Month: April 2019

Pangloss is a fictional character in Voltaire’s 18th century masterpiece of satire, Candide. When describing the current state of affairs, Pangloss always refers to the status quo as “the best of all possible worlds.” His smug optimism in the face of injustice and tragedy produces much of the mordant humor of Voltaire’s novella. From the start, the reader understands that Pangloss is a suck-up to the establishment—the aristocracy and various churches, whose control over a society of a very few rich and mostly poor was weakening in 18th century Europe as ideas about science and freedom began to disseminate despite a high level of censorship.

While 21st century America enjoys a representational democracy, the economic policies of the past 40 years have re-established an aristocracy-free version of the inequitable society of 18th century Europe, one in which a very few people take an unfairly large percentage of income and wealth. The major reasons for the enormous increase in economic inequality since Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency include the destruction of labor unions, privatization of government functions, enormous tax breaks for the wealthy, large deficits financed by bond purchases by the wealthy, the erosion of the purchasing power of the minimum wage, and the shrinking of government support of education, infrastructure and the social safety net.

As the new regime of economic inequality has stabilized over the past 18 or so years—essentially since the Bush II tax cuts for the wealthy—it has had its share of Panglosses, ready to determine after so-called rigorous analysis that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, that is, as long as the world is based on an unfettered and lightly regulated free market. I think these contemporary Panglosses are okay with uniform weights and measures, but not much else in the way of government interference in the marketplace.

The University of Pangloss is George Mason University, often called Koch University, because of the millions of dollars the ultra-right wing Koch Brothers have given the institution (I hesitate to call it a “school”), virtually all of it earmarked to support development and dissemination of pamphlets and papers (notice I avoid using the word “research”) that advocate lower taxes, less regulation, a fossil-fuel economy and other positions that entrench the current elite as permanent economic and political overlords. In 2018, a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the Koch Bros and their pals have direct influence over faculty hiring decisions at the university’s law and economics schools. No wonder the faculty employees of George Mason (note my refusal to use the word “professors”) always put on the Panglossian happy-face for the current state of affairs and bemoan the possibility of a better way—be it a Green New Deal or an increase in the minimum wage.

If George Mason U is the University of Pangloss, then the ultimate Panglossian—the Poohbah of Pangloss, as it were—must be Tyler Cowen, Herbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason and author of a number of apologies for Reaganomics, including his recent Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. Over the years I have chided Cowen for saying that growing inequality of wealth is not a problem,   and that the gig economy is good for workers,  Typically, Cowen’s argument reduces to looking at individual trees that are thriving while ignoring the destruction of whole forests.

The mainstream news media keeps giving Cowen a chance to embarrass himself with effusions of enthusiasm for a very grim and unfair status quo. In the past, he has had articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. This time, it’s Time, now a wan specter of its former self, which finds room for an opinion piece by Cowen titled “CEOs Are Not Overpaid.” He asserts that a competitive market determines the current high value of the CEO and that’s a good thing. For Cowen, CEOs of large American corporations averaging $18.9 million in salary a year is the best of all possible worlds.

First the facts. Before the Reagan revolution, American CEOs made 20 to 40 times what their average employee took home. Now, it’s 361 times what the average worker makes, which Cowen conveniently rounds down to 300 for us in the article. Like most Panglossians, Cowen always uses the happiest numbers. In comparison, CEOS in the United Kingdom currently average 22 times what their workers make. It’s 12 times for German CEOs and 15 times for the French. As it turns out, CEO salaries in the United States began to expand obscenely as Congress and corporations instituted the Reagan plan. Lower taxes gave CEOS more incentive to keep more. An inflation-eroded minimum wage and the decline of unions made the corporate pie from which to plunder an unfair piece even larger.

Cowen proclaims that contemporary CEOs must wield many more skills than their predecessors. They can’t just be good at running the business, they also need to have financial, public relations and technology expertise. But Cowen forgets that nowadays CEOs haves many more experts to guide them in their decision-making. Only the very largest corporations had full-time PR departments in the 1950s and virtually none had chief information officers. Plus, it’s hard to understand why the job of American CEOs is so much harder than that of their European counterparts.

The Pangloss Poohbah spends a lot of ink fighting the “common idea that high CEO pay is mainly ripping people off.” His reasoning is so weak as to be laughable. First he says that corporate governance has toughened, implying the new standards make it harder for the CEO to extract unfair salary and bonuses. Huh? All the tougher post-Enron standards mean is that it’s harder for corporations to commit illegal actions; it has nothing to do with how the pie is divided by executives, shareholders and employees. Cowen then states that the fact that CEOs hired from outside the company make more money than insiders proves that the CEOs deserve the extravagant pay they get. Run that by me again? Or how about this polished turd: the fact that only the salaries of CEOs have risen and not of high-tier (middle management) professionals proves CEOs are not overpaid. No, it merely shows that CEOs are screwing workers at all levels. Cowen makes so many of these dubious statements with such assurance—one after another—that the unsuspecting careless reader may buy Cowen’s hooey.

Just as Voltaire’s Pangloss obsequiously drooled out praise for whatever duke or prince was footing the bill, so Tyler Cowen elevates contemporary CEOs to a kind of rare Űbermensch, aristocrats of meritocracy so much more skilled than everyone else that they deserves everything they get, even if it means that most of their workers scrape by or lose ground.

Underneath Cowen’s specious arguments lies the fundamental assumption that the people who have more deserve more. He never contemplates why those who got bucks deserve more now than they did in the 1940’s-1970’s, or why they deserve more than they would get in Europe. Cowen never wonders why an hour running a meeting is worth so much more than an hour sweeping the floor or an hour teaching our children. He never imagines the great good luck a CEO has to be born with the exact skills desired by contemporary society and to get to go to the right schools and meet the right people, usually introduced through a family connection. Cowen never asks these questions, because like Pangloss, he is happy in “this the best of all possible worlds.”

The Democrats who don’t want to impeach Donald Trump at this point are afraid of their own shadows. Or maybe the shadows of their big funders.

They say they fear that the move would backfire—as it seems to have done when the House impeached Bill Clinton in 1999 and Slick Willie’s popularity soared.

But the Clinton case is much different from the current situation. Most of the country didn’t really care one way or another about what Clinton had done in his private life. People at the time understood that Clinton was not a corrupt individual, nor was he running a corrupt enterprise. Many people thought it was nobody’s business what two people did with each other behind closed doors. It had no bearing on U.S. security or the ability of Clinton to serve as president. Many people even forgave Clinton his one instance of law-breaking: lying under oath about having had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. They thought as I did at the time—and still do—that lying was inherent in adultery. It’s virtually as impossible to have an affair without lying as it is to get a homerun and not touch first base. Besides, a consensual relationship with an adult is a far cry from Trump’s history of illegality and unethical behavior. Lying about an affair is definitely not the same as breaking campaign finance laws; trying to impede an investigation; manipulating the value of assets up to get a bigger loan  and down to avoid taxes; or not reporting it to the FBI when a foreign adversary offers you help to get elected.

Instead of the Clinton case, Democrats should look at the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and the almost-impeachment of Richard Nixon for historical precedents. Like Trump, they were both truly guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Johnson endangered American law by impeding reconstruction of the south as a bastion of democracy for all. While there were no political polls in the 1860s, everything we read of the period suggests highly that Johnson’s popularity went down after his impeachment and near-conviction by the Senate. Besides the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Nixon had bombed Cambodia illegally and gone way too far in investigating his perceived domestic enemies. We know Nixon lost the country, because that’s why the GOP finally ended its resistance to impeachment and conviction, and ultimately why Tricky Dick short-circuited the constitutional process for removing a president and resigned. Thus the two times presidents deserved impeachment, the impeachment process did not help their popularity.

Let’s also keep in mind—only a little facetiously—that no president who has faced impeachment was ever elected to the office again. Facetiously because in both Nixon and Clinton’s case, the impeachment proceedings began during his second term, a fact that goes to the heart of the Democrat’s cravenness in not immediately initiating impeachment proceedings. They figure that the people will vote Trump out of office in 2020, and if they don’t then they’ll think about taking care of business.

Others suggest that until the Republicans are on board with convicting in the Senate, impeachment is a waste of time. That argument assumes falsely that impeachment is in of itself a little less than a hand slap.

But as the always perceptive Charles Blow points out in the New York Times, “an impeachment vote in the House has to this point been the strongest rebuke America is willing to give a president.” Blow and others argue—and I agree—that impeachment without conviction is nonetheless a severe punishment.

Blow also reminds us that Trump’s approval rating has never vacillated widely the way other modern presidents have. He has stayed in a narrow channel of around 40% no matter what he says or does or others say or do about him. There is therefore not much of a chance that his popularity will soar after an impeachment and non-conviction.

It is true that the several investigations of Trump recently opened by the House will likely reveal more and remind us of many Trump’s wrong doings—illegal or merely despicable. The idea of waiting until the evidence builds up seems prudent until you peruse the Mueller Report and realize that there is already enough to impeach Trump multiple times. The impeachment hearings will allow the House, and maybe the entire country, to see most of the documents being requested in these various committee hearings. One way or another, Trump’s taxes are coming out! So why wait? No need for them to appear before impeachment hearings begin, since they can emerge as part of those hearings.

There is one overarching reason for the House to pursue impeachment. It’s their job and the right thing to do.

As usual, Elizabeth Warren expressed it best, in her tweet advocating the House begin impeachment proceedings: The Mueller Report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack. Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: “Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment.

The Democrats seem to risk little by starting the ball rolling on impeachment. And the reward will be that they did their jobs under the Constitution of the United States.

Many people are giving Joe Biden a free pass for his past touchiness because his intentions were never sexual. That’s absurd. He invaded the personal space of a lot of women and it made them feel very uncomfortable. Plus, even in the benighted days of Joe Biden’s youth, when grabbing someone’s shoulders from behind and rubbing them was perceived as a sign of encouragement, it was never okay for a man to kiss a woman’s hair unless she was a close relative or a paramour.

And just like Al Franken, he should have known better. In all of his years of hanging around well-educated, liberated, articulate and outspoken women, you’d think Joe Biden would have encountered at least one person who told him his touchiness creeped out a lot of people, and that the younger the person, the more likely she would find his little lip musses to the hair repulsive. Let’s remember that the #Metoo movement is now two years old. A politician more attune to the times than Citizen Joe would not have waited until an accusation to change his hugging ways.

The Joe Biden controversy has gone a long way to clarifying what the rules should be regarding public interactions between people who are not related or involved. Touching and hugging should never be allowed unless preapproved by both parties, but we’ll forgive everyone older than 75 for all past public non-sexual touching without prior permission. I’m happy to give Joe Biden a free pass for past actions because his intentions were always noble, which essentially means that I’m happy to welcome Al Franken back into the fold, too.

But then there’s the little matter of the Anita Hill hearings. I saw about 80% of the hearings live and at the time was disgusted by Joe Biden’s behavior towards Hill. He treated her with a great deal of disrespect and suspicion, which made no sense since Clarence Thomas represented judicial values far to the right of the centrist Democratic Party of the early 1990’s. You would think Biden would have wanted to sink the confirmation, not run interference for a pervert. But Biden took it upon himself to serve as prosecutor trying a case of false accusation and perjury.

Biden, like Bernie, is of the generation directly before the Baby Boomers—a generation that used to be called the “Silent Generation”—and thus out of step in many ways, not just with Gen Xers and Millennials, but with Boomers, too. His touchiness symbolizes the generation gap that leaves people on either side of the age divide with different attitudes about race, women, LGBTQ, mass media and music. The Biden controversy has demonstrated how inappropriate it is for Citizen Joe and Bernie Sanders to run for president because they are out of touch to some degree with what will attract young people to the Democratic Party in a way that Baby Boomers Elizabeth Warren, Jay Inslee and Kamala Harris are not. Biden was already in his thirties when feminism became a political and cultural force, whereas Warren and Kamala Harris (the oldest and youngest Boomers running) were among the first women to take advantage of the doors feminism opened. Inslee is young enough to have had to confront women’s issues from the very beginning of his career.  

The Democrats have a number of qualified candidates from which to choose this election cycle and the differences between them are narrow compared to the vast gap between their views and the Trumpublicans. There is no rational reason for Biden to siphon off resources from younger, more dynamic, and frankly more qualified candidates.

On the other hand, if Biden runs and wins the nomination, we should be ready to support him with enthusiasm. No matter who heads the Democratic ticket, we must send her-him money, talk her-him up to our acquaintances and vote for her-him on Election Day.

The first week after the announcement of the arrests of dozens of selfish and unethical rich folk who committed fraud to get their kids into college, the New York Times must have had 25 articles analyzing various aspects of this disgraceful scandal. All of these articles repeated a limited number of basic facts, with each article providing a different frame—the kids, the parents, the corrupt coaches, the investigation. After a while, it was just so much blah, blah, blah…

I wonder whether that’s why there has been no room in the Times to cover “War Spending and Lost Opportunities,” a truly startling piece of research by Heidi Garrett-Peltier, a research fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Garrett-Peltier studies the impact of war-related spending compared to other ways the federal government could spend the money. The paper demonstrates that if instead of going to war in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the federal government had spent the money on other government programs, the economy would have created approximately 1.4 million more jobs since 2001.   

In 2017, her first paper on the subject, published by the Watson Institute of International Affairs at Brown University, Dr. Garrett-Peltier took a look at how many jobs various government activities produce, including waging war, investing in education, support of wind and solar energy, maintaining our infrastructure of mass transit, sewers systems, highways and bridges and healthcare. Her analysis consisted of three parts:

1. Distinguishing between wartime spending and the base Pentagon budget.
2. Comparing the number of jobs created by waging war to the numbers created by other federal spending.
3. Creating a reasonable mix of other ways to spend and comparing the number of potential jobs created with the number of jobs actually created by our war economy.

As it turns out, virtually every other kind of federal expenditure creates more jobs than bombing and invasion. Check out some of these numbers: Healthcare sending creates 107.2% more jobs, which means that if war money created 100 jobs, the same amount spent on healthcare would have created more than 207 jobs. Elementary and secondary school education spending creates 178.3% more jobs, infrastructure spending creates 42% more jobs, retrofitting existing manufacturing and energy systems creates 53.6% more jobs.

While other researchers could disagree about how much alternative spending should go to education versus renewable resources, whatever mix you pick will create significantly more jobs than spending it on war.

Her initial study was ignored by the mainstream media at the time, and the same fate has met her 2019 update so far. Her latest numbers estimate warfare spending from FY 2001 through FY2019 (FY = fiscal year) and fine tune some details of her analysis.

Perhaps the most shocking number Dr. Garrett-Peltier provides is the average annual amount we have spent on war-related activities over the past 19 years. The number is in addition to the base Pentagon budget, which already puts us way ahead of what any two other nations combined spend on the military. Get ready for this number. Sit down. Relax. Maybe ready a glass or pipe of your favorite anti-anxiety home remedy. Or an Ativan or two.

Here goes…

On average, every year since 2001, the United States has spent $290 billion fighting wars. Again that’s not the total, but the annual average. Using Dr. Garrett-Peletier’s model, it works out 1.8 million defense-related jobs, instead of 3.7 million jobs that spending that money on a realistic mix of education, infrastructure, retrofitting, healthcare and renewable energy would have created.

And what did we get? Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and our bloody little adventures throughout Africa.  

Dr. Garrett-Peltier doesn’t measure the toll our wars have taken on American soldiers, their families and the soldiers and civilians of our adversaries. She hasn’t measured the monetary value of the wrecked cities, roads and bridges. She hasn’t taken into account the millions of refugees created by our wars. On a more Kissingerian “Realpolitik” note, Dr. Garrett-Peltier’s research doesn’t measure the loss of status we have suffered throughout Western Europe and the Muslim world for our stupid, goalless bullying wars. She doesn’t compute the value of the loss in global leadership to China and other countries in the areas of alternative fuels and infrastructure development. Or the value of the loss of status as a leader in the future by spending trillions of dollars on bombing and shooting instead of investing in meeting the Paris Accords on climate change.

None of these wars made the United States any safer. None of them advanced our expressed interests. None of these wars created greater democracy, freedom of speech, equality for women or economic growth. All they did was to kill people, destroy economies and enlarge the bank accounts of military contractors and weapons manufacturers.

It’s time to bring home all our troops, reign in development of new weapons of mass and pinpoint destruction, and start investing our tax dollars in life, not death.