Occupy and the FBI - UPDATED

UPDATE (1/03/2013):  I stand corrected.  I saw this morning that the NY Times actually did publish a story about this - on Christmas Day.  So yeah, I doubt very many people saw it.  Still not sure why it didn't come up in my google search....

If you are one of those who gets all of their news from the mainstream media then I don't blame you if you missed this story.

On Friday the 21st the FBI - finally - responded to a FOIA request from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund by releasing some heavily redacted documents relating to their response to the Occupy Wall Street protests.  The documents are available to view on the PCJF website here.  A summary of the contents from the website appears below the jump.  The documents show a nationwide, coordinated effort involving the FBI, DHS, NCIS, local police and corporate security departments to surveil and put down the protests that sprung up after the first Zuccotti Park encampment 15 months ago, all based on the premise that OWS was a "terrorist threat."

There are also reports on the document release in the Guardian newspaper, Democracy Now, Daily Kos, Nakedcapitalism, Economic Populist and others.  

I have only four things to say about this.

First, notice the media outlets that have written on this issue. I did a google search about this and came up with only one mention of these documents in the mainstream media, and that was this on CNN's website, unceremoniously posted at 5:30 AM, 5 days after the PCJF posted the documents.  There is no video posted with the story, so I assume it was only mentioned on the website and not actually reported on in a broadcast.  Nothing on the major networks or any major newspaper.  And this is not surprising at all to me - they are fully integrated in the politcal-corporate security establishment, and are not about to do anything to rock the boat.

Second, this is a further demonstration of the extent of the surveillance state.  The idea that the FBI was already coordinating a response with the NYPD and corporate security a month before the protests began is kind of scary.  They are clearly much more plugged in to what people are saying to each other than most people realize. 

Third, if there was any doubt as to who really rules in America, all one has to do is contrast these activities with the action - or more appropriately non-action - that has been taken in response to numerous criminal acts undertaken by major corporate actors over the last dozen years or so.  Case in point here.

Finally, I often pooh-pooh the mentality of gun owners, particularly those that literally maintain arsenals in their homes in the belief that they have to defend themselves from the government.  But when I read stories like this - when I see the steps the government will take when the corporate establishment feels threatened - sometimes I wonder whether those people have a point.  This is not going to make me go out and buy my own arsenal.  I still am a firm believer that peaceful protest - and democratic action - is the way to overcome the insidious, corrupt relationship between our government and its corporate masters. But when I see stories like this, I have to admit they have a point.

If only they realized that the protesters are on their side....

The Big Fix

I saw Dean Baker on Chris Hayes this morning.  Dean is an economist and blogger at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (here is a link to his blog)  and, while I agree with him on most points, I disagree with the point (a point made by many other progressives) made on the show this morning that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.  

The argument that social security does not impact the deficit is that the trust fund has assets that can be drawn upon to make up the difference between payroll tax revenues on the one hand, and benefit payments and administrative costs on the other, for the next 20-plus years.  But right now we have reached the point where we have that shortfall: payroll tax revenues are less than the sum of benefits paid and administrative costs. 

The Reaction to the NRA

An assistant superintendent of the West Hartford Connecticut school district:

Tom Moore, assistant superintendent for administration for West Hartford schools, told the Hartford Courant that his district “won’t be taking our advice on how to keep kids safe from the president of the NRA.” He added, “I come from a family of hunters; I have four brothers who are hunters and members of the NRA. All I’ll be asking for for Christmas, after hearing Wayne LaPierre essentially blame school officials for the shootings, is for [my brothers] to resign from the NRA.”

Let's hear more of this....

ht Think Progress

Irony

It does not surprise me that the same people who tend to agree with the NRA are defending Zero Dark Thirty.

But I do find it ironic that they think the answer to gun violence is to reign in depictions of violence in video games and movies.....

What the NRA Proposed is Already Happening

In the school district where my sons go to school, all of the schools are located on a single large rectangular "campus", and if you drive along the main street that borders one side of the campus during school hours you will always see, in the main parking lot right in front of the school, a patrol from the local sheriff's department parked there.  You might think this is a high school - and it was when it was originally built in the 1950s - but now it is the middle school, with students from grades 6 to 8.  At the other end of the campus, about a quarter mile away, you will see a second patrol car in the high school parking lot.

In that school district they have a program called the "School Resource Officer" program.  Here is a link to the page on the Sheriff Department's website describing the program.  The cost of the program is split between the school district and the sheriff's department.

Things That Interest Me

Links:

The Great Gun Gag:  This post is about the Costas affair, but in light of the events of yesterday, it seems prescient.

The Myth of Inequality Courtesy of AEI:  A take-down of a report by a prominent conservative think-tank.  Why do these people have to resort to lies to get their way?

One Month Later We're Still Counting Votes.  Why?  Our voting system is broken.  It really needs to be nationalized.

Watch Out For the Second US Cliffhanger.  In the wake of the financial crisis in 2008, one of the actions taken by the government was to eliminate the $250,000 limit on the FDIC guarantee of bank deposits.  As a result, banks currently have on hand huge deposit balances - they have increased by $1.5 trillion dollars, about half of which is corporate deposits.  This has happened because these are safe - as safe as investing in treasury bonds, since the government stands behind them 100%.  The guaranteed deposit limit is scheduled fall back to $250,000 on January 1, and banks are scrambling to prevent massive withdrawals when that happens.  Note this is really just a problem for smaller banks.  The big boys, being too big to fail, will always have that implicit guarantee behind them.

Napster, Udacity and the Academy.  A fascinating look at what has happened in the music industry, what is going on in online education, and what it means for the future of higher education.

Graph of the Day:  It's the Health Care Prices, Stupid:  Latest information shows that the main reason health care costs continue to rise - even in a depressed economy - isn't that people are seeking more and more complex services or that the population is aging.  It's happening because doctors and hospitals keep charging higher prices.  My doctor friends won't like this.  But...duh!

The Great Migration of the 21st Century.  I talk with my friends about this from time to time but haven't posted about it.  There is no doubt that climate change will have huge demographic effects.  Here is a good summary of what we might expect.

We Have to End Republican Nihilism:  The Republicans' willingness to hold a gun to the head of the economy is the issue of our times.  As I've already said, this is going to end, one way or the other....

Google's Bermuda Hideaway/HSBC's Too-Big Status: Time to Rein In the Corporations! A short but interesting post that triggered an idea I hadn't really given much thought about: how the tax law encourages mergers and acquisitions.  It's now on my list of future topics to write about!

A Rescued Comment:  This would be funny if it weren't for the millions of people who's lives are being devastated by the foolish policies it symbolizes...

Cathedral to Massive Stars:

Maybe, Just Maybe, Americans Are Getting in Touch With Their Inner Liberal

This morning I was reading this post by Ezra Klein about mass shootings in the U.S., which included this:

10. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular.Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think gun control laws should be stricter. The answer, increasingly, is that they don’t. “The percentage in favor of making the laws governing the sale of firearms ‘more strict’ fell from 78% in 1990 to 62% in 1995, and 51% in 2007,” reports Gallup. “In the most recent reading, Gallup in 2010 found 44% in favor of stricter laws. In fact, in 2009 and again last year, the slight majority said gun laws should either remain the same or be made less strict.”

11. But particular policies to control guns often are.An August CNN/ORC poll asked respondents whether they favor or oppose a number of specific policies to restrict gun ownership. And when you drill down to that level, many policies, including banning the manufacture and possession of semi-automatic rifles, are popular.

This phenomenon is seen in many other aspects of political opinion in the United States.  Americans express a generally conservative outlook when asked about politics in the abstract, but when it comes to specifics, they tend to be much more liberal.  They want smaller government, but they strongly support such things as Social Security and Medicare, and want these programs strengthened.  They want lower property taxes but they also want a public education system that works and prepares their children for the future.  They are against regulations, but they know global warming exists and they want it dealt with and they know, in their guts, that unregulated financial institutions caused the crisis four years ago and are holding the economy hostage right now.

Why the dichotomy?  Why do Americans profess conservative attitudes but support liberal policies?

Newtown

I am just devastated by what happened in Newtown yesterday.

Prior to this past May, I lived for 17 years in Brewster NY, which is about as far to the west of Danbury CT as Newtown is to the east.  Danbury is really the commercial center of small metro area of which Newtown and Brewster are both parts - members of both communities shop at the malls and big box stores of Danbury and I have had a lot of interaction with people there over the years.  As an example, my sons have both been active in athletics over the years, and I have attended many a youth basketball game in the Newtown recreation center.

Last night I attended a high school basketball game - Brewster against New Milford CT, another of those towns in the Danbury metro area.  It was unusually somber - during the moment of silence you could hear a pin drop.

Many people are touched by this.  Let's pray for the victims, their family and their community.

What Do You Want to Cut?

Greg Sargeant this morning:

I spoke this morning to an official familiar with the fiscal cliff talks. He tells me that ever since Republicans rejected the first White House fiscal offer, White House negotiators have been asking Republicans to detail both the spending cuts they want and the loopholes and deductions they would close to raise revenues while avoiding a hike in tax rates for the rich.
According to the official, Republicans continue to refuse to answer.

“No answer ever since the Geithner meeting,” the official said. “To date they have been unwilling or able to identify a list of specific cuts or changes they would like or a single loophole they are willing to close.”

This is borne out by reporting in both the New York Times and Politico. How on earth can there be any progress under these circumstances?

This should not be surprising.  It is exactly the same situation Romney was in during the campaign.  But it must be extremely frustrating for the Obama Administration and Democratic negotiators. 

What's really happening is that Republicans have figured out that what they have been peddling for the last 12 years is very popular in the abstract - smaller government, less taxes - but extremely unpopular in the implementation.  You can rail all you want against "government," but in actuality it does a lot of things that people actually like and want it to do.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the first Obama term was the number of times he proposed Republican ideas, only to have the Republicans not only oppose them in the legislative process, but actually run against them in the election.  I mean, Romney running against Obamacare was just as absurd as Mitch McConnell filibustering his own proposal last week.  But then again, so was Ryan protesting Medicare cost cutting under Obamacare while having a budget proposal that basically ends Medicare as we know it. 

The Democrats made a huge mistake in 2010 when they let Republicans get away with the claim that Democrats were trying to get rid of Medicare, something they have been trying to do for years.  It was a cynical, manipulative ploy, but it worked.  It was enough to get them into the House and most particularly the statehouses, where we are going to have to live with gerrymandered districts for the next decade (at least). 

Against that backdrop, Democrats are clearly in the right to say: we're willing to reign in spending to get a deal.  Now tell us what you want to cut.

If they continue to refuse to answer and we go over the cliff, you will know they never were serious about this.

A Lost Decade

Krugman on yesterday's Fed announcement:

What struck me is that the Fed expects the unemployment rate to be well above its long-run level even in the fourth quarter of 2015, which is as far as its projections go.

This means that the Fed is projecting elevated unemployment nine full years after the Great Recession started. And, of course, the Fed has been consistently over-optimistic.

This is an awesome failure of policy — not solely at the Fed, of course.When I wax caustic about Very Serious People, bear this in mind. Faced with an economic crisis where textbook macroeconomics told us exactly how to respond, people of influence chose instead to obsess over budget deficits and generally punt on employment; and the result has been a huge economic and human disaster.

We Should All Be Up In Arms About This

There has been a lot of chatter over the last 36 hours or so about the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute HSBC for money laundering.

From Time Magazine, here's a brief rundown of what HSBC is accused of doing:

The Justice Department on Tuesday alleged that British bank HSBC violated the Bank Secrecy Act in connection with the laundering of money from narcotics drug traffickers in Mexico and intentionally allowed prohibited transactions with Iran and other nations that have been under sanctions.

In court papers filed in federal court in Brooklyn, the federal government said the case against HSBC is related to the laundering of proceeds from narcotics trafficking via the Black Market Peso Exchange — a method by which money launderers convert cash narcotics dollars into Colombian pesos by buying and re-selling wholesale consumer goods.

“The lack of an effective anti-money laundering program at HSBC Mexico and HSBC Bank USA, N.A. contributed to the conduct charged” in the money-laundering case against narcotics traffickers, Justice Department prosecutors said in a court filing.

The government alleges that HSBC intentionally allowed prohibited transactions with Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. The federal government also said the bank facilitated transactions with Cuba in violation of the Trading With the Enemy Act.

The documents say the prohibited transactions with Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma took place from 2001 through 2006.

HSBC is the largest bank in the United Kingdom.  Its CEO, who has been in that position for two years, "expressed regret" for the transgressions.

The New York Times Editorial Board:

It is a dark day for the rule of law. Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions.

Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is weakened, if not lost.

Glenn Greenwald points out that this is part of a pattern that is becoming increasing prevalent in our society:

The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation on earth, both in  absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities atoverwhelmingly disproportionate rates.

But not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

....

Obviously, those with money and power always enjoyed substantial advantages in the US justice system, but lip service was at least always paid to the core precept of the rule of law: that - regardless of power, position and prestige - all stand equal before the blindness of Lady Justice.

It really is the case that this principle is now not only routinely violated, as was always true, but explicitly repudiated, right out in the open. It is commonplace to hear US elites unblinkingly insisting that those who become sufficiently important and influential are - and should be - immunized from the system of criminal punishment to which everyone else is subjected.

Worse, we are constantly told that immunizing those with the greatest power is not for their good, but for our good, for our collective good: because it's better for all of us if society is free of the disruptions that come from trying to punish the most powerful, if we're free of the deprivations that we would collectively experience if we lose their extraordinary value and contributions by prosecuting them.

A new episode unveiled on Tuesday is one of the most vivid examples yet of this mentality. Over the last year, federal investigators found that one of the world's largest banks, HSBC, spent years committing serious crimes, involving money laundering for terrorists; "facilitat[ing] money laundering by Mexican drug cartels"; and "mov[ing] tainted money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups". Those investigations uncovered substantial evidence "that senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity." As but one example, "an HSBC executive at one point argued that the bank should continue working with the Saudi Al Rajhi bank, which has supported Al Qaeda."

Needless to say, these are the kinds of crimes for which ordinary and powerless people are prosecuted and imprisoned with the greatest aggression possible. If you're Muslim and your conduct gets anywhere near helping a terrorist group, even by accident, you're going to prison for a long, long time. In fact, powerless, obscure, low-level employees are routinely sentenced to long prison terms for engaging in relatively petty money laundering schemes, unrelated to terrorism, and on a scale that is a tiny fraction of what HSBC and its senior officials are alleged to have done.

But not HSBC. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions. In other words, shielding them from the system of criminal sanction to which the rest of us are subject is not for their good, but for our common good. We should not be angry, but grateful, for the extraordinary gift bestowed on the global banking giant.

....

By coincidence, on the very same day that the DOJ announced that HSBC would not be indicted for its multiple money-laundering felonies, the New York Times published a story featuring the harrowing story of an African-American single mother of three who was sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 27 for a minor drug offense:

Stephanie George and Judge Roger Vinson had quite different opinions about the lockbox seized by the police from her home in Pensacola. She insisted she had no idea that a former boyfriend had hidden it in her attic. Judge Vinson considered the lockbox, containing a half-kilogram of cocaine, to be evidence of her guilt.

But the defendant and the judge fully agreed about the fairness of the sentence he imposed in federal court.

"Even though you have been involved in drugs and drug dealing," Judge Vinson told Ms. George, "your role has basically been as a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not actively involved in the drug dealing, so certainly in my judgment it does not warrant a life sentence."

Yet the judge had no other option on that morning 15 years ago. As her stunned family watched, Ms. George, then 27, who had never been accused of violence, was led from the courtroom to serve a sentence of life without parole.

"I remember my mom crying out and asking the Lord why," said Ms. George, now 42, in an interview at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. 'Sometimes I still can't believe myself it could happen in America."

As the NYT notes - and read her whole story to get the full flavor of it - this is commonplace for the poor and for minorities in the US justice system. Contrast that deeply oppressive, merciless punishment system with the full-scale immunity bestowed on HSBC - along with virtually every powerful and rich lawbreaking faction in America over the last decade - and that is the living, breathing two-tiered US justice system. How this glaringly disparate, and explicitly status-based, treatment under the criminal law does not produce serious social unrest is mystifying.

The more I think about this, the angrier I get.

Press Fail: "The Biggest Story of Our Time"

Via Digby comes this article from Dan Froomkin:

[A]ccording to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.

Mann and Ornstein are two longtime centrist Washington fixtures who earlier this year dramatically rejected the strictures of false equivalency that bind so much of the capital's media elite and publicly concluded that GOP leaders have become "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

 Digby adds her take on this:

That is the story of our time. And it has been, by the way, for quite a while. And after watching the Senate refuse to ratify a treaty last week solely on the basis of wingnut lunacy, I'm guessing it's not changing any time soon. Perhaps people forget that these wackjobs impeached a president over a private indiscretion with the enthusiastic support of the media. That was as crazy as you can get in a democracy --- except for their subsequent actions which included stealing and election and invading a country on false evidence. And now we're on a crazed economic crusade that's right up there with "we will disarm Saddam Hussein" for absurd up-is-down-ism.

The historical view of this era is going to be incredulous --- if we don't kill the planet in the meantime because of this nonsense.

Of course, you rarely hear any discussion about why this is happening.  It's the clear result of a long slog of media deregulation initiatives that have been going on since the 1980s, not to mention one of Bill Clinton's signature pieces of legislation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which has done to the media what the repeal of Glass-Steagle did to the banking industry.  And don't think that the media conglomerates aren't seeking even more.

Jobs and Automation

Both Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum wonder aloud about what affect increasing automation is having on our ability to keep out people employed. First Drum talks about the declining labor force participation rates, particularly among men:

What's the answer? Liberals suggest more vocational education. Conservatives think we should stigmatize nonwork and reduce welfare transfers. Everyone agrees that more kids should go to college.

But will any of that work? Craft work has long since given way to factory work, and if Chinese workers will do factory work for less than American workers, then more vocational education won't do much good. Likewise, if there just aren't enough jobs for the weakly educated, stigmatizing nonwork won't do any good either. It will just immiserate people for no reason. And the kind of people who are most affected by all this—high-school dropouts and those who barely got diplomas—aren't going to college no matter how much we push them. It's just not going to happen.

It's hard to be optimistic here. Until about 2000 or so, you could argue that declining male labor force participation was mostly due to increasing female participation. But that doesn't wash anymore. Since 2000, work attachment has been going down for everyone. There's something else going on, and I suspect it's very strongly related to increased automation. We've seen this especially strongly since the 2008 recession, as businesses let go of millions of workers and then discovered they just flatly didn't need them back when the economy started to recover.

This is only going to get worse as automation gets better and better. Things will probably improve a bit in the short term as the economy continues to recover from the Great Recession (assuming we don't idiotically force ourselves into a double-dip via bad fiscal policy). But the longer-term trend is pretty stark, and it's not clear what the answer is. I'm not sure there is one.

Then Krugman on what this means from the perspective on income inequality, which to me is the driving force behind out economic issue:

Robots mean that labor costs don’t matter much, so you might as well locate in advanced countries with large markets and good infrastructure (which may soon not include us, but that’s another issue). On the other hand, it’s not good news for workers!

This is an old concern in economics; it’s “capital-biased technological change”, which tends to shift the distribution of income away from workers to the owners of capital.

Twenty years ago, when I was writing about globalization and inequality, capital bias didn’t look like a big issue; the major changes in income distribution had been among workers (when you include hedge fund managers and CEOs among the workers), rather than between labor and capital. So the academic literature focused almost exclusively on “skill bias”, supposedly explaining the rising college premium.

But the college premium hasn’t risen for a while. What has happened, on the other hand, is a notable shift in income away from labor:

If this is the wave of the future, it makes nonsense of just about all the conventional wisdom on reducing inequality. Better education won’t do much to reduce inequality if the big rewards simply go to those with the most assets. Creating an “opportunity society”, or whatever it is the likes of Paul Ryan etc. are selling this week, won’t do much if the most important asset you can have in life is, well, lots of assets inherited from your parents. And so on.

I think our eyes have been averted from the capital/labor dimension of inequality, for several reasons. It didn’t seem crucial back in the 1990s, and not enough people (me included!) have looked up to notice that things have changed. It has echoes of old-fashioned Marxism — which shouldn’t be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is. And it has really uncomfortable implications.

But I think we’d better start paying attention to those implications.

I agree.  This is a topic I have been concerned about for many years.  I have spoken before about how the markets react when companies announce layoffs.  It always occurred to me that layoffs were a bad thing, and when it became obvious in the 1990s that the market was rewarding companies for laying people off rather than punishing them, I thought that it was nuts.  The most important reason for this, of course, is that people with no jobs and people with low paying jobs can't buy things, and you need people to buy things to keep the economy going.

This trend hasn't really stopped.  On Wednesday Citibank announced job cuts, and its stock price increased by 10%.

Another way of looking at this is from the standpoint of increasing labor productivity.  As has been pointed out in a number of contexts, this can be a double-edged sword:

Since 1980, average labor productivity in the US has increased 2% per year yet average worker pay has remained stagnant and the average number of hours worked has not decreased.  The great promise that increased productivity would lead to increased wealth and leisure time seems to not have come true for the majority of workers.  Increased productivity has led to increased profits instead of higher wages.  Increased labor productivity has also led to increased levels of unemployment.  Fewer workers are needed to produce the same amount of goods and services.

The problem being, of course, that fewer workers with jobs means fewer people who can buy the goods and services that are being produced:

If American companies were willing to trade off some of their current earnings growth to make investments in wage increases and hiring, American workers would have more money to spend. And as American workers spent more money, the economy would begin to grow more quickly again. And the growing economy would help the companies begin to grow more quickly again. And so on.

But, instead, U.S. companies have become obsessed with generating near-term profits at the expense of paying their employees more, making capital investments, and investing in future growth.

This may help make their shareholders temporarily richer.

But it doesn't make the economy healthier.

And, ultimately, as with any ecosystem that gets out of whack, it's bad for the whole ecosystem.

These trends have been a long time coming, and the attitudes of our political and business elites are not going to change easily.  But they must change if the economy is ever going to be robust again.

I'm not worried about us becoming another Greece.  I'm worried about becoming another Japan.

Things That Interest Me

Links:

How the People Who Brought You Curves Are Actually Working Against Women's Health:  I think my women friends ought to re-think where they work out.

US Attorney in New Orleans Resigns After Anonymous Internet Smears Traced to His Office:  Is anyone surprised that this guy is a holdover Bush appointee?

If We Did Not Share in the Prosperity, Why Should We Have to Share the Sacrifice?  I'm not a big fan of Sharpton, but he does have a point.

Scientists Warn of Sperm Count Crisis:  This is not a joke, and it is something I wasn't really aware of up to now.  I wonder how much of it is just plain old evolution.  Sooner or later, human population growth is going to have to stop or we'll overwhelm the planet (if we haven't already).  To paraphrase the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park, "Nature finds a way."

The PSY scandal, singing about killing people v. constantly doing it:  Vintage Greenwald.  The sad fact is that most Americans are totally unaware of what is being done in their name around the world.

Fiscal Cliff + OMB or Fool Me Once/Twice:  Patrick Durusau on how the OMB is making it difficult to assess just what's going to happen if we go over the cliff.  This is just part and parcel of how the government is actually pushing an agenda rather than just giving the facts, along the same lines as this and this.

Khuzami Deathwatch:  SEC Ignores Tips About $12 Billion of Hidden Losses at Deutsche Bank:  For those who don't know, Khuzami, who is the Chief Enforcement Officer for the SEC, was an executive at Deutsche Bank before he assumed this post.  The SEC needs a thorough housekeeping, which isn't going to happen as long as the banks maintain their stranglehold on our political system.

On The Border:  A fascinating take on what is happening on our Southern Border from the perspective of the decline of the American Empire.  This is a blog that I just discovered and, perusing some of its prior posts, is definitely one I intend to keep following.

Oil to the World:  Happy Holidays (I think).

Dispatch From Torture Nation

Via Digby:

The warden of a North Carolina prison has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations that inmates were forced to rub hot sauce on their genitals, officials said Tuesday.


Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Pamela Walker said that Sampson Correctional Institution administrator Lafayette Hall has been put on paid leave while the State Bureau of Investigation reviews what happened at the Clinton facility.

Forget about the fact that we seem to have a significant number of police officers and prison guards who get off on imposing pain and suffering on other human beings for no good reason.  That's a huge problem as it is.

But where do they get their ideas for how to do it?

I Feel So Bad For Those Poor People....

2016 GOPers Push for New Focus on Poverty After Romney Disaster:

Ryan, best known for his plan to slash safety net spending, focused his speech overwhelmingly on America’s poorest citizens, a group often left out of stump speeches in 2012 as both parties focused on winning the middle class. He used the word “poverty” 15 times in his prepared remarks. But he positioned his calls for reduced spending on anti-poverty programs as consistent with his concern for struggling families.


“We haven’t applied the welfare-reform mindset with equal vigor across the spectrum of anti-poverty programs,” he said. “In most cases, we’re still trying to measure compassion by how much we spend — not by how many people we help.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) put just as much emphasis on the disadvantaged, frequently referring to his own roots as the son of poor Cuban immigrants. He called for an expansion of charter schools and voucher programs to help parents find opportunities for their children. He suggested greater cooperation with churches and other local institutions in impoverished neighborhoods to help “confront societal breakdown” that traps families in poverty. And while he said Congress should “protect our nation’s safety net programs,” he stressed that he did not favor tax increases on the wealthy to do so and that “these programs must be reformed to enhance family stability, financial opportunity, education and a culture of work.”

“It is not the ever expanding reach of government, but rather having access to the benefits of thriving economy that allows the poor to rise into the middle class,” Rubio said. “Not by making rich people poorer, but by making poor people richer.”

For the most part, neither candidate suggested a major break with traditional GOP policy prescriptions. Rubio praised Community Health Centers, an area where the House GOP has tried to cut funding for in recent years, but it’s hardly a heretical position. Based on remarks by Ryan, Rubio, and other rising politicians like Bobby Jindal, the GOP’s next generation appears convinced that a more inclusive tone can salvage the party’s platform as is.

You can express concern for the poor all you want, but you're going to have a hard time convincing them (and many others) that poverty can be cured by eliminating the capital gains tax....

We seem determined to destroy ourselves....

Studies Tie Rise of Significant Earthquakes in U.S. Midcontinenet to Wastewater Injection.

In other words, fracking causes earthquakes.  Including some pretty big ones....

Chickensh*t Republicans

Kevin Drum points out something I hadn't noticed in any of the media reports on Boehner's so-called "counterproposal":

[E]very news account of Boehner's proposal says that it includes (a) an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, and (b) a change in the way inflation is calculated, which would reduce Social Security benefits. But neither of those things is in the letter he sent to President Obama. So where did they come from?

The answer, apparently, is from anonymous GOP aides on background. And if that's the case, it should have been clearly reported that way. Because that's not a proposal at all, it's a way of pretending to make a proposal that can be disavowed and denied at any time if it becomes inconvenient. If it were real, after all, Boehner would have put it in his letter.

My biggest fear is that a "deal" will be reached that every Republican will vote no on.  Imagine a grand bargain bill that includes tax increases and entitlement cuts that passes the House with 201 Democratic yes votes, 200 Republican no votes and 34 Republican abstentions, and passes the Senate with no Republican votes there either.
 
Then, when the 2014 elections roll around, Republicans will once again run on a platform blaming the Democrats for cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

I'll say it again: whatever Obama ultimately gives in the negotiations, Republicans better damn well vote in favor of it.  One aspect of the deal must be that there are two bills: a spending cut bill and a tax bill, and the spending cut bill gets voted on first.  If a majority of Republicans don't vote in favor of it, no deal.

Oh, Good God Not Again

Via Yves I came across this post by Wolf Richter about the next great wave of deregulation - in the life insurance industry. 

Because, you know, it worked so well with the banking industry.

And the savings and loan industry.

And....

Will we never learn?

This Is What We Mean By a Captive Agency

Yves outlines how the SEC is a total fail: 

The SEC has made one, repeat one, payout from its $450 million whistleblower fund last summer, a whopping $50,000. That was a full two years after the program was established. And there hasn’t been a single payout since then.

....

The SEC is not suffering from a want of leads under this program. Again from Powers:

They’re digging out from under an avalanche of information, overwhelmed by tips of Wall Street crimes and corporate malfeasance. The SEC whistleblower program received 334 tips in its first seven weeks in August 2011, and over the past year has averaged nearly 10 new tips per day.

Of course, when you have this guy as you head of enforcement, who could expect otherwise?

[T]here’s good reason Khuzami has engaged in (at best) entering into settlements with banks that Judge Jed Rakoff described as mere “cost of doing business” level punishments. Any serious pursuit into the conduct at the heart of the crisis would have implicated him. He was General Counsel for the Americas for Deutsche Bank, and its senior trader Greg Lippmann was patient zero of toxic CDOs, so Khuzami was directly responsible for the failure to rein him in (specifically, note that Khuzami sued Goldman over one of 27 Abacus CDOs but did not sue Deutsche over a similar Deutsche Bank CDO program called Start).

I said a long time ago I'm keeping my money in my mattress until I see heads roll.  My mattress is getting full....

What We're Really Saying About Syria

Dan Drezner translates all the sturm and drang over the last 48 hours regarding Syria.

It would be funny if it wasn't so tru.

All You Need to Know

I saw this chart on Digby's blog and found it striking:

So during our strongest period of economic growth, corporate profits comprised about 5% of GDP and wages were about 50%.  Now corporate profits comprises 10-11% of GDP and wages about 44%.  That's a huge shift.

Anyone who thinks this isn't a fundamental reason for the slowing of economic growth over the last decade is kidding themselves.  This is a trend that has to be reversed if we are ever going to have a truly robust economy again....

Repubs Freak Out Over Obama Fiscal Cliff Proposal

I was watching Morning Joe this morning, and I must say it was amusing watching those guys freak out over the proposal Geithner presented to Boehner yesterday.  Apparently, they think that President Obama should make an opening offer in the negotiations that differs substantially from what he was proposing during the election campaign.  Are they serious?

I can tell you for myself - and from what I've been reading on the blogs - Dems are delighted.  For the entire first term the President was entirely solicitous of the Repubs, and they consistently spit on him.
Even when he did things they say they favor, they totally opposed him, and even worse, ran against him for supporting Republican proposals.  I mean, Repubs have been talking about reforming Medicare for years, and the ACA goes a long way towards that.  Then they run against him claiming that he's gutting Medicare!

The mendacity of these people is amazing. 

Look, the Republicans are on the wrong side on the two big issues they are upset about.  They want to preserve the tax cuts for the rich.  Large majorities of the public say no.  The want to cut entitlements.  Large majorities of the public say no.  If they want to do these things, they better get specific on how they want to do it.  There's no reason for Obama to negotiate with himself on these two main points.

My feeling is that Obama should hold firm and force the Repubs make a counter offer.  And it should be a specific one.  No three page powerpoint presentations.  No unspecified spending cuts and unspecified tax loopholes to close.  Specific proposals fully scored.  Enough of this negotiating with himself BS.

Obama should also make clear to Boehner that whatever deal is ultimately reached, he better bring his caucus along.  Democrats can't be left in a position where the they are the only ones voting for policies the public doesn't want.  Both sides have to own the compromise. 

If there's no majority of the majority in the House voting in favor of the deal, there's no deal. 

The Social Security Payroll "Tax"

In a roundabout way I came across a couple of items today that revived some ideas I've had rolling around in my mind for a very long time (since the 80s in fact).  One item in particular is this item from Ross Douthat.

Now to start off, I have always been fundamentally opposed to payroll taxes.  I've never viewed it as "retirement contributions" (social security) or medical insurance premiums (medicare).  They are taxes, used to fund government operations, two of which are the payment of social security and medicare benefits. 

Why do I think that?  Because there really is no obligation on the part of the government to pay social security benefits or medicare benefits.  I mean think about it.  These are government programs enacted by statute.  A bare majority in Congress and a supportive President could decide tomorrow to repeal these programs, and that's it.  Done.  There's no obligation, if they do so, to "refund" the "contributions" or "premiums" people have paid.  There is no obligation really, to do anything should they decide to repeal these programs. 

The reasons these programs continue to exist are (i) a feeling that there is a moral obligation to do so, and (ii) the fact that it would be political suicide if our politicians decided to repeal the programs.  But a legal obligation?  You know, in the same way that a corporation has a contractual obligation to fund pension and health care benefits for its employees?  No such obligation exists.  These programs could be repealed tomorrow, and nobody would have any legal recourse.  Period.

You want further proof that these really are taxes?  For years the government collected much more in social security and medicare taxes than was paid out in benefits.  And what happened to those excess revenues?  The government "borrowed" them - the surplus funds are "invested" in treasury obligations - and used them to fund other government operations.  Have you ever "borrowed" from yourself?  Of course, in reality there is no such thing.  What do you think would happen to the "trust fund" if Congress decided to repeal the program?  The treasury bills would just disappear.  The government would just rip up the IOUs it has given to itself.  This is all just internal accounting - paper transactions - smoke and mirrors, designed to make people think that there really is an obligation there when in fact there isn't.

Actually, a huge chunk of the excess revenues were used to offset the dramatic reduction in income tax rates that have taken place over the last 30 years.  I have pointed out as often as I can over the last month or so how in the 1980s Congress "fixed" the horror of future social security and medicare "shortfalls" by increasing the payroll tax by 33%, only to turn around a couple of years later and reduce the top marginal income tax rate by 44% (from 50% to 28%).  I cannot think of any other instance in our history when such a huge shift in the tax burden from the upper class to the working class has taken place.  But they got away with it because it was disguised as a "fix" to a future "actuarial problem."  What a horrible sham inflicted on the American people....
Now that same fiction continues to transfix people.  The same "actuarial problem" looms and we hear that it's got to be fixed again - this time by cutting benefits.  That's not really what the problem is of course.  The problem is - if you actually believe in the smoke and mirrors - that those "borrowings" now have to be "repaid."  We are soon getting to the point (with the payroll tax cut we may have gotten there already) where payroll taxes are no longer high enough to fund benefit payments, so the government will have to start "repaying" those "borrowings" to fund the benefits.  In other words, income tax revenues will now have to be tapped to pay social security and medicare benefits.  Heaven forbid....
I actually think that's what's really going on here.  The only reason social security and medicare were palatable to our rich elites was that they really didn't cost them anything.  The costs of the programs were more than offset by payroll tax revenues which for the most part the elites didn't bear (or at the very least, which they got back in benefits like everyone else).  Now, heaven forbid, they might have to bear some of those costs, and it's driving them nuts.

I honestly never understood why the two sides of these programs were linked.  On one side is the tax revenues - in this case a payroll tax.  On the other side is the benefit expenditures.  Congress can stop one side or the other any time it wants to, and nobody will have any recourse.  It's pay as you go, plain and simple. 

So in my mind there was never any reason to have a separate payroll tax - something I object to because of the inherently regressive nature of the tax.  The same fundamental fairness that, to me, underlies the principle of the progressive income tax applies here as well.

Which gets me to Douthat's post.  There he talks about, well, if we got rid of the payroll tax what would we replace it with? 

[T]o completely replace the Social Security portion of the payroll tax (which was the focus of my op-ed), you would need just south of a trillion dollars in revenue every year for the next decade. To get that from the tax system as it currently exists, you’d need to let the Bush tax cuts expire and purge the tax code of nearly every credit and deduction. Alternatively, if you were willing to think more outside the existing policy box, you could institute a Value-Added Tax, perhaps paired with a carbon tax — but the VAT rate would have to be as high as 10-12 percent.

Note the paradigm here.  As laudible as his goal is of getting rid of the payroll tax, he just can't seem to accept the notion that tax rates may have to go up - perhaps, even, to the rate that was in place for the first six years of the Reagan presidency - you know, 50%.  Why is 35% magical or 39.6% (which would be the rate if we return to the Clinton era rates)? 

Douthat's goal seems to be to replace the payroll tax with something equally as regressive.  If you're going to do that, why bother?

Cox Joins Fox

Just what we need.

Why Hostess Went Under

Great summary of the real cause of Hostess's failure, by Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times.

The shorter version, as Atrios said, Hostess got Bained.

Really, how can anyone think that a company that goes into bankruptcy with $575 million of debt, and comes out of bankruptcy with $774 million of debt, is actually going to succeed? 

What kind of stupid judge approved this reorganization plan?

The Education of Bruce Bartlett

Via Paul Krugman comes this essay by Bruce Bartlett in the American Conservative about his long slow ostracization from the Republican Party because he dared to make his judgments based on facts rather than epistimology.  Krugman calls it moving and I must say I agree.

I'll have more to say about this later today.  But in the meantime, as they say, read the whole thing.

Forty-Seven

For my Pomona College friends and fellow alumni:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dear Red States

I saw this today in the comment section of Charlie Pierce's blog.  Apparently, it's an update of an earlier version that was circulating back during the Bush Administration.  As near as I can tell, no one has claimed authorship.  But it does seem appropriate in light of all the secession talk that's been going around lately.

Dear Red States:


We're ticked off at your Neanderthal attitudes and politics and we've decided we're leaving.

We in New York intend to form our own country and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the rest of the Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A).

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. You get Bobby Jindal and Todd Akin.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ol' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.

You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

We're taking the good weed too. You can have that crap they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,

Citizen of the Enlightened States of America

National Health Insurance Risk Pools.

Karoli:

GOP Governors Unwittingly Move U.S. Towards Single-Payer Health Care.

It is kind of ironic that the reason that Obamacare provides for state-level risk pools (which states can opt out of) instead of a national risk pool was because of Republican concerns about states rights. Now the only states electing not to establish state level risk pools are those governed by Republicans....

Now if we could only get other states to do the same thing....

Now We're Talking

Timmy comes up with a great idea:

Treasury Secretary Calls For Abolishing The Debt Ceiling

We have this huge budget negotiating process that where Congress agrees on tax and spending numbers.  Everyone knows what affect the outcome of these negotiations will have on the budget.  And it gives people the opportunity to be two-faced.  Vote yes on the budget so you can show everyone how you are working hard to maintain the programs they support, then become a deficity scold when what you support increases the debt.

There is no need to have a separate vote on this.  It's part of the budget process.

How Low Interest Rates Make the Future Look Scary

One of the things that people just aren't talking about in the whole fiscal cliff/tax reform/entitlement reform is how our view of the future is being skewed by the historically low interest rates we are experiencing right now.

I was reminded of this when a friend of mine posted a link to this on Facebook this morning.

How do interest rates affect this?  Well, the amount of money you have to invest in order to fund future pensions differs depending on how much you expect to earn on that investment.  For example, let's say you were looking to put money aside today to pay a pension obligation to an individual that begins ten years from now, and that obligation is $3,000 per month for the rest of that person's life (and using life expectancy tables let's say that lifetime is expected to be 15 years).  The following table shows how much you would have to put aside, based upon your assumptions as to what future interest rates will be:

Interest Rate                      Amount Required

     1%                                      $453,890
     2%                                      $381,751
     3%                                      $321,944
     4%                                      $272,046
     5%                                      $230,336
     6%                                      $195,400

I ran headlong into this when the financial crisis hit and I was sitting on my local school board trying to figure out what this all meant for our budget.  In New York State, public employees and teachers have pension plans that are maintained by the state.  Each year the state figures out actuarially what is needed in the fund in order to pay future pensions, taking into account expected future performance of its investments.  Based on that, it bills the local government units that employs the personnel their shares of the amount necessary to get to the right balance in the fund.  When the crash hit, the bills from the state skyrocketed.  Most of this was due to losses incurred in their investments.  But the required contributions really have not dropped all that much since then, and that is because the expected future earnings in the fund is smaller now than it used to be.

Of course, the reason for the record low interest rates is our weak economy.  Fix that, and a lot of these problems look a lot less scary.

Labor and the Markets

I've commented on this before, but sitting here watching Chris Hayes talking about the Wal-Mart labor situation, I feel I have to say this again.

I have always been amazed at the short sightedness of our markets.  For years you see companies announcing cuts in personnel and the market responding by lifting their stocks.  But in the long run, if you cut the resources of workers, you cut the resources of your customers.

This is one of the basic disconnects between the stock market and the economy.  These actions may be good for business, but what is good for business is not necessarily good for the economy.

Going Over the Fiscal Cliff

Paul Krugman has a series of charts up on his blog that need to be seen and understood by everyone involved in the fiscal cliff negotiations.  These two he posted on Friday are very instructive:

This chart shows changes in gross domestic product since the financial crisis began in 2007.  As you can see, the US economy has now resumed growth and is now beyond where it was at the peak before the crisis.  On the other hand, the other countries shown, still have not fully recovered, and progress made prior in the first year or so after the bottom was hit has stalled and even reversed.

The second chart is this one, which he posted yesterday:

This shows that our unemployment picture is significantly better than what is happening in the Euro Area.  This should not be surprising based on the first chart, which shows that our economy has begun to expand again while their economies have ceased to expand and, to some extent are beginning to contract again.

The third chart is this one:

What this chart shows is that the EU and the UK have worked very hard - and apparently succeeded - to get their budget balances back to where they were prior to the crisis.  The US has not - our budget balance continues to be in a greater deficit position than these other areas.

Are these factors related - economic growth, unemployment and budget deficit levels?  Of course they are.  Traditional economic theory, at least since the days of Keynes, holds if the government tries to deleverage - reduce it's debt (or at least avoid incurring more debt) - at the same time the private economy is doing so, it holds back expansion of the economy. This was one of the major things I learned when I took my introductory economics class in college.  So this is precisely what one would expect from the different policies being followed in Europe and the United States.

So what happens if we go over the fiscal cliff?  Basically, going over the fiscal cliff means that we will be adopting the policies that governments in Europe have followed - closing our deficit at the same time we are trying to recover from the financial crisis.  And this will stall the recovery, and quite likely push us back into recession.

Everybody knows this - that's why everyone is working so hard to avoid it.

Ironically, one of the things that has allowed us to perform better than Europe is the political gridlock surrounding the budget and taxes.  The result of that has been to keep the status quo in place, so that we continue to have more expansionary policies.  There is talk of putting off the decision once again, rather than reaching a Grand Bargain before the end of the year.  Depending on what the terms of the Grand Bargain are, that would not necessarily be a bad thing.

When Do Kids Become Self-Reliant?

Recently when I was helping my mother with packing up for a move, we got to reminiscing (as one is wont to do when you are packing up someone's life).  And we talked about how, when I was a kid, she used to send me to the market with a list and some money.  It was a small local market where we knew the owner and all the personnel.  When I got there I would hand them the list and the money, and one of the workers would gather together the items on the list and put them in a bag, together with the change, for me to take home.  The distance was about a half-mile each way through a mostly lower-middle class residential neighborhood - think Levittown - and I walked both ways.

I was 7 years old.

So when I see something like this, all I can do is shake my head:

A Principal Calls CPS After Mom Lets Daughter, 10, Ride City Bus to School

CPS = Child Protective Services

Has our society really grown so dangerous that letting a 10 year old ride a bus is considered child endangerment?

No.  The only thing that has grown since I was a kid is our fear.

h/t Atrios

The Press and Patraeus

David Simon has a great column up at Salon on the Patraeus affair:

It would be one thing if this were a scandal that could have compromised the CIA or American intelligence, if this were some honey trap set by foreign entities. When politically connected columnist Joe Alsop was famously lured into a homosexual liaison by Russian intelligence, which then attempted to turn Alsop, he rightly marched into the CIA headquarters and revealed the ploy, rendering it moot. And if there were indications that Petraeus was vulnerable to being so blackmailed, this mess might have actual import. But no, upon being confronted with his paramour’s indiscreet emails, he confessed all, resigned, and returned to private life to attempt, no doubt, to salvage his marriage or at least deal with the personal implications of it all.

More incredibly, Mr. Simon argues the general’s stupidity in not lying to federal investigators. He is, at that moment, not merely callow and sneering, as much of the press is apt to be in such a circumstance, he is, himself, grandly idiotic. The penalties for lying to an FBI agent are profound. Just ask Henry Cisneros. Or Martha Stewart, for that matter. Or Bill Clinton. No doubt if the general did lie and was later charged with a false statement, or worse, lying to a grand jury, Mr. Simon and his like would rush to declare that it wasn’t the marital infidelity that we care about, but the perjury and dishonesty. As if it isn’t entirely rational for any human being — caught and shamed for thinking with their genitals as ordinary mortals are often apt to do — to lie and avoid not only the public shaming, but the private harm to other loved ones inherent in that public disgrace. Nice for the press to have it both ways: Shame them when they tell the truth about their private indiscretions, or stand self-righteously and defend the public trust if they don’t. Christ. It’s enough to make even a half-honest man vomit.

I’m neither an admirer nor detractor of Gen. Petraeus. But I am most definitely a detractor of what journalism has become in this country, of what passes for the qualitative analysis of our society and its problems. And I’ve paid enough attention to the human condition to no longer take seriously the notion that anyone who lets penis or vagina rub against the wrong person, who is indiscreet in doing so, and who then tells the truth about it when confronted by an FBI agent is unfit for either citizenship or public service. I certainly know enough about the human condition to know that all kinds of people — smart and dumb, powerful and powerless — are capable of finding themselves in such a circumstance and shaking their heads at just how far they strayed, at just how indiscreet they were in their very ordinary, human hunger, and how they have hurt those closest to them. Sex, done right, is some powerful shit. And when Americans begin to accept the human condition for what it is rather than an opportunity to jeer at the other fellow for getting caught, then we will be, if nothing else, a little bit more grown up. I remember when Francois Mitterrand’s wife and mistress walked beside each other in the French premier’s funeral procession and few in that country thought it remarkable. The French have got their problems, but in some respects, they make our country, our political commentary, seem as mature and insightful as a 14-year-old unsticking the pages of his dad’s just-discovered skin mags. It’s a peculiar American hypocrisy that only the worst kind of  journalistic hack would readily and willingly embrace as a meaningful metric.

We’ve caught some of the smartest and most committed public men and women with their pants at their ankles. Time and again, we’ve had our fun. We’ve roundly mocked them for the very weaknesses that are so utterly our own. Reporters who have at points in their lives fucked themselves silly in hotel rooms across this great land of ours while pursuing the infidelities of more public men with righteous glee — these are not men and women who are much inclined to any real moment of self-reflection, but then who among us really is? This kind of hypocrisy requires a complicit silence and a ritual wiping of the memory before every byline. Well, I’m 52 years old and I will admit that I have not lived this long without occasionally misplacing my penis. For shame, yeah. And so, being fully complicit in the human comedy, the last thing I’m going to mock is the mistakes that others make in the rush to bed, or why they do so.

But for those who love throwing stones, is it too much to ask that their aim be true? That they limit the target to Darwinian compulsion, to ordinary, and yes, at times, unthinking human desire. That they not equip themselves to judge the totality of a public servant’s entire career and works solely with the details of whatever sexual misadventure we happen to discover. Roosevelt was a smart guy. So was Eisenhower. Clinton might be the smartest president of my generation. And David Petraeus saw and spoke to the folly of Iraq before the rest of America was cheering the fall of Saddam’s statue. And he stayed long after that folly was evident to work at a remedy for and an extrication from that tragic intervention.

If we can judge stupidity by solitary lapses, then Roger Simon, by dint of this recent column could rightly be judged a moron. And if we’re going to free-associate stupidity with the public discovery of sexual misadventure, such vacuous shit as Mr. Simon just offered up virtually requires him to be caught unawares in a Nuevo Laredo whorehouse with a fistful of 50s.

What I just wrote is unfair of course. I’m sure Mr. Simon has had better and meaningful moments commenting on our body politic, just as the general has had other, more meaningful moments as a public servant. But given that Petraeus himself doesn’t seem to have done anything criminal, or failed in his public performance, one can surmise that his decision to depart as CIA director is predicated on what he will now endure from our stunted media culture.

I can't help but think that the mindset that Simon describes here is the same one that tolerates the derision of women who stand up for their rights to use contraception.  And the press is a key, continuing to press these memes without realizing the role they play in reinforcing them.  

Our society's attitudes towards sex are, forgive the pun, royally screwed up.