The R.oB. Opinion » Obama

The Problem is Ignorance

Robert Barrimond — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:27:58 +0000

“President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance. So many kids from West Philadelphia don’t even know these opportunities exist for them. Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home. Many have teachers who are overburdened and too stressed to find the time to help every kid that needs it. Many of these kids don’t have the brains to figure this out themselves – like my kids. Except that my kids are just lucky enough to have parents and a well-funded school system around to push them in the right direction.

Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.”

(Via Forbes .)

Mr. Marks is exactly right the problem is ignorance. His. Its willfulness especially. I don’t doubt his heart is somewhere near the right place, but seriously. His entire argument boils down to this: Poor black kids “don’t have the brains to figure this out for themselves” just like his presumably white middle class kids. Further, they don’t have adults with the resources to help them. So even when the odds are stacked against them, and like all children, are ill equipped to face these challenges alone, it’s still their fault they struggle. You gotta love conservative ideology for it’s ability to engender doublethink. Orwell would be impressed.

Obama’s Turn at the Populism Trough

Robert Barrimond — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:22:56 +0000

Obama channeling Teddy Roosevelt:

UPDATE 3-Obama hits Republicans, Wall St in populist speech | Reuters: “Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. Well, I’m here to say they are wrong,” he said.

But Republicans said it was another attempt to distract from what they see as Obama’s failed economic record. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell accused the president and his fellow Democrats of resorting to “cheap political theater.”

(Via Reuters.)

Of course being the Party of No, well, that’s expensive political theater. If he resonates with the Occupy movement, the GOP goose is cooked. You heard it here first. Break a leg, Mr. President!

Wall Street Is Already Reacting Negatively To Debt Ceiling Fight

Robert Barrimond — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:32:03 +0000

Wall Street Is Already Reacting Negatively To Debt Ceiling Fight:

[UPDATE: Forgot to add the previous paragraph that follows.] In other words, and completely contrary to what GOP leaders are saying, two major financial market participants are warning that there will be a Wall Street-related price to pay if the debt ceiling is not raised as needed.

The best indication of all that the market has already started reacting negatively is the current trading of credit default swaps on U.S. debt. As of late May, the number of CDS contracts — essentially insurance policies on the possibility of a default — had risen by 82 percent. Equally as important, the cost of a CDS — the best indication of how much riskier U.S. debt has become — rose by more than 35 percent from April to May. Last week I spoke to a number of people who calculate such things for a living, and they said this change means that the interest rate the U.S. government has to pay has already increased by as much as 40 basis points compared with what it otherwise would be. This means higher federal borrowing costs and deficits, and overall higher interest rates on everything from car loans to mortgages to credit cards.

(Via Capital Gains and Games | Washington, Wall Street and Everything ….)

Grade school social studies class: Congress has the Power of the Purse.

I Feel Like A Black Republican, Too

Robert Barrimond — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:33:13 +0000

TNC, quotes a commenter named David White who must have been channeling me.

I Feel Like A Black Republican:

You know, normally something this stupid wouldn’t bother me, but this story really gets under my skin. If they can try to paint Common as a ‘dangerous black man,’ what black man is immune? If they think Common is vile, then I know they have no use for my black ass. Common is beyond the pale, Michelle Obama hates whitey, Eric Holder is protecting the New Black Panther Party, Shirley Sherrod is discriminating against white farmers, Barack Obama is giving reparations to black people? Conservatives, do you realize how stupid this sounds to black people?

…But shit like this is what prevents me from even getting to the point where I’d give their policies a fair hearing. And I know there are some Republicans and conservatives here, and I say that you have no chance of getting any kind of support from black voters as long as the leaders of your party are pulling these kinds of stunts.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Faux News is Complete Bull!@#$

Robert Barrimond — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:54:57 +0000

Jon Stewart ethers Faux News:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Tone Def Poetry Jam – Lyrics Controversy

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Tone Def Poetry Jam – Lyrics Controversy

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Healthcare is not a Normal Good

Robert Barrimond — Tue, 10 May 2011 04:56:46 +0000

Freakonomics » New Freakonomics Podcast: Does College Still Matter? And Other FREAK-y Questions Answered.

[Healthcare] is virtually the only part of the economy where I can go out and get any service I want—cancer treatment, open heart surgery, have a wart removed, whatever it is—and I pay $3 for it or $5 for it or nothing, even if it costs $50,000 or $100,000. I mean, imagine if you had the same situation with automobiles. Where I could show up at the car dealership and I could say, ‘I want the Mercedes for free.’ Well, people say, ‘You can’t have the Mercedes for free. You have to pay $50,000 for it.’ You say, ‘Why not, I have an inalienable right to free healthcare. Right? Why don’t I have an inalienable right to a free Mercedes?’

I love Levitt and Dubner, but here they lose their way. They miss an important moral dimension to the argument over healthcare. The best response was in the comments from “Miichael[sic?]”

To extend your Mercedes analogy, what usually happens is that you are told by your personal Car Expert that you need a Mercedes or you will die. You can’t afford one, and your Car Insurer says they won’t pay for one. So you walk. And you die.

The Racism of Frame

Robert Barrimond — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:17:51 +0000

Wow.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Racism of Frame:

On Friday I joked on twitter, the other day, that biggest problem with attempting to write smart is that you end up attracting people who really are smart. And sometimes they write in to tell you you’re wrong. And sometimes, In such cases, your forced to acknowledge their point.

At the end of this post I said of Huck’s ridiculous Obama/Kenya comparison, ‘This is not skin-color prejudice.’ Numerous people have noted that, well, it kinda is. A sample or three.

From Keshii:

Aside from the fact that Obama’s father was passed over by Kenyatta, you have the fact that the Mau Mau Rebellion was primarily a Kikuyu rebellion, the result of Kikuyu being kicked off their lands by white settlers. The war was primarily fought between Mau Mau Kikuyu and Kikuyu loyal to the colonial state. Fewer than 100 Europeans died in the rebellion…tens of thousands of Kikuyu died. The lazy assumption that Obama’s father, a Luo by birth, would have been a part of the Mau Mau Rebellion simply underscores the fact that Europeans and Americans have NEVER understood the Mau Mau Rebellion. To them it just meant ‘black people doing crazy things.’ Huxley called it ‘the yell from the swamp.’ It was uncivilized, savage, a revolt against civilization. The fact that it was connected to real grievances by the Kikuyu, that it was a product also of Kenya’s very divided ethnic heritage (as witnessed by Kenyatta’s favoritism towards Kikuyu during his long presidency, and the bloody and protracted battle between Luo and Kikuyu after the 2007 elections) is ignored, or better yet, never understood in the first place.

I disagree with the opening post in that I think this does have something to do with skin color. Because Kenya’s anti-colonialism was black, it is easier for idiotic people like Huckabee to claim that it is somehow bad if an African has a negative view of British colonialism. Imagine Huckabee trying to say the same thing about a white victim of colonization, be it the Irish, the Dutch settlers in South Africa up to the Boer War, or Canadians. There’s no way, no way at all, that Huckabee would employ the same language and the same dismissive contempt for an entire people’s aspirations for freedom and independence. This is absolutely about race, about Obama’s ‘otherness,’ an argument that is made so much easier by Obama’s ancestors and his mixed skin color. Moderate Flag.

Another:

In an editorial they wrote during the height of Mau Mau, the Times said: ‘We live in a tortured period of history when strange and primitive forces are coming into their own again. Our civilization often seems but a veneer covering a dark abyss. Now and then the surface is pierced and we see frightening things.’ That was part of their commentary on Mau Mau.

Time Magazine also ran a story on Mau Mau. Not only did Time report rumors that Mau Mau oathing ceremonies involved the harvesting and eating of human brains by Mau Mau, they also had this quote from a white settler living in Kenya: ‘Some bastards still think Kukes are human. They aren’t…Night after night, you lock the doors, see to the guns, and kiss your wife and kids goodnight, and wonder if you’ll ever see another alive in the morning. We have no protection, except ourselves. And don’t forget, most of us are on commando duty. Some of us can’t farm anymore.’ Around this same time, Robert Ruark, the American author, said of Mau Mau: ‘To understand [Mau Mau] you must understand a basic impulsive savagery that is greater than anything we civilized people have encountered in two centuries.’

I find these quotes remarkable in part because the world had just gone through the Second World War, which saw the gassing of six million Jews, the slaughtering of some 50 million civilians, etc. Yet it took the Mau Mau rebellion for people to think that ‘civilization’ was endangered. Think about that, and then ask yourself, why were people so freaked out by Mau Mau? Again, fewer than 100 whites died in Kenya. A thousand Africans were hung by the British. Tens of thousands more died in the rebellion, or died in the British concentration camps. So what made Mau Mau so different? I know what I think the answer is, but it’s something to ponder.

Cynic critiques the willingness to give Huck, in all cases, the benefit of the doubt:

Dave Weigel, back in September, when Newt Gingrich praised Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘brilliant’ book for its ‘interesting insight’:

What will be the impact of D’Souza’s book? If 1995 and 2007 repeat themselves, Gingrich will be the exception–people in the rest of the movement will realize just how tissue-thin this research is. If they realize that, they may then look askance at Glenn Beck’s search for similar evidence of Obama’s radical history. They may even question the wisdom of questioning Obama’s birthplace. Could the search for some skeleton key in Obama’s past be a distraction? It could be! If it were a book, it could be called the The End of Birtherism.

And Weigel on Huckabee:

Occam’s razor: Huckabee is just ill-informed….I’ll give Huckabee the benefit of the doubt and say he put a few different ideas in the blender. So he’s not a birther; he does reveal an odd ignorance of the biography of the man he occasionally out-polls in the 2012 presidential election. (That said, I’m not sure if Obama could pass a pop quiz on the early years of Mike Huckabee.)

I’m picking on Weigel here because he’s as competent and well-informed as any journalist covering the conservative movement, and so the problems with his coverage serve as a useful proxy for his colleagues. He predicted in the fall that D’Souza’s book was so explicitly batshit crazy that it would end up discrediting birtherism, a movement that thrives on innuendo and suggestion. Well, here we are six months later, and a man who ‘occasionally out-polls’ the president just offered it as fact. And Weigel now excuses this as being ‘ill-informed.’

He’s right about the ignorance, but he’s wrong to dismiss or excuse it. If Obama were to chalk Huckabee’s pro-life stance up to his Catholicism, Weigel would be among the first to pounce. And he’d be right to do so. If you’re going to rely on pop psychology to explain policy preferences, arguing that the political is merely the personal, then you’d better understand the person you’re talking about.

But it’s also worth pondering why Weigel got this wrong back in September, because I think it explains his continued failure to grasp the point today. It’s not about the facts. It’s about a basic, emotional, intuitive belief that Obama is foreign. And it’s about the new esotericism of the right. The fact that Obama is actually proudly American drives his critics nuts. They know he cannot mean it. And so, precisely because all of the readily available facts indicate that he is patriotic and moderate, they search everywhere for evidence that will reveal his underlying foreignness and radicalism. It’s not subject to factual rebuttal because the facts that might rebut it are, in their view, further evidence of his massive duplicity.

And I differ with our esteemed host. This is not merely skin-color prejudice; it’s not that simple. But that is, absolutely, where it starts.

I don’t want to speak for Dave here, but I’ll say that when looking at this sort of thing, I try to make sharp, distinct point that evinces some degree of reflection, while avoided the kind of wild overstatement that tends to distract from your central point. But there’s always a danger of hedging too much. Witness the thin allegedly sober claim that we should never accuse anyone of racism because it’s ‘distracting’–a claim which I sometimes, myself, am seduced by. But the fact is that sometime people do say things that are demonstrably racist. In such instances, accusing them of bad behavoir, or mispeaking, or even simple evidently ‘nonracist’ white populism is cheap.

What you see in Keshii’s comment is a textbook case of racism in its most isidious form– racism of frame. In this case, the frame is that black people fighting a war of liberation, should only employ such means which do not offend our sense of decency. That implication, as Keshii notes in the second comment, is well established in the Western vocabulary.

So it’s true that Huck’s attack doesn’t hold that Obama, himself, is a lesser human because he is black, it simply seeks to associate him with people who we’ve already decided, within our frame, are lesser humans. Here’s an elegant racism–no need to insult Obama directly, instead simply associate him with a group of black people who have the disreputable habit of waging indelicate wars of liberation.

This is not about whether the Mau Mau were ‘right.’ On the contrary, it’s about the right of all people–not just those in power–to be wrong. There is a reason the Mau Mau hold a place in our imagination that, say, the gulags of Kenya do not. The racism of frame, as practiced in America, is premised on denying blacks the privilege of being wrong. It’s why in a country where the right of self-defense is sacred, the notion of Malcolm X impolite telling blacks to arm themselves is seen as particularly heinous. It’s why, as Keshii notes, in a world that had just experienced Hitlerism, it was the Mau Mau who truly threatened civilization.

I was wrong to absolve Huckabee. I’d like to say it won’t happen again. But I’d be lying.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Political Illusions

Robert Barrimond — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:21:39 +0000

Political Illusions: “

Tyler Cowen writes a column that is both good and bad. It is good for what it says: it debunks fiscal illusions. It is bad for what it does not say, and for what it does not say it tends to deepen our political illusions. You see, for some reason Tyler Cowen does not mention the obvious solution at the ballot box to the very real fiscal illusion problems he writes about. If we simply stopped electing Republicans–if we simply elected presidents who would choose policies designed by the technocrats of the Clinton and Obama administrations and elected senators and representatives who voted for them–we would be absolutely fine.

He makes two mistakes in the article as well, but I will postpone them until later…

TC:

The Fiscal Illusion and How to Face It: James M. Buchanan, a Nobel laureate in economics — and my former colleague and now professor emeritus at George Mason University — argued that deficit spending would evolve into a permanent disconnect between spending and revenue, precisely because it brings short-term gains. We end up institutionalizing irresponsibility in the federal government, the largest and most central institution in our society. As we fail to make progress on entitlement reform with each passing year, Professor Buchanan’s essentially moral critique of deficit spending looks more prophetic. We are fooling ourselves most of all. United States government debt in public hands is now more than $9 trillion, but most people still don’t realize what it will take to pay that off.

Here’s an example: Say that you have $20,000 in Treasury bills. You probably believe that you own $20,000 in wealth. This will encourage you to spend and come up with ambitious plans. Yet someone — quite possibly you — will be taxed in the future to pay off the government debt. The $20,000 may be needed in order to do that. The illusion is this: A government bond represents both a current asset and a future liability, yet for most people, those future tax payments feel less concrete and less real than the dollars they’re holding in a money market account.

Here I would have changed ‘dollars’ into ‘bonds.’ The key is that there is real wealth–factories, equipment, business organizations, and the profits that they generate–in back of the money market fund, while there is only the government’s taxing power in back of government bonds.

TC goes on:

The sorry truth is that our savings aren’t worth as much as many of us think, and a rude awakening is coming. One way or another, some of our savings will be taxed away to make good on governmental commitments, like future Medicare benefits, which we currently are framing as personal free lunches…. [E]ventually, the books must balance. There is then a fiscal crunch, a sudden retrenchment of plans and great rancor over budgets, as we have been seeing lately at both the federal and the state level…. [T]he federal government must act soon. Limiting Medicare and Social Security spending involves re-indexing benefits, adjusting eligibility ages, shifting the growth rates of costs and making other changes that have their full fiscal impact only over the longer run. Yet we are postponing even these actions. Experts’ recommendations might lead us toward a fiscal smooth landing, but at this point the fiscal illusion — and not the advice of experts — is in control. So Professor Buchanan’s argument is ringing true.

The technocratic Keynesian recommendation was to run deficits in bad times and surpluses in good times. But except for one stretch during the Clinton administration, this notion has been broken since the early 1980s…. Now that fiscal constraints are starting to bite, many politicians are afraid to reform or even to discuss changes in the largest problem areas: Medicare and Medicaid. Yes, some laudable cost controls on Medicare are embedded in the new health care law, but they’re not enough. Most likely, we will end up making other spending cuts that won’t solve our fiscal problems — and in areas that could instead benefit from Keynesian employment stimulus. These kinds of knee-jerk, poorly reasoned decisions are what happens when fiscal illusion reigns….

So, given this mess, what should be done?

As Matthew Yglesias from the Center for American Progress has proposed, President Obama could pledge to veto any budget that increases the projected medium-term deficit, relative to the status quo. He should include in that veto threat any deficit increases that arise from annual budgetary gimmicks like patches to the alternative minimum tax or the ‘doc fix’ adjustment of Medicare reimbursement rates. Such an announcement would not fix health care costs, but it would force us to recognize them, and would move us away from purely short-term planning. It would force the government to consider both spending cuts and tax increases…

Tyler’s second mistake? His writing ‘since the early 1980s’ instead of ‘since supply-side economics took over the Republican Party during the Reagan administration.’ These are two ways of referring to the same thing–but the first does not explain why it happened or point to the easy cure: stop electing Republicans.

Tylers third mistake? His writing ‘some laudable cost controls on Medicare are embedded in the new health care law, but they’re not enough.’ They are enough–or are almost enough–if they are allowed to go into effect: if the curbs on Medicare cost growth and the tax on Cadillac health plans both go into effect, we dont have a serious long-run budget unsustainability problem. If they do not both go into effect, we do. Who wants to repeal the curbs on Medicare cost growth and the tax on Cadillac health plans? You guessed it–Republicans.

All in all, I think Tyler Cowen’s article is a net minus as far as American political economy and governance are concerned. There is nothing wrong with what it says–but what is wrong is what it does not say, and how it points readers who are not already deeply versed in the politics in the wrong direction.

Now those of his readers who are up on the politics will recognize that the political villains underlying Tyler Cowen’s argument are today’s Republicans. Who was it who broke the ‘technocratic Keynesian recommendation was to run deficits in bad times and surpluses in good times… [that] except for one stretch during the Clinton administration… has been broken since the early 1980s’? Reagan’s Republicans. Why is that in the ‘United States… Keynesian economics has failed to find the necessary political institutions to enact and sustain a wise version of the theory’? Because the Reagan administration broke it in the 1980s, and after the Clinton administration fixed it the George W. Bush administratio broke it again in the 2000s. Who are the ‘politicians are afraid to reform or even to discuss changes in the largest problem areas: Medicare and Medicaid’? Well, the Democrats incorporated large cost-saving changes in Medicare in their 2010 health care reform–changes so large that many of us could not believe that the Democratic congressional caucus would actually vote for them. They did. And now who wants to repeal these cost-saving changes? The Republicans.

Readers up on the politics will read Tyler Cowen’s article, learn quite a bit about our long-run budget dilemmas, and conclude that we need to do things to (a) prevent budget politics like we saw in the Reagan administration, (b) prevent budget politics like we saw in the George W. Bush administration, and (c) strengthen rather than repeal the cost controls in the Affordable Care Act. They will then conclude that the first step is that they should vote for Presidents like Clinton rather than Presidents like Reagan and Bush, and for representatives and senator who will strengthen the Affordable Care Act rather than those who are pledged to repeal the whole thing.

Those of his readers who are not up on the politics will hear only one single politician blamed–one single politician criticized by name in Tyler Cowens article. TC is disappointed that Democratic President Obama has not and will not ‘pledge to veto any budget that increases the projected medium-term deficit, relative to the status quo. He should include in that veto threat any deficit increases that arise from annual budgetary gimmicks like patches to the alternative minimum tax or the ‘doc fix’ adjustment of Medicare reimbursement rates.’ And they will conclude that, as a first step, we should probably have a president who does not act like Obama and that it would be good to have senators and representatives who will serve to check his policies.

And that would be destructive. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, as enacted, is the largest long-run deficit reducing piece of legislation ever signed into law in America. He–and the Democratic congressional caucus that voted for it–deserve to be the deficit-hawk heroes of Tyler’s piece, not the only named villain.

Now on the substance I agree with Tyler. President Obama should promise to veto everything that increases the national debt in the medium run. He should have done this in December 2008. It is very disappointing that he did not.

But since many fewer of Tyler Cowen’s readers are up on the politics than are not up on the politics, I think that for what Tyler’s column does not say it makes our fiscal illusions worse rather than better.”

(Via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.)

I just quoted the whole thing. It’s worth the read.

Loud and Wrong

Robert Barrimond — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:59:07 +0000

Proud Of Being Ignorant:

“What runs through Adam’s point, and Andrew’s point is one of the common threads of white populism–a rejoicing in not knowing things. It does not much matter to Huckabee that Obama wrote an entire book investigating the lack of a relationship between him and his father. It does not matter that Obama’s father and Kenyatta were ultimately of different factions. And most damning of all, it does not matter that every year on July 4th the country which Huckabee claims to love effectively throws national anti-colonial bash celebrating its liberation from the British.

The easy claim to make here is that the difference between American anti-colonialist and British anti-colonialist is skin color. Were it so simple. More likely, I think, Huckabee just doesn’t much care. A significant portion of the conservative base fundamentally believes Obama, not simply to be wrong, but to be an outsider to the American tradition.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Every Issue Isn’t A Voting Issue For Everyone

Robert Barrimond — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:35:09 +0000

Every Issue Isn’t A Voting Issue For Everyone:

“And the last thing that needs to be said is black voters are generally good at naming their interests. The party that embraces white populism–whatever party it may be at the time–has generally not been judged to be in the corner. I see no reason why this will be different.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Nor do I.