Month: August 2010

Via Bilerico.

This George Packer article on the Senate is getting a lot of love from liberal blogs. Bernstein thinks it's "sort of a hodgepodge":

The problems in the Senate today are pretty much entirely about the third thing that Packer discusses: partisanship and full exploitation of the Senate rules to create obstacles to the Senate working at all.  Packer's story about the banking bill and Senator Corker, I think, is the key one.  In that case, it turned out that none of the other problems of the Senate (three day weeks, staff, lack of personal relationships, time absorbed by raising money) mattered at all: when they wanted to Democrats and one mainstream conservative Republican had no trouble at all working together on a bill.  But in the end, it turned out that Corker's participation was impossible because party discipline demanded it.

A reader writes:

Typically Posner fails to analyze the many key differences between IBM and the Security State. He posits a simple comparison and expects us to fall over satisfied due to the reflected brilliance of his own ego. He ignores that in many ways IBM was too big and that's why Microsoft and others ate much of its potentially profitable lunch for years and years.

IBM lost many, many business opportunities because of its immensities, including a significant amount of domestic manufacturing. Also, the Security State lives in a nexus of government and private business, making it easier to hide from scrutiny from both government and shareholders. This is especially true when one considers the currency of the Security State: opaqueness, secrets, and non-accountability. (If you think government is unaccountable now, try to get at a classified factoid that shouldn't be classified.) The potential for corruption, incompetence and inside dealing is immense, as typified by the way the Bush/Cheney Administration ran Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority, as illustrated succinctly by Chandrasekarian in Imperial Life In The Emerald City.  Does anybody think the TSA, for example, makes much fundamental sense?

Perhaps most important, tough market conditions will force IBM to change, as it has over time. Does Posner really think that the Security State will change and respond nimbly to market forces (what are they?) other than to continue to bloat, become more opaque, suck away more tax dollars under the promise of more security, classify more and more unread/unprocessed data, and continue to trample individual freedoms as the revolving door between government and business spins at a faster rate to the filthy inurement of politicians, the military, and bureaucratic hangers-on?

Contra Drum, Ezra Klein defends Rep. Paul Ryan:

For a long time, liberals were talking about the sort of things you would actually have to do to get health-care spending under control while conservatives simply criticized the downsides of those intimidating reforms. And the main thing you have to do is get health-care spending into a single budget and then stick to it. You can do that by having the government set payment rates for providers or by having it set subsidies for individuals. Democrats were admitting this and thus taking on the burden of its problems, while Republicans were simply denying it.

Ryan’s proposal is an admission of the reality.

Alas, Ryan is hopeless on defense and still hooked on some of the loopier supply-side hooey. But it’s a start.

A shrewd analysis of why Prop 8 passed in 2008: the swing voters were not African-Americans but parents with kids under 18 at home:

The Yes on 8 campaign targeted parents in its TV ads. "Mom! Guess what I learned in school today!" were the cheery-frightening first words

of the supporters' most-broadcast ad.

They emerged from the mouth of a young girl who had supposedly just learned that she could marry a female when she grew up.

Among the array of untrue ideas that parents could easily take away: that impressionable kids would be indoctrinated; that they would learn about gay sex; that they would be more likely to become gay; and that they might choose to be gay. California voters, depending on where they lived in the state, were exposed to the Yes on 8 ads 20 to 40 times.

The lesson: It's not enough to make the case for same-sex marriage. It's also important to arm voters — particularly parents — against an inevitable propaganda attack. And it's crucial to rebut lies so parents don't panic.

Gabe highlights another example of late-night talk shows' growing obsolescence:

Remember a couple of years ago when Between Two Ferns was just another wonderfully enjoyable web series starring a favorite but little-known comedian interviewing whoever was available? Now it’s a full-fledged viral marketing tool for the full-fledged movie stars that are in it, and no one is a little-known comedian anymore. This week’s new episode came to my attention in a publicity email from Paramount for Dinner for Schmucks. … If this is what viral marketing is these days, PLEASE MAKE MORE VIRAL MARKETING, FACELESS UNCARING CORPORATIONS.

Ross Douthat:

…too many conservatives have convinced themselves that “re-commit to limited government” is the only political lesson the post-Bush Republican Party needs to learn. It’s true that the G.O.P.’s modest resurgence has been fueled by voter backlash against the various expansions of government being passed and contemplated by the Obama administration. But despite what many on the right believe, Republicans didn’t lose in 2006 and 2008 because they were insufficiently committed to spending discipline. They lost because of the Iraq War and to some extent Hurricane Katrina, obviously — but also because the Bush boom (such as it was) badly failed to deliver the goods for the middle and working classes. These voters were coping with stagnating wages and climbing health care costs well before the financial crisis exposed all their real estate “wealth” as a mirage, and it was their anxieties — and the sense that the G.O.P. didn’t have anything to offer them — that helped push public opinion steadily leftward well before Barack Obama appeared on the political scene.

I take Ross's point. But throwing fiscal discipline to the winds was both awful for the core integrity of the conservative brand and also related to the great middle class stagnation. Lowering taxes and increasing spending by borrowing helped prop up the illusion of prosperity when the wheels were coming off; it was a reckless, unfunded bribe, like the Medicare entitlement. Instead of tackling the problem, the right provided palliative care – at the expense of the next generation.

Frum tries to talk some sense into the Republican base:

Conservatives who fume against the president’s supposed socialism are chasing phantoms: railing against dead ideas while failing to notice the actual gathering dangers to economic liberty and American prosperity.

It’s not the red hand of socialism we have to fear. It’s the dead hand of the status quo. An example:

In 2009, the US health economy reached a symbolic tipping point: for the first time, more than 50% of the dollars spent on health were spent by some agency of federal or state government. Sounds like socialism, right? But this tipping point was not driven by President Obama. It was driven by the growth of Medicare – and last I heard, it was President Obama who was proposing slowdowns in Medicare spending, and it was Sarah Palin and the Tea Party activists who were denouncing reductions in Medicare as tantamount to “death panels.”

E.D. Kain answers Dish readers.