Month: September 2011

Distilled:

Here is the real story of Social Security in one sentence: It is underfunded and badly needs to be modernized but even if Washington does nothing, young people will receive three-quarters of their promised benefits. And last I looked, three-quarters of promised benefits falls somewhat short of a “monstrous lie.”

But it should be fixed – and easily could be. The alternative – investing in riskier stocks – looked more promising a few years back.

From when Jeffrey Goldberg meets Mel Gibson:

MG: Yes. Hey, did you know they use foreskins for replacing eyelids?

JG: No they don't.

MG: Yeah, they do.

JG: Come on, really?

MG: You tend to look a bit cock-eyed, though.

JG: I can't believe I just walked into that one.

MG: Me either.

Readers continue the thread in force:

One of my favorite films, Short Bus, is an unorthodox tribute to 9/11 and the New Yorkers left in its wake. Director John Cameron Mitchell generated a lot of buzz and controversy due to his integration of real sex into a feature-length film, but Short Bus was so much more about the emotional rawness of its characters seeking human connection. I don't have time to compose a more thoughtful tribute because I'm at work, so I'll just hand it over to Jim Emerson:

At Toys in Babeland, a sex shop in lower Manhattan, sales increased 30 percent in the wake of 9/11, according to the New York Observer. A year after 9/11, the number of babies born in New York hospitals was up 20 percent. These statistics form the background for John Cameron Mitchell's enchanting "Shortbus," the most unexpectedly honest and moving American feature film about 9/11 yet. And by far the funniest.

No, this is not a gripping docudrama, extrapolated from eyewitness accounts and official investigative findings, pumped full of Hollywood dramatic speculation and designed to elevate real-life heroism into the realm of pop-culture super-myth, like "United 93" and "World Trade Center." Instead, "Shortbus" takes place entirely in a fantasy post-9/11 New York City (played in the film by an ingenious handcrafted miniature), an interstitial dream in the chasm between that black day in September 2001 and the blackout of August 2003. In this ephemeral temporal-geographical metropolis, a lot of people engage in a lot of sex for a lot of reasons. And not to make you feel better about their valor, but simply because they're human beings who are still alive.

Another reader:

I know Bruce Springsteen's The Rising has already been mentioned as a great work of art that came out of 9/11, but I wanted to specifically mention his solo performance of "You're Missing" on SNL in October 2002.  It still moves me to tears.  

Another:

There is some debate about whether Wilco’s "Jesus, Etc." was written about 9/11. I have never seen that issue definitively resolved. The album on which it appears, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was released in 2002. If the song was written before 9/11, it makes it even more moving given what it captures. Even if you believe the pre-9/11 doubters, the song is truly beautiful and worth a listen.

There is also a popular meme that Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A predicted 9/11. Another:

Sleater-Kinney from their 2002 album One Beat has a few songs about 9/11, but "Far Away" is the only real 9/11 piece of art that has hit me. It just really hits home for me with the mix of fear and sadness that came over me in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Another:

Loudon Wainwright's astonishing "No Sure Way" is unlikely to be surpassed.

Another:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Grand Central Station." Backstory here.

And another:

My favorite work of post-9/11 art is this lecture that McSweeneys reposts every year on the anniversary. It was given by a former literary agent 14 days after the attacks and almost perfectly captures what was uncapturable in those first few foggy days, when we thought nothing would ever be the same:

So if art cannot contain or describe this event, and if for now the suffering is too keen to be alleviated by parable… if stories are for the moment not as critically needed, as courage, as medicine, as blood, as bacon, they can at least revert to this social function. As time goes on, this will all pass away into memory, into a story with a beginning and a middle and finally an end. And that transition from the real into fable will bring its own kind of comfort and pain. Now, though, we may gather and distract one another, take comfort in our proximity, and know that we are, at this moment, safe.

Another:

On a lighter note … "America (f***k YEAH!!!)"

Another:

I believe this work was already in production before 9/11, but I really can't see how Bill Viola's "Going Forth By Day" as released in 2002 isn't massively informed by that event. I remember seeing it in NYC and just being overwhelmed on so many levels, because I found so much of it to be a direct reflection/meditation of that experience. Here are two reviews by Lisbet Krogslund Bertelsen and Felix Salmon.

Another:

Graydon Parrish's "The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy" should be part of the discussion (though the New York Times hated it).

Yet another:

Shortly after 9/11, the comic book industry did a series of tribute anthologies, with the money raised going to relief charities for the victims of the attack. Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's contribution, a short story called This Is Information, ranges from the nature of entropy to the history of military interventions in Afghanistan to the eternal cycle of violence, but comes back to the simple image of one human hand holding another – falling through the air, or digging through rubble.

For all its surface intellectual cool, it pulses with grief and compassion underneath. The story places a then-raw disaster in a broader context and inverts a massive, unthinkable tragedy into a single, ordinary human act of hope and kindness. I still can't even think about the final lines and image of the story without getting a lump in my throat. Sadly, I can't find the piece anywhere online; the best I can dig up is this tiny excerpt.

Another:

I would nominate Omer Fast's "CNN Concatenated" as a great 9/11 work of art. You can see the first 10 minutes of it  thought to be insensitive and disturbing. The piece was removed shortly after going on display because so many people found it upsetting. Fischl released a statement saying, "The sculpture was not meant to hurt anybody. It was a sincere expression of deepest sympathy for the vulnerability of the human condition. Both specifically towards the victims of Sept. 11 and towards humanity in general." I believe that Fischl was sincere, but I think that he was just incorrect when he later claimed people misunderstood the work because it was too bodily and people are uncomfortable seeing bodies. In my view, this was a really dense thing for Fischl to say. Instead I think Fischl bumped up against the limits of representational art as a means of coping with tragedy.

In a way, one of the reasons that there is not more great art about 9/11 is that art usually isn't up to the task. Even the best poets can't find the right words for an event like 9/11, or the plague, or the holocaust, or torture. There is a fundamental rip or void that art can only cover up, it cannot adequately represent or articulate it.

One more:

I think there is a misconception in this string that has to do with this being largely a political and philosophical blog. The people reading and responding are primarily interested in politics, not matters of aesthetics, and, I think, tend to view politics as the driving force for every other human endeavor. I assert that this is not the case, and that high quality in art has nothing to do with politics.

I remember the art critic Robert Hughes once pointed out that sometimes there are just low periods of art. In other words there are golden ages of art and then there are periods when not much memorable is produced. The quality of art production at any particular time and place has no relationship at all to the significance of political events. I think it is essentially a mystery of why some periods have outbursts of creative genius and others are fallow, but it is safe to say from a survey of art history that there isn't much consistent correlation with significant political events. There are plenty of significant historical events that have only bad or middling art associated with them – the Civil War for example. Whitman's worst poetry and a lot of really bad memorials were inspired by that war, but no great art (Gone With the Wind?).  

Sometimes there are great flowerings of culture when an area is in political decline, or when it is relatively unimportant. Athens was a tiny, miserably poor city state compared to the Persian Empire, but it produced an astonishing amount of work of lasting value. The Russians were writing great novels and producing great music even when the Russian economy and general level of culture was an embarrassment compared to countries in Europe. The source of great art really is a mystery.

George Packer imagines a likely endgame:

My guess is that the House will give [Obama] just enough of his plan—further cuts to payroll taxes paid by employers and employees—to be able to say, We’re not rank partisans and blind ideologues: we are doing something. But this wouldn’t be nearly enough to reverse the downward economic slide, allowing the opposition to go on playing the game it’s played since Obama’s inauguration—to lay the blame on him for the results of their own acts of legislative sabotage.

“Suppose two grandparents created a trust fund, appointed a bank as trustee, and instructed the bank to invest the proceeds of the trust fund so as to provide for their grandchildren’s education. Suppose further that the bank used the proceeds for its own purposes, so that when the grandchildren turned eighteen, there was no money for them to go to college. What would happen to the bankers responsible for misusing the money? They would go to jail. But what has happened to the people responsible for the looming bankruptcy of Social Security? They keep returning to Congress every two years,” – Mitt Romney, “No Apology.”

Yes, it is worth noting this passage from her recent Tea Party speech:

“Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done? It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along …

This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

She's positioning herself against the corruption of both parties, just as she positioned herself in Alaska as the hockey mom prepared to take on her own party elites' collusion with Big Oil. Alas, her efforts in Alaska soon unraveled, even after she was able to tax the oil companies and deliver the goodies directly to Alaska voters. Her gas pipeline is as distant a prospect as ever. And when one reviews her career, it's hard to resist noting that her populism (combined with extreme Christianism) was the only way she could see making it to the top – especially after the Murkowskis dissed her. Opportunism or principle? It could be both, but with Palin, one should never under-estimate the former. She's shrewder as a politician than some understand.

I wonder if she's contemplating a populist third party campaign. Or if this anti-establishment message is what she will bring to the GOP contest. Or whether she is just trying to recast her celebrity image a little. Well, we'll soon find out.

(Photo: Former U.S. Vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin rides on a motorcycle before participating in 'Rolling Thunder' rally May 29, 2011 in Arlington, Virginia. Although not an official guest, former U.S. Vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin is expected to participate in today's motorcycle parade from the Pentagon to the National Mall. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

The full speech, in case you missed it:

Ryan Avent:

It's not a perfect plan, but nothing that emerges from Washington is. It's not going to magically generate strong growth; the Fed's upcoming meetings are more important. It is a package of sensible steps presented in a sensible way. Were Congress to fall into a momentary stupor and pass the bill as is, the American economy would clearly be better for it (though not obviously 2m jobs better). Americans should hope that most of it gets through Congress and on to the president's desk.

Edward Barbier:

This is the type of jobs program initiative that many economists—and the American people—have been waiting at least six months for. In fact, the program would have been most effective if it had been announced and launched simultaneously with an endorsement by the President of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan, when the latter was first unveiled in November 2010. Then the economy would have had a double punch of a short-term job and recovery stimulus coupled with a medium-term deficit and debt reduction plan.

Peter Beinart:

Explaining why nothing he’s done in his first two-and-a-half years in office has brought back economic growth may be politically tricky. By ignoring it, however, he cedes the narrative to the Republicans. The GOP’s story, of course, is that Obama’s past efforts to throw money at the economy have failed and so this will as well. Obama needed to respond to that tonight, to explain why his past economic policies merit confidence in his new ones. But he didn’t. And so a casual viewer might come away with the impression that he believes his first stimulus bill failed too.

Frum:

Qua economics, the proposal looks a lot better than the 2009 stimulus. This new measure is not larded up with the Democratic wish lists and obsolete campaign promises that made such a mess of Stimulus 1. There are no tax rebates here, no Pell grants, only the basic material of a counter-cyclical program: investment tax credits, continuing payroll tax relief, and infrastructure spending.

Brad Plumer:

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is frequently the go-to guy for both parties when it comes to analysis of various jobs proposals. So, what did he think of President Obama’s speech last night? His report is behind a paywall, but here’s the topline: “The plan would add 2 percentage points to GDP growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs, and cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point.”

Jonathan Bernstein:

One of the reasons for presidents to give high-profile speeches, indeed, is to signal to Congress (and to everyone else in the policy-making process) that this is something that's a high priority for him. This is something he intends to fight for, and that he's willing to bargain for. And if that's true — if Obama is in fact willing to give way on GOP priorities if they're willing to accept some of what he's proposing — then this thing does in fact have some chance of being enacted.

Felix Salmon:

This is a stimulus bill; stimulus bills, by their nature, can’t be revenue-neutral or fully paid-for. And this one isn’t. Instead, it seems like Obama is going to tot up the cost of the bill — $447 billion is the number doing the rounds — and add it to the $1.5 trillion that the deficit supercommittee is being charged with cutting from the budget over a decade-long period. That’s not paying for a bill, it’s passing the buck to someone else.

Howard Gleckman:

The tax breaks for companies that hire vets and the like probably won’t increase hiring at all. It will encourage firms to employ targeted workers, but at the expense of those who are not on the preferred list. The payroll tax cut for employers may also help some, but not much. And many profitable firms will enjoy a windfall for hiring workers they would have hired anyway.

Nate Silver:

We are likely to see a real semantic scrum over the next few weeks as partisans seek to define the territory that the bill occupies. Pollsters, whether knowingly or not, will be a part of that battle. I would advise them to use multiple question variants where possible, taking a larger sample and splitting it into halves or thirds, and I would advise readers to be suspicious of articles that cherry-pick one or two polls without discussing the broader context.

Hertzberg:

Helping the country is unlikely to be enough of an incentive for Republicans to pass a bill, any bill, that Obama supports, even a bill, like this one, that is assembled mostly from refurbished spare parts collected from their own ideological warehouse. No doubt many of them sincerely believe that the end (upping the chances of defeating Obama and his nefarious agenda of turning America into a socialist hellhole like Western Europe) justifies the means (deepening the extent of mass unemployment, human suffering, and ancillary damage to the economy and to society).

Will Wilkinson:

Mr Obama's a dead man walking unless the economy turns around or he finds a way to somehow pin the still-flailing economy on the Republicans. Mr Obama's bill is a not-so-plausible way to achieve substantial growth, but, together with his speech, it's a savvy first stab at winning re-election by out-manoeuvring the right.

Fallows:

In style and structure the constant refrain provided the "music" of the speech. Do you wonder what point the President is trying to get across? Well, in case you've forgotten, every thirty seconds he will remind you: Pass this jobs bill; you should pass it right away.  It's an approach familiar from religious speeches and sermons, and tent-revival orations. When done right, the recurrent refrain seems not repetitive and boring but rather cumulatively engaging: the audience knows where the speaker is going, anticipates the connections he is going to make, and sees how the parts fit together.

McArdle:

[W]hile all the proposals are well enough, they're hardly an exciting new direction for the administration.  These aren't new ideas; they're things we're already doing, like unemployment assistance and the payroll tax cuts, or things that Obama has been proposing for a while, like the infrastructure bank.  Even the "new" proposals, like added money for infrastructure, is a retread of ARRA.

Economically, this is mostly treading water while we wait for something to change.

Earlier reax here.

Taibbi cries out that Perry's social security rhetoric will sink him. Bernstein differs:

[T]here is still plenty of time for Perry to blunt charges of extremism by modifying his positions and, especially, emphasis. Yes, the Obama campaign has the debate footage saved and ready to deploy. And yes, it will make no sense at all when Perry says (if he wins the nomination) that despite still believing what he’s said in the past, he remains committed to delivering every dollar of Social Security benefits to absolutely everyone who has ever paid into the system. It won’t make sense — but if the economy is awful and Obama is at 35% approval, it won’t matter because no one will be listening to the president any more.

I don't agree. Even in a steep recession, an Obama-Perry fight is much likelier to end in an Obama victory. No one wants to return to Bushism. Very few want to abolish social security and Medicare. Gelman looks beyond the horse-race:

[T]he evidence is that political extremism might cost a presidential candidate about 1 or 2 percentage points of the vote. (Political scientist Steven Rosenstone wrote about this in his 1983 book, Forecasting Presidential Elections, where he argued that, contrary to what some disaffected Democrats wanted to believe, Ted Kennedy would’ve done even worse than Jimmy Carter in the 1980 general election.) But my second point is that, yes, it could matter a lot who the Republican nominee is in 2012. The new president can have a big impact on all sorts of policies. In his phrasing, Tucker was making the common slip of assuming that all that matters is which party wins the election and forgetting about policy after the election has been decided.