Charles Lane was kind enough to respond to me about my recent post questioning the motivation for his long anti-Krugman jihad.
I conceded that he had never made any firm austerian (in the sense of reducing short-term budget deficits during this slowdown/recession) policy recommendations and he conceded that he had never made ANY firm economic policy recommendations beyond opposing minimum wage laws. He was reasonably rude and strangely ignorant of the fact that many contemporary Keynesian economists (Krugman, for example) believe that increased government spending stimulates the economy more than tax cuts do during an economic slowdown, but still….I give him a lot of credit for engaging me at all. So hats off.
I suppose this goes under the category of hippie punching, but it struck me that what Lane and a host of other centrist and faux liberal commentators are really about is being anti-liberal. They don’t want to make any specific policy recommendations (Kinsley certainly hasn’t in his recent string of anti-Krugman pieces), they just want to point at what they see as the “far left” and say “I am more serious and centrist than that”.
One strange thing about a lot of contrarian, anti-liberal writing is that its tone suggests that liberals are running everything, that we are truly governed by hippie overlords. I’m not sure where this comes from, maybe their editors or professors or parents were liberal or maybe when they started, Washington wasn’t wired for Republican control (though I doubt this, hardly any started much before 1980 and you could argue that the real power shift occurred in the late 60s/early 70s anyway). Here’s a telling (and admirably honest) tweet from conservative legal scholar Benjamin Wittes, previously an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
@billymeltdown @kgosztola I’m really an anti-authoritarian. It’s just that all my authority figures were liberals!
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) May 1, 2013
A good explanation of why hippie punching is cool and transgressive.
Redshirt
The puzzle at the foundation of your equation: How could a Hippy be in charge of anything?
Tonybrown74
So, in other words he’s a conservative asshole.
the Conster
So they’re all 14 year olds jockeying for the kool kidz table. Great!
LittlePig
they just want to point at what they see as the “far left” and say “I am more serious and centrist than that”.
And then you can be on Dancing Dave’s joint, or maybe the show by The Clinton Guy Who Was Shocked By Blowjobs! Employment is now assured!
Jeez Louise.
Domino
Does this really boil down to “I like to appear “serious” when I attend DC cocktail parties.” ?
WereBear
I just had a generational discussion one thread down, about compare and contrast. And the hippy punching is definitely about who you were and what you were doing when the hippies were changing society.
People who weren’t born yet think it’s a fashion statement.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Hippies are dirty, use drugs, do not wash, vote Democrat and indulge in irresponsible and revolting sexual practices.
It is not merely patriotic to punch them, nay, it is our moral imperative as God-fearing Americans.
NonyNony
So these guys are all Alex P. Keaton lashing out at their ex-hippie parents?
Yeah … I call bullshit. It seems more like they grew up to get jobs that put them in the highest tax bracket and decided that tax cuts were more important than anything else.
Shakezula
“You’re not gonna let those liberals boss you around and give you a safety net wedgie are you?” is one of the new/old ways conservatives try to sell shit sandwiches.
Villago Delenda Est
More than sufficient reason to be booked for a tumbrel ride.
As for Wittes, his comment is more than enough justification for the annihilation of the Village.
catclub
” So hats off.”
Remember the reviews for PDQ Bach? “Hats off gentlemen, a genius. … Hats back on gentlemen, an idiot.”
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: “As for Wittes” I still want him to name names. Who exactly, besides his nanny, was a liberal authority figure?
ranchandsyrup
For me this demonstrates the connection between narcissism and tribalism. The tribalism is a tool to further the narcissism. An extension of the exaggerated sense of self is that one’s tribe is always right. So the merits of what an authority is saying don’t matter, just the uniform of the authority. How could a righty or faux lefty live with himself after being dressed down by a hippie/other? They’d rather be wrong but bossed around by a Daddy Republican in a codpiece and jumpsuit.
srv
Chuck is just someone who bought a bowflex but didn’t work out enough to go Republican.
Suffern ACE
@Forum Transmitted Disease: For you maybe hippies look that way. For THEM, hippies look like Mike Dukkakis and Janet Reno.
patroclus
So the entire contribution that Charles Lane wants to make to the U.S.’s financial situation is to argue that Paul Krugman should be more civil to Michael Kinsley and that the minimum wage should be abolished??!! I am really rather astonished – you gave him a chance, were reasonably polite and he totally punted.
Based on your summary (you didn’t attach a link), Lane has nothing to say about how deficits have declined precipitously now that the economy is growing; he has nothing to say about the income tax increases over $400,0000 enacted early this year, he has nothing to say about the FICA tax increases; he has nothing to say about the sequestration, he has nothing to say about the potential impact of the immigration reform bill; he has nothing to say about medical costs coming more into control in light of the ACA, he has nothing to say about the debt limit; he basically has nothing to say whatsoever.
And this guy is a former TNR editor, a Washington Post columnist/reporter and a regular Fox commentator. Our failed media experiement indeed.
Frankensteinbeck
@ranchandsyrup:
I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what you’re saying.
Also, never underestimate just how deeply abusive thinking has sunk into the conservative psyche, even among those who do not intend to be cruel. Helping people by directly helping them makes no sense to these folks. At a gut level, they know it cannot work. Their common sense tells them that you can only help people by hurting them. That’s ‘being responsible’.
piratedan
well after all hippies are well known for their communes.. wait a second…
it’s like these guys never went to a history or political science class. They think that Communism is what the Soviet Union actually followed and that the socialism that the Hippies practice in their communes means that there must have been some old rich people that were murdered in their beds in order for them to have redistributed their wealth. These folks are still hung up on rigid social dogma with latent irritation of people “not knowing their place” driving their arguments. It’s as if they’ve still not shaken the Victorian age set of class values and refuse to see people as people and that there is any inherent value in the individual.
So when someone proposes that it’s inherently in our best interest for us to take care of old people, make it possible for folks to help themselves through education or working hard or both and see their financial station in life approve is somehow an anathema to them because they’re locked into this mindset that people can’t change, won’t change because it allows them to maintain their own perceived superiority. Me, I just don’t like seeing people living under overpasses and think that most folks, if given the opportunity to have a better life with some creature comforts, someone to love and a sense of security will seize it.
ranchandsyrup
@Frankensteinbeck: If Ayn Rand didn’t give them cover, I’m sure someone else would have. Still, fuck you Ayn Rand. We’re fighting the fever-dreams of a lady that assimilated the threat of communism.
NonyNony
@catclub:
According to his Wikipedia entry he went to Oberlin College. So at the very least most of the professors he had while attending college would have been liberal authority figures. Why the hell he would choose to go to Oberlin I can’t say – maybe his parents were hippies and forced him to go there?
burnspbesq
Ben Wittes is an interesting case. Very often wrong (in my view) but always smart and thoughtful. He’s a big part of the reason why Lawfare is a must-read blog.
patroclus
Kinsley, at least, argued for tax increases for those making $250,000 or more and for unspecified cuts to Medicare and Social Security – this is why he considers himself to be a “left austerian.” And Kinsley opposed any further stimulus appropriations. So, at least partially, he is engaging in the debate. But, like Lane, even he seems more concerned with how he is treated by those with which he disagrees rather than any actual policy implications.
This is really bizarre – a democracy is supposed to have a healthy debate about what it allocates resources towards and how much it asks its citizens to contribute. But the attittude of our “betters” like Lane/Kinsley, when given an opportunity, is to simply to refuse to engage in the process and either to merely make civility police comments or to lambaste those that actually do try to engage in the debate. Or, I suppose, they’re also willing to kibitz on the process issues and how the political optics should be managed.
What’s weird is that I used to respect Lane; his reputation is now completely in the toilet.
DZ
There hasn’t been any significant ‘far left’ since the late 60s and early 70s. What they mean is anyone to the left of Attila the Hun. Just for the record, the real hippies had all disappeared into the wilds by 1969.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
How do you square “anti-authoritarian” with the top-down, trickle-down, just-walk-on-by-while-Daddy-tortures-a-bad-man mentality that pervades pretty much all conservatism of the Reagan-Cheney years, from the myth of job creators to the unitary executive to “Shut up and sing!”
ETA: I don’t know Wittes, I guess he may be one of those rare libertarians with an MSM platform who opposed a lot of the Bush agenda, like Chapman and IIRC Bruce Fein.
Scotius
One of the things I’ve been enjoying about Michael Kinsley’s posts the past week is the shock of a hippy puncher at having the hippies punch back. This didn’t used to happen in the 90s. Now pundits like him and Joe Klein can no longer write fact-free drivel without being called on it. Those Georgetown cocktail weenies must be turning into dust in thyeir mouths at such a situation.
Frankensteinbeck
@ranchandsyrup:
I think Reagan gave them the most cover with his ‘welfare queens’ angle. It not only sucked up the hate addicts, it confirmed everything the people infected with abusive thinking wanted to believe. He gave them an excuse to believe that helping people just makes things worse. They REALLY want Reagan back. It was all so clear, then.
Alex S.
It IS weird. “Serious” commentators can suggest the most outlandish right-wing ideas and still get traction. From George Will’s climate denialism to Niall Ferguson’s gay-bashing, everything is possible. You can have 25% unemployment in certain European countries and still argue that people shouldn’t be let off the hook for being “irresponsible”, so they need to suffer a little more. You can give ‘troubled’ banks billions of dollars, so they can afford to write off the mortgages of bankrupt households and seize their houses which will now be empty and lose value; yet it is apparently inconceivable that the free money goes to households instead, so they can pay their mortgage which also helps the banks in the end. In the end, the apparent irresponsibility of households (who took a bank loan not knowing that the economy was about to collapse) is worse than the irresponsibility of the banks (who gave out loans to people who either couldn’t afford it, or tricked them into taking them, or simply didn’t realize that there was a housing bubble.)
Todd
Hippie punching is generally fun if the hippies are of the sort that cry or get eating disorders when people state that:
1. Aggressive panhandlers who shit on downtown sidewalks are being oppressed if anyone dares to suggest that they are filthy and that the practice should stop;
2. Mumia is a murderous asshole;
3. Julian Assange is a cretinous famewhore;
4. The Armed Forces of the United States should exist;
5. Meat is good; and
6. Bradley Manning should not get a place on Mount Rushmore.
The problem is that conservatives now lump anybody who desires effective, responsive government and those who support the ideals of “old labor” in with the hippies.
Doug Milhous J
@burnspbesq:
I didn’t mean for this to sound too critical of him, I give him credit for his honesty there.
Hunter Gathers
They punch hippies because hippies are well known to take part in the very unconservative, extremely un-serious endeavor known as ‘having fun’. The Very Serious People never had any fun. Ever.
ranchandsyrup
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah great point re Reagan. The ur-daddy goper
WereBear
Not weird when it is by design. If hippies had made metric tons of money, and bought themselves a bunch of media outlets, the world would look quite different than it does now.
Higgs Boson's Mate
I was at all three days of Monterey pop back in ’67. I had knots wailed on my head by Alameda County Sheriffs at the Oakland Selective Service blockade in ’68. I smoked dope with Spirit and I hung out at the Fish house. I knew the Jefferson Airplane when they were the the Jefferson Street Airplane and Signe Toly Anderson was their lead vocalist.
So where are my goddamned hippy liberal super powers?
Todd
Of course, judging by the front pagers at FDL and Kos, hippies are weak and can’t take a punch.
Violet
@ranchandsyrup: Isn’t one of the defining characteristics of Republicans that they seem to have Daddy issues? We had a list of those characteristics going awhile back.
Patrick
@patroclus:
This is just it. There should not be needed a debate about this. It is economics 101. You increase govt spending during a downturn and you do the opposite when the economy does well. The deficit will take care of itself once the economy start growing. And this exactly what is currently happening.
WereBear
Abused as children, every one of them. I haven’t been wrong yet.
Of course, some liberals were, too. They just got over it much better.
Mnemosyne
@patroclus:
I have noticed that there is a certain type of 50+ white male (not all of them, mind you, but a certain subset) who get very upset when you challenge their authoritah by asking questions or pointing out their facts and/or assumptions are wrong. They get particularly upset if you are the “wrong” kind of person to be doing this (a minority, a woman, a younger person, etc.) because you are supposed to automatically listen to them and give their points credence simply because of their social position as 50+ white males. And if they don’t get that deference, they get very, very upset.
Violet
@WereBear: Yes. Abusers beget abusers unless they get help to change their ways. Republican policy is abuse writ large.
Hawes
I feel reasonably certain that “liberal” and “hippies” are different things.
gussie
@Todd: That’s pretty much perfect. Hippie punchers are people who feel, deep in their souls, that impolite mentally-ill people and the McRib are more important than employment and climate change.
ranchandsyrup
@Violet: yeah I remember that. Righties say that libruls have daddy issues stemming from absenteeism and effeminate fathers and lack of discipline.
some guy
@Todd:
spoken like a true Center-Right Hippy Puncher. good on you, punching below your weight class.
Keith G
A good and interesting post.
I wonder if some of the conditions you point to would be alleviated if a new and contemporary take on liberalism could be assertively enunciated. Paul Krugman does what he can but he’s not always the best messenger and besides we need more than one voice. It’s easy to to punch hippies when they don’t put up much of a fight and they are outnumbered…and the message isnt calibrated to its audience.
Many decades ago when I was a wee lad just getting my social and political consciousness, the Liberals were the cool kids generating important ideas, always fighting the good fight. It would be nice to get back to that.
patroclus
@Patrick: Agreed, but it depends on whether the tax rates are set so as to structurally raise enough revenues during growth periods. Which is more or less what we did earlier this year with the tax increases over $400,000, the FICA tax increases and the AMT changes. And winding down the off-budget Iraq war was helpful as well. This is Keynesian Economics 101 and ever since Keynes actually wrote The General Theory, it has generally been borne out by actual experience. The high growth Clinton era brought about budget surpluses because of this. According to current trends, the Obama period, if growth is higher and sustained, will probably also trend towards surpluses. The end of the FICA tax holiday will help extend Social Security solvency; the ACA, by reining in medical cost increases when fully effective in 2014 and beyond, will help extend Medicare solvency.
Meanwhile, Kinsley and Lane are concerned about civility.
mapaghimagsik
@ranchandsyrup:
Doesn’t the discipline usually involve wetsuits?
Mnemosyne
@Hawes:
In reality, yes. Inside Charles Lane’s head, not so much. I suspect he really is one of those guys who looks at Obama and sees Huey P. Newton.
NickT
@Mnemosyne:
It’s pretty amusing when you find them trolling a forum and you just keep tripping them up with facts, logic and citations of what they actually said. Sooner or later they just lose it and melt down in a mixture of threats, self-pity and claims that they are going to do all sorts of things that liberals supposedly hate.
Doug Milhous J
@Keith G:
I agree, though I think that at this point, generating new ideas is not the thing, it’s using the old ideas that have worked in the past.
A realist foreign policy and traditional mainstream Keynesian economic policies would have made a big difference the last 12 years. I don’t know enough about the financial crisis to say for sure, but I think that old ideas about financial regulation might have headed off the financial crisis too.
catclub
@patroclus: “And winding down the off-budget Iraq war”
Nope, Obama put it ON the budget so that when it winds down, it makes the budget look better.
Smart guy.
WereBear
@ranchandsyrup: From their dysfunctional point of view, sure! From where reality sits, not so much.
Anyone with doubts, just read Republican Gomorrah. You are welcome.
catclub
@patroclus:” The end of the FICA tax holiday will help extend Social Security solvency”
I think we were told that the FICA tax holiday would have NO impact on the solvency of SS, because the SS shortfall would be made up by general revenues.
The best thing to extend SS solvency is a growing economy.
Chyron HR
@some guy:
Yes, let’s all shed a tear for poor little world famous political activist Julian Assange. How persecuted he is by the comments of Todd from Balloon Juice.
joes527
This is is an interesting post, given the amount of hippie punching that goes on around here when the hippies are … inconvenient.
I know, I know … We punch the bad hippies. Lane is punching the good hippies.
Groovy.
patroclus
@Mnemosyne: Well, I would be willing to listen to them and even defer to their “authority” if they had something useful to say. But the subset you’re talking about, which includes Lane and Kinsley, have been given the opportunity to say something and all they come out with is drivel. Kinsley is more interested in pissing off liberals by being a neo-liberal contrarian and Lane is more interested in criticizing liberals for alleged civility errors – neither have much, if anything, to say on actual policy issues.
This vapid vacuousness does not bode well for the upcoming “debate” about extending the debt ceiling…
some guy
@Chyron HR:
I think my point was Todd was, in fact, mirroring the exact same moves Charles Lane and other Center-Right Hippy Punchers make.
Odd, the use of Hippy Punching to decry Hippy Punching, but who am I to determine the rationale of Right Wingers like Lane, or Center Rightists like todd?
some guy
@joes527:
please stop hoisting the regulars on their own petards.
low-tech cyclist
How do I find my way to Benjamin Wittes’ alternate universe where all the authority figures are liberals? I can have my bags packed in half an hour!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@joes527: Lane is punching all of the hippies.
ETA: And also a number of people hippies wouldn’t consider hippies.
NobodySpecial
Balloon Juicers defending ‘hippies’? Someone’s been into the Wild Irish Rose again. When they stop the drunken brofest hugging, they’ll go back to their old ways of smacking anything to the left of Bob Dole.
smintheus
Wittes, the guy who loves Gitmo and wants to keep it open, describes himself as anti-authoritarian? Aha ha ha.
raven
@NobodySpecial:
What’s the word?
Thunderbird
What’s the price?
Foty twice!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The big difference though is that BJer’s “punch hippies” for their arguments. Lane and those like him are punching hippies for being hippies, nothing else.
some guy
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
really? you feel confident todd’s “Julian Assange is a famewhore” and “Mumia is a murderous asshole” are actual argumentative claims rather than simple Center-Right Hippy Punching?
patroclus
@catclub: I agree wholeheartedly that the best way to extend Social Security solvency is robust growth. The goals of public finance are: (1) growth; (2) stabilization (safety and soundness); (3) an efficient allocation of resources (high employment and capacity utilization); and (4) an equitable distribution of wealth and income. This is what economies should be trying to accomplish – all the time. Deficits (both long- and short-term) matter, but only to the extent that they are used as tools to accomplish the 4 goals or as indicia that reflect how well we are accomplishing the 4 goals. I wish that politicians and policy-makers understood this much better. Kinsley and Lane certainly don’t.
Hoodie
There’s probably some truth in what Wittes says. It seems that most folks’ worldview gets pretty locked in around their late teens and twenties. Most center left/right types I know had formative years in the 70’s and 80’s and really have difficulty not using the frames of that era, e.g., everything is Reagan v. Dan Rostenkowski, Jimmy Carter, etc. Even though guys like Kinsley can intellectualize that times have changed and people born after, say 1975, have no particular investment in the world historical perspectives of Kinsley et al., they may hold on particularly tightly to those perspectives because they are tied to time at which they established their identities as pundits and, therefore, those perspectives bear sort of unmutable wisdom. They’re old farts. It’s kind of interesting that Krugman was not all that political before the Bush era, while guys like Kinsley have been hacking politics for their entire lives.
Todd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
This. If Hubert Horatio Humphrey were alive today, he would be considered a hippie worthy of a punch by Charles Lane. Other likely candidates for hippie status would be any pre-1965 New England Republican, post-1980 Barry Goldwater, John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.
In terms of the right wing, the Birchers now dominate, and are probably were at their apex in 2005. We’re seeing the pain of the contraction, kind of like when the Hulk metamorphosizes back to his Banner identity, and ther is more damage that they can do yet, as they insinuated themselves incredibly deeply into society.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Hawes:
The deal with ‘hippie punching’ isn’t to punch actual hippies. It’s to lift someone or something up as a strawman of being guilty of the unforgivable sin of being a hippie, in order to delegitimize not only that person or argument, but anything to their left as being unforgivably hippyish. Because in our political climate, the worst thing you can be is a ‘hippie’.
muddy
Their whole “government is bad” thing really informs the abuse issue that has been raised. Obviously it has not worked well to have people who think government is bad run the government. They do a poor job, fuck it up, and then say, “Look how fucked up it is!”
It’s exactly like abusive parents who fuck their kids up good and proper, and then carry on about how messed up the kids are, and what’s their damn problem?
Todd
@raven:
“Thunderbird has an unusual flavor all its own, not quite like anything I’ve ever tasted.”
– James Mason
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xY7mBQrzXU
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@some guy: I had to go look up who Mumia was. The question on Assange is: Why do we know the name of someone who works for a group named Anonymous?
As for Todd’s list, it sounded like he was hippy poking, not hippy punching. He just likes to torture. He probably pulled the wings off flies as a kid.
joes527
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yes. That is a very clear critique of his arguments. I see what you are saying.
Bruce S
Interesting how this obvious idiot Wittes conflates the meaning of “authority” and “authoritarian.” Paul Krugman is undeniably an authority on macro-economics. The notion that he’s an authoritarian is ridiculous. To simplify this, Wittes doesn’t understand the difference between Holden Caulfield and Bakunin. He’s got an adolescent mentality, not a principled political position.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@joes527: I knew a guy who believed it was his purpose to get people angry. He always took whatever position was opposite of the person he was talking to. He just liked to get a rise out of people.
That’s how I read Todd’s list, especially since he said as much in his first sentence.
Todd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I would have, but the little fuckers were always too damn fast.
raven
@Todd: Dang
Todd
@raven:
There’s a whole string of them.
A paen to Ripple
“That ripe new drink with a ‘ring-a-ding’ flavor that winks right back at you.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciR7Fq2tqJ0
Todd
Orson Welles shooting a Paul Masson commercial while hammered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFevH5vP32s
Chris
It’s in their nature to invent vague, amorphous, ill-defined enemies that supposedly control the entire world – it’s how they deflect any criticism from the people who actually have the power. A hundred years ago, they told us that the Council of the Elders of Zion were our overlords. Today, it’s “liberal elites,” “political correctness,” and all these other things that come back to hippies. As long as people are outraged at fictional, powerless “hippie overlords,” they’re not being outraged at the people who actually crashed our economy (and have, in general, been fucking it up since the seventies).
Nitpicking, but I think Washington has always had a pro-Republican bias, at least for as long as Republicans have been the party of rich people (so, since the Gilded Age or thenabouts). Certainly Republicans were treated with far greater respect in the “liberal consensus” era of the fifties and sixties than Democrats have been since the Reagan years.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie:
I honestly feel a little shocked every time a left/liberal movement or argument that would have been hopeless during the Reagan or even the Clinton era actually works. My default assumptions about what’s politically possible were established back then, and it’s surprising when reality challenges them: Americans always believe that government is the problem and seriousness implies budget cuts; agitating too soon for gay rights will cause a terrible backlash; the first black President will have to be a Republican, etc.
Todd
Thunderbird and Grapefruit Juice commercial in the middle of Fernwood 2Nite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMwBgU8VTfw
Roger Moore
@Doug Milhous J:
That’s a bit unclear. Part of the problem is that regulation needs to be updated regularly or the banksters will find ways of working around it. For all that people blame the crash of ’08 on the repeal of Glass-Steagall, I’ve heard a number of people I trust claim that shadow banking had already made it pretty much a dead letter. There’s just too much incentive to find ways around regulation to stick exclusively with old ideas.
Chris
@Domino:
Yes. Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s the press’s only real standard when it comes to evaluating how “serious” people are. People like Clinton and Obama come in and trash the place and it’s not their place, and they don’t revel in the socialite games that the city’s elites so enjoy, which proves how unserious they are.
ericblair
@Bruce S:
Part of being an authoritarian is not being able to understand the difference. Everything is personalized into Great Leaders. So, if Krugman comes out against austerity, and Wittes somehow manages to find out that Krugman sodomizes goats in his spare time and discredits Professor K, then Wittes has proven that austerity is correct. QE fuckin D.
NonyNony
@Todd:
I think that the fact that Paul freaking Krugman is a “hippie” worth punching supports that point immensely.
The fact that Paul freaking Krugman is the leftmost edge of our political discourse makes me sad every time I contemplate it. Those of us who remember the 90s recall Krugman being a Moderate Centrist of the Clinton mold. And nothing he’s written has actually showed me that his positions have changed all that much to the left – it appears that our world has just shifted to the right enough to make Paul freaking Krugman into a leftist bombthrower.
Loviatar, Firebagger
.
I suppose this goes under the category of firebagger punching, but it struck me that what John Cole and a host of other Obotsand faux liberal commentators are really about is being anti-liberal. They don’t want to make any specific policy recommendations (Kinsley certainly hasn’t in his recent string of anti-Krugman pieces), they just want to point at what they see as the “far left” and say “I am more serious and pragmatic than that”.
———-
Obot = Republican 2.0
Centrist policies = Pragmatic policies
RaflW
Semi-on topic, I loved this tweet from last night
joes527
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Are you suggesting that Todd’s list is an isolated incident here on BJ?
Mumia should be in the BJ lexicon. He is commonly used as shorthand for “let’s punch the DFH”
Assange is hotly contested here, but often conjured as a device dismiss people
Same with Manning (who is linked to GG (this blog’s kryptonite))
The only thing that is unusual about Todd’s post is that it is a bit of a “greatest hits” of what sometimes passes for argument around here.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
The best thing to extend SS solvency is more of the economy going to workers and less to capitalists.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s just that all my authority figures were liberals!
Oh god lord, this is all about some group of emotional retarded Boomers finally rebelling against mummy and daddy in their middle age.
Bruce S
@Loviatar, Firebagger:
Problem with that gimmicky comment is that there is a whole range of important Obama-friendly blogs, publications, pundits and advocacy organizations that are very heavy on specific policy, from health care reform to tax policy to gay marriage.
Frankensteinbeck
@some guy:
No. I feel confident you were trolled by someone listing parodies of moderate liberal positions framed in a way to make them insulting to both you and us.
catclub
@Roger Moore: Yeah, that too.
catclub
@Bruce S: “Pass the damn bill.” is a policy recommendation.
MikkiChan
@catclub: Exactly! Who is he talking about?
Loviatar, Firebagger
@Bruce S:
Same could be said for the Centrist Democrats, doesn’t make what they’re spouting anymore sensible.
———-
Obot = Republican 2.0
Centrist policies = Pragmatic policies
Linda
Also, too, a lot of these folks came up in a world where hippy punching took no guts, because in the late 70s and all of the 80s, hippies were headed to the dustbin of history, while conservatives were proving good at working the refs and otherwise bullying people. Commentators like Kinsley are still used to living in a time where conservatives set the intellectual and political agenda. Not anymore. Like lots of old generals, they are fighting the last war, and answering questions nobody has asked since 1983.
Mike G
“Anti-authoritarian” doesn’t jibe. I’d say they are quite attuned to compliance with right-wing power institutions when it will advance their careers.
The Village were complicit with, if not enthusiasts for, the authoritarian bullies of the Cheney/Bush assministration, and are ever-eager to genuflect to corporate power.
Chris T.
@catclub: I have no idea what you were told. I do know a lot of people are confused, perhaps because Republicans do their best to confuse people. The rest of this is not aimed at you, just trying to find a good way to explain things…
To keep things straight but simple, there’s an income stream—FICA taxes—whose dollar numbers are added to a counter, and there’s an expense stream (SSDI) whose dollar numbers are subtracted from this counter.
Up until the Greenspan Commission and Reagan-and-Congress making changes based on that commission’s recommendations, the counter tended to stay pretty close to zero. The main change recommended was to increase FICA taxes quite a lot, so that the counter started zooming upward. It’s currently right around 2.7 trillion (2,700,000,000,000).
Of course, that counter is counting “dollars”, so that’s $2.7T. Now, if you had $2.7T in your pocket, what would you do with it? (“First, get a much bigger pocket.” :-) ) If you’re charged with keeping it extremely safe, what you should do with it is buy Treasuries (US government bonds, of whatever duration). That’s exactly what those who are in charge of it are doing.
The funny thing about Treasuries is, in order for anyone anywhere to buy any, the government has to issue some. That means that the government has to borrow some money. In fact, it has to borrow at least as much as the “social security trust fund” is saving.
Suppose I buy a Treasury myself (perhaps via http://www.treasurydirect.gov/). Let’s say I get a 30-year bond for $100. That bond pays interest for 30 years, then it “matures” and I get my $100 back. Meanwhile the government gets to use my $100. They’ve borrowed my $100! For 30 years, in fact. And then they give it back.
Suppose instead I contribute $100 in FICA taxes, and the office that my $100 went to buys a 30 year bond. That bond pays interest for 30 years, and then they get the $100 back. Meanwhile the government gets to use that $100. It’s exactly the same arrangement.
Claiming that the “trust fund is broke” or “is never going to get that money back” is the same as saying that the government is not going to pay me back … nor, for that matter, any Rich White Guys who bought $100 million (instead of just $100) in Treasuries. I bet they are going to pay back the Rich White Guys. I think they will also pay me, and the trust fund.
So, here’s what seems likely to happen with Social Security: in another ten or fifteen years or so (the date shifts around a lot), that counter that’s now up around $2.7 trillion will stop counting up on average, and in fact start counting down on average. That means the social security office will stop buying new Treasuries, while the ones it has matures and the Treasury hands over some cash for each matured bond. (The SS office has to buy bonds at regular intervals 30, 29, 28, 27, … years before that, so that some mature each year on schedule. They have been doing that, and are still doing that, and they’re really quite good at it. Insurance companies do this sort of thing too; lots of people are good at it; it’s not actually a rare skill, just kind of boring since it’s Accounting.)
Eventually, that counter will get close to, or even reach, zero again. Then it will be like Social Security was before 1986: we’ll have to fund it out of current income, rather than savings. The exact date of “counter reaches zero” moves a lot, and lately it’s around 2035 or so. It’s extremely sensitive to small changes though. Raising the FICA tax cap a little (from its current setting of about $110k of income, to about $125k of income, for instance) moves that date past 2060. Removing the cap causes it to never reach zero. If the economy improves just a little bit in the next five years, the date slides back out to 2070, even without raising the FICA tax cap.
If nothing is done and we do hit zero (say, in 2035), funding social security out of then-current income implies, today, that the payout will be at 75%, i.e., if you were getting $1500 per month in 2034, you’d start getting $1125 per month in 2035.
The two “easy” things to do are to raise the cap—currently, if I’ve made $110k of income in November and I earn another $10k in December, I pay no FICA taxes at all on that last 10k, while you who, who only earned $100k instead of $110k by Nov, pay an extra $620 on that last $10k—or to lower the payouts now. Obviously that second one gets a lot of seniors to vote against you, so it’s not really that easy after all. :-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just like to remind everyone that our little purity troll is, in reality, a bitter PUMA. So bear that in mind when it’s whining about “Centrist Democrats”
DRN0001
I’m with you (and K-Thug and Delong) in any fight against austerians, or even knee-jerk contrarianism (which is giving neo-liberalism an undeserved bad name), but to be fair, haven’t you buried the lead here?
Your prior post asserted “Charles Lane has consistently written in favor of austerity.” Now, you concede “that he [Lane] had **never** made any firm austerian (in the sense of reducing short-term budget deficits during this slowdown/recession) policy recommendations. . .”
I think this merits a “Correction” tag here and on the original post. Particularly here, where many of the objections to Kinsley and Lane were that they had inaccurately, and without citations, ascribed views to Krugman and other Keynesians which they don’t have.
To win this fight, we need to be scrupulously careful and accurate. You are doing it wrong.
NickT
@DRN0001:
Never bring a correction to a knife fight.
Mike E
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Chris
@Linda:
I think the great appeal of hippie punching is that it’s pretty much risk free. Hippies don’t punch back, and even when they do, you’ve got the entire security apparatus of the government backing you, not to mention the media, big business and every other power center.
Actually, I think that explains a great deal of the popularity of punching to the left in general. In other words, the widespread pissing and moaning about hippie overlords and liberal bias is possible precisely because neither of these things exists. If they did, there would be consequences, and you wouldn’t hear about them nearly as much.
Loviatar, Firebagger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
.
And you know this how?
NickT
@Loviatar, Firebagger:
If it walks like a PUMA and talks like a PUMA….
Loviatar, Firebagger
@NickT:
Ahh, so its an assumption. Not based on anything factual.
OK. I see. I’ve spent the better part off 4 years pointing out that your great leader governs like a Republican. I’ve backed it up with links and quotes directly from Obama himself and that makes me a PUMA.
Actually I prefer to be called a Firebagger. It just sounds more ummmm – exotic.
———-
Obot = Republican 2.0
Pragmatic policies = Centrist policies
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Loviatar, Firebagger: You let your mask slip a few weeks back, and I remember because I find you and your impotent, pseudo-Naderite mewlings amusing. Just to be clear, I’m laughing at you, not with you. Didn’t you also try some schtick where you were lamenting all the O-bot meanies calling you names when, darn it, you were trying so hard to have a serious discussion?
patroclus
@DRN0001: Uh, no. If the subject was “civility” then you would have a point – Doug erred is stating that Lane had previously written pro-austerity stuff. But the real subject is what is the best policy option for the U.S.’s finance, and Lane has indeed parrotted right-wing talking points on Fox orally innumberable times. So, while your narrow point about Lane’s “writings” is correct, it only makes a Kinsleyesque point, that is, it is about civility, not policy.
And you say that you are willing to fight austerianism, but you don’t actually do that in your post. Rather, in your post, the only one on the thread, all you really do is make yet another point about civility; not policy. This is Michael Kinsley to a tee.
Why do you think austerians are wrong?? Please describe this in detail. Why do you think the “lede” should be concerned with Kinsley/Long’s obsession with civility towards one’s betters rather than actually about policy? Why not take this occasion to state your views on policy? Why the continual obsession with the civility police? Why does “neo-liberalism” get a “bad name”? Please be specific!
McJulie
@Chris:
True. The media also has a pro-Republican bias that seems somehow inherited from that era — as if Republican politicians and ideas always default to being taken seriously, in a way that does not apply to Democratic politicians and ideas.
The myth of the “liberal media” was possibly the right’s most brilliant rhetorical strategy, ever.
ranchandsyrup
@mapaghimagsik: heh. More than one wetsuit, for some reason
patroclus
@NickT: Exactly. To win this fight on policy, we must make arguments about policy. Austerianism has demonstrably caused a double-dip recession in most of the EU. Austerianism, in times of slow growth, has a contractionary effect on economic performance. When growth is the goal, austerianism is a bad policy. Obsessions about deficit reduction, in times of slow growth, are misplaced – the real goal is to grow the economy and to create new jobs. And obsessions about civility have nothing to do with policy.
lol
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Loviator also claimed Reagan was better on gay rights than Obama.
Chris
@McJulie:
And one that the public’s swallowed hook, line and sinker. It makes dialogue incredibly difficult; no matter how far the media bends backwards to accomodate the right, people will just say “well, at least SOME people are being a counterweight to the liberal bias,” and when they report the facts, it’s dismissed as liberal bias.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@McJulie: Someone here posted or linked to a post in the Kinsley/Krugman dispute about Kinsley’s thinking being stuck in the past, I forget when, but I think that’s true of most Villagers. History ended at some point between 1972 and 1996. The Reagan revolution and Reagan Democrats are current events for them. For the elder generation, Republicans are ‘really’ good sound Eisenhower moderates, all white picket fences and mainline protestant churches (Catholics and Jews, like women, and minorities, tolerated as long as they’re not noisy about it). Democrats are a bunch of union thugs, corrupt big city machines, militant Negroes and radical feminists, sometimes radical Negroes and militant feminists, and dirty veteran-spitting-on hippies. In Uncle Broder’s world, it’s always 1973, and Nixon is just an aberration who needn’t be considered. The Iraq War was an unfortunate blip on the radar screen and the Clenis haunts their dreams. The younger generation seems to have inherited most of these prejudices even though most of them probably don’t even know who Bill Daley’s pappy was. I saw Frank Bruni, who must be comfortably on the sunny side of forty, on MSNBC a couple weeks ago saying that the Tea Party isn’t the “real” Republican Party, and somewhere in Pundit Heaven, which is every bit as sterile and white bread as you would think, Broder and Russert smiled contentedly.
Loviatar, Firebagger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Link please.
—
I’m not laughing with you or at you, I’m just hmmm, actually I’m not feeling anything really. You guys are pretty much a non-factor to me. Why waste the emotional energy on the simpleminded.
—
The ironic thing is you still think you’re better person than the average commenter at RedState. Personal prediction; by the end of Obama’s 2nd term the only difference between this site and RedState will be the causes you support. The vitriol, the name calling, the personal attacks are here now, all we’re missing are the bigoted, racist and sexist remarks.
———-
Obot = Republican 2.0
Pragmatic policies = Centrist policies
patroclus
@Chris T.: Thanks. That is an excellent description of policy options aimed at making SS more solvent than it already is – most liberal economists of which I am aware support raising the FICA limit so as to extend systematic solvency. The only difference is in the timing – I would argue that, in times of slow growth, we should put off raising the FICA limit, but that in times of high growth, it should be considered.
I wonder what Charles Lane thinks about this – both on the issue and the timing. Or Michael Kinsley? Or DRN001? It would seem that they are more interested in how Paul Krugman behaves than on this policy question…
NickT
@Loviatar, Firebagger:
You seem a bit confused about how this thing called evidence works. Let me explain it in suitably simple, short words, so that we can clear up your confusion:
1)You post things here.
2)People read what you post (EVIDENCE!!!)
3)People draw conclusions from what you post about your views and mental capacity
Now, moving from the domain of complex theories and ideas to the domain of practice:
1)You have chosen to post like a particularly cognitively-challenged(i.e. stupid) PUMA.
2)People read your particularly cognitively-challenged PUMA posts (EVIDENCE!!!)
3)People conclude that you are a particularly cognitively-challenged PUMA
Please don’t hesitate to contact me, or any one else on the threads, if you need any of the difficult ideas or long words explained to you.
*smooches*
Loviatar, Firebagger
@lol:
Absolute Lie.
My comment was that Reagan was tolerant of gays as he had many gay friends in Hollywood. Obama’s polices until recently made him no different than Reagan, personal tolerance, political cowardness.
Bad enough when you can’t make your case and have to resort to personal attacks but to flat out lie. Wow you guys have sunk pretty low. smh
———-
Obot = Republican 2.0
Pragmatic policies = Centrist policies
NickT
@lol:
Loviator, or Bloviator?
We report, you decide!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, Puddinhead, if that were true you wouldn’t be posting all these little keyboard droppings, would you?
Kind of central to the whole PUMAbagger ethos that politics isn’t about issues, isn’t it?
NickT
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Give Bloviator a minute or so and we’ll be hearing the whole Obama is chocolate Hitler schtick in all its incoherent, babbling glory.
patroclus
@Loviatar, Firebagger: What on earth are you talking about? This thread is (or was) about Charles Lane and Michael Kinsley and austerity in the U.S.’s finances. Do you have any opinion on the thread topic? Why are you de-railing the thread so much? Why the name-calling?
sparrow
@ericblair: Exactly. Authoritarians are notoriously bad at logical reasoning, understanding evidence, and drawing correct conclusions from that evidence.
Doug Milhous J
@DRN0001:
He has written in favor of austerity in terms of his attitude. He’s said that sequestration is no big deal, for example, and consistently pushed R-R. To me that’s writing in favor of austerity.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I must say, their obsession with “union thugs” and “Chicago style politics” is amusingly quaint in this day and age. Unions are a shadow of their former selves and are fighting for their lives even in the Northeastern and Midwestern states where they still have a strong presence, much less the rest of the country. Big city machines have been steadily losing power for a hundred years, and have basically not existed as a political force in my lifetime (25 years old), though to be fair, there’s more than a passing resemblance in the way Republicans have set up their control over national politics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: Villagers need unions to loom large as a political force so they can talk about campaign funding as a “both sides do it” issue. See also, too, “Hollywood”.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s true. Having never bought into the “liberal Hollywood” notion either, I’d be curious to see how much of their money goes to finance liberal vs conservative causes.
Nicole
Late to the thread, but thanks a lot for getting “Nowhere Man” stuck in my head.
Mnemosyne
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Assange is apparently very unhappy with the new documentary about Wikileaks, We Steal Secrets, because it’s not about the utter gloriousness and wonderfulness and martyrdom of Julian Assange and dares to take a critical (though ultimately positive) look at what Wikileaks does.
jefft452
@Mnemosyne: “there is a certain type of 50+ white male (not all of them, mind you, but a certain subset) who get very upset when you challenge their authoritah”
Yep (and I’m a 55 year old white guy – so I must be right :-) )
This ties into daddy issues too
30 some odd years ago, their 50+ white male dad, their 50+ white male collage prof, and their 50+ white male boss, laid down the law and they shut up and did as they were told
Now they are 50+ and their 20something sons and daughters, their 20something students, and their 20something coworkers don’t cower like they did at that age – its just not fair
Rex Everything
J@Doug Milhous J: Jeez, dude, one of these clowns—it was either Burnspbesq or General Stuck—spent all last summer babbling about how Wittes is better than Taibbi. (Wittes is a total shit, of course.)
DRN0001
@Doug Milhous J: fair enough. Maybe we can agree that he’s at least “austerity-curious”. (Thx for replying.)
Eli Rabett
Making the Lanes and Rogoffs and the world respond is a sure sign that they have lost control of the public discourse.