Roger Cohen: The Conscience of a Bureaucrat

The Beauty of Institutions

By ROGER COHEN

Published: October 24, 2011

LONDON — Jean Monnet, the postwar architect of European unity, once wrote: “Nothing is possible without men,

Except growth, decay, life, death, nature, change, termite colonies, hurricanes, asteroid collisions, sunrise, sunset, the tides, migratory birds, and literally any of a hundred thousand things that you can think of that doesn’t involve man.

but nothing is lasting without institutions.”

Again, with the exception of gravity, time, magnetism, and the thousands of other natural truths we have uncovered over the millennia.

So upon even a cursory examination of its two assertions, neither holds to be anywhere close to true. And yet, this is the type of thing that you want to build a column off of? Have at it, hoss.

When humankind fails, the best institutions save it from the brink.

Ah, so this is a defense of the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the litany of child molestation scandals that have peppered the institution for decades?

No?

Then certainly it’s a fawning declaration of industrial prowess under Fascism?

No?

An ode to organizational efficiency at the DMV? A rousing defense of the corporate responsibility of the oil industry? An essay praising the traditional nuclear family?

Of course not.

The forging of the European Union is up there with the U.S. Constitution as an act of creative genius.

No. Now you’re deliberately trying to piss me off. This is precisely what conservatives mean when they argue that liberals are disdainful of American exceptionalism. Comparing the United States to the EU would be hurtful if it weren’t so ludicrous.

Loving an entity is hard, given the intangibility of the thing,

No. It isn’t. Patriotism is easy—or it should be. It’s quite easy to love a sports team or a church or a school or a brand—all institutions. In fact, the intangibility is what makes the love easier. Loving tangible government—with its corruption, inefficiency, factionalism and petty egos--is both weird and foolish. Loving country and the promise it holds is an instinct that only grows stronger with understanding.

but I love the bland Brussels institutions that gave my generation a peace denied its forbears —

…seriously? That is what you love? You need to start watching football.

all those young men engraved in stone and granite on melancholy town squares across Europe. It’s a measure of the success of the European Union that peace is now taken for granted by its half billion inhabitants.

That’s wasn’t the EU. It was postwar demographic and economic shifts away from European power, Cold War-era mutually assured destruction, and stringent military prohibitions from Europe’s transatlantic victors.

Nobody pauses at the memorials. These days I find myself wanting to shout: “Remember!”

You self-important dolt. You write for one of the most widely circulated papers in the country and you find yourself compelled to get the message out by shouting? Even if you were that dumb, I would shout back “Remember what? Be more specific.” You’re a professional writer for God’s sake. The very idea of making a vague proclamation or an unsubstantiated assertion ought to be hateful to you.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised; you’re not very good at your job.

That’s a tall order when people glide from France to Germany and onto Poland, across the killing fields of old, without pause for a border, and the Basque separatists of ETA have just laid down their weapons in Europe’s last armed confrontation.

If you’re going to give the EU credit for disarming the Basque separatists, will you also fault them for Bosnia and Kosovo (and pretty much all of the ethnic cleansing shenanigans that go on in the Balkans?)

Yet I detect a dawning sense of the gravity of Europe’s crisis — its political rather than financial peril — in the parallels being drawn between dying for Danzig in 1939 and paying for Athens in 2011.

If this financial crisis can so easily turn into a political one, a rational observer would underscore the necessity of conservative fiscal policy that frowns upon deficit spending. Cohen, being both dangerous and a buffoon, is going to propose hyperinflation.

These are dangerous times. Helmut Schmidt, who as a German is hardwired to the nature of cataclysm

The German people appreciate you distilling their national identity from six thousand miles away. (Not only distilling their national identity, but giving them “cataclysm” as a national identity. Then again, I’m itching to machete some video game zombie-Nazis tonight, so I suppose it’s justfied.)

and at 92 knows what sacrifice brought a borderless Europe,

Exchanging the Lira for the Euro was hard for us all. VIVE LA FRANC!

declared as much the other day, lambasting “anyone who considers his own nation more important than common Europe.”

What a buffoon.

There are plenty of such people these days, driven by frustration or boredom or pettiness to the refuge of the tribe.

The people of Germany are not the people of Greece. They have different languages, cultures, politics, traditions, religions, histories and virtually everything else that ties a people together in common identity. And yet, the sins and excesses of the Greek people are expected to be funded by the Germans? Or French? This is a clear highway to resentment, and will do more to foment aggression than to promote harmony.

The euro’s creation was an irrevocable political decision.

Um…it’s pretty revocable. A sovereign country simply just needs to pull its funding and cash out. It would require recreating a central bank and currency, but these are pretty manageable feats when confronted with the alternatives of hyperinflation and social collapse.

The currency, however, had the misfortune to be birthed just as the idealism that fired Europe’s integration sagged.

In other words, the groundswell of pan-Europeanism that birthed this “irrevocable political decision” was pretty temporary.

The federalist implications of a common currency met the fissuring rancor of complacent Europeans.

Leaning pretty heavy on the thesaurus, huh?

They had been lulled by the end of the Cold War, irked by European bureaucracy and wearied by the E.U. expansion to post-Communist states. The bad history uppermost in the minds of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl had faded. If ever a crisis was foretold, it’s the euro crisis.

The only thing predictable is that internationalism will always fail. Always.

But the danger is broader. European frustration with remote, seemingly unaccountable institutions

Remote and unaccountable is a veritable definition of the European Union.

has spread into a wider anger against the impunity of the powerful and the richness of the ever richer.

As I have said before, the Occupy protests stem from the larval form of conservative thought.

Growing numbers of people feel that the levers of globalization’s compounding advantages are manipulated by the privileged few. From Manhattan to Milan, the Occupy movement is saying “Enough Already!”

And much like Richard Cohen shouting “remember,” the rest of the world is screaming back: “be more specific! (And take a shower!)”

No, European leaders retort, we need more — more budget-cutting, more sacrifice to set our houses in order after the debt-driven binge of this century’s first decade.

We have a fundamental definition of what “more” means. “More” does not mean “less” government. This isn’t some sort of Orwellian thought exercise or an appropriated architectural slogan from the 60s. This is just stupidity.

Just as the euro had to row against an unraveling tide,

This should be obvious, but tides most certainly do not “unravel.”

so the austerity prescribed to save the currency now has to row against a tide of skepticism.

Europe isn’t embracing austerity to save the currency. They’re doing it because they simply can’t continue to self-finance at their prior spending levels. The market for their debt securities would balloon more than Violet Beauregard. That’s right, it’s a Willy Wonka reference. Want to fight about it?

Jean Arthuis, a French senator, gave this recent assessment of the state of the West: “Globalization led us, through outsourcing, to give up our productive substance and opt for the comfort of consumption, while other states became the producers of what we consumed on credit: on our side sovereign debts, on the other sovereign wealth funds.”

Tying debt to manufacturing outsourcing is pretty much retarded, but hey, they’re French. The nation of Camus has different standards for logical cohesion. Have I mentioned that I disdain Camus?

Many Europeans and Americans experience that shift day to day as lost jobs, the disappearance of the credit that cushioned relative decline, growing disparities between rich and poor, a feeling of powerlessness, too many bills to pay, a gathering sense of injustice, and growing anger toward hapless politicians outstripped by markets they cannot control.

Recessions blow. We get it. But it has very little to do with globalization. If you want proof, ask yourself why China continues to attract manufacturers despite having almost completely lost its labor wage advantage over some of our less crazy/communist neighbors like Brazil, Mexico, or Colombia.

“Capitalism is crisis,” says a big banner of the Occupy movement at St. Paul’s in London. Indeed it is.

I told you before why conservatives think liberals have no regard for American exceptionalism. This is why we feel confident in calling the rest of you socialists. If you don’t believe that capitalism is the most efficient economic system, the alternatives are socialism (or it’s synonyms—and yes, they are synonyms--Marxism and communism), fascism, feudalism or...uh…mercantilism? Syndicalism? Honestly, I think we’re being kind.

As Joseph Schumpeter noted, “Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.”

Turmoil is not the same as crisis.

The trick

Trick? A trick is something a whore does for money. This is an illusion.

is to convince people that crisis is creative more than it is destructive —

As opposed to literally every other economic system ever devised, each of which has been empirically proven to be destructive.

and that’s not happening right now. The European Union was created for such a moment.

And yet it continues to fail spectacularly. Can we finally put to rest the unjustifiable reverence for international organizations like NATO, the EU, or the UN?

It was meant to guarantee the impossibility of the worst — not to deliver Europeans to postmodern bliss but to save them from the hell that began almost a century ago in 1914 and did not really stop until the Continent lay in ruins in 1945.

This is like asking an electrician to fix your toilet. Unless you live in Japan, where basic household appliances have the computing power of the WOPR from War Games, he simply doesn’t have the right tools in his belt. Similarly, you can’t promote responsible representative democracy by centralizing power abroad. You can’t purify capitalism with government involvement.

That metaphor may have gotten away from me.

Now, thankfully, the big bazookas are financial. Roll them out, whatever the subsequent cost in inflation. Irrevocable means just that: The euro cannot be turned back.

If you’re trying to prevent the re-implementation of Nazism in Europe, which is firmly entrenched as a “worst-case scenario” behind only pterodactyl invasion in calamitous repercussions, you might want to do a little research into the Weimar Republic’s policies on inflation. Inflation isn’t a bazooka; it’s a kamikaze.

There is no soft euro exit imaginable, only mayhem and danger.

Why? Why is there danger? Obviously there would be some pain in reestablishing national central banks and currencies. The alternative, however, is tying a rope around a group of shipwreck survivors floating in the ocean. When one of the frail, exhausted bodies stops kicking, his weight invariably pulls the others under.

Recapitalize the banks.

With what? Worthless paper?

Bulk up on the rescue fund.

Again, how do you do that without inflating or begging?

Turn bankers’ Greek haircuts into buzz cuts.

At first I confused this call for higher taxes with support for austerity. I nearly had a heart attack.

Do whatever it takes.

This is just sad.  Very few financial crises have been known to be avoided by begging, desperation, or shamelessness.

Germany, ushered from ruin by the European Union, must lead the safeguarding of the euro or risk the loss of the stability that it prizes above anything.

Stability is overrated; existence is not.

The best institutions are also self-correcting mechanisms.

The self-correcting mechanism here would be for Greece to become a subjugated client-state of Germany and/or France. As much as the idea of German territorial expansion horrifies me, Greece has forfeit the right to exist as a sovereign nation. It is their citizens that must pay the price for their bankruptcy.

They work like the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution. They turn crisis into opportunity. In time the euro’s defense will demand a federative leap forward. That will be good for Europeans even though they cannot see it now.

So all of this—the crisis, the defense of Greece—is all just a guise for an pan-European central government. National sovereignty still means something. This article is titled “The Beauty of Institutions.” There has been no espousal of beauty. Only a grim, dystopian future of European inflation in which, at the end of the trials of financial collapse, the entirety of Europe congeals into one federal government. This is some weird mix of a Bond movie villain’s plot, a UN ambassador’s wet dream, and Napoleonic conquest. To Cohen, that is what beauty looks like.

Speaking of Shakedowns and Shutdowns...

After Robert Reich just got done telling us that shakedowns and shutdowns were the worst thing that could possibly happen to a government, I bring you an ideological kin making the argument for shakedowns and shutdowns. Awesome.

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Oh Krugman, you rogue! It’s been too long. This is going to be fun.

Here’s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn’t Cairo after all.

If it takes you a colon, two commas, and an inappropriately antequated state abbreviation to say “I’m wrong,” this might be a good time to crack open The Elements of Style.

Maybe it’s Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

In a middle east where Egypt is drifting towards state-sponsored extremism and Libya—which was a docile house cat in the wake of the invasion of Iraq—is descending into an anarchical bloodbath, are you sure this is the time to take on the only stable republic in the Islamic world?

As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular — in a bad way.

What deft verbal judo! This is the rhetorical equivalent putting “not” at the end of a sarcastic statement. Let’s all watch Waynes World and listen to Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

…Actually, that sounds awesome.

Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war,

So to be clear, this is an argument against nation-building?

those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision.

Far from the liberal caricature, W was far from a conservative ideologue. Outside of the Bush tax cuts in 2001, he did virtually nothing to decrease the size or influence of government. Why would one believe that he would impose on Iraq what he refused to back domestically?

Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy,

For the record, viceroy is necessarily a monarchical term (from the latin vice- “in the palace of” and the French roi- “the king”). When you’re criticizing someone for too rapidly dismantling totalitarian institutions, it is downright counterintuitive to simultaneously criticize them for being monarchical totalitarians.

told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises”

When a government has a stranglehold on the economy, and the government topples, privatizing state-owned enterprises is synonymous with stimulating the economy. That of course leads to jobs and gets looters, vandals, and potential terrorists off the street. I was under the impression that economics was supposed to be your wheelhouse.

 — Mr. Bremer’s words, not the reporter’s — and to “wean people from the idea the state supports everything.”

In other words, the Bush Administration’s goals were to erode the cultural tolerance towards totalitarianism and building the fledgling ideal of self-determination, which is the foundation of a culture in which a democratic republic can take hold. My goodness, that sounds almost like a well thought-out plan!

The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein’s best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine,”

Can someone please stop professional writers from turning their columns into 8^th grade book reports on obscure drivel that no one bothers to read? Editors? Executives? Typesetters? Please?

which argued that it was part of a broader pattern.

I’m bored with this book already.

From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested,

That does involve the Iranian hostage situation as part of the “control group,” right. Given the Obama Administration’s callow response to the unlawful detention of an American diplomat in Pakistan, I’d say the precedent of indecision and half-measures from the left is far more unsettling. What about Clinton’s complicity with turning North Korea into a nuclear-armed rogue state?

right-wing ideologues have exploited crises

Of course, it was the great Republican thinker Sarah Palin who said “never let a crisis go to waste.” Wait…that doesn’t sound right.

to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises,

Seriously, how’d the Iranian Hostage Crisis get resolved, again?

and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal,

If we wanted to impose an equal society, we’d all be socialists.

less democratic society.

Again, how does an ideology permissive of totalitarian government interference at the expense of individual liberty promote a democratic society?

Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011,

Actually, it takes you to the end of Ms. Klein’s book, which is currently selling it’s 162^nd copy for 85% off at Borders. Congratulations, Ms. Klein. If you want to transition to Wisconsin, you actually have to make the transition, not just state that one occurred.

where the shock doctrine is on full display.

Part of not turning your column into a book report involves avoiding the obnoxious verbiage from someone else’s work and applying it to something wholly unrelated.

In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor’s budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers.

Keep in mind, these are public sector workers. And only select public sector workers at that. Police and Fire workers are excluded.

Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state’s fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions — an offer the governor has rejected.

Unless these concessions are single-handedly enough to get the state of Wisconsin out of debt (they’re not), then the concessions are less important to the budget than giving the legislature the tools to cut the budget now and in the future.  Which means, if you’re playing America’s favorite drinking game “Paul Krugman is wrong,” you need to take two shots of Jagermeister and switch right shoes with the person sitting to your left. (The rules to this game are really tricky.)

Sadly, since the peace prize was awarded to Obama, I can no longer in good conscious advocate playing the drinking game “Nobel Lauriates are wrong.” Seven people died of alcohol poisoning during the State of the Union.

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy.

Well it’s certainly a nice side-effect. The idea of public funds financing public union dues financing partisan political contributions should be loathsome to, well, anyone.

And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

It takes some stones to criticize Republicans for overly long bills. 144 pages? That’s 1/16^th the size of Obamacare.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

Funny. That actually was in Obamacare.

And then there’s this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”

What’s that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim.

Should state government really be a utility company?

Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.”

While I’m not a fan of the language that opens the door to corruption, I understand the reasoning behind it. The language expedites the process considerably, because generally dealing with the government is as slow as it gets.

If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering — remember those missing billions in Iraq? — you’re not alone.

This is an article about unions and you’re mentioning cronyism and profiteering without mention of the stimulus. Of course, that’s cool with me. Just acknowledge your biases.

Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker’s anti-union push,

Which was completely refuted when a liberal activist called the governor posing as one of the Koch brothers and tricked the Governor into saying…exactly what he says in public.

felt compelled to issue a denial that it’s interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?

Certainly it’s uncomfortable, but is it any more comfortable than Wisconsin tax dollars financing the Democratic Party through the public union siphon?

The good news from Wisconsin is that the upsurge of public outrage — aided by the maneuvering of Democrats in the State Senate,

Well that I agree with, but most of the outrage is coming from the right.

who absented themselves to deny Republicans a quorum

A fancy way of saying “shut down the legislature in a purely anti-democratic technicality.”

--has slowed the bum’s rush.

Great. In the meantime, the people of Wisconsin are due a budget, and the Democrats have taken their ball and gone to an out-of-state protectorate.

If Mr. Walker’s plan was to push his bill through before anyone had a chance to realize his true goals, that plan has been foiled.

Does anyone really believe that Governor Walker didn’t want any attention paid to this bill? He has majority support both in Wisconsin and nationwide.

And events in Wisconsin may have given pause to other Republican governors, who seem to be backing off similar moves.

Really? What’s going on in Indiana and Ohio?

But don’t expect either Mr. Walker or the rest of his party to change those goals. Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets.

Smaller government is the GOP’s priority. They said it throughout the 2010 campaign; this rallying cry was noticeably absent in George W. Bush’s second term, to the detriment of the party. But here’s the question that no one really has an answer for: how does stripping public unions of the right to collectively bargain on benefits hurt Wisconsin? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t.

Bob Herbert: Back to Work

Don’t think that just because I shredded up your last two articles about class disparity in a volley of righteous elitism (It’s not a bad thing when I really am better than you.) that I won’t come right back at you, Bob Herbert. Let this be a lesson to all of Op-Ed writers–except Maureen Dowd, who really only writes about menopause and her poor, pitiable family—I’m at least as mean as a high school outcast projecting body-image issues onto pictures of cheerleaders. Is this supposed to be self-depricating? I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.

Anyways, I'll take a step away from the italicized voice that heckles my heckling and simply point out that Bob Herbert is perhaps the most professionally incompetent of all the whiny losers that draw a paycheck from the New York Times' Editorial Board. (At least I assume that's how they segment their payroll; I don't have great insight into accounting practices for the Times.) It is no ironic twist of fate that this incompetent buffoon is leading the charge for better pay for incompetent buffoons everywhere. How does one argue incompetently in favor of incompetence? By supporting public school teachers.

A Terrible Divide

My marketing consultants have obligated me to cordially request that you Embrace the Divide. Perhaps while Being All That You Can Be, Obeying your Thirst, or Just Doing the Dew. … Every Kiss Begins with Kay. Good, now we all feel nice and corporate clean! Seriously, I can’t even tell if you’re being sarcastic. You love corporations.

By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 7, 2011

The Ronald Reagan crowd loved to talk about morning in America.

The message is that when America stands for freedom, we are a nation in perpetual ascent. Feel free to disagree, but kindly do not shit on the sentiment.

For millions of individuals and families, perhaps the majority, it’s more like twilight —

I bet $10 Bob Herbert is “Team Edward.”

with nighttime coming on fast.

Does this guy know how to party or what?

Look out the window.

Sorry, I’m one of those “data zealots” you deplore so much for not having a window. Oh! I can open up a webcam of a window though.

More and more Americans are being left behind in an economy that is being divided

Embrace the Divide™

ever more starkly between the haves and the have-nots.

I still steadfastly object to the idea that a goal of the United States government should be to reduce income disparity. Please provide Constitutional support for the hypothesis that it is even permitted of the federal government.

Not only are millions of people jobless and millions more underemployed,

You want a hard job search? Ask a 65 year-old with scant journalistic credibility and no marketable skills. Wait, what year were you born in again?

but more and more of the so-called fringe benefits and public services that help make life livable,

Fringe benefits and public services make your life livable?

or even bearable,

Well clearly this man gave has forfeit those attributes which once made him a man. In case there’s any confusion, I’m alleging that Bob Herbert is dickless.

in a modern society are being put to the torch.

The “torch” is intended as an allusion to a frightened mob of townspeople, fearful of change, science, and outsiders. That’s what he thinks of us.

Employer-based pensions, paid vacations, health benefits and the like are going the way of phone booths and VCRs.

There is a reason that we don’t have phone booths anymore.

There is a reason that you can’t go into Best Buy and get a VCR.

The comparisons that Mr. Herbert chose serve no other purpose than to undercut his point. Phone booths were eliminated because a new technology did the better and cheaper. Same with VCRs. That is because these technologies were subjected to market influences. Meanwhile, public benefits have resisted the market for decades by pretending that governments did not operate in the same environment of resource scarcity as the rest of the world. It’s time to embrace progress in government, which means precisely the opposite of what progressives think.

As poverty increases and reliable employment becomes less and less the norm,

The barriers to entry for new businesses are reduced, as risk-takers are further enticed to take risks working for themselves than they are to take risks working for someone else. This is why recessions end.

 the dwindling number of workers with any sort of job security or guaranteed pensions (think teachers and other modestly compensated public employees) are being viewed with increasing contempt.

This sentence is really poorly written. Are people contemptuous of the workers or the dwindling of the workers? You know what fixes this? Effective sentence construction rooted in the ability to “just say no” to excessive commas.

How dare they enjoy a modicum of economic comfort?

Teachers have 3 months off per year and they make more money than most at the entry level. Promotions are arbitrary. Talent and effectiveness are subjective. With massive evidence of product quality in decline, teachers—both collectively and individually—should be punished.

It turns out that a lot of those jobs were never so secure, after all.

I know that I spent an entire column last week about how you would fail junior high math, but I’m about to throw down some knowledge on you. The realization of a risk does not change the probability of that risk occurring going forward. In other words, there was always a low chance that teachers can lose their jobs. The fact that it happened doesn’t mean that it was ever less likely to have occurred. This is the exact same as pulling all your money out of the stock market after a 30% decline.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells us:

The standard-bearer for the “nonpartisan” left. Even so, I’m not going to dispute the facts presented, both because that entails research that would conflict with my general lethargy and I can guarantee with absolute certainty that Bob Herbert didn’t make it past the executive summary of whatever report he’s about to cite.

 “At least 44 states and the District of Columbia have reduced overall wages paid to state workers by laying off workers, requiring them to take unpaid leave (furloughs), freezing hew hires, or similar actions. State and local governments have eliminated 407,000 jobs since August 2008, federal data show.”

Well that sounds awful impressive, except that August 2008-February 2011 covers the height of the worst recession in forty years. Census data from 2009 (and yes, I am pissed because I had to do research anyways) shows a total state and local government employees numbering 14,951,433 full time plus 4,857,171 part time. Since the above statistic doesn’t segregate full time from part time, neither will I. Bob Herbert, not being one for math, doesn’t understand that losing 2.05% of the state and local government work force is nowhere close to what happened to the private sector. January 2009, for example, saw 741,000 net jobs lost.

We have not faced up to the scale of the economic crisis that still confronts the United States.

2.05% is not a crisis unless it’s your batting average. (And yes, I realize that it would be formatted .025 for you baseball snobs.)

Standards of living for the people on the wrong side of the economic divide are being ratcheted lower

That’s not really how ratchets work. If you want to loosen something, just use a wrench. Ratchets really only exist to build pressure.

We have officially begun the gradual meld from mathematical ineptitude to general ignorance.

and will remain that way for many years to come. Forget the fairy tales being spun by politicians in both parties — that somehow they can impose service cuts that are drastic enough to bring federal and local budgets into balance while at the same time developing economic growth strong enough to support a robust middle class.

I know the New York Times Editorial Board thinks so, but does anyone else genuinely believe that private sector growth or the existence of the middle class is contingent upon government services? (Notwithstanding police)

It would take a Bernie Madoff to do that.

See, more confusion about the private sector. Bernie Madoff didn’t actually achieve the returns that he claimed. Just like government doesn’t actually create any economic growth—and yes, the argument that it does is tantamount to fraud.

In the real world, schools and libraries are being closed and other educational services are being curtailed. Police officers are being fired. Access to health services for poor families is being restricted.

While that’s true—and it should be. Ineffective schools should be closed. Bad or incompetent police officers should be fired, and the poor should not have access to health care coverage beyond what they can afford to pay for or what private charities provide.

“At least 29 states and the District of Columbia,” according to the budget center, “are cutting medical, rehabilitative, home care, or other services needed by low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, or are significantly increasing the cost of these services.”

Can we call them death panels yet?

For a variety of reasons, there are not enough tax revenues being generated to pay for the basic public services that one would expect in an advanced country like the United States.

That is because one—aka you—expects too much from the country. The rest of us expect great things of the country.

The rich are not shouldering their fair share of the tax burden.

The stats on this are well known. Only the rich pay income taxes. And even so, federal revenues have trended flat around 18% of GDP. Tax policy has only a trivial role in determining revenue. Meanwhile, tax policy has a very large role in determining GDP growth.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to consume an insane amount of revenue.

I’ll agree to defund Iraq if you agree to completely defund the NEA, FCC, Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Education. Fair?

And there are not enough jobs available at decent enough pay to ease some of the demand for public services while at the same time increasing the amount of taxes paid by ordinary workers.

The U.S. cannot cut its way out of this crisis.

Depends on how you define the crisis. I define the crisis as the floundering economy, so you absolutely can budget cut your way out of the crisis. You define the crisis as government budget cuts.

Instead of trying to figure out how to keep 4-year-olds out of pre-kindergarten classes, or how to withhold life-saving treatments from Medicaid recipients, or how to cheat the elderly out of their Social Security, the nation’s leaders should be trying seriously to figure out what to do about the future of the American work force.

They do that. In the private sector.

Enormous numbers of workers are in grave danger of being left behind permanently.

What the hell does that even mean? How can we leave them behind if we’re not going anywhere?

Businesses have figured out how to prosper without putting the unemployed back to work in jobs that pay well and offer decent benefits.

So one would be wise to encourage workers to adapt to the new climate.

Corporate profits and the stock markets are way up. Businesses are sitting atop mountains of cash. Put people back to work? Forget about it.

This argument bleeds my judgment of Bob Herbert from general ignorance to professional incompetence. He needs to know what stocks, why people invest, and how profits are distributed to shareholders in order to be a productive member of society, let alone use the biggest megaphone in print media to tell us what is going on with the economy.

The stock market is way up (I take the approach that the stock market is a mass noun). There are three reasons for this:

1)      They were undervalued in the first place because skittish investors overreacted to the initial market plunge.

2)      Companies have re-assessed their business models to become more profitable.

3)      The herd has already been thinned. It’s not like the S&P still includes Lehman Brothers.

Second, the argument that profitable businesses have a moral obligation to hire unproductive employees simply based on an unemployed person’s need for a job is downright un-American.

Finally, the reason that companies are sitting on cash instead of reinvesting it is because they still see opportunities for growth but have opted to wait until there is a more favorable economic and regulatory environment. If businesses had no intention of reinvesting their cash, they would have paid this cash out in dividends to their shareholders.

This is basic stuff here, people.

Has anyone bothered to notice that much of those profits are the result of aggressive payroll-cutting — companies making do with fewer, less well-paid and harder-working employees?

Yes. That’s good business.

For American corporations, the action is increasingly elsewhere. Their interests are not the same as those of workers, or the country as a whole.

Their interest is money because their investors interests are money. The employee’s interests are money because employees are often investors. The country’s interests are money because the country is made up of employees. I fail to see a disconnect.

As Harold Meyerson put it in The American Prospect: “Our corporations don’t need us anymore. Half their revenues come from abroad. Their products, increasingly, come from abroad as well.”

I fail to see a disconnect.

American workers are in a world of hurt. Anyone who thinks that politicians can improve this sorry state of affairs by hacking away at Social Security, Medicare and the public schools are great candidates for involuntary commitment.

I told you they’d come for you. Go to hell, Bob Herbert! You’ll never take us alive!

New ideas on a grand scale are needed.

No, new ideas on a very small scale are needed. That is because invention and innovation are what drive the economy. Believing that the banking industry is going to lead the national recovery is as crazy as thinking that the government is going to do it. It will happen in garages nationwide.

The United States can’t thrive with so many of its citizens condemned to shrunken standards of living because they can’t find adequate employment.

How does he miss the point that finding adequate employment is about the well-being of employers, not employees.

Long-term joblessness is a recipe for societal destabilization. It should not be tolerated in a country with as much wealth as the United States. It’s destructive, and it’s wrong.

I’m relatively sure this is a veiled call for armed revolution.

Why Do We Need More Math Education If It’s All a Conspiracy Propagated by the Rich ?

Bewitched by the Numbers

"I mean, there are two Darrin Stevenses,
right? Dick York and Dick Sargent. Yeah, right,
as if we wouldn't notice. Oh hold on:
Dick York, Dick Sargent, Sergeant York...'
-Mike Myers, Wayne's World

Not even the delightful Elizabeth Montgomery could make Bob Herbert's inanities enjoyable. Brace yourself. Put on some happy music. I’m throwing down some 80’s one hit wonder-ific repeat-one action with Katrina and the Waves Walking on Sunshine. I suggest you do likewise. May I recommend Brett Dennen’s new single Sydney (I’ll Come Running)?

By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 4, 2011

They 

Who are "they?"

were expecting something on the order of 150,000 new jobs to have been created in January.

This has been going on for two years. “Weaker than expected” jobs numbers are the only thing that we actually do expect with any regularity.

That would have been a lousy number,

I haven't seen you in forever. Yeah. the
nineties were crazy. Sorry you missed them.

True dat. You can’t pull that off. I’m inclined to agree. It felt very wrong.

but they were fully prepared to spin it as being pretty good.

So “they” is the Obama Administration?

They thought the official jobless rate might hop up a tick to 9.5 percent.

Two factors are in play here. First, the new jobs number is only one of many forces tied to the unemployment rate. It is offset by those who quit, are fired, or leave their jobs for new jobs. Secondly, that the unemployment rate does not include the jobless who have quit looking. I would think that literally everyone in the country knew this by now. These poor sods are labeled “discouraged workers” and cease to be represented by the data. This is why we have massive disparity between the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate, which is a much true representation of how truly bojanked (now that you can pull off) we really are.

Instead, the economy created just 36,000 jobs in January, an absolutely dreadful number.

True dat. We’ve talked about this. I know. I feel dirty all over.

But the unemployment rate fell like a stone from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent.

Which means a) no one quit their jobs in January and/or b) a lot of people quit looking for jobs.

What is this, amateur hour?

The crunchers stared at the numbers in disbelief.

I explained it in 97 characters. That’s not even a full tweet. 

They moved them this way and that. No matter how they arranged them, they made no sense. Nothing even close to enough jobs were being created

Please stop using the past perfect. It’s not working for you…or really anyone else that understands verbs.

to bring the unemployment rate down, but for two successive months it had dropped sharply. (It dived from 9.8 percent to 9.4 in December.)

Is it too late to offer a secondary explanation? Fraud. Precisely 1/28^th of a tweet. See?

Actually, the soul of wit is context, because this is decidedly
un-witty as a stand-alone tweet.

A baffled commentator on CNBC said, “I think there is an improvement in the economy, though you can’t see it in today’s payroll survey.”

This commentator is also known as “the fucking idiot CNBC hired to warm the seat." I'm not a talented enough Googler (20 years ago, that was a euphamism for prostitute) to find out who that actually was, but i'm pretty sure he's fucktarded.

Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, who is frequently very good at this stuff, said: “I think these numbers are meaningless. I don’t think they mean anything.”

Which is undoubtedly true. Statistical analysis demands that the analyst cautiously handle poorly-constructed data and extreme outliers.

What data zealots need to do

Careful. Given Bob Herbert’s proclivities, this may be a government-mandated activity within the next six months.

Can we all agree that I don't get enough
traffic to worry about narc-ing me out to
the Chicago Tribune for re-posting this picture?

is leave their hermetically sealed rooms

It’s fucking cold out. No sale.

and step outside, take a walk among the millions of Americans who are hurting to the bone.

Most of whom are actually inside their own hermetically sealed abodes. Seriously, it’s called insulation, and I highly recommend it.

They should talk with families that are suffering,

Snore. They don’t have any insight on the unemployment rate. I asked "Rusty the Vagrant." He stands outside the Walgreens down the street and grunts. I asked him about Fed policy a little while back. Big mistake. He believed that the Fed should rely less on Open Market Operations and focus instead on adjusting reserve requirements. Crackpot.

losing their homes, doubling up,

These cost-cutting mechanisms are how the economy purges itself of its own excesses during recessions. The faster these mechanisms are allowed to work, the faster we can actually recover.

checking into homeless shelters.

Befriending a vagrant doesn't mean
he won't try to eat your hand. I learned
 that from Joaquin Phoenix. Twice.

The homeless don’t tend to be “family men.” Based on my own extensive research ignoring the inarticulate ramblings of Rusty the Vagrant and the shifty-eyed lady in the entrance to the vacant store, I can say with a high degree of confidence that the homeless are absolutely batshit-crazy, and have taken concerted steps to eschew social safety net programs.

We behave as though the numbers are an end in themselves

Numbers and statistical analysis are a way of reflecting reality that is vastly more accurate than the infinitely skewed sample observed by “talking to families that are suffering.” GDP and the unemployment rate are effective metrics because all of us not named Bob Herbert understand exactly what they represent.

 — just get the G.D.P. up or the jobless rate down —

It’s not an either-or proposition, champ.

 and we’ll be on our way to fat city.

It’s astounding that he only stumbles upon an accurate conclusion when he’s trying to point out a perceived fallacy. Talk about a  broken clock.

But the numbers are just tools,

No, the tools are things like database programs or Excel.

 Abstractions

Abstractions are theoretical constructs like the CAPM or the Keynesian Cross.

to help guide us,

Sherpas.

orient us.

Compasses.

They aren’t the be-all and end-all.

Keep in mind that my last post was Katrina vanden Heuvel claiming that Liberals were the true believers in science. Granted, she then went on to show that she had no idea what science was, but the point is still valid.

They don’t tell us squat about the flesh-and-blood reality of the mom or dad lying awake in the dark of night, worrying about the repo man coming for the family van or the foreclosure notice that’s sure to materialize any day now.

Great. Now I want food.

Actually it does. We have data for family composition, size, and ages. We have data for incomes, unemployment, overall debt, and vehicle repossessions. We have data for foreclosures. What actually bothers Bob Herbert is that this family represents a mere one data point.

Also, what the hell is this family doing driving a “family van?” Anyone who drives a van is either a plumber or shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a school. 

The policy makers who rely on the data zealots are just as detached from the real world of real people.

Jesus, national “Hug a Vagrant” day is right around the bend.

 They’re always promising in the most earnest tones imaginable to do something about employment,

Lower taxes. Lower interest rates. Remove obstructions to business growth. This is as simple as looking at a rejected capital budgeting analysis for business expansion.  (FYI, Bob Herbert, this is all about the numbers.)

to ease the awful squeeze on the middle class

This is precisely equivalent to economic growth.

 (policy makers never talk about the poor),

That’s because “middle class” is a euphemism for poor; not a replacement topic.

 to reform education, and so on.

That’s what you’re looking for from a politician to improve the economy? Education? How about lowering taxes? Fed policy? Restructuring the tax code? Deregulating? Even for a liberal, what about things like targeted subsidies? Infrastructure expansions and updates? Leadership in the Green Economy?  

They say those things because they have to. But they are far more obsessed with the numbers than they are with the struggles and suffering of real people.

You want to know what happens when policy-makers actually believe that numbers are mere abstractions? Policies based on the absurdity of whims.

You won’t hear policy makers acknowledging that the unemployment numbers would be much worse if not for the millions of people who have left the work force over the past few years.

Yes. You will. Regularly.

What happened to those folks? How are they and their families faring?

Probably pretty poorly. There’s a good indication that they shouldn’t have left the work force.

The policy makers don’t tell us that most of the new jobs being created in such meager numbers are, in fact, poor ones, with lousy pay and few or no benefits.

Yes. They do. Regularly. This is why we have opposition parties instead of propaganda.

What we hear is what the data zealots pump out week after week, that the market is up, retail sales are strong, Wall Street salaries and bonuses are streaking, as always, to the moon,

That would appear to have something to do with the markets being up. Most of these guys work on a pay-for-performance scale, and they’ve knocked it out of the park this last year. Why? Because idiots like Herbert thought the Dow would actually languish at 7,000.

and that businesses are sitting on mountains of cash.

Instead of accusing businesses of hoarding, why not ask why investors aren’t demanding dividend distributions for that cash? Is it perhaps because they would prefer that money reinvested?

So all must be right with the world.

Actually the take-away from this year is that if you pulled your money out of equities in early 2009, you have the financial acumen of a dimwitted peasant. The stock market has violent swings like this because it is risky. That’s also precisely why it offers long-term returns in excess of any other investment vehicle.

Jobs? Well, the less said the better.

Except that the release of employment figures still dominates the news cycle.

What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around.

Wealth is not a collective attribute. It is an individual attribute. Overwhelmingly—with the exceptions of lottery winners, inheritants, and public pensioners (See what I did there?)—massive wealth reflects the merit of competence and the intrepid risk-tolerant behavior that makes America great.

The people running the country — the ones with the real clout, whether Democrats or Republicans — are all part of this power elite.

If Bob Herbert knew anything about statistics,
he'd know that 1919-1991 was not an outlier.

Seriously, it sounds like he’s going to call for a people’s revolution.

Ordinary people may be struggling, but both the Obama administration and the Republican Party leadership are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.

So…Obama is working for Jeff Immelt?

I love when the wackos call President Obama a socialist.

He is. So are you.

Wasn’t it his budget director, Peter Orszag, who moved effortlessly from his job in the administration to a hotshot post at Citigroup, beneficiary of tons of government largess?

He moved to Citi because Citi wanted to ensure that they still had a direct line into the White House for more government largess if the need arose. This is precisely the opposite of capitalism. Actually the melding of government and business is more a feature of fascism, but I assume Bobby would find that comparison even less favorable than socialism.

And didn’t the president’s new chief of staff, William Daley, arrive in his powerful new post fresh from the executive suite of JPMorgan Chase?

Same role, except more local. JPMorgan wanted an in with Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago.

And isn’t the incoming chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness 

My God, doesn't this type of dipstick-ery sound like Madison Avenue trying to govern?

very conveniently the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt?

GE is the very same company whose green initiatives have come to represent the company’s public image. Far from the days of Jack Welsh, GE is now all about towing the line for the government and maximizing the federal subsidies it can snake away from the budget.

You might ask: Who represents working people?

Why would the poor not be represented by their elected officials?

The answer, as Tevye would say with grave emphasis in “Fiddler on the Roof,” is, “I don’t know.”

I don’t listen to classical music.

Maybe the data zealots have stumbled on a solution. They’ve created a model in which a radically insufficient number of jobs has resulted in a sharp decline in the official gauge of unemployment.

Seriously, don’t discount fraud. http://www.gallup.com/poll/125639/Gallup-Daily-Workforce.aspx This poll has unemployment at 9.9%.

If that trend can be sustained,

Visit www.xkcd.com/
Seriously. Do it.

Two data points is not a trend, jackass.

we’ll eventually get the jobless rate down to zero. People will still be suffering, but full employment will have finally been achieved.

This is why we have large data sets: to discourage overzealous extrapolation. Of course, Bob Herbert would understand literally all of this if he had the benefit of a junior high school statistics course. No wonder liberals say we need more math education. They suck at it.