The Torture Memo of Professor John Yoo and the Responsibility of the Faculty of the University of California at Berkeley

For now, I've moved the discussion of Professor John Yoo's Torture Memo over here: http://delong.typepad.com/the_torture_memo/

links for 2008-05-10

• Roger Pillon, ed., The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton
• Dani Rodrik: Why Do Some Countries Remain Poor While Others Grow Rich?
• Justin Fox: Newt Gingrich's bold plan to save the Republican Party by overhauling the Census Bureau
• Solar System Visualizer
• James Kanter: Arcelor agrees to Mittal takeover

Patrick Ruffini Tries to Take Back His Movement from the Bushies and Their Acolytes

We wish him luck. We suggest he focus more on an appealing vision of what America should become.

He writes:

Patrick Ruffini :: Introducing The Next Right: Today, we’re giving a sneak peek into something new on the right side of the blogosphere: an online community for change-minded activists and hardcore political junkies in the conservative movement.... Here’s why we’re doing this, and here’s why it’s different....

[T]he party, and in many cases, the movement, has lost its moorings. Earmarks exploded ten-fold, and it wasn’t under a Democratic Congress. In this winter’s primary, we saw the once mighty fiscal-social-national conservative coalition turned in on itself, with economic conservatives pitted against social conservatives. And too many of the “experts” in the Presidential campaigns this cycle failed to modernize... clinging to the old top-down rostrums of direct mail and fundraising-by-cocktail-party....

It’s no wonder that Joe Conservative outside the Beltway feels that none of his self appointed “leaders” are listening to him. He looks to Washington and sees a leadership class that is too often arrogant, timid, divided, and technologically behind the curve....  

What are the coalitions, strategies, and tactics the right needs to win again? How does the party need to change to attract a generation of voters who could very well be lost to us if we don’t move fast? Where do we find the candidates who will lead a resurgent right in the 2010 and 2012 elections and beyond?... If you’re looking for pure-play opinion and link bait on sundry topics from Ann Coulter to Jimmy Carter/Hamas, you won’t find it here. What you will find is in-depth (often unabashedly technical) writing about the election, the polls, the strategy, and the issues. Our analysis will track truth and stay true to the numbers. But it will self-consciously serve a greater purpose — educating YOU to be your own political strategist and start doing something.... Only a revival of civic engagement at the grassroots level will create a conservative future we want: one that is pork-free and robust in the defense of our country and its values....

In that spirit, we’re opening the doors to anyone who wants to blog on The Next Right. Users will be able to create their own blogs on the site, an ability only a handful of conservative sites offer today....

I’m pumped about this new venture. The last few months have seen a considerable amount of backchannel discussion between the thought leaders about the sorry state of online activism on the right — often with great agreement on a direction moving forward.... This is not “the Daily Kos of the right.” What we’re hoping to do is create momentum and an intellectual framework for action — because action ultimately starts with narratives and ideas. We want grassroots conservatives and libertarians to start believing that they can make a difference again — a sense all too many have lost. Only you – and not some well-funded 527 — can bring the movement into the future...

Gurk!

Moming Zhou with the oil news:

Crude surges to above $120 for first time on supply concerns - MarketWatch: SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Crude oil futures surged nearly $4 Monday to above $120 a barrel for the first time on concerns about supply disruptions in Nigeria and weakness in the U.S. dollar. Crude oil for June delivery soared $3.89 to an intraday high of $120.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in mid-morning trading, a new record high for a front-month contract. Nigeria's rebel group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said Sunday it was responsible for an attack on a Shell oil flow station in the south of the country, according to media reports.

I Don't Think Jeffrey Goldberg Gets This "Weblogging" Thing... (May 09, 2008) - Hezbollah and its Apologists

So I was told I really should read Jeffrey Goldberg--that he is really good, and has a new weblog at the Atlantic. And so I surf on over. And I find that he writes:

Hezbollah and its Apologists: Hezbollah has been doing a bang-up job this week undermining Lebanon's future on behalf of its sponsors, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Syrian intelligence. It is simultaneously doing effective work undermining its apologists in the West. We've heard the arguments over and over again: Hezbollah is social service agency; Hezbollah wants to join the Lebanese political process; Hezbollah is not in fact dominated by murderous Jew-haters. And so on...

And my first reaction is: "We have? Over and over again? I haven't! Who is he talking about here?

But there are no names in Goldberg's first paragraph. No names in the rest of the post either--just a reference to "many of Hezbollah's friends" and to "those on the left... who wanted to whitewash Hezbollah's violent, anti-democratic program," and a pointer to Michael Young.

So we surf on over to Michael Young at Reason.

First paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists, just a reference to intellectual "collateral damage... in academic departments, newsrooms, think tanks, and cafes far and wide...alleged "experts"...

Second paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists...

Third paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists, just a reference to "an embarrassing number of writers and academics"...

Fourth paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists, just a reference to "writers and scholars, particularly Westerners, who lay claim to Hezbollah sources... edited with minimal rigor"...

Fifth paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists, just a reference to how the Party of God "though it is religious, autocratic, and armed to the teeth, often elicits approval from secular, liberal Westerners"...

Sixth paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists, just a reference to the "primary emotion... prompting secular liberals to applaud armed Islamic groups... hostility toward the United States, toward Israel... toward what is seen as Western-dominated, capitalist-driven globalization"...

Seventh paragraph: no names of Hezbollah apologists, just a quote from Fred Halliday warning of "dangers in the accommodation between Islamists and the left"...

Eighth paragraph: A name! Norman Finkelstein! And Norman Finkelstein again in paragraphs nine and ten!

Eleventh paragraph: A name! Noam Chomsky! And Finkelstein in paragraph twelve! And Finkelstein and Chomsky in paragraph thirteen!

And that's it. Fifteen paragraphs--three from Young and two from Goldberg--to denounce the Noam-Norm axis. Yes, the denizens of "academic departments, newsrooms, think tanks, and cafes far and wide, the "alleged 'experts'," the "embarrassing number of writers and academics," the "writers and scholars, particularly Westerners," the "secular, liberal Westerners," the "secular liberals," the "left" all turn out--though their names is truly Legion--to be two whacko guys, Noam Chomsky and Norm Finkelstein, each of whom breaks out in oaths and curses when miscalled a "liberal."

Now don't get me wrong. There's nothing I love more on the internet than to hear the horns of Elfland summoning me to join the Queen of Air and Darkness and the rest of the Unseelie Court on their wild nighttime hunt through the skies in pursuit of the those twin beasts of the apocalypse Noam Chomsky and Norm Finkelstein, especially Noam Chomsky (see here and here and here and here). But neither Goldberg nor Young have any quotes from Chomsky at all! And Young's quotes from Finkelstein make him look (falsely) reasonable--quoting him as stating that Palestinians have a right to wage war on Israelis occupying their country, that Lebanese have a right to wage war on Israelis invading their country.

This weblogging has to be carried out with style: with actual quotations (ideally weblinks) from real targets and with a much higher information density than two barreled fish in fifteen paragraphs. At the least put some facts about Chomsky in apposition--Chomsky, who classified Holocaust denier Faurisson as an "apolitical liberal of some sort"; Chomsky, who compared Pol Pot favorably to Charles de Gaulle; Chomsky, who claimed that Milosevic's massacres of Bosnian Muslims were the key struggle of our time against global imperalism because the U.S. had selected the Muslims of Bosnia to be its Balkan clients."

On the internet, if you are to be successful, you need to recognize that you are not S.I. Hayakawa with control over the megaphone. So:

• You need to name, quote from, and link to your targets--real targets, important targets, not ineffectual and marginalized loons (unless you are just in it for entertainment value)--or else people will point out that you did not do so, and you will appear and will be either ignorant, lazy, mendacious, or off-base.
• You need to get to the point quickly: there is lots to read on the internet, and people who chase pointers through fifteen paragraphs only to come across nothing but a weak-tea denunciation of the Noam-Norm axis will be snarky.
• You need to bring information to the table that your readers lack--at least one of these three: new information you have, information others have not been aware of that you can point to, analyses that have not occurred to your readers.

Whether Goldberg will eventually acquire the... sprezzatura, I guess... to make a success of the internet is unclear. But I'm not optimistic about a weblog that seems not to reach beyond "cooking with Elijah Muhammed" and denunciations of the Noam-Norm axis. Surely the Atlantic can find someone better suited to the medium?

The Current State of Dodd-Franik

Jeanne Sahadi

Dodd-Frank: In a 266-154 vote... lawmakers approved... Frank... to let the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insure up to $300 billion in new loans over four years if lenders agree to reduce the mortgage principal.

To qualify, the lender would have to cut the debt to no more than 85% of a home's current appraised value. If the FHA-refinanced loans went into default, the FHA would pay the lender the remaining principal owed.

While 1.4 million loans are likely to be eligible for such a program, the Congressional Budget Office estimates such a measure would end up insuring 500,000 borrowers. The CBO estimates the FHA expansion program would cost taxpayers $1.7 billion.

"This bill is very time limited and limited in specifics to a subset of mortgages and meant to mitigate a market failure," Frank said during the floor debate on Thursday.... [T]he program is limited to loans for owner-occupied residents... lenders and investors would be taking a loss on every loan... borrower[s] would be paying higher-than-usual premiums to the FHA... would share equity in their home with the government. "No borrower who goes through this process will say at the end of it, 'Boy, that was fun. Where do I buy a ticket to get back on Space Mountain?" Frank said.... If the bill is a bailout for anyone, they say, it's a bailout for communities across the country, which suffer when home values and property taxes go down because of foreclosures...

David Wessell on Dodd-Frank

David Wessel writes:

Capital - WSJ.com: The latest flash point in the debate over the nation's bursting housing bubble is this: Since so many American houses are worth less than their mortgages, should the government do more to get lenders to settle...?

Of the 80 million houses in the U.S., about 55 million have mortgages. Of those, four million are behind on payments. Foreclosure proceedings were begun on about 1.5 million homes last year, up more than 50% from 2006. This year will be worse. The Treasury, according to presentations its officials have made recently, predicts house prices could fall another 10% to 15% before touching bottom.

Moody's Economy.com estimates that one in roughly 12 American families with mortgages -- four million in all -- already... are... "underwater." The firm predicts that by early 2009 nearly one in four, or 12 million... underwater. Most will continue to pay mortgages on time. Many won't....

Lenders... prefer to avoid foreclosure if possible.... Better to cut a deal than end up with an empty, decaying house.... In ordinary times, a lender shouldn't need prodding from the government to do what's in its self-interest. But these aren't ordinary times. The drop in home prices is pervasive, mortgage markets messy and complexities caused by turning mortgages into securities many....

Mr. Frank would offer lenders and eligible borrowers a deal: If the lender agrees to cut the debt so the homeowner owes no more than 90% of the house's current value, and the Federal Housing Administration (or an outfit to whom it outsources this) determines the homeowner can afford a new loan, then the lender gets rid of the mortgage and the FHA insures a new mortgage for the remaining balance.

The lender takes a hit, but gets rid of the risk.... [T]he lender has to chip in another 5% of the property's current value. The homeowner has to surrender some profits, if any... when the house is sold.

The White House condemns this.... [T]he Treasury argued in a recent PowerPoint presentation: "Homeowners who can afford their mortgage but walk away because they are underwater are merely speculators." (It's a bit jarring to hear the Treasury vilifying people who are acting in their economic self-interest.)...

Despite the restrictions, the plan could allow some homeowners to get a deal they don't deserve; that's the unfortunate byproduct of any rescue. But the Treasury and Fed surrendered the let-the-market-work-it-out high ground when they agreed to risk nearly $30 billion of taxpayer money to shield Bear Stearns, its creditors and counterparties from losses....

[T]he Congressional Budget Office... predict[s] only 500,000 mortgages would be refinanced.... So, perhaps it's best considered a prudent experiment for coping with a bad situation that might get worse: Create a mechanism now so the bugs are worked out, in case home prices plunge more than anticipated...

Menzie Chinn Watches the Turnaround of the U.S. Current Account

The U.S. current account turns around:

How far does it have to turn around? One unresolved issue is how much of the oil trade deficit will ever have to be repaid--if oil wealth is going to be invested in the U.S. in dollars in order to give princelings and dictators a political-risk insurance policy, the oil part never has to be "paid back" in a foreign-exchange sense. If foreign oil wealth is going to be used to buy imports of capital goods and raw materials from the U.S., to fuel industrialization, the answer is quite different...

Gas Prices Matter!

Supply and demand at work:

From the Federal Highway Association: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/08jantvt/08jantvt.pdf

The Fed Thinks About Paying Interest on Banks' Required Reserve Deposits

Steve Randy Waldmann writes:

Interfluidity :: Stock of Treasury securities at the Fed: As of April 30, the Fed's uncommitted stock of Treasuries was $382B, just under half of its December 5 stock. The Fed recently announced a $50B expansion of the TAF program, and a widening of acceptable collateral for its TSLF program. Assuming the Fed sterilizes the extra TAF funding (very likely) and that the $200B pledged to TSLF is now fully exploited (likely), the Fed's stock of uncommitted Treasuries will soon be $275.5B. Just over 64% of the Fed's stock of Treasury's will have been exhausted since the Fed began its unconventional lending programs in December.

The Fed wants to swap out Treasuries for other securities in order to reduce the risk premium--to raise the (temporary) market supply of Treasuries and reduce the supply of other securities until the crisis passes and MBSs and other securities recover their value. (If they never recover their value, then we have much bigger things to worry about.)

The Fed may also want to raise the general level of interest rates in order to fight inflation--which requires that it sell its Treasuries for safe bank reserves rather than temporarily swap them for risky MBSs.

The Fed is clearly thinking that it may run out of Treasuries with which it can accomplish these two missions. Hence it is coming up with an alternative way to raise the general level of interest rates--that is, paying interest on banks' required reserve deposits at the Fed.

What Does John Yoo Believe?

A correspondent sends me to a 2000 article by Yoo, "The Imperial President Abroad", an article that opens:

Aside from getting himself impeached, President Clinton's most signal impact on the Constitution, and the rule of law it embraces, will have been in the area of foreign affairs. As his domestic agenda met with frustration in a Republican Congress, President Clinton exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utomost in the area in which those powers are already at their height--in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, President Clinton has accelerated disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law...

That's a hell of an opening paragraph from someone who was, less than three years later, to say that the president has the power to order the torture and maiming of prisoners no matter what laws congress may have passed or treaties the United States has signed.

What does Yoo mean by saying that Clinton has "undermine[d] democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law? He turns out to mean:

• "The Clinton administration's use of the military in several long-term interventions has rendered the War Powers Resolution a dead letter.... [Its failure to obtain] affirmative congressional authorization for its conduct... is still open to constitutional question..."
• "The administration has used troops... not to achieve total victory or to contain the spread of Soviet influence but in order to achieve more limited goals... whose long-term benefits for American security are unclear..."
• "In Kosovo... American troops... serve[d] under... non-American... commanders, such as British General Michael Jackson.... [This] threatens that basic principle of government accountability. International or foreign officials have no obligation to pursue American policy, nor do they take an oath to uphold the Constitution..."

The only way I can find to reconcile these arguments with those of the Torture Memo is to conclude that Yoo truly believes nothing at all.

Can anybody help me here? For the president's commander-in-chief power to extend to the ordering of torturing and maiming against natural law, solemn treaty, and congressional enactment but not to extend to placing U.S. troops under NATO command?...

Does anyone understand how Yoo can pass the Turing test here?

---

People have been asking "what is Youngstown?" as it more and more becomes the pivot around which lawyers' discussions of the matter of John Yoo's Torture Memo wheel. For example, Boalt Hall graduate "Ugh" writes in:

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong: And John Yoo clearly knows about the Youngstown case, he taught it to me in Con Law I in the spring of 2000. Strangely, he somehow omitted his theory of POTUS as King that semester, as if, somehow, he might not have believed it. Huh.

Youngstown is the Korean War steel seizure case: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. During the Korean War President Harry S Truman seized the steel mills to keep them running. The Supreme Court said that he could not do that: it limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress.

Steel company attorney John W. Davis closed his oral argument before the Supreme Court with Thomas Jefferson: "In questions of power let no more be said of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." The Court voted by six to three to affirm the District Court's injunction barring the President from seizing the steel plants.

The plurality opinion by Justice Hugo Black held that the president had no power to act without congressional or constitutional authorization. Robert H. Jackson's concurrence was less absolutist, and divided the constitutional issues into three cases--(1) presidential action in accord with express or implied authority from Congress, (2) presidential action in the face of congressional silence, and (3) presidential action in defiance of congressional legislation--classified Youngstown as category 3 in which presidential powers were at their "lowest ebb," and so disallowed Truman's action.

Since then the Supreme Court has expressly cited Youngstown and the Jackson classification as authority for its decisions invalidating Nixon's warrantless wiretaps, permitting litigation against thep to proceed in Clinton v. Jones, limiting the power of the president to intervene in state judicial process in Medellín v. Texas, and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Youngstown is good law, and bears heavily upon the issues of John Yoo's Torture Memo. Yoo did not fulfill his duty to his clients or to the law in ignoring it in the Torture Memo--at the very least he had a duty to explain his (erroneous) implicit claim that the principles of Youngstown did not apply because the situation here was in some way distinguished from the situation there.

links for 2008-05-09

• Alex Tabarrok: Foul Weather Austrians
• Jeff Frankel on Bryan Caplan: How Far the NYT had to go to Find an Economist to Support the Gas Tax Holiday | Jeff Frankels Weblog | Views on the Economy and the World
• Cosma Shalizi: So You Think You Have a Power Law — Well Isn't That Special?
• Satyam: Rumsfeld blames the generals for poor pre-war planning.

Martin Feldstein Calls for Large-Scale Public Intervention in the Housing Market...

He writes:

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - Misleading growth statistics give false comfort: Macroeconomic Advisers... [estimates monthly GDP] using the same conceptual approach as the government uses for its quarterly estimates.... Its most recent estimates... show that real GDP rose from an annual $11,649bn [real 2000 dollars] last October to $11,701bn in December and $11,777bn in January but fell to $11,686bn in March, a decline of about $100bn in two months.... The misstatement that the economy expanded in the first quarter creates an inappropriately sanguine view of the months ahead....

Although the tax rebates now under way may provide some temporary help, the combination of falling real incomes, declining household wealth and a dramatic drop in consumer confidence suggests further falls in consumer spending and GDP. But the most serious risk is that the rapid fall in house prices – down more than 12 per cent in the past year and falling at a 25 per cent rate in the past three months – will raise the number of negative-equity mortgages, leading to widespread defaults and foreclosures.

Because US mortgages are “no-recourse”... individuals with negative equity have an incentive to default. There are now an estimated 8m negative-equity mortgages – more than 15 per cent of all outstanding mortgages.... A downward spiral in house prices would cause a fall in household wealth and in the capital of financial institutions, potentially resulting in a deeper and longer recession than any seen in the past several decades.

Now is the time for policy action to forestall such a house price collapse. There is nothing more the Federal Reserve can do by lowering short-term interest rates or by creating new credit facilities.... What is missing is action to prevent positive-equity mortgages from becoming negative-equity mortgages. The federal government could achieve that by providing low-interest loans with full recourse that would allow any homeowner to pay down a significant fraction of his mortgage. Homeowners would be in effect giving up the potential to default on their mortgage loans in exchange for lower interest costs...

Different from the more typical proposal these days of having the Federal government guarantee private mortgages (in exchange for warrants on the upside), but different in ways that I suspect are minor...

Hoisted from Comments: John Yoo as a Sportswriter Who Did Not Mention the Red Sox

Hoisted from Comments: Rea says:

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong: "Leitner's analysis is that Yoo did nothing wrong because he was acting in "good faith", like a tax adviser who gives incorrect advice."

Problem is, Yoo, ignored the Youngstown case in formulating his advice. The Youngstown case, as anyone with the slightest passing familiarity with constitutional law knows, ought to be the very first case anyone looks at when considering the extent of the President's powere as Commander in Chief of the armed forces. That sort of mistake can't happen in good faith. If he'd written up an argument that Youngstown was inapplicable, or wrongly decided, he might be able to make a plausible claim of good faith, but not even to mention it?

What would you make of a sportswriter who did a preseason analysis of the 2008 baseball season, and didn't mention the Red Sox? Not, predicted they wouldn't do well, but simply didn't mention them?

Jack Balkin on John Yoo

Jack Balkin on the highly-trained legal mind of John Yoo:

Balkinization: Note the switch. Instead of saying that the defense of following orders is generally unavailable, the defense is now described as generally permissible. And instead of a limited defense in cases where the subordinate did not know and did not have reason to know of the unlawful nature of the order, the defense becomes much broader. The act is generally privileged unless the illegality of the order is patent.

What difference does this formulation make? Put the first set of arguments about Presidential power together with the second. You are a subordinate asked to torture a subject. Do you know that this order is patently unlawful? No, you do not, because of the memo's first argument. The first argument claims that in order to avoid constitutional conflicts, all laws restricting the President's power to interrogate subjects should be construed not to apply to the President. Since the President is ordering you to torture someone, you may-- indeed, you must-- presume that this order does not violate any existing law when properly construed so as to avoid a constitutional conflict. Hence you can torture the suspect with a clear conscience.

Clearly it takes a highly trained legal mind to reach conclusions like these.

There is more in this memo worth discussing, but the import should by now be clear. The stench of corruption permeates the pages of this report. Legal minds, blinded by ideology, and seduced by power, have willingly done the Administration's dirtiest work-- apologizing for torture and justifying violations of the most basic human rights. They have mangled the law and distorted the Constitution, manipulating legal sources to maximize power and minimize accountability. It is the sort of legal reasoning that twists law to destroy the Rule of Law. It is the sort of legal reasoning that brings shame on our nation and our people. It is the sort of legal reasoning that makes me ashamed to be a lawyer.

David Leonhardt on the "True" Inflation Rate

I'm not sure that it is (now) overstated by much, but I think he's right in his claim that inflation is not understated--at least not if you have tastes for high-tech toys:

Seeing Inflation Only in the Prices That Go Up: Next week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its monthly report on inflation... that the Consumer Price Index rose just three-tenths of a percentage point in April. Over the last year, the index has risen only about 4 percent.

I’m guessing that doesn’t square with your sense of reality.

In my household, we just broke the $60 barrier for filling up our gas tank... the price of bananas is up almost 20 percent... eggs are up 35 percent. Costco and Sam’s Club recently began rationing rice... big-ticket items that have been getting more expensive for years — like health care and college — just keep on getting more so.

This contrast between the official government statistics and day-to-day reality has led to a boomlet in skepticism.... [W]hat’s going on here?

To answer that question, it helps to go back.... In 2003, a pound of hamburger cost all of $2.20. More than two decades earlier, in 1980, it cost $1.86, which means that the nominal price of burger meat rose only 18 percent over a period in which the nominal hourly pay of the typical American worker rose 150 percent. Similar stories can be told about eggs, bananas, bread and frozen orange juice. Food was getting cheaper.... During the 1980s and 1990s, though, did you ever stop and marvel at what a small share of your paycheck you were spending at the supermarket? I didn’t. I also didn’t really notice that gas cost less in the late 1990s than it had in the 1980s.... Price increases are simply more noticeable — more salient, as psychologists would say — than price decreases....

The price of major appliances has been flat over the last year. Furniture is 1 percent less expensive. A decade ago, a basic four-door Toyota Corolla LE cost $16,018, according to the company. The 2009 basic model costs $16,650, and it’s a safer, more powerful, more fuel-efficient car than its predecessor....

The conspiracy theories about inflation play off these human instincts, but they also depend on two other oddities. The first is the amount of attention given to the so-called core inflation rate. This is a version of inflation that excludes food and energy, which makes it a little like a grade point average that excludes math and French.

The core inflation rate does have a purpose... [to] help Federal Reserve officials base interest rates on underlying price trends, instead of being overly influenced by food or gas prices, both of which can be volatile....

The final piece of the puzzle... is the way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has changed the price index recently.... [E]conomists who have studied the changes say they have had only a modest effect on the inflation rate, lowering it by perhaps a half point a year. More to the point, the changes seem to have made the index more accurate than it used to be. “It’s about as accurate as anybody is going to get it,” Mr. Cecchetti said...

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Joe Klein Edition)

A conversation in Brewed Awakening this morning:

Thrasymakhos: Why are you chewing your tie?

Glaukon: I made the mistake of reading Joe Klein this morning...

Sokrates: How can listening to what somebody has to say ever be a mistake?

Glaukon: You'll see. The structure of Klein's argument was roughly as follows: (1) Hillary Rodham Clinton has been demagoguing the gas tax holiday; (2) I know it's a bad and stupid idea; (3) but my small unevolved journalist lizard-brain was excited and enthusiastic; (4) but she lost; (5) so I will kick her when she is down; (6) and I feel somewhat guilty; (7) and I will be a more substance- and less spin-minded journalist in the future...

Sokrates: But this is a story of self-development--of someone acquiring knowledge through experience. Why should that make you chew your tie?

Thrasymakhos: No, Sokrates, you are wrong. This is a story of someone pretending to acquire knowledge through experience--it is a false repentance narrative, a la Elmer Gantry. But did you expect any better?

Glaukon: I was not finished. Then there is: (8) John McCain is an honorable man; (9) if Barack Obama "wants to maintain his reputation for honor, he'll have representatives from his campaign sit down with McCain's people to work out a sane, equitable campaign-financing mechanism for the general election — and a robust series of debates." The fact that the initial gas tax holiday demagoguer was John McCain is not mentioned--Joe Klein hides it from his readers. If he meant his pledge to do better, the fact that the gas tax holidy was McCain's idea first would have made it into the column...

Sokrates: Your logic is irrefutable, Glaukon.

Thrasymakhos: You are correct, Glaukon. If I were as ill-mannered as Duncan Black, I would award Joe Klein yet another "wanker of the day" prize.

Sokrates: I do wish you wouldn't chew on your tie, however. It sends the wrong message...

Thrasymakhos: This is Berkeley. Why are you even wearing a tie?

---

Here is Klein:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1738330,00.html: Clinton stood on the back of a vintage pickup truck in Gastonia, N.C., and let fly in the most impressive fashion — a woman transformed from Eleanor Roosevelt into Huey Long in two short months. Spotting a big yellow placard that said GAS TAX HOLIDAY IS BLATANT PANDERING — a sign she would have ignored in her earlier, less feisty incarnations — she went after the young Obamish sign-holders: Why wasn't the Federal Reserve accused of pandering when it bailed out the Bear Stearns investment bank to the tune of $30 billion? Why shouldn't the oil companies pay the federal gasoline tax this summer instead of the people who "hold their breath" every time they pull up to the gas pump? "I know that some people don't have to worry when they go to the supermarket," she said, staring accusingly at the placard bearers, but "there are people who count their pennies as they walk down the aisle," trying to figure out what they can afford. "Don't they deserve a break every once in a while? They haven't done anything wrong ... The oil companies have had it their way for too long," she said. "I'm tired of being a patsy."

Wow.... I was of two minds. My high-minded policy brain was, of course, appalled. The gas-tax holiday was a scam.... Her sell was, well, shameless pandering.

On the other hand, my cynical low-information political brain was saying, You go, girl. This was fun to watch. "This is a serious election," Clinton said in Gastonia, "but I believe you still should have some fun." She seemed energized by her irresponsibility, sprung from her lifelong, eat-your-peas policy straitjacket.... It seemed like smart politics too... the kind of thing I have seen "work" throughout my nearly 40-year career as a journalist... you could fool most of the people most of the time....

[Yet] Clinton's paste-on populism changed absolutely nothing. The demographic blocs that had determined the shape of this remarkable campaign remained stolidly in place.... Clinton's slim margin of victory in Indiana was provided, appropriately enough, by Republicans.... Rush Limbaugh... had counseled his ditto heads to bring "chaos" to the Democratic electoral process by voting for their favorite whipping girl....

Clinton was spiky and histrionic in her simultaneous duel with George Stephanopoulos. She made alpha-dog power moves.... It wasn't until I read the transcript that I realized that Clinton's bravado had masked a brazenly empty performance. Stephanopoulos nailed her time after time.... In retrospect, it was easy to see that Clinton was desperate, willing to say almost anything to get over. At the time, she just seemed strong, certainly stronger than Obama on Meet the Press ... at least she did to me and many members of my chattering tribe. And our knee-jerk reactions — our prejudice toward performance values over policy — could infect the campaign to come between Obama and John McCain, just as it has the primaries....

The shameless populism that seemed a possible game changer to media observers, micro-ideas like the gas-tax holiday, the willingness to go negative....

In his victory speech after the smashing North Carolina results came in, Obama went directly after both McCain and the media. "[McCain's] plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election," Obama said. "Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."

That may have been unfair to McCain, since the Senator from Arizona won the Republican nomination in much the same way Obama has triumphed — as an outsider, an occasional reformer, a pariah to blowhards like Limbaugh. But it's also true that McCain has a choice to make: in the past month, he has wobbled between the high and low roads, at one point calling Obama the Hamas candidate for President after a member of that group "endorsed" the Senator from Illinois. If McCain wants to maintain his reputation as a politician more honorable than most, he's going to have to stop the sleaze. And if Obama wants to maintain his reputation for honor, he'll have representatives from his campaign sit down with McCain's people to work out a sane, equitable campaign-financing mechanism for the general election — and a robust series of debates. Mark McKinnon, a McCain adviser who has said he would rather recuse himself than help his candidate against Obama, has suggested that the two candidates campaign together, staging Lincoln-Douglas-style debates across the country — a proposal similar to the offer that Kennedy reportedly wanted to make if he ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964.

In the end, Obama's challenge to the media is as significant as his challenge to McCain. All the evidence — and especially the selection of these two apparent nominees — suggests the public not only is taking this election very seriously but is also extremely concerned about the state of the nation and tired of politics as usual. I suspect the public is also tired of media as usual, tired of journalists who put showmanship over substance ... as I found myself doing in the days before the May 6 primaries. Obama was talking about the Republicans, but he could easily have been talking about the press when he said, "The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. You see, I didn't get into this race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it."

Politics will always be propelled by grease, hot air and showmanship, but in the astonishing prosperity of the late 20th century, we allowed our public life to drift toward too much show biz, too little substance. Yes, the low-information signals — the bowling and tamale-eating — are crucial; politicians have to show that they are in touch with the lives of average folks. But a balance needs to be struck between carnival populism and the higher demands of democracy, and as a nation, we haven't been very good lately with the serious part of the program. As a result, there is a festering sense — I've seen it everywhere I've traveled this year — that the country is in "the ditch," as Clinton said. A general-election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama doesn't need any hype. It won't be boring. The question is whether we, politicians and press alike, will grant this election — and electorate — the respect that it deserves.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain vs the Economists

Felix Salmon writes:

Clinton vs the Economists: [D]oes it matter if politicians ignore economists? Thoma and Mankiw say yes, if they're willing to ignore the experts on one of the few areas where the experts agree with each other, then you can't trust that they will ever make good use of advice. Krugman and Cowen say no, there are bigger fish to fry, and economists tend to overrate their own importance.

For me, personally, this gas-tax episode has changed my opinion of Hillary Clinton quite dramatically. Yes, I've been an Obama supporter for a while, but I've been less opposed to Clinton than most Obama supporters, until now. But the gas-tax proposal reminded me of the way that she described the proposed Dubai Ports deal as a threat to national security, and I realized that I just couldn't trust her assertions. I'm pretty sure she's smart enough to know that she's pandering - what Mankiw calls "mendacity with a dash of condescension". Which means that Clinton considers working-class votes to be more important than working-class voters. And that's not a claim I'd make about either of the other two candidates.

And Greg Mankiw writes:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: In Praise of Gas Tax Hysterics: Paul Krugman thinks all of the fuss about the gas tax holiday has become a bit hysterical. He agrees that the policy is a bad idea, but it is no big deal, so let's not focus on it. Paul is right that the issue is, quantitatively, small potatoes, but I am nonetheless pleased to see it get so much attention. This issue is like the canary in the coal mine: No one really cares about the canary, but its condition tells us about deeper problems that lie below.

Many economic issues (e.g., health care, corporate taxation, the trade deficit) are vastly complicated, with experts holding a variety of opinions. When candidates disagree, it simply means that each is siding with a different set of experts, and it is hard for laymen to figure out which set of experts is right. By contrast, the gas tax holiday is not nearly as complicated, and the experts speak with one voice.

Why, then, are candidates proposing the holiday? I can think of three hypotheses:

• Ignorance: They don't know that the consensus of experts is opposed.
• Hubris: They know the experts are opposed, but they think they know better.
• Mendacity with a dash of condescension:* They know the experts are opposed, and they secretly agree, but they think they can win some votes by pulling the wool over the eyes of an ill-informed electorate.

So which of these three hypotheses is right? I don't know, but whichever it is, it says a lot about the character of the candidates.

It is very clear on both McCain's and Rodham Clinton's part that it is not ignorance It my be to some degree hubris on McCain's part--but I doubt it. It is overwhelmingy on Rodham Clinton's part and predominantly on McCain's part the third option: mendacity with a dash of condescension.

And Greg is right: it says a lot of bad things about th character of John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton that they would do this.

Jo Walton on Linguistic Subcreation

Patrick Nielsen Hayden sends us to Jo Walton. She writes:

papersky: Fast and Dirty Fantasy Names: You don't have to make up languages the way Tolkien did, you have to make up words and names and the illusion of languages. But those names and words have to be right, because names are threads in the tapestry, names need to work with the picture, or at least be neutral....

There is a simple way of getting round this... the random fantasy name generating program.... First vowels -- eliminate one, and decide which of the others is the favourite. Then consonants -- decide between: B-V V-W W-R M-N B-M C-K C-G C-S S-Sh Ch-Sh TT-Th. When you've decided, write down the alphabet without the ones you don't want, with the favourite vowel twice and with "Ch" or "Sh" or "Th" if you want them.... Then randomly (roll dice?) select consonants (no more than two together) and vowels, stopping when you have stuff that feels nice....

[I]f you want to have two fantasy countries that are different from each other, make all the different choices for the other language... their names and words sound different from each other, even if the reader can't tell exactly how.... The Gonovians and the Camavese really will seem like different people....

carandol and I once made an alien language.... The aliens were called Xanfd, and they rocked.... But I defined so many of their words that eventually when I ran the [word-generating] program it was as if I was getting messages from them, full of words I knew, or half-knew, and other words I didn't. The screen would fill up with things like "Human attack /something/ spaceship /something-plural/ size-comparative something-highstatus FTL communications /something/ broken /something/ /something/ light something something-plural survivors".

I could therefore use this for plot generation.

I do not actually recommend this, as my memory of sitting in a darkening room reading yellow text on a blue screen that told me of battles far away and alien secrets is a little too realistic for comfort.

The Past Is Not Dead, It Is Not Even Past: Torture Edition

So I am reading an escapist mystery novel set in the Tudor dynasty--Dissolution by C.J. Sansom--and I find this passage affecting:

"Are you in pain, crookback?" Jerome aske"d suddenly.

"A little discomfort. We have had a long walk through the snow."

"Do you know the saying, to touch a dwarf brings good luck, but to touch a hunchback means ill fortune? You are a mockery of the human form, Commissioner, doubly so for your soul is twisted and cankered like all Cromwell's men."

Mark stepped forward. "God's bones, sir, you have a vile tongue."

I waved him to silence, and stood staring at Jerome. "Why do you abuse me, Jerome of London? They say you are mad. Are you? Would madness be your defense were I to have your arse hauled off to the Tower for your treasonable talk?"

"I would make no defence, crookback. I would be glad to have the chance to be what I should have been before, a martyr for God's Church. I shit on King Henry's name and his usurpation of the pope's authority." He laughed bitterly. "Even Martin Luther disowns King Henry, did you know? He says Junker Heinz will end by making himself God." Mark gasped. Those words alone were enough to have Jerome executed.

"Then how you must burn with shame that you took the oath acknowledging the king's supremacy," I said quietly.

Jerome reached for his crutch and rose painfully from the bed. He tucked the crutch under his arm and began slowly pacing the cell. When he spoke again it was in a quiet, steely tone. "Yes, crookback. Shame and fear for my eternal soul. Do you know who my family are? Did they tell you that?"

"I know you are related to Queen Jane, God rest her."

"God will not rest her. She burns in hell for marrying a schismatic king." He turned and faced me. "Shall I tell you how I came to be here? Shall I put a case to you, master lawyer?

"Yes, tell me. I shall sit to listen." I lowered myself onto the hard bed. Mark remained standing, hand on sword, as Jerome dragged himself slowly up and down the room.

"I left the world of idle show when I was twenty. My late second cousin was not born then, I never met her. I lived over thirty years in peace at the London Charterhouse; a holy place, not like this self-corrupted house. It was a haven, a place devoted to God in the midst of the profane city."

"Where wearing hair shirts was part of the Rule."

"To remind us always that flesh is sinful and corrupt. Thomas More lived with us for four years. He wore the hair shirt ever after, even under his robes of state when he was lord chancellor. It helped keep him humble, and steadfast unto death when he stood out against the king's marriage."

"And before, when he was lord chancellor and burning all the heretics he could find. But you were not steadfast, Brother Jerome?"

His back stiffened, and when I turned I expected another outburst. But his voice remained calm. "When the king said he required an oath from all members of the religious houses, acknowledging him as Supreme Head of the Church, only we Carthusians refused, though we knew what that would mean." His eyes burned into me.

"Yes. All the other houses took the oath, but not you."

"There were forty of us, and they took us one by one. Prior Houghton first refuse the oath and was interrogated by Cromwell himself. Did you know, Commissioner, when Father Houghton told him that St. Augustine had placed the authority of the Church above Scripture, Cromwell replied that he carted naught for the Church and Augustine might hold as he pleased?"

"He was right. The authority of Scripture stands above that of any scholar."

"And the opinion of a tavern keeper's son stands above St. Augustine's?" Jerome laughed bitterly. "When he would not submit, our venerable prior was judged guilty of treason and executed at Tyburn. I was there; I saw his body sliced open by the executioner's knife while he still lived. But it wasn't the usual hanging fair that day; the crowd watched silently as he died."

I glanced at Mark; he was watching Jerome intently, his face troubled. The Carthusian continued. "Your master had no better luck with Prior Houghton's successor. Vicar Middlemore and the senior obedentiaries still would not swear, so they too went to Tyburn. This time there were calls against the king from the crowd. Cromwell wasn't going to risk a riot the next time, so he tried all manner of pressure to make the rest of us take the oath. He put his own men in charge of the house, where Prior Houghton's arm, stinking and rotten, was nailed to the gate. They kept us half-starved, mocked our services, tore up our booiks, insulted us. The picked off trouble-makers one by one. Someone would suddenly be sent off to a more compliant house or just disappear."

He paused and leaned his good arm on the bed for a moment. I looked up at him. "I have heard these stories," I said. "They are mere tales."

He ignored me and resumed his pacing. "After the north rebelled last spring, the kind lost patience with us. The remaining brethren were told to swear or be taken to Newgate where they would be left to starve to death. Fifteen swore and lost their souls. Ten went to Newgate, where they were chained in a foul cell and left without food. Some lated for weeks--" He broke off suddenly. Covering his face with his hands he stood rocking on his heels, weeping silently.

"I have heard such rumours," Mark whispered. "Everyone said they were false--"

I waved him to silence. "Even if that were true, Brother Jerome, you could not have been among them. You were already here."

He turned his back on me, wiping his face with the sleeve of his habit, and stood looking from the window, leaning heavily on his crutch. Outside, the snow whirled down as though it might bury the world.

"Yes, crookback, I as one of those who had been spirited away. I had watched my superiors taken, I knew how they died, but despite our daily humiliations we brethren succoured each other. We thought we could hold out. I was a fit, strong man then, I prided myself on my fortitude." He laughed; a cracked hysterical sound. "The soldiers came for me one morning, and brought me to the Tower. It was the middle of May last year. Anne Boleyn had been condemned to die and they were building a great scaffold in the grounds. I saw it. And that was when I became trulyo afraid. As the guards bustled me down into the dungeons, I knew my resolution might fail. They took me to a big underground room and bundled me into a chair. In a corner I saw the rack, the hinged table and the ropes, two big guards standing ready to turn the wheels. There were two others in the room, facing me across a desk. One wa Kingston, the warden of the Tower. The other, glowering at me most foully, was your master, Cromwell."

"The vicar general himself? I don't believe you."

"Let me tell you what he said. 'Brother Jerome Wentworth, you are a nuisance. Tell me straight, without cavil, will you swear to the Royal Supremacy?'"

"I said I would not. But me heart banged as though it would burst my chest as I sat before that man, his eyes like the fires of hell, for the Devil looks out of them. How can you face him, Commissioner, and not know what he is?"

"Enough of that. Go on."

"Your master, the great and wise counsellor, nodded at the rack. 'We shall see', he said. 'In a few weeks' time Jane Seymour will be queen of England. The king would not have her cousin refusing the oath. Nor does he want her name included among those executed for treason. Either would be an embarrassment, Brother Jerome. So, you must swear, or you will be made to'. Then he nodded at the rack.

"I told him again I would not take the oath, though my voice shook. He studied me a moment and smiled. 'I think you will', he said. 'Master Kingston, I have little time. Get him lengthened.' Kingston nodded at the rackmasters and they hauled me to my feet. The slammed me down on the rack, knocking the breath from my body. They bound my hands and feet, stretching my arms above my head." Jerome's voice lowered to a whisper. "It was all so quick. Neither of rackmasters spoke a word."

"I heard a creak as they turned the wheel, then there was a great searing pain in my arms like I had never known. It consumed me." He broke off, gently massaging his torn shoulder, his eyes vacant. In the memory of his agony he seemed to have forgotten our presence. Beside me, Mark shifted uneasily.

"I was screaming. I hadn't realized till I heard the sounds. Then the pulling stopped. I was still in anguish but the tide--" he fluttered a hand up and down--"the tide had ebbed. I looked up and there Cromwell stood, staring down at me.

"'Swear now, Brother,' he said. 'You have only a little fortitude, I see. This will go on till you swear. These men are skilled, they will not allow you to die, but your body is already torn and soon it will be so broken you will never be out of pain again. There is no shame in swearing when you have been brought to it by this road.'"

"You are lying," I said to the Carthusian. Again he ignored me.

"I shouted that I would bear the pain, as Christ had on the Cross. He shrugged and nodded at the torturers, who pulled both wheels this time. I felt the muscles of my legs tear and when I felt my thighbone pull from its socket I screamed that I would swear the oath."

"An oath sworn under duress is surely not binding in law?" Mark said.

"God's blood, be quiet!" I snapped at him. Jerome started a little, recalled to himself, then smiled.

"It was an oath before God, a perjured oath, and I am lost. Are you kind, boy? Then you should not be in the company of this bent-backed heretic."

I stared at him fixedly. In truth the power of his story had struck me forcefully; but I had to keep the initiative. I stood up, folded me arms, and faced him. "Brother Jerome, I am tired of your insults and of your tales. I came here to discuss the foul murder of Robin Singleton. You called him perjurer and liar, before witnesses. I would like to know why."

Jerome's mouth worked into something like a snarl. "Do you know what torture is like, heretic?"

"Do you know what murder is like, monk? And no more words from you, Mark Poer," I added as he opened his mouth.

"Mark." Jerome smiled darkly. "That name again. Why, your bedesman has a look of the other Mark about him."

"What other Mark? What are you babbling about now?"

"Shall I tell you? You say you want no more tales, but this is a story that will interest you. May I sit down again? I am in pain now."

"I will have no more treasonable words or insults."

"No insults, I promise, nor treason. Just the truth."

I nodded, and he lowered himself back onto the bed with the help of his crutch. He scratched his chest, wincing at a pang from the hair shirt. "I see that what I told you of my racking discomfited you, lawyer. This will discomfit you more. The other boy called Mark was Mark Smeaton. You know that name?"

"Of course. The court musician who confessed to adultery with Queen Anne, and died for it."

"Yes, he confessed." Jerome nodded. "For the same reason I swore."

"How could you know that?"

"I will tell you. When I had taken the oath before Cromwell in that terrible room, the constable told me I would be lodged in the Tower a few days to recover; arrangements were being made through my cousin for me to be taken as a pensioner at Scarnsea. Jane Seymour would be told that I had sworn. Lord Cromwell, meanwhile, had lost interest; he was collecting up my sworn oath with the rest of his papers. I was taken to a cell deep underground. The guards had to carry me. It was in a dark, damp corridor. They laid me on an old straw mattress and left. My mind was in such turmoil at what I had done, I was in such pain. The smell of damp from that rotten mattress made me feel sick. Somehow I managed to rise and went over to the door, where there was a barred window. I leaned against it, for there was a breeze of fresher air from the corridor, and prayed for forgiveness for what I had done.

"Then I heard footsteps, and sobbing and crying. More guards appeared and this time they were half-carrying a young man, just the age of your assistant and with another pretty face, though softer, and streaked with tears. He wore the remnants of fine clothes, and his big scared eyes darted wildly round him. He looked at me beseechingly as he was dragged past, then I heard the door of the next cell open. 'Compose yourself, Master Smeaton', one of the guards said. 'You will be here for tonight. It will be quick tomorrow, no pain'. He sounded almost sympathetic." Jerome laughed again, showing grey decayed teeth. The sound made me shiver. His face worked for a moment, then he went on. "The cell door slammed and the footprints receded. Then I heard a voice.

"'Father! Father! Are you a priest?'

"'I am a monk of the Charterhouse', I replied. 'Are you the musician accused with the queen?'

"He began to sob. 'Brother, I did nothing! I am accused of lying with her, but I did nothing.'

"'They say you have confessed', I called back.

"'Brother, they took me to Lord Cromwell's house, they said if I did not confess they would tie a cord round my head and tighten it until they put my eyes out' His voice was frantic almost a scream. 'Lord Cromwell told them to rack me instead, to leave no marks. Father, I am in such pain but I want to live. I am to be killed tomorrow!' He broke down. I heard him sobbing." Jerome sat still, his eyes distant. "The pain in my leg and shoulder worsened, but I had not the strength to move. I hooked my good arm through the bars to support myself, and leaned half-insensible against the door listening to Smeaton's sobs., After a while he grew calmer and called again, his voice shaking.

"'Brother, I signed a false confession. It helped condemn the queen. Will I go to hell?'

"'If it was tortured from you God will not condemn you for that. A false confession is not like an oath before God,' I added bitterly.

"'Brother I am afraid for my soul. I have sinned with women, it has been easy.'

"'If you truly repent, the Lord will forgive you'.

"'But I don't repent, Brother.' He laughed hysterically. 'It was always pleasure. I do not want to die and never know pleasure again'

"'You must compose your soul', I urged him. 'You must repent truly, or it will be the fire.'

"'It will be purgatory anyway'. He began sobbing again, but my head was swimming. I was to weak to call out any more, and I crawled back to my stinking mattress. I did not know the time of day; there is no light down there but the torches in the corridor. I slept a while. Twice I was woken when guards brought a visitor to Smeaton's cell."

Jerome's eyes flickered up to meet mine for a second then slid away again. "Both times I heard him crying most piteously. Then later I woke to see the guard pass with a priest, and there was muttering for a long time, though whether Smeaton made proper confession in the end and saved his soul I do not know. I drifted off to sleep again and when I woke again to my pain all was silent. There are no windows down there, but I knew, somehow, that it was morning and he was gone, dead." His eyes focused on me again. "Know then that your master tortured a false confession from an innocent man and killed him. He is a man of blood"...

James Poulos Fears the Black Helicopters

He does not want to see Fareed Zakaria ascend to the Secretary-Generalship:

James Poulos » Deconstructing Globalization: The United States has already succeeded in globalizing the world — by globalizing American culture. What Zakaria wants, I think, is for the United States to succeed at the new task of globalizing itself.... Not a single proponent of globalizing America is against maximizing migrant labor among the lower classes and maximizing math and science among the upper classes. My distaste for migrant labor and the hegemony of engineers, each taken separately, is already almost incalculable because of my judgments about what ruins a healthy republic. Taken together, these two great prescriptions for globalizing America fill me with something I must quickly laugh off as paranoid rage.

Everywhere I turn some bold-faced name is guzzling this kool-aid.... I’m content for America to continue in its capacity as globalizer. I’m much less sanguine about America becoming a globalizee. This isn’t just because I’m a nationalist; it’s because I’m convinced that the United States has, and depends upon, a globally unique system of government which is itself dependent upon America’s unique geopolitical, cultural, and religious heritage. The maintenance of that heritage demands a conscious effort not to regularize the American workforce into a system of migrant drones at the bottom and civil engineers at the top....

Probably the most grievous error of the pro-globalization crowd is its intransigent comprehensiveness fetish: globalizing America hasn’t meant making foreign countries ‘more like the US’ in some kind of holistic, across-the-board fashion; it’s meant exporting the things about America that work, that can travel, that are fungible and useful and beneficial in different cultural contexts. (Yes, this is an incomplete and too-happy picture of what’s happened. But I’m identifying the good so I can contrast it better with the bad.) Globalization, in its natural, uncontrolled diversity, will be and should be an irregular process in which countries pragmatically adopt and appropriate a la carte things from elsewhere that work for them...

On David Brin's "The Transparent Society"

Michael Froomkin writes:

Discourse.net: CFP '08 Accepts Our Panel on 'The Transparent Society': I’m delighted to report that my proposal for a panel on “‘The Transparent Society’ — Ten Years Later” has been accepted for CFP’08, thanks no doubt to the sterling panelists I was able to assemble. Our panel is now scheduled to take place on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 3:30-5:00(PM) in the George room at the Omni Hotel in New Haven.

Computers, Freedom and Privacy is the most fun conference I go to; the program can be variable, I admit, but the hallway conversations are always fantastic. Come - it’s fun.

Here’s the panel description:

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of David Brin’s controversial book, “The Transparent Society”. The book argues that in the face of the explosion of sensors, cheap storage, and cheap data processing we should adopt strategies of vision over concealment. A world in which not just transactional information, but essentially all information about us will be collected, stored, and sorted is, Brin says, inevitable. The only issue left to be decided is who will have access to this information; he argues that freedom, and even some privacy, are more likely to flourish if everybody - not just elites - has access to this flood of data.

Brin proposes a stark choice: either the information will be “secret” and “private”—in which case only governments, always potentially repressive, will have access. Or, the information will be “open” and “public” and we will all be transparent to each other. Given this choice, Brin argues, better to be naked to each other than to empower a few with unique access to information about the many. The attempt to protect privacy as we know it carries too great a risk, as it leads if not inevitably than at least all too easily to a world of enormous information-driven tyranny in which the powers — primarily governments — with access to our ‘private’ information will abuse it. In contrast, a high-transparency world with very little privacy is one in which citizens have tools that allow them to monitor their governments.

Brin proposed a paradox which infuriated a good segment of the privacy community. It is normally an article of faith for privacy advocates that privacy empowers, and the removal of privacy is at least disempowering and at worst oppressive. Brin counters that privacy advocates have it exactly backwards: trying to maintain traditional ideas of information privacy in the face of technological changes he sees as (now) inevitable is what will disempower and perhaps oppress; only a program of radical information openness, nakedness even, stands a chance of leveling a playing field on which information is truly power.

The reception of “The Transparent Society” reflected the audacity of its claims. Some dismissed it; some attacked it; a few embraced it. What is striking, however, is that the ideas have had staying power: the book remains in print, it is regularly footnoted, and it comes up in discussion. Right or wrong, “The Transparent Society” has become more than a polar case trotted out as a good or bad example, but an as-yet unproved but also un-falsified challenge to how we think about privacy — one that demands continuing reflection (or, some would say, refutation).

The tenth anniversary of publication is an appropriate time to do that reflection at CFP.

About the presenters:

David Brin (remote participation): David Brin is the author of “The Transparent Society,” the inspiration for this panel. He is a noted futurist and science fiction writer.

Alan Davidson: Alan is the head of Google’s Washington, DC, government affairs office. Previously he was Associate Director of the Center for Democracy & Technology. Alan is a frequent speaker and presence in national privacy debates, and a frequent CFP participant.

J. Bradford DeLong: Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley: In addition to his work as a macro and economic historian, Brad has written extensively about the economics of information and the Internet. He runs a very popular economics and culture blog, “Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong’s Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal” at http://delong.typepad.com/. Brad served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in the Clinton administration, 1993-95. He is also a founder-member of the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill.

A. Michael Froomkin (Moderator): Professor of Law, University of Miami: Michael has been writing about privacy, encryption, and anonymity for almost fifteen years. His writings include “The Death of Privacy?” 2 Stan L. Rev. 1461 (2000). He is a founder-editor of ICANNWatch, and serves on the Editorial Board of Information, Communication & Society and of I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. He is on the Advisory Boards of several organizations including the Electronic Freedom Foundation and BNA Electronic Information Policy & Law Report. He is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He is also active in several technology related projects in the greater Miami area.

Stephanie Perrin: Stephanie is the Acting Director General of Risk Management, Integrity Branch, Service Canada. She is the former Director of Research and Policy at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and was prior to this a consultant in privacy and information policy issues, president of her own company Digital Discretion Inc., and a Senior Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Centre in Washington. She is the former Chief Privacy Officer of Zero-Knowledge, and has been active in a number of CPO associations, working with those responsible for implementing privacy in their organizations. Formerly the Director of Privacy Policy for Industry Canada’s Electronic Commerce Task Force, she led the legislative initiative at Industry Canada that resulted in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, privacy legislation that came into force in 2001 and has set the standard for private sector compliance. She is the principal author of a text on the Act, published by Irwin Law.

Zephyr Teachout: Visiting Asst. Prof. of Law, Duke University: Zephyr is one of the leading practitioners and theoreticians of online political organizing. She directed Internet organizing for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. Zephyr is noted for advocating the Internet as a tool for creating local offline groups. publications include “Mousepads, Shoeleather and Hope: Lessons from the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics”(Editor) (forthcoming August 2007, Paradigm Publishers); “How Politicians can use Distributive Networks” (New Assignment, November 2006); “Youtube? It’s so Yesterday,” (with Tim Wu) (Washington Post, November 2006), and “Powering Up Internet Campaigns,” book chapter in Lets Get This Party Started (Rowan and Littlefield, 2005.) She is currently writing about the meaning of corruption in the American constitutional tradition.

Brad DeLong Interviewed by Philippe Gohier

In Macleans magazine:

The Macleans.ca Interview: Brad DeLong | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features: Q: As a general rule, Republicans say the U.S. isn't in a recession, while Democrats say it is. In your opinion, is the U.S. in or headed for a recession?

A: We’re saying it looks like it’s the weakest possible not-recession. Come July, the Commerce Department is going to revise the GDP numbers and that’s going to change things. It could make things either look less recessionary, or it could push us into determining we’re in a recession. The odds are about 50/50.

Q: In simple terms, what does a recession mean for Americans?

A: It means it’s a lot harder to get jobs. A lot more people are unemployed and without income. People who are employed are scared and eager to settle for much lower increases in real wages, or even accept real wage cuts. It means a lot of people who could be doing something useful are unable to get themselves matched with firms that can use their talent. [A recession is] something you would definitely rather avoid, even if [avoiding it] does produce some costs. It's better to have some investment flowing into the wrong sectors than it is to have all your investment proportions exactly what they should be and a whole bunch of people who could be working and want to work sitting at home, feeling poor.

Q: The Bush administration has already dealt out a pretty expensive stimulus package.

A: I a $13-trillion economy, we’re at about $150-billion of fiscal stimulus this year. That’s only one per cent. Together with what the Federal Reserve has done, everyone hopes this is going to be enough to keep us near full employment without creating an inflation problem for the longer run. But that’s just a hope at the moment.

Q: Has the sputtering economy been properly managed?

A: One way to look at it is this all starts back in 1995, when Alan Greenspan said, ‘It looks like this new economy stuff may really be there. I’m going to ignore all my staff who’s telling me about limits to growth and likelihood of inflationary pressures. I’m not going to raise interest rates and see how much high-tech investment we can get going on the grounds that this might be an opportunity for a serious boom.' Indeed, there was a lot of irrational exuberance. A lot of the world's richest people invested in Internet startups and communications companies. They paid for an enormous amount of dark fibre out of which they never got any dividends, but which did give the rest of us very cheap phone calls and data for half a decade or so.

Then comes 2000 and 2001, and it becomes clear, not that the technology has been oversold, but that the ability to use the Internet to actually make huge profits has been oversold. The Federal Reserve’s response was, ‘We need another leading sector. How about if we drop interest rates and see if we can get a construction boom going?' So, Greenspan does this and it works. In fact, it works beyond his wildest dreams. Then, there’s the irrational exuberance that comes out of the financial bubble, as [some] mortgage companies stop checking people’s loan.

Right now, we have an interesting game going on. As the housing boom unwinds, it's become clear the U.S. built perhaps three million more houses than would be supportable at 2007 housing prices. Construction employment is collapsing and the hope is that, once again, you can replace a leading sector that’s had a boom and a bubble with another one. This time the sector that’s growing is exports and import-competing manufacturing, especially as the dollar falls, first against the Europeans and against the Canadians and hopefully soon against the Asians. But the U.S. economy is already, relative to trend labour force growth, down three-quarters of a million jobs relative to last December. So even if it’s not a recession, it feels like a recession.

Q: American economist Joseph Stiglitz has made the argument that the U.S. economic problems are in part due to the war in Iraq.

A: The war has certainly pushed up oil prices a bunch, directly and indirectly. And I think the war has made us significantly weaker. A trillion dollars that could have been spent doing something useful has been spent creating a situation that, for most Iraqis, has been worse than living under the cruel, semi-totalitarian dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. It still seems to be a much more minor contribution to the current macroeconomic puzzle. I think Joe’s letting his view about the future and the likely good course of U.S. foreign policy lead him to overstate the case a bit. The argument against our adventure in Iraq would still be there even if we were still in the housing boom.

Q: Economic figures for the month of February were recently released in Canada and they showed the country's economy shrank 0.2 per cent. There’s some worry we’re on the brink of recession here.

A: If U.S. demand for Canadian exports keep falling and the U.S. goes into a recession, it seems highly likely.

Q: The federal government in Canada has taken a laissez-faire approach and promoted aggressive tax cuts as a solution. Do you have any thoughts on that?

A: I learned my macroeconomics at the knee of Martin Feldstein, back when the Republican Party in the United States was still the party of sound money and fiscal surpluses. I was just running through my class the argument Marty made around 1980: that basic utilitarian calculations suggest the United States should be saving half again as much as it is and investing it into the future. Unfunded tax cuts take what would otherwise be national savings and divert them into government deficits. While I do see a very small and limited role for tax cuts in a recession to try to prevent mass unemployment, I’m still with Marty--or at least with the old, unmuzzled Marty. Developed countries ought to be running substantial government surpluses because the opportunities for saving and investment are great, because aging populations are going to require debt capacity in the future, and because the technological revolution in medical care is going to produce a huge future demand for governments to spend money keeping people healthy. I have this instinctive, allergic reaction to unfunded tax cuts, even in recessions. And we’re not quite in a recession, yet.

Q: The presidential candidates in the U.S. have had a lot to say on the economy. How would you rate their economic platform?

A: We were sitting around here in the lounge yesterday, all feeling sorry for Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s economic guy. He is a sensible guy who’s now saying extremely silly and stupid things. He seems to have lost an internal struggle about what the McCain economic policy for the campaign should be. Phil Gramm, another of McCain's economic advisers, is smart as a whip and is a serious person for whom we have to have respect--even if he is a right-wing hyena of a magnitude rarely seen. Our hope is that everything McCain is saying about the economy right now is for shoring up [his support on] the right, [is] for campaign purposes only. Paul Krugman, on the other hand, is out there saying all of us who have hopes for the McCain economic policy are deluding ourselves.

The candidates’ economic policy [proposals] on the Democratic side [pretty much all] looked like sensible attempts to approach very hard problems--or so I thought until Hillary Clinton came out in favour of [McCain's] temporary gas tax holiday. Global warming says you want to increase gas taxes rather than diminish them, and income distribution suggests you don’t want temporary holidays because they're quickly over and have no effect on supply. To boost gasoline supply takes a long time. The McCain gas tax holiday for the summer seems to simply be a ‘let’s transfer a lot of money from the government to the oil companies while doing something that sounds like it’ll help driving consumers but actually won’t.’ Clinton’s plan is to have a gas tax holiday and pay for it by a tax on refineries; as Paul Krugman wrote, this had the effect of making the proposal pointless rather than evil. Maybe you have to give Clinton’s economic policy people credit for coming up with something that sounds good and manages to turn an economic minus into an economic zero. But it wasn’t a terribly good sign...

New York Times Death Spiral Watch: Bill Kristol Edition (May 07, 2008) - Editing Anyone (Politics)

Outsourced to Matthew Yglesias:

Editing Anyone?: Bill Kristol's column from Monday:

In a New York Times/CBS News poll in late February, Obama was defeating John McCain 50 to 38. Two months later, the Times/CBS poll had McCain and Obama tied. The poll that came out yesterday showed Obama reopening a lead over McCain — but clearly over this period a vulnerability for Obama was exposed.

As Noam Scheiber notes it's a bit curious of Kristol to have left out the precise numbers from the new poll. But what it says is that Obama hasa lead of 51 to 40 which is identical to Obama's previous lead. I'm hardly shocked to see Kristol playing some funny games, but shouldn't there be some kind of editing of the Times columnists? Surely the NYT has it within its powers to be aware of the results of its own polls and get its writers to characterize the trends accurately.

Econ 210a: May 7: The twentieth-century experience: half empty or half full?

May 7: The twentieth-century experience: half empty or half full?

• Richard Easterlin (1981), "Why Isn't the Whole World Developed?" Journal of Economic History 41:1 (March), pp. 1-19 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28198103%2941%3A1%3C1%3AWITWWD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y
• Angus Maddison (1983), "A Comparison of Levels of GDP Per Capita in Developed and Developing Countries, 1700-1980," Journal of Economic History 43:1 (March), pp. 27-41 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28198303%2943%3A1%3C27%3AACOLOG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
• Lant Pritchett, "Divergence, Big Time," Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer 1997), pp. 3-17, http://uclibs.org/PID/1011
• Dani Rodrik, "Getting Interventions Right: How South Korea and Taiwan Grew Rich," Economic Policy 20, (1995) pp. 55-107, http://papers.nber.org/papers/w4964.pdf

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Let's start today with Karl Marx: "The Future Results of British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853:

The political unity... imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric telegraph. The native army, organized and trained by the British drill-sergeant, was the sine qua non of... India ceasing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder. The free press, introduced for the first time into Asiatic society.... is a new and powerful agent of reconstruction.... From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. Steam.... The day is not far distant when, by a combination of railways and steam-vessels, the distance between England and India, measured by time, will be shortened to eight days, and when that once fabulous country will thus be actually annexed to the Western world.

The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, but an accidental, transitory and exceptional interest in the progress of India. The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it.... [T]he English millocracy i