Month: January 2011

A reader writes:

Unfortunately, I believe there is a negative side to the relationships among Apple, our culture and technology.  In the first half of the 20th century, the U.S. made goods that were essential to life.  In the second half, we made machines and software that made it easier and more efficient to produce those essential goods.  In both cases, the utility of the what we produced stretched far beyond the end-user.  However, over the past 20 years, much of our technology has been focused on facilitating our personal mirth via iPods, Facebook, widescreens, etc.  It may not be an accident that this shift in technology focus coincided with economic decline, because I do not believe these personal technologies bring as many positive externalities as do steam engines, cotton gins and inventory control systems. 

Or put more succinctly, what comes after "Here we are now, entertain us"?

Greg Scoblete sounds off:

Rubin does raise a significant question … regarding U.S. policy towards Tunisia.

It could be, as her source suggests, that there exists a wellspring of knowledgeable people in the U.S. federal government who understand Tunisian society and have a keen grasp of how to ensure that the country's revolutionary tumult is channeled toward a stable, sustainable representative democracy (provided it's not too Islamist, of course). If that is the case, telling whatever government does emerge "what we expect" makes some sense, as it presumes we know what we're talking about.

If, however, we don't actually know what's best for Tunisian society going forward, outside of a general desire for it to have a representative and relatively liberal government, should we really be butting in?

Put This On: LBJ Buys Pants from Put This On on Vimeo.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President. We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana.

Tom Jensen waves goodbye to it:

85% of Democrats in the country are either 'very excited' or 'somewhat excited' about voting in the Presidential election next year, actually slightly higher than the 82% of Republicans. There are more Republicans who are 'very excited'- 62% to the Democrats' 57%, but 'somewhat excited' voters are going to come out the vast majority of the time. The ones you need to worry about are the 'not excited' voters- and 18% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats fall into that category, virtually indistinguishable.

Scott Morgan captions this disturbing video:

The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.

Weigel bluntly states that Lieberman "was going to lose if he ran":

What happened? How did a guy who won a three-way 2006 race with 50 percent of the vote come to this? It's simple: Lieberman turned everybody off and broke a series of promises. If you were a Democrat who supported him, you heard him promise to endorse the party's 2008 presidential candidate, then you watched him endorse John McCain. If you were a Republican who supported him, you heard him say he couldn't vote for the health care bill in December 2009, because of the Medicare buy-in. You might have even waved pro-Lieberman signs, as some people I met at a Tea Party rally in D.C. did at that time. Then you watched him cave once the buy-in came out.

Josef Joffe applies an economic model developed by Samuel Huntington to knock down the notion that Tunisia will spark other upheavals:

Not counting the petro-potentates (more about them later) and strife-torn Lebanon, Tunisia is the richest of [all Arab and Maghreb African countries]. Its per-capita income is almost twice as high as neighboring Morocco, and it is ahead of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria by similar margins. The country is more urbanized (67 percent of the populace) than either Morocco (56 percent) or Egypt, (43 percent). Tunisia is also more educated: Its literacy is a bit higher than Egypt’s and a lot higher than Morocco’s, and it spends much more on education—7.2 percent of GDP, while Egypt devotes about half as much, and Morocco comes in at just 5.7 percent.

Such numbers would have made Karl Marx clap his hands in delight.

Looking at the Tunisian upheaval he would have cried out: “I was right.” About what? About the “contradiction” between regime and risers, between an ossified power structure and what he called the “bourgeoisie.” If you are poor, you have neither the time nor the energy to engage in politics. If you are not educated, you lack the cultural skills to articulate your demands—to agitate and organize. And, if you are poor, uneducated, and thus isolated, as much of the Arab world is, then you have no benchmark against which to measure your misery. Sociologists call this the “demonstration effect.”

Freddie DeBoer's much-linked critique of the neoliberal left conflates true liberalism with support for the labor movement. But Ryan Avent doesn't understand why Freddie has such love for unions:

[Y]ounger individuals have had their formative ideological experiences in an era in which labor strength is concentrated in sectors that are either public or dependent on public largesse, and these unions often place themselves squarely in the path of reforms sought by left-leaning writers. I’m sure it was easier to be sympathetic to labor when it was winning limits on truly heinous business practices rather than fighting against merit-based pay for excellent teachers.

And I think that current neoliberals think of themselves as more honestly egalitarian than traditional leftists, based on their international view of developments in human welfare. The past few decades have witnessed an unprecedented reduction in global poverty thanks to liberal reforms in China and India. Countries containing twice the population of the currently developed world are now hurtling toward middle-income status, thanks to trade, thanks to deregulation, and thanks to the introduction of market reforms. The neoliberals I enjoy reading pride themselves on fighting for access to opportunity for the disadvantaged, through reduced barriers to trade with America, increased opportunities for immigration to America, and (in Matt’s case) reduced obstacles to living, working, and starting businesses in America’s most dynamic urban centers. The neoliberal platform strikes me as much easier to understand, from a progressive viewpoint, when considered at an international level. 

Mike Konczal focuses on other elements of Freddie's post:

I think it is useful to consider what the strengths of wonks are.  Starting a socialist overturn of the capitalist order is not one.  

Also known as ceding control:

Los Angeles school officials have announced that for the second time in the district's history, they're handing off management of one of the city's lowest performing high schools to outside organizations. Watts' Jordan High School will be split into three campuses, and the school's 200 teachers will have to reapply for their jobs. Two charter school operators, Green Dot Public Schools and Alliance For College Ready Public Schools will run two of the campuses, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's nonprofit, Partnership for Los Angeles Schools will take over the third.

That's one way to get rid of underperforming teachers – and in LA, administrators need all the help they can get.

Herman Cain is running for the 2012 GOP nomination. Josh Green uploaded this 1994 healthcare town hall exchange with Bill Clinton – in which Cain holds his own:

A bit from Green's profile of Cain:

Truth be told, what distinguishes Cain’s message is less its content—“From the standpoint of our conservative beliefs and values, Sarah Palin and I are probably identical,” he told me—than the person supplying it. Cain is a 65-year-old retired African American pizza-company CEO who sits on several corporate boards, including Whirlpool’s, and entered politics only as a late-life hobby. But he’s serious about running for president. To a bland field, he’d add charisma, a compelling story, and some craziness.