Aspiring to the Third World

More and more lately, it seems as though the Republican vision for America is to turn it into the world's richest Third World country. Consider these common characteristics of Third World countries:

• Life is extremely pleasant for the rich, and extremely difficult for everyone else.

• Economic growth is hampered by poor transportation systems and crumbling infrastructure.

• Environmental regulation is minimal.

• The only widely respected public institution is the military.

Sound familiar? Now comes this story on India from The New York Times:

Doing nothing might be considered the epitaph of India’s political year in 2011. A ... national government ... demonstrated little political vision, analysts agree, and even less political backbone. An opposition ... seemed interested primarily in thwarting the government, offering little in the way of a constructive alternate agenda.

Political stalemate is not always a terrible thing, but the question is how much longer India can afford its increasingly dysfunctional politics. India’s dynamic economy, buffeted by the broader global slowdown and uncertainty about Europe, is wobbling precariously... private investors are spooked by governmental inaction or timidity on a long list of reforms....

Parliament, once the proud symbol of India’s democracy, has increasingly become a stage for televised acts of obstruction and political theater.

Well, at least the Republicans are here to save us from imitating Europe. Except I think by "Europe" they mean "the industrialized world."

Hercule Poirot, Meet The Pentagon's Inspector General

The New York Times reports on an investigation into a Defense Department program to curry favor with retired officers working as TV military analysts:

One former Pentagon official told the investigators that when Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general and NBC military analyst, “started challenging” Mr. Rumsfeld on air, he was told that Mr. Rumsfeld wanted him “immediately” removed from the invitation list because General McCaffrey was no longer considered a “team player.” Mr. Rumsfeld told investigators that he did not recall ordering General McCaffrey’s exclusion.

Wesley K. Clark, a retired four-star Army general who worked as a military analyst for CNN, told investigators he took it as a sign that the Pentagon “was displeased” with his commentary when CNN officials told him he would no longer be invited to special briefings for military analysts. General Clark told investigators that CNN officials made him feel as if he was less valued as a commentator because “he wasn’t trusted by the Pentagon.” At one point, he said, a CNN official told him that the White House had asked CNN to “release you from your contract as a commentator.”

...Investigators said that to understand the program’s intent, they had to rely on interviews with Mr. Rumsfeld’s former public affairs aides, including his spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke. Based on these interviews, the report said, investigators concluded that the “outreach activities were intended to serve as an open information exchange with credible third-party subject-matter experts” who could “explain military issues, actions and strategies to the American public.”

...The report found that at least 43 of the military analysts were affiliated with defense contractors. The inspector general’s office said it asked 35 of these analysts whether their participation in the program benefited their business interests. Almost all said no. Based on these answers, the report said, investigators were unable to identify any analysts who “profited financially” from their participation in the program.

In these economically straitened times, here's how we do an investigation: We ask people if they're guilty. If they say no, we go home.

Boo, Yale

Why do they do this? You of course recall my recent post noting how uninformative all those comparisons about stacks of dollar bills to the moon were.  Now the New York Times "Green" blog quotes a paper from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, saying that yearly carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. rivers and streams are "equal to a car burning 40 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to drive back and forth to the moon 3.4 million times."

Helpful? How many times do you drive back and forth to the moon in a year? Does this give you any idea about the magnitude, other than "big"?

Let's make it simple. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. consumes 378 million gallons of motor gasoline per day. So the annual emissions from rivers and streams are equal to a little over 100 days of emissions from cars burning gasoline, or between a quarter and a third.

At this point it becomes apparent that either we've buried the lead, or we're not understanding the story. Here we are going to all this trouble about carbon emissions from cars, and we haven't done anything about killer rivers and streams. I presume that this study is not really about finding a huge new source of carbon emissions, but about changing our understanding of transport mechanisms. But that gets obscured by the image of The Little Camry That Could making those millions of round trips (it's a long commute, but the scenery is great).

Anyway, no more moon statistics, OK?

The Huntsman Miscalculation

Over at The New York Times, Ross Douthat, the Other Conservative Columnist, is apparently discouraged by the assortment of dolts and liars running for the Republican nomination for President. He has devoted a column to lamenting the "staggeringly inept" political mistakes that have kept a more plausible conservative, Jon Huntsman, mired in the low single digits in popularity.

Douthat says Huntsman was not well known to conservatives in the Republican base. Therefore he should have tenderly wooed them (I'm paraphrasing). Instead, what did he do? "He picked high-profile fights on two hot-button issues — evolution and global warming — that were completely irrelevant to his candidacy’s rationale....Imagine a contender for the Democratic nomination introducing himself to liberal voters by attacking Planned Parenthood...."

Well, gosh, Mr. Douthat, can you see any difference between attacking Planned Parenthood and supporting evolution? How about the fact that the "hot-button issues" for the Republican base involve denying reality? Doesn't it bother you to be a supporter of a party whose other supporters have to be appeased by never mentioning what you and every other educated person know to be true? Doesn't that ever make you wonder if you've got the wrong party?

Actually, I think Huntsman was following a conscious strategy. Here's the calculation: "People don't like Romney. Everyone else who runs is going to be appealing to the Tea Party. They split the votes, and I get the votes of all the rest, the people who are sick of all the nut jobs. That may not be a majority,but it  might be a plurality, say 30%. There have got to be at least that many Republicans who are still sane."

But apparently, there aren't. Oops.

Who's Got Cultcha?

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center has created a minor stir. It seems that a mere 49% of Americans agree with the statement, "Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others." True, this is higher than other countries, but it's down from 60% in 2002. Fox and Friends wasted no time in blaming this on Obama, despite the fact that the figure had already declined to 55% by 2007.

It's time for someone (i.e., Obama) to take on this whole Republican thing  about "American exceptionalism." The Republican idea seems to be that because we're Americans we're exceptional, without the need to actually do any of the things that made us exceptional. For example, America used to have the best-educated population in the world. Not any more.

That aside, there were two odd things about the Pew survey. First is the whole idea of Americans thinking of themselves as having a "superior culture." Offhand, I would've said that the American attitude is better expressed as, "When I hear the word 'culture,' I reach for my remote."

Second is the international comparison. Wouldn't you think that Germans would be a little reluctant to describe themselves as having the Uberkultur? You'd be wrong: 47 percent felt their culture is superior, almost as many as in the US (though 52 percent disagreed). The real stunner, though, is France: only 27 percent thought their culture was superior. I thought the whole point of being French was to feel culturally superior to everyone else, and to see France as the  fount of enlightenment for the whole world. Maybe they're discouraged because they haven't been able to produce a talent to equal Jerry Lewis. Or because they've realized John Lennon really is better than Johnny Hallyday.

Courage, mes amis. I mean, just the food alone...

The Constitution versus Brocco-Tyranny

The mandate to purchase health insurance is the primary legal issue in the case soon to appear before the Supreme Court. Does the Federal government have the authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to make people buy something? What, opponents of the bill frequently ask, is to stop the government from making everyone buy broccoli?

This  argument ignores the fact that state governments already have this power. There has been no constitutional challenge, after all, to the mandate in the Massachusetts health care law. So why is it that, over the last 220 years, not a single state has passed a law requiring citizens to buy broccoli?

The answer can be found in the U.S. Constitution. Not in Article I, Section 8, where the Commerce Clause is found, but in Article IV, Section 4: "The United States shall guarantee to each state a Republican Form of Government." States don't require their citizens to buy broccoli, because they are democracies and voters don't want a broccoli mandate.

This is the ultimate security for citizens in general. It doesn't protect minorities against tyranny by the majority; the Bill of Rights does that. But the intended protection of citizens against tyranny by the government is representative democracy.

Of course, citizens don't want an insurance mandate, either. But they overwhelmingly do want a ban on exclusion by insurance companies for preexisting conditions. It's up to the advocates of a mandate to explain that having one without the other would be like telling people they could wait until after the accident to buy auto insurance.

The IKYABWAI Ploy

What is one to make of all these claims by right-wing pundits that the coverage of Herman Cain's alleged boorishness represents racism? On its face the charge is absurd. Senator Bob Packwood and Rep. Anthony Weiner are among  the prominent white boys who have had their careers derailed by evidence of inappropriate behavior towards women.

What I think lies behind the charges is a variant of a ploy widely practiced among elementary-school students when insulted: saying "I know you are, but what am I?" Republicans get tired of being called racists and start itching to turn the tables. Thus, after Obama's election in 2008, there was a spate of comments on right-wing websites about how blacks were racists for supporting Obama just because he was black, as if they hadn't overwhelmingly supported John Kerry and Al Gore. And let's not forget Rush Limbaugh's charge of racism against Sonia Sotomayor.

But it's even better when, instead of accusing a member of a racial minority of being racist, you can really stick it to the liberals by accusing whites. Republicans don't get such an opportunity very often, but Clarence Thomas employed this strategy with notable success.

Another favorite table-turner is sexism. Thus, if people criticize Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin, it's not because Bachmann and Palin are unqualified (in both senses) ignoramuses. It's because the people criticizing them are sexists.

The larger advantage of this ploy is that it preemptively devalues things people might say about you. A past master was Yasir Arafat, who never let an opportunity pass to accuse Israel of antisemitism (Arabs are Semites, get it?) and terrorism.

The danger to Republicans in using the IKYABWAI Ploy, of course, is that it can so easily be turned against them, and with much better reason. For example, Republicans in Congress are unanimous that there should be dramatic cuts in programs helping the poor and middle class, and that no sacrifice, no matter how slight, should be demanded of the rich. What can one call this but "Republican class warfare"? The ever-polite Democrats have not called it that, of course.

And what about accepting American decline? What better exemplifies that than the Republican attitude that we can't afford to do anything big, and so we must just hunker down and try to avoid losing ground?

I never considered myself terribly astute as a politician. But when I see how bad professional pols are at doing obvious things, I have to wonder.

Pitching "The Matrix"

After seeing it again on TV:

"See, basically it's a Philip K. Dick story, but he didn't write it, so we don't have to pay for rights.

"No, not 'Minority Report' or 'Blade Runner.' I mean the books where it turns out that everything we see is a carefully constructed illusion, and reality is much worse than anyone realizes. OK, you haven't read them. Who has? They're depressing. But we put in a happy ending. Think 'Total Recall.'

"Only our target is high school and college kids, so the illusion is ... digital!  And the hero is a computer hacker. Instead of Arnold, I see Keanu Reeves.

"Then we just plug in some teenage angst, and basically we're done. The hero feels there's something wrong with the world, but he can't put his finger on it. But it turns out he's the guy everyone's been waiting for, the only guy who can save humanity and awaken people to reality!

"And there's small group of underground fighters who are the only people who can see reality and realize the hero's importance. One of them, of course, is a hot chick who falls in love with him.

"And the good guys have a computer program that instantly makes the hero incredibly good at--wait for it--kung fu! We toss in a ton of martial arts flying-through-the-air special effects.

"Oh, and lots of gunfire and stuff getting destroyed.

"No, forget about Arnold. This will be twice as big as 'Total Recall'. Think 'Terminator 2'. Oh, and did I mention we've got a men-versus-machines plot?"

Health Numbers We Can Do Without

I was looking forward to reading Ezekiel Emanuel's opinion piece in The New York Times online about health-care costs. Looking forward, at any rate, to banging my head against the wall as he made the arguments that brother Rahm should have suggested to his boss two years ago. I was disappointed.

Instead, Emanuel first tries to give an idea of the size of health care costs with the hoary old stack-of-dollar-bills image so dear to Ronald Reagan. Can we please stop doing this? You can use it about virtually any number concerned with the US economy, and it sounds huge.

Actually, all it shows is that we're a big country. In population we're now the third-largest country in the world: there's China and India, and then us. If you stacked  up all Americans head to foot they would reach from here to the moon and beyond (assuming an average height of 4.5 feet, which seems conservative). If you put the whole U.S. GDP into one dollar bills, it would make a stack from the earth to the moon, back to the earth, back to the moon, and halfway back to earth. Or we could put it into pennies, and then it would go from here to Saturn and halfway back. Does this actually tell us anything? Americans' spending on things to read would form a pile of dollar bills four times the height of the International Space Station. Is that a lot or a little?

Emanuel has more comparisons, and again, all they prove is that the US is a big country. We spend as much on health care as France spends on everything. But we spend as much on cosmetics as Iceland spends on everything. Again, so what?

Here is what you need to know about health care spending in the US in a nutshell:

1. Over the next ten years, we'll spend about $30 trillion on health care. 
2. The cost of the health care reform bill is about 3% of that. Since almost half of all health care spending goes through the Federal government, the cost of Obamacare is about 6% of current Federal spending on health care.
3. We spend about $2500 more per capita than the next-most-expensive health care system in the world. That's $10,000 for a family of four. The next-most-expensive health care system in the world has universal care and better health statistics than we do.
4. Implication: It's not at all hard to believe that Obamacare, while covering tens of millions more people, could improve efficiency enough to decrease total Federal health care spending (and, a fortiori, total US health-care spending).

Throw in the fact that we rank between 30th and 40th in the world in life expectancy and infant survival, and you've got everything you need to hold your own at your next cocktail party.

[Notes: A dollar bill is about 0.1 mm thick. A penny is 1.5 mm thick, so a dollar in pennies is about 1,500 times as thick as a dollar bill. The average distance from the earth to the moon is about 384,000 km; the minimum distance from the earth to Saturn is 1.2 billion km. The 2010 US GDP was about $14.5 trillion.]

For Marijuana Prohibition

We often hear the laws against marijuana compared to Prohibition, usually alluding to their futility and their encouragement of violent criminal gangs. Actually, though, proponents of legalization should be advocating placing marijuana under a regime similar to the Volstead Act, the harsh implementing legislation of the Eighteenth Amendment.

Here are some things that were legal for alcohol under the Volstead Act:

1. Possession in one's own home
2. Serving to a bona fide guest
3. Purchase for medical purposes, with a bona fide prescription

The slogan for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws should be "Prohibition Now!"

Of course, legalizing home cultivation would mean a drastic cut in revenues to criminal gangs, as well as making it safe again to hike in national forests, but let's start small and see how it goes.