2:00PM Water Cooler 3/24/15

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32 comments

1. ProNewerDeal March 24, 2015 at 1:59 pm

   Lambert,

   In your 2016 Presidential election coverage, could you periodically (say monthly or quarterly), include fund raising (broadly defined including “uncoordinated” PAC groups) dollar amounts of the candidates? The atrocious reality is the biggest fundraiser tends to win the election. IIRC political scientist Dr. Thomas Ferguson had an NC article posted or linked here claiming this trend holds in something like 90%+ of elections, especially since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

   Thus, I feel that these fundraising data are (sadly) vital in understanding the election

   What do you think about this topic?
   1. edmondo March 24, 2015 at 4:15 pm

      Is the money why the candidate won or does the money merely follow the candidate who is most likely to win? Chicken or egg?
      1. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL March 25, 2015 at 12:25 am

         Let’s face it, since Citizens United the primary schedule has changed, the races are underway now, in backrooms and board rooms in the race for boatloads of the required cashish. Once the winner has been selected, they will still be asked to show up in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, pour encourager les autres. The media of course will breathlessly record each inside baseball campaign move and studiously avoid any serious discussion of issues. A “race” will ensue, and a variety of astroturf groups will sway the “debate”. Once the malarkey is over people can settle down to the next chapter of business-as-usual corporo-fascism, Permanent War, unlimited spying, and destruction of the middle class.
         If this was a cable channel I would happily just unsubscribe.
   2. Lambert Strether Post authorMarch 25, 2015 at 2:16 am

      I can do what, with the caution that funding doesn’t translate directly to electability. After all, Clinton was well-funded in 2008, and all Sheldon Adelman’s millions couldn’t lever Newtie out of the clown car.
2. Working Class Nero March 24, 2015 at 2:23 pm

   Charlottesville police make clear that Rolling Stone story is a complete crock

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/23/charlottesville-police-make-clear-that-rolling-stone-story-is-a-complete-crock/?hpid=z3

   After months of delay, the autopsies on the U-Va rape hoax are finally starting to appear. The Washington Post are hitting the story hard while the NYT continues to hope against hope that the imaginary rapist Haven Monahan will someday appear in Aryan fratboy flesh and blood.

   No word yet if the Social Justice Warriors, who held a mini Kristallnacht by smashing windows at the frat house where the imaginary events took place, will be arrested and tried for their crimes.

   The Columbia Review of Journalism will soon issue a report that should ensure that the journalist responsible for this atrocity will be fired for her incompetence.
   1. cwaltz March 24, 2015 at 3:09 pm

      Actually what it says is they can’t find evidence. That’s a big shocker considering they are investigating 3 years after the alleged rape occurred.

      Next up: If they can’t find a body then a murder never really happened. LOL
      1. Working Class Nero March 24, 2015 at 3:51 pm

         Not true. They have plenty of evidence in the form of emails and phone records from the time the imaginary attack occurred. The “rapist” Haven Monahan was emailing and texting with Jackie’s friends — and continued to do so after the “attack”. The slight problem is that Jackie “catfished” this blond fratboy Haven and the phone numbers were controlled by her. Even “his” letters professing undying love for Jackie (written of course by Jackie) were plagiarized from a Dawson’s Creek episode.
         1. cwaltz March 25, 2015 at 12:08 am

            Here’s a quote directly from the article since you seem to have some reading comprehension problems.

            A lot of time and energy went into tracking down people,” said Longo, who made clear that the department’s failure to corroborate the allegations in the Rolling Story doesn’t mean that nothing traumatic happened to Jackie that night.
            1. Lambert Strether Post authorMarch 25, 2015 at 2:18 am

               Waiting for the Rolling Stone post mortem.
               1. craazyman March 25, 2015 at 4:29 am

                  The Post Mortem was written long ago . . .

                  “Well!” he said, “are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman on the streets of Jefferson?”
                  Butch sprang up again. the silk of his shirt clung flat to his heavy shoulders. At each armpit was a half moon. “That’s what I been telling them! That’s what I –”
                  “Did it really happen?? a third said. “This a/n’t the first man scare she ever had, like Hawkshaw says. Wasn’t there something about a man on the kitchen roof, watching her undress, about a year ago?”
                  Maclendon whirled on the third speaker. “Happen? What the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let black sons get away with it until one really does it?
                  ….
                  ‘What is is captains?” the negro said. “I aint done nothing ‘For god sake Mr. John'” Someone produced handcuffs. They worked busily about the Negro as though he were a post, quiet, intense, getting in each other’s way. He submitted to the handcuffs, looking swiftly and constantly from face to face. “What’s here, captain?” he said, . . . “What you say I done Mr. John? I ain’t done nothin. I swear ‘fore God.”
                  McLendon jerked the car door open. “Get in” he said. “Get iin”, he struck the Negro.
                  The barber leaned suddenly forward and now touched Mclendon’s arm.
                  “Let me out John,” he said.
                  “Jump out niggerlover,” Mclendon said without turning his head.

                  -William Faulkner, Dry September
            2. Working Class Nero March 25, 2015 at 2:38 am

               In other words they cannot prove a negative. They also would have troubling proving that she was not abducted by aliens that night either. But the important fact is that there is substantial evidence, all surrounding the Haven Monahan character, that she made the entire story up. Now sure, who knows, maybe something else happened, no one knows. Maybe she got attacked at a football team party but decided to blame it on frat boys instead? But what was claimed to have occurred in the Rolling Stone story just never happened.
   2. Jake Johnson March 24, 2015 at 8:18 pm

      “Social Justice Warrior” is the worst right-wing dog whistle. Stop spamming over here.
      1. Working Class Nero March 25, 2015 at 1:59 am

         The Rhetoric Police have made an appearance!

         While I think the label Social Justice Warrior fits the bill perfectly, perhaps you can suggest a Left Wing friendly term for what this mob did?

         Here is the money quote from a Washington Times article where the lead SJW defends his actions in attacking a fraternity over a fake rape:

         The young man, the progeny of a privileged family, readily and unrepentantly admitted his role and described the attack his friends carried out in details that match police and eyewitness reports. He also said he knew his actions would be considered illegal.

         “I texted one of my friends and I was like, ‘Let’s throw bottles at the Phi Psi house tonight,’ and she said, ‘Yes!’ I think that the article made it clear that victims at the university have no legitimate channels to take action, and I think vandalism is a completely legitimate form of action when like, legitimate authority is corrupt. I think it was justified,” he said in an interview with The Times…

         The student who claimed to participate in the attack said he had no regrets despite the fact that the accuracy of Jackie’s story in Rolling Stone has come under significant doubt, including the name of the fraternity where the alleged attack occurred. Asked whether he felt at all bad about attacking the wrong fraternity, he showed no remorse and justified the attack on the broader woes of “social injustice.”

         “I’ve done some thinking about that, but the answer is no. Everyone knows this is a house that does not respect women. They are part of the problem, and I do not feel bad. We have an objective set of laws that empowers the police to kill black men with impunity and protects white rapists at U.Va. from prosecution. The laws are only legitimate when they work. This is not a particularly radical campus, but we’re mad.

         Wow a rich kid using a fake rape to stir up racial tensions among the peasants. Who would have thought that would ever happen???
         1. Lambert Strether Post authorMarch 25, 2015 at 2:51 am

            “Wow a rich kid using a fake rape to stir up racial tensions among the peasants.” Since, IIRC, you were the one with a rigorous class analysis, you might consider adding a little rigor by showing that (1) the “rich kid” knew the rape was fake at the time, (2) that the “racial tensions” weren’t present because of prior events, and (3) what the heck “peasants” means. I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen the corvée at UVa, am I right?

            That said, kudos for pointing out that the first one to advocate violence is always… a Rule #1 violator. People who might actually suffer consequences tend to be more thoughtful.
            1. Working Class Nero March 25, 2015 at 3:48 am

               1. The super rich kid doesn’t care in the least whether the charges are true or not – they are just a vehicle to advance his class interests. He will be on to the next divisive cause by the time the actual truth comes out.

               2. The racial tensions are certainly present in a large degree due to exasperation by the wealthiest classes to make sure non-rich whites and blacks never join forces together against them. This is a classic divide ut regnes strategy that is repeated so often over and over again in many human societies.

               3. Peasants would be what the super rich see everyone else as….
      2. Lambert Strether Post authorMarch 25, 2015 at 2:33 am

         Actually, “Social Justice Warrior” (along with “SJW”) is very precisely a GamerGate dog whistle. Ugh. Not here, please. Seriously.

         And just to keep this on track with really being about journalism — i.e., how Rolling Stone butchered a story in a way that really damages people trying to solve a real problem — yes, party culture and abuse of women in fraternity settings is an real problem; as living in a college town I can testify to from personal experience as well. Granted, that means I have priors.

         NOTE I hardly think that pointing out the provenance of talking points and memes constitutes a “Rhetoric Police.” This being the NC comments section, presumably your words were carefully chosen.
3. Matt Pappalardo March 24, 2015 at 2:28 pm

   Not even Paul Krugman is a real Keynesian: Two economists argue that John Maynard Keynes’s insights have yet to go mainstream – Boston Globe

   …Keynes’s insights have enormous practical importance, according to Lance Taylor and Duncan Foley of the New School. Temperamentally opposite — Foley a brilliant theorist, Taylor a pragmatist influential in developing nations — they jointly received the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute on Monday.

   But isn’t Keynes now mainstream? No, say Foley and Taylor. The mainstream still sees economies as inherently moving to an optimal equilibrium, as Wicksell did. It still says demand causes short-run fluctuations, but only supply factors, such as the capital stock and technology, can affect long-run growth.

   EVEN PAUL KRUGMAN, a self-described Keynesian, Nobel Laureate, and New York Times columnist, writes in the 2012 edition of his textbook: “In the long run the economy is self-correcting: shocks to aggregate demand affect aggregate output in the short run but not in the long run.” He says Keynes and Wicksell are in key respects “essentially equivalent…”
   1. Benedict@Large March 24, 2015 at 8:48 pm

      Krugman describes himself as a Keynesian? Where?

      Krugman is actually a New Keynesian, which is actually a form of Monetarism. New Keynesianism might better be described as a demand-side monetarism.
4. diptherio March 24, 2015 at 2:35 pm

   As the smoking ruins of the American Dream smolder around us and the powers that be reach for their pitchfork repellent, the Solidarity Economy movement is creating new options for autonomy and collaboration:

   Solidarity Economy as Political Economy ~Yavor Tarinski

   But the solidarity economy should not be viewed as just an alternative economic practice, but as part of the broader frame of the creative resistance. The logic of creative resistance is to serve as a basis for alternative structures inside the cracks of the contemporary system and not to allow them to become isolated islands of freedom. Instead of aiming only to destroy the contemporary system, creative resistance encourages the creation of the cells and building blocks of a future society founded on solidarity and autonomy, showing that it is possible in practice. And the solidarity economy in particular, by allowing people to lead their lives independently (as much as possible) from the state and capitalist markets, sets the conditions for the creation of a new anthropological type — something that is necessary to create a new world that is more just and democratic.

   However we shouldn’t be too eager for quick results, because there is a difference between desire and action. We should always consider our local context and its limitations and try to act in accordance. Creative resistance acts as a water drop that, with perseverance, breaks the rock.
   1. diptherio March 24, 2015 at 2:36 pm

      Actually, the author is Bulgarian, so I probably shouldn’t say “American Dream”…maybe “capitalist dream” or “liberal dream” would be better…
5. timbers March 24, 2015 at 3:23 pm

   “If the Russians and Chinese do not expect a pre-emptive nuclear attack from Washington, they will be destroyed.”

   Paul Craig Robert’s last sentence in his Saker interview.

   Considering what Obama is doing in Ukraine/Putin is not unlike what GWB did in Iraq/Saddam, the silence from Dems is deafening. And one big difference between the two is the media is worse today than it was during the run up to the Iraq War.
6. Yves Smith March 24, 2015 at 3:30 pm

   The real story in the NYT story about free range kids is the way the Times distorted the comments. The comments skew overwhelmingly to agreement that children aren’t allowed enough autonomy. One buddy went through 450 comments and found 97% arguing that kids are too controlled now. But ALL of the comments arguing for more supervision were selected as “recommended” so the “recommend” comments skewed 2/3 arguing for more freedom, 1/3 citing horror stories like “I was raped”. Even with rape, that’s a dubious factoid, since overwhelmingly, child sexual abuse is perpetrated people known by the child, like relatives and neighbors.

   In other words, one of the arguments of the op-ed was that overprotective parenting resulted from media hyping dangers to children. So what does the Times do? Curate the comments so as to prove the article’s thesis!
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorMarch 25, 2015 at 2:35 am

      #EvenTheLiberalNewYorkTimes
7. DJG March 24, 2015 at 3:34 pm

   From Ryan Cooper’s article, What Rahm Can Learn from Crazy Lefties, linked up top to The Week: “American liberals of the Emanuel-ian mode were eager participants in the First Red Scare, which obliterated those Oklahoman socialists, and in the second one, which made frenzied anti-leftism a precondition for mainstream politics. Left-bashing developed enough momentum to carry it far beyond the death of the Soviet Union — as late as 2004, Peter Beinart wrote in bold advocacy of purging antiwar voices like Michael Moore and MoveOn from the Democratic Party.” The Democratic Party, with liberals in control, moved farther and farther to the right, and now, it is engaged in careerism and in fighting over a sliver of the political spectrum with the Republicans. But leftism means a vision of equality and redistribution of wealth, and neo-libs and neo-cons wouldn’t want that breaking out. Again, Frum’s Law: The Democrats hate their base.
   1. JerseyJeffersonian March 24, 2015 at 8:46 pm

      As found in yesterday’s links section:

      http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/04/07/misrepresenting-the-left/

      Liberalism has come to have very little to do with the Left, both out of choice as well as out of pants-shitting fear of being tagged as “Leftist”. Republicans hammer away on the (increasingly ridiculous) contention that Democrats are indeed “Leftist”. So, in terror, today’s Democrat party obligingly runs away from any identification with the Left, and now even looks askance at being characterized as “Liberal”. Thus the Democrats’ ideological handle cranks, the ratchet spins, and every time the pawl clicks into position on the next tooth the party-acceptable line moves further and further toward the Right.

      Could it be any more clear that there is no place for a leftist or left libertarian in the Democrat party?
8. DJG March 24, 2015 at 3:39 pm

   Further on the wages of Guantanamo: Harper’s Magazine, April issue, which is likely behind a paywall but still exists in a hold-it-in-your-hand-and-read paper edition. Pardiss Kebiaei’s “Life after Guantanamo,” about a father and son, also Syrian, arrested on the flimsiest of grounds. And if I may comment again on the neo-lib and neo-con distinction, I note that neither has accepted any responsibility for torture by the USA or proposed how to set matters right (which is going to mean a series of highly embarrassing trials). Torture delegitimizes the justice system and the state, which is the neo-con and neo-lib project.
   1. Jack March 24, 2015 at 5:10 pm

      Hey man, ‘mistakes were made’. No ones to blame. You win some, you lose some. It’s all a wash, let’s just let the past lie and look forward, not backward, to a brighter future (of further kidnappings, detentions, torture and now drone strikes).

      I mean, it’s not like aey-rabs are real people anyway…
      1. Jay M March 24, 2015 at 10:10 pm

         if the elite definition of looking forward is cover your ass then the future looks unseemly
         sniping muppets seems rather useless, rather than a test of upholstery
      2. Lambert Strether Post authorMarch 25, 2015 at 2:51 am

         Bad apples, I’d say.
   2. Strangely Enough March 24, 2015 at 7:19 pm

      “[A]n endless horror story.” The Intercept:

      Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni national who has been detained at the American prison facility at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, weighs only 98 pounds. Never charged with a crime, al-Alwi, now 35 years old, is one of many detainees at the camp who have gone on a prolonged hunger strike.
9. Foy March 25, 2015 at 5:25 am

   There’s been a few articles recently on kids playing outside, comparing to yesteryear etc. Here’s another to add to the sad pile…need another reason why kids wont go out and play? Try this for size…a mother’s 11 yo and 6 yo children were detained by police on 3 separate occasions when on their own either riding a bike out the front of their house or the 11 yo walking to the local library 6 blocks way (which the parents deemed quite safe as it was past the local school).

   The reason the police kept giving was that a ‘concerned citizen’ had reported the kids, worried for their safety…

   http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/help_my_boys_were_stopped_three_times_by_police_for_being_outside_unsupervised/

   “Despite our best efforts to allay their fears, our children now won’t leave our property without our company, out of the legitimate fear that they will be stopped by police. Our youngest son (now 7) won’t even play in the front yard alone. He no longer rides his bike because there is nowhere flat to ride it unless one of us is able to make the time to go with him to the park (less than a block from our house).  “

   That ‘concerned citizen’ is working overtime. Why do I get the feeling that the end result of intimidated kids is a feature, not a bug, of a grander plan. The police state keeps ratcheting up the fear factor and closing in, …
   1. Demeter March 25, 2015 at 8:00 am

      This is not unusual, not in this day and age. Fear is the only appropriate state of mind, because the State is fearful of its disenfranchised People, and the State has many ways to hurt them (us), pre-emptively, if necessary…and more evil designs are drawn up daily.

      We are raising a nation of emotionally crippled children who will rebel wildly (or not) to gain autonomy…or fail in the attempt. I’m mindful of the Japanese shut-ins…kids who never leave their rooms, and the parents who created them. Just as the US followed Japan into the Liquidity trap, so we are following them into other top-down-created disasters.

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