Deep thought

It takes someone as shallow as Matt Taibbi to make Terry Eagleton look deep.

Adding: I was going to just do a short post about the fact that Taibbi doesn't seem to know the difference between atheism and agnosticism, but having read his post on the topic, it's clear that this is but one of many, many, many, many distinctions that Taibbi can't be bothered to understand.

And, to answer Taibbi's question about Eagleton's use of the phrase a priori, he used it there because it was fundamental to his argument. To miss this, and then go on to write, "As for the actual argument..." is to reveal yourself to be an ignorant fool.

Our unsustainable budget deficit

Obviously, what we ought to do slash the living shit out of defense spending. Reduce it by 90% and we'll be roughly on par with our most likely antagonists.

Please note: This post occasioned by hearing yet another thoughtful moderate wonder whether we can afford universal healthcare. Meanwhile, the woman who cleans the building where my office is located needs surgery on her foot (it's a repetitive stress injury brought on by her other, full time job), has to pay for it out of her own pocket, and won't be paid for the time off. Why is killing more important? Why can't we ask whether we can afford to spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense? What the fuck is wrong with this country?

A note for the Obamacons

You say that the Republican Party failed to implement conservatism properly and all of the problems that Republicans have caused can be attributed to ideological impurity. Old Uncle Trotsky had a similar complaint and all it got him was stabbed in the head, but I'm sure that your apostasy will be forgiven by the GOP.

In the meantime, I'm glad to hear that you'll be casting your ballot for a plausible candidate for once. That said, the mere fact that you have abandoned the Republican Party doesn't do anything to redeem your political philosophy. Last time I checked, you opposed reasonable regulation of economic activity and supported a ridiculously aggressive foreign policy. Them dogs won't hunt.

Don't you even try to bring that bullshit into the Democratic caucus! The adults are going to have their hands full cleaning up your mess, and the only way for you to help is to shut the fuck up for a few years. Please do so.

Today's number

According to the ACLU, there are 5.3 million American citizens who are ineligible to vote because they have been convicted of a felony. Of these, approximately four million have served their time and been released.

I wasn't able to find a racial breakdown of that number, but in 2005, African Americans comprised about 40% of the prison population. It seems reasonable to assume, then, that about two million African Americans are ineligible to vote because they have been convicted of a felony.

In 2006, the total number of African Americans of voting age was about 25 million. Really easy math tells us that about 8% of potential African American voters are ineligible to vote because they have been convicted of a felony.

Using the same sources and methods, the comparable result for white Americans is 1.2%. Which means that the rate of ineligible voters is nearly seven times greater among African Americans than among whites.

Now, of course you can say that felons don't deserve our sympathy, and it's your own darn fault if you give up your right to vote, but that really misses the point. Unless you believe that African Americans are seven times as likely as white Americans to commit felonies, then you pretty much have to acknowledge that there is some sort of structural cause here.

At the end of the day, there's really only one question. Is it okay that one out of every eleven African Americans lacks the right to vote? If you're answer is that it is, and that it all comes down to personal responsibility, then you should keep voting for Republicans.

Hey Joe

Get a union card you fucking scab.

Relatedly:

Occupational licensing is one of the Leviathan State's biggest scams. Heck, in Mississippi you need a license to be a hair braider. Louisiana licenses florists. And this one takes the cake: Maryland licenses fortune tellers. (See this Reason Foundation report by Adam B. Summers.)

Occupational licenses are often sold as instruments of consumer protection, but their real effect is to strangle entrepreneurship through regulation. When Joe is done making his case against higher taxes, maybe he should make a case against occupational licensing. |The Fever Swamp|

And:

Which to me once again raises the issue of whether or not it really serves the public interest to have so many occupational licensing rules. Like most people, if I needed to hire a plumber, I’d probably look for a recommendation. I don’t have any real confidence that these licensing schemes are tracking quality in any meaningful way, just preventing a certain number of people from earning a living and raising the general cost of plumbing services for everyone else. |Yglesias|

Point the first: It is true enough that one thing licensing schemes do is impose a tax on economic activity. Those of us who do not wish to drown the state in our bathtub are, on general principles, okay with this. Everybody else can take a hike for all I care.

Which still leaves open the question of whether this particular sort of tax is so pernicious that it must be abandoned. In light of the apparent abundance of plumbers and hair braiders, I see no reason to think that the licensing schemes in place now tend to "strangle entrepreneurship."

Point the second: At least in the case of plumbers, the licensing scheme may well be an artifact of labor organizing. Plumbing is similar to trades like bricklaying, carpentry, and electrical work in that it is both a learned skill requiring considerable expertise and a skill which is commonly assumed to be well within reach of most people.

First corollary to point the second: Contra Yglesias, licensing is likely to do something to control quality. It will, at the very least, ensure that a minimum standard is met. Also, insofar as licensing serves as a barrier to entry, it will tend to mean that if you call a plumber at random, that plumber is likely to be experienced at plumbing (where I live, for example, there is a five year apprenticeship).

Second corollary to point the second: While limiting the supply of plumbers increases the cost of plumbing work for consumers, it also increases the wage for plumbers. In my county (which has a high cost of living), the prevailing wage for a plumber is $51.42. Pretty good if you can get your forty, but not so expensive that people forgo plumbing or that economic growth has ground to a halt in face of the prohibative cost of pipes.

Final debate predictions, a rant

I haven't got much, just this. The conventional wisdom seems to be that John McCain has to do something dramatic tonight in order to have any chance at all. Nobody, though, seems to have any idea of what dramatic thing he might do. About the only suggestion you hear is that he's got to attack so harshly that he throws Obama off balance.

Count me as skeptical that McCain could pull that off. If the last few weeks of agitating for assassination haven't gotten Obama to lose his cool, nothing is going to.

The real questions about this debate have to do less with the coming election than with McCain's legacy. McCain, barring some bizarre and unexpected circumstance, is going to lose the election. The question is, will he continue to align himself with the fascist wing of the GOP?

And, yeah, I said fascist. There is just no other adequate word to describe Palin and her supporters. They have no respect for the rule of law, demonize opponents in ways that seem calculated to lead to political violence, and see it as entirely proper that the apparatus of the state might be used to serve the whims of a charismatic leader.

It really is time for John McCain and the rest of the Republicans to take a hard look at the party and the conservative movement. This isn't about winning elections anymore. It's about stepping away from the brink and turning back toward democracy.

Adding: As per usual, I'm expecting a rocking thread at the OG for those of you who like to spice up the debate watching with a dash of the internet.

Jesus fucking Christ there are some stupid people out there:

“He doesn’t come from the African-American perspective — he’s not of that tradition,” said Kimi Oaks, a prominent community volunteer in the Mobile area, with apparent approval. Ms. Oaks, along with about 15 others, had gathered after Sunday services at Mobile’s leading Methodist church to discuss the presidential campaign. “He’s not a product of any ghetto,” Ms. Oaks added.

At the same time, however, she vigorously rejected the idea that race would be important in the election, a question met with general head-shaking from those assembled; Ms. Oaks said she was “terribly offended,” as a Southerner, at even being asked about this. |NY Times|

Wanna wanna let it burn

The distractions of the campaign can make you forget how maliciously irresponsible the Republican Party has become:

"Once again the Fed has put the taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars to bail out an institution that put greed ahead of responsibility and used their good name to take risky bets that did not pay off," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

A spokesman for Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the committee, said the senator "profoundly disagrees with the decision to use taxpayer dollars to bail out a private company" and is upset the government has sent an inconsistent message to the markets by bailing out AIG after it just refused to save investment bank Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. |CNN|

Opposition to a clearly necessary step speaks for itself. Truth be told, the likes of Shelby and Bunning are probably glad Congress wasn't consulted. What they're doing now is warming up for the post-bailout fight about the extent of regulatory oversight. Care to guess which side they'll be on?

And by the way, how do you square the circle of blaming greed for this crisis? There are no significant allegations of shoddy accounting or fiduciary irresponsibility. At every level, from home buyers accepting sub-prime loans to lenders offering those loans to derivatives traders betting on the security of those loans to insurers backing those bets, every actor was doing exactly was free market absolutists like Bunning and Shelby thinks that they should be doing. They were seeking to maximize profit.

I'm no economist, but the basic shape of the current crisis is clear enough. It begins with a wide range of policies with generally bipartisan support that overly favored investment in housing, investments which were almost entirely based on credit. Next, the decades long Republican campaign against regulation meant that there was limited oversight over the financial sector's handling of this huge mountain of debt. Throw in the bankruptcy bill and a weak economy, and Bob's your uncle.

This is what is sometimes called a cascading failure. No one thing caused it. Instead, the interaction of several independent factors brought about the crisis.

What's striking is that despite the complexity of the cause, the blame is abundantly clear. At almost every step, the underlying explanation for how we got into this mess is the laissez faire economic ideology that Republicans have been campaigning on for decades. I mean, can you even believe that derivatives remain substantially unregulated seven years after Enron?