I may have mentioned before that my inbox has been getting pounded recently with a steady rain of artillery fire from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in the form of begging letters over the names of such Big Berthas as Madeleine Albright, Nancy Pelosi, James Carville, and John Kerry. I think my favorite purported to come from the mad bomber above, General Wesley Clark. It was chockablock full of muscular squirrel military rhetoric:

Dear Michael,

In politics, when your opponent attacks your only option is to respond with overwhelming force.

My friends at that DCCC have set a goal of raising one million dollars before the June 30th FEC Deadline to make a show of overwhelming force in response to these unpatriotic attacks on President Obama. Fight back with a matching gift* today.

Will you help stand strong against the right-wing's attacks?

House Democrats are willing to match your dollars with their own money because that's how important it is to show the world how strongly we support our Commander in Chief. The DCCC asked me to review their battle plan for responding to these attacks on President Obama.

They showed me the maps of every targeted Republican district that they plan to hit back hard in.

Yesterday brought a barbaric yawp of triumph:

Dear Michael,

Thanks to you, we didn't just meet our June 30th grassroots fundraising goal - we shattered it by raising an astounding $1.2 million.

So naturally I dropped in to Daily Kos -- that haven for prematurely middle-aged political hobbyists -- to see how this famous victory was being toasted there. To my surprise, I found very little about it. There were a few tepid exhortations to contribute, following the talking points from the DCCC's emails in a half-hearted way. Here's a sample:

The other objection, on the other hand, is entirely an individual decision, and not one that is easily countered.

That is the "the Democrats won't get another dollar from me until they (fill in blank of desperately needed action)" crowd. A crowd that proved pretty irresistable late last year when Joe Lieberman was welcomed back into the Senate fold with a big hug and a cookie.

The sentiment is hard not to understand and appreciate. This would probably be a pretty good spot to remind you that the Republican Party probably cares less about said issue than the Democrats do, but that might be little, if any comfort. So, those of you seeking a campaign finance Conscientious Objector status, consider it granted.

Will you....
Give to the DCCC only	0 votes	- 0 %
Give to individual candidates only	15 votes	- 37 %
Both of the above	2 votes	- 5 %
Neither of the above, too pissed at everyone	12 votes	- 30 %
Neither of the above, no money to give	11 votes	- 27 %

Non-donors, whether by reason of disillusionment or poverty, formed an absolute majority at 57%, which is excellent news. But among the choices given, "individual candidates only" got a plurality of 37%. This suggests that Kosniks still have a thing or two to learn about the relationship of individuals to institutions.

]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/07/incoming_incoming.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/07/incoming_incoming.html send money Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:14:36 -0500

Despite the moans and wails that abound today in pwog circles, talk about plans vs. markets doesn't always have to be melodramatic, though Stigelasaurus Rex might not agree. Here's a postively positive note, and it's on the planning side -- hot stuff, and right out of the academy.

By now you all know the great fox of emerging world progressive productivism, Doctor Dani Rodrik. Here he spends about 30 pages showing us well-intended one-world lugs how an aggressive but shrewd global-south country might substitute a neighborly, balanced-trade, parity-forex regime for the east Asian nasty fiddle gimmick -- and still grow with Han-like speed toward the white man's living standard.

And to think -- it's positively Hamiltonian! (Couldn't resist the bust -- never could resist a bust -- but keep reading after the photo):

According to Dani boy, what the Southern states need now is a set of comprehensive national subsidy plans for rapid local industrial transformation.

The idea is simple enough, really: just contrive a relative price shift between domestic and foreign trade goods, and also between domestic trade and non-trade goods; then let the local markets and entrepreneurs do the rest.

This can be pushed to any desired level; you only need to "show me the money" -- "me" being that local entrepreneur, of course -- and watch "me" -- Mister Mister of Bongoville -- work the work and jerk the jerk errr umhh -- for the benefit of the whole nation.

Just where will these lovely catalytic public subsidy funds come from? In Dani's model they come from -- where else -- the policy economist's universal non-distorting can opener, "lump sum taxes".

However, since this is the People's Republic of Southeast Utopia we're talkin' here, why not go for broke? I recommend a universal ground rent tax as the nicest base for the subsidy. As the local currency rises, it touches off a lot boom, and the cycle turns virtuous, eh?

But trust Dani here -- he has a toy general equilibrium model, nicely illustrated toward the end of the piece, to soundly prove it's a lead-pipe cinch.

The acid test in these matters of high economic policy is of course how one answers this one straightforward question: can you fit this gubmint-type "plan" comfortably within the Limited liability Incs' world wide optimal design?

Whaddya think, rangers? ]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/07/money_for_nothing_and_chicks_f.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/07/money_for_nothing_and_chicks_f.html The Immiserators Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:11:07 -0500

Vanity Fair features Cousin It Stiglitz -- the thinking econ-con 's choice for prince of lightness. His brilliant punchthrough:

"There used to be a sense of shared values between America and the American-educated elites around the world. The economic crisis has now undermined the credibility of those elites. We have given critics who opposed America’s licentious form of capitalism ample ammunition to preach a broader anti-market philosophy. --. Many countries may conclude not simply that unfettered capitalism, American-style, has failed but that the very concept of a market economy has failed, and is indeed unworkable under any circumstances. Old-style Communism won’t be back, but a variety of forms of excessive market intervention will return."

" -- And these will fail. The poor suffered under market fundamentalism—we had trickle-up economics, not trickle-down economics. But the poor will suffer again under these new regimes, which will not deliver growth. Without growth there cannot be sustainable poverty reduction. There has been no successful economy that has not relied heavily on markets. Poverty feeds disaffection. The inevitable downturns, hard to manage in any case, but especially so by governments brought to power on the basis of rage against American-style capitalism, will lead to more poverty. The consequences for global stability and American security are obvious."

Juan Cole's blog recently carried an extraordinary carpet-chewing piece by one Mansoor Moaddel, who I presume from his name is a member of the Iranian diaspora:

Iran’s Crisis and the U.S. Option:
Support Mousavi now or fight Ahmadinejad tomorrow

The current civil uprising in Iran reflects not just a protest against a rigged election. Nor is it primarily a symptom of contentions for power or clashes between opposing perspectives on the nature of the Islamic regime. It is, rather, resistance against a political coup, whose engineers plan to impose a Taliban-style Islamic government on Iran....

Ahmadinejad’s deeds are Islamic extremism in action. He has already restricted the freedom of Iranian citizens, expanded men’s authority over women, increased political persecution, undermined the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, and supported terrorism and political adventurism abroad....

At this point, the regime cannot secure its rule without unleashing a reign of terror. And if this coup succeeds, the regime will forge ahead with its expressed plans for nuclear development and support for religious extremism abroad....

The option that is left for the United States is either to effectively support Mousavi’s camp today or risk a military confrontation with Ahmadinejad tomorrow.

From The Washington Post:

White House Weighs Order on Detention
Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely....

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war....

After months of internal debate over how to close the military facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible....

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation....

[S]everal officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees cannot be charged or released....

"These issues haven't morphed simply because the administration changed," said Juan Zarate, who served as Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

NEW YORK – General Motors Corp. has agreed to take on responsibility for future product liability claims, removing what could have been a sizable roadblock on the automaker's path to a quick sale of its assets and emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a new company.

As part of its government-backed restructuring plan, GM wants to sell the bulk of its assets to a new company and leave behind unprofitable assets and other liabilities such as product-related lawsuits. A hearing on the proposed sale is scheduled for Tuesday.

The previous business model was the best effort of well-meaning managers, but somehow or other the dead weight of "unprofitable assets and other liabilities" grew and grew until, sadly, poor GM went bankrupt. Unprofitable assets and other liabilities occur without agency, needless to say. They just happen! All we can do is bob along on the tides that generate them. And anyway, the golden lunch pail crowd and the sinister Asians made them do the things that occurred without agency.

GM's founder, Abner Snopes, was a humble man who didn't take shit from no one. He worked hard, but couldn't get a break. Beset from all sides, he did what any man might do in his circumstances and handed the torch, er, managerial ethos on to his successors.

They did their best too, as their legacy demanded, and I think we can all agree that recriminations are unhelpful, with the exception of recriminations for the golden lunch pail crowd and any other undeserving wretches that need a sharp lesson in economic realities.

Here's EPI elf John Irons. Recently he was reminding our federal senate that there is at least one cap Uncle oughta blow off, not put on -- and that one is now on our two-sided payroll tax. Irons wants to get rid of the cap on earnings taxable for Social Security.

I agree, of course -- though I hasten to add, in Paine's world we'd now be on payroll tax holiday till further notice.

But even in Paine's world, we'd enjoy scheduling a nasty 6% tax increase on all "upper earners" payroll, for the dark day when extraction recommences -- errr umh -- down the road somewhere, when we're flyin' through the endless main drag of hyperemployment city.

Some nice Irons tidbits:

"Due to growing income inequality, the share of earnings above the cap has risen from 10 percent in 1982 to over 16 percent in 2006. This is because incomes have grown strongly at the top while middle incomes have stagnated."

"Including the employee and employer shares of Social Security and Medicare taxes, earners in the middle fifth of the income distribution pay an average effective payroll tax of about 11 percent.

In contrast, the top 1 percent of earners pay just 1.5 percent on average."

Paine's world's Solomon-like answer -- hell no! ]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/decapitation.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/decapitation.html Social insecurity Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:26:28 -0500

File under Too Good To Be True:

Fighting tears, shah's son calls crisis a 'moment of truth'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The son of the former shah of Iran called Monday for solidarity against Iran's Islamic regime, warning that the democratic movement born out of the election crisis might not succeed without international support.

"The moment of truth has arrived," Reza Shah Pahlavi said at Washington's National Press Club. "The people of Iran need to know who stands with them."

Pahlavi has lived in exile since 1979, when his father, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution....

The son now lives in the United States with his family, where he spends much of his time talking about the Islamic regime in Iran.

During his remarks, he broke into tears when he spoke of "bullets piercing our beloved Neda," a woman killed Saturday by Iranian police at a protest in Tehran, whose death has become a rallying cry among demonstrators in Iran.

Time to give Mike Hudson, numbers man from La Mancha, his due. From a recent Counterpunch item:

"In reaching across the aisle for Republican support – and no doubt future campaign contributions from the financial sector -- Pres. Obama is morphing into Joe Lieberman.... Confronting the wreckage of a debt crisis worse than any since the Great Depression, Mr. Obama has achieved what no Republican could have: rescuing the Bush Administration’s pro-creditor policies that fostered the Bubble Economy in the first place."

"The deregulation-by-centralization ploy -- The politically astute way to deregulate a public utility – especially in the wake of a financial crisis that has much of the population up in arms – is to shed crocodile tears over Wall Street’s “culture of irresponsibility,” as Mr. Obama did on Wednesday, and then claim that you are “centralizing” regulation to make it stronger rather than weaker. If you are going to block future bank regulation, of course you promise that your act will provide greater public oversight. Mr. Obama has tapped the Federal Reserve for this role. But this is precisely what exacerbated the Greenspan Bubble."

"One way to make credit-card rates more economic would be for the government to provide its own rival service. After all, credit cards have become a major form of payment today. Isn’t electronic payment really a public utility? The difference is that unlike electric and gas utilities or railroads, there is no regulation to keep fees in line with economically necessary basic costs to the card issuer.... To really protect consumers, why not counter extortionate credit-card practices by re-introducing anti-usury laws? They were evaded initially by companies incorporating themselves in states with “race to the bottom” laws. If Washington can override state prosecutors to prevent punishment of financial fraud, why can’t it override such ploys by the usury industry? Here’s where centralized federal law really should count for something."

"The plan is silent when it comes to the reported 25 per cent of U.S. real estate sunk into a state of negative equity and 1/8 already in arrears heading for foreclosure as the mortgage debt attached to it exceeds its (falling) market price."

1. Regulatory capture. Preparing the ground for future Alan Greenspan “free market” ideologues
2. Failure to give meaningful teeth to fraud reduction
3. Failure to reverse the shift to pro-creditor bankruptcy laws
4. Failure to re-introduce Glass Steagall or otherwise limit lenders “too big to fail”
5. Failure to deter credit default swaps and other “casino capitalist” gambles
6. Failure to reform the tax system that has distorted the financial system to promote predatory extractive debt, not productive industrial credit

Here's Mike's summary verdict on Ob's draconian crackdown:

"Mr. Obama explained: “we are proposing a set of reforms to require regulators to look not only at the safety and soundness of individual institutions, but also – for the first time – at the stability of the system as a whole.” But this is just what is not being done."

“Born and bred in the briar patch,” crowed B’rer Rabbit triumphantly after being thrown there.

]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/familiar_territory.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/familiar_territory.html The Immiserators Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:37:38 -0500

Tom Daschle, of course. From The Note:

"While I feel very strongly that consumers should have the choice of a national, Medicare-like plan, my colleagues do not... But we were concerned that the ongoing health reform debate is beginning to show signs of fracture on the public plan issue, so in order to advance the process of developing bipartisan legislation and to move it forward, it's time to find consensus here."

“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation... Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.” --Financial Times

Western leaders rejected the results because they ‘knew’ that their reformist candidate could not lose.

For months they published daily interviews, editorials and reports from the field ‘detailing’ the failures of Ahmadinejad’s administration; they cited the support from clerics, former officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the ‘voices of moderation’, at least the White House’s version of that vacuous cliché.

What is astonishing about the West’s universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count.

As long as the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive....

... the Western media ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations – the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class.

.... over two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and the 18-24 year olds “comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all groups” (Washington Post June 15, 2009).

The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class.

The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity.

Could this man, Gentle Ben of Temple Fed, be the future Jimmy Stewart of homespun people's biz finance? It's on the order of the day, and the grey lady has a question in her mouth about it all: should the fed emerge from the current credit crisis as a hands-on outfit operating exclusively for the collective benefit of that noblest of all noble abstractions -- "the people"?

[T]he Fed... stepped in to fill the lending vacuum left by banks and Wall Street firms [and now] officials have been dragged into murky battles over the creditworthiness of narrow-bore industries like motor homes, rental cars, snowmobiles, recreational boats and farm equipment."

"A growing number of economists worry that the Fed’s new role poses risks to taxpayers and to the Fed itself -- If the Fed cannot extract itself quickly, they warn, the crucial task of allocating credit will become more political and less subject to..."

"... rigorous economic analysis."

Get it? Credentialed meritoids, awake!

As if that alone were not enough to set the entire professional class of the upper West Side into motion, the grey lady goes on to mouthpiece mode: "Fed officials acknowledge" that doing stuff like lending to real economy credit sectors directly could

"undermine the Fed’s political independence and credibility as an institution..."

"... that operates above the fray."

The Fed under its normal modus operandi lets our private banks gather in the windfalls of credit expansion, by costlessly creating a larger monetary base and leaving the lending out of the new money -- and at multiples, yet, limited only by a generous reserve ratio -- to the banksta caste. With nice assured margins, too.

The bankstas can lend it out to whomever they wish, and more importantly, not lend it out when they don't wish. And that's what the present so-called liquidity trap really is all about: not lending -- except back to Uncle of course.

Thus arises the "lending vacuum" mentioned above by the Times, that got the Fed pro-tem in the loan biz. And damned if now -- as the horror appears to recede -- these bankers don't get their front men out cautioning Uncle to keep his issuing of new fiscally driven debt -- at least for real purchases of real products -- to a biblical minimum.

Quite the paradox, at least on the surface. After all, the more new securities issued by Uncle, the higher the rate of interest he pays and borrowers earn -- all else equal, as they say.

Here's the great "concern" in a nutshell:

"Executives and lobbyists [will] flock to the Fed, providing elaborate presentations on why their niche industry should be eligible for Fed financing or easier lending terms."

Obviously this will lead to a better, higher overall social welfare result. Obviously.

Such are the rhumba-like miracles of "rigorous economic analysis" when clutched tightly in the profit nuts by the grand old goosing hand of the market place.

]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/rigor_mortis.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/rigor_mortis.html The Immiserators Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:00:22 -0500 Deja vu, all over again:

Senate Dems pare back health bill

WASHINGTON – Key Senate Democrats, bidding for bipartisan support on health care, pared back subsidies designed to make insurance more affordable on Thursday and floated a compromise that rules out direct government competition against private insurers.

Shown above, the seal of Israel's spy agency, Mossad, with its new, slightly less sinister motto (Proverbs 11:14, instead of 24:6 from the same book of cracker-barrel apophthegmata).

Needless to say, the Jerusalem spookery has been up to its elbows in the recent events in Iran.

We've all read about how those kewl up-to-date hip young people in Tehran are using Twitter to organize opposition to Ahmadinejad, right? Turns out there may be a bit more to the story:

Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran....

I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

That eloquent con artist Winston Churchill once observed (if memory serves) that truth is so valuable in wartime that it must be escorted with a bodyguard of lies. This may be a lemma of a more general law; another such lemma, I suspect, is that insight in times of crisis is always surrounded with a bodyguard of imbecilities, and the more important the crisis, the higher the ratio of imbecility to insight.

Here's a currently popular imbecility; this particular instance comes from one of my lefty mailing lists:

> Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection
> Monday, June 15, 2009 19:52
> Posted in category Politics
>
> iran1 Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter
> attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing
> political instability within Iran.  
==============================================
These analyses in Ha'aretz suggest the major part of the Israeli right has 
exactly the opposite interest:

ANALYSIS / Ahmadinejad win actually preferable for Israel
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent
June 14 2009

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092587.html

The narrow strategic thinking of pro-Ahmadinejad Israelis
By Aluf Benn
June 17 2009

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093588.html

Such sophomoric wiseacre-y overlooks a couple of important facts. One of these facts is that the Israel fan club's noise machine can demonize anybody it wants to, any time. It's what they do, and they've had a lot of practice and they've gotten really good at it.

More to the point, though, is that instability and turmoil in Iran -- with the possibility of regime collapse and serious social conflict -- is infinitely more valuable to Israel than any second-order propaganda advantage. The propaganda apparatus can be counted on to do its job effectively through thick and thin, but real upheaval in Iran is definitely thick, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Seems like this ought to be elementary, but apparently it's not. I wonder why.

Well, no, actually, that's a lie. I think I know. The weenies who adopt the theory that Ahmadi is an invaluable propanda prize are assuming that the only people who matter in the world are people like themselves -- that is, sanctimonious moralizing liberals for whom a religious backwoods hick like Ahmadi is the Antichrist. Of course Israel must be deeply concerned all the time about what such good-hearted formerly Methodist Unitarians might be thinking.

After all, what else matters? Facts on the ground? Bah, that's vulgar materialism.

]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/tweety_bird.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/tweety_bird.html mini-me Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:30:00 -0500

From Le Monde:

Venezuela supports Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and condemns "campaign of discreditation"

Caracas took a stand in favor of Tehran in connection with the contested re-election of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Venezuela expresses its firm rejection of the capaign of discreditation, ferocious and without foundation, which has been unleashed abroad against the institutions of the Islamic Republic, in order to disturb the political climate of this brother country"....

The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, had "congratulated Ahmadinejad...." [and] considers his Iranian counterpart a "courageous fighter for the Islamic revolution and against capitalism." Chavez referred to the "spokesmen for capitalism" who are questioning the vote....

When he assumed the presidency, Ahmadinejad benefited from Chavez' help in breaking the isolation of Iran, fostering relations with Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador.... And Venezuela supported Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency which sought in vain for transparency in the Iranian nuclear program, suspected of including a military aspect.

Third and fourth largest oil producers in OPEC, Iran and Venezuela have always been advocates of reducing production in order to increase the price of crude oil.

]]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/my_other_man.html http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/06/my_other_man.html The sand trap Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:57:38 -0500