Monday, June 13, 2011
Huh?
From The New York Review of Books:
Is he serious? A writer for the New York Review, a professor of Political Economy at Harvard, first encountered the word "bankster" in a book that was published in 2010. Is that possible?
On the other hand:
The National Journal reports:
Is it possible that "Washington's premier source of nonpartisan insight on politics and policy" considers "monetary policy" an obscure subject?
I know, if you read blogs, you've seen that kind of thing pointed out a zillion on the Internet, but sometimes the unintentional self-parody is impossible to ignore.
Cassandra Among the Banksters
June 23, 2011
Benjamin M. Friedman
The banksters, as some people have taken to calling them, have had a mixed run lately.1
...
1 I first encountered the word in John Lanchester's I.O.U. (Simon and Schuster, 2010).
Is he serious? A writer for the New York Review, a professor of Political Economy at Harvard, first encountered the word "bankster" in a book that was published in 2010. Is that possible?
On the other hand:
The National Journal reports:
Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who has run for president before, did little to shake his image as a fringe candidate by talking too fast and dropping obscure subjects like “Keynesian bubble" and “monetary policy" into the conversation.
Is it possible that "Washington's premier source of nonpartisan insight on politics and policy" considers "monetary policy" an obscure subject?
I know, if you read blogs, you've seen that kind of thing pointed out a zillion on the Internet, but sometimes the unintentional self-parody is impossible to ignore.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
I hate typed sighs
But I exhaled audibly when I read James Gill's column today:
James Gill wishes Nagin hadn't been re-elected, but "doofus" is the worst name he can call Nagin -- he still can't bring himself to question Nagin's integrity. I guess the poor doofus was just led astray by the suave, smooth-talking Greg Meffert.
One problem with that theory is that we've heard it before. In early 2005, the local press began to question Nagin's integrity, but quickly decided he had been taken advantage of by Charles Rice and his "Billy Carter brother-in-law". Billboard Ben isn't the only forgotten man in this story.
At any rate, prior to Katrina, the local press corps, including James Gill, knew that there had been ethical lapses within the Nagin Administration but somehow decided that Nagin was not personally involved. After Katina, questions about Nagin's personal integrity were, for some reason, off limits, and it would be at least a couple of years before local journalists even questioned the integrity of Nagin's associates.
How did that doofus get re-elected?
So many voters had pegged Ray Nagin for a doofus by 2006 that he could barely raise a dollar for his re-election campaign.
...
There can be little doubt that we'd all have been better off had Nagin lost. It is highly unlikely, for instance, that Landrieu would have wrecked Armstrong Park by entrusting its renovation to a company owned by a felon and staffed by incompetents. Get rid of Nagin, the concrete gets poured properly and Satchmo's statue keeps all his toes.
If Meffert and St. Pierre did push Nagin over the top in that election, they bear a more terrible responsibility than one ruined park. Without Nagin, there would have been no Ed Blakely to screw up the Katrina recovery.
...
Meffert and St. Pierre were cock-a-hoop when Nagin was re-elected, but they must now rue the day. They could never have dug themselves into this deep a hole if we hadn't had a doofus for mayor.
James Gill wishes Nagin hadn't been re-elected, but "doofus" is the worst name he can call Nagin -- he still can't bring himself to question Nagin's integrity. I guess the poor doofus was just led astray by the suave, smooth-talking Greg Meffert.
One problem with that theory is that we've heard it before. In early 2005, the local press began to question Nagin's integrity, but quickly decided he had been taken advantage of by Charles Rice and his "Billy Carter brother-in-law". Billboard Ben isn't the only forgotten man in this story.
At any rate, prior to Katrina, the local press corps, including James Gill, knew that there had been ethical lapses within the Nagin Administration but somehow decided that Nagin was not personally involved. After Katina, questions about Nagin's personal integrity were, for some reason, off limits, and it would be at least a couple of years before local journalists even questioned the integrity of Nagin's associates.
How did that doofus get re-elected?
Friday, April 08, 2011
Nothing that a rich conservative says is too much for Joe Kernan
The really venomous stuff starts about seven minutes in. Notice how strongly Kernan agrees with Faber when it gets to be a little too much for Becky Quick. If I understood Faber correctly, the hard-working rich are punishing the lazy, illiterate poor by exporting the jobs that they're too lazy to do.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
I'll bet on the computer
I didn’t watch Jeopardy yesterday, but I suspect that one human would have a better chance against two computers than two humans would have against one computer. Actually, I think that having IBM's Watson palying one game against Brad Rutter and one against Ken Jennings would be a better test than having the computer play two games against both. I'll expalin why after today's match.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
An obvious point and a late New Year's resolution
An obvious point, that almost never gets mentioned in discussions about Social Security and deficit reduction, is that the manufacturing work decreased dramatically between the early Nineteenth Century and the end of World War II, but has barely changed since 1950. Link
It doesn't take much thought to figure out why Americans were able to work fewer hours in 1950 than in 1830 -- technological advances and increased productivity. So, why has the work week remained basically unchanged through roughly sixty years of great technological advances and greatly increased productivity? One reason would be that people are living longer and enjoying longer retirements. Increased productivity prior to World War II led to greater leisure relatively early in life, increased productivity since WWII has led to more leisure in our later years.
I feel I'm stating the obvious, but I constantly come across people like George Will writing things like:
So, I can't help but wonder why pundits like Will never mention technological advances, increased productivity and the static length of the work week when discussing retirement age.
I can only come up with two possible reasons. Either, they're too stupid or too lazy to think for themselves, or they think you are.
Unless anybody can come up with another reason, my late New Year's resolution is to point out that any politician or political pundit who discusses the retirement age without mentioning the unchanged length of the work week after decades of technological change is either a fool or thinks you're one. I hope that resolution doesn't apply to the president.
I'm also starting to think the same thing about the use of generational labels in political discussions, especially discussions of Social Security, but I'll have to turn this comment into a full length post or two to explain why. I do recommend the Archein post where I made the comment, even though it's a few months old and I think the author took a wrong turn at the end.
It doesn't take much thought to figure out why Americans were able to work fewer hours in 1950 than in 1830 -- technological advances and increased productivity. So, why has the work week remained basically unchanged through roughly sixty years of great technological advances and greatly increased productivity? One reason would be that people are living longer and enjoying longer retirements. Increased productivity prior to World War II led to greater leisure relatively early in life, increased productivity since WWII has led to more leisure in our later years.
I feel I'm stating the obvious, but I constantly come across people like George Will writing things like:
In 1935, when Congress enacted Social Security, protracted retirement was a luxury enjoyed by a tiny sliver of the population. Back then, Congress did its arithmetic ruthlessly: When it set the retirement age at 65, the life expectancy of an adult American male was 65. If in 1935 Congress had indexed the retirement age to life expectancy, today's retirement age would be 75.
So, I can't help but wonder why pundits like Will never mention technological advances, increased productivity and the static length of the work week when discussing retirement age.
I can only come up with two possible reasons. Either, they're too stupid or too lazy to think for themselves, or they think you are.
Unless anybody can come up with another reason, my late New Year's resolution is to point out that any politician or political pundit who discusses the retirement age without mentioning the unchanged length of the work week after decades of technological change is either a fool or thinks you're one. I hope that resolution doesn't apply to the president.
I'm also starting to think the same thing about the use of generational labels in political discussions, especially discussions of Social Security, but I'll have to turn this comment into a full length post or two to explain why. I do recommend the Archein post where I made the comment, even though it's a few months old and I think the author took a wrong turn at the end.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
8 X 12 = 96
But, it takes 120 credit hours to earn an undergraduate degree from a school in the LSU system. Since I consider the use of technically true facts to give a misleading impression to be a form of bullshit, I'd have to say that John Lombardi is an unprincipled spreader of bullshit. From today's Times Picayune:
15 seems like the relevant number to me: two semesters ina year, four year program, so 120/8 = 15. If the facts are on your side, you shouldn't need to engage in exaggeration or bullshit.
The most costly and significant change would be to raise $75 million a year by charging undergraduate students for each academic credit hour. Currently, most state colleges charge a fixed tuition for "full-time enrollment" of 12 credit hours per semester. Students that cram more credit hours into a semester pay the same tuition as those who only take 12, meaning the extra classes are essentially free.
According to Board of Regents data, Louisiana college students in fall 2009 enrolled in 301,724 credit hours above the 12-hour level, or the equivalent of more than 25,000 full-time students who aren't paying any tuition at all.
15 seems like the relevant number to me: two semesters ina year, four year program, so 120/8 = 15. If the facts are on your side, you shouldn't need to engage in exaggeration or bullshit.
Both lies and bullshit can either be true or false but bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences, and in general are unconcerned with the truth or falsehood of their statements (it is because of this that Frankfurt concedes that "the bullshitter is faking things", but that "this does not necessarily mean he gets them wrong"). While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, "...bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are" link
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Do they really hate Houston that much in West Texas?
So, Rick Perry (Sorry, Daily Show clip would not embed correctly) thinks that Washington began to "go off the rails" about a century ago. He might be correct:
Of course, the federal's government's role in the development of Houston's economy goes back more than a century and continues to this day, but Rick Perry is from West Texas and might not be aware of this.
Here in Louisiana, when I watched six candidates for the U.S. Senate take part in an election debate, I thought that they sounded like six ordinary, middle class guys. It was only when I thought about what they actually said that I realized that five of the candidates did not have fathers or grandfathers who first went to college or first bought a house with the help of the G.I. Bill -- none of their families needed any help from the federal government to achieve the American dream. Boy, I must have been listening to five blue-blooded patricians discuss politics and policy and I didn't even realize it.
Yes, I listened to Perry's interview and I know he was discussing the income tax. First off, I think that's crazy. Secondly, I was making a joke to help illustrate the fact that the "federal government bad/market good" bumper sticker that dominates American political debate is based on willful historical ignorance. This will all be discussed in greater detail in my soon to be published book: Hedgehog Nation: High Concept Politics and the Destruction of the American Middle Class.
•1910--A group of Houston businessmen headed by the Houston Chamber of Commerce proposes to Congress--and Congress accepts--a novel plan to split ship channel development costs between Houston and the federal government.
Of course, the federal's government's role in the development of Houston's economy goes back more than a century and continues to this day, but Rick Perry is from West Texas and might not be aware of this.
Here in Louisiana, when I watched six candidates for the U.S. Senate take part in an election debate, I thought that they sounded like six ordinary, middle class guys. It was only when I thought about what they actually said that I realized that five of the candidates did not have fathers or grandfathers who first went to college or first bought a house with the help of the G.I. Bill -- none of their families needed any help from the federal government to achieve the American dream. Boy, I must have been listening to five blue-blooded patricians discuss politics and policy and I didn't even realize it.
Yes, I listened to Perry's interview and I know he was discussing the income tax. First off, I think that's crazy. Secondly, I was making a joke to help illustrate the fact that the "federal government bad/market good" bumper sticker that dominates American political debate is based on willful historical ignorance. This will all be discussed in greater detail in my soon to be published book: Hedgehog Nation: High Concept Politics and the Destruction of the American Middle Class.
