Lawyers, Guns & Money

Dave Brockington
Paul Campos
- Website
- CV
- Blog Posts
- Blogroll
- My Other Blogs
Erik Loomis
Robert Farley
SEK
Scott Lemieux
Dave Noon
DJW

The Prospects for Bachmann

[ 1 ] July 21, 2011 | Dave Brockington

I’m not one who immediately wrote off Michele Bachmann’s chances to secure the GOP nomination, and Scott L’s observations on July 11 are sensible. Over at The Democratic Strategist, however, there’s a good piece on why Bachmann is potentially encountering obstacles. I discount the argument that “intensified scrutiny of her background and character” could cause problems. She’s already well established as batshit crazy and yet her credibility isn’t suffering: she’s “leading” in the current PPP poll of Republican voters (though by 1% it’s within the MoE, and she’s well behind in all others.) I’m not sure what revelations could possibly come out that would render her brand of crazy unsustainable.

Where this TDS piece gets it right is the challenge provided by Rick Perry, who is looking more likely to announce his candidacy. They appeal to the same constituency in the Republican Party, yet Perry (correctly) is considered more electable by the elite in the party. But in reality, only marginally so; at this early stage in the game the strongest opposition to Obama remains Mitt Romney.

Share and Enjoy:

When Will the Prohibitionist War on All Things Good and Holy End?

[ 12 ] July 21, 2011 | Erik Loomis

This is just outrageous:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed legislation that officially classifies beer as alcohol in Russia.

The new law will allow controls on the sale of beer and other “low alcohol” beverages in an attempt to reduce alcohol abuse in Russia, a country with an alcohol consumption that is twice the critical level set by the World Health Organization.

Until now, any drinks containing less than 10 percent alcohol have been classified as a foodstuff in Russia, with no restrictions on sales.

Russians have tended to treat beer as if it were a soft drink, and it is has even been marketed as a healthier alternative to vodka, the BBC says. Beer has soared in popularity in recent years, while vodka sales have fallen.

Share and Enjoy:

How to radicalize liberals

[ 33 ] July 21, 2011 | Paul Campos

Actual cuts now, theoretical revenue increases later.

If something like this doesn’t happen it’ll be because the median vote in the House is a lunatic winger.

What’s particularly exasperating about this is that we’re in a situation which the dysfunctional structure of our political system is on the POTUS’ side (assuming for the purposes of argument that what he actually wants is a deal that features at least as much revenue enhancement as budget cutting). After all the Bush II tax cuts expire if nothing happens, and if there’s one thing the US legislative process is good at producing it’s nothing. Then consider that there’s no way the money men who run the GOP would actually allow anything more than a very short term and almost completely symbolic “default” to occur, and if such a thing did occur, polling data indicates the public would blame the GOP more than the Democrats.

At some point one has to consider the radical hypothesis that these negotiations are on the level, and that Obama wants this kind of deal.

Update:. More details emerging.

Share and Enjoy:

How to Radicalize Graduate Students

[ 7 ] July 21, 2011 | Erik Loomis

This is awesome:

C. The HPT Meeting. Around the Pentagon, HPT stands for “high-payoff target,” and that’s exactly what you’re aiming for, so use this tactic sparingly. Here, HPT is a mnemonic you can use to plan meetings with overconfident graduate students.

A few days after a friendly interaction (drinks at a reception, a chat in the hall about good news on the publishing front, or some similar light conversation), casually request a meeting with your student to check up on his progress. Be sure to say something personal in the e-mail to maximize the sense of informality (“I was glad to hear that your cat’s surgery was successful!”).

Meeting set, the HPT agenda proceeds as follows: (1) Humiliate the student immediately by asking an exam-style question tangential to his area of knowledge. After he stumbles through an answer, inform him that he is devastatingly wrong (for proper affect management, imagine he’s just farted audibly while speaking). As he tilts toward the abyss of his self- doubt, (2) patronizingly offer an olive branch to help him out—a task useful to your own research that also happens to be the only thing capable of saving him from his overwhelming wrongness. You’ll either get a domesticated free research assistant or he’ll resist, declaring that that is not what his project is about at all. If the latter occurs, (3) bring out the threats: “It will be very hard for your thesis to gain my approval if this is not accounted for.” As fear enters your student’s eyes, open the door, extend your best wishes to the cat, and tell him you’ll look forward to seeing how his work progresses. If you’re not naturally coldhearted, the HPT meeting might shake you up a little, but keep in mind that as you’re sipping your evening pinot, your student might be getting in touch with his inner Wobbly at the bar down the street.

Share and Enjoy:

California Rural Homeowners to Pay Fire Tax

[ 34 ] July 21, 2011 | Erik Loomis

In a rare piece of sensible legislation coming out of California, rural homeowners who rely on state firefighters for basic fire services will have to pay a $150 annual fee.

This makes a tremendous amount of sense, even if California was not suffering through its never-ending fiscal meltdown. Recent years have seen an explosion of home-building in the exurban West. Retirees deciding to spend their final years in the golf courses and beautiful views of the east side of the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico and second-homeowners building megamansions in the Rockies have strained firefighting services. Many of these people are oblivious to the fire risks of the places they build. Dryland forests are meant to burn frequently at low temperatures, but a century of fire suppression combined with climate change have turned these forests into kindling for mega-fires.

On top of that, these new residents by and large avoid the kind of community-building exercises that have made the region function. These places largely operate on volunteer fire departments. As long-time residents are forced out by rising property taxes or offers for their land that are too good to refuse, no one is filling these positions, forcing the state to take over.

It’s not just fire services to exurban wealthy developments that are straining state resources, it’s also medical services. As these residents age (and their average age is already quite high), long ambulance trips out to the mountains will both cost a lot in gas and wages, but will tie up precious resources needed to respond to urban residents.

California has it even worse because there is so much development happening there in a state defined by fire, particularly in the mountains above Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area. This is a growing crisis throughout the West and it’s about time that legislatures begin forcing these, again by and large wealthy, residents to pay something for the services they demand.

Share and Enjoy:

Out of Sight

[ 9 ] July 21, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Excellent essay at Only the Cinema on Out of Sight, clearly Soderbergh’s best film (though a strong case can be made for The Limey) and one of the most entertaining films of the last 20 years.

Share and Enjoy:

Comparisons Can be Useful…

[ 52 ] July 21, 2011 | Robert Farley

This is worth your while.

And as if to illustrate…

In what looks to increasingly be an inevitable presidential bid, Rick Perry has turned to Doug Feith to discuss national security matters, according to a report at National Review Online.

Feith, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, was previously undersecretary of defense for policy under the George W. Bush administration and is widely considered to be one of the main architects of the Iraq invasion.

Share and Enjoy:

The 1899 Cleveland Spiders, Still the Worst Ever

[ 30 ] July 20, 2011 | Dave Brockington

Geoff Baker has a decent, and balanced, post on the construction of the historically inept offense of the 2011 Seattle Mariners (unfortunately, my preferred team playing “baseball” since 1977). Placing the current edition of the Mariners into historical context, Baker offers us this to assuage our pain:

The Mariners open play tonight with an OPS+ of 75. Last year’s abysmal team — with the worst offense in the DH era — posted a 78. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders — generally recognized as the worst team in baseball history — were at 74.

Unfortunately, the 2011 season isn’t over yet, so there’s still time to overtake the Spiders and achieve baseball immortality.

Share and Enjoy:

Michelle Rhee, Union-Buster

[ 48 ] July 20, 2011 | Erik Loomis

It’s possible that some education “reformers” really do care about improving childhood education. But many of them care about union-busting much, much more.

Share and Enjoy:

On Netflix

[ 50 ] July 20, 2011 | Erik Loomis

The Netflix price spike annoys me as much as everyone else. I don’t mind paying for my films, and indeed I do, but the combination of the on-demand and mail services is extraordinarily annoying. Jim Emerson gets at some of the key issues:

The more serious problem is that too many of the movies themselves (even the good ones) are being made available in lousy prints: not just shabby public-domain versions (the equivalent of the old 16 mm local TV station prints that used to circulate through low-end nontheatrical distributors), but films shown in the wrong aspect ratio (beware of anything with the Starz logo on it) or even obsolete pan-and-scan (shame on you, Warner Bros.). What good is streaming delivery if you have to watch a digital mastering job that looks like it was done in 1986? I thought these battles were fought (and won) long ago, in the VHS and early DVD era. Surely the dominance of 16:9 HDTVs has accustomed mainstream movie and television watchers to the previously foreign concept of widescreen and “letterboxing.” (Now some people actually distort their TV picture on purpose — grotesquely stretching 4:3 images just so they’ll fill up the whole screen horizontally. Oy!)

A recent anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) movie like “Let Me In” shown in “full screen” (16:9)? Not acceptable. Albert Brooks’ “Lost in America” (1.85:1) in 4:3? Outrage! (Actually, that particular movie doesn’t look so bad, but why crop it? The Amazon $2.99 Instant Video 48-hour rental is in the right ratio.) And the mangled movies aren’t even labeled, the way they would be if they were axed for television or DVD: “This film has been modified from its original version: it has been formatted to fit your screen.” (Although, that too is bull: Parts of the picture have been cut off so that the smaller image gives the illusion of looking bigger. Properly presented letterboxed or windowboxed movies “fit your screen” just fine.)

On top of this is the fact that the large majority of movies are not available online. Sometimes the streaming isn’t great either, but that will likely improve over time. But if you can’t get your movies online, however possible, you are going to lose customers to better services if you charge this much.

Netflix was originally a site that appealed to cinephiles like myself. I became a subscriber fairy early in the company’s history But as they quickly dominated the market, they became the Wal-Mart of film. They kept prices low in order to undermine Blockbuster and other physical videos stores. Once those are gone, they jack up the prices. A classic capitalist move I suppose.

Except that the quality is not there to justify this move. Without a more integrated film library between the DVDs and on-demand, it just doesn’t make sense to do this. In addition, there are too many other options for people for the company to treat its customers like this. Netflix seems to assume that while it could lose customers like me, the average person who thinks Date Night is going to be awesome is there’s. But the arrival of Red Box is a real threat for Netflix on this front.

For people like me, Netflix’s appeal has lessened. What Netflix doesn’t seem to understand is that is the base of their business is not that hard to replicate today–using the internet for convenience. Two very real alternatives for cinephiles are GreenCine and, increasingly, Mubi. GreenCine operates very much like Netflix but with better movies. About the same price with a pay by the film online service for some. Mubi is a growing site that is all on-demand and pay by the film. It has some really great and obscure stuff. For all of you who want to watch the entire Chris Marker catalog, as I do, it’s gold.

The other issue here transcends film and gets to the problems of rejuvenating the economy. Netflix wants everyone to drop their mail subscriptions so they can lay off thousands of employees and increase profits. So long as the government encourages companies to lay off everyone possible to maximize profits at the top or to move every single possible job overseas, this economy almost cannot recover. People have to work somewhere. We don’t value work, employees are seen as expendable, and there isn’t any entity picking up the slack.

Edward Copeland has a powerful indictment of Netflix as well.

Share and Enjoy:

Young Progressives and Labor

[ 68 ] July 20, 2011 | Erik Loomis

I’ve talked before about how young progressive bloggers don’t seem to have too much interest in labor history or labor issues more broadly. Of course, most of the voices in this debate are familiar. So it’s nice to hear someone I haven’t read before weigh in, a young writer at one of the Kos diaries. As a response to the left neoliberal conversation from the other day, eastern619 notes that it took him a long time to understand why labor was important:

One of the problems for young left wingers like myself is that we have no sense of labor history. I was born in 1987; during the height of the Reagan Era. I have no idea what life was like when the labor movement was at its peak. I have lived in a capitalistic system all my life, and even though I’m aware of alternative economic systems like social democracy, I have never experience it. Finally, like many college graduates, if I wanted to participate in discussions about class, socialism, and labor, I had to seek out my college socialist club because I wasn’t getting it from my political science major.

For my generation, its very easy to go through life without ever questioning our capitalistic system. Given the limited power that workers have today, it’s very easy for my generation to assume that this is how the world always worked. As in, its easy for us to assume that employers always had an advantage over the employees, and the lack of workers rights is simply the natural result of our changing economy and society. It’s easy to believe that so long as you are not aware that since the 1970′s there has been a very deliberate effort on the part of businesses to weaken the power of workers by destroying their unions.

This is just one opinion here, but it makes some sense to me. Last month, when making this point, Yglesias found some numbers suggesting that young people were as pro-union if not more than older people. Can’t find the link now, but it’s interesting. I don’t know. Could be true. I’m not going to argue against numbers with my anecdotal information, but I don’t think that translates to much in practical terms. I’d guess that those numbers reflect that young people aren’t per se opposed to the idea of a union when it is mentioned to them, but still don’t know much about what it is. Since the fall of the Soviet Union there hasn’t been a legitimate system to use as a counterweight to capitalism. The widespread assumption that free-market capitalism was the only workable system has created ground for embracing it in its extremist form, as we are seeing in today’s Republican Party.

Everything young people have been taught about extremist capitalism is that it’s the perfect economic system. So why wouldn’t most people think this was true. After all, they all have video game systems. This is the first time that faith may be questioned, with high unemployment rates for the young and a persistent economic crisis. I have only had the chance to teach labor history once and this was in the spring of 2008, just after the recession began. Much to my surprise, students were really into it. So maybe there are more young people like eastern619 out there. And whether that’s true, we should be trying to make it so. There are millions of young Americans unsure about the future. Making a concerted effort to get them to see that labor unions could be part of the answer should be a top priority.

UPDATE: Matt sent me his post on the demographics of union support.

Share and Enjoy:

GOP on China

[ 28 ] July 20, 2011 | Robert Farley

In my latest WPR column, I discuss the old Red Dawn, the new Red Dawn, and the reluctance of the current crop of GOP presidential aspirants to focus on the security aspect of US relations with China:

For the most part, candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have avoided inflammatory rhetoric about the military threat represented by China. While former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has warned of the dangers of an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States, China specifically does not figure prominently in his rhetoric. Rep. Michelle Bachman’s critique of China is limited mostly to the economic realm,saying recently, “With all the money that we owe China, I think you might correctly say, Hu’s your daddy.” One of the selling points for John Huntsman’s candidacy is the business opportunities generated by his recent ambassadorship to China. Similarly, Mitt Romneyhas emphasized China’s role as both an economic competitor and economic partner, more than as a military threat. Tim Pawlenty has argued that the United States should try to achieve China-like rates of GDP growth. Of the notable Republican candidates, only Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has sounded a note of warning about China’s military ambitions, faulting President Barack Obama for “acquiescence to China’s saber-rattling in the South China Sea.”

Share and Enjoy: