Category: Rants

The great but largely forgotten journalist Sydney Harris once said, "You may be certain that when a man begins to call himself a 'realist,' he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of." That quote kept coming to mind as I read this:

A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

Traditionally, university donors have little official input into choosing the person who fills a chair they've funded. The power of university faculty and officials to choose professors without outside interference is considered a hallmark of academic freedom.

Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.

My favorite Calvin and Hobbes panel features Calvin lamenting not that everyone has a price, but that the price is always so low. It took all of $1.5 million – a pittance by the standards of a large research university – for Florida State to surrender the power to make its own hiring decisions. Sorry to play the slippery slope card, but one must wonder how far off we are from non-profit "foundations" sponsoring their own departments and purchasing university naming rights. If the story itself wasn't depressing enough, the comments from the Dean finished the job:

A separate grant from BB&T funds a course on ethics and economics in which Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is required reading. The novel, which depicts society's collapse in the wake of government encroachment on free enterprise, was recently made into a movie marketed to tea party members.

"If somebody says, 'We're willing to help support your students and faculty by giving you money, but we'd like you to read this book,' that doesn't strike me as a big sin," said Rasmussen of the BB&T arrangement, which the bank has with about 60 schools. "What is a big sin is saying that certain ideas cannot be discussed."

Nor does he fear that the agreements with Koch and BB&T will prompt future donors to demand control over hiring or curriculum.

Said Rasmussen, "I have no objections to people who want to help us fund excellence at our university. I'm happy to do it."

Is there a sadder phrase in the English language than "It's really not so bad…"? A more tacit admission that one is engaged in some kind of morally repugnant activity? Even in print the extent to which the Dean is over-justifying what he knows implicitly is disgusting is loud and clear. People like him will likely find little success in convincing academia to try what he's doing because, you know, it's really not as bad as it seems once you suppress the gag reflex and get used to the taste.

Recently a few of my colleagues have been debating drug legalization, an issue Ron Paul is hitting heavily in what I assume is a not-terrible strategy to appeal to more young voters. I never tire of talking about the War on Drugs – a flawless example of everything wrong, deceptive, and misguided about the Reaganite vision of America – and, unusually, I get a kick out of watching other people talk about it too. It forces people to argue based on either morality ("Drugs are evil!" vs. "It's a personal choice!") or logic ("Drug X should be illegal because has Y and Z consequences.") Of course I am always happy to see people attempting to come to logical conclusions rather than emotional ones, but as my colleagues' debate currently illustrates the attempts at logic usually proceed from fundamentally false assumptions.

People inevitably attempt to make sense of U.S. drug policy based on the assumption that illegal drugs are illegal because of health and/or safety concerns. In other words, cocaine is worse for you than alcohol so beer is legal and cocaine is not. Or meth makes people violent while tobacco does not, hence the latter is legal. It is very easy to poke holes in these arguments – tobacco kills people by the millions and alcohol causes far more violence than, say, marijuana – or to segue into secondary arguments like the "gateway drug" hypothesis in order to keep the conversation moving in circles.
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It all misses the point entirely. The purpose of the War on Drugs is not to keep people safe or healthy. The purpose of the War on Drugs is to put people in prison, and from that perspective it has been a smashing success.

Note the mysterious spike in 1980

The War on Drugs is, at its core, a blunt form of class warfare.

Around 1980 Americans began to accept in large numbers the idea that wealth should be concentrated entirely in the hands of a small group of people – sure, we tried that in the 19th Century and the results were subpar, but this time there were fancy Austrian economics to reassure us that the rising tide would lift all boats. Abandoning the social safety net, public schools, and the like was a recipe for increased wealth inequality and, as the past 30 years have shown, it worked like a charm. So now our society is less like those we used to consider peers (the U.

K., Germany, Canada, etc.) and more like the ones we usually condescend (Brazil, India, and other 2nd World countries with great but poorly distributed wealth).

In a society like this, there is a small elite with phenomenal wealth; let's say it's the top 10%. Below that is a large mass of people living somewhere between affluence and poverty; let's say that's 70%. These people have some economically valuable skills, even if, in the case of unskilled service industry work, that skill is merely the ability to show up to work regularly and follow instructions. Many of the people in this 70% enjoy comfortable lives, but they have income and not wealth. At the bottom end they live paycheck to paycheck; at the top, they make good money but they carry far more debt. In other words, if they lost their job things could fall apart rapidly (stop me if any of this sounds familiar). Then we have the bottom, the remaining 20%. They have no economically valuable skills that the top 10% can exploit. The rest of society sees this group as a burden. Since no one wants to pay to support them or improve their circumstances in any way, you just have to find a way to get rid of them somehow.

In the average African or Latin American country, they send out the cops or, in many cases, paramilitary "cleansing" squads to crack skulls. Since America can't quite get away with that, we have to think of more subtle ways to get them out of our sight. We tried segregation. We tried jamming the poor into vertical filing cabinets. Eventually it dawned on us to simply incarcerate most of them, if not for life then in an endless cycle among the criminal justice system, the underground economy, and poverty. So you ratchet up the drug laws with the full understanding that the huge demand for narcotics (mostly among the upper classes and their children, of course) will funnel tons of people with no other economic opportunities into the trade.

So you invest billions in policing, arresting, convicting, and incarcerating them – conservatively estimated at around $40 billion annually.

That's what the War on Drugs is about. The widely debated social and physical effects of drugs may be real but they have nothing to do with drug policy in the U.S. It's just a means of dealing with the people who are remainders when the rest of the population divides up the economic pie.

There is so much to say about bin Laden; in an effort to avoid devoting a week's worth of posts to the topic I am going to attempt to cover several points here at once.

1. The news of bin Laden's death excited me mostly because I couldn't wait to hear how Republicans were going to criticize Obama over it. Would it be that it took him too long? That he didn't decapitate the corpse and put it on a pike outside the Capitol? According to K-Lo, Obama isn't being sufficiently modest:

It is therefore unfortunate that Mr. Obama seems to want more than that fair share the American people will naturally and rightly give him. His remarks last night were far too much laced with words like "I met repeatedly," "at my direction," and "I determined," trying to take personal credit for the years of painstaking work by our intelligence community. Mr. Obama might have noted that this work began under President Bush, but as usual he did not.

Yeah, I suppose he should have been more humble. You know, the whole land on an aircraft carrier in a fucking flight suit to declare "Mission Accomplished" routine.

Republicans find credit-claiming spectacles immodest and distasteful.

2. To say that the public reaction was somewhat disturbing is an understatement. Watching Americans once again unironically become the people they demonize – remember those Palestinians dancing in the streets when the WTC fell? – was as predictable as it is gross. It was not our finest moment. I understand why people feel exhilarated or maybe even that we've had a rare moment of Collective Victory. Hooray, the evil bad guy is dead. I get that. But to what end? What are we celebrating in the streets like drunken late 1980s Detroit Pistons fans?

This reaction reminds me of hearing capital punishment advocates talk about how killing the Bad Guy brings "closure" and a lot of other polished up words that mean "revenge." The villain dies, you feel the juvenile thrill for a moment, and then you feel as empty as before – only more so, because now you can't tell yourself that revenge will make you feel better. I wouldn't say it's "wrong" to celebrate as much as it's just pointless. To me, the best gloating would come from putting him on trial. But that wouldn't have brought all of his victims back to life either.

3. So, uh, how 'bout our ally Pakistan? Good to know the world's most wanted man was hiding out 100 meters from a Pakistani military academy. Bang up job, fellas.

4. Now that the body has been disposed of, good lord can you comprehend the conspiracy theories we're going to have to endure for the next decade-plus? My god, they're going to make the 9/11 twoofers look sane in comparison.

5. The "Well, Obama has the election sewn up" meme betrays some ignorance. Eleven months before the 1992 election, George H. Bush was at 88% approval. The public opinion effects of this will be measurable and most likely temporary. Gas will be $4.50/gal by the 4th of July and bin Laden will be ancient history by then. I'm not saying this won't be a useful talking point or a source of long-term benefit for Obama, but beware the awesome ability of the American public to A) forget things almost immediately and B) refocus on economic issues to the exclusion of any others.

This is important, but it is important symbolically. Bin Laden was a sick old man who served as a figurehead but probably exercised little direct control over terrorist activities. Terrorism is a hydra; whenever a terrorist falls there are three more ready to replace him. The fact is that the world is not safer today than it was last week and the death of OBL isn't going to bring terrorism to a screeching halt. So, yay. "We got 'im!" and all that. But by the time the election rolls around the realizations sink in that this hasn't A) ended the war in Afghanistan or B) meaningfully reduced the threat of terrorism, Obama isn't going to be riding this to victory. The best thing about it from his perspective is having a great comeback ready when Republican presidential candidates try to call him "Soft on terror" or whatever.

6. Obama played the Birth Certificate thing pretty well after all. How petty and stupid does the GOP look now? Oh, I'm sorry guys. I was busy authorizing a mission to get that guy you've been chasing for nine years. But here's your precious birth certificate, since we know that's very important to you…

7. Raise your hand if your inbox and Facebook page filled up with crap like this over the past 24 hours.

The frequency with which the 2012 presidential election comes up in my casual conversations is increasing as 2011 progresses, and the general outlook I've mentioned on here several times has not changed. Obama is vulnerable and the GOP field is historically bad.

Romney has the potential to beat him but probably can't win the nomination. Daniels could be a legitimate challenger but is viewed as essentially a Communist by the GOP base (recent pandering aside).

Romney could win because he is polished and projects a competent, moderate image. Note that he may or may not actually possess those qualities; the important thing is that he appears to.
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He would not be a slam dunk or even the favorite. He is merely better than the rest of his field. It is plausible that he could win, which is more than we can say of Newt Gingrich and the rest of the peanut gallery.

Let's say the economy continues to falter – a safe bet. Let's say Mitt convinces voters that as a businessman he is somehow better suited to fix it. Let's say he deflects concerns that as a Mormon he might hold extreme right positions on social issues (or alternatively that Evangelical voters get very excited by the prospect that he does). Let's say Obama can't recreate the magic and excitement of 2008 among a demoralized base made up of people who have heard it all before and have so very little to show for it after four years. Romney squeaks out wins in Ohio and Florida, backing his way into the White House by a few Electoral Votes.

The more I think about this possibility – again, I consider it plausible, not certain or even highly likely – the more trouble I have with my feelings about it.

The thing is, I've realized that I don't really care if Mitt Romney wins. With all due respect to the many people who stridently believe that Barack Obama has accomplished a lot thus far, the available evidence strongly supports the contention that he is essentially an Eisenhower Republican. If Romney is truly a New England moderate Republican as I believe he is – someone in the Lowell Weicker / Ed Brooke / Jacob Javits tradition – will any of the outcomes be fundamentally different? Our dominant fiscal policy will still be cutting everyone's taxes. The wars will stagger on aimlessly and without an end in sight. Interest groups and major industries will continue to write all of the legislation that comes out of Congress. The Justice Department will sit around on its thumb. The regulatory and welfare state will continue to be dismantled. All of this is happening now. True, Romney is more conservative on social stuff like abortion and gay rights, but given the same Congress, what is really going to change on those issues in the next four years anyway? It's not like he's going to reinstate DADT now that the curtain has been lifted.

My single biggest disincentive to participate in politics in this country is the lack of meaningful alternatives. The entire political system has shifted so far to the right that we are essentially choosing between a loose center-right coalition and a group of well-organized ultraconservatives when we choose between the major parties. As an article I linked a couple weeks ago stated well:

There was also a sharp change in the U.S. economy in the 1970s, towards financialization and export of production. A variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1% of the population – mostly CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and the like. That leads to the concentration of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats – by now what used to be moderate Republicans – not far behind.

Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year.

The feeling of powerlessness that accompanies the absence of choice is profound and I imagine it affects many Americans, voters and non-voters alike.
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If it honestly doesn't make much difference if Mitt Romney gets elected (You may disagree on that, of course, but it's where I'm at) what does that say about the Democratic brand? How badly damaged is the party? As the last three years have repeatedly shown, it has become a second, slightly more PR-savvy party of corporatists; the GOP-Democrat differences are largely on the margins and the Democrats' best selling point appears to be that they are not Republicans. That's why you and I will drag ourselves out to the polls to cast Obama votes with zero enthusiasm and the sneaking suspicion that while we prefer the Blue puppet, getting the Red one really wouldn't make much of a difference.

(Warning: post contains language that may be cause for offense. More so than usual.)

It has been a two year exercise in frustration attempting to figure out what is going on inside Barack Obama's head, and few of his decisions have been more puzzling than the one to release his "long form" birth certificate more than three years after Wingnuttia started drumming up conspiracy theories about his birthplace and citizenship status. Despite the clear legal validity of his short form birth certificate (which is all most of us have, and which in Hawaii loudly states, "This document serves as prima facie evidence of birth in any court proceeding"), a large segment of the American population remained skeptical that such a black potential secret Muslim could really have been born in the U.S. of A.

The release of the "long form" accomplishes very little for Obama with the possible exception of making Donald Trump look like a jackass (although he and his supporters are declaring "victory" for making Obama release the document, irrespective of the fact that said document proves conclusively that he and all of his supporters are all fucking morons). It accomplishes so little because Birtherism is not and never has been about Obama's birth certificate, and it certainly hasn't been about facts. "Not a natural-born citizen" is little more than gussied up Newspeak for "n*gger", and there is no practical distinction between "Where's the birth certificate?" and "Go back to Africa, you black SOB."

Though he has been dead for many years, Lee Atwater offers us one of the best explanations of Birtherism in a nutshell in describing the use of coded racial language in the 1980s:

You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can’t say (that)—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

The Teabaggers and Birthers have been fighting this accusation vociferously since the moment the conspiracy theory emerged, yet the release of the long-demanded Long Form certificate provides some of the most damning evidence against their feeble claims. IF this is really about a birth certificate, then the birth certificate should bring the "controversy" to an end. Instead, we see that Birtherism has no intention of being derailed by something as trivial as the document that its supporters have been demanding for three goddamn years. It will have no effect because the underlying cause of the phenomenon remains: to paraphrase the legendary scene from Blazing Saddles, the President is a n(*DING*). But of course Birthers don't think they're racists. A dog doesn't know what a "dog whistle" is; to them, it's just a whistle (much as to people in Cleveland, it is simply called a Steamer).

Why would Obama expect this new information to have any impact on his opponents? The more mainstream, non-lunatic conservatives have already rejected the issue (Birtherism appears to embarrass them, in fact) and the lunatics will simply trot out predictable excuses – "It's fake!" or any number of similar Moving Goalposts arguments. Rather than being satisfied, they will simply demand additional "evidence" which, if received, they will similarly discount in their haste to demand even more.

World Nut Daily, which has been unofficial Birther HQ for the last two years, has taken a different approach. After receiving the birth certificate they've been demanding for all this time, they have now decided that the birth certificate is irrelevant because even if Obama was born in Hawaii, his father was not a U.S. citizen and thus he cannot be "natural born" (according to the definition of "natural born" devised by WND legal scholars like Jerome Corsi and a collection of regular commenters in Freeper forums). Check out their new "headlines", noting that the "author" repeatedly referenced is Corsi, whose books are published exclusively on WND Press.

-Obama document still doesn't answer all questions
-Authors: Even Hawaii birth won't make Obama eligible
-President still has major legal issues following release of 'birth certificate'
-Author suggests disputed presidency won't survive publication of book
-Verdict: Birthers are (mainly) right: 'Sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude' Obama probably not eligibile
-Obama's day of reckoning could end his presidency

Translation, with deference Mr. Atwater: "Despite release of certificate, Obama fails to answer allegations of negritude."

WND honcho Joseph Farah humiliates himself further in the Washington Post, telling Steve Levingston that Corsi's book Where's the Birth Certificate?, which comes out in three weeks, has been vindicated. But he's not humiliated, nor is the cause he champions really set back by the new document. Once again, none of this has anything to do with a birth certificate. It has everything to do with a black president who has a furreign-soundin' name and a father from Kenya. This is about the politics of tribalism and blood, about how he is one of Them and not one of Us.

I fail to see what Obama has to gain from addressing these claims at face value. They can say "not natural born" or "secret Muslim" all they want – they know, just as we know, exactly what they really mean. And since the real, underlying issue can never be addressed in any way that will placate Birthers, what does it accomplish to respond to the coded language they use to make their racism sound acceptable in polite society?

There's something impressive about fraud – the old fashioned kind, not the new Wall Street "we'll rob you blind and pay off Congress for protection" or the identity theft kind. I mean the 19th Century kind; a man rolls into town on a wagon, sells a bunch of bottles of McGillicuddy's #5 Elixir (guaranteed to cure the Vapors, Rheumatism, Sallow Complexion, and Female Complaints), and disappears before the customers realize it's essentially grain alcohol, cocaine, and poison. It required a combination of balls and showmanship that not many of us are blessed with. I'm not saying it's a good way to earn a living, but I have always been more than willing to tip my hat to a criminal with a particularly bold or ingenious methodology.

We don't see much of this anymore, mostly because A) modern technology makes people too easy to track down (and prosecute) once they leave town and B) modern advertising techniques are difficult to distinguish from a man in a top hat grifting out of the back of a covered wagon. Some of these sales techniques – promises of miracle products and cure-alls, untrustworthy looking touts with suspiciously white teeth, loud and repetitive sales pitches – live on today in infomercials and in things like the "dietary supplement" industry (aka Orrin Hatch's love child). But to see real, honest-to-god fraud that would make a Three Card Monte dealer blush, the "field" of education reform is the place to look.

One of my favorite blogs has a good comment on a phenomenon that has always fascinated me. It points to the prevalence of fast talking, silver tongued con artists failing in highly paid positions at the helm of failing school districts…then "failing upward" into an equally high paying gig in some other city and repeating their performance. Since urban public school districts are usually a complete disaster, you can see the natural allure of some out of town savior – "Superintendent Chocolate Jesus", as BJ delicately puts it – promising the moon and dazzling the desperate locals with bullshit.

The scam is essentially self-perpetuating, as these Ed.D.-bearing swindlers have mastered the many ways of convincing a new mark school district that their magic potion works. How hard is it to be creative with definitions to make the graduation rate look better? Not very. How hard is it to create a shiny, polished presentation of some Big Plan with an Inspiring Name ("Achievement-gasm 2020!!!!111!!!") with some fudged examples of past successes? It isn't. How hard is it to fudge aggregate student performance numbers? Why, not at all! Just look at Oprah / Beltway Media Insider / Bush / Obama darling Michelle Rhee, the high-profile union buster and "school choice" advocate who achieved remarkable improvements in performance at some failing Washington D.C. schools…using the miracle pedagogical technique of having administrators erase students' incorrect answers and replace them with correct ones on standardized tests. The sheer genius of it. It boggles the mind.

Despite the fact that any semi-reasoned analysis must conclude that there are no quick, cheap, or easy answers to the morass of failure in which the American educational system currently resides, parents and politicos continue to take a short view and seek miracle cures. It's understandable; if my Billy is getting a bad education now, I'm not interested in hearing about a plan that will improve the school in 15 years. So for the foreseeable future this will continue to be America's highest profile, most financially rewarding swindle, making a small group of ballsy scam artists shuttling among the halls of power in Cleveland, Detroit, Newark, Buffalo, and every other major city dealing with the reality of urban decay and a public school system that redefines catastrophic failure.

Two seemingly unrelated tales of Christian conservative leadership in the United States.

1. Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy, was on Christiane Amanpour's Sunday show making a tremendous ass of himself by plastering on his Most Serious Face and talking nice about Donald Trump. Forgive my manual transcript here, but the statement is approximately:

Graham: "Trump, when I first heard that he was getting in, I thought this has got to be a joke. But the more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, you know, maybe this guy's right."

Amanpour: "So he might be your candidate of choice?"

Graham: "Sure. Yes."

This comes after 5 minutes of Graham pontificating about living in "the time of the Antichrist" and about the moral decline of America, the cure for which is apparently Donald "Mr. Morality" Trump – an ambiguously religious (variously reported as Catholic, Presbyterian, Protestant Reformed, etc.) man-whore with a taste for 20 year old Eastern European girls and serial infidelity.

2. Foreign Policy ran an interesting piece about the staunch support for Ivorian dictator Laurent Gbagbo from key U.S. Christian conservatives, notably OK Senator James Inhofe (who has his own mission organization in Africa, where he has made more than 25 trips since being elected). Gbagbo, who transitioned from democratic reformer to typical African "big man" after losing an election, is an evangelical Christian whereas the declared winner is Muslim. But actually Foreign Policy forgot to note that Gbagbo is a Christian…with two wives, one a Muslim he married in an animist ceremony. Inhofe sure does like his fellow Christians, up to and including overlooking bigamy (not to mention the crimes Gbagbo has perpetrated in office, of course).

I haven't the slightest problem with people being atheists, bigamists, man-whores, evangelical Christians, or anything else they so choose. I can respect the hell out of a deeply religious person – provided there is some small nod toward consistency rather than the "buffet style" (pick the plates you want and ignore the rest) attitude toward religion and morals that is so common in this country. If Franklin Graham is a humorless, moralizing Christian, then be a humorless, moralizing Christian. Don't be one 98% of the time and sing the praises of Donald Trump the rest of the time. If James Inhofe wants to preach to "the natives" or whatever in his spare time, so be it. But don't lecture us about our moral failings if, for reasons of economic, political, and military expediency, you're willing to overlook the fact that your SuperJesusPal Laurent Gbagbo has two wives. OK? OK.

I do not understand this impulse, this inability for our self-appointed evangelists and moral guardians to apply their belief systems consistently rather than making exceptions whenever political points are to be scored or advantages are to be had.
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Do they not see their hypocrisy?
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Do they see it and not care? Do they see it and think we're too stupid to see it? This American brand of TV bible-thumping and neo-theocracy arguably is no more or less hypocritical than other major religions. However, with the Mormons or the Vatican one must at least do a little digging to find the rank hypocrisy.
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People like Franklin Graham think nothing of laying it out in the open for all and sundry to see. If Pope Benedict goes on TV to endorse Rudy Giuliani and lavish praise on George Tiller I'll retract that statement.
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Do you ever get the feeling that some non-negligible share of the polarization and disagreement over issues in our society results from people being contrary simply for the sake of being contrary? When we establish that the world is round, someone has to argue that it is flat. When we see two planes hit the World Trade Center, someone has to argue that they were actually holograms to cover up a controlled demolition. I don't even think people who say this kind of thing believe it; they just get off on trolling and watching other people get riled up.

My theory is not well developed yet it might come closest to explaining why we are now seeing economists and people in the banking industry coming out of the woodwork to argue that refusing to raise the debt ceiling, thereby forcing the Treasury to default on its obligations, is a good thing. This "pro-default" "movement" (which must remain in quotes until enough of them appear to justify using the term) consists of either people who are dumber than a bag of doorknobs or the economics equivalent of a doomsday cult. They should probably be off in a field somewhere praying for Hale-Bopp to strike the Earth and bring about the apocalypse.

In the past few days alone Bank of America's Jeffrey Rosenberg and the Cato Institute's Jagadeesh Gokhale have thrown caution to the wind and booked two first-class cabins on the USS Retarded. I can't do this as much justice as Mike or the finance folks could, but I'd like to draw your attention to two of Mr. Sokhale's points:

In contrast, the current prospect of a technical default, from failing to increase the debt limit, would not be due to any real national insolvency. Given today's low interest rates, the federal government could easily raise the resources needed to meet today's contractual government obligations.

In other words, the government can just borrow money to pay the obligations it will default on because it reached the debt ceiling and therefore can't legally borrow any more money. Are you sure this guy is an economist? He worked for the Federal Reserve? No way. Prove it.

Given its purpose is to avoid a real future crisis, by bringing to heel run-away spending on entitlements and other wasteful government programs, here's an opportunity for experiment: Would a debt-limit "crisis" beget better fiscal policies?

After the global economic meltdown, famine, and societal collapse it might.

How might investors really view this ersatz U.S. debt crisis? If some lawmakers' refusal to vote for increasing the debt limit without also passing prudential fiscal policies resulted in a technical U.S. default, it would demonstrate their significant political strength.

By cutting off our nose we will be sending a strong message to the rest of our face.

Might that not actually induce investors to buy long-term U.S. debt — reducing long-term interest rates and improving the U.S. investment climate?

You win, Jagadeesh. Yes, defaulting on its obligations will convince people to buy long-term Treasury debt. We must improve the "investment climate" by reducing long-term interest rates…which are at historic lows right now.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. 2+2 = 5.

It is more trouble than it's worth to find and post either of the following clips (which would doubtlessly require linking some sketchy video site that bills itself in Cyrillic as "the YouTube of Kyrgyzstan") so you rely on my descriptions and I'll rely on your memories.

Throughout most of the 1980s McDonald's ran a popular commercial emphasizing the positive role its restaurants played in the local economy, particularly by offering entry-level job opportunities. A black teenager in a McDonald's uniform walked home from work through an inner city neighborhood with a sense of pride on payday. His neighbors all smiled at him, the implication being that they were proud of him for working hard. The commercial was unbelievably corny and actually pretty offensive, combining paternalistic sentiments (more than a few "White Man's Burden" vibes here) and the insulting implication that everyone in town would be thrilled that the kid was flipping burgers instead of, you know, slinging crack or one of the other pastimes black people were allowed to have on TV in the 1980s. Dave Chappelle, bless his crazy heart, made this point and followed with an excellent parody of the ad; in the Chappelle version the young man is dumped by his girlfriend because he "smells like fries", mocked by the neighborhood for having a crappy job and wearing the lame uniform, and chased by thugs who applaud his employment because his regular paychecks give them an attractive target to rob.

The ribbing is well deserved; sure, it's great that McDonald's is a source of employment, especially for high school kids (who end up working way too many hours while in school, but that's another story) and in areas without a lot of economic opportunities.

Nonetheless we must bear in mind that a job at McDonald's is a job at McDonald's: minimum wage, no benefits, lousy work, and few if any useful skills gained through experience. In its effort to pat itself on the back and burnish its public image Mickey D's exposed itself to the universal truth that no one really wants to work there.

It's just a thing you do when you're too young to be employed outside of food service or on hard times as an adult and badly in need of income. I would never look down on someone for working there, but…it's not the sort of thing one gets excited about or celebrates, you know?

Maybe that is what is so heartbreaking about this blaring headline on CNN: "McDonald's Hiring 50,000 Workers Today." This is supposed to make us feel good, but I do not feel anything positive about the prospect of 50,000 adults, many of whom were gainfully employed until recently, obtaining jobs originally designed to be given to 16 year old boys with no particular skills. Don't get me wrong, the individuals interviewed in that story along with all of the other 50,000 hires will be materially better off with the job than without it, and the reduced burden on underfunded social services always helps too. Yet I can't get around the underlying issue – McDonald's?

Seriously, this is what we're doing now? The article semi-hopefully (I think) announces that "food service jobs have been one of the fastest growing segments of the job market, accounting for 63,500 jobs added, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"

So we are directing unemployed adults, many of whom have education and skills that could more productively be used in their areas of expertise, queuing up for jobs dunking fries and mopping bathrooms at fast food joints. I applaud their work ethic as much as I worry about what this spectacle says about the state of our society.

Good to know that when the middle class has been completely outsourced the service industry will be there to give us a job manning the drive-thru window.