1 in 10 californians jobless

California's unemployment rate hits 10.1%; 1.8 million Californians without jobs.

coen brothers direct a reality campaign anti-'clean coal' ad

That's more like it:



Directly addressing the Rovian/Orwellian linguistics of "clean coal" is great, and the sarcasm here is impossible to miss. Good work, Coen brothers!

a sports metaphor for framing

David Sirota explains it all:

Think about it in terms of the Celtics and the Lakers rivalry in the 1980s.
To beat the Lakers, the Celts goal was to slow the game down into a plodding, use-up-the-24-second-clock, half-court operation. They knew that their own strength was the half-court game; that with slow lumbering trees like Bird, McHale and Parish, their weakness was the fast break; and that if they could slow the game down and make the Lakers play their game, they'd have a much better chance of winning. The Lakers goal was the other way around. They knew their strength was the fast-paced, high-octane run-and-gun "Showtime" game with Magic and James Worthy and Byron Scott pushing it as much as possible. The more they could speed up the game, the more chance they would have to win basketball games.

In this rivalry, you never saw the Celtics decide to try to turn up the pace of the game against the Lakers, and you never saw the Lakers try to slow things down. Sure, there were plays here and there where the Celts had a nice fast break, or the Lakers executed a sweet half-court set up. But as an overarching philosophy of winning, you never saw either team devise a strategy whose formula relied on beating the other team at their own game, because that's a losing proposition in the long run.

It's the same thing for Democrats on taxes. Yes, they should show how their tax policies are more fair and just, as Democrats in state legislatures are already doing. But they shouldn't play the game of trying to outbrag the Republicans about the overall size of the tax cuts they are supporting. It's a losing proposition because that's the Republicans game, and they will always be arguing for a bigger tax cut (this is, after all, the party whose ideological goals are to effectively eliminate all taxes, and most of the government). Additionally, it's not even a necessity to frame the debate this way when they have at least as good a story to tell about the stimulus bill as much-needed spending that provides a critical downpayment on America's future.

It actually has been a little disturbing that Pres. Obama's line has been "look at my tax cuts" and not "look at all the jobs I'm creating." Seems like he's playing the other team's game. Others, including framing guru George Lakoff, believe that the President knows exactly what he's doing, but the question remains whether he's spending too much effort trying to convert "partially progressive Republicans" where the counterweight of the conservative message machine is still too strong to compete with.

Speaking of David Sirota, a leading populist voice in the blogosphere, he's perhaps being considered for a new show on MSNBC to follow Olbermann and Maddow. There is, as with everything in the universe, a Facebook group supporting him getting a show.

gov. gary locke to commerce; third apia in the cabinet

As you've heard by now, President Obama has nominated former Washington Gov. Gary Locke as Secretary of Commerce. This is Obama's third attempt, the first being Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) and the second being the bizarre choice of New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg.

Sometimes, of course, you just save the best for last, and Gov. Locke definitely has an idea of what to do with the Department. In his own words, from this morning's announcement (h/t angry asian man):

Our nation's economic success is tied directly to America continuing to lead in technology and innovation, and in exporting those products, services and ideas to nations around the globe. The Department of Commerce plays a critical role in nurturing innovation, expanding global markets, protecting and managing our ocean fisheries, and fostering economic growth. The Department of Commerce can and will help create the jobs and the economic vitality our nation needs.

When I was first sworn in as governor of the great state of Washington, I told the story of how a hundred years ago, my grandfather came from China as a teenager and worked for a family as a houseboy in exchange for English lessons -- just one mile from the Governor's Mansion. It took our family 100 years to move that one mile, a journey possible only in America.

And during World War II, my father served in the United States Army as a staff sergeant and landed on the shores of Normandy. As a kid I lived in public housing, and my mom and dad worked very hard in the neighborhood grocery store that they owned.

We grew up on the values of get a good education, work hard, and take care of each other. It was a struggle, but thanks to their sacrifices, I received the best education America offered. And here I am today, proud to have the opportunity to serve all the people of our great nation.

My family's story is America's story. Our story is just one of hundreds of millions since the birth of our nation, of people coming from every part of the world in pursuit of the American Dream of freedom, hope and opportunity. In hard times, Americans have rallied together, sacrificed and even given their lives for our country, because they believe in the essential goodness and promise of America.

Americans are prepared to do the same today. They believe in your leadership, Mr. President, and want you to succeed because they want America to succeed. They want a better future for themselves and their children.

We will harness the resources and the talent of the Department of Commerce to help you fulfill your commitment to the American people to build a stronger and more prosperous nation. I embrace this opportunity to serve you and the American people.

And finally I want to thank my family -- my parents and brother and sisters and the extended Locke clan, but especially my beautiful and truly gifted and loving wife, Mona, and the joys of our lives, Emily, Dylan and Madeline. Today would not have been possible without their love, support and sacrifices. And thank you, Mr. President, for this opportunity.

This is a surprise return to politics for Gov. Locke, who was the first Chinese American governor and considered a rising star in the party before he declined to run for reelection after the 2004 election, citing a desire to spend more time with family. He joins Secretary of Veteran Affairs Eric Shinseki and Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu as the third Asian American in the Obama Cabinet.

reality campaign: new 'no such thing as clean coal' ad

Not sure the winning strategy is to make this a debate about industry trying to confuse the debate. It's too inside baseball, too wonky. This should be about saying that there's no such thing as clean coal, the end. The smudge on the nose after he says that "it smells nice, too" is good, but the rest of it may fall by the wayside.

The original was better. Stick with that sort of thing.

H/t TPM.

the dangers of coffee

le Café - Oldelaf (english subtitles)
by Boebis

why the banking nonsense is making americans so angry

This response by Josh Marshall at TPM to a reader comment got me thinking:

From TPM Reader JP ...

Please stop using the highly inaccurate term "nationalization" which connotes permanent government takeover of the banks. The correct term is receivership, which is by definition temporary and a routine staple of our capitalist economy and banking regulatory system. Using the term nationalization plays into the propaganda of the far right.

As I've said a number of times, the term 'nationalization' at best confuses the issue, for pretty much the reasons JP says. I'm inclined to say that I don't want to further confuse the issue by using a different term when this is the one everyone is using already. But perhaps JP has a better point than I realize.

The key is that financial reorganization of failed companies -- whether it's receivership, or bankruptcy proceedings, or something else like it -- is textbook rule of law capitalism. If you're a real free marketeer the real departure is keeping failed companies afloat with a perpetual taxpayer IV line, socializing all the losses and leaving all the upside with people who ran their companies into the ground. It's not just a raw deal for taxpayers. It also keeps the whole economy in idle.

Why is it that I and so many other Americans are so upset about the Wall Street bailout? I think the answer is that the bailout is contrary to both halves of our political minds. Our conservative brain that operates within the value framework of individual responsibility is outraged by this affront to American capitalism and meritocracy: not only are we saving those who have failed so horribly in running their businesses, but we're actually rewarding them. The outrage at the CEO bonuses and the compensation cap debate is, in most ways, about retributive justice and the punitive tendencies that all Americans hold in their value system, though it is overgrown for some (e.g., Republicans) and atrophied for others (e.g., prison abolitionists).

Simultaneously, our progressive brain that operates within the value framework of community is equally outraged by this affront to the mismanagement and wasteful allocation of resources that we've all contributed to, and especially by the protection of those institutions and individuals least in need of protection at a time when unemployment and foreclosures are skyrocketing. In other words, while our progressive value system, which all Americans share at different levels, is not opposed to the idea of helping those who have stumbled or made mistakes, our progressive selves are adamantly opposed to using our limited national resources to help those who will be fine regardless of our assistance when there are so many more who are about to fall into truly dire situations without some neighborly help.

Progressive or conservative, there's really nothing to like about the unstructured "taxpayer IV line" for failed zombie banks that's going on (because keeping zombies alive is never a good idea). Receivership or bankruptcy seems to be inevitable at this point, and I can't say that either progressives or conservatives will be terribly upset at that development.

how nyc mta cuts will impact you

NYC's Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. has created an online tool that lets you see how you'll be impacted by the MTA cuts. Just plug in your five digit NYC zip code and you get to find out that there will be fewer trains on all line for weekends and evenings.

From the NYT piece on the website, what the cuts mean (and how Thompson says we could avoid them):

The service cuts, which would help close a $1.2 billion gap, would involve the elimination of the W and Z lines; shortening the G and M lines; run fewer trains during the middle of the day and on weekends, evenings and late nights; and reduce the number of station booths and agents. A total of 56 bus lines would lose service on weekdays or weekends, with other service reductions on another 29.

To close the authority’s deficit, Mr. Thompson has instead proposed a weight-based vehicle annual registration fee of $100 for vehicles of 2,300 pounds or less, plus 9 cents for every pound over that, along with a reinstatement of a commuter tax or a suburban payroll tax.

This isn't just a problem for New York City; mass transit, often competing for limited state resources against health care and education.

While mass transit did get some funding in the Stimulus Bill, it was for capital improvements, not operating costs. This is sort of the plague of funding for transit: it's way more fun for politicians to talk about building new trains and lines, but less fun to pay for the ones that we already have (and that transit-dependent Americans rely on). From the L.A. Times:

[M]any mass transit agencies around California were preparing to take a hit in the state budget. Sure enough, it has come to pass, with the Legislature approving a budget Thursday morning that denies putting money into the State Transit Assistance Fund for the next several fiscal years.

The fund is designed to supply money to local transit operators around California to help them cover operating costs. Most of the money goes to the most populated areas in the state, but there are dozens of local bus agencies that receive some money from the fund. [...]

The [Los Angeles] MTA's [spokesman Marc] Littman noted that many smaller municipal transit operators rely more heavily on the state funds than do the MTA and other large agencies. "A lot of the munis around the state have already had to cut service and raise fares," Littman said. "Losing the state money on top of it makes providing service that much harder."

[...]

One thing worth noting is that the stimulus money is likely going to capital projects, not the operating costs that are bedeviling transit agencies. That may allow some agencies to shift money toward keeping their buses and trains rolling, but until the money is spent, that remains to be seen.

Finding a way to maintain and expand mass transit services is crucial to the economy and to the environment; it's troublesome that it continues to be seen as separate from the core challenges that need to be addressed.

restore democracy, repeal 2/3

I was having dinner with a friend last night and wondering when someone was going to take up the flag to repeal the terrible 2/3 rule in the California Legislature for passing budgets. Despite having escaped complete catastrophe, this rule is going to be around when this year's budget is decided, and the year after that, and onward forever. In the foreseeable future, that means more jobs cuts, more service and program cuts, and an exacerbated economic crisis in the Golden State.

Luckily, as is now expected, the Courage Campaign is leading the fight to overturn the 2/3 rule.

Rachel Maddow discussed the issue with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass last night, before the early morning passage of the bill today. As Maddow points out, there are national implications here; if Republicans can get away with blackmailing Democratic majorities in California, why not in other states, and why not in D.C. (hint: they already did!).



You can sign the petition to overturn the 2/3 rule at the Courage Campaign website.

california escapes collapse

State Senate passes budget after three-month deadlock; budget cuts $15 billion in spending and raises $12.8 billion in temporary (2-year) tax increases.

$15 billion in cuts to state services and programs, leading to up to 10,000 jobs lost in a state that already has a 9.3% official unemployment rate (the third-highest in the country), is a pretty awful idea. This is what happens when the state government is set up so that Neo-Hooverite Republicans can hold the entire state hostage by refusing to raise new revenue, and when regressive "balanced budget" laws prevent essential deficit spending.

So this is an escape from complete catastrophe, but what California has just survived is a symptom of a much larger disease, exacerbated by the current economic crisis.

executive bonus caps we can believe in

British Conservative Party leader David Cameron proposes limits on the bonuses that U.K. bank executives can receive. The amount? 2000 pounds, or $2,854.30. That's the bonus that bank tellers receive.

TPM points out that this is less than 1% of the cap that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has been advocating.

Of course, such limits are unthinkable in the U.S., where that bonus would barely pay for a fifth of a charity ball-quality gown that is one of the necessities of living amongst the American Aristocracy.

oh, california

Another reason to love California: the "biggest storm of the year" is predicted to yield 1-3 inches of rain.

Awesome.

sen. lu tian na (d-ny)

Apparently newly-appointed junior Senator from New York, Kristin Gillibrand, is fluent in Mandarin, and has lived in or traveled to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, NYT reports today. Here's some tidbits:

During her studies abroad in 1986, first in Beijing, then in Taichung, Taiwan, Ms. Gillibrand, then a junior, sampled everything from congee to dried cuttlefish and stinky tofu. She used a slide projector to show images of people and places she photographed, talked constantly to ordinary Chinese, took up tai chi and navigated her bicycle through Beijing’s thoroughfares and narrow alleys.

By the time she returned to Dartmouth, Ms. Gillibrand could comprehend television news and newspaper articles, according to two classmates, Eve Stacey and Dana Beard, who accompanied Ms. Gillibrand overseas.

“I know it was a life-changing experience for me, and I suspect it was the same for Tina,” said Ms. Beard. “It opened our minds.”

Ms. Gillibrand agreed.

“Our relationship with China is extraordinarily complicated, and when you do understand the culture better, having that appreciation means you can hopefully find compromises,” she said.

She said that the United States should be a “candle for the world,” and that “so much of our foreign policy and national security depends on China.”

She also suggested that she would be pragmatic in dealing with China’s human rights record. She recalled trekking in Tibet, and noticing a 5-year-old boy who had little choice, because of his family’s economic predicament, but to work alongside his father, carting stones in a wheelbarrow.

“When we talk about child labor laws, I have a recognition of how far other places have to go,” she said.

Her Mandarin name, in case you were wondering about the title of this post, "Lu Tian Na," was derived from her maiden name and the name "Tina," which she was known as growing up.

Seems liked a mixed-bag in terms of whether her exposure will be a positive or negative; the way the story frames it, it seems like it may have reinforced some sense of cultural relativism for her, especially regarding human rights violations.

But mad props to anyone who's willing to try stinky tofu.

the most awesome obama failure

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), Obama's second nominee for Commerce Secretary, has resigned, either due to the fact that he just now realized that he's an economic conservative and President Obama is, you know, a Democrat, or because he couldn't take his home state newspapers saying mean things about him.

Either way, Democrats rejoice!

A somewhat embarrassing situation for Obama will not always be a failure for Democrats, or progressives. Case in point: Judd Gregg turning himself into a punchline. This was a guy who endorsed essentially the sort of laissez-faire capitalism that got us into this economic crisis in the first place, who wanted to privatize Social Security, and who wanted to operate the Census in a way that dramatically undercounted historically underrepresented populations.

And now a popular Republican Senator has made a mockery of himself to the point that he's not going to seek reelection, opening up a very strong Democratic pick-up.

Someone explain to me how this isn't a victory for progressives and Dems? Also, note to the President: bipartisanship only works when the other side genuinely wants to work together. Token Republicans don't do any good except give them the chance to make you look bad.

In case you actually want to see his somewhat confusing press conference, here it is:

the american aristocracy would rather go into debt than send their kids to your kids' school

Remember back when the economy was doing well, and people were able to complain about how terrible it was that people who had trouble paying their bills were getting cable? I mean, cable! How dare they have access to the same basic forms of news, educational programming, and television that the rest of us have?! Poor people, as we were told then, should just suck it up and live like monks until they designed the next killer app and became millionaires themselves. THEN it would be okay for them to get cable.

Well, rules are easy to ignore when you're the one pimping them. As David Sirota writes:

([P]ersonal foibles aside) John Edwards was right - there really are two Americas: People who think $500,000-a-year is not much, and then the rest of us whose median household (not individual, but household) income is $49,000 a year.

As I noted in a recent post, there are, indeed, people who think that $500,000 is barely a pittance. Chief among which is apparently some writers at NYT, including staff writer Allen Salkin, who published this gem on Friday:

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

Chalk it up to another NYT "Woe is the Wealthy" moment. Seriously, you pay $192,000/year for housing, and $32,000 for private school.

Wait, wait... maybe I'm judging too quickly. Maybe if we listen to their best argument, it will make more sense:

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Very, very sad. Good thing we had the daughter of the founder of a corporation that's worth a mere $3.47 billion (with a "b") to tell us how hard it is out on the streets. What other sort of essentials and necessities must these poor souls live without if making ONLY $500,000 a year? According to Salkin:

• A winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the slopes: $16,000
• A $4 million summer home in the Hamptons: $24,000/yr in mortgage payments
• A chauffer: $75,000. But one with a gun: $125,000
• A garage for that car: $8,400/yr
• A personal trainer: $12,000
• Three charity ball-quality gowns (b/c you can't wear it twice!): $35,000
• Tutoring your private school kid for 30 weeks: $3,500
• Nanny: $45,000. Note the disparity in pay between the person who takes care of their kids and the one who takes care of their car. Interesting.
  

So the grand total for this extremely frugal lifestyle is $790,750 a year in post-tax, which means at minimum they need to make $1.6 million a year.

Just to make ends meet. Very sad.

update: per consultation with journalist friends, it was not cool of me to ascribe the values (or lack thereof) of the aristocracy with the reporter; whether or not reporter actually believes this is not clear. But I think all agree that it was a crappy article, and reporters are responsible for writing the article.

And I gave the NYT crap because this isn't the first of these sort of "Woe is the Wealthy" articles that they've run without critiquing how ridiculous these people actually are/sound. See previous post on the topic.

why a 'public' plan option needs to actually be public

There's a lot of sometimes confusing lingo in the health care reform debate, but one of the vaguest terms lately has been "public plan."

The common sense notion of a public plan is a U.S.-operated health coverage plan, such as Medicare, that is accountable to Americans through our elected representatives. A public plan could be made available to both employers and individuals by allowing them to buy into the plan, paying premiums to the U.S. Treasury rather than to private insurance companies. Currently, Medicare recipients pay $96 per month for their benefits.

But the vagueness and muddying of the public plan waters comes where folks begin to refer to private-public partnerships, or publicly-subsidized/funded private plans as "public." Example: Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is private insurance, paid for mostly by the Treasury. The problem, as Americans is well aware, is that private insurance companies have no shame and are, and will, continue to increase premiums, co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs every single year.

Evidence of this comes today on news that 2009 premiums for Medicare Advantage plans are increasing a whopping 13%, charging many recipients up to an additional $50 per month. This is money that the insurance companies are pocketing, as the U.S. government is already paying a whopping $100 billion each year to private insurance companies to do a job that the government is doing better. Medicare loses money on Medicare Advantage, paying 14% more per patient to insurance companies. Coincidentally, the overhead/profits of private insurance companies is around 15-25% of dollars spent, compared to 3-5% at Medicare.

Takeaway points here: First, private insurance companies, even contracting through the government, will find ways to increase a family's costs every year, unless there are some really, really serious regulations, and even that may not be enough. Second, in a fair, competitive market, private insurance cannot compete against a universally-accessible, truly public plan. Which means that private insurance companies will allow a universally-accessible, truly public plan over their dead bodies. The left-hook Americans need to be looking out for is where private insurers will try to create a faux-public plan, like Medicare Advantage, which will divert public money into an inefficient system, namely their wallets.

progressive victories two weeks in

It's not all bad news around these parts; progressives haven't been able to stop all of the centrist and right-wing nonsense, but have had some solid victories. Let's review:

1) The Lily Ledbetter Act: Companies can no longer pay women less and get away with it just by keeping it a secret for the first couple of years. Hooray for equal pay!

2) The State Child Health Insurance Program: Covering the children of middle class and working class families, the expanded SCHIP will not only cover more children generally, but has removed the horrendous 5-year waiting period for the children of documented immigrants. Five years is a lifetime to a child.

3) Obama's Support for Executive Compensation Limits: Sure, Bernie Sanders was saying this a year ago and, sure, there might be some loopholes, but getting the President to stand up for common sense when his main advisor is a former bank CEO is a victory, even if just a small one.

4) Buy America Provision Stays in Stimulus: Remember a guy named John McCain? Hint: He's not your friend. Anyway, he wanted to strip out the "Buy America" provisions of the stimulus package and send all of this $900 billion or so overseas, because, y'know, that might help the economy! Or an economy, just not ours. Luckily, we had Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Byron Dorgan (D-SD) reaffirming the notion that this economic stimulus bill is supposed to create jobs in the U.S. Again, in a sane world, this wouldn't be considered a victory, but these are chaotic times we live in.

Have I missed any?

the american aristocracy is causing the recession

From economist and sometimes-Obama adviser Robert Reich:

The bursting of the housing bubble caused the current crisis, but the underlying problem began much earlier -- in the late 1970s, when median U.S. incomes began to stall. Because wages got hit then by the double-whammy of global competition and new technologies, the typical American family was able to maintain its living standard only if women went into the workforce in larger numbers, and later, only if everyone worked longer hours.

When even these coping mechanisms were exhausted, families went into debt -- a strategy that was viable as long as home values continued to rise. But when the housing bubble burst, families were no longer able to easily refinance and take out home-equity loans. The result: Americans no longer have the money to keep consuming. When you consider that consumers make up 70 percent of the economy, the magnitude of the problem becomes apparent.

What happened to the money? According to researchers Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, since the late 1970s, a greater and greater share of national income has gone to people at the top of the earnings ladder. As late as 1976, the richest 1 percent of the country took home about 9 percent of the total national income. By 2006, they were pocketing more than 20 percent. But the rich don't spend as much of their income as the middle class and the poor do -- after all, being rich means that you already have most of what you need. That's why the concentration of income at the top can lead to a big shortfall in overall demand and send the economy into a tailspin. (It's not coincidental that 1928 was the last time that the top 1 percent took home more than 20 percent of the nation's income.)

Okay, so the wealthy aren't causing the recession on their own, as I doubt our solution is to demand that the top 1 percent all buy 100 Ford cars. But undoubtedly, the massive wage gap and concentration of wealth amongst those who cannot fathom living on a mere $500,000 a year is not good for the economy.

What would be good for the economy? Putting money in the hands of people who need it and will spend it. As Reich's fellow-Salon columnist Joan Walsh argues:

[President Obama] needs bigger and simpler themes: Put money in the hands of those who need it most -- and will spend it fastest. Create jobs and rebuild infrastructure so we see no more levees fail, bridges collapse and school buildings crumble. Invest in new, future-facing job-creating projects like new transit and green industry. Finally, do what our brave ancestors did, and make government again the engine of economic development, by providing the support 21st century employers and workers require: from Head Start and early education programs through college funding; new health insurance programs; lifetime worker retraining, investments in broadband infrastructure and green technologies.

That's the definition of economic stimulus. Anything short of that is window dressing.

best wishes to the ginsbergs

News is that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has been hospitalized for pancreatic cancer. Best wishes to her, Georgetown Law Professor Marty Ginsberg, and all their friends and family.

Ginsberg has undoubtedly been one of the saving graces of a very rough patch in the history of the Supreme Court. Her outrage in the Lily Ledbetter case was prescient, as often her dissents are, and her contribution in fighting for the rights of the American people and for justice have been invaluable.

I hope she makes a speedy recovery.

conservatives want to get rid of the best part of the country

Because it's only the sixth largest economy in the world, the primary grower of domestic produce, the largest state by population and the third largest state by territory. Not anything you'd want to keep around, or so says Fox News anchor and conservative mouthpiece Glenn Beck (via pandagon):

California today, they voted against offshore drilling. Not on their land, or their shore, no. They also voted last week to raise emissions standards because it’s too smoggy there and they care about the trees[....]

The Civil War taught us that, apparently, U.S. states can’t secede from the Union. I’d like to test that one again maybe sometime. But what I’d like to know is if the Union has the right to kick out states. Because if so, I’d like to take a star right out of our flag, and California is it.

Yes, Californians are against offshore drilling and smog, and in favor of trees.

How horrible we are!

Full video at C&L, if you can handle it.

the american aristocracy wants to have its cake and then let you eat it, too

Wall Street [has become] an aristocracy, completely disconnected from America[....] We're throwing money at a golden calf--let's call it Wall Street--praying, 'Please give loans!" But the calf doesn't listen, because it's stupid.

- Uwe Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, 1/29/09.

Another "Woe is us Wealthy" winner from the NYT:

President Obama on Wednesday announced a salary cap of $500,000 for top executives at companies that receive large amounts of bailout money, calling the step an expression not only of fairness but of “basic common sense.”

[...]

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend.”

O, woe is us, making only $500,000 a year, not included the bonuses we're still getting through loopholes and stock options! How ever will we continue to pay our gardeners for our summer house in the Hamptons!

But perhaps I am being too harsh... not everyone on Wall Street makes even a measly $500,000, after all. Some have to survive making barely six figures! Again, from NYT's "Woe is us Wealthy" files, via Sirota:

Of course, many Wall Street employees never expected the good times to end. They lived large, believing bonuses would always arrive, so they are ill prepared, both emotionally and financially, to cope with a sudden drop in income.

“Without a doubt, $18 billion is a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the bucket on Wall Street,” said Gustavo Dolfino, president of the WhiteRock Group, a headhunter for the banks. “These bonuses are down, and the salaries are not enough for these people. They can’t live on $150 to $180,000, so they haven’t saved any money. They put it on credit lines and at bonus time, they thought they’d pay it off.”

Sympathy! They just need our sympathy, and $700 billion in unconditional bailout funds. Is that really too much to ask? I mean, come on! If you made some poor decisions due to a culture of exorbitant spending and an expectation that "the good times" would always last and, let's say, were about to lose your house, of course you'd get bailed out too, right?

Oh wait, I forgot: if you're middle-class, working class or poor, then it's your own damn fault.

daschle shot down; give them dr. dean!

Word on the street is that the nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) for Secretary of Health & Human Services has been withdrawn, citing him owing $140,000 in back taxes for transportation services provided by a corporate overlord. I'm frankly quite shocked, not by the news that a wealthy and powerful politician can't find it within himself to pay his taxes, but by the fact that the incredibly clubby Senate didn't overlook the greed-based error as they have overlooked so many high crimes and misdemeanors that have befallen their brood (usually, though, it's a Republican, and as we all know, It's OK If You're A Republican).

I say, since the Republicans were so excited about shooting down a centrist nominee, let's pay them back by nominating someone they hate even more. Say, a former presidential candidate and head of the DNC who turned the Democratic Party against the war and then helped them win control of both houses of Congress with an innovative 50-state strategy?

Paging Doctor Dean.

Update: USA Today, CNN and others confirm the withdrawal.

Update 2: Join the Facebook Group. President Obama's best pick for the Cabinet so far was putting a real scientist (and a Nobel Prize winner at that) in Energy (go Dr. Chu!). He can repeat that greatness by putting a read M.D. in Health!

best super bowl ad

In case you missed it;



h/t to angry asian man for reminding me.

stereotypes have measurable impacts

From WaPo today, a report on a new study showing measurable impacts of even the most subtle reminder of stereotypes:

Sociologist Min-Hsuing Huang recently decided to ask whether the race of the person administering the survey mattered: He found that when black people and white people answered 10 vocabulary questions posed by a white interviewer, blacks on average answered 5.49 questions correctly and whites answered 6.33 correctly -- a gap typical of the ones found on many standardized tests.

Huang then examined the performance of African Americans who interacted with black interviewers: He found that black respondents then answered 6.33 questions correctly -- the same as white ones. The reason African Americans scored more poorly on tests administered by white interviewers, Huang theorized, is that these situations can make the issue of race salient and subtly remind the test-takers of the societal stereotype that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.
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Huang's findings, recently published in the journal Social Science Research, are only the latest in a body of research that has gone largely unnoticed by policymakers, parents and managers: Dozens of field experiments have found that reminding African Americans and Latinos about their race before administering academic tests, or telling them that the tests are measures of innate intelligence, can hurt their performance compared with minorities who were not reminded about race and not told that the results reflect inherent ability.

Psychologists such as Claude Steele at Stanford University came up with the term "stereotype threat" for the phenomenon: When people are threatened by a negative stereotype they think applies to them, they can be subtly biased to live out that stereotype.

The threats do not have to take place at a conscious level: When volunteers in experimental studies that have found huge stereotype-threat differences in performance are told about the phenomenon afterward, they invariably tell researchers that the theory is interesting but does not apply to them.

Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink dealt in detail with this phenomenon, and as referenced, a large body of other research has reached the same conclusion. There was a linguistics study that I remember hearing about in an undergrad course that played back the same recording of a female instructor giving a lecture, and students who heard the lecture took a test immediately afterward that was designed to measure how much of the lecture they comprehended. The twist was that the lecture was delivered while showing a still photograph of, in one case, an Asian American woman, and in another, a White woman. The students comprehended the lecture less when the Asian American woman's picture was displayed, it was theorized, because of the stereotype that it is harder to understand what Asian Americans are saying, being that we're all foreigners and have accents.

Somewhat non sequitur, did you all see that terrible Budweiser Super Bowl commercial yesterday with the Clydesdale horse that had an Irish accent, and was talking about how his great-grandfather traveled to America from Ireland and became a Budweiser carriage horse? Apparently accents persist into the third generation!?

I call B.S.