I listen to what Simon Johnson’s has to say in his article Voodoo Economics Revisited, but I don’t necessarily swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

What we are seeing is agreement across the aisle on a very dangerous approach to public finance: a continuation and extension of what President George H.W. Bush memorably called “voodoo economics.” Its consequences are about to catch up with America, and the world.

The following paragraph hints at my qualms about Johnson:

The market is nervous — mostly about the prospect of large fiscal deficits as far as the eye can see. Some commentators dismiss this as irrational, but, again, that is wishful thinking. The path-breaking work over many years of Carmen Reinhart, my colleague at the Peterson Institute in Washington, makes this very clear — no country, including the US, escapes the deleterious consequences of persistent large fiscal deficits. (Indeed, her book with Ken Rogoff, This Time Is Different, should be required reading for US policymakers.)

I think Johnson is probably right about the long term consequences of “large fiscal deficits as far as the eye can see”.  I am less sure about his opinions of short term fiscal stimulus in the middle of a recession. Of course, given the fact that Reagan/Bush/Bush used deficits when they shouldn’t have, has left me wondering if their actions ruined the possibility of rescuing the economy with correctly timed stimulus now.  It’s a worry, but I don’t know what to do instead. I don’t know whether John Maynard Keynes talked about necessary fiscal stimulus applied after unnecessary stimulus has wrecked his weapon of choice just when it is truly needed. Perhaps Keynes should have pointed out that theoretically his policy prescriptions are the right ones, but politically and sociologically, they are impossible to carry out in a Democracy.

As a former chief economist of the IMF, I am unsure of how much credence to put in what Johnson says.  He certainly has plenty of experience with trying to rescue faltering economies.  However, much of the advice that the IMF has given over the years has had terrible consequences on the economies that have taken its advice.  I have always had doubts about Johnson’s association with The Peterson Institute in Washington, D.C. The benefactor of the institute has a somewhat one track mind in his thinking on economics and the research that he wants his institute to support.  That one track thinking is probably consistent with the advice issued by the IMF.

I had always hoped that Johnson was not a prisoner of these two institutions and that his presence at MIT had some significance.  Perhaps my hopes were like my hopes for Obama.  The good parts may be good, but I am relearning that the bad parts cannot be ignored.

In the article Arnold King reviews the book The Symbolic Uses of Politics.

King  says the following:

According to Edelman, here is how the insider-outsider interaction plays out (p. 23-28; as you read this, keep in mind something like Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, or the year-end tax bill):

as an introduction to the following quotes from the book:

Tangible resources and benefits are frequently not distributed to unorganized political group interests as promised in regulatory statutes and the propaganda attending their enactment…

and

The most intensive dissemination of symbols commonly attends the enactment of legislation which is most meaningless in its effects upon resource allocation. In the legislative history of particular regulatory statutes the provisions least significant for resource allocation are most widely publicized and the most significant provisions are least widely publicized…

Is it any wonder that some of us objected to the tax deal?  Is it any wonder why we are so frustrated by the acceptance of this outcome by so many people?

In the comments on the review, one person noted that the article Symbols and Political Quiescence by Murray Edelman published in 1960 in the American Political Science Review may be the basis for the part of the book reviewed by King.

The article Speaking Ill of ‘the Best and the Brightest’ by Robert Scheer presents a different view of Holbrooke’s impact on the world scene.

One of “the best and the brightest” died last week, and in Richard Holbrooke we had a perfect example of the dark mischief to which David Halberstam referred when he authored that ironic label. Holbrooke’s life marks the propensity of our elite institutions to turn out alpha leaders with simplistic world-ordering ambitions unrestrained by moral conscience or intellectual humility.

On of the commenters on the article pointed to the YouTube video Pirates and Emperors – Schoolhouse Rock.

Gains in Kandahar Came With More Brutal US Tactics is a very disturbing article, if true. Unfortunately, these stories often do turn out to be true.

[Col. David] Flynn [the battalion commander of a unit of the 101st Airborne Division] told reporters of London’s Daily Mail he had issued an ultimatum to residents of Khosrow Sofia: provide full information on the location of IEDs the Taliban had planted there or face destruction of the village, according to the account published Oct. 26.
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The threat to destroy a village if its residents did not come forward with information would be a “collective penalty” against the civilian population, which is strictly forbidden by the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
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The new level of brutality used in the Kandahar operation indicates that Petraeus has consciously jettisoned the central assumption of his counterinsurgency theory, which is that harsh military measures undermine the main objective of winning over the population.

But there are tell-tale signs that higher-level commanders in Kandahar know that those tactics will not defeat the Taliban either. Col. Flynn, the U.S. commander in a section of Arghandab, told the Daily Mail, “At the end of the day, you cannot kill your way to victory here. It will have to be a political solution.”

If we have to commit war crimes to win, should we give up or should we commit war crimes?  I shudder to think how the majority of U.S. citizens would respond to that question.

Let us remember that the U.S. public vehemently rejected the idea of collective guilt of the people killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  This was the “justification” used by the “terrorists” for their action. I doubt that many U.S. citizens would recognize the parallel when applied to the innocents in Afghanistan.

Has Barack Obama become the third in line of the Bush Dynasty? Does he have any principles left?

The  final vote results for roll call for H.R.4853 with the latest misleading title: Middle Class Tax Relief Act of 2010.

At least I had one of my members of Congress vote no on this travesty. See the vote of “Neal (MA)”.  My former Oregon Representative, David Wu, also voted no.

How did your Representative do?

Contrary to the usual pro-war propaganda published by The New York Times, they published the article Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War.

These few quotes don’t do the article complete justice, but they give you a hint at what you will see if you read the whole article.

The reports, one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan, say that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.
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.Pentagon and military officials also say the reports were written by desk-bound Washington analysts who have spent limited time, if any, in Afghanistan and have no feel for the war.
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But in Afghanistan, the intelligence agencies play a strong role, with the largest Central Intelligence Agency station since the Vietnam War located in Kabul. C.I.A. operatives also command an Afghan paramilitary force in the thousands. In Pakistan, the C.I.A. is running a covert war using drone aircraft.

Anybody who was an adult during the Viet Nam War can see history repeating itself. (Actually I have read that “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”).

The enemy has sanctuaries we can’t touch.  If we only go after them in their sanctuaries, the war will turn around.  The naysayers don’t have a feel for what is really happening on the ground.  Well, Nixon went after sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia and turned a bad situation into a horror show.  The naysayers were right, and the people who claimed to be closest to the war were the ones that really didn’t know what was going on.

Obama was just too young to have heard the first stanza of this poem.  Hundreds of thousands will die because of Obama’s youth.  When I voted for him, I did so because I thought he was good at listening to reason.  I thought he had the humility to ask for advice when he didn’t know the issue well enough.  I also thought he was good at telling the BS from the straight poop.  Again and again he has demonstrated that I was wrong about his talents as a manager.

I guess his campaign proved that if he were lucky enough to stumble across a winning strategy, he had the guts to stick with it. It wasn’t only guts, I thought.  His team was constantly measuring the effects of the strategy. I didn’t realize that if he stumbled across a bad strategy, he would stick to that one too. If he is still a manager that likes to measure results, his measurement of how his strategy is doing seems to be badly off target.

He seems to have the same nearsightedness when fighting the Republicans as he has with fighting the wars. Is this Obama’s character flaw that will be his Achilles heel?

These are apparently the words of President Obama himself. Oregon Representative Peter De Fazio saying Obama warns “This is the end of his presidency” if he doesn’t get tax deal.

DeFazio was not my representative when I lived in Oregon, but he did make me proud to live in the state that he helped to represent.

You wouldn’t know it by anything you might read at the following link, but I think this is the Senate Vote on Extending The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy.

Question: On the Motion (Motion to Concur in the House Amdt. to the Senate Amdt. with Amdt. No. 4753 to H.R. 4853 )

Measure Number: H.R. 4853 (Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010, Part III )

According to the H.R. 4853 Bill Summary:

Latest Title: Middle Class Tax Relief Act of 2010

This is a bill to give tax relief to the middle class (and oh by the way, we also give tax relief to the ultra-wealthy that will end all hope of ever balancing the budget without cutting Social Security and Medicare.  There is no positive economic benefit to extending this cut to the wealthy. All this is just a minor detail, though.)

Despite the news reports you may have heard, there is only 1 Independent in the Senate, Bernie Sanders, and he voted no.

If your Senator is not in the list below, then you can decide if this is really the type of person you want to vote for in the next election for that office. I have sent my emails to Senators Kerry and Brown to let them know that they have lost my vote for their re-election. (Well, Brown never had it to begin with.) I have emailed Representative Richard Neal to let him know of the consequences if he too caves to the demands of the Republicans.

This blog post will remain on this blog so that when the time comes, you can look it up.  (Use the search box at the top of this web site to find this article in the Novembers to come.)

Politically, I long for the days when we were living in Oregon.

I have already told Harry Reid and Al Franken that they can stop sending me any more email.  They were not on the above list.

If the elected officials that passed this abomination think this will all blow over by 2012, they are badly mistaken.  By then even the people who are willing to give them a pass on this vote now will know of the bad consequences of this surrender.  This won’t blow over, this will blow-up.

The introduction to the piece Rob Johnson Hunts for the Budget “Moby Dick” on Newdeal2.0 (which contains the above video) is:

So you’re concerned about the debt-to-GDP ratio? Then listen to Rob Johnson, who separates the real white whales to harpoon from the harmless minnows. A new paper he co-authored with Tom Ferguson points out that austerity and stagnation most threaten our fiscal future. The American people are angry, and “there is a lot of valid rage in our society,” Rob says. But “fears of magic thresholds like a 90% debt-to-GDP ratio or mythologies that have to do with the painlessness of cutting deficits are playing on those fears, but they’re not sending things in a proper direction.”