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Monday, July 29, 2013

The Newsroom: Counterpoints and Retrospective (7/28/13)

Watching this episode, I noticed that I wrote down a lot less than usually do. There are a few points to address but not nearly as much as last time. That being said, time to get down to it.

1. The GOP primary candidates are an absolute disgrace for not standing by Captain Stephen Hill when his video was booed by members of the audience during the debate. Had Romney intervened, he would have won the election then and there.

I watched all of the GOP primary debates during the 2012 campaign season and I vividly remember two instances where the audience's reaction made me cringe visibly. That was the first one. I will readily admit that the GOP candidates are cowards because none of them could, politically speaking, defend Captain Hill in the face of such boorish behavior.

But all politicians are like that. They can't afford to go against the people who elect them otherwise they get voted out of office. When then-candidate Obama talked about revising NAFTA to help blue collar workers in front of blue collar crowds while having his aides privately reassure backers that he had no such intentions of doing so, that was also an example of political cowardice. But the Newsroom didn't show that.

Well, it couldn't have, chronologically speaking. But considering that the subject was on Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the President's recent actions to repeal it, the show could have questioned the President's own stance on the subject before and after he became President. He was against it while he was scrapping for votes in the blue collar districts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. But he gets to "evolve" on the issue and the Republican candidates don't get the same implicit benefit of the doubt?

That's slanted coverage. It's too partisan to accuse one party of political cowardice and not mention the other. Both parties are equally opportunistic and cowardly, subject to the whims and fancies of their largely uneducated constituency. For McAvoy to be a Republican and excoriate his own party and spare the Democrats represents a very curious type of political allegiance.

2. Let's throw more fancy terminology and credentialism at the audience to advance the plausibility of Operation Genoa.

I get the fact that The Newsroom has to sell Operation Genoa as something plausible, but the story just falls apart when you apply an actual plausibility check against the story. The Marine who met with Mackenzie and Dantana said they were going door to door looking for their captured fellow Marines and the helicopters started spraying white phosphorus and Sarin everywhere? Even if the extraction team is wearing MOPP suits, there's no way they can count on the hostages wearing the same. If you were going to gas an area you were trying to go door to door through to find and extract people, you'd be extracting corpses.

There is no tactical rationale for using Sarin and white phosphorus to suppress the indigenous population, even if they couldn't get an AC-130 to loiter on the other side of the border. From what most journalists have gathered, the likely course of action for an extraction team in trouble is to get themselves into a Black Hawk Down situation (indiscriminately slaughtering civilians and militia alike). Carpeting an area with nerve gas just makes no sense.

3. Boycott Lockheed because they make the Hellfire missiles that Predator drones use.

If you have such disdain for the drone program, wouldn't it make more sense to use your limited airtime to excoriate the Federal government and the Obama Administration rather than to direct your fire at the defense contractors who are just filling an order requested by the government?

To paraphrase an argument from Thank You For Smoking, if some drunk driver kills himself in a car collision, do you go banging on the door of General Motors questioning their role in the incident?

4. The campaign bus is nothing but free media for the candidate. When are we going to be able to ask the hard hitting questions?

All those questions that Jim Harper, fearless journalist, asked were the same questions that political reporters and journalists asked candidates and aides during the campaign season. Perhaps he should get over the fact that beat reporters attached to the campaign bus are complete nonentities.

5. Shout "tequila!" after you take a shot of tequila.

You had me at "tequila!"

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Real Time With Bill Maher: Counterpoints and Retrospective (7/26/13)

Tonight we had a great show with good panelists. Although the mid-show guest slowed it down a little, tonight was one of the better episodes. A lot of things were discussed, so it's time to get right to it:

Sarah Slamen: Conservative Republicans in Texas don't seem to be very pro-life when it comes to their stance on the death penalty. They're waging a war on women and only care about babies when they're in the womb. If they cared about kids growing up, there wouldn't be over 13,000 kids under state foster care.

Slamen recycled one well worn liberal/progressive trope regarding abortion rights and capital punishment. But it's one of those lines that can only be used to pump up your base. Obviously there is a huge difference between a baby in a uterus, which has done nothing of its own free will, and a convicted felon who did something so heinous that a prosecutor has seen fit to punish with execution. She knew she was speaking in front of a friendly crowd, which is why she got away with it. But you can't conflate the two issues together.

The point about kids growing up in foster care is much murkier. I'm not sure how she crafted that argument. Is she suggesting that most wards of the state are the children of pro-life Texas conservatives who abandoned them? Or the fact that 13,000 kids in foster care is a travesty in and of itself? I'm not sure. If it's the former, it's completely spurious. If it's the latter, it's just a confusing argument with no real rebuttal because there's no real argument, just confidently delivered word diarrhea.

My overall impression of Slamen is that she is trying her hardest to enjoy her 15 minutes of fame. Obviously when you testify in front of a government body, you are supposed to do so in a composed, courteous way. Her outburst was undignified and can only appeal to people who already agree with her point of view. She was just making a scene.

Bill Maher 1: It baffles me how inconsistent talking heads are when it comes to publicly shaming politicians who like to cheat on their spouses.

Amen.

Eliot Spitzer: The Republicans don't know what they're talking about when it comes to the stimulus bill. Obama brought us out of the recession with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This couldn't be further from the truth. The vast majority of stimulus money was spent in the latter half of 2009 and 2010. The market bottomed in March and then began a rapid recovery as firms were propped up by TARP (a stabilization program begun under the Bush Administration and then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) and, more importantly, by the extraordinary actions of the Federal Reserve, which pumped trillions of dollars of easy money into the banks at the time.

While it is impossible to know how important the stimulus was to the economic recovery, one thing we do know is that the economic recovery we've experience has been the slowest in American economic history. A lot of this has to do with forces outside of the Federal government's control. Things like globalization, the profligate spending of the average American, and municipal governments who couldn't care less about providing fundamental public goods at a reasonable cost conspired decades before and when the latest boom/bust cycle happened, it finally revealed the fundamental flaws in the American balance sheet.

Politicians and the pundits who support them need to stop kidding themselves when they state that the US government bailed us out of some new Great Depression. All they did was ameliorate the effects at great financial cost that must be borne by future generations.

Reza Aslan 1: The laws of this country are geared towards keeping the rich rich and keeping the poor poor. Only accredited investors benefit from the Federal statutory and regulatory codes when it comes to finance.

While it is true that accredited investors have more choices when it comes to investing (only accredited investors can invest in hedge funds, for example), those extra choices carry a lot more risk. It is extraordinarily easy to become rich the boring way: investing in stocks. Given the fact that most Americans have shown zero propensity to save and invest their wage income, assets are trading at a structural deficit. Those who do show the patience and discipline to set aside a portion of their wages to invest will reap the rewards.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the American public has no interest in investing. That's why the recovery has really been a recovery of the rich. Because the rich are the only people with any real wealth to recover.

Jim Wallis: Words about the Bible, Jesus, and immigration.

Maher always treats his religious guests with a generous heaping of condescension, but Wallis' halting, slow speech does not translate well to a rather fast paced debate panel. Even though it annoys me when Maher expects a direct answer from the first answer and cuts people off when they try to answer in a roundabout (and sometimes evasive) manner, at this point it needs to be expected. Be direct, concise, and don't take 20 words to say something that could have been said with 5.

Bill Maher 2: I tell my religious friends this all the time: if there's even one turd in the pool, do you jump in?

Life is messy and nothing is perfect. It is unrealistic to expect religion to be any different. Reza Aslan made a very good point when he said that the Bible isn't about the words within it, it's about the people interpreting it. It really is a mirror reflecting the values and beliefs of the person who reads it at the time. Maher reads it to find contradictory/embarrassing stuff to throw at religious people's faces. Conservatives read it to find support for their beliefs, as do many liberals. Abolitionists read it and so did slave owners.

People, naturally are going to gravitate towards the data that supports their predefined belief system. It is only when their personal experiences disabuse them of their preconceived notions repeatedly and in a substantive way do they have a change of heart. Even self described literalists, as Aslan stated, aren't actually literalists.

Reza Aslan 2: I've been in this country a long time. Had to pretend to be Mexican because being an Iranian in the 80s was even worse, if you can believe it. And I was an illegal immigrant for 10 years. From my personal experience, I can tell you that the reason why immigration is so prohibitive in this country is because of racism.

Racism isn't the right word for this. It's actually xenophobia. Jim Wallis actually had a point when he was talking about immigration. It's about fear of the foreigner. Humans have a natural tribal tendency. There's a reason why international trade deficits can be used to demagogue an issue but nobody worries about the trade between California and Nevada.

My own personal experience is that people are distrusting of people who are not similar to them. People are always going to be suspicious of people who are different from them. The most obvious difference is in physical appearance (skin color). But when we get to know people a bit more, we slowly learn that we are not so much different from one another. I've had many friends and colleagues say to me, after they've known me for a while, that I'm more American than they are. The implicit statement was that before, they saw me as some perpetual foreigner because I'm ethnically Chinese.

When it comes to immigration, many people are close minded about it because they have an idea in their head that immigrants are foreigners. And you know what? We're not too crazy about foreigners. I'd rather be in contact with Americans. When communities and people have more exposure with immigrants, they usually turn around but only towards those specific immigrants. Sure, Jay Sun is an example of an immigrant coming to America who rapidly Americanizes and becomes a successful person, but not all immigrants are like him. When people who are against immigration reform think about the immigrants who want to come in, they immediately default to some unlikable stereotype, probably of a dirty, smelly, uneducated Mexican male who wants to commit crime.

That stereotype is something rooted in racial prejudice, but that doesn't mean that the person who believes in that stereotype can't view a Mexican in a positive light. They'll simply say "oh, that guy's the exception that proves the rule." This is why so many Americans can have strong racial prejudice and still say with absolute conviction that they're not racists/bigots. Because they can judge individuals after they get to know them, but the group that those individuals happen to be classified under don't get the benefit of the doubt.

It's not racism. It's tribalism.

Friday, July 26, 2013

The Resource Curse, Scaled Down

A week ago, two separate articles featured the Long Island College Hospital. One appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The other in The New York Times. Both described the imminent closing of the hospital due to financial problems. The latter article described a full time medical staff that costs 3 million per week, enough to service a hospital with a capacity of 375 patients. At the time, there were only 18 patients.

The former article described a charitable gift to the hospital from a deceased couple. In the 1990s, the hospital received a 135 million dollar endowment from the Othmer family, the investment proceeds (the principal sum was meant to be untouched) were meant to help fund the hospital's operations in perpetuity. Now, the vast majority of that endowment is gone. Much of it was used to settle medical malpractice suits and to finance renovations of the hospital.

It amazes me that such a generous gift could have been squandered in such a short amount of time. It costs a lot of money to run a hospital. But a charitable gift, meant to be held in a trust with its principal sum untouched, should not have been squandered like that. Court ruling after court ruling effectively stated that, were the Othmers alive today, they would have wanted (or at the very least, consented) the hospital to liquidate portions of their trust.

The fact that the hospital has a full time staff and no patients to treat also amazes me. Union rules prevented the hospital from furloughing unneeded staff and, in any case, the hospital administration had to have been incompetent if it needed to dip into a charitable trust to pay for settling/litigating medical malpractice suits. This is simply the resource curse scaled down.

Any organization that happens upon a windfall that they didn't earn is likely to squander that windfall. It's the reason why great fortunes are so often lost by the succeeding generations. They take the money for granted. They count on that money being there to support them. And they keep spending it, and spending it, until, suddenly, it doesn't exist anymore.

And that's what happened at Long Island College Hospital. Any competent administrator should have realized that, while 135 million dollars seems like a lot of money, for a hospital trust, it can't contribute any more than 11 million dollars in a good year without dipping into the principal amount. 11 million dollars is not a lot of money when you consider how much money it takes to support a hospital. And that's in a good year. The average year would be around 7-8 million dollars.

That's enough to support a couple dozen extra nurses and doctors per year. But you can't count on that money to do much more than that. And once you start dipping into the principal, then you're in even worse shape because suddenly a couple dozen extra nurses and doctors turns into only a dozen. Or half a dozen. Or none, once you've spent all the principal amount.

The end result is that a great fortune, one that was meant to explicitly provide for a community, is used to hasten the community's downfall. The vast majority of people have a hard time readjusting to a lower baseline of spending, which is why so many of them dip into their savings/principal investments to begin with. It's better to keep living like nothing's wrong at the expense of the future. Because who knows? Maybe somebody else in the future will come along and bail you out. The sad reality is that it never works out that way.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Minimum Wages of Destruction

Two weeks ago, the DC City Council passed the Large Retailer Accountability Act, a bill that would raise the minimum wage for employees at big box retailers like Wal-Mart to 12.50 USD an hour. Since this proposed law would only apply to stores with retail space of at least 75k sq ft whose parent companies have gross revenues of over 1 billion per year, it is a bill designed to keep 3 proposed Wal-Mart stores out of DC, which would create about 1800 permanent jobs.

And that's a real shame. Right now, DC proper really only has two types of residents: upper middle class white yuppies and poor, uneducated inner city blacks. The latter group live in an environment of crushing poverty, a dearth of jobs (of any kind), and rampant crime and drug use. They need low end jobs provided by stores like Wal-Mart in order to gain work experience and make money.

According to the BLS, DC currently has an unemployment rate of 8.3%. But black unemployment levels in DC are around 20%. This staggering disparity is even more pronounced when you realize that blacks make up half the city. Whites in DC have an unemployment rate of under 4%.

The action taken by the city council represents the trifecta of bad government in the US: rent seeking by entrenched special interests, ignorance or indifference to sound economic principle, and the political goodwill of useful idiots needed to back such harmful laws.

The fact that Wal-Mart must pay 4 dollars above the DC minimum wage simply because it's Wal-Mart and not some small convenience store is sheer lunacy. And the only reason why only Wal-Mart has to comply is because those smaller mom and pop shops pay many of their employees at minimum wage. This law is designed to keep Wal-Mart out of DC in the most naked way possible.

Raising the minimum wage for large retailers disproportionately hurts poor blacks because it drastically increases the barriers to job entry for the least skilled/marketable members of society. Given the fact that employment has become so important to a person's career, high minimum wages do nothing but perpetuate an underclass of people who have no economic prospects whatsoever.

All this is made possible by a coalition of upper middle class progressives (who hate Wal-Mart and love Whole Foods) and politically connected blacks who couldn't care less about Wal-Mart and would rather build political capital than do things that would actually help the people they're supposed to serve. Even a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart is a good thing because it helps a person with no work experience (who could only be hired at minimum wage by a neutral employer) gain work experience.

Work experience is paramount to building a career. Every day you're working is another day that you're building your personal social capital and signalling to employers that you're employable. But if you can't get your foot in the door, you remain an unemployable bum in the eyes of prospective employers. For a person with no work experience, very few skills, and low marketability (which unfortunately describes the vast majority of young black kids living in DC), you need an employer to take a chance on you. And the higher you set the minimum wage, the more expensive it is for a business to take that chance.

My very first job was working at a movie theater for 5.50 an hour (at the time, 35 cents above minimum wage). I hated the job. I hated my bosses. But I kept working at it because I wanted spending money. The time I was there, I learned about how wage employees get paid and how they keep track of employee hours. I also learned that I had to suck up to both the customers and the bosses in order to be considered a good worker. And I learned that anybody could do my job, so even if I quit, they would just hire somebody else to take my place.

Learning and adjusting to be a cog in the system is something very, very important. And it's something that nobody teaches you in school. You learn it when you start working. But if nobody ever gives you a job, it's something you never learn and the hiring manager will easily dismiss you as a "bad culture fit".

Nobody dreams of working at Wal-Mart. And working at Wal-Mart at minimum wage is something that very few people want to do. But for some people, it's their only option. And that option is better than doing nothing.

Monday, July 22, 2013

The Newsroom: Counterpoints and Retrospective (7/21/13)

My oh my, we've got quite a chock full episode of Things That Need To Be Addressed. It was also quite entertaining as well. But let's get right to it. I feel like this is gonna be a long blog post.

1. Chasing down a lead on sarin gas is worth doing, despite the fact that it's completely implausible.

Supposedly the story within the story is based on Operation Tailwind. But Tailwind had much more "this might actually be plausible" flavor to it seeing as it was based in Vietnam 28 years ago at the time. And it was allegedly a punitive mission, not a extraction mission. Using Sarin during an extraction makes absolutely no sense because you'd wind up gassing the very people you were trying to extract in the first place.

The US military has a very good term for that kind of thing: danger close. If their servicemen couldn't be extracted because of heavy enemy resistance, it's likely because the enemy is keeping them pinned. If that happens, that means they're close by. With a dispersal agent like Sarin, any drop would probably be within 600 meters of the people we were trying to extract. Combine that with the fact that Predator drones aren't currently equipped with warheads that can deliver Sarin and that manned fixed-wing aircraft are unable to operate within Pakistani airspace, and there is literally zero possibility for this being plausible from an operational standpoint. Conventional drone strikes would have provided effective close air support, anyways.

From a political standpoint, any military operation involving explicitly banned chemicals would be political suicide for any Administration. Any tactical advantage that could be gained from its use would be immediately outweighed by the political and strategic consequences. Use of white phosphorus in Iraq already created a mini-scandal and its use isn't banned by international protocols on the rules of war. Sarin, which was used to notorious effect in the Iran-Iraq war and, most recently, in Syria (in which the President declared that such use would represent a red line that would carry dire consequences) would have been impossible for any Administration to consider.

The Newsroom is doing itself a huge disfavor by introducing this storyline into the mix. It's utterly implausible.

2. Troy Davis should be granted clemency on account of the fact that the appeals process was arguably mishandled and that 7 out of 9 witnesses that had testified against him later recanted their story.

I hate to use Will McAvoy's own argument against the case against Troy Davis' execution, but everything he said was true. Witnesses make lousy witnesses and could easily recant in the years after which the issue becomes a cause celebre. And arguing that the lawyers handling the appeals weren't good enough also makes sets dangerous precedent for future cases to be overturned on appeal simply because the issue of "good enough" is too subjective.

In the absence of incontrovertible evidence that could be used to exonerate Davis or a clear blunder in the handling of his appeals process, the original ruling must stand. The lengthy time it takes to take a case through due process when capital punishment is sought can easily distort our perception of how things happened as they happened. When the jury heard the evidence brought against Davis, they agreed, unanimously, that it was strong enough to warrant a conviction. Any relitigation of the issue would immediately be tainted by the fact that the case had become an extreme controversy after the fact.

3. Will McAvoy: I'm not allowed to get into advocacy.

When he explained his position to Don, this just immediately jumped out to me. Of course McAvoy is allowed to get into advocacy. And he's already done so. It would have been more prudent for him to state his original case, which is that the jury already decided, the trial is too far removed to relitigate, and that it would be both petty and useless to advocate on one case of capital punishment, even if it is somewhat of a big controversy.

Given the fact that McAvoy has already gone on air to say that he will make no attempt to hide his opinions from the audience, later seeing him say that he's not allowed to get into advocacy is a bit of a stretch.

4. The killing of al-Awlaki is a surprise to McAvoy and represents an egregious abuse of executive power.

This can't have been a surprise to any experienced news hand. The fact of the matter is that al-Awlaki had been marked for death for over a year before it actually happened. I know this because I read it in the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages a year before al-Awlaki was terminated via Predator strike. al-Awlaki cannot be granted the rights of due process a civilian enjoys in US jurisdiction if he is an enemy combatant.

His status as a senior operative within al-Qaeda made him an enemy combatant. The government of Yemen (I know, not the most revered of authorities) has already declared him outlaw and subject to death. The fact of the matter is, at the time of his sanctioned killing, he was an enemy combatant and therefore not entitled to normal procedures of due process as befitting an American civilian. The legal precedent had already been established in a case (Ex Parte Quirin) with similar circumstances.

All of this is readily available information. What is not readily known are the confidential courts and legal memorandums that authorized his killing. But any chase down that rabbit hole ultimately leads to a compromised ability for the executive to safeguard national security. For this type of incident, there simply isn't any smoke that suggests the government was acting irrationally, imprudently, or illegally. "Just trust us" is the implicit argument of Justice and Defense. In this case, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

5. Sloan Sabbath: Investors should look to Nigeria for the next oil supply boom.

The funny thing about The Newsroom is that although their journalists have a preternatural ability to sense how major events will turn out before they actually turn out, they can't get the details right when it comes to economics.

Nigeria's oil production has been stagnant since 2010 due to extreme corruption in the state owned petroleum industry. Meanwhile, the extraordinary increases in oil and gas production in the US, thanks to hydraulic fracturing (fracking), has lead Federal and international energy agencies to predict that the US will overtake Saudi Arabia as the top petroleum producer by 2020.

Widespread fracking had begun in earnest in the mid aughts and singlehandedly revived the flagging US petroleum and gas industries, which began their slow decline in the 70s, after conventional sources peaked. This had all been common knowledge in late 2011. If The Newsroom wants to credibly portray Sabbath as some economic genius, the least they could have done was have her stay on the economic knowledge curve at the time instead of just giving her a throwaway line that only sounds smart to the uninitiated.

6. Will McAvoy: I'm sick of this charade I have to put on for my Democratic/liberal newsroom colleagues.

What really pissed me off about Sorkin is how he discredited McAvoy's legitimate arguments against Troy Davis and al-Awlaki by having him express remorse to a complete stranger (the police officer) about those arguments he used. It's "winning" an argument by not actually winning the argument. The fact is those arguments are legitimate and they weren't addressed in a substantive manner. It was what McAvoy needed to do to let the audience know that he's still the secret liberal/progressive Sorkin wants him to be and it was the easiest way to "win" the internal debate within the show.

7. Rival news chick: Perry's gonna bomb out as soon as he opens his mouth.

Of course, The Newsroom gets the benefit of hindsight. And gives their prognostication to some random news chick that's so obviously going to be a love interest of Jim. So of course they have to make her look smart. At the time, the smart money (Intrade) still had Romney as the (slight) favorite to win the nomination. But nobody predicted that Perry would have flamed out in such spectacular fashion as he did (oops, gets me every time!). I remember the news coverage of Perry at the time of his nomination, and he was treated as the insta-frontrunner and the serious, credible alternative to Romney in a way that Huntsman never was.

8. Lisa: We're only living together because we can't afford to live apart. The rent is too damn high.

I know this is the line they used to give Maggie a reason to still be living with Lisa (to set up their eventual reconciliation), but come on. During this time, NYC rents had been in the midst of a renascence and Lisa could have easily found a roommate to replace Maggie.

9. Sloan Sabbath: I have 450k Twitter followers.

Gimme a break. Given Sloan's area of expertise and the fact that her real life counterpart, Maria Bartiromo, only has 85k, they should have picked a slightly more realistic number. I'd give her 150k at the most.

I know, ridiculously stupid nitpick. But that's why you read this blog.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Real Time With Bill Maher: Counterpoints (7/19/13)

I don't think I've said this before, but we didn't get a very good show tonight. Lots of cross talk. The panel was bad. The interview sucked. Really the only bright spot was Dan Savage's spirited semi-monologues. That being said, we had a show, it had some talking points, I gotta provide some counterpoints. So let's get to it.

John Hargrove: It's hard for sensible people to take me seriously because I'm a huge hypocrite and I don't even realize it.

I really wish Maher had explicitly called Hargrove out on his hypocritical self righteousness, but it was not to be. If you've been at SeaWorld for a decade and you only decided to resign now, after having been disillusioned for years (his own words), why didn't you resign sooner? And how can you possibly make a complete 180 without even telling the audience why you had such an about face on the issue?

Maher implicitly called him out when he said something to the effect of "what right do humans have an emotional relationship with and be entertained by killer whales?" Hargrove immediately jumped in after that, agreeing with Maher. And I can't take him seriously because he kept talking about his relationship (again, his words) with those Killer Whales. Being a trainer at SeaWorld obviously means he was complicit in entertaining other people by exploiting/leveraging his "relationship" with the whales. And yet he never really confesses his own sins. The sins belong completely to the corporation, who is an easily demonized target.

Grover Norquist: Let's talk, in an inarticulate fashion, about charter schools in Louisiana and the DC voucher program when the conversation is actually about racial bias in our legal system.

I really like low taxes. Every two weeks, the government gets a very sizable cut of my earnings and I'm furious about it. That being said, Norquist is a terrible spokesperson for small government and lower taxes. His attempt to reroute the conversation from George Zimmerman and the legal system to education was ill handled, distasteful, and intellectually dishonest. He can't think on his feet very quickly either. There's a lot of pauses and halts in his speech, as if he's trying to analyze precisely the right thing to say.

Rula Jebreal 1: I'm going to talk in a very self righteous manner, be a complete scold, and do it all through a very thick and very annoying accent.

I remember her from a previous panel, and she was terrible. And she did the same thing this panel. I'm honestly flummoxed as to why Maher keeps booking her. I've come to the conclusion is that it's because she's insanely attractive, because she has no other redeeming qualities whatsoever.

In a show that is supposed to be about intellectual discourse of American politics, she is somewhere close to the bottom of the totem pole. If you can't speak English fluently, you shouldn't be a panelist on a political show. It's really that simple.

Normally that wouldn't bother me so much, but that combined with the way she carries herself. She is incredibly arrogant, judgmental, and has absolute conviction in the drivel that she's saying. And the audience plays along with it because she's on their team and she can memorize enough talking points to hand out red meat to the base. She has absolutely nothing substantive to say.

Connie Mack: "I don't know that I have the same experience" growing up as a black guy.

Are you kidding me? Rich white guy doesn't have the same experience growing up as a black person? The fact that a retired politician has to mince words like that when we're talking about race between the most privileged racial group and the most disadvantaged racial group in the US absolutely astounds me.

This is something that Maher gets so frustrated by and it frustrates me to no end too. White people need to realize that being black in the US absolutely sucks. Hell, being anything nonwhite sucks compared to being white when it comes to how other people perceive you. Being white is to be a blank slate. Nobody will assume anything bad/weird about you if you're white. That changes for any other ethnic and racial group.



Bill Maher: With the Zimmerman ruling and Stand Your Ground and the other trial statistics I brought up, it seems like the legal system is telling white people that it's okay to shoot black people.

There is no racial component to Stand Your Ground. This ruling is a combination of the triumph of reasonable doubt, and the fact that there are still plenty of white people who have negative opinions of black people. The jury acquitted Zimmerman. And juries have acquitted white people who shot black people and then used the Stand Your Ground defense to exonerate themselves. Laws and regulations are enforced by fallible human beings. There's nothing wrong with the law. It's the people that are wrong.

In my view, Zimmerman should have been convicted of some type of manslaughter. It is unconscionable to be armed and approach somebody who is unarmed, get into a fight, and then shoot the other person. Zimmerman's life may have been in danger when he got into the fight, but he should have never approached Martin in the first place.

Had it been a black guy stalking a white person who was unarmed, confronted him, got into a fight, and eventually shot the white guy dead, he would have been found guilty of manslaughter. This is an edge case where race clearly played an issue.

Rula Jebreal 2: Explain why 90% of the prison population is comprised of minorities and why black people are disproportionately targeted in the Stop and Frisk program in New York. The legal system is disproportionately biased against black people.

This might be hard to hear, but it's probably because blacks and other minorities commit a disproportionate number of crimes.

I agree with Democrats, Maher, and Jebreal that you are definitely treated differently (and mostly in a negative way) if you're black. And when you get judged by 12 (or 6, depending on the jurisdiction), you're less likely to get the benefit of the doubt if you're black. There is definitely a case to be made that, on the margin, black people get a raw deal.

But can we get real for a second? The system is weighted against their favor, but it's not weighted 4x against black people. Gun homicides like the Zimmerman controversy are not the norm. The majority of gun homicides is black on black or minority against minority, and most of those homicides are drug and gang related. But when it comes to overall homicide, blacks were arrested for 49.7% of such instances in 2011. That is something you absolutely can't ignore.

The only area where the legal system (rather, the people within the legal system) are heavily biased against minorities (blacks in particular) is drug crime and sentencing upon conviction. If you legalized the possession and distribution of marijuana and cocaine, you'd eliminate the majority of racial disparity.

Rula Jebreal 3: Corporations shouldn't be threatening to pull advertisements from Rolling Stone. Free speech is a fundamental right.

I know it seems like I'm picking on Jebreal, but she honestly is an airhead and deserves it. Hey, Rula, Rolling Stone can have free speech and free press, but it can't have the right for companies to pay money to advertise in their product.

Observation: Grover Norquist has a thoroughly unlikable persona.

Friday, July 19, 2013

A Quick Thought on Detroit's Bankruptcy

A few hours ago, Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in Federal court. It needs to restructure an 18 billion dollar debt. It is the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

The cause is pretty easy to see. After decades of mismanagement by the city's officials, Detroit shrunk from a city of 1.8 million in 1950 to a city of just 700,000. Rising crime, corruption, and profligate misuse of taxpayer dollars all contributed to the decline and fall of one of the greatest American cities. Right now, the city spends half of all its tax revenue just servicing its pension and health obligations of retired municipal workers.

Although it is the currently the largest municipal bankruptcy ever, it will soon be eclipsed by other cities and counties. The tax exemption on municipal bonds created a gigantic pool of easy credit that states and municipalities gorged. They used those funds to build wasteful capital projects to appeal to politicians' vanity and guarantee exorbitant retiree benefits for government workers. Spending rapidly outpaced revenue and now many local governments find themselves drowning in red ink.

This is going to be a closely watched bellwether for the 4 trillion dollar municipal bond market. Depending on how secured creditors get treated by the bankruptcy court judges, this could have a cascading effect on interest rates for other municipal bonds. If that happens, state and local governments will experience higher debt loads and interest payments.

The recession took the biggest toll on state and local payrolls. Detroit could easily be a harbinger of even further cuts in state and local government.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

You've Got Some Nerve

I've written about the prodigious arrogance of internet columnists before, but this was just too good to pass up. Alyssa Rosenberg, some nobody writer for Slate is telling J.K Rowling, one of the most famous and successful writers of all time, to use her real identity when writing a book because...Alyssa wants her to and because it appeals to her own sense of feminism.

It's more than galling, considering that Alyssa is roughly three orders of magnitude less famous and successful of a writer than Joanne Rowling (her actual name). And yet she can't stop from publicly fuming about her lack of relative success (disguised as advice). Her entire reasoning for wanting Rowling to use her real literary identity (J.K Rowling is actually still a pen name, she doesn't actually have a middle name)? Because it'll be easier for other female authors to use their real name and not suffer the indignity of having to use a pseudonym to help their chance at literary success.

Simply put, Joanne Rowling is not your bitch. And that's an important life lesson to learn. Role models, for the most part, do not see themselves as role models. A role model is a result of another person projecting their desires and hopes onto another. Rowling wants to be recognized for the quality of her craft instead of coasting on the huge inertia of her past success. Rosenberg's approval ranks somewhere between knowing the gross state product of Alabama in 1967 and imitating the mating call of the Brazilian tree frog in terms of Rowling's priorities in life.

I get the fact that online magazines like Slate need things to write about. And Rowling was in the news and therefore worth writing about. But I really wish that Slate (among other publications) would stop writing from their usual angle of maddening condescension.

There is one standout article from Slate, that I feel is worth mentioning. Written 10 years ago, the author had a brief piece on Robert Bartley, the guy who turned the Wall Street Journal's editorial page into the most influential organ of public opinion in the US. The last paragraph was especially insightful:
Despite these shortcomings, Bartley still deserves credit for revitalizing the editorial form. "Journalistically, my proudest boast is that I've run the only editorial page in the country that actually sells newspapers," he said in 2002, and he was absolutely right. Wherever editorial pages take a genuine stand on an issue instead of pondering the complexity of the world for 600 words before recommending further study, you have Bartley to thank. Wherever editorial pages report a story or break news, wherever editorials read as if they were written by a human instead of an institutional voice, you probably have Bartley to thank, too. And wherever an editorial page serves red meat instead of tapioca, no matter what the page's politics, its writers should pay royalties to the Bartley estate.
It seems like every publication took Bartley's method to heart. I really started reading the papers in 2007, and I have no idea how things operated before then, but it seems like everybody has an opinion, and they want to write about it in the most arrogant and condescending way possible.

Monday, July 15, 2013

The Newsroom: Counterpoints and Retrospective (7/14/13)

Oh boy. The Newsroom is back and there is a lot to cover. Let's get right into it.

1. We got shut out of SOPA negotiations because of your American Taliban rant. This affects our company big time!

Atlantis World Media must be a huge company. Not only do they own cable television productions, they also own the cable that transmits their work. This is not without precedent. NBCU is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. And the company I work for is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner, which also used to own cable distribution operations that later got spun off into a separate company called Time Warner Cable.

So it's very plausible that AWM would have an interest in SOPA. But AWM isn't the only player in the game. SOPA was not designed to be a windfall for individual companies. It would create winners and losers at an industry wide level, pitting content creation vs distribution. If they lose their ability to influence, individually as a company, they still have titans like Comcast, Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, and Viacom in their corner. These kinds of bills are lobbied at an industry wide level. Getting shut out of testimony before Congress is a symbolic snub. There isn't much real downside.

Likewise, there's an array of companies and industries against them, most notably led by internet based titans like Google, Facebook, Cisco, and Microsoft (whose combined market capitalization trumps the media companies by over 5 to 1). One individual company is not going to make a substantial impact either way. In the final analysis, SOPA was killed in committee so really this is a bunch of hoopla over nothing. For a show where their characters are so prescient about how the future unfolds, it doesn't look like CEO Leona Lansing is at the top of her game.

2. Drone strikes are immoral and bad policy.

I'm glad that the show still portrays Will McAvoy, a self described old school Republican, as a defense hawk that old school Republicans are supposed to be. But it's obvious that the show is trying to push it the other way, as more characters are opposed to the drone strikes than in favor. Perhaps this reflects the ideological schism of The Newsroom's peons (who, if they are anything remotely like other newsrooms, are overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic) and McAvoy's Republican leanings, but it's still too soon to tell.

They portray the guest speaker as an inarticulate advocate for drones, but the arguments he makes are real. One other thing I thought was off color was Sloan Sabbath citing package order and unit costs for the Predator but failed to do so for the F-16. The Pentagon does not procure aircraft individually. They procure them in the dozens and hundreds. But the fact Sabbath neglected to mention were the operational costs. It is vastly cheaper to use a Predator drone for a surgical strike than an F-16. It's also vastly less risky.

The other issues surrounding drone use, such as its demoralizing effect on Pakistan, is a bit murkier. The deep state within Pakistan actually allows the stationing of drones within its country, although the people definitely don't like it. The reality is that McAvoy is right on this. And it's better to send a drone to do our dirty job and have civilians killed as collateral than to send US servicemen to do the same thing and have civilians killed by errant bullets or a tense situation. If the show also sheds light on the countless JSOC raids (that kill just as many civilians as collateral), it'll be more consistent. But it's still a bad argument.

National security is of paramount importance to the executive. And they also have the most and best information related to these strikes. As a rule, we have to take it on faith that the executive knows what it's doing. It's too easy to armchair quarterback when nothing is at stake, but for those on the ground and in the air, everything is at stake for them personally, and their jobs revolve around keeping Americans safe. I'd rather trust them than pampered UMC liberals trying to impress their friends at cocktail parties.

3. Occupy Wall Street Girl: The banks are evil and they make money by ripping off their clients.

Obviously I'm paraphrasing the character's exact words, but it really isn't too far off from what she's said. There were two instances she cited, which was Goldman-Sachs involvement in a deal between John Paulson's hedge fund and ACA Financial Guaranty Corporation and Citi's prop desk betting against clients on CDOs that "they knew would fail".

The first instance actually resulted in litigation brought forth by ACA against Goldman-Sachs. And the case was dismissed by a New York appellate court a few months ago. What OWS girl failed to mention is that Goldman-Sachs' clients are not like you and me. They're rich hedge funds and financial corporations who are supposed to know what they're doing. This isn't mom and pop being swindled by greedy banks taking advantage of their ignorance, it's two sophisticated parties engaging in two sides of a deal where one side stands to make a lot of money if they're right while the other takes a bath.

ACA was a bond insurance company who bet that a security comprised of collateralized mortgages would hold up while the opposing party, John Paulson's hedge fund, bet that it wouldn't. Goldman-Sachs doesn't need to inform ACA that Paulson structured the fund because ACA's responsibility is to review the composition of the security and then make a decision one way or the other. In fact, ACA already knows that there is a counterparty betting that the structured deal will fail.

What does it matter if that party also helped structure the deal? ACA is betting that the other party is wrong. If they think that the other party is right, they wouldn't have gone into the deal. You can't bet and then whine when your bet goes south. Or, you can, but nobody will take you seriously. And that's exactly what the New York appellate court said.

The other case isn't very specific, but I guarantee that involves one of Citi's prop desks and parties that might also be clients of Citi's advisement division. Financial organizations (it's not enough to call them banks anymore) are allowed to have prop desks (which make money by using the firm's money), commercial banking operations (which make money by using depositor's money), and wealth advisory operations (which make money by selling advice). It is more than possible that some parties could be clients of the wealth management/advisory operations and also take part in deals where the prop desks are counterparties.

Again, OWS girl is so sure that Citi's prop desk managers knew that the deals they structured would fail, but she fails to mention that the counterparty to Citi's prop desks are sophisticated investors as well. Again, the people they do business with are not average individual investors. They do deals that are valued at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Everybody who's doing deals at that point are intelligent, well informed, and know enough to do their due diligence.

4. Occupy Wall Street is gonna fail because there isn't a clear and concise message and they have no centralized leadership.

It's pretty obvious from Neil's dialogue with OWS girl that this is the direction that the show is taking. It's not hard to believe that Sorkin, speaking through Neil, was one of many liberals who had hoped that OWS would prove an effective counterweight to the tea party movement and was disappointed by its ephemeral impact on the public consciousness.

Occupy Wall Street failed because the primary drivers behind it were twentysomethings. And twentysomethings are the least reliable demographic in society. It didn't fail because of lack of clear messaging or leadership. It failed because the people who embodied the movement don't have what it takes to create a lasting political movement. The public collectively shrugged and dismissed them as naive college students. And that's exactly what they were.

5. The New Intro

It's an improvement over the old one. But it still sucks. Sorkin and company need to get past the "we're trying to bring news back to the way it was in the 70s" vibe that their music supposedly embodies. They also need to improve the visuals which is just a bunch of active movement within the newsroom. I have no idea how to make a good intro, but I can tell the good from the bad. And The Newsroom's is still mostly bad.

6. I guess this season is gonna be told in flashback?

They make it pretty clear from the first episode (and the previews for the next) that the show is gonna be told mostly in flashback for this season. I'm glad that they finally had the guts (or at the very least, the shame) to show that their characters were capable of screwing up and not always prescient. But I'm not sure this is the way to do it.

In a TV season, it's very hard to do the story within the story for the entire season effectively. I'm worried that The Newsroom will fall into this trap.

But it's not like it matters for me. I'll still watch it. And I plan to do counterpoints and retrospectives for each episode. So watch the show on HBO. And then come over here for a balanced view.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Real Time With Bill Maher: Counterpoints and Retrospective (7/12/13)

Despite the inclusion of Cornel West (seriously, he is among the lower end of panel guests) in the show and some frequent and loud crosstalk, we had a decent show tonight. There are definitely a lot of issues to address.

Bobby Ghosh: Egypt is ready for democracy, but they need to learn that democracy is more than tyranny of the majority.

Egyptians aren't ready for liberal democracy. Because there are democracies that operate as tyrannies of the majority (Chavez-era Venezuela being the most notable model) that are just as repressive as dictatorships and there are liberal democracies that give the majority candidate and party a right to rule, but also protects minority rights as well. The latter type of democracy is much better than the former. I don't know too much about Egypt, but two revolutions in 2 years seems emblematic of a deeply dysfunctional society. It's not enough just to have elections. So far, the Egyptians aren't doing too well with their experiment in democracy.

Bill Maher: Why is burglary the only option for so many black kids? Why aren't they being given good opportunities for legal socioeconomic advancement?

Societal change is, as a rule, extremely slow. If you look at how segregated black communities are from everywhere else. Combine that with a culture that is not conducive to higher level education and the debilitating effects of well meaning welfare programs, and you get a problem that can fester for a very long time.

The actions needed to change it as fast as humanly possible are also actions that would be completely unacceptable. It requires forcibly relocating millions of families and subsidizing them in an intelligent way. The government obviously can't do any of that. So right now, there's not a lot we can do. The two most helpful things revolve around our legal system and education.

Cornel West has a point on drug convictions and sentencing. Repealing the controlled substances act would keep a lot of black kids and families out of jail. Reforming public education would also help them get the skills needed to be productive members of society. The former can be achieved relatively quickly if there is the political will to do it. The latter will take decades. It will take a very long time to rectify the injustices of racial discrimination in the US. This is something that cannot be fixed by throwing money at it, which seems to be the first idea Americans try when it comes to problem solving.

Cornel West: President Obama is a war criminal, and I say this with love.

It's an idiotic thing to say and it's completely beneath the dignity of an Ivy League professor to say so. You can't be harsh on President Obama and call it tough love and also call him a war criminal. It simply cheapens the term "war criminal". Maher kinda called him out on it by saying that his definition makes just about every modern American President a war criminal.

Governments prosecute war criminals. The President of the United States cannot be prosecuted by the Federal government for war crimes. It's impossible. It would never happen. War criminals are convicted by governments that recently emerged victorious in some terrible struggle. And the kids who become collateral damage from drone strikes simply don't get a voice in our political system.

Almost every American agrees that the President needs to be tough on national security. Almost every American will also agree that to be tough on national security, you gotta kill the bad guys. And Americans, as Matt Lewis said, will tolerate collateral damage especially when it's remote controlled drones doing the dirty work and not American soldiers being put in harm's way.

At the end of the day, the President is charged with serving the public interest of a country of over 300 million people. Of course he will prioritize the safety of Americans over foreigners. Of course that will occasionally result in some foreigners getting killed. That doesn't make him a war criminal. To say otherwise is needlessly inflammatory and either intellectually dishonest or ignorant.

Mike Rowe: We have so many job openings available, but kids these days don't want to work blue collar type jobs due to the indoctrination of society telling us that we should all go to college and leave manual labor for Mexicans and Chinese.

This man hit the nail on the head. The reality is that an economy and society as large and complex as ours requires a lot of moving parts. And not everybody can be a reality TV star, PR spokesperson, model, or radio host. We need doctors, engineers, software developers, plumbers, electricians, forklift operators, construction workers, and sewage workers.

And we have shortages of all those professions. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to be a doctor or engineer. So most kids don't go down that career path. Plumbers, electricians, heavy machinery operators and construction workers get absolutely no respect in the "so what do you do?" phase of a cocktail party, so most kids don't go down those career paths either. That essentially leaves a lot of kids vying to be reality TV contestants, marketing/creative types that barely work, and pretty people jobs. And there are only a finite number of those jobs.

The modern economy doesn't really need entertainment jobs. Those jobs are created with the excess economic productivity generated from jobs that involve or facilitate food production and preparation, construction, health care, defense (like it or not, every society needs a security apparatus), transportation. The wealthier a society is, the more jobs it can afford to create in the entertainment sector. But it cannot rely on the entertainment sector to create wealth. Entertainment is not wealth. It is strictly consumption.*

But, big surprise, everybody wants to go into entertainment. It involves the least amount of real work and the most amount of real compensation. Unfortunately, that compensation is only made possible with the hard work of people working in the real economy. Actors can only get paid millions of dollars when they can show off their craft on a television designed by an engineer, manufactured by a factory worker, shipped by a truck driver, and sold by a sales associate at your local big box store or online.

We have a lot of jobs open in the real economy. You know, the part that addresses the things that humans need to survive. Prospering can only come after surviving. And too many Americans want to prosper before surviving.

Liz Mair: I am wearing a black leather jacket. I am also annoying and inarticulate.

This is not a sexist rant, by the way. If you want to be taken seriously, you probably shouldn't wear a black leather jacket. And it sure doesn't help your cause if you can't also be clear and concise when you make an argument. If she's the kind of political operative that Republicans hire for strategy, it's no wonder they're in such bad shape.

* I appreciate the irony of making this statement even as I draw a paycheck from a large media/entertainment corporation. It's kinda like celebrities ragging about how unimportant their jobs are, except I'm not absurdly rich, of average intelligence, and laden with a host of emotional issues that emanate from childhood.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

The Politicization of the News

In the second episode of The Newsroom, Mackenzie McHale revamps the show within the show, News Night With Will McAvoy, and her top priority is news that is political.


If the goal of revamping News Night is to better inform the American public about important issues, the number 1 objective should not be about information that's most relevant to the voting booth. It should be about information that's most relevant to everyday life. And the information that's most relevant to everyday life is money related.

Leave it to a rich, Hollywood liberal to tell his viewers that what matters isn't financial, it's political. Even the financial "expert" on the show, Sloan Sabbath, is focused on financial issues as it relates to politics. Her pet cause has always been the debt ceiling fight. The show never talks about money matters that's relevant to the average household. They only ever talk about the importance of the debt ceiling as it relates to Federal outlays and making Republicans look bad.

Things like the risk free rate (Treasury yields) and how it affects personal finances are never explained. Investment strategy? Nope. The importance of bond markets and how it affects everyday prices? Unh uh. Appropriate savings rates for a comfortable retirement? Nah, let's just talk about how union employees aren't really overpaid (even though they really are, especially when you count their retirement and health benefits).

No. The news should always be about politics and how it should affect your decision come Election Day. This should tell you a lot about the priorities within The Newsroom. And it certainly dispenses any of the boneheaded arguments saying that the show is not a political show. It is a political show. And if you couldn't tell from the opening scene of the first episode, they literally spell it out for you early in the second episode.

That does not mean that the show is not good or not enjoyable. It's a good show and it's enjoyable. But it's a show meant to stir up politics, not to "properly inform" average Americans or show how the news really should be done. News Night With Will McAvoy is not a news show. It's a political show presented as a news show, which is actually pretty subversive when you think about it.

This is the fundamental reason why actual news shows have experienced declining ratings. The average viewer is content with knowing the bare minimum of current events and then going over to their favorite opinion source to get their take on how it really is. Opinions, not information, rule the day when it comes to the "news" channels.

If I asked you to name the most visible personality on CNN, you would name Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper. And their main duty is to report the news. The most visible personality on Fox is Bill O'Reilly, and his show is purely political and opinion based. And MSNBC? It's either Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, or Lawrence O'Donnell (who is the closest approximation to Will McAvoy in real life), and they're all political pundits. Guess which news channel is in the ratings doldrums? CNN.

And it's not like The Newsroom tries to hide this reality. McAvoy's show spikes in the ratings after he gives that speech in the first episode, which is nothing more than a stream-of-consciousness rant of his own political opinions. Opinions are the bread and butter of the news channels. Breaking news is too unreliable to be a mainstay.

I don't know if Aaron Sorkin intentionally meant to mislead his audience or if he's completely unaware of the irony in a show that positions itself as best presenting the news when it's actually just politicizing and editorializing the news. So it's important to remember that, while watching The Newsroom, this isn't a show about facts. It's a show about opinions on facts, which can be shortened to just "opinions".

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Peril of Prosecutorial Discretion

The Obama Administration generated quite a controversy last week when it announced that it would delay the enforcement of the employer mandate requiring companies with at least 50 employees to provide health care to all of their workers for a year.

Republicans immediately denounced the act as political maneuvering for the midterm elections and how it represented a breach in the rule of law. The Wall Street Journal had quite a popular op-ed yesterday about it. The argument is this: the decision to delay enforcement represents a bridge too far when it comes to the selective enforcement of the country's laws.

As a rule, I favor laws that give enforcers and prosecutors as little room for interpretation as possible when it comes to execution and enforcement of them. Because wiggle room results in uncertainty and uneven enforcement. And it also introduces an exceptionally corrupting influence into the government. At the Federal level, this manifests itself most obviously in the revolving door between the private sector and top level bureaucrats in DC. Companies directly lobby bureaucrats for more lenient or preferential treatment from regulators and promise them cushy, high paying jobs in the private sector should they decide to leave public service.

If bureaucrats had less discretionary power, corporations wouldn't bother lobbying them. Likewise, if a President couldn't make good on promises to reward favored constituencies and donors with his extraordinary level of power over the Federal bureaucracy, you'd see political campaign contributions shrivel up as well. This phenomenon is best observed in the low level bureaucracies of emerging markets. Corruption runs rampant because government officials are poorly paid but have extraordinary discretionary power over the private sector.

A government of laws is much more appealing because power is more clearly rooted in the political process rather than the bureaucracy. And it allows for a much more efficient bureaucracy. The IRS is probably the most efficient and effective organ of the Federal government because its duties are clear and allow almost no wiggle room. IRS officials can't selectively enforce the tax laws for favorable treatment. The result? Companies lobby Congress for tax loopholes instead of the IRS. This makes the IRS much more professional and gives it much more legitimacy. And lobbying Congress is a higher profile activity than trying to bribe/cajole an IRS auditor, so the process becomes more transparent.

Although it is perfectly legal for the Administration to delay enforcement of a new law, it represents further deterioration in the competency and legitimacy of the bureaucracy. Right now, we have a dysfunctional political ecosystem and a highly functioning bureaucratic organization. If the latter becomes as dysfunctional as the former, then expect to see economic growth slow substantially as more and more activity is geared towards wealth preservation rather than wealth creation.

Monday, July 8, 2013

America the Great

The opening scene of The Newsroom introduces our protagonist, Will McAvoy, as a jaded and bored news anchor at a Q&A/debate session with a few other media personalities at some university. The scene plays out as follows:


That speech, while simultaneously entertaining and cringe inducing, was loquacious and bordering on stream-of-consciousness: trademark Aaron Sorkin. And it also happened to be a speech about why America is not the greatest country in the world written by a writer who does believe America is the greatest country in the world.

In their heart of hearts, American liberals are just as proud as American conservatives concerning matters such as national greatness. But among the progressive elites of American society, it is a huge faux pas to say it directly, out loud, and be proud about it. Which is why Aaron Sor -- I mean Will McAvoy said all those things. We aren't the greatest, but we were and we can be again if we just did x, y, z. That is acceptable liberal/progressive code for saying "USA! USA! USA!"

David Mamet, quoting some dead old white guy, once wrote that liberalism can be reduced to just two words "and yet...". As in, the United States is the greatest country in the world, and yet we still can't find it within ourselves to offer universal healthcare like every other developed country. For people of a certain means and mindset, society can always be improved and requires a huge, collective effort directed by some central authority to make it so. Some liberals are more cautious than others when it comes to rushing into the breach with a bold new idea or program, but that is the general progressive/liberal point of view.

Conservatives obviously view it differently. They are slightly unnerved by the breakneck pace that modern society changes by, and are nostalgic for some bygone era that is always much worse than how they actually remember it. They are also amazed at how good people in the US have it and want to preserve our extraordinary circumstances even at the expense of innovation and improvement. Because change is uncertain. And it is certain that life in the US is great. Why should we, this group asks, risk destroying the essence of what makes America great for some nebulous, incremental improvement?

In the end, both conservatives and liberals (and most every American in and around those two camps) will always (if not publicly) agree with the following statement: America is the greatest country in the world. Conservatives will follow up with "and let's keep it that way" just like the conservative in the above clip. Liberals will follow up with "and yet we still have so much to improve upon".

The reason why we're the greatest country in the world is pretty simple. Although other countries might do better in certain individual aspects, no other country in the world has us beat when we are considered as a gestalt. Obviously, there is no concrete, objective measure for gauging the comparative greatness of countries. But, like pornography, this goes through a pretty accurate eyeball test. You know it when you see it. And for the past 150 years, no other country can match the overall efforts of the American people when it comes to outsized impact the country has had on science, the economy, world politics, and culture. It's really that simple.

It must be said that all this talk about comparative greatness is nothing more than an exercise in vanity. America being no. 1 isn't going to feed you when you're hungry or get your kids into their first school of choice. But pride is one of those traits that is universal to every culture. And our collective obsession with cataloging, quantifying, analyzing, and comparing greatness, whether it's in sports, history, politics, movies, business, or culture, isn't weird or stupid. It's natural. So say it loud and say it proud, baby. Because America is the greatest country in the world and there's no shame in admitting that.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

The Newsroom is Back!

In one week, that is. To commemorate the series, which really got me in the groove of writing for this blog (now over a year old!), I'm going to write a series of essays on topics covered by The Newsroom. The first one will be out on Monday.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

On the Inside Looking Around: Or, Why Game of Thrones Is So Compelling

Game of Thrones is one of the most popular shows on TV, and the crown jewel of HBO's premium cable empire. At first glance, it is exceptionally hard to tell why. There are dozens of characters all with vastly different names. There is a huge backstory that is incredibly important to the plot but it's only ever touched upon here and there in the series. And, after the 9th episode, there is no clear cut protagonist. It's a mish-mash of various points of view alternating by 4-7 minute scenes. And yet it's extremely popular. Which begs the question: why? The answer can be boiled down into three words: proximity to power.

The primary reason why television is inundated with cop, lawyer, and doctor shows is because very few people are cops, lawyers, or doctors. And these three professions have outsized importance in daily life. Watching these shows is voyeuristic. The viewer gets to see one area of influence and power at a very personal level. Game of Thrones takes this concept, supercharges it, and then adds an immense amount of drama.

Perhaps the most basic description for Game of Thrones is that it is the story of a group of dynastic families and their struggle to gain and maintain power. And the show is at its best when the scene is just two people talking to each other. But the reason why it's so compelling is because, more often than not, those two characters belong to powerful aristocratic families and their thoughts and actions influence the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions.

After a President leaves office or some great economic calamity passes, there is always a demand for some kind of postmortem analysis, Hollywood style. In another HBO production, Too Big To Fail, it depicted the efforts of former Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson to avert the next Great Depression as financial markets go into freefall in the summer and fall of 2008. Most of the scenes show Paulson in the room with many very powerful policymakers and CEOs. A movie about the effects of the recession affecting some worker don't get made because we can see that in real life. But very few of us ever get to sit in one of those meetings where a handful of people determine the fates of millions.

What makes Game of Thrones different from that kind of voyeurism is that it's removed from reality and history even as it heavily borrows from both. Too Big To Fail was a postmortem. We already knew what happened. When Game of Thrones went through with (SPOILERS) the main character's execution (SPOILERS), it completely upended the audience's expectations for a regular TV series. Suddenly, the stakes were upped in the most dramatic way possible. Anything could happen.

But the apex of GoT's first season wasn't a series of chaotic and unforeseeable events. The narrative concluded in an entirely predictable way if you could observe it outside the lens of a TV show (where audiences have expectations already baked into the pie). You were essentially witnessing history in the making from the best seats in the house. That is what makes Game of Thrones (and the books it's based off of) so remarkable.

The world building is absolutely incredible, and no stone gets left unturned. Every aspect of life is filled in and explained. There is an incredibly deep backstory. Aristocratic families have extensive family trees, official mottoes, and depict people in a very realistic manner. The common people have drinking songs, superstitions, and different accents that distinguish them from highborn characters. Every city has a founding story. Every castle has its own legend.

When the author or the show's creators depict a meal or a family crest or some weapon of historical origin, they're building a world. They're making you invested in the world. And because you're invested, you care what happens next. And what happens next is going to be determined by the decisions and actions of a very small and very powerful group of people. And you're by their side, able to see them in their element at the decisive moment where everything changed. Suddenly, it becomes incredibly easy to understand why so many people love to watch Game of Thrones.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Real Time With Bill Maher: Counterpoints (6/28/13)

Sorry for getting this out late, usually I watch the live viewing and then go from there. But I couldn't do it this weekend. Regardless, we had a decent show, good points to discuss, and some counterpoints to make. So let's get to it.

Anthony Leiserowitz 1: Keystone XL needs to stop because it just makes the problem of CO2 emissions worse.

Again, we have to deal with the reality of economics. If we're not going to transport that heavy crude via pipeline, we're going to do it by rail. And shipping it by train requires a lot more CO2 emissions than shipping by pipeline, which is the most efficient form of logistical distribution we have today.

Bill Maher 1: I think we can all admit that the Obama Administration really is waging a war against coal. But coal miners have the worst jobs in the world. Is working at Home Depot really such a downgrade?

This is essentially the reverse libertarian argument. People naturally resent authority, especially when it messes with their livelihoods. The people who are most affected by the EPA and DOE's crusade against coal are the employees of those coal companies. For other people, our electricity bills will go up about 4-5 cents per kilowatt hour, but for them, they'll lose their current job in a precarious economic climate that cannot guarantee them another.

They've already made the decision that being a coal miner is worth it. When you look at places where coal is being mined, mostly in rural Appalachia where the average person has a living standard that's worse than an inner city youth in Baltimore, you really are disrupting their lives and livelihoods. There's a difference from when market forces drives companies and employees out of business. When the government does it, that's a whole different story.

Anthony Leiserowitz 2: China and India are already doing a better job of fighting climate change than we are.

Such a statement couldn't be further from the truth. Every week, China and India are building 4 new coal plants. Industrializing economies require vast amounts of extremely cheap energy, and coal is the cheapest (besides natural gas, but that is only a very recent state of affairs). China's subsidies for energy research are geared primarily towards their fast breeder reactor program (and other nuclear programs) and a few billion for solar panel manufacturers to capture American subsidies on "green" energy.

In the US, CO2 emissions have gone down largely due to the large scale conversion from coal fired electricity to natural gas powered electricity. China's CO2 emissions continue to grow at double digit percentages per year.

 Dan Neil and Bill Maher: Justice Roberts is essentially saying racism is a non-issue by overturning Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, but voter discrimination is still a huge concern.

The real issue of preclearance is the extraordinary level of Federal control over a state issue (election laws are supposed to be determined by states, specified in the Constitution). Prior Court rulings have made note of this high level of scrutiny but the issue really comes down to how far can the Federal government curtail states' rights by using an issue that is no longer valid?

5 of the states subject to preclearance by the VRA had higher black turnout than white turnout in the most recent election. If the southern states are so irredeemably racist that they still need Federal scrutiny, obviously they aren't doing a good job of translating that racism into actionable voter suppression and perhaps other states might warrant preclearance.

On a related note, when Maher trotted out Posner's quote that John Roberts was essentially making shit up, Horace Cooper shut that down pretty hard with an exceptionally obscure legal case and it made for an awkward scene. But I'm glad that Maher admitted he had a point.

Kristen Soltis (heavy paraphrasing): Gay rights have advanced a rapid clip because the thought leaders and upper middle class live around gays and not around blacks.

Nail on the head. I've always said that I want more gay people living in my neighborhood because they're clean, don't cause crime, and they boost property values. There is a lot of intermingling between the UMC and gays, therefore it's easier to identify and relate with them. The UMC is so sheltered from most black people that it really is just socioeconomic/white guilt driving their support of "black" causes, which is why they haven't advanced nearly as quickly as gay causes.

Adrian Grenier: The war on drugs has to end.

Agreed. It's time to let the pros take over the sale of drugs instead of Mexican drug lords and teenagers on street corners.