part of the trouble with the modern economy is exaggerated expectations of return on investment on the part of investors. This is essentially one reference to it here. Still, it doesn't seem to crop up as much as I'd guessed it would. I'm not sure whether this is because the author understates its role (or I'm just wrong in its significance), or he just assumes it as a near-axiom, not worth mentioning because it's a given.

Yet gradually, as may now be recognised with the benefit of hindsight, the development of such new consumer markets proved insufficient to offset the impact of the saturation of existing ones.... Thus for many it was an article of faith that every economy was subject to a normal or 'underlying' growth rate or trend, from which it might be expected to deviate only under abnormal circumstances and, implicitly, for relatively short periods. Likewise, as already noted, many of the cruder apostles of Keynes had convinced themselves that 'demand management' could actually permit the stimulation of increased consumption simply by injecting more money into the economy, and that consequently excess productive capacity need never be a problem again. Thus they, along with most OECD governments, failed to appreciate that, once the short-term limits of purchasing power have been reached, the only consequence of artificially trying to extend them further is bound to be inflation.³

3. Even now it is quite common to find economists who reject any notion of limits to demand growth, usually on the grounds that it is based on the 'lump of labour fallacy' — that is, the suggestion that there is a fixed amount of output (and hence labour) required to meet demand (cf. S. Brittan, Capitalism with a Human Face, Fontana, London 1996). The obvious perversity of this argument is based on a refusal to bring the time factor into the equation, since it is not a question of suggesting that demand is finite in any absolute sense but only over a given time period. Yet since rates of return on capital are reckoned in relation to periods of time it should not be necessary to point out that it is the short- or medium-term limitation which is crucial in defining whether there is a ceiling on demand growth.

I think we're getting pretty close now to the "limits of purchasing power," "bound to be inflation" point he's talking about. By the way, have you checked the price of wheat lately?

The Trouble With Capitalism: Investment promotion

Investment promotion (pp. 23 & 24)

Besides undertaking to apply the weapons of macroeconomic management to influence the level of output and employment, governments resorted to other forms of intervention to help sustain activity. Most conspicuously, they became significant promoters of investment, whether through state subsidies or incentives to private investment, or else through direct state equity participation in enterprise. The proliferation of such mechanisms — including grants, tax concessions, loan guarantees and subsidies to research and development — was for many countries (notably those of continental Europe as well as Japan) simply an extension of their traditional approach to economic development. Yet its rapid growth throughout the Western market economies (including the United States) in the post-war period meant that 'corporatism' had become a universally accepted element in the post-war capitalist system. What was scarcely perceived at the time — and is still not widely accepted even in the supposedly more laissez-fair 1990s — is that such uncontrolled use of state support for enterprise (whether in the private or public sectors) was bound to result in serious distortion of competition and international trade patterns.⁵

5. See H. Shutt, The Myth of Free Trade, Basil Blackwell/The Economist, Oxford 1985

Note that I would certainly agree that, here in the US, the "grants, tax concessions, [and] loan guarantees" have certainly gotten rather out of hand. More on that when I cover the later chapters.

Transnational corporations (p. 32):

Such was the basis of what was later to become known as the 'global economy'. Perhaps surprisingly, it has been widely acclaimed in the 1990s as the very model of a dynamic, free-market economic system in which the inability of either governments or private corporations to control the pattern of development is treated as a positive virtue. However, as suggested in this chapter, it is really the legacy of a post-war attempt to organise the world economy along the lines of international cooperation rather than uncontrolled competition & in a climate of opinion which had, indeed, come to reject laissez faire as an intolerably unstable basis for economic management. The fact that it proved a recipe for anarchy based on rampant market distortion was the result of misplaced commitment to the idea of the sovereign nation-state, combined with a lack of political will to curb the power of transnational corporations.

The Trouble With Capitalism: The New Deal

I'll be mostly glossing over the next couple of chapters in The Trouble With Capitalism, as the mostly deal with historical background. But I'll doubtless find a few bits worth mentioning. Like the following. (pp. 15 & 16)

[W]hen US President Roosevelt assumed office for the first time in 1933 he was committed to a programme of vigorous intervention by the federal government to stimulate and underpin a recovery in the US economy — the New Deal — based on broadly similar principles to those applied by the Fascist regimes in Italy and Germany....

It is significant that one area where the Roosevelt administration's proposals for state intervention in the economy met with little opposition was support for the financial sector. Nothing had been more fatal to attempts to restore confidence in the United States following the Wall Street crash than the catastrophic collapse in the banking sector, with no fewer than two thousand banks failing in 1930 alone. This prompted the new administration to introduce, as one of its earliest measures, legislation requiring all banks to insure their deposits (up to a maximum level for each one) through a government agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, thus guaranteeing small savers against total ruin.¹³ This measure... foreshadowed what was to become, after World War II, an implicit commitment by the state to act as 'lender of last resort' to the banking community — in other words, to come to the rescue of any institution whose failure could be considered a threat to the stability of the financial system as a whole, regardless of how reckless its lending policy may have been. Yet as with so many other moves tending to advance the role of the state in sustaining the capitalist system, this far-reaching commitment was made as a purely pragmatic response to otherwise ruinous market trends. It is scarcely a matter of wonder that those responsible, who were also closely linked to the main beneficiaries, were not inclined to emphasise its ideological implications.

13. In reality the use of an insurance scheme was cosmetic, since the level of premiums paid by the banks never corresponded to the actuarial cost of providing the necessary cover and it has been understood ever since that the federal government will provide whatever support is necessary to avert the collapse of any bank which might entail 'systemic risk'.

In short, the kind of trouble that these policies were meant to avert does sound a lot like the current problems of the sub-prime collapse. Especially that bit about "com[ing] to the rescue of any institution whose failure could be considered a threat to the stability of the financial system as a whole, regardless of how reckless its lending policy may have been."