Selfishness is Alive and Well in America

Here is an excellent post by Paul Krugman in his NY Times blog looking at the poison the corrupts political discourse in American politics:

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means, Hypocrisy Edition

OK, let me start by talking about Mel Gibson for a minute. Bear with me, this is actually relevant.

Back in 2000 Gibson made a movie, The Patriot, about the Revolutionary War. (I think I saw it on an airplane). And when the movie came out, Michael Lind wrote an essay that has stuck with me, pointing out that nobody involved in the picture seemed to know what patriotism means. The Gibson character was presented as a man who refused to get involved until his own family was hurt — then, he went to war for personal revenge. And this was supposed to show his patriotism.

As Lind said, the truth is that that’s more or less the opposite of patriotism, which is about making sacrifices for the national good, not serving your personal motives or interests.

Which brings me to the subject of this post, the apparently equally misunderstood concept of hypocrisy. I’ve been getting some personal attacks on this front, but it’s a bigger issue than that. Here’s the personal version: suppose that you’re a professor/columnist who advocates higher taxes on high incomes and a stronger social safety net — but you yourself earn enough from various sources that you will pay some of those higher taxes and are unlikely to rely on that stronger safety net. A remarkable number of people look at that combination of personal and political positions and cry “Hypocrisy!”

Wait — it’s not just about me and the wingnuts. If you remember the 2004 election, which unfortunately I do, there were quite a few journalists who basically accused John Kerry of being “inauthentic” because he was a rich man advocating policies that would help the poor and the middle class. Apparently you can only be authentic if your politics reflect pure personal self-interest — Mitt Romney is Mr. Natural.

So to say what should be obvious but apparently isn’t: supporting policies that are to your personal financial disadvantage isn’t hypocrisy — it’s civic virtue!

But, say the wingnuts, you say that rich people are evil. Actually, no — that’s a right-wing fantasy about what liberals believe. I don’t want to punish the rich, I just want them to pay more taxes. You can favor redistribution without indulging in class hatred; it’s only the defenders of privilege who try to claim otherwise.

Lind’s essay about Mel Gibson ended with concerns that we may have lost the sense of what citizenship and its duties mean. Indeed. If people can’t comprehend what it means to work for larger goals than their own interest, if they actually consider any deviation from self-service somehow a sign of phoniness, we, as a nation, are lost.

The political right is poisonous. Right now they are blocking any attempt to heal the US after the 2008 economic collapse. They put politics above country... and of course consider themselves "patriots" because in their lexicon "patriotism" is doing what is in your own interest, not in the country's interest. This has made the US ungovernable and turned a big recession in the Great Recession and stretched it from a 2 or 3 year rut in the road into a decade long collapse of the economy. What I find incredible is that there appear to be roughly half the population in the US so bitterly "fundamentalist Christian" that they are willing to punch out their fellow man than go the extra mile, or turn the cheek, or give him the extra cloak. Pathetic!

Update 2011nov05: Here is a bit from from Krugman today on his NY Times blog:

But here’s an item that caught my eye, given what I wrote about hypocrisy yesterday:

Deadbeat Rep. Joe Walsh, Who Owes $100k In Child Support, Receives ‘Pro-Family’ Award From Family Research Council.

Now that’s real hypocrisy — and if the past is any indication, it won’t matter at all for Rep. Walsh’s career.

There’s a big difference between the left and the right in such matters, one that I don’t fully understand, although I’m trying. Here’s how it goes: if a liberal politician is caught behaving badly — enriching himself while preaching the need to help the poor, or just in general showing himself less than admirable by having an affair, visiting call girls, whatever — his career is over.

But if a conservative politician who preaches stern traditional morality is caught engaging in actions that are at odds with what he preaches — buying sex, taking wide stances in restrooms, or, in this case, stiffing his family even while preaching family values — he may well ride right through the scandal. Witness what’s going on now with Herman Cain.

How can this be? Here’s what I understand: on the right, “moral values” are considered to be, literally, God-given principles. And a politician is well-regarded for advocating those values, no matter what he does personally. Instead of his personal behavior devaluing his political position, his political position excuses his personal behavior; a philandering politician who preaches the sacred bond of marriage is considered a good man because of what he says, no matter what he does.

Unlike Krugman, I simply dismiss the right wing as insincere idiots who are completely self-serving in their manipulation of "morality". Paul Krugman, on the other hand, takes them at face value and tries hard to understand this hypocritical behaviour. I can't be bothered because I lived up close to a serial manipulator who used religion and self-serving "morality" to enable his crimes and cover his tracks. I have no patience with these people. But I do admire Krugman for trying to make sense of their behaviour.

Unveiling the Real Obama

Here is a bit from a post by Matt Taibbi in his Rolling Stone blog that makes clear that Obama has abandoned his left wing and moved right for purely selfing and policially calculated reasons: he wants to win re-election and he's willing to sacrifice his left to ensure his political future:

Krugman seems to believe that Obama has basically purged all of his real economic advisors and is doing what Bush did on foreign policy -- engaging in complex and portentous policy initiatives at the behest not of experts, but political advisors. Just as Bush had Karl Rove telling him when and how to launch military invasions and drop bombs on unsuspecting foreign human beings in order to establish electoral credentials, Obama might be playing chicken with the budget for the benefit of undecideds in Florida and Ohio:

Some of what we’re hearing is presumably coming from the political team, whose members seem to believe that a move toward Republican positions, reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” in the 1990s, is the key to Mr. Obama’s re-election. And Mr. Clinton did, indeed, rebound from a big defeat in the 1994 midterms to win big two years later. But some of us think that the rebound had less to do with his rhetorical move to the center than with the five million jobs the economy added over those two years — an achievement not likely to be repeated this time, especially not in the face of harsh spending cuts.

The blindness of the DLC-era "Third Way" Democratic Party continues to be an astounding thing. For more than a decade now they have been clinging to the idea that the path to electoral success is social liberalism plus laissez-faire economics – in other words, get Wall Street and corporate America to fund your campaigns, and get minorities, pro-choice and gay marriage activists (who will always frightened into loyalty by the Tea Party/Christian loonies on the other side) to march at your rallies and vote every November. They've abandoned the unions-and-jobs platform that was the party's anchor since Roosevelt, and the latest innovations all involve peeling back their own policy legacies from the 20th century. Obama's new plan, for instance, might involve slashing Medicare and Social Security under "pressure" from the Republicans.

I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch.

I agree with the above interpretation.

What it means is that American politics on both left and right are following the same script. The "mainstream" candidates appeal to their base to get nominated, but once in power they move to the centre to consolidate their chance of re-election. So, you promise pie in the sky to your "base" but you deliver the real goods to Wall Street and Corporate America in order to get the big bucks for your next election run.

I think the political right can get away with this because the right wing extremists are smart enough to realize their being used. But I think Obama will fail because his left wing base will realize their being used and will walk away from him. I think this is a serious miscalculation on the part of Obama. He is a cynical politician thinking he can make campaign speeches promising one thing and then deliver another for his "real" supporters, the bag men for Wall Street and Corporate America.

The Real Reason Why Taxes Must Not Be Raised in the US

Here is a post by "Invictus" on Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture blog:

High Net Worth Wealth: +9.1% in 2010

The Republican position on tax increases was perfectly articulated by Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday. Per the NY Times:

On “Fox News Sunday,” the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said that he was “for the biggest deal possible, too, it’s just that we’re not going to raise taxes in the middle of this horrible economic situation.”

Yes, we are in a “horrible economic situation.” Of that there can be no doubt. But the horribleness of that situation is not being felt by a segment of the population — High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) — whose numbers and net worth have swelled even over the past two years. Per the annual Capgemini/Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report:

The population of HNWIs in North America rose 8.6% in 2010 to 3.4 million, after rising 16.6% in 2009. Their wealth rose 9.1% to US$11.6 trillion. [Ed note: Per Capgemini's 2010, the HNWI gain in 2009 was 17.8%.]

While the single biggest asset most of us own is our home (still deflating, unfortunately), the single biggest asset most HNWI own is their investment portfolio (S&P500 up almost 100 percent over the past two years); real wages for working stiffs barely budging while those in the C-suite party like it’s 1999 (or 2007). These folks — presumably the “job creators” about whom we hear so much on a regular basis — have seen their wealth rise by about 28% over the past two years. I can only conclude that a 13+ percent annual gain on one’s wealth is insufficient to begin adding to payrolls, which begs the question as to how much more wealth our “job creators” need to amass before they’ll hang the “Help Wanted” sign. Or how much additional wealth they need to amass before a minimal tax increase is considered within the realm of the possible.

NOTES:

1 HNWIs are defined as those having investable assets of US$1 million or more, excluding primary residence, collectibles, consumables, and consumer durables.

2 Ultra-HNWIs are defined as those having investable assets of US$30 million or more, excluding primary residence, collectibles, consumables, and consumer durables.

Yes... the real reason why taxes can't be raised is that the ultra-rich are doing really, really well and really, really want to do even better! It is greed gone wild. They don't care that the bottom 90% is suffering. All they care about is themselves. They want more and they want it right now! They've bought and paid for the politicians so they are keeping the pressure on to make sure that they aren't dinged to pay any more taxes. In fact, they are the ones behind the continuous call for more "tax cuts"!

Maureen Dowd Roughs Up Strauss-Kahn

Here is a bit from an article in the NY Times by Maureen Dowd taking the reprobate Dominique Strauss-Kahn to task for raping "the help" at a high priced hotel:

Was the chief of the International Monetary Fund telling other countries to tighten their belts while he was dropping his trousers? Lawyers for the 62-year-old Frenchman, who had been a leading Socialist prospect to run against Nicolas Sarkozy next year, seem ready to rebut any DNA evidence by arguing that sex with the maid who came in to clean his room was consensual.

Will they argue that she wilted with desire once she realized Strauss-Kahn had been at Davos?

Jeffrey Shapiro, the maid’s lawyer, angrily rebutted that there was “nothing, nothing” consensual about the droit du monsieur. (It was not a “come in and see my monetary fund” kind of thing.)

“She is a simple housekeeper who was going into a room to clean a room,” Shapiro told The Times. He called the devout Muslim woman from the Bronx “a very proper, dignified young woman” and said “she did not even know who this guy was” until she saw the news accounts.

Strauss-Kahn’s French defenders are throwing around nutty conspiracy theories, sounding like the Pakistanis about Osama. Some have suggested that he was the victim of a honey-pot arranged by the Sarkozy forces.

Go read the whole article to savour every jibe and jab as she deflates this hyper-inflated ego for his lechery and vicious disregard of the rights and dignity of "the little people". Strauss-Kahn is a symbol of today as the billionaires and millionaires aggrandize power that lets them rise, in their minds, above the long arm of the law. We are their playthings. The are the lords of this new world which has been carefully arranged to give the ultra-rich complete dominance over the rest of us.

Here is the new reality as characterized by Dowd:

In Washington, they have now nicknamed the street that separates the I.M.F. and the World Bank, where Paul Wolfowitz lost his job over financial hanky-panky with his girlfriend, the Boulevard of Bad Behavior.

These are the two institutions that are globally renowned for lecturing the rest of the world on discipline and freedom, when it’s the West that’s guilty of recklessness and improvident behavior. First in finance, then in sex.

People who can’t keep their flies zipped lecturing other people.

Here she points out that the rise to dominance of the ultra-rich has led them to ultra-outrageous behaviour:

Another famous European with a disturbing pattern of sexual aggression got in trouble over the help this week: The ex-governor of California, who got elected after his wife, Maria Shriver, defended him so eloquently against groping charges.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was also guilty of the raw assertion of male power. More than mere infidelity, The Sperminator was caught on lying and piggishness, having a son with a staffer around the same time Maria had their youngest son, who is now 13. He kept the staffer on the payroll and sometimes even brought the son Maria didn’t know about into the house. No wonder Maria fled to a Beverly Hills hotel.

We’re always fascinated with the contradiction that cosmopolitan, high-powered, multilingual people can behave in such primitive ways. But civilization and morality have nothing to do with sophistication and social status.

I'm hoping that "the little people" get tired of being kicked around by the Leona Helmsley's of this world, famous for her quote:

We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes...

Which was an outcome of this sordid crime:

Following allegations by unpaid contractors that work done on her home had been charged to her company, she was investigated and convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989. Although having initially received a sentence of 16 years, Helmsley was required to serve only 19 months in prison and two months under house arrest. Helmsley's fate was sealed when a former housekeeper testified during the trial that she had heard Helmsley say: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes...", a saying that became notorious and was identified with her for the rest of her life.

Rape "the help", refuse to pay "the help", demand that the "little people" keep lowering taxes on the rich, allow the rich to buy politicians and ignore the law, etc. This is the brave new world that the "Reagan revolution" has unleashed on the world. A new Gilded Age with the ultra-rich rampant, aggressive, mean, and uncontrolled.

Update 2011jul3: There is a very nice follow-up article by Maureen Dowd entitled "When a Predator Collides With a Fabricator" that looks at the state of this case once the lies of the accuser became public.

Hollywood as Your Moral Compass

This raises some interesting questions about letting Hollywood stars define your "political issues" for you...

Robert Redford:


James Cameron:


From the UK's Independent newspaper, here's the key bit:

For years, they've preached green living while travelling the world in SUVs, limousines and private jets. But now Hollywood's foremost tree-huggers face the prospect of being exposed as eco-hypocrites – in the very medium that finances their extravagant carbon footprints in the first place.

Robert Redford became the latest movie star to have his environmental credentials publicly ridiculed on film this week, when a hostile documentary was released in which he stood accused of failing to practise the environmentalism that he so vehemently preaches.

The short film, Robert Redford: Hypocrite, was released on Friday, via YouTube, to coincide with the closing days of his Sundance Film Festival. Depending on your point of view, it represented either a cheap hatchet-job or a stunning evisceration of a pioneering green activist who was once lauded on Time Magazine's list of environmental "superheroes".

According to the film, Redford recently sold a dozen plots of land near to the Sundance ski resort in Utah, which he owns, to developers seeking to build luxury homes there. The revelation is especially contentious because each of the sites sits on an undeveloped ridge, in what was previously wilderness. Ironically, Redford recently stuck his head above the parapet to lobby against a similar project in California's Napa Valley, where he keeps a home. Mind you, the film points out, the nimby-ish actor did not stand to profit from the Napa development. The plots of land near Sundance, by contrast, fetched him around $2m each.

"It's the hypocrisy that gets me," said the film's Irish director, Phelim McAleer. "He's taking a lovely virgin ridge and building McMansions on it. Granted, they're nice, lefty, eco-McMansions. But they're McMansions all the same. At the same time, he's trying to stop other people from building houses in a nice spot." The film also points out that Redford, 74, has often called for the world to reduce its carbon footprint, while simultaneously accepting the shilling of United Airlines, for which he performed voiceovers in aTV advert proclaiming that "it's time to fly"

For more, read the whole article.