Comment on: "The Milquetoast Radicals" by David Brooks

See
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/opinion/the-milquetoast-radicals.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
for the original Brooks column.

Mr. Brooks, it is indeed a 99% vs 1% problem. All the valid policy imperatives you enumerate (\"Do tax reform, fiscal reform, education reform and political reform so that when the economy finally does recover the prosperity is deep, broad and strong\") to get the country out of the doldrums are exactly the steps being blocked by a GOP which has been completely hijacked by a minority of radical conservatives whose only policy goal is the \"ensure that Obama fails\" (as opposed to ensuring that the country succeeds).

The 1% are in possession of the vast majority of wealth, and thus, given the PAC and Lobby-driven nature of the US political system, hold virtually all economic and political power.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are an expression of frustration with the government and the 1% power-elite which controls it, not much different from the Tea Party before it was hijacked by conservative PACs.

Our current political problems are indeed like \"declaring war on some nefarious elite\", just like the American Revolution declaring war on the nefarious British Crown, with actions like the original Boston Tea Party...

Comment on: "Panic of the Plutocrats", by Paul Krugman

For the original piece by Paul Krugman, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html

I am surprised by Mr. Krugman's apparent surprise...

Plutocrats and/or Oligarchs always react with panic, and when pushed to the wall, with extreme ruthlessness to any perceived or actual threat to their status and privilege.

Judging by some of the disproportionate reactions from the NYPD to the protesters, the moneyed powers obviously want to crush this in the bud - let's remember that the New York mayor is named Bloomberg, and although I often admire his sometimes liberal policies, he is definitely a member of the Oligarchy.

Comment on: "Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

For original Freedman column, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/friedman-where-have-you-gone-joe-dimaggio.html?_r=1&hp


While I agree with Mr. Friedman's oft stated view:
"To do that, we need to reinvigorate our traditional formula for success — quality education and infrastructure, open immigration, the right rules to incentivize risk-taking and government-financed scientific research",
his assertion that Steve Jobs embodies the kind of leadership qualities we need in politics, however, is ludicrous. There is nothing "democratic" (small d) about successful corporate leaders. They are more akin to dictators, and we want to be careful about a populous longing for a "strong man" or dictator to get us out of our current troubles. It is exactly the fact that Americans, different from most other countries during the last Great Depression, did not succumb to the temptation to turn to a dictator to lead them out of their miseries, which makes America different. All right, I'll grant you that FDR had many of the qualities of a "strong man" leader, some on the Right would even say, a dictator. But we as Americans did manage to keep things within the framework of a democratic government and society.
I agree that leaders like Steve Jobs are important in a free-market, entrepreneurial society, but let's make sure we keep the boundaries between good corporate leadership (generally un-democratic) and good public leadership, clearly defined.

Review of: "Aftershock: The next Economy and America's Future", by Robert B. Reich

On balance, this book proved to be a huge disappointment.

I approached Mr. Reich's latest book with great anticipation. After all, he is a political economist and legal scholar with some renown, he has served in government as Secretary of Labor and he is a liberal progressive with ideas that I generally agree with -- yes, I admit to a liberal bias.

In Part 1, "The Broken Bargain" he describes the parallels between the Great Depression (1929) and the "Great Recession", as he calls the financial meltdown of 2008, in that previous to both events the concentration of income and wealth had been concentrated in the top 1%, peaking in both cases above 23% of income. His heroes, Mr. Marriner Eccles, head of the Federal Reserve Board during Roosevelt, and John Maynard Keynes, are used to argue his main points - that for the economy to remain healthy and grow, a large, prosperous and confident middle class is needed in order to purchase and consume the products and services produced by a free market economy, and that the government must protect the middle class against the natural tendency of free-market capitalism to concentrate wealth in a small oligarchy. Moreover, when there is a downturn in the cyclic economy, the government must step in to boost investment,  spending, as well as direct support of the middle class so as to maintain their purchasing power to reinvigorate the economy.

He calls this balance between the rich and the middle class"The Bargain".

Although I fully agree with these notions, Mr. Reich, an academic economist, does not deal at all with the current thinking that Keynesian economic theory has been invalidated by the fact that it cannot explain the simultaneous inflation and unemployment of the 1970's (see, for example, "How the Economy Works", by Roger E.A. Farmer). As a non-economist, I don't really care, because all of the so called "economic theories" and "models" are simplistic hot air balloons in my mind, but I would have at least expected some mention of this from Prof. Reich. 

Prof. Reich also glosses over the colliery to Keynesian policy proscriptions, that during economic prosperity the government needs to save and repay the "loans" it took out to intervene on behalf of the middle class. The author is very one-sided in his praise of unionization and protection of workers without addressing the excesses of union rules, which brought some industries down, and the effects of the global markets vis-a-vis national employment protection, which allows corporations to freely move jobs to the cheapest markets.

In Part 2, "Backlash", Mr. Reich succumbs to what seems to be the fashion de-jour of these kinds of books, and paints a rather silly Armageddon scenario of the extreme way in which the increasing income inequality, and the consequent political inequality and frustration, could resolve itself - the fictional election of 2020. Although I agree that increasing concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a small oligarchy, as we are again witnessing today (just as before the Great Depression), can and often does lead to frustration and political extremism and paranoia (for example, the Tea Party), I have much more faith in the American electorate than Mr. Reich seems to have. Having immigrated from Germany, one of the characteristics of the American electorate is their ultimate common sense in rejecting some of the extremes which other countries have chosen in response to great economic hardships. Although when interviewed individually, American voters often seem frighteningly ignorant, as a group they did not choose Fascism or Communism when push came to shove.

The real letdown of this book, however, is Part 3, "The Bargain Restored", where I expected a well thought out set of policies and suggested steps, based on academically sound reasoning and real-world political experience, on how to move this country out of its current disastrous economic decline and political gridlock, back to an America of equality, prosperity, hope and optimism.

Instead we get a warmed over "New Deal" (much of which I would agree with as broad objectives), but without any sensible or realistic steps to implement them. Basically Prof. Reich counts on increasing poverty and frustration on the part of a beaten down and disenfranchised middle class (that is, the same forces underlying his Armageddon scenario) to be recognized and appreciated by a suddenly enlightened economic oligarchy and political elite, which will then miraculously implement the proposed new New Deal policies.

There is no attempt to deal with all the multitude of differences in the world we live in today as opposed to the world in which his heroes, Eccles and Keynes, made their observations and proposed their solutions. We live in a "global economy" where corporations know no national boundaries, but where the rules are set by national governments with very limited control over the flow of capital, resources and jobs. We live in a world where "consumption" is the be-all-end-all. We live in a world where our technological know-how has far outstripped out moral, legal and emotional ability to deal with all its positive and negative ramifications. Although Prof. Reich pays lip service to some of these issues, it is as if his economic and political thinking is confined to a bubble of New Deal thinking.

Review of: "The Day After the Dollar Crashes", by Damon Vickers.

This book is fascinating, not so much for what the title promises (that, it turns out, seems almost incidental), but more for the seeming multiple personality disorder of the author, where a different "personality" seems to be in charge in each chapter.

In Chapter 1 the emphasis is on a "liberation" and 'free trade" world view, mixed with a generous sprinkling of "environmentalist"/Green warnings. All the well known and well worn statistics are rolled out about the huge national debt, the trade imbalance, and environmental ravages brought on by heedless pursuit of growth and consumption, and the dependence on entitlement programs. He states that GDP is not an appropriate measure for the wealth and health of a country and its economy (agreed) but then states that "The only real gauge of our worth is what we export".

Towards the end of this chapter he seems to be vying with Glenn Beck for the honor of "confused crazy", perhaps hoping for a seat at the table of television punditry.

Chapter 2 his Dr. Phil/Suze Orman/Glenn Beck personality mix takes full flight and the book takes a turn to the "How to Heal Thyself" genre, admittedly a good source of income, if you can develop a following - perhaps Oprah will sign him on to OWN. This chapter is full of platitudes and conflicting advice. He goes on an on about how US workers cannot hope to compete internationally, but does not offer any solutions (except perhaps accepting the incomes and lack of social services of third world countries). He ends this chapter out in left field with an admonition to reduce our prison population -- they get a free ride, shelter, food, medical care - still not quite sure how this fits into the New World Order.

In Chapter 3 Mr. Vickers seems to want to go back to the Silver Standard: "According to the 1792 Coinage Act, one single US dollar bill equals 0.77344 ounces of silver. That was sound money". I'm not an economists or finance expert, but that seems to be a dead horse since Nixon repudiated the ability to redeem gold for Dollars in 1971. In this regard Mr. Vickers is again aligning himself with some of the libertarian crazies.

He also states in the same section that "If you look at the period between 1800 and 1941, inflation did not exist while the currency was sound". That seems to be a completely false statement if you look at any of a number of historical inflation data sets. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Historical_Inflation.svg shows that inflation in 1920 peaked at over 20%.

Mr. Vickers has an amazing capacity for forceful arguments on both sides of an issue without seeming to realize that he is contradicting himself. He argues that jobs are leaving the US because American workers are too bloated and selfish and will not accept that demanding a living wage, some healthcare and old age pension will cause their jobs to leave forever. He offers the same old tired free-market arguments to demonstrate that this is inevitable and that "government regulations never work".

In the very next section he thunders against the unethical corporations, which act "against the common good in exchange for profits to the shareholders". He gets on his little soapbox and calls for "a social uprising that hits these conglomerates and this club of economic elites in the pocketbook". Then he goes on to "pray that the New world Order…includes powerful and enforceable policies to prevent this kind of financial pressure" which allow the corporate excesses.

So on the one hand he argues that "government regulations never work" but then calls for a "New World Order [which] includes powerful and enforceable policies". Mr Vickers seems to have separate compartments in his brain which don't communicate with each other.

Then Mr. Vickers morphs back into his Buddhist personality (the third personality of his multi-personality disorder?) with statements like "people saw clearly that we are one world, one ocean, one atmosphere… and acted with a new awareness that every living thing on earth was connected". This from the same man who only a few paragraphs earlier has berated the self-indulgent American worker for wanting a living wage and not acknowledging the wonders of free-market capitalism and its self-regulating, resource optimizing truths.

Mr. Vickers seems to keep gyrating back and forth between his libertarian self, where the government is nothing but a money grubbing, inefficient, self-serving, unaccountable menace to We the People, his Green/Buddhist self, where he bemoans the unsustainable, consumer-oriented, environment-destroying economic system of the West, and the corporate and political elite which control it to their own advantage, and the somewhat insane "New World Order" proponent, where, through some miraculous turn of events, all the ills of the current separate governments and corporate entities are morphed into a benevolent and all-knowing global governing entity which brings us into Nirvana.

Sprinkled into this melange are some real zingers - I'll quote just one:

"We Westernized citizens spend 80 percent of our time working for profit, thinking that someday we will evan enough money to allow us time to fish and garden [apparently his idyll]. In comparison, the third world citizen spends 80 percent of his time fishing and gardening [when he is not busy being slave labor for us]".

In Chapter 4, having not yet defined what the New World Order is, except vague references to some form of benevolent world government, which has miraculously managed to solve all the numerous problems he has enumerated, he turns to thermodynamic theory (entropy) to "prove" that a collapse of our current systems is inevitable. And like the tension between the Old and New Testaments, Mr. Vickers goes into "preacher mode" and pats us on the head and tells us not to be afraid of the "new order", for it is inevitable/ordained, and will lead us to Nirvana.

This religious fervor is mixed with some good old fashioned right-wing big-bad-government rhetoric (nationalizing various industries, stealing money through taxes, forcing through wasteful healthcare, etc). And this whole bizarre discussion ends with another zinger:

"We must realize that we infect the atmosphere with our thoughts. We create exactly what we think about. That may sound like some simplistic, new-thought mumbo-jumbo, but your belief is not required for this to be true. It is the law of the universe and no amount of resistance will change it. It is simply the way it is".

Yes, Your Vickers Holiness, we bow to your superior insights!

Chapter 5 is odd, in that it makes a lot of suggestions, again a confused mixture of libertarian, environmentalist, new-age and plain-old revolutionary, which we should follow, whether to avoid the cataclysmic collapse or to prepare for the New World Order afterwards - not clear which.

The Federal Reserve is lambasted, we are exhorted to "vote on character, not by party", we are told to go back to a self-sustaining agricultural society (after having previously been told that only exports count!), and to shift our consciousness to Oneness, and finally, to "take it to the street".

As if the previous chapters were not confusing and weird enough, Chapter 6 goes into a completely different direction. Here Mr. Vickers seems to be "pitching" a disaster movie script to Hollywood by giving a minute by minute account of the cataclysmic events, as only he is privy to, leading to the New World Order. 

Tellingly, at the end of this chapter Mr. Vickers morphs back into his investment advisor personality with this piece of advise (could be right out of his firm's brochure): 

"We embrace bull and bear markets equally, seeking to profit from what the market gives us, just as we did in both the 2000-2003 and the 2007-2008 market collapses".  So people, not to worry, the world as we know it will collapse, governments and institutions will be swept away, but Mr. Vickers' investment advisors will survive and stand ready to help you profit.

So perhaps the movie Mr. Vickers is pitching is a combination of "War of the Worlds" and "Wall Street".

Enough said, this is complete BS.

In the remaining chapters Mr. Vickers brings down the tablets from the mountain and tells us how the "Central Government" of the "New World Order" should/will function. The image that jumps to my mind when reading this, was the scene from the original "The Wizard of Oz" when we finally see "The Wizard" behind the curtain, flashing lights, smoke and pulling levers.

Although these chapters, as indeed the whole book, contain nuggets of interesting, admirable, and worthwhile (but certainly nothing new) ideas, Mr. Vickers' presentation of this wild melange of conflicting, often completely unproven ideas and scenarios is just too schizophrenic to be taken seriously.

If one were serious about investigating the possibility of, and the path to, a New World Order, one could, for example, study the origins and evolution of the European Union and the Euro, from the cataclysm of two World Wars, to the humble beginnings of the "Montanunion" (Coal and Steel free trade), to the Rome Treaty creating the European Union, all the way to the creation of the common currency and the difficulties that has spawned.

The schizophrenic, confused, self-serving and pitifully incoherent book by Mr. Vickers, in my view, does more harm than good in charting a course into the future.

Review of: "DEMONIC: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America" by Ann Coulter.

The existence of "mob mentality" and "group psychology", as described by Gustave LeBon and studied by sociologists and psychologists since then, is a fact. As Ms. Coulter points out, we can see it in action in history (French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany, on both sides of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests) and on and on the list goes. Mobs are not only evident in large national and historic events; they are just as evident, for example, in school bullying and gang rapes. 

Mob mentality is evident in all forms of political activity, be they on the left or the right or in between. With the developments in modern media, from radio to TV, and now the internet and social media, it is no longer necessary to actually physically gather together a "crowd", but mobs can be incited, controlled and directed from far away and over lengthy periods of time. This combination of modern mass media technology (both "technology" in the strict sense, as well as the methodology of mass persuasion perfected by the advertising industry), together with the virtually unconstrained American interpretation of "free speech", is indeed a very real danger to the survival of civil and democratic societies.

If Ms. Coulter had chosen to present a balanced description and analysis of mass psychology and mob mentality in American political life in history and today, and the very real danger it presents to civil society and meaningful democracy, then this might indeed have been a worthwhile read. However, her demonic obsession with turning this discussion into a one-sided political harangue makes this book into exactly what she accuses "liberals" of - an effort to incite marginally informed masses into a mob movement against any thought or action which does not conform to her rather myopic view of "correct" political views. With this book Ms. Coulter has become exactly what she decries - the Joseph Goebbels of the extreme right-wing.

Even reading the dust cover, it struck me as odd that Ms. Coulter was at pains to describe the French Revolution as liberal and mob-controlled (which undoubtably it was in some aspects), of which the Democrats are supposedly direct "heirs", while "Republicans, heirs to the American Revolution, have regularly stood for peaceable order". Right there is the first instance of Ms. Coulter's use of mob psychology for her own purposes, by wrapping Republicans in the American flag, and associating the Democrats with a foreign flag, culture and mentality - a text-book exercise in inciting mob hysteria.

By the way, Ms. Coulter might be interested in reading "A Note on Mobs in the American Revolution" by Gordon S. Wood, assuming she is open to reading something which might disturb her myopic world view.

For every instance Ms. Coulter cites where liberals, Democrats, progressives (or whatever label she wishes to attach to those she accuses of destroying America) use tools of mob psychology, there are equivalents used by conservatives and Republicans. Take slogans. Ms. Coulter states that "Conservatives don't cotton to slogans", and then goes on to list many of the whoppers coined by liberals and Democrats. But what about "Death Panels" and "taxing the job creators" to name just two. 

Ms. Coulter accuses liberal mobs of "foisting faddish ideas … on the rest of us … which would never have occurred to anyone fifty years ago"; I guess civil rights is a faddish idea in her view.

The negative term "mob" is quickly equivalenced with Democrats (a classic ploy of mob psychology to establish automatic negative associations with your "enemies"), as in "The Mob's Compulsion to Create Messiahs". But hold on, Ronald Reagan has been elevated to a demigod by conservatives, with "supply-side economics" or trickle-down the equivalent of the holy grail.

Overall, Ms. Coulter is obviously a gifted and effective propagandist. I can easily imagine "Demonic" being prominently displayed on the coffee tables of the true believers, as some of the other propaganda masterpieces, "Mein Kampf",  "Das Kapital", and Mao's Little Red Book, are still proudly displayed in other quarters. 

"Dignity is at the Heart of our Declaration of Independence"

Commentary on:

"Dignity is at the Heart of our Declaration of Independence"

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/02/dignity-is-at-heart-our-declaration-independence/

The Declaration and Constitution are indeed inspiring documents. It is, however, one of the tragedies of America and Americans in recent years that we interpret events in other countries as if they too have come through the same European intellectual, social and political experience as we have, and that therefore events like the "Arab Spring" signify the same desire for "dignity" and "democracy" which the American Revolution signified (even that may be over-romanticized).

This skewed world view has led America into the mis-adventures of "nation-building" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. Try to think of it in terms of the French, who helped the American revolutionaries, if they had come in with the same "overwhelming force" of "shock and awe" to build a nation in the Americas in their own image. Would that have been appreciated by American colonials? Would they have turned against the French?

And remember, that the French, just like the Americans now, did not come to help for altruistic reasons - they had their own agenda in a centuries-long struggle with the British for colonial dominance.

So let's try and keep both feet on the ground when we "analyze" events such as the Arab Spring, and remember that the spark which ignited these protests were not a search for "dignity" or "democracy", but a protest against high food prices. And let's try and remember that the "American way of life", as much as most of us may like it, is not what everybody in the world wants or needs.