Author: Andrew Sullivan

by Patrick Appel

Beinart's pithy argument:

The more fundamental difference between the Obama era and its New Deal and Great Society predecessors is this: Back then, progressives did not define the left end of the political spectrum. In the 1930s and 1960s, America featured honest-to-goodness alternatives to capitalism, home-grown radical movements that scared the crap out of the American establishment and sent some of its denizens scurrying into arms of reformers like FDR and LBJ. Because our entire ideological spectrum has shifted right since communism’s collapse, reforms that once looked like centrist compromises now look like the brainchild of Chairman Mao.

by Patrick Appel

Joe Keohane's article on the fact that "facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds" is making the rounds:

These findings open a long-running argument about the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about the interplay between the nature of human intelligence and our democratic ideals. Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept.

This is one reason why we post so much material on neurology, cognitive biases, and psychology. And it is why Andrew post opinions 180 degrees from his own. Good blogging requires reading pundits you hate. Systems, such as markets or the scientific method, are generally more reliable than individuals. In keeping with that, the Dish attempts to be more a system through which information is processed rather than a final product.

by Dave Weigel

This is really just trivia, but if no one else has pointed it out — is it unusual for three members of the House Republican leadership to write a book inspired by, and using the same photo as, a 2007 Weekly Standard cover package? I assume somebody (hopefully Justin Raimondo) could make an amusingly tortured case about what this reveals about the Power of NeoCons; I choose to think that the Standard simply nailed it. Its 2007 pieces still sound right today. Fred Barnes on Eric Cantor:

"We do a very poor job of selling our ideas," Cantor told me. "We've got to get better at connecting our solutions to the problems people face." Worse, many of their ideas are stale. "There's a tendency for those inside the Beltway to look at the established sources of ideas," chiefly the Washington think tanks, he argues. "I want to talk to people in the real world."

And so he did, after a fashion, although his big outreach project was shuttered in its infancy.

by David Frum

Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker is poised to snuff out inflation with higher interest rates, according to the WSJ:

Rate hikes aren’t imminent, but they are getting closer, the official said. “I have been saying that I am waiting for the time when growth is strong enough and well enough established that it will be clear we need higher rates,” Lacker said. “I don’t think we are there yet,” although he also said “we are getting to a time period where it’s going to be a more and more cogent question” as to when tighter policy will be required. …

Lacker said the Fed must be vigilant about inflation, and that he expects the core inflation rate to gradually drift back toward 1.5%, as he noted the relatively stability of inflation expectations. He warned “we are capable of causing inflation when the unemployment rate is relatively elevated,” so the Fed must continue to monitor the situation closely.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, we are menaced by the much more ominous and more difficult to redress threat of deflation, according to John Makin.

U.S. year-over-year core inflation has dropped to 0.9 percent–its lowest level in forty-four years. The six-month annualized core consumer price index inflation level has dropped even closer to zero, at 0.4 percent. Europe's year-over-year core inflation rate has fallen to 0.8 percent–the lowest level ever reported in the series that began in 1991. Heavily indebted Spain's year-over-year core inflation rate is down to 0.1 percent. Ireland's deflation rate is 2.7 percent. As commodity prices slip, inflation will become deflation globally in short order.

How can this be? CS Lewis nicely explained today's inflation illusion in his "Screwtape Letters":

We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Put this into the Journalism 101 file, please. 

Question, follow up, inform: How effing hard is that?

by Patrick Appel

Felix Salmon attempts one:

Without unions and minimum-wage laws, corporations compete on who can pay the least. With them, they compete on who has the best employees and they invest significantly in those employees. Which is exactly what we want, especially since raising the minimum wage is unlikely in and of itself to increase unemployment visibly.

He expands on this thought here. I'd like to believe this, and it may be correct in some instances, but am not sure it's true for all companies – or even for Walmart, the company Felix mentions.

by David Frum

John Vecchione on Democrats who defy Supreme Court decisions:

Comes news from the Windy City that in response to the resounding victory for Second Amendment Rights in McDonald v. Chicago the Mayor and City Counsel have turned to the city’s problems in a manner designed to protect constitutional liberties.  Just kidding.  They have instituted a scheme of “massive resistance.”

Mayor Daley has said he will not “roll over” to the Supreme Court.  Now, I’m as much for not treating Supreme Court pronouncements as gospel as the next guy (presuming he has an “Impeach Warren” bumper sticker down in the basement), but this is really a scandal.    This is not a made-up right we have come to expect from the Court. Yet Chicago, the President’s home town, has in four days set out to resist, resist, resist the clear import of the Court’s decision.  President Obama has said nothing.

by Patrick Appel

Mike Masnick adds his voice to those finding Andy Grove's article wanting:

How do you pick the "good jobs" from the jobs we're actually better off offshoring. Nearly every day we hear stories about attempts by the US government to protect jobs in a particular industry. Just look at US telco policy or US copyright policy — both of which are very much designed to prop up less efficient companies in the industry, at the expense of more innovative, more efficient upstarts. Protecting jobs comes at a cost to efficiency. If we always had a policy of "protecting jobs," then we never would have automated the telephone switching system, which put tons of "operators" out of work. But that also opened up massive new innovations, including the internet. I don't think anyone would argue that the jobs created due to more efficient telephone switching have so far surpassed the jobs lost from no longer needing operators to connect one party to another.