It's All About Moving the Middle

There are an awful lot of Americans who view themselves as "middle of the road" folks, the kind of "ordinary people" who operate as much on a "gut feeling" of what's "common sense" as they do on a careful, time consuming analysis of details.

And, in my experience, these people don't tend to have a concrete viewpoint. They listen to what they consider to be "all sides of an issue" and then...split the difference. They have an unstated assumption that "the truth" or "reality" is necessarily 50% of the way between the most extreme views that they hear.

That approach has the advantage of being easy--no need for lots of thought, no need to change your mind once it's made up, no need to spend a whole lot of time reading, discussing, arguing. One side says 20, the other says 44, so it's "reasonable" that the answer should be 32. But if one extreme becomes even more extreme, so does the position of the middle of the roader. Change the competing positions to 20 and 80 and, just like that, the middle of the roader thinks that 50 is a nice, moderate choice. Even though that "moderate" choice is now more extreme than the number, 44, which used to be the extreme.

And these people tend to view themselves as "independents" who "think for themselves." Of course, these independents are the swing vote. Ask any political consultant worth a contract which group is most likely to decide a public election. The independent folks, those common sense-loving, complexity-fearing middle of the roaders.

And guess what? The people who want to manipulate public opinion know that this is how the middle of the roaders think. Which means that the smartest tactic for any group which is outnumbered among the electorate--as the super-rich and mega-corporations always are and always will be--is to move the middle much closer to the extreme end that they favor.

That's really what Fox, the Koch brothers, and others of that ilk have been up to for these past several decades: injecting ever more extreme positions into the public debate, so that the "middle," as computed by the independents, moves ever closer to the extreme positions advocated by the Murdoch, the Kochs, and the billionaires you don't even know.

If the extremes of the debate are that Social Security should be expanded and the benefits increased, at one end, and that Social Security has gone far enough and should be left alone, at the other end, the "split the difference" thinker is likely to decide that Social Security is pretty good, and we could reasonably expand it, but let's not raise the benefits. Change the extreme opposition view, however, to a claim that Social Security is a Communistic device doomed to failure and likely to play a role in the subjugation of the citizenry by a power-mad government, and where is the "middle of the roader" likely to end up?

That's where Fox news has really changed the game far more than most Americans recognize. That is where the mouthpieces--ranging from the rabid like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, to the pseudo-rational like Neil Cavuto--have really earned their propagandist stripes.

And that's where today's "mainstream" media play into the hands of the monied few and their highly compensated mouthpieces. The knee jerk approach of reporting all claims as plausible means that there is no one in the media, no one in a position of power, to point out that the claims at one extreme are, in fact, not only super extreme, but demonstrably untrue.

It does not matter that income tax rates during the heyday of America's success during the 20th century were far higher than they are today. What matters is that Fox and frauds present the current rates as "Socialistic" or even "communistic." The choice then is between whether we should raise the rates a little bit for people at the top end of the income scale, or whether we should cut the rates considerably for everybody, especially the super-rich. Split the difference and you get....

It's the mindless middle-of-the roader who is going to do us in if something doesn't change, and change quickly.

Ignorance Will Do Us In For Sure

What passes for public debate in America right now is a joke.

What passes for media coverage in America right now is a joke.

What passes for an economy in America right now is a joke.

The common cause of these wonderful facts is ignorance.

You can't, for example, have a serious public debate when a significant chunk of the debaters think the president is a Communistic Muslim who was born in Africa and hates freedom.

You can't, for example, have serious media coverage when the media is owned by commercial interests which are ignorant of the long term need for real information in order to maintain a country where freedom can flourish.

You can't, for example, have a serious economy when the voting public is completely ignorant of the real state of the economy, completely ignorant of the reasons why the economy is in that state, and completely ignorant of the available alternative approaches to "fixing it."

So let's all wring our hands about "the state of things," let's all sorrowfully hope that we can "learn a lesson" from the shootings in Tucson, let's all lament the rhetoric of violence and treason from the right, let's all hope that civility can prevail, let's all hope that things get better.

I'm pretty sure that all this hoping, hand wringing and lamenting served as the sound track for the downward spiral of many, many civilizations before this one.

Home values down, consumer credit up...WAY up

According to a report in Business Week, consumer credit debt--especially revolving credit such as credit card debt--is mushrooming:

Consumers boosted their borrowing more than expected in June, reflecting another hefty jump in credit card debt.
The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumer credit rose at an annual rate of 6.5 percent in June. It marked the second straight sizable gain. Consumer credit rose by an even larger 7.9 percent in May.

The increase was led by an 8.4 percent rate of increase for revolving credit, the category that includes credit card debt. The category that includes auto loans rose at a 5.3 percent rate, the same as in May.

Total consumer credit rose by $13.2 billion in June to a record $2.459 trillion. The increase was double what economists had been expecting.

Consumer credit as measured by the Fed does not include mortgage debt. Analysts said the big rise in consumer credit reflects the slumping housing market and growing troubles in mortgage markets.
...
Homeowners are unable to borrow against their homes so they are turning back to their credit cards," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Zandi predicted this trend would continue for the next year or so until the housing market stabilizes and home prices start rising again.

If the credit card debt continues to rise at anything near these percentages, get ready for a wave of consumer bankruptcies within a year.

Not that this would put a dent in credit card debt, given the recent report that bankrupt consumers still get flooded with offers of more credit:

Credit-card companies target people fresh out of bankruptcy with credit offers, according to a study that found that nearly 100 percent of more than 300 families surveyed had been offered new credit cards within a year after completing Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings.

The findings show "how the credit industry seeks to profit from financial distress," said the study's author.

Can David Brooks be Reality-Based?

David Brooks is one of the few people in the world who has the New York Times editorial page for a platform. Why he has it is anybody's guess, but it probably isn't because of his economic acumen, honesty or openness, judging from his latest column A Reality-Based Economy.

Brooks is beating his usual drum here: things are soooo much better than us gloomy naysayers say. In this case, he's nominally taking to task the Democratic presidential candidates:

If you’ve paid attention to the presidential campaign, you’ve heard the neopopulist story line. C.E.O.’s are seeing their incomes skyrocket while the middle class gets squeezed. The tides of globalization work against average Americans while most of the benefits go to the top 1 percent.
This story is not entirely wrong, but it is incredibly simple-minded. To believe it, you have to suppress a whole string of complicating facts.

Not "entirely wrong." That's an understatement if I ever heard one. What complicating "facts" do I have to suppress in order to think that CEO's are seeing their incomes skyrocket while the middle class gets squeezed? These, essentially:

• After a lag, average wages are rising sharply. Real average wages rose by 2 percent in 2006, the second fastest rise in 30 years


• Earnings for the poorest fifth of Americans are also on the increase


• Despite years of scare stories, income volatility is probably not trending upward


• Recent rises in inequality have less to do with the grinding unfairness of globalization than with the reality that the market increasingly rewards education and hard work


• Companies are getting more efficient at singling out and rewarding productive workers


• Another reason for rising inequality is that upper income workers are putting in more hours, while lower income workers are putting in less


• It’s "not at all clear that the big winners in this economy are self-dealing corporate greedheads who are bilking shareholders" (he cites a study showing that “the top 25 hedge fund managers combined appear to have earned more than all 500 S.&P. 500 C.E.O.’s combined.”)


• To the extent that C.E.O. pay packets have thickened (and they have), there may be good economic reasons (the bigger a company gets, the more a talented C.E.O. can do to increase earnings)


• We’re in the middle of one of the greatest economic eras ever: global poverty has declined at astounding rates; globalization boosts each American household’s income by about $10,000 a year; thanks to all the growth, tax revenues are at 18.8 percent of G.D.P., higher than the historical average and the deficit is down to about 1.5 percent of G.D.P., below the historical average)

You know, if all that's true....but then how in the world would Brooks or anyone else know that "globalization boosts each American household’s income by about $10,000 a year?" And what do a lot of those things have to do with whether the top is getting rich and the middle is getting squeezed? Does it really matter, for example, whether the people getting the richest the fastest are hedge fund managers or CEOs?

Income volatility is probably not trending upward--meaning it could be, and what the hell is his source?

Then there's the sly little attempt to make you think that real wages are going great guns. I took the time and effort to check that one out, and if that claim is representative of how he arrived at his other "inconvenient facts," then he deliberately misrepresenting at worst and grossly incompetent at best.

Here's the story on real wages. He's right about the 2+ % rise in 2006. But there's a reason he chose 2006, leaving out the several years before it and the performance so far in 2007.

All the following figures are from the BLS Archived News Releases r.e. Real Earnings.

Monthly 2007 changes in real earnings show a significant net loss of purchasing power so far this year:

Jan...............-.3
Feb..............-.3

Mar.............+.1

Apr............. -.5

May.............-.4

June.............+.5

And here are the year-end statements as to changes in real earnings for 1995 through 2006:
Average weekly earnings rose by 4.5 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2005 to December 2006. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings increased by 2.1 percent.
Average weekly earnings rose by 3.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2004 to December 2005. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings decreased by 0.4 percent.

Average weekly earnings rose by 3.3 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2003 to December 2004. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings decreased by 0.2 percent.

Average weekly earnings rose by 1.7 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2002 to December 2003. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings were unchanged.

Average weekly earnings rose by 3.0 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2001 to December 2002. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings rose by 0.5 percent.

Average weekly earnings rose 4.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2000 to December 2001. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings rose 2.9 percent.

Average weekly earnings rose by 3.0 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 1999 to December 2000. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings fell by 0.4 percent.

Average weekly earnings rose by 3.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, between December of 1998 and 1999. After adjustment for inflation, average weekly earnings grew by 0.6 percent.

Average weekly earnings rose by 3.4 percent between December of 1997 and 1998 as a result of a 3.7 percent increase in average hourly earnings which was partially offset by a 0.3 percent decline in average weekly hours. After adjustment for a 1.6 percent increase in the CPI-W over the same period, real average weekly earnings grew by 1.8 percent.

Real average weekly earnings decreased by 0.6 percent from November to December after seasonal adjustment, according to preliminary data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S.Department of Labor. This loss was due to a 0.6 percent drop in average weekly hours and a 0.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The decline was partly offset by a 0.1 percent increase in average hourly earnings.

Before seasonal adjustment, average weekly earnings increased by 3.4 percent between December of 1996 and 1997 as a result of a 3.7 percent increase in average hourly earnings and a 0.3 percent loss in average weekly hours. After adjustment for a 1.5 percent gain in the CPI-W over the same period, real average weekly earnings grew by 1.9 percent.

Before seasonal adjustment, average weekly earnings increased by 5.2 percent between December of 1995 and 1996 as a result of a 4.0 percent increase in average hourly earnings and a 1.2 percent increase in average weekly hours. After adjustment for a 3.3 percent gain in the CPI-W over the same period, real average weekly earnings grew by 1.8 percent.

We can compare this to several sources on executive pay. This, for example, from Forbes in:
1. April of 2005: "The heads of America's 500 biggest companies received an aggregate 54% pay raise last year. As a group, their total compensation amounted to $5.1 billion, versus $3.3 billion in fiscal 2003."

2. May of 2007: "The chief executives of America's 500 biggest companies got a collective 38% pay raise last year, to $7.5 billion. That's an average $15.2 million apiece."

Or this, from Lab Manager magazine in April of 2007: "While the median change in CEO total direct compensation (salary, bonus and long-term incentives) was 8.9 percent, corporate net income increased by 14.4 percent, up from 13 percent in 2005, and total shareholder return was 15.1 percent, more than double the 6.8 percent return in 2005."

Then there is this long term chart from Mercer Human Resource Consulting on the year to year percentage change in CEO compensation, exempt employee compensation, corporate profits, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) covering 1996 to 2005:

Year.............CEO*...........Exempt.employees*.......Corporate.profits........Annual CPI

1996.............5.2%....................4.0%...............................11.0%.......................3.0%

1997............11.7%...................4.2%..............................8.9%.........................2.3%

1998.............5.2%....................4.2%................................5.0%.........................1.6%

1999............11.0%...................4.2%...............................15.1%........................2.2%

2000............10.0%....................4.2%................................8.9%........................3.4%

2001.......minus2.8%.....................4.4%.........................minus17.8% ......................2.8%

2002.............10.0%....................3.8%...............................14.8%.......................1.6%

2003...............7.2%....................3.6% ..............................19.2%........................2.3%

2004..............14.5%...................3.4%...............................23.0%........................2.7%

2005...............7.1%....................3.6%...............................13.0%........................3.4%

(1) Annual compensation comprised of salary + bonus

Brooks closes his column with the statement that "Whoever gets globalization right will have a bright future, and in the long run, the facts matter." The facts matter, alright. It's too bad he gets so many wrong, so many irrelevant, and so many from undisclosed sources.

Nor is this the first time Brooks has published really questionable stats that make economists scratch their heads (and wonder why he, of all people, merits space on the Times editorial page). Check out this on AlterNet and this on Brad DeLong's blog.

That White House love of the four Ss: science, spin, and spinning science

July 11, 2007
Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised
By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.
...
Dr. Carmona refused to name specific people in the administration who had instructed him to put political considerations over scientific ones. He said, however, that they included assistant secretaries of health and human services as well as top political appointees outside the department of health.

Dr. Carmona did offer to provide the names to the committee in a private meeting.
...
He described attending a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.

If that doesn't make you sick enough, try this: a White House spokeswoman tried to spin it that Carmona was at fault for not resisting the pressure from...the White House:

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the surgeon general “is the leading voice for the health of all Americans.”

“It’s disappointing to us,” Ms. Lawrimore said, “if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation.”

Internal Displacement of Iraqis said to be 'Human Tragedy Unprecedented in Iraq's History'

According to the blog Iraq Slogger, a recent report from the Iraqi Red Cresent calls the displacement of Iraqis within the country a "Human Tragedy Unprecedented in Iraq's History."

According to the blog:

• the number of internally displaced people (IDP's) in Iraq has quadrupled since January and is up eight times from a year ago.


• many IDP's take refuge in the house of extended family or a friend, while others squat illegally in abandoned houses, live on the streets or in makeshift mud huts and tin shacks; tens of thousands of others live in tent cities.


• the province with the greatest number of IDP's is Ninevah (Mosul area), with 239,547, followed by Baghdad, with 196,227.

The full report isn't readily available, but can be ordered through the blog.

An apparently different report from Oxfam duscussed on the Associated Content web site adds more grim info:

• 1 in 3 Iraqis are in a desperate humanitarian situation, having trouble meeting their basic humanitarian needs for water, food, sanitation, or shelter


• 4 million Iraqis (15% of the population) regularly can not buy enough to eat


• 70% of Iraqis do not have adequate water supplies


• more than 2 million people have been displaced inside Iraq


• an additional 2 million Iraqis have become refugees predominantly in Syria and Jordan

The full version of that report is available, here

God, secular schools, and religiosity, then and now

A few quotes from recent days and a few from the glory days of Fascism:

1. Evils of public, secular schools:

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people."
-- Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"
-- Jerry Falwell

___________________
2. Good guys doing God's work:

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: - by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” — Adolph Hitler

"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
-- Adolf Hitler

"We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. . .we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess."
-- Adolf Hitler

"Get the few liberals out. If you don’t do it, it ain’t gonna be done. You will be doing the Lord’s work, and he will richly bless you for it."–Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, describing the goals of the 2004 elections at the Christian Coalition’s Road to Victory Conference, 2002, Washington D.C.

"He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am."
-- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
________________________
3. Our heaven-sent leaders:

"God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany."
--Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."
--Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of G. W. Bush, New York Times, 17 October 2003

"He [Rumsfeld] leads in a way that the Good Lord tells him is best for our country."
-- Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
_________________
4. Bonus quote from the one and only James (Has Anyone Seen My Mind?) Inhofe, in his 1999 official statement on the impeachment of Clinton (his closed-door impeachment statement that was released into the Congressional Record on February 12, 1999):

"I sometimes say one of the few qualifications I have for the U.S. Senate is I am not a lawyer. So that when I read the Constitution, I know what it says; when I read the oath of office, I know what it says; when I read the law, I know what it says. I don't have to clutter up my mind with what the definition of 'is' is. So it makes it a little easier for me.

...
"as a non-attorney, I have a hard time reconciling the idea that there might be certain permissible exceptions to telling the truth under oath. Maybe you who are attorneys, and have a different background than mine, see it differently. But how can you reconcile this idea that under some conditions--if the subject matter is sex or something else--you can lie under oath? I really have a hard time with this.
.....
"Sometimes when I am not really sure I am right, I consult my best friend. His name is Jesus. And I asked that question. Now I will quote to you the response that is found in Luke: 'From one who has been entrusted with more, much more will be asked.'

"Mr. Chief Justice, I think Jesus is right."