Campaign Contributions

I'm jinxed when it comes to campaign contributions. In 2008 I donated money to Rudy Guiliani--a couple weeks later he dropped out of the race. In 2012 I gave money to Herman Cain--and look what happened to him. I refused to contribute to the Romney campaign, partly because he was so uninspiring, but mostly because I wanted him to win.

Anyway, I'm trying it one last time--I just contributed to a Republican running for Jesse Jackson Jr's seat in Chicago. His chances of winning are about zero, and I'm probably not helping any. But I can't resist. I'm a sucker for courageous people who struggle against long odds and try to do good in the world. After my recent post about Mumia Abu Jamal, this guy is just a breath of fresh air. Anyway--here's his Youtube introduction.

http://youtu.be/UITQ-YvVbS8

If you can send him a dollar or two you can't go too far wrong. And if by some fluke you live on Chicago's south side (I used to live in Hyde Park), then please get out the vote. His politics (which I totally agree with) are described more fully on his webpage, mckinleyforcongress.com.

Update: h/t LegalInsurrection

Update 2: Here's an even better video: http://youtu.be/1-5BzyrKX3c

Update 3: A follow-up post is here.

Expletive Deleted

A recent post entitled Eric Alterman: What an (expletive deleted) is authored by an otherwise knowledgeable and talented writer that I've frequently linked to in the past. He'll remain nameless here so as not to engender unfortunate associations from search engines. In a word, I am shocked that he requires scatological profanity to make his point. Why?

I associate written profanity with stupid people possessed of small vocabularies. That description definitely does not suit Mr. P. So there is something else going on here--I don't really know what it is. Does Mr. P have some sort of mild mental disorder that causes needless use of profanity, some pale version of Tourette's syndrome? If that were true we could just ignore it--it's a very minor problem. But unfortunately he's not unique.

I think profanity is common on the Left side of the blogosphere. Even some of the best writers in the business (I'm thinking of Violet Socks over at Reclusive Leftist) can't seem to resist the meaningless expletive. And then there's the famous case of Amanda Marcotte--clearly a very talented young woman--who was picked to assist John Edward's presidential campaign. The job offer foundered on her compulsive use of utterly vile language, to the point of being pornographic. And then comments on The Daily Kos, or even Bloggingheads.tv, are absurdly vicious.

This feature seems to distinguish the Left-o-sphere from the Right-o-sphere. Now there's enough snark and stupidity to go around on both sides--the world's not running out of any of that. But profanity is highly concentrated on the Left. Again, I don't really know why. Is it supposed to be shocking? Well--it is. I continue to be shocked that otherwise intelligent people degrade themselves with gutter talk.

I learned my polemical skills from the Socialist Workers Party, and they did me a good turn. I have been reading The Militant for nigh 44 years now (unbelievable!), and never once do I recall them ever using the f-bomb. Or refer to feces. Or call a woman a c**t or a man a d**k. Nor are people they disagree with associated with a piece of toilet paper. The people who run The Militant are civilized people.

I hate to quote Abraham Lincoln on rules for blogging. He certainly had something much more consequential in mind for his second inaugural. But these words pithily express the preconditions for civilized discourse:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right...

Book Review: Here's The Deal

David Leonhardt's book Here's the Deal is well worth reading. For the $1.99 Kindle price you can't go wrong. It is a short, informative introduction to the federal budget deficit, along with some suggestions about how to fix it. Most of what he says is correct--it's what he doesn't say that is greatly mistaken. Mr. Leonhardt is the Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times.

As Mr. Leonhardt amply demonstrates, the budget deficit in and of itself is not a big deal. It amounts to about 5% of GDP, a tractable if painful sum in our current economy, and an easy hurdle in circumstances of strong, economic growth. The book ultimately agrees with Mr. Obama and argues that some combination of tax increases and entitlement cuts is the solution.

He faults both Democrats and Republicans for political cowardice. Neither party levels with the American people and tells them that some long-term sacrifice will be necessary to solve this problem. The Democrats simply over-promise, touting a political program that in this blog we mock as "free unicorns for all." The Republicans--who come off worse in Mr. Leonhardt's account--are guilty of a tax fetish, and unreasonably claim that any increase in taxes starts us down the slippery slope toward catastrophe.

Within the purely fiscal argument that Mr. Leonhardt makes, his criticism of the Republican position is correct. There is no way that increasing tax rates from 35% to 38% is going to ruin the economy. And he makes an argument (that I don't know enough to disagree with) that taxes as a percent of GDP are now at record low and that we can afford to raise them slightly.

But his argument ignores the primary reason why Republicans (or at least us Tea Party types) oppose higher taxes. That is, we believe in limited government as a matter of principle, and that the federal government has no constitutional right to be in the entitlement business at all--independent of economic arguments. Now he'll accuse us of being "constitutional fetishists" rather than anti-tax fanatics, and note that the world has surely changed since 1789. Fair enough--most notably life expectancy is now around 80 instead of 35 (or whatever it was), making social security and (probably) Medicare necessities. And those are faits accompli--no serious political thinker believes those programs should be abolished.

But apart from life expectancy, the world has not changed that much. Basic political morality certainly has not changed. Government tyranny--even the well-intentioned tyranny imposed by forced income redistribution--is as immoral today as it was 224 years ago. It is instructive that Mr. Leonhardt hardly mentions Obamacare. I don't blame him--it is still not possible to calculate the damage it will do to federal and state budgets, not to mention our constitutional rights.

Mr. Leonhardt argues that there is no fiscal crisis. In his view, covering 5% of GDP over the next couple decades is a tractable problem. Maybe he's right. But if so, then why is the Federal Reserve printing $1.2 trillion annually? Why is it so important to keep interest rates at or near zero? Would Mr. Leonhardt be as sanguine about the federal deficit if interest rates were to spike to 6%, or 8%? By viewing the federal deficit as a long-term problem, Mr. Leonhardt misstates the issue. He is correct--long term it is tractable. But the problem is short term. The issue is that debtors are very much at the mercy of who is lending them money, and if the creditors change their minds and call in their loans, then all hell breaks loose. And that's the problem.

The federal government depends on low interest rates, but this greatly distorts the economy. It is arguably responsible for the real estate bubble, it is probably leading to a bubble in asset prices right now, and it is totally screwing anybody who is trying to save for their own retirement. In a word, it results in a huge misallocation of resources--people investing in things that simply don't make any sense. Student loans come to mind--what a phenomenal disaster that is. It will literally ruin the financial lives of millions of young people and their parents because the money is priced arbitrarily cheaply. Free unicorns for all.

Mr. Leonhardt discusses education and medical care in some detail. His argument is that our investment in education from 1950 through the 1980s was extraordinarily successful (no disagreement there), and therefore we need to keep investing money. That latter clause is completely wrong, and as a college professor and former college administrator this is something I know something about. Mr. Leonhardt has apparently never heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns. Regards higher education, not only are the returns diminishing, they are completely non-existent.

The key task confronting higher education today is to lower the cost to students and taxpayers without lowering the quality of education. This is possible both because of new technology, and also because of large reservoirs of accumulated waste. College education is too long, involves too many mediocre faculty, way too many college administrators, and no longer meets the needs of the modern world. Briefly, it's an example of massive resource misallocation. Mr. Leonhardt, by advocating that we spend even more money on this Rube Goldberg contraption is simply enabling waste. Higher ed will employ far fewer people in the near future, require less time and money from students, and be much more effective.

I'm much less knowledgeable about the medical industry, and can't cite line and verse like I can with higher education. But I suggest that the only way to lower medical costs is to lower medical costs. That is, to sharply reduce employment in that industry by taking advantage of technology and eliminating accumulated waste.

In summary, Here's The Deal is a very good, short introduction to the federal deficit, and is well worth reading. On narrow fiscal issues I think it is correct (as far as I know). But broaden the picture just a little bit and Mr. Leonhardt's proposed solutions fall apart.

Trotskyism & New Media

This is Part 1 of a series. Subsequent posts will look at Socialist Action and Socialist Viewpoint.

Update: Part 2 is here.

Ever since 1900 when Lenin founded the newspaper Iskra, Marxist parties have put great emphasis on the revolutionary press. Indeed, in those days when print media were expensive and rare, the concept of democratic centralism made sense. The Party press should print only the point of view of the entire organization, and not serve as a forum for internal discussion. These principles crystallized in the popular imagination with newspapers such as Pravda and The People’s Daily, often dubbed “Party organs,” or “government mouthpieces.”

The founding Trotskyist group in America, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) published The Militant with the same purpose--to represent the unified voice of the Party. Similarly that was the mission behind Pathfinder Press, even now the leading publisher of Trotskyist literature.

In 1998 Mary-Alice wrote

One thing that impressed them [Cubans] the most was something I did not expect. One person asked, "Do you have your own print shop?" When we answered, "Yes," her response was, "Well, that explains a lot. It would be hard to do this without your own shop." Many publishers in Cuba share the same presses. When acute paper shortages and equipment breakdowns are added to the equation, they have to make many painful decisions on who gets priority press time for which titles.

In the interim, the Party has dismantled the print shop and sold off the building. The Militant is now posted on-line, with digital issues available back to 1995. And no longer are “acute paper shortages and equipment breakdowns” responsible for painful decisions about what gets published, certainly not in the US. Anybody can publish anything, essentially for free.

And that’s the problem. Even the bourgeois press, such as the New York Times (NYT), no longer has a meaningful business model. Publication is now so cheap and so available that talented individuals can outdo the circulation of august institutions such as the NYT--witness Matt Drudge or Arianna Huffington. The money to be made in news publication is dropping to zero. While The Militant is not motivated by money, it confronts the same problem.

The Militant suffers from the Internet in three significant ways. First, it devalues their brand. In print, The Militant has a product far better than anything somebody like me could produce--I am not willing to invest in my own print shop. But on the web, The Militant becomes just another website--in no way distinct from my website. We are both essentially competing for eyeballs, and the fact that The Militant has an 85 year history behind it is just irrelevant. If I can generate content that successfully attracts Militant readers, then I win. That’s how Drudge & Huffington are putting the NYT out of business.

Second, it disaggregates their content. I still read The Militant (even though I haven’t seen a print copy in many years) by starting on their homepage and checking the articles that interest me. I don’t read the NYT that way--instead I come across NYT articles from outside. I click on them from the DrudgeReport or from RealClearPolitics. Because I’m not willing to pay for an NYT subscription, I no longer have access to the wisdom of the NYT editorial board. I read their articles in a disaggregated way. That may be the way you read The Militant. Instead of going to their homepage, you may only read the articles to which I provide links. In other words, I become your editor--The Militant’s editors are out of the loop.

And finally, the web is intrinsically interactive. A recent column by Tom Friedman has 267 comments. The NYT advertises “follow us on Twitter.” A measure of success of any web page is how many comments they get, or how many Twitter followers they have. A successful web page (not yet this one) has an extensive blogroll--a call-out for dialogue with other people. The Militant doesn’t allow comments. Indeed, its web edition is just a copy of the print edition--there is no effort to make it web native.

So how has The Militant responded to this changed set of circumstances? Not well--they display head-in-the-sand obtuseness. If there is one single, catalyzing event causing the decline of the SWP, it is that they have been unable to find a way to deal with new media. To see just how spectacularly the Party has failed in that regard, go back and read Mary-Alice’s article linked above.

I think the new media puts the whole concept of democratic centralism into question. A web site is ultimately a discussion forum, not a place to expostulate from on high. One can’t host a discussion if you insist that everybody has to agree with you in advance. The Militant can’t tolerate any disagreement--none at all--so conversation with them is impossible. Accordingly, almost nobody reads or links to their web site. And The Militant rarely links to anybody else’s website, either--they live in a self-contained universe.

Extrapolate this to social media. What are Comrades supposed to do with something like Twitter? Simply retweet the Party Line? How boring (and counterproductive) can you get. A Comrade who erroneously tweets a falsehood about our position on pre-war Croatia might get away with it. But what about the post that starts “The Party position is...,” which might imply that the tweeter doesn’t totally agree with the Party. Should they be promptly expelled? This is never going to work. Predictably, The Militant has no presence on social media web sites at all.

Instead, the Party concentrates on selling subscriptions to the print edition! To be sure, this is totally safe, but otherwise just nuts. It renders the Party completely irrelevant to anybody under age 40--people who came of age in a twitter/facebook world. It turns the Party into an apolitical organization that exists primarily for the psychological comfort of its own Comrades.

Back in the day, when staffing literature tables, we were frequently asked what was the purpose of the revolutionary party. “We know how to run the mimeograph machines” was often part of the answer. That is, the Party collected expertise necessary to organize and guide a mass movement, both politically and practically. And I’m certain that today’s Comrades--mostly sixty-plus--still know how to run mimeograph machines. The problem is they haven’t learned any new tricks.

This was all brought home to me in 2006. Recall the mass demonstrations (hundreds of thousands of people) by Mexican immigrants for less stringent immigration enforcement. Large numbers of high school students simply left their schools to participate. This was all organized by cell phone--today we would call it a flash mob, though that term had not been invented yet. Nobody ran any mimeograph machines. The Militant knew nothing about this demonstration until after it was over--they were completely out of the loop. What kind of vanguard Party is that? This is what happens when you cut yourself off from dialogue and discussion--nobody pays any attention to you.

Except me.

Prisoners

There are two so-called "political prisoners" that all the Trotskyist grouplets I follow champion: Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Lynne Stewart. My primary sources of information about both these cases come from Socialist Viewpoint, Socialist Action, and The Militant, in approximately that order of importance.

Mumia, a long-time Black activist involved earlier with the Black Panther Party, was convicted of the 1981 murder of policeman Daniel Faulkner. He spent 30 years on death row until the sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison. His case is now finally settled--he has few if any avenues of appeal left open. The original trial apparently was something of a circus. Mumia started by defending himself, but being obviously incompetent as a lawyer he was assigned an attorney. Subsequently he claimed (perhaps with justification) that the judge was racist and that the jury was all white. Multiple levels of appeal have not found cause to overturn the conviction--the only real matter of dispute was whether the death penalty should stand.

Lynne Stewart was a progressive civil rights lawyer--somebody who in the old days would have at very least been known as a "fellow traveler." She defended the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman in his trial on charges related to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Mr. Abdel-Rahman was convicted, and because of his terrorist connections was placed under "Special Administrative Measures," designed to restrict his communication with conspirators outside. Ms. Stewart was arrested on assisting Mr. Abdel-Rahman in violating those measures, and eventually convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Both of these figures proclaim their innocence. Mumia just flat-out says that he's innocent, without in anyway seeking to rebut the evidence against him. Ms. Stewart maintains that she simply acted as a good defense attorney, and that in any case the Special Administrative Measures are an unconstitutional infringement on her rights of free speech and freedom of association.

Now there are innocent people in jail. Indeed, there is a worthy organization known as the Innocence Project that is dedicated to freeing as many of them as possible. (Neither Mumia nor Ms. Stewart are on their list of clients.) Most innocent prisoners are victims of busy prosecutors, lazy cops, vengeful witnesses, tired  jurors, and overworked, incompetent public defenders. Sammy Jones and Johnny Smith are not convicted after due process, but more likely they just fell through the cracks of a creaking and overworked criminal justice system.

How different this is from the cases of Mumia & Stewart. While Mumia turned his own trial into a farce, the case has been thoroughly reviewed in the subsequent thirty years of appeals. Likewise, Ms. Stewart (who clearly had competent counsel) has had multiple reviews of her case, and has lost every appeal. Unlike the clients of the Innocence Project, this pair has due process coming out the wazoo. I suppose there is some mathematical chance that they're innocent, but I think the odds of that are vanishingly small.

So what is it that makes these political prisoners? Both of these people claim that they, uniquely, are targets of government repression--somebody is out to get them. Mumia talks about the "Mumia exception to the constitution." Unlike the pedestrian injustice cataloged by the Innocence Project, this (according to their defenders) is a purposeful, conscious rigging of the system to "railroad" brave people to jail. In a word, it's a conspiracy theory.

For thirty years, Mumia has loudly and consistently proclaimed his innocence. I think he actually believes he's innocent, but then I think he's a psychopath. Now I've never met the man, nor am I a clinical psychologist, but he certainly shares some characteristics common with psychopaths. First, psychopaths always think they're innocent--by definition they have no conscience and thus are incapable of feeling guilt the way normal people do. Mumia's claim of innocence is not that he didn't commit the murder, but rather that there was nothing wrong about murdering the guy, and he shouldn't be in jail for it.

Second, psychopaths tend to be superficially charming and charismatic. Mumia definitely fits this category--supporters and do-gooders who visit him come away charmed (see here, for example). And there is no doubt that he is a talented man. Early in his criminal career he was introduced as a poet, as if poets couldn't be guilty of murder. He clearly knows how to write, and has acquired a considerable education. But I hazard that people who know him better--guards and other prisoners--have learned not to trust him at all.

Finally, Mumia has never shown any remorse. He has never reached out to the family of the victim, nor ever asked what he could do to make amends. Truly innocent people are frequently very remorseful, and try very hard to convince the victim's family that they really are innocent. Mumia has done nothing of the sort.

Ms. Stewart, certainly not a psychopath, thinks she's above the law. Now it may be that the Special Administrative Measures are unconstitutional, or that our government is asserting too much power in the fight against terrorism. But Ms. Stewart's status as a defense attorney does not give her the right to simply ignore these laws. The state depends on competent defense attorneys, and Ms. Stewart is to be commended for her full-throated defense of Mr. Abdel-Rahman. She made the difference between a real trial and a kangaroo court. Nobody has any interest in "railroading" her to jail for defending her client. But it's one thing to defend accused bank robbers in a courtroom; it's quite another to help them rob banks. It's the latter that she is convicted of doing, and for this she deserves to be in jail.

A political prisoner, properly understood, is somebody jailed because of their opposition to the regime. By this measure, neither Mumia Abu-Jamal nor Lynne Stewart are political prisoners. They should not be defended as such.

Where The Customer Always Comes Last

This article is about the so-called "wildcat" strike described by Laura Gottesdiener in the current issue of Socialist Viewpoint. The immigrant (Mexican) staff won union representation at a New York City bakery called Hot & Crusty.

The villains include a venture capital firm (worth $700 million, but no context given), and the managing partner, a white South African (must be a really evil guy) who lived around the corner from the shop. Then there's a part for the restaurant's landlord.

The hero is an illegal Mexican immigrant by the name of Mahoma Lopez (photo here). Mr. Lopez reports that the workers were regularly mistreated--wages withheld, subjected to verbal abuse, and in general not employed in compliance with labor laws. Given that the employees were mostly illegal immigrants, this may very well be true.

So Mr. Lopez organized a campaign for higher wages and working conditions, with help from the National Labor Relations Board. The employees won back pay, but the response of the owners was simply to shut the store down. The workers staged a sit-in and gave away free food. At this point the landlord got involved--the owners hadn't paid the rent, and the workers hadn't vacated the premises.

The landlord had another tenant in the wings--a non-union firm unacceptable to the workers. And at this point things get murky. Some new investor materializes, recognizes the union and grants the workers much higher wages, sick pay, and grievance and arbitration procedures. More, there is now a union hiring hall--the union gets to decide who gets hired--not management.

So apparently Hot & Crusty is back in business in the same location under new rules: free unicorns for everybody. Everybody, that is, except for the customers, who presumably have to pay considerably more for their pastries, to be served by people hired by the union. This clearly isn't going to work long term.

So one wonders what persuaded management to go along with this scheme? The article doesn't say, and I have no other information. But somehow I suspect gangland style threats made against the landlord--the employees in the picture are burly guys instead of the dainty ladies in most fast-food establishments. There may be other explanations, but I can't think of one.

This is particularly ironic since Gottesdiener's article first appeared on a website called Waging Nonviolence. I have to think that the folks who run that website, along with my friends at Socialist Viewpoint, are useful idiots.

Socialist Action on Virginity!

I have to weigh in on Socialist Action's recent post about virginity, of all things. The article (by Dawn Rose) is a review of Jessica Valenti's 2009 book entitled The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. I have not read that book, but I'll assume that Rose's description is accurate.

The book is in response to a supposed effort by conservatives and "anti-feminists" to roll back women's rights. According to Valenti (per Rose), we right-wingers want women who are docile, passive, and obedient, and focus on traditional motherhood. In a word, we want "a return to traditional gender roles (marriage and motherhood), and focusing on purity is the vehicle toward that end.”

Now I have no doubt that there are conservative religious groups focused on virginity, and for just the reasons Rose describes. But their battle is lost. They will never persuade more than an insignificant minority of women to follow their lead. So this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. Or rather, it was an effort to create a bogeyman--a fictitious enemy designed to scare the living daylights out of single women. That somewhat dishonest end seems to be Valenti's purpose in writing the book, and the Obama 2012 election campaign used the mostly mythical Republican threat to abortion and birth control as part of its successful GOTV effort.

But let's ignore the dubious motives and consider only the arguments made in Rose's review. She states "[t]he virginity movement’s ideal woman is passive, docile, and relegated to the home." Now this doesn't make any sense, for I can't see how self-discipline leads to passive docility. Self-discipline in almost anything generally leads to success of some sort. Students who study hard get good grades. Those who don't eat too much keep their weight down. People who save money are generally richer in retirement, and so forth.

Ascetic self-discipline has a long history in human affairs, and demonstrates success for both individuals and social groups. Among individuals, the odd example that comes immediately to mind is Malcolm X. He, a libertine in his youth, upon conversion to (the weird form of) Islam gave up womanizing, alcohol, and general carousing. Would his political career have been successful absent that self-discipline? Certainly not. Other political examples include Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Contrast them with Bill Clinton, successful to be sure, but not heroic nor in any way a figure for the ages. Future generations will not be celebrating Bill Clinton's birthday.

So I dispute the notion that virginity will result in docility or passivity. Are nuns passive and docile? I don't think so.

Rose writes

If women are the moral gatekeepers of sex, Valenti claims, then the behaviors of men are excusable; rape, sexual assault and violence against women are natural male responses to biological urges. We see this manifested often through victim blaming. The media reporting around sexual violence is often centered on women’s behavior—what she was wearing, what she was drinking, or where she was walking—rather than on the actions of the actual perpetrators.

Let's leave out the word "moral," and ask who are the gatekeepers of sex? For very obvious biological reasons (that only socialists can deny), women are. Women take by far the biggest risk from any sexual encounter. Unlike men, women are not generally interested in casual sex, and absent some financial or other tangible reward won't do that.

Since women are the gatekeepers, rape and sexual assault are crimes men commit against women, and rarely the other way round. This is not some cultural oddity of American society (as the article seems to imply), but is a worldwide phenomenon rooted in human biology. But it doesn't mean such behavior is excusable. All societies punish rape, often very severely and unjustly.

The last claim--that the press reports what rape victims wore--is surely laughable. How politically incorrect could you possibly get? I have never, in my entire life, read a news article that contained anything like "she was raped because she wore a mini-skirt." Still, dress and drink are relevant. Rape is a crime no matter what, but gatekeepers do need to guard the gate. Camille Paglia has interesting things to say about that.

I think whether or not a woman remains a virgin until marriage is a personal decision, and not a political one. I have no objection to either religious conservatives or Jessica Valenti offering free advice. I do object to words like "reactionary" used to describe a woman who chooses to remain virgin. It may very well be a good option for her.

Why are so many on the Left against traditional morality? I doubt it is political. Instead, I think it is envy. Among the groups that gets the Leftist goat are the Mormons. Now I don't much care for them either, but there is no gainsaying their success. By holding to a tight moral code, they preserve and expand social and physical capital. They have among the highest fertility rates in the nation. They're successful in business, and increasingly successful in politics. Success inspires envy and hatred.

Other groups--some evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews, Amish, some Muslim groups--are similarly able to both reproduce and preserve social capital. This feat is mostly impossible for single mothers, who usually only have one or two children, and for whom capital appreciation is a lost cause. A subgroup amongst this population are socialists and academic feminists, who then blame their plight on a so-called "virginity movement."

I feel sorry for them.