The Daily Kos has a petition discussed in the post  Signature needed: Senate will vote on Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions opened the floodgates of unlimited campaign spending by the 1%, which threatens our democracy.

And the Court will keep ruling this way, as long as we subscribe to the absurd notion that money is “speech.”

However, Senator Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) has sponsored a constitutional amendment to give Congress the power to pass campaign contribution limits and spending limits. A vote is expected in the coming months.

I signed the petition, and added the comment:

We should have a constitutional amendment banning the use of invalid syllogisms as a justification for any ruling.

The link above shows that Google has the definition of syllogism as “a formal argument in logic that is formed by two statements and a conclusion which must be true if the two statements are true.”

Note that is is very important that the two initial statements must be true for the conclusion to be true. If either of the two initial statements are “money is speech” or “corporations are people”, then you know that the logic does not validate that conclusion that corporations are allowed to make unlimited political contributions.

Maybe I ought to be referring to WikiPedia‘s explanation of the actual meaning of begging the question.

Begging the question means “assuming the conclusion (of an argument)”, a type of circular reasoning. This is an informal fallacy where the conclusion that one is attempting to prove is included in the initial premises of an argument, often in an indirect way that conceals this fact.^[1]

Maybe the footnote 1 above is even a better definition of the problem.

Garner, B.A. (1995). Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. Oxford Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. Oxford University Press. p. 101. ISBN 9780195142365. LCCN 95003863. “begging the question does not mean “evading the issue” or “inviting the obvious questions,” as some mistakenly believe. The proper meaning of begging the question is “basing a conclusion on an assumption that is as much in need of proof or demonstration as the conclusion itself.” The formal name for this logical fallacy is petitio principii. Following are two classic examples: “Reasonable men are those who think and reason intelligently.” Patterson v. Nutter, 7 A. 273, 275 (Me. 1886). (This statement begs the question, “What does it mean to think and reason intelligently?”)/ “Life begins at conception! [Fn.: ‘Conception is defined as the beginning of life.’]” Davis v. Davis, unreported opinion (Cir. Tenn. Eq. 1989). (The “proof”—or the definition—is circular.)”

The Daily Kos has the post Elizabeth Warren Changes the Conversation.

The massive response to Elizabeth Warren’s new book, A Fighting Chance, gives Democrats a great opportunity to change the 2014 conversation.
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Democrats need to embrace Warren’s message in order to fire up the activists, online donors, and Democratic base voters they so desperately need to win in 2014. This is our moment to light a fire under Democrats and change the dynamic from us being in a defensive crouch, whining because our voters are unmotivated to turn out and vote, to going on offense and taking it to the Republicans and their billionaire big business buddies.

I was hoping that this book tour would raise this type of reaction. I truly think this is the intention of Elizabeth Warren in writing the book. It’s purpose is not to get herself elected to anything. However, if getting her elected as President in 2016 is what it will take, then I am all for it.

Naked Capitalism has the post Bill Black: NYT DealBook Praises Steve Jobs’ Serial Felonies.

The fact that Silicon Valley “deeply revere[s]” a serial felon who targeted workers (globally, see my prior columns on China) and shareholders (he secretly backdated stock options in an effort to make himself even wealthier) should be deeply disturbing, even to Deal Book.  (I joke: if DealBook had appeared as a character in The Wizard of Oz it would have simultaneously represented “no brain, no heart, no ethics, and no courage.”)  Jobs’ CEO counterparts knew about his serial crimes because they were conspiring with him to form the cartel suppressing workers’ wages and because his backdating scam was made public.

We should also stress that Microsoft was found to have violated the antitrust laws (the Bush administration deliberately gutted the remedy for those violations of the law) and that Robert Tillman’s (a prominent white-collar criminologist) empirical work has found that high tech firms were particularly likely to have engaged in accounting and securities fraud.  That requires a hard look at Silicon Valley’s culture.  While Ayn Rand, von Mises, and von Hayek all stressed the evil of elite fraud and the legitimate, and vital role of the government in acting to deter and punish such frauds, the culture of Silicon Valley is increasingly dominated by wealthy libertarians who are far more radical in their hostility to democratic government, their disdain for ethics, and their opposition to the government preventing fraud.  The “Kristallnacht” lunacy is a perfect example of the depraved culture that can emerge when you mix the worst strands of Silicon Valley’s and finance’s contempt for ethics into a single package.

This is one of the reasons why I could never be a fan of Steve Jobs, nor of Apple Computer. Bill Gates was no happy alternative. That is why, of the three computers I have, two of them have a variant of linux (Kubuntu) as their primary operating systems and the third has Kubuntu installed as a virtual machine. The two mobile devices that I have use an Android operating system.

The financial damage that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have done to the world is only half the story. The technological anti-competitive behavior of these two companies has probably set back the the state of the art in computers by decades.

I am reading Elizabeth Warren’s book A Fighting Chance. I was thrilled to see that she remembered the advice that I gave her in the campaign for the Senate.

To see which part was my advice, refer back to my March 3, 2012 post How Will The Warren Campaign Compete With Scott Brown’s Money?

Here is the relevant section of that post.

Do’s

• Improve efforts to raise the connection in voters’ minds between the name Elizabeth Warren, her photograph, and the office she is seeking.
  • Change the logo on all bumper stickers, web sites, social media sites, and printed material to say “Elizabeth Warren for U.S. Senator” instead of saying “Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts”
  • Use every opportunity to put her name next to her photo and the office she is seeking.
    

I think I may have first mentioned the change of bumper sticker to Elizabeth Warren at her early campaign stop in in Ware, Massachusetts.

Not only did I make up the signature gathering sign shown above, but I also made my own bumper sticker.  The one below, I felt was easier to read, but it still didn’t make it clear what she was running for.

The one I eventually used on my car made it clearer what she was running for.

I am not sure about this, but the campaign may have eventually come out with new bumper stickers. I continued to use my own throughout the campaign.

Depending on where you start the process of getting to the podcast below, the headline is either Randy Wray on Krugman and the Frustration of the Heterodox or Stephanie Ketlon Talks with Randy Wray.

A broad-ranging discussion of conventional economics and the heterodox alternatives to IS/LM, Ricardian equivalence, etc.

Most economists who have finally come back to the real world after the 2008/2009 economic crash think that we need more government stimulus.   The people who are proponents of Modern Monetary Theory have known this for several decades before the current crisis.  The Neo-Keynesians like Krugman and Summers seem to have come to the realization more recently and perhaps for the wrong reasons.

This podcast explains why it is necessary to understand the correct reasons for why there is agreement on what the short term policy needs to be.  If you get to the right short-term policy by way of the wrong reasons, then you will get the long-term policy all wrong.

One of the things that the MIT philosophy taught me is that it is not enough to come up with the right answer, you need to come up with the right answer for the right reasons.  As I said above, if you come up with the right answer for the wrong reasons, you are very likely to come up with the wrong answer the next time you apply the wrong reasons to solving a problem.

By the way, the Google definition of heterodox is – not conforming with accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs.  It is silly to lump all heterodox economists in one category.  Perhaps there are only a few ways to define what orthodox economists think, but heterodoxy is just everything else.

You can well imagine that heterodoxy can range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Being a fan of Elizabeth Warren and also of her idea of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), I realized that I had not visited its web site, nor have I told others about it.

There are two URLs that you can use to get to the site. The shortened version www.cfpb.gov will automatically redirect you to the longer URL www.consumerfinance.gov. There is also a CFPB Facebook page.

Here is the introductory message from Richard Cordray, the CFPB director.

In Elizabeth Warren’s book A Fighting Chance, she said about the CFPB,

I figured it this way. Every day the wind would blow over this agency from one direction. We would hear the voices of those who were organized, those who had money, and those who were powerful. If we weren’t careful, their point of view would eventually seep into every crack and crevice of the place. We needed a strong wind from the other direction. We needed to create an agency that would be transparent about our mission, our goals, and the work we were doing – so that the public would call us out if we fell short.

One way for us to help this agency fulfill its potential is to talk about the agency and to tell people about the web site. We can look at the video above on YouTube, and click the like button.

Remember this web site if you ever have a problem with a financial institution, or if you want to find out what the CFPB is doing to protect you.