I have a great deal of respect for writers, regardless of political persuasion. It takes a lot, mentally, to hold together a narrative for a few hundred words without losing your way. ADD is very real and sometimes words like to flood a page without rhyme or reason.

But you have to at least try to have a reason. Much as I have resolved to try and keep politics off this Tumblr page, there are times when I can't.

Today, I was informed of a website called FireDogLake, which I had never heard of. The reason I found out it existed was because of a highly noxious piece regarding a BuzzFeed writer named Rosie Gray, her boss Ben Smith, and her father. It was a piece designed to discredit her views, but used sexual innuendo and a generally sexist attitude regarding female reporters to do so.

But that holding a narrative thing I talked about? The failure of the FDL piece as a work of writing comes in its arguments. It supposes, implies, and innuendos several things, but the accusations are never backed up beyond the original supposition. As a result, the point is never proven, just smeared.

Being a writer on a site like BuzzFeed means you're going to receive some hate pieces from time to time, and Gray has handled it very well. Smith, admirably, came to a staunch defense of his writer. At the end of the day, the only ones who came off looking worse was FDL.

Today, Bradley Manning eloquently expressed his motivations for the unauthorized disclosures, including the need to expose corruption and deception in the conduct of diplomacy and military operations. He described the efforts he made to weigh the possible damage that might result from disclosure, and the judgment he made that release of the records was the appropriate step.

The Army belatedly released a redacted copy of Pfc. Manning's statement yesterday. (An unofficial version had been privately transcribed by Alexa O'Brien soon after the hearing.)

This just makes me laugh:

A group of “free enterprise” activists have hatched an idea to buy an island park nestled on the Detroit River long the U.S.-Canadian border named Belle Isle from the City of Detroit for $1 Billion.  Inspired by the philosophies of Ayn Rand, the chain smoking author who preached the benefits of an anarcho-capitalist free market system while collecting public assistance for her lung cancer, supporters hope to transform the 982 acre island park into a 35,000 person free-market city-state with it’s own laws, currency, customs and tax code.

This idea of a libertarian fantasy island is the brainchild of Ayn Rand enthusiast, Rodney Lockwood, Jr., a developer of  government subsidized housing for seniors.    Supporters of the plan, most of whom made their fortunes as recipients of corporate welfare from either the state of Michigan and/or the federal government want to buy the island for $1 Billion and claim the concept of the Belle Isle Commonwealth, as it is being named, “champions freedom and opportunity”

The backers of this effort to take a longtime public resource and turn it into a plutocrats’ preserve include a who’s who of wealthy right-wing “rugged individualists” and groups who owe their fortunes, in whole or in part, to taxpayers’ generosity. Among them: former Chrysler President Hal Sperlich, who went with Lee Iacocca to Washington, D.C. in 1979 to beg Jimmy Carter’s White House and the U.S. Congress for a government bailout of $1.5 billion, or nearly $4.8 billion in 2013 dollars; and Clark Durant, co-founder of Detroit’s Cornerstone Schools, a charter school system for students of upscale parents that receives lots of Michigan tax money. Groups involved in the plan include the Koch-funded Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Walmart heirs (who might want to be saving their money instead, as their cash cow has suddenly gone into a tailspin — “total disaster” is the phrase one Walmart VP used in an internal email), Michigan Pyramid Marketing Pioneers, the VanAndel family and of course Lockwood, who is a board member of the Mackinac Center and gets tax subsidies and government loans for his many development projects.

Note, if you will, that these rugged individualists aren’t trying to build a casino-funded paradise from scratch on an old oil rig in international waters, or even take over existing tax-free lawless places like Somalia. Oh, no — they may themselves refuse to pay taxes, but they sure like the developed-world infrastructure that taxes and regulations make possible. So instead, they want to take over an already-existing piece of public property and turn it into their own pleasure dome, no plebians allowed, but with access to existing water, sewer and other public-utility hookups.

But I suspect that even taking over a piece of previously-developed public land may be too much effort for these Galtian demigods, even with Ricky Snyder’s and the Michigan Legislature’s wind filling their sails. These people aren’t innovators, they’re rentiers, and they don’t have the guts or the discipline to follow through on this.

Is Mitt Romney a closet Keynesian?

Hyper-rich Conservatives loathe John Maynard Keynes, and with good cause. His prescriptions for the economy run counter to their Galtian dreams of world domination with themselves in the Howard Roark/John Galt roles. If any of them ever read Chapter 24 of Keynes’ book, The General theory of Employment, Interest and Money, they would realize that Keynes despised them right back. He thought they were a bunch of useless sacks of money with little purpose and less value, a group whose success arises from chance and the false economic theories they support.

Keynes explains that the major mistake people make about economics is the idea that capital is scarce, and must be rewarded heavily to encourage investment in job-creating projects. Keynesian theory says that this view is utterly wrong. Keynes says that the amount of capital needed to operate an economy at full employment is limited, and once achieved, the marginal return to capital will drop to the point that it merely covers depreciation, obsolescence, and a small return for risk and for managerial skill and judgment.

Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital.

Savor that thought for a minute.

Chapter 24 begins with the statement that the twin problems of capitalism are “… its failure to provide for full employment, and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.” The hyper-rich conservatives who dominate our political/economic lives regard those as features, not bugs, and have spent their money to make sure that workers and voters don’t understand that these are real and fixable problems. Practically all economists have lost any sense that Keynes is right, and instead teach us that we have to have a pool of unemployed to make sure that wage demands don’t push up inflation. See, e.g. Mulligan, Casey.

Keynes wrote in 1935. He says that in his time the average citizen was certain that the estate tax, which he calls “death duties”, was a bad thing because it removed scarce capital from the economy. Nonsense, says Keynes. When the government spends money, including the money generated by the estate tax, it increases the propensity of the average person to consume, which creates the incentive to save and invest in a virtuous cycle.

Thus our argument leads towards the conclusion that in contemporary conditions the growth of wealth, so far from being dependant on the abstinence of the rich, as is commonly supposed, is more likely to be impeded by it.

Our contemporary conditions are a good test of his theory. There is a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few. There are trillions of dollars floating around uselessly in overseas bank accounts of the rich, their corporations, corrupt politicians from around the world, drug cartels and other scum. The hyper-rich do not spend much of their money on consumption. Instead they use it to generate political power. Then they use that power to increase the returns on their capital by insisting on monopoly control, lower taxes, less regulation and the ability to crush the demands of labor with an enormous pool of increasingly desperate unemployed. This works to the benefit of the corrupt politicians and drug sellers, the free riders on the sleazy rich.

Keynes is right that the estate tax is a test of the ability of average voters to understand the economy. As he says, while there is some justification for inequality in wealth from work and production, that doesn’t apply to inequality in inheritance. See, e.g., the creepy Walton heirs. Every effort bent to support this ignorance is vigorously supported by the hyper-rich and their willing tools in economics and politics.

Chapter 24 is sketchy. It doesn’t offer a pathway to change or make specific predictions of how much capital a society needs. It doesn’t explain exactly how this would happen, or what would have to change in the minds of voters to make it possible. The permanent campaign to discredit Keynes has all but erased the memory of his memorable phrase, The Euthanasia of the Rentier.

One group that might recall this felicitous phrase is the Modern Money Theorists. L. Randall Wray’s excellent work Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems sets out in Chapter 7 a sensible program to create full employment, and provides a detailed refutation of the stupid idea that full employment leads to inflation. Wray doesn’t talk about inequitable wealth distribution, but I’m pretty sure his plan would also lead to the Euthanasia of the Rentier.

The Progressive Caucus in Congress does not understand these ideas either. As Gaius Publius points out at AmericaBlog, they are all neoliberal Rubinites. All of their proposals are premised on failed economic theories, and spend way too much time bowing in the direction of the great American Capitalist. I think Euthanasia of the Rentier would make a marvelous slogan for a progressive economic caucus.

Photo from the IMF in the public domain

Calculate

Some of us didn’t take the skills deficit seriously, but David Brooks shows us that it is a real problem. Apparently the New York Times cannot find a conservative columnist who can deal with basic issues of logic and arithmetic. Brooks is very upset because the budget deal apparently does not include any cuts in Medicare.

He also is very angry that so many people insist on relying on arithmetic and pointing out that the “$1 trillion” deficits are almost entirely due to the economic downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble and not some fundamental imbalance of taxes and spending. He scoffs:

“They have found that the original Keynesian rationale for these deficits provides a perfect cover for permanent deficit-living.”

Wow, those damn math nerds!

On the more fundamental question of the long-term deficit projections that have Brooks so excited, fans of arithmetic keep pointing out, to Brooks’ frustration and anger, that it is all due to our broken health care system. If our per person health care costs were comparable to those in Germany, Canada, or any other wealthy country we would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the future, not the enormous deficits that have Brooks so excited.

Serious people therefore talk about fixing our health care system. (Trade is one possible route, although committed protectionists like Brooks apparently never even consider it.) In fact, recent cost numbers suggest that we may already be on the right track. But Brooks doesn’t look at numbers. He is really angry because the public doesn’t want to suffer and politicians who want to keep their jobs are not anxious to make them suffer.

Lincoln Memorial

On the eve of President Obama’s second inaugural address, I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s, delivered on the eve of both the end of the Civil War and his own assassination. Lincoln packed more into four paragraphs than others can deliver in forty pages, and every president since him dreams of trying to get even close to his eloquence. The last paragraph of that speech gets enormous attention — as it should — but if one doesn’t see what Lincoln does in the first three, that last immortal paragraph is robbed of its full power.

The first paragraph sets the stage, in straightforward and direct language:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

Shorter Abe: “You all can read the papers, you’ve argued and debated every last detail of my presidency, and you are well aware of the current situation. So let’s move on.”

But in moving on, he immediately looks back:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

While he doesn’t names, Lincoln is not at all shy in publicly laying blame for the war at the feet of those responsible, and contrasting the approaches of the two parties four years earlier in addressing their differences. Lincoln may have “high hope for the future,” but he does not want anyone to forget how the country came to be in the situation of that moment.

And that situation was ugly. Damned ugly.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Lincoln does not sugar coat war, nor does he pussyfoot about what slavery entails. He can’t. It was an ugly war with a terrible cost. Exact figures are hard to come by, but the number of deaths in the war were enormous by any account, perhaps around 1 in 12 white men of fighting age (1 in 16 in the North and 1 in 6 in the South).

But do you see what else Lincoln did here? Even as he calls out his opponents as the ones who forced the nation into this bloody conflict, he refuses to demonize them. Look again at the middle of that paragraph:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered.

Lincoln does not apologize for fighting the war, nor for the side he chose. But he is not about to let impending victory blind him — or the nation — to the humanity shared by those who fought on either side and by the slaves over which they fought.

Most powerfully, though, he takes aim at those who purport to enlist God on their side and their side alone. To claim divine approval for the shedding of blood on such a scale is something Lincoln cannot condone; indeed, says Lincoln, if God is active in this war, it is perhaps a judgment on us all. If God is a God of justice, we as a nation have a lot to answer for. Save your pious victory speeches for some other occasion. There is no glory in this bloody and brutal and life-sucking war.

And then comes that famous conclusion. Instead of pious and self-righteous victors crowing over the vanquishing of their demonic enemies, Lincoln offers a powerful vision of an alternative future:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The guns are still firing, the deaths are still mounting, the injured are still crying out, the sick are still in agony, the farms are still in disarray, the cities are still in upheaval, and Lincoln says “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” This war will not end, he says, so long as the nation holds onto malice and reserves its charity only for some. He gives one last skewer to those who claim to perfectly understand the will of God (God’s on my side, you know), and instead paints a picture of wounds tended, the dead buried and the survivors carrying on in a manner much different from the previous four years of death and destruction. He looks for peace not just between the armies of North and South, not just between the people of the North and South, but a vision of peace that goes beyond this nation to embrace the world.

That’s it. Just four paragraphs, and that was enough.

Looking out today, it is clear that Lincoln was right. The voices that claim to speak with perfect clarity on God’s behalf are still speaking (I’m looking at you and your brothers, Cardinal Dolan), and those who would demonize their opponents continue to do so as well. State attempts to revive the failed doctrine of nullification are still being proposed today. Claims of the sub-humanity of some based on race have largely (but not at all completely) receded, but battles over equality based on gender and sexual orientation continue, not just unabated but at a higher pitch.

Today, the guns are still firing, the deaths are still mounting, the injured are still crying out, the sick are still in agony, the farms are still in disarray, the cities are still in upheaval, and too much of this nation still holds onto malice and reserves its charity only for some.

Enough already. But until the political leaders in DC remember *all* of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, the vision of the future he painted in that final paragraph will remain just that: a vision of the future.

_____

Photo h/t to me, because I took it, and it is used here because I said I could