Gov. Walker's Reaganesque Power Grab

For my 300th post, I re-publish the following column. This is a sign of two things: (1) I lack the time to state my own view on this matter and my reasons for it; (2) Krugman and I are in complete agreement on this matter. Click here for an explanation of the title of this post. 

Wisconsin Power Play

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 20, 2011

Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.

In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.

In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.

But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.

The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers — namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning — are exempted from the ban; it’s as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions.

Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.

So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html

I'm going with the Nobel Prize-winning economist and the scientific community on this one.

Source

RedState's Vladimir has taken it upon himself to write another ignorant post about climate change. (This is what I had to say about one of his previous posts.)

His target: Paul Krugman. He quotes Krugman as writing the following:

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

Vladimir responds to Krugman as follows:

[H]aven’t we heard this all before?

“Gee, this is some crazy weather we’ve been having.”

I’m old enough to remember some pretty darn extreme weather, like Hurricane Camille, a monster Cat 5 storm that devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969. There was the Super Tornado Outbreak of April, 1974: a complex of 148 twisters that spun across hundreds of mile of the Midwest, killing 148, injuring 5,300, and wiping the town of Xenia, OH off the map. And lest we forget the record cold winter of 1977-78, when natural gas supplies ran low.

Many of our impressions of current extreme weather conditions have to do with the fact that 1) they’re fresh in our memories; 2) we have better communications and 3) higher population densities than in times past.

Complaining about extreme weather is part of the human condition. 

Vladimir then goes on to cite 19 stories about extreme weather dating back to 1888 (I am assuming that none of them were fabricated), and in some cases the extreme weather prompted speculation that the climate was changing. I take it that Vladimir considers that speculation to have been unfounded.

So, what's wrong with Vladimir's response?

Vladimir is attributing to Krugman the following argument:

1. There have been recent outbreaks of severe weather. 
2. Therefore, global climate change is real. 

Granted, Vladimir says nothing about global climate change, but there is little doubt that Vladimir's response is intended to convince his readers that recent severe weather is not evidence that the climate is changing. That is, Vladimir is arguing that the truth of (1) isn't sufficient evidence for the truth of (2).

But if you put the quotation in context and read the rest of Krugman's column, you'll find that Krugman's argument is much stronger than the one Vladimir attributes to him:

It’s true that growth in emerging nations like China leads to rising meat consumption, and hence rising demand for animal feed. It’s also true that agricultural raw materials, especially cotton, compete for land and other resources with food crops — as does the subsidized production of ethanol, which consumes a lot of corn. So both economic growth and bad energy policy have played some role in the food price surge. 

Still, food prices lagged behind the prices of other commodities until last summer. Then the weather struck.  

Consider the case of wheat, whose price has almost doubled since the summer. The immediate cause of the wheat price spike is obvious: world production is down sharply. The bulk of that production decline, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, reflects a sharp plunge in the former Soviet Union. And we know what that’s about: a record heat wave and drought, which pushed Moscow temperatures above 100 degrees for the first time ever.  

The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in Australia, that have damaged world food production.  

The question then becomes, what’s behind all this extreme weather?  

To some extent we’re seeing the results of a natural phenomenon, La Niña — a periodic event in which water in the equatorial Pacific becomes cooler than normal. And La Niña events have historically been associated with global food crises, including the crisis of 2007-8.  

But that’s not the whole story. Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.  

As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.

Clearly, Krugman is not making the hasty, crude inference Vladimir attributes to him. Krugman's reasoning is more sophisticated than that. Krugman is making what has been called an inference to the best explanation. The idea is this: we are justified in inferring the truth of what best explains what we observe or already know. The mere occurrence of extreme weather does not alone justify the claim that the climate is changing, obviously. But extreme weather, combined with all the other evidence Krugman mentions, does, because if the climate were changing, the phenomena we're observing is exactly what we would expect to observe, i.e., we wouldn't be surprised to make the observations we are in fact making. And that means that the hypothesis that the climate is changing is probably true.

Look at the argument Vladimir attributes to Krugman again. It's bad. Vladimir's post might leave his readers with the impression that those of us who believe that climate change is real accept bad arguments for our belief. But the evidence for climate change is much, much stronger than the argument Vladimir attributes to Krugman. And no amount of bullshit from non-scientists like Vladimir will convince me otherwise, much as I would like it to, because what we face is terrifying.

Perhaps you choose to ignore the evidence because you're not emotionally equipped to deal with the reality of global climate change. Perhaps you have an economic interest in ignoring it, like those Republicans who have been bought by the energy industry. Perhaps you are comforted by the lie that God won't allow global climate change to do serious damage to the planet and those who live on it; perhaps you turn to the Bible for scientific enlightenment. Maybe you're ready to simply continue leading your life as you have always led it because it is comfortable and familiar, and it is good to live in the adolescent haze of the belief that we can release as much carbon dioxide into the environment as we like without consequence. And even if it turns out that the scientific predictions are correct, maybe you won't have to deal with the worst of it, and what do you care if your children, and your children's children, have to live in a far less hospitable world? Why should you care, really?

Sorry, Vladimir. I'm going with the Nobel Prize-winning economist and the scientific community on this one.

Q: Bush deficit bad, Obama deficit good? A: Elder column terrible.

The self-proclaimed Sage of South Central needs to matriculate.

Or he could control his urge to lie by omission.

In "Bush deficit bad, Obama deficit good?" Larry Elder accuses New York Times columnist Paul Krugman of hypocrisy. That is, an hypocrisy that I'm confident exists only in Elder's simple-minded conservative fantasyland.

The World Nut Daily columnist claims that it is hypocritical of Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning economist, to attack the Bush II deficits and yet defend the Obama deficits:

Questions: Didn't Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit "enormous"? Wouldn't he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10 percent of GDP mega-normous? Didn't he describe the economy with 5.5 percent unemployment as "weak"? Isn't the current economy, at 9.7 percent unemployment, even weaker? If the 2004 deficit was "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country," wouldn't today's much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?

Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: "The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs." The deficit "should be bigger"?!

Therein lies the answer to your questions, O Sagely One. No one, except those with a partisan axe to grind, will claim that the economic troubles during the first Bush II administration were anywhere near as serious as our current economic crisis. This is obviously a relevant difference.

If government has any role in managing the economy, it should run surpluses when the economy is growing and deficits when the economy is contracting. This would make it easier for government to stimulate the economy when necessary. Bush II and the Republican Congress chose to run up huge deficits at the wrong time by starting an unnecessary war of choice and making unnecessary cuts in taxes. (It might be argued that the economic effect of the 9/11 attacks required stimulus in the form of tax cuts. But this would not show that Krugman is a hypocrite, again because the threat of the economic impact of the 9/11 attacks was nowhere near the economic threat we faced in 2008.)

It is easy to believe that their real agenda is to force the government to shrink: cutting government services is less unpopular than raising taxes, thanks to the GOP's incessant call to cut taxes in response to virtually every problem. Their current complaints about deficit spending—which many of them failed to make during the previous administration, by the way—represents the next phase of this plan.

I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the enormous debt we're racking up. But I don't believe that Republicans are being entirely forthcoming about their motivations. And I don't believe that Krugman is being a hypocrite. Rather, the so-called Sage of South Central has, intentionally or otherwise, oversimplified the discussion in order to score political points. This is a common strategy in our civic debate, unfortunately, and our civic debate suffers for it.

Paul Krugman: America Is Not Yet Lost

Published: February 7, 2010

A version of this article appeared in print on February 8, 2010, on page A21 of the New York edition of the New York Times

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It’s an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson’s qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, had put a “hold” on her appointment to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City.

This dubious achievement may have inspired Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. In any case, Mr. Shelby has now placed a hold on all outstanding Obama administration nominations — about 70 high-level government positions — until his state gets a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center.

What gives individual senators this kind of power? Much of the Senate’s business relies on unanimous consent: it’s difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don’t like.

In the past, holds were used sparingly. That’s because, as a Congressional Research Service report on the practice says, the Senate used to be ruled by “traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation.” But that was then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation’s major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm — in fact, political dividends — in making the nation ungovernable.

How bad is it? It’s so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich.

Readers may recall that in 1995 Mr. Gingrich, then speaker of the House, cut off the federal government’s funding and forced a temporary government shutdown. It was ugly and extreme, but at least Mr. Gingrich had specific demands: he wanted Bill Clinton to agree to sharp cuts in Medicare.

Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit — and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn’t had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely.

And with the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it’s only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded.

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism.

It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of “silliness.” Yep, that will really resonate with voters.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html

$700,000,000,000 a year

On Sunday, George Will claimed that with our current reliance on deficit spending, "we're apt to be spending in 10 years $700 billion a year servicing our debt." And this huge sum takes into account "unreasonably cheerful assumptions about economic growth and interest rates."

$700,000,000,000 a year is a lot more than what I pay my thieving credit card company in finance charges in a year. (More about Bank of America in a future post.) But the economy of the United States is almost unimaginably larger than my household finances. According to Paul Krugman, this difference is key in thinking about deficit spending. Read about it here.

Republicans are suddenly raising the alarm about deficits. (It is obvious why they waited until after Bush left office to do this.) If you consider the huge figures in their proper context, it is more likely that you'll keep your head. Republicans have an ulterior motive for trying to scare you: republicans have a history of growing deficits in order to pressure the president and Congress to shrink the size of government. But that is a topic for another post.