On Women And Work

"They blame the low income women for ruining the country because they are staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children."

-Ann Richards

 When we were pushing "welfare reform," meaning putting single mothers out to work, I always wondered, "who is going to raise the children?" There are possible answers, but I don't recall that we ever had that conversation.

Seventy Years Ago: Hanging In The Balance

Mid August 1942, Guadalcanal. US Marines have a tentative toehold. August 17, Henderson Field, originally started by the Japanese but completed by the marines, became operational. August 20, USS Long Island, the navy's first escort carrier, delivered 19 Grumman F-4-F Wildcat fighters and 12 SBD Dauntless dive bombers to a point 170 nm SE of Guadalcanal and launched them enroute to Henderson Field. These 31 aircraft formed the nucleus of what was later known as the "cactus air force."

Air resupply and evacuation flights using R-4D's (the navy version of the C-47) began the same day.



USS Long Island proved the concept of conversion of merchant ships to what was referred to as a "baby flattop." CVE's like Long Island would prove to be a great force multiplier in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.

Mother Goose: Dislikes

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,

The reason why - I cannot tell;

But this I know, and know full well,

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

 

English Poet Tom Brown - 1680

Third Parties And Other Fantasies

Just got back from a couple of days' training by the State Board of Elections. I always learn something new.

This time, one of the new things is that Americans Elect, an innovative third party that qualified as an official party in North Carolina law, is dissolving. Their innovation: picking their nominees by an Internet primary. The problem: it didn't work.

About a year ago, I called attention to the push by prominent "moderates" like Thomas Friedman to support a third party movement. I have a lot of problems with the idea that third parties can ever make things well, especially through presidential elections.

You want third parties? Take a look at the 1948 presidential election. Plenty of third parties, including the Vegetarian Party. Two of them - the Progressive Party and the State's Rights Party- split off from the Democratic Party and seemed to be viable. Despite the odds and despite the Chicago Tribune's premature headline, Truman won.

It seems to me that third party movements would be better advised to start at the bottom rather than the top of the ticket. Apparently that just takes too long.

If that's too hard, think seriously about getting involved with an existing party.

Take a look at two interesting web sites: The Political Compass and The Pew Center. Take the surveys. You might learn something about yourself.

A Good Article By Bruce Bartlett

Here's a link to a good article by Bruce Bartlett, former staffer for Congressman Ron Paul, Congressman Jack Kemp, Senator Jepson of Iowa, and President George H. W. Bush, among others.

Cox v. Town Of Oriental

Some readers are aware that I filed an appeal last Thursday to the closing by the Town of Oriental of Avenue A on July 3 after a public hearing.

I filed the appeal within the statutory deadline of thirty days following the permanent closing of the street. A civil summons notifying the town of the appeal and providing a copy was served on Mayor Sage Monday morning about ten o'clock.

The mayor transmitted the appeal to Mr. Scott Davis, the Town Attorney, and to the town's insurance carrier.

Anyone who wishes to read a copy of the appeal will find a link on the home page of TownDock.net. I think the appeal speaks for itself.

Let's Fix The Deficit?

Headline in today's Los Angeles Times tells you all you need to know about the so-called deficit problem:

Deficit debate driven by the wealthy

The Simpson/Bowles plan bills itself as a road map to deficit reduction, but it's really a guide to cutting services and benefits for the working and middle class while protecting the interests of the wealthy.

I like the opening paragraph of the article by Michael Hiltzik, as well:

"There must be a reason that every time I hear the term "fiscal cliff," the image that comes to mind is of Wile E. Coyote pumping his feet in midair just before plunging into the valley below.
Is it that the debate over when and how to cure the federal deficit has reached new heights of cartoonish inanity? That we are now being treated to finger-wagging about the need to get our fiscal house in order by corporate CEOs like JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon (trading loss $5.8 billion and counting, potential cost to ratepayers from alleged manipulation of the California electricity market $200 million and counting).
Or is it that the remedies for the deficit always seem to involve cutting taxes for the top 1% of U.S. income earners while cutting Social Security retirement benefits (average monthly check: $1,230) for everyone else?"

 As I have said before, the real question in politics is, "who benefits and who pays?"

For the past four decades, the answer has been that the top 1% benefits and the rest of us pay. Time to wake up.

Economic Policy Debate - Entirely Political

Earlier this week an analysis in Bloomberg News assessed the current debate on economic policy as being entirely phony.  I recommend the article.

Real economists, Bloomberg reported, are in remarkable agreement about economic conditions and about what should be done. The debate, the article contends, is entirely political. That is to say, it is being undertaken on the part of Republicans for entirely partisan ends.

The same could be said, by the way, about the phony "debate" on global warming and sea level rise and many other "debate" topics.

The problem is, so far as Congress is concerned, the "debate" is accompanied by entirely cynical efforts to obstruct any measures to make the economy better.

Republican businessmen understand as well as anyone else that the main problem with the economy at present is lack of aggregate demand for goods and services. We know how to fix that. But Republican politicians believe any improvement in the economy would only benefit the president's party, so Republicans in Congress oppose anything that might improve the job situation.

Is this the face of patriotism?

On Economic Laws - Not Like The Law Of Gravity

"Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws--sacred, inviolable, unchangeable--cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Nomination Address, July 2nd, 1932, Chicago, IL)

Who Benefits? Who Pays?

I have said it before: it isn't how big government is that matters, but who benefits. Conservatives rail against redistribution. That's a smokescreen. For four decades, redistribution has been upward.

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research posted an excellent article yesterday making the point better than I. The argument isn't over government size. The argument is over rigging rules to benefit the wealthy.

As Dean Baker explains: "[Conservatives] don't object to big government, they object to government programs that help poor and middle class people."

Taxes

Tax policy is complicated. If the actual policy weren't complicated enough, understanding tax policy becomes almost impossible because of unsupported assertions and fear mongering.

Yesterday economist Robert Reich posted an article attempting to cut through the often complicated rhetoric and describe the proposal that is actually on the table.

By the way, the Congressional Budget Office has a new study out on income and taxes. The study shows that in 2008-2009 average federal taxes paid for all households reached the lowest level in thirty years. As for income distribution, the top 20% of the population received more than half of total before tax income. The bottom 20% received five percent of total before tax income. Probably not good for aggregate demand.

Rent Seeking

Economist Joseph Stiglitz in a recent interview attributes many of our economic problems to rent-seeking.

"The people at the top are not the people who made the most contributions to our society. Some of them are. But a very large proportion (is) simply people I describe as rent-seekers -- people who have been successful in getting a larger share of the pie rather than increasing the size of the pie.  ...[W]e don't understand the extent to which our economy has really become a rent-seeking economy."

This runs counter to a view I often see in conservative commentary - the people with a lot of money are the "winners," who should be exalted and people who actually work for a living (and especially those who lose their jobs in an economic downturn) are "losers" and "freeloaders."

I think the biggest freeloaders are those who siphon off money from the productive work of others.

Stiglitz' take:

"Much of what goes on in the financial sector is this kind of rent-seeking.

"The most dramatic example was the predatory lending and the abusive credit card practices, which took money from people on the bottom and the middle often in a very deceptive way, sometimes in a fraudulent way, and moved it to the top.... 

"And what is interesting to realize is that our tax structure not only is unfair, but actually distorts our economy. It lowers growth and increases inequality. If you tax speculation at less than half the rate you tax people who work for a living, what you do is you encourage speculation. You weaken the economy. Speculative activities are activities associated with high levels of inequality. And that way you increase inequality. We tax in a sense a lot of the rent-seeking activities at a lower rate because they get under the rubric of the capital gains tax. ... "

Stiglitz' aim is an economy that works better. For everyone.

Polarized Politics

I have from time to time offered the view that in understanding political controversies, it is helpful to seek the answer to two questions: who benefits? and who pays?

Today I came across a review of a book by political scientists who have studied and sought to explain polarization. Political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal present their findings in Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Walras-Pareto Lectures).

The review summarizes their findings: "[The authors] succeed in cutting through the seemingly crazed rhetoric of conservative extremists in and out of Congress and reveal what it's really all about: protecting the economic interests of the wealthy....
"What is really interesting about this analysis is that it implies that the sizzling rhetoric coming from the right -- personal attacks on the President, anti-gay rants, renewed heat around abortion and contraception -- is just window dressing. By the evidence of voting records, what the right really cares about is economic issues favoring the affluent -- tax cuts, reduced social spending, reduced regulation of business activity, and estate taxes. This isn't to say that the enraged cultural commentators aren't sincere about their personal belief -- who knows? But the policies of their party are very consistent, in the analysis offered here. Maybe the best way of understanding the extremist pundits is as a class of well-paid entertainers, riffing on themes of hatred and cultural fundamentalism that have nothing to do with the real goals of their party."

Who benefits? Who pays?

Why Wasn't The Higgs Boson Discovered By America?

A serious/humorous take on the issue by New York Times columnist Gail Collins in today's on-line issue here. Worth reading.

Higgs Boson

The recent cautious announcement that scientists at Europe's Large Hadron Collider may have found the elusive Higgs boson reminds me that this important step in high energy physics could have occurred in the United States except for partisan and regional politics.

More than twenty years ago, at a project in southern Dallas County and Ellis County, Texas, the United States had dug an enormous circular tunnel deep underground near Waxahatchie, Texas, for what was known as the Superconducting Super Collider. This was to be the showcase of US high energy physics, and was a project of the Department of Energy.

I was briefly involved as a contractor working for SSC's project management office.

When completed, the SSC would have been three times as powerful as Europe's Large Hadron Collider, and would have been in operation more than a decade ago. The Higgs Boson would have been old hat by now, and Waxahatchie, Texas rather than Geneva, Switzerland, would be the research center drawing physicists from all over the world.

But by 1990, US research budgets became tighter, other massive projects such as the International Space Station and other scientific communities competed strongly for the dollars. Each of those projects also had supporters in Congress. Just at that time, the Texas Congressional delegation became particularly vocal about balancing the budget. As a result of all of that, coupled with resentment by other members of Congress, support for SSC evaporated.

The project was cancelled in 1993.

An enormous hole in the ground remains under Ellis County, Texas.

No one knows what discoveries the SSC would have achieved by now. Almost certainly the Higgs boson would have been among them.

Since I posted this observation July 5, NYTimes  columnist Gail Collins on July 6 posted a set of more humorous observations about the Higgs, Waxahatchie and American Politics. Worth reading here for a chuckle, but a serious thought as well.

On Patriotism

This fourth of July, Robert Reich has published a thoughtful piece here on patriotism.

There's nothing I can add to it, so I won't try.

South Avenue: Heart Of The Matter

Last night I received an e-mail from Mayor Bill Sage responding to earlier e-mails from me. What I learned from his e-mail is that he and the commissioners seem bound and determined to be able to sell the parcel the Municipal Corporation will receive from Chris Fulcher in exchange for the public rights of way the town holds in trust for the public.

The mayor's mantra: "Don't tie our hands."

My mantra: "Don't violate your trust."

Here is the heart of my letter in response to the mayor:

"Bill:

"Thank you for your reply. I am pleased the Town is in contact with David Lawrence, and I look forward to reading the written exchange with him. I am interested in his response to your questions and any citations he provided. I would also appreciate copies of any correspondence with other professors contacted at the School of Government, and with the Legal Services Department of the North Carolina Department of Justice....

"Please bear in mind I am neither opposing nor defending the Wisdom of the transaction. I am questioning the Rightness of the contract.

"Each Town Board must make decisions concerning the Public streets based solely on the long-term traffic use interests of the Public.  In this case, the long-term interest that matters most to me is public access to public trust waters. You and the Board clearly intend to close the South Avenue Right of Way which you hold in trust for the public and to replace it with a private asset not held in trust, but free to be sold by the municipal corporation at any time. I conclude from your e-mail that this is not just an unintentional result, but has been central to your deliberations. That violates the responsibility of the trustee. That is wrong.

David Cox"

Here is the heart of Mayor Sage's e-mail to me:

"David,

 

"Thank you for your letter and materials concerning the South Avenue transaction.  I am sorry that you feel compelled to oppose a transaction that I believe will benefit the town and its citizens and visitors immensely.  You are correct that process is important and the town attorney has consulted at great length with several of the professors (and retired Professor David Lawrence) at the UNC School of Government.  All agree that the end result under the contract is legally achievable, but they disagree on the best procedure to follow to get there.....

"You now seem to be taking the position that this board has a duty to “tie the hands” of all future boards, no matter the circumstances.  Will a town board 50 years hence be thanking us for “tying their hands”  if the circumstances then facing them (which we cannot possibly foresee) make it imperative that the property be closed as public access to Raccoon Creek.  Should it then revert to the Fulcher heirs because we didn’t trust future boards to be as sensitive to the public good as we are?....

"We cannot judge from this vantage point the circumstances they may face in making those decisions in the future.  I know there is often a strong urge to “carve things in stone,” but I truly believe that most of the time the urge should be resisted for the good of all.

 

"I have long been impressed by your thoroughness and seriousness of thought.  I simply and respectfully disagree on this matter.  Thanks again for your input.

 

"Bill Sage

  

  My original e-mail:

"From: David Cox
To: bob maxbauer ; Bill Sage ; Warren Johnson ; cechele@yahoo.com; barbara venturi ; larsum@aol.com
Cc: letters@towndock.net; Maureen Donald < editor@pamliconews.com >; Charlie Hall < chall@freedomenc.com >
Sent: Sat, June 30, 2012 11:27:55 AM
Subject: contract between town of oriental and chris fulcher

Some of you know I have been uneasy with certain aspects of the contract between the town of oriental and Chris Fulcher. I have been especially uneasy over what appears to be a sale of town rights of way, contrary to the law of streets. I am also concerned that acquisition of waterfront property under the contract provides no protection to the public interest comparable to the status of a right of way.

"I intend to speak on the subject at Tuesday's public hearing.

"In the meantime I wish to share my thoughts and some relevant information with you in advance of the meeting. I will deliver a hard copy to Town Hall Monday morning.

"Many years ago when Ben Hollowell was town attorney and the issue of South Avenue arose, he consulted with David Lawrence of the school of government and received Professor Lawrence's views in writing. Those views remain a matter of record at Town Hall. Likewise, Mr. Hollowell contacted the attorney general concerning some legal aspects of a right of way leading to the water. The attorney general responded with an advisory opinion, which is also on record at Town Hall.

"I strongly recommend the town board table consideration of the contract and intended street closures pending written consultation both with the School of Government and with the North Carolina Attorney General.

David Cox"

 

South Avenue: New Stuff

Today at 3:15 the Town of Oriental published a set of significant amendments to the contract with Chris Fulcher. The public hearing is tomorrow night at 7:00. Not good.

Show Me Your Papers?

I'm a bit bemused by some of the rhetoric about the Affordable Care Act. A member of my family links to some of it on his Facebook page. "Today marks a sad day in the history of America. With the Supreme Court's decision, Americans have lost the right to be left alone..." one of the links announces. As opposed to when? I wonder. As opposed to 1792 under the Militia Act? As opposed to the Alien and Sedition Acts? As opposed to the Civil War draft, both North and South? As opposed to being required to register for the draft and with the Social Security Administration?

A big question in all this is whether government is to be effective or not. The "Real ID" Act is what computer programmers call a "kludge." That is, a clumsy work around.

There is a way to provide a national ID card, used for all purposes. If effected, it would provide useful tools for keeping track of immigrants, tourists arriving on tourist visa, students on student visas, and all the other ways Foreign citizens arrive here. Every advanced European country has such a system. It can even be used to show eligibility to vote. It would sort out domicile for purposes of state taxes, child custody, eligibility to run for office, license plates, replace draft registration (except for the draft physical) and keep track of where potential draftees live, etc.

Good article on the concept by Bill Keller in today's New York Times. If we were really serious about immigration, voting, driver's licensing, etc. We might institute such a system.

But the present mish-mash serves many purposes. Among others, "libertarians" and other brands of conservatives want the government out of their business but into everyone else's.

It reminds me of Mississippi's former tax on illegally sold beverages. Baptists and others of their ilk could point with pride to statewide prohibition of distilled beverages. Those who sold such beverages paid the state tax and bought federal liquor licenses. Both of those entities were happy. The State Tax Collector collected the tax but was prevented by law from blowing the whistle on those who paid the tax. It was no more illegal to sell to high school and college students than to anyone else. Sheriffs had to get their share of the take under the table, but they were used to that. They might schedule a show raid near election time. Just a cost of doing business.

Something like that is going on with foreigners. If we kept effective track of everyone, what would the "view with alarm" crowd do?

Poem For The General Assemby

I think that I shall never see,
A billboard lovely as a tree.