The Washington Post is out with yet another Amity Shlaes piece today claiming that the New Deal was a big failure. I won’t analyze the piece itself, since I am not an economist, but I will revisit a piece she wrote last July, titled, auspiciously enough, “Phil Gramm Was Right”:
Consider what happened this week. While speaking with the Washington Times, Gramm said that the country was not in a true recession but a “mental recession.” He also said, “We have sort of become a nation of whiners” and “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.”
Gramm was right about the recession and stood by his recession comments on Thursday. A recession is two consecutive quarters in which the economy shrinks, and last quarter it grew. But no matter. Voters feel they are in a recession, and so they are, at least according to Campaign Econ.
I wonder why voters thought we were in recession last July? Is it because they are ill-informed whiners? Oh, that’s right, it’s because we were in recession last July and had been been for seven months:
It took seven economists 11 months to decide what should seem obvious given all the foreclosures, bank failures and layoffs – the United States is officially mired in a recession.
Still, Monday’s declaration by the National Bureau of Economic Research that the economy has been in retreat since last December (2007) sent Wall Street into a bearish fit that knocked nearly 9 percent off the S&P 500 index.
The pronouncement by a committee of academics led by Stanford economist Robert Hall should have come as no surprise.
“We’ve been saying the economy has been in recession for months now,” said economist Brian Bethune of IHS Global Insight, a Boston consulting firm.
Obviously, no one could have anticipated that we were in a recession this summer, no one other than 71% of economists surveyed in March 2008, anyway.
Why on earth does the Washington Post see fit to publish a pseudo-economist who was completely wrong about the big economic issue of the year? It’s probably the same reason, of course, that they exclusively (except for Meyerson) publish columnists who were completely wrong about the Iraq war. Or maybe it’s just because Fred Hiatt is such an influential liberal.
(via)
Woodrowfan
I about threw the Outlook section of the paper across the room when I saw they published her nonsense again today. DC already HAS two RW paper, the Times and the Examiner. Neither make money and yet the Post seems to want to emulate them. WTF??
Riggsveda
"Publishing"? Is that what they do? And here I thought they were proselytizing for the Reagan theology.
Deborah
Are you going to listen to 71% of economists and most of the citizenry, or are you going to listen to Phil Gramm?
(Thank heaven the candidate who agreed with Amity on the answer to that question wasn’t elected.)
JGabriel
Isn’t that kind of redundant?
.
Comrade Jake
The guys over at Powerline have a better track record when it comes to this sort of thing.
FWIW, it took me awhile to find that Powerline post. It seems clear that they "relocated" it after Krugman linked to it. I guess I’d want to hide it too if I’d written something that proved to be so cosmically stupid. Perhaps Amity will try the same trickery.
DougJ
@JG
It was a weak attempt at a pun on Amityville Horror.
rumpole
Because the editorial page staff is as dumb as a sack of hammers.
TR
If anyone’s interested in seeing what actual, professional historians have to say about the New Deal’s accomplishments — as opposed to, say, a right-wing hack with an agenda — the historians over at Edge of the American West have been pushing back against Shlaes’ tendentious bullshit for a while now. Eric Rauchway has a nice dismantling of her book here, too.
MattF
It’s true, the WP Outlook section today gives up any pretense of even handedness. It’s all that votin’ & inauguratin’ going on in the streets these days. The Villagers are pulling up the drawbridge and manning the battlements.
JGabriel
They say history repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
Amity Shlaes is Ayn Rand as farce. Discuss.
.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Damn, I am slow on the uptake. Should have caught that one.
.
Brick Oven Bill
A legitimate ‘stimulus’ would be to electrify the railroads. There could be a standardized design developed in a few hours, and the work could begin tomorrow. Give me $10 million and I will provide this design by 8:00am EST tomorrow morning.
This bill is not about Americans. It is about concentrating government power. The other thing that would stimulate the economy would be to institute tariffs.
Coloradoblue
The real reason their was no "official" (read government) call of a recession last July was the little election thingy going on at the time. If Bush’s admin had called a recession, McCain’s campaign would have crashed sooner, rather than later.
TheFountainHead
Whoah whoah whoah.
Say what you will about Ayn Rand’s philosophy (I think you all have) but to compare Amity Shlaes writing ability (loathe as I am to dignify it as such) to Ayn Rand’s is just completely unfair. The reason she became so popular is because she created a rather plausible and vivid fiction around her philosophy. Amity creates an implausible fiction around reality.
TheHatOnMyCat
Can’t we move on from this deer in the headlights faux surprise thing? We know why, it’s because they sell churn, and this is churn. It’s the same reason we have this thread here.
It’s all about the churn. So, we have the eyeballs, why not make good use of them? What are the five most important issues to be talking about today? I am willing to bet that the question of whether we were in a recession last summer … or whether we should be reading the commentary of someone who said we weren’t …. isn’t on anybody’s list.
Here’s my list: Afghanistan, Iraq, Credit Crunch, Stimulus strategies, Car Industry Redux (next episode coming soon), Healthcare Reform.
That’s six things that are critically important to our future in the next two years. What’s your list look like?
Just Some Fuckhead
@TheHatOnMyCat:
Recession, Recession, Recession, Recession, Recession. Nothing else matters until there is no recession.
MattF
@TheHatOnMyCat
All right, I’ll bite. My list is more orthogonal:
war
democracy/legality
health care
infrastructure
banking/credit
TR
Did you express similar concerns about concentrating government power during the last administration? You know, when Bush was writing "signing statements" that overrode legislative will and when he was proclaiming anything his people did was protected by "executive privilege" from any kind of inquiry at all, and when he was flat-out violating laws like FISA and bragging about it?
Did you worry about the concentration of power then? No? Then kindly shut the fuck up.
TheFountainHead
It would also kill international trade (something we now rely heavily on) as well as cause many of our major corporations to finally move completely overseas.
Laura W
"Desperation in Davos". Fareed Zakaria GPS just starting. CNN.
Sounds a tad grim.
TR
Great stuff in the comments to that moronic WaPo piece.
"Amity Shlaes has a degree in English literature, not economics, right? I guess that is why she is so good at writing fiction."
icculus
It seems to me that the more appropriate venue for Shlaes is Coast-to-Coast AM. She was on last fall, sadly the east of the Rockies line was tied up.
joe from Lowell
To a man (or woman), the people who are now telling us that the New Deal prolonged the Depression spent 2007 and the first 3/4 telling us how awesome the economy was.
Paleocons, necons, libertarians (hi, Reason!), Reaganites, all of ’em. Larry Kudlow used to write columns making fun of the "Bubbleheads," those deluded, partisan fools who thought we had a housing bubble that could pop.
Now, of course, they all pretend to be outraged at how the Democrats created the housing bubble, along with (of course) poor people and minorities.
Forget them. Their opinions don’t matter.
demimondian
Five top things to concentrate upon…
Direct fiscal stimulus to individuals
Strengthening of the union movement
Health care reform
Restoration of progressive taxation patterns in all states, if necessary by limiting state fees and ad valorem tax rates.
Energy independence without radical climate change
Each of these has the effect of moving money into the pockets of the poor and the middle class, which will, in turn, directly stimulate the economy.
TheHatOnMyCat
What is it good for?
Discuss.
TheHatOnMyCat
@demimondian:
Good list.
DougJ
I would put recession first, then healthcare reform (normally this would be at the top but this recession really scares me), and I’d have to put improving our national discourse by getting media to stop publishing shit like Amity Shlaes up there too.
I understand that you think that no one listens to the pundits and editorial pages anymore. But I don’t agree. If you want to convince me you have to come up with come real arguments about this. I think you’re way underestimating how many of our problems stem from our polluted national discourse.
DougJ
@demi
Good list.
demimondian
@DougJ: Ironically, the two issues I care most about personally, civil rights and data privacy, don’t even make the list. Things are that bad…
Rick Taylor
Global warming, environmental resource depletion, and what the hell are we going to use for energy as oil becomes progressively harder to drill. Fifty years from now people looking back will wonder why these weren’t our top priorities.
DougJ
@demi
I think that, as a society, we may be irredeemably fucked. If the recession lingers too long or we get hit with a terrorist attack, there’s a very real chance someone like Sarah Palin will become president. And if that happens, it’s game over.
Reverend Dennis
WaPo publishes Shlaes, Gerson, Hoagland, Krauthammer, Broder, Cohen, etc. because they don’t know what they’re talking about. People who do know what they’re talking about wouldn’t write the kind of tripe that passes for editorials at that paper. It’s the paper of record for The Village and the Villagers are given deference – no matter how out of touch they are with anything outside of the Beltway. I’m only surprised that Cokie Roberts doesn’t have a regular column.
TheHatOnMyCat
Heh. Somehow, convincing you fell way down on my list. But that notwithstanding, I think you are overestimating the idea of a "national discourse" and don’t understand what one is even if there is one.
National discourse is not the crap you hear on tv. That’s tv discourse. Most people tune it out. A few of us addicts tune it in. The most basic data available … ratings … tell us that.
The esteem in which the tv blatherers are held also confirms it. People think tv blather is just noise, just shit. To the extent that they hear what they already believe, they notice. To the extent that they hear what they do not believe, they reject it. That’s it.
You are mistaking the effects of a vocal minority with something called a "national discourse." That’s my opinion.
We are a country that reacts to vocal minorities, in the short run, and goes along with the large implacable majority in the long run. Don’t mix them up.
TR
So in that WaPo piece, Shlaes argues that the "uncertainty" in FDR’s actions caused the markets to hesitate and stumble. Really?
The Dow Jones average was 52.54 when Roosevelt took office in March 1933, and four years later, it was 187.68. The stock market more than TRIPLED in value in a single term in office, and that’s evidence that the market was scared off by FDR?
Do you have to be a complete idiot to work at the Washington Post?
DougJ
I’m not convinced.
TheHatOnMyCat
I strongly and specifically disagree. I think that the USA reestablished itself as the great nation in the world last November 4. The world recognizes the huge break with the past — for the world, not just for us — represented by that event.
Smart won over stupid by ten million votes. That’s a message, which you seem to not have gotten yet.
TheHatOnMyCat
We can save a lot of time by agreeing that you understand that I am not out to convince you. That’s not my goal, nor is it the standard here.
TheFountainHead
Are you watching with the volume off?
DougJ
If you don’t mind me asking, what is the purpose of any of the arguments here between various commenters, then? Just territorial pissing?
TheHatOnMyCat
If BobWoodward is any indication …. yes.
Not just an idiot, but one that got himself played by Robert Redford in a movie. Now THAT’S impressive.
DougJ
No, see Priest, Dana and Gellman, Barton.
It’s just the editorial page that sucks.
Atlliberal
@joe from Lowell:
"Forget them. Their opinions don’t matter."
Unfortunately it’s hard to forget them when they are all over my TV radio and newspapers. We can’t forget them if they won’t go away. They won’t go away until they are completely discredited. That’s our job now.
demimondian
@DougJ: Neither am I — and I track this kind of thing for a living these days.
One of the key concepts used in analyzing web traffic is the notion of a "canary" — a person or web site which is a traffic predictor. Getting talked about on a canary is the key step in peer-based marketing — and opinion movement is all about peer-based marketing.
That’s why the Sunday morning talk shows are so important, TZ.
TheHatOnMyCat
Oh my. First of all, shouldn’t you front pagers be in charge of that? Ask John.
But, for some reason, you are asking me. I only know why I post here, and I wouldn’t presume to know why anyone else does. Part entertainment, part enlightment, part performance art (I write a persona, something you might be familiar with, Mister Chameleon), part outlet for frustration, part comedy, part social gathering/campfire, part addiction.
Stir, simmer, and serve with garlic toast.
demimondian
@DougJ: Um…yes?
TheHatOnMyCat
To whom? The interaction is mostly self-referential.
I think you meant "self-important."
sparky
@TheHatOnMyCat: Sorry, but I disagree.
Very smart and accomplished beat inept and frighteningly stupid by ten million votes. In other words, after eight years of Bush, only ten million fewer people voted for McCain/Palin than Obama/Biden. And that includes Obama’s astounding mobilization ability. So, no, the reality is that the US is still basically the same place.
Geithner seems to think he should be working for JPM and anything other than the merest feint leftward (read: center-ward) is met with howls of outrage.
Also, while there is certainly a sigh of relief around the world, I haven’t noticed the US pulling out of any of its –what, 700+–military installations that lie beyond its borders. So permit me a little skepticism here. The Empire is still listing, even if it does have a smarter skipper.
Warren Terra
Other possible post titles include:
Calamity Shlaes
Amity Flails
… probably there are better ones, I’m just not feeling very creative.
TR
Well, that was fast. Prof. Rauchway at Edge of the American West has already responded to the latest.
J Royce
Again with the (willful, fearful?) ignorance about what the Right does in its modern incarnation of Corporatism. Here are the steps:
A) It is the party of Wealth, so it buys media.
B) It buys political influence to change rules in its favor, for example allowing it to buy up all the newpapers and also have radio and tv stations for SurroundSound Propaganda.
c) It establishes a centralized method of propaganda dissemination such as Think Tanks.
D) It blows out the useful lies from all speakers to create a false reality in which Wealth is to be honored and seen as above whatever silly "laws" civil society has instituted, while distracting (spinning) the citizenry into frenzy or stupefaction at will.
E) Since propaganda works without the person knowing, people who are not self-reflective (ie, Conservatives, whatever it is that calls itself Progressive, and the insane) swallow the hook and become virtual automatons in the false reality.
F) Make untold millions, unless people cannot figure out Steps A-E, in which case Wealth captures billions, unless people still cannot figure it out, in which case Wealth captures trillions, at which point if people STILL cannot figure it out they are reduced to the peasants they surely deserve to be. And better luck next life.
BTW, we are not in a recession. We are in the early stages of a depression. And all this kind of excusing stuff is useful-idiocy that benefits our would-be Overlords:
DC already HAS two RW paper, the Times and the Examiner. Neither make money and yet the Post seems to want to emulate them. WTF??
Because they make money by ruling your mind, not selling ads. That’s why Boeing contributes bribes to Corporate Media: they have a stake in controlling your mind, not in selling you an airplane.
"Because the editorial page staff is as dumb as a sack of hammers."
That’s it … they’re all just soooo dumb. That’s why they just manipulated YOUR tax dollars into the pockets of fat cats that make Tunch look like a svelte cheetah … Not to mention having shilled for illegal wars and a Rightwing Conservative Presidency stillborn Dictatorship that corrupted our already pathetic government and killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and no one, NOT ONE of our "leaders" went to jail. Yeahs thems stoopid huh.
"We know why, it’s because they sell churn, and this is churn."
Sort of, in the sense that whatever gets you to look is useful in the same way that it was useful to Sauron the Lord of Mordor for you to look into his glass orb.
My fellow citizens scare the crap out of me, because it looks very much like this isn’t being figured out quickly enough.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: Shut The Fuck Up:
Bill on bailouts.
Bill on George Bush.
America has been shedding manufacturing and construction jobs steadily. The job ‘gains’ were in education, health care, and government. But education and health care really boil down to government anyway. They do not create national wealth.
We bailed out Fannie-Freddie after the Treasury tried to get China to buy them and the Chinese said no. I believe that we may very well be headed towards a hard currency fall. If outside interests decide to crash our currency, they can, and then that is that.
So here’s my ‘churn’ list.
1. Electrify the railroads, and power them with nuclear power.
2. Lift the oil shale ban, and make America energy independent.
3. Enforce immigration laws.
4. Institute an immediate 35% across the board tariff to raise money and force domestic production.
5. End our engagement in the Middle East and declare Islam to be a violation of RICO in North America (it is and I am running out of ideas).
6. A brick oven in every backyard! Brick Ovens are 90% thermally efficient, in contrast to probably 10-15% for your kitchen oven. Rotting wood creates every bit of CO2 that burning wood does so we might as well burn it. The organic material is oxidized in either case. Brick ovens are truly green energy machines. Give me a grant. This is no kidding a good idea to reduce energy production and green house gas emissions, which is a big deal about nothing in any case. But a grant would still be nice.
demimondian
@TheHatOnMyCat: I think you miss the point of my argument. But, honestly, that’s not unusual.
joe from Lowell
Atlliberal,
A fair point. My retort: living well is the best revenge.
The deluded fools making these arguments don’t have enough power to control squat, so we don’t need to refute them in the short term. Over the long term, success will render any words that were written irrelevant.
TheFountainHead
lolwut?
Just Some Fuckhead
@sparky: Not to get all wrapped around the axle here but after a disastrous eight year run by Bush and Republicans finished out with about a 25% or less approval rating, only about two million fewer people voted for Bush’s handpicked successor, John McCain, than voted for Bush in 2004, or about a 3% decline. That should be depressing as hell for anyone that cares about this shit.
Edit: I was shooting TZ down, not you.
DougJ
Fair enough.
Personally, I often do learn things from the comments here and sometimes change my mind about things.
Cassidy the Racist White Man
…part asshole, part grandstanding, part psuedo intellectual bullshit, part prima donna…
TZ forgot a few.
DougJ
That’s certainly how I view my persona here.
robertdsc
BOB, sometimes I can listen to you, and then there’s times like this. Go DIAF, preferably in your own oven.
MikeJ
Edwin Starr.
gnomedad
@DougJ:
Exactly. One argues not only to convince, but to explore. In fact, the latter is likely more valuable.
Oh, and @DougJ: keep the puns coming. The best ones settle for a while before they go off.
numbskull
Hey Bob, been to China recently?
I have. Lots of brick ovens in people’s backyards and forecourts. Lots and lots. At breakfast time and dinner time, it’s amazing. The smell of wood fires is everywhere. It smells good. Too bad you can’t see more than 3 blocks. But hey, why not burn all the wood. What could possibly go wrong?
ThymeZoneThePlumber
I think you presume that getting the "point" of your argument is my goal. Let me be blunt: You aren’t paying me enough.
Money talks, bullshit walks, compadre.
( rubs fingers together )
I am suspicious of anyone around here who pretends that having his point "gotten" or being "convinced" is what they think this is about. Please refer to the blog’s logo for more information.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Oh sure, damn me with faint praise.
JGabriel
TheFountainHead:
In "The Fountainhead" Rand names one of the characters, the pathetic and evil socialist bad guy, "Toohey". Never one to overestimate her audience, Rand also has one of the characters tell him, "I like your name. It fits you. It sounds like spitting." (Or words to that effect. I don’t have a copy here to look up the exact quote).
The point is, Rand is not a subtle writer. She bludgeons with words. Rand is not a good writer. And don’t get me started on the rape fantasy as metaphor for the people’s will to be dominated by the ubermensch, because that’s just sick fucking offensive shit.
In fact, as far as writing skill goes, Shlaes is probably improved by the comparison.
Sorry, TF, I love you like a familiar and entertaing fellow blog commenter, but you have got to past this lingering delusion that Ayn Rand has any redeeming social merit whatsoever.
And does anyone else think "Shlaes" looks like a typo for "Shales"? I always have to remind myself to not suggest correcting it.
.
Fencedude
And does anyone else think "Shlaes" looks like a typo for "Shales"?
*blinks*
I’ve spent this entire comment thread reading it as "Shales"
RSA
And does anyone else think "Shlaes" looks like a typo for "Shales"?
Me. My brain says, "Amy Shales".
GSD
I think they should start a new group. Rightwing Historical Revisionists for Truth.
-GSD
JL
McCain obviously listened to Phil Gramm and Carla Fiorina but Mark Zandi was also on his economic team. His book Financial Shock is interesting and informative. He supports Obama’s stimulus plan and I can’t figure out why McCain didn’t tout some of his ideas. Of course, I’m glad that he didn’t.
JGabriel
Fencedude, RSA:
So glad to know I’m not alone.
,
eric
i think the simplest answer for why "we" post is because it is enjoyable to be a part of a community that is part smart, part funny, and part angry. The specific mix of smart, funny, and angry is different for people and on different days and on different issues. but in the end, it is "fun." being called an idiot or a$$ by a fellow idiot or a$$ can be enjoyable when you know that it is not pesonal and not an enduring dislike and when there is a good chance that at the end of the thread you will be a little bit smarter and in better humor than when it started.
just a thought,
eric
GSD
Amity Fails.
-GSD
Josh Hueco
I’ve been reading it as Shales. But don’t tell Brickshithouse Bill.
Daniel
I hadn’t read a good ad hom today. It was good to read yours.
So I’m assuming that you agree that Shlaes is right about FDR on economics. If you had any valid complaints I would assumed you would write them instead of relying on an ad hom.
demimondian
@Daniel: You can read? I’m impressed. Most people who think that it’s cool to write ad hom can’t.
But you clearly can’t think, so reading isn’t terribly useful, anyway, is it?
Wile E. Quixote
Brick Shithouse Bill
Does that mean that you’ll stop posting? Actually I’d be interested in running some RICO prosecutions against the Catholic Church. The Church engaged in a massive coverup of its pederasty problem and arranged to transfer child molesters to parishes in other states to cover up the problem. So you have an illegal activity, i.e, fucking choir boys in the ass and a conspiracy to cover it up. Sounds like classic RICO bait to me. Too bad no prosecutor has the balls to take on the Catholics, there are a lot of bishops and monsignors out there who would look much better in orange jumpsuits than they do in clerical garb.
AnneLaurie
Of course not! They’ll train you!
But they do give Dan Froomkin a platform, however grudgingly.
burnspbesq
@Brick Oven Bill:
Lift the oil shale ban??? Are you out of your fucking mind?
Or, to be more specific, have you been to Alberta lately, and seen the environmental disaster that inevitably follows in the wake of oil-shale or tar-sands exploitation?
You can have the oil shale ban lifted as soon as you agree that you and all of your family will live at Ground Zero forever.
Deal?
Didn’t think so. Having to deal with the negative externalities up close and personal tends to shut people like you up pretty quickly.
burnspbesq
@Wile E. Quixote:
The nutcase U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles is apparently getting ready to go after Cardinal Mahony. Pass the popcorn, please.
Brick Oven Bill
numbskul; The use of my brick oven reduces my carbon footprint. As I write, we are preparing our annual Super Bowl ribs feast. One time a year. It is really cold outside and I am cooking my rib feast in the kitchen oven.
Most of our electricity comes from coal. It is foolish to use natural gas to generate electricity, but that is for a different day. So, anyway, the thermal efficiency of a coal powered electricity plant is probably 37%. So roughly two-thirds of the coal’s energy leaves the plant, and goes into the atmosphere.
The other third leaves the plant in the form of electricity, which is synchronized wiggling electrons. Another 8% of the coal’s energy is lost to friction as the electrons wiggle. Friction friction friction.
Then the wiggling electrons enter my house and are directed to the heating coils in my oven, which are high-resistance and much more friction is introduced, causing my oven to heat up.
But there is smoke coming out of the top of my kitchen range. This is heat losses, which I will estimate to be 50%. So let us see what percentage of the coal’s energy goes into my rib feast.
100% * (0.37) * (0.92) * (0.50) = SEVENTEEN PERCENT
In contrast, a properly operated brick oven can achieve thermal efficiencies of 90%. The concrete roof is heated directly by the energy contained in wood. If the wood was to rot, the carbon would be oxidized anyway, so burning the wood does not affect the eventual release of the carbon energy contained in the wood.
This is why I need Obama stimulus money. I am saving the environment. It is for the children.
Brick Oven Bill
burnspbesq; Oil sands are something completely different than oil shale. Oil sands have undergone catagenesis and are ‘wet’ fuels. Oil shale is solid.
The challenge is how to protect the groundwater as catagenesis is induced in the kerogen, producing liquid fuel. This is a challenge that can be overcome in an environmentally-safe manner. Kerogen is virgin fuel, and in my opinion, is the most valuable type of hydrocarbon.
[delurk]...[/delurk]
I think Sparky and Just Some Fuckhead are correct that we shouldn’t be complacent about Obama’s victory but: I think external circumstances are conspiring to mask the true decisiveness of the right wing’s defeat from them. If this can keep them delusional and us motivated, it’s all to the good.
My biggest fear was that the Republicans would nominate McCain. Any voters who hadn’t been playing close attention lately (which is most of them) remembered McCain as the guy who was really well thought of by both sides and an honest man. (Plus, no one in the media had the balls to refute that "war hero" crapola.)
Most people pay no attention to the vice-presidential nominee; they should, but they don’t. The only ones really exercised about Caribou Barbie were her admirers on the extreme right, and us sane people who were scared to death by her. Making fun of somebody on Saturday Night Live doesn’t really register with most people.
And while most of America is still quite racist (and Islamophobic since 9/11) McCain was decisively defeated by a black guy with Arabic first and middle names and a last name one letter off from "Osama"! Does anyone realize how extraordinary that is? Put yourselves back in 2004 and try to imagine it. This is like the earth changing its orbit. It really is a big deal.
The right-wing pundits (who stopped counting percentages when the election was called and ignore Nader and Barr) say to themselves: "52/48? That’s not so bad. We’ll turn it around next time." I say: if the Republicans had nominated anybody but McCain, and Barack Obama had been white (exactly the same guy, but white; with an Anglo/Scottish/Irish name) the election would have been the biggest blowout in history.
Now with my opinion and $1.89 you can buy a cup of coffee, but: I think things did really change on November 4th, and it’s going to take more than a little ignorant carping from right-wing gasbags to turn it around.
JGabriel
Daniel:
So your argument is that the Great Depression, generally agreed to have started with either the stock market crash of 1929, or the bad loans and real estate crash of 1930-1931, was caused by FDR?
What’s it like living through history backwards?
Because in the real world where time flows forward, FDR became president in 1933, when the Great Depression was already in place (circa 1929-1931, which, and apparently I can’t stress this quite enough, comes before 1933) and well underway as the result of 12 years indifference and deregulation by the GOP.
That would be the same GOP who were in charge of the WH 1921-1932 (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover).
.
Mike in NC
What a trifecta of assholes. Fortunate that we didn’t repeat it with Bush, Bush, and McMaverick.
demimondian
@Brick Outhouse Bill: Um…no.
Wow, dude, so many lies in such a short time. I am truly…amazed.
First, your lie about efficiency. You’re comparing efficiency at the smokestack (computed very inaccurately, by the way) with efficiency in the oven. A wood fired oven (with a properly constructed reburner, something that most brick ovens don’t actually have) can, indeed, transfer about 80% of the heat from oxidation of wood to the cavity. Most of that heat is later radiated out into the atmosphere by the ceramic surround (that’s the part you call "the bricks"). You conveniently ignore that step. If you did the same computation for the gas oven in my house, you’d get an approximate efficiency of 97% in the cavity, though.
Oops.
Second, your lie about oxidation. The decomposition of wood in soil does not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It leaves the carbon trapped in the soil. When you burn a block of wood, you release the carbon into the atmosphere, which is the reason that you can’t see more than a couple of blocks in Beijing.
Oops.
Sorry, puppy, you’ll have to make up better lies than that to pass muster with this crowd.
Just Some Fuckhead
@[delurk]…[/delurk]:
Something like Brock O’Bama?
Will
Weren’t Gene Robinson and E.J. Dionne against the war?
DonkeyKong
I wonder if Freddies legs fall asleep "publishing" the Post.
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@Just Some Fuckhead:
Perfect! And 50 years ago that’s what it would have been, too!
Brick Oven Bill
Demondian; I beg to differ. The thermal efficiency of a brick oven, in theory, could be above 90%. This would require a perfectly insulated roof and a minimum of gases leaving the chimney. I will not argue that there are significant heat losses through the roof and that, when operating at the white-hot temperature of 800F, the thermal efficiency is probably below 80%. As the temperature goes up, the thermal efficiency goes down.
It was my intent to put an insulating blanket above the chamber, but all of those crazy dreams just kind of came and went.
We agree that organic materials that are isolated from oxygen will not be oxidized. They instead undergo diagenesis, creating Kerogen, or virgin fuel. The carbon molecules, instead of bonding with oxygen, and being released to the atmosphere as CO2, instead bond with hydrogen. Creating the savior of Western civilization, as we know it, if we are smart enough to take advantage of it.
But you’d have to bury our theoretical piece of wood pretty deep. Wood would have to be buried in sediment, in order to release its stored solar energy to Kerogen. America’s Kerogen resources were mostly fresh-water algae, buried hundreds of millions of years ago in sediment in an ancient lake in the American west. The Green River Deposits are the highest energy Kerogen to be found anywhere in the world.
It is, perhaps, divine.
DougJ
Were they? I don’t know.
liberal
@DougJ:
It’s possible Robinson wasn’t an op-ed columnist yet (in Mar 2003).
Sam Simple
It’s because the Washington Post is full of CIA plants, and has been since the 1950’s – see Operation Mockingbird:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
I wonder if this Shlaes person opposed George W. Bush’s wasteful infrastructure spending projects in Iraq, every penny of which was borrowed money? Kinda doubt it. Talk about a waste of American taxpayer dollars!
demimondian
@Crematorium Bill: You’re lying, then? Not just misinformed, but actually lying? And you admit it?
Wow. That’s a new level of goalpost moving.
Brick Oven Bill
Every one of my words, to the best of my knowledge, are true. To what do you refer?
TheHatOnMyCat
Sometimes the heat of that oven gets to BillBob a little.
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It slays me the people who think that cutting down trees that have been formed by removing carbon from the atmosphere over the last few years or decades and returning that carbon to the atmosphere through burning it is exactly the same as digging up 400,000,000 years worth of sequestered carbon out of the ground and burning it all in a couple of centuries.
That’s right up there with the "So what if the Antarctic ice cap melts? When the ice melts in my drink, the level doesn’t change." argument.
Oh, and by all means, let’s start strip-mining entire states for oil shale and burn that! (Or pave over entire states with solar panels, but that’s another rant.)
TheHatOnMyCat
We’ll be the judge of that, BillBob.
Brick Oven Bill
Long hair, definitely.
Chris Johnson
Try to remember that ‘figuring out’ is not at all the same as ‘acting on’.
My own prediction is this: an awful lot of people, perhaps most of them, have learned to treat the mass media news as akin to reality shows- it’s entertaining, but not really ‘real’. It’s faked, made up.
I’m sure it’s a little frustrating, but it’s also a comforting conclusion to draw in a Tofflerian ‘Future Shock’ future where you really cannot keep up with pretty much anything, and there are way more lies than truths. You get rebellious, don’t believe in much of anything anyone says, and cling to institutions (like the GOP) simply because they are familiar.
The massive clinging to the GOP is not an endorsement of their policies or even evidence that the average GOP voter even believes a word they say deep down inside. That’s for the Red State trike force, for those who need to get pumped up about something beyond the Super Bowl.
The challenge is not so much deprogramming (apart from for instance the racist right- deprogramming some of that would be nice), the challenge is for civic and media leaders to be somewhat intelligent and coherent. Jon Stewart’s developed amazing popularity just by being somewhat intelligent and coherent, and that’s not his job- his job is making you laugh at stuff.
Chuck Butcher
Back to Sclaes for a moment, you might note that the prescription offered is the favorite wealth concentrator of the right, halve the corporate tax and reduce capital gains to 5%. Effectively wealth would pay 1/8th tax on their wealth that a non-union carpenter pays. Ring any bells?
No blushing with the biggest F-you in a long time.
TenguPhule
BOB, the gold star of stupid.
Wile E. Quixote
@Simple Sam
I’d love to see the Democrats grow enough balls to hammer the Republicans with this. Just start slamming away at the cost of the Iraq war and ask Mitch McConnell why he was willing to tax Americans to pay for infrastructure in Iraq but hates the idea of building infrastructure in the United States.
Common Sense
There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama
demkat620
@Wile E. Quixote:
That’s pretty much what Barney Frank did to Jim Demint on Snuffleupagus’ show this morning.
Wile E. Quixote
@Chuck Butcher
Can anyone explain the logic of the capital gains tax to me? So let’s say I’m a shit hot orthopedic surgeon at a major trauma center. I work my ass off, my day starts at 5, and can go until 8PM. It is not uncommon for me to spend nine hours in surgery working on a single patient. It is also not uncommon for me to end up working on weekends and holidays on emergency cases. I had to go through 10 to 14 years of incredibly demanding schooling in order to become an orthopedic surgeon. So let’s say I make 1 million dollars a year as an orthopedic surgeon, I’m going to be paying 35 percent tax on all of that over, what, $100,000? So I’m paying a few hundred thousand dollars in taxes every year.
Now, let’s say that Mommy and Daddy left me a bunch of stock on Exxon/Mobil. So much stock that I get 1 million dollars a year in dividends. I didn’t do a fucking thing to earn that money, not one goddamned thing, but I pay 15% on it. Or I can purchase stock in a company, wait 12 months and then sell it and make $1,000,000 and only pay 15 percent on that. So I pay less on the money I "earned" than the orthopedic surgeon.
So who is contributing more to society? The surgeon who makes a million dollars a year and works for every penny of it? Or the guys who laze around collecting dividends and selling stock?
The way I see it the reduced rates for capital gains are nothing more than rich people gaming the tax code so that they pay less on the income they "earn" than do the people who actually work for a living. If Mommy and Daddy had left me a bunch of Exxon/Mobil stock, or if I were a no-load like Shlaes or her spiritual sister McMegan McArdle (have either one of these women ever held a real job?) I’d probably think that this was a great deal, but well, I’m not a trustafarian, think-tank whore or Gen-X slacker blogger for The Atlantic so I’m left wondering.
Church Lady
No, the capital gains tax rate is a total rip-off, primarily benefitting the wealthy. Why is some investment income taxed at a lower rate than other types of investment income? If I hold a stock for a year and sell it at a profit, I pay the capital gains tax of 15% on that profit. If I invest my money in a one year CD however, I will pay whatever my marginal tax rate is on the interest I earned on that CD, and for most that will be something in excess of 15%. All investment income should be treated the same – either tax it all at the same capital gains rate or tax it all at the marginal income tax rates. Given the pull of the wealthy in shaping our tax policies, we all know that will never happen.
daveinboca
Thank God for the WaPo’s giving Schlaes a forum, bringing a touch of PC-free sanity to a paper stained with the likes of Froomkin and dozens of other loons to the left of Uncle Joe Stalin. Barney Frank is as big a crook as Charlie Rangel and Chris Dodd, the kind of corrupt assholes the Dems promote to their top-down shitstorm of socialist racketeers.
jhh
The public’s disgust at the huge bonuses paid out to Wall St bankers just ahead of the arrival of hundreds of billions of taxpayer-financed bailout cash is leading to demands that somehow they pay back the ill-gotten bonus cash. And how to do it?
The experience of watching the idle rich get richer in the 20s and blow up the economy for everyone in the Great Depression, which led to the New Deal and WWII led the US public to a solution. The bills were paid by raising taxes to top marginal rates which hit 90% by the end of the Eisenhower administration. And under Ike, interestingly, the average economic well being of most (white at least) Americans was probably the highest ever.
So the answer to how we are going to get the money back from the bankers is really quite simple. And it is of course 180 degrees opposite to the proposed policies of the GOP.
Medicine Man
Good Lord. History does repeat, doesn’t it.
numbskull
BOB,
Sorry, I guess all the wood smoke in China was a figment of my imagination. Sure most of the air pollution is from coal. So let’s all go back to having brick ovens in our yards. It’s what the Chinese do. I’m sure every one of ours in the US of A will be a super-duper efficient one, just like yours.
Like I said, let’s burn all the wood now. I mean, all those carbon atoms will eventually be free anyway, right? Let’s just set ’em free right now. What could possibly go wrnog?
Jack
Amity is right on point. Fortunately she knows more about history and social engineering than you do.
The New Deal was the first step in undermining capitalism and moving toward socialism. It has nearly destroyed the Federal budget and is being expanded to the point where the debt and entitlement payments can not be sustained without taxation that will cripple the economy for decades to come. Oh, I forgot. Congress fixed welfare by renaming it earned income tax credit. Now you can get a welfare check, even if you earn $43,000 a year. Nice vote buying expenditure there.
Phil Gramm was right, America has a lot of whiners. Too many people think they’re a victim and need to blame everyone but themselves for their situations. They want the government to provide them a free lunch and see nothing wrong with taking the cost of their lunch from someone else who takes responsibility for their own well being and earns more than they consume.
These are the same people that were refinancing their houses as fast as they could go and over spending on everything they thought they couldn’t live without. Now they want the government to fix the problem.
The number of people earning more than they consume is shrinking. It’s going to be real hard for people to make a living at Starbucks and Barnes and Noble.
You should pay more attention to Amity and less attention to whatever is rolling around in your empty head.
Carl Marx thought communism was a good way to improve the lives of the working class. Yeah, he was right about that one! And it was interesting to see how many "life improving" despots used Marxist philosophy to gain power and then improved the lives of the workers by killing off millions of them so there would be more rice left for the ones that lived and less political opposition to their version of the new deal.
It’s time for Americans to stop whining, stop looking to blame everyone else for the shit they’re standing in and start to improve their lives through their own efforts by pulling their open hands back wanting something for nothing.
Jack
Jeanne Ringland
Dear John,
Just ran across this when I was looking for something to refute an idiot singing the praises of Amity, and I have to say it again, you rock.
oipe_jeanne