SCOTUS and the Affordable Care Act

There's lots of coverage about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision today that upholds most of President Obama's signature health care reform legislation, the Affordable Care Act. I'm therefore not going to link to any specific article; if you haven't already read or watched anything about it, do a Web search.

My only thought on the subject is, I'm wondering how President Obama and the Democrats generally will fumble the (unfortunately) important battle over the public perception of the Court's decision and of the Act itself. Because if recent history is any indication, they will screw up and lose that battle to the Republicans, even if the Dems have the facts on their side. Republicans in the last twenty years have excelled at repeating The Big Lie (which varies according to which issue they're pushing) often enough that people who aren't paying attention start believing it ("Saddam Hussein is linked to the 9/11 terrorists", for example).

A worrying and potentially more significant byproduct of today's decision is discussed in a blog post in the New York Times, namely, the potential gutting of the Commerce Clause. We may end up regretting this decision as much as we regret Citizens United in the not too distant future.

Oh, and with this Constitutional Twister of a decision (by which I mean it bends first one way, then another; you should see the disparate alliances he cobbled together in different parts of the decision to muster a bare majority for the whole), Chief Justice Roberts looks like he excels at playing the public-relations game. He has, at first blush, apparently improved the Court's battered reputation, about which he is known to care a good deal. Whether he is worth respecting for his judicial principles and dedication to a genuinely nonpartisan reading of the law and the Constitution is, in my opinion, still gravely in doubt. I suspect, though, that a few decades hence, he and this era's Court will not be as well-regarded as he would like.

Goodman on Ann Curry

If there's a silver lining to the strange brouhaha surrounding Ann Curry's tenure on the Today show, leading up to her ouster as its cohost, it's that the fuss has resulted in what looks like a future classic Tim Goodman column for The Hollywood Reporter.

Can’t this network do anything right? We’re a long way past “this is starting to get embarrassing” and nudging up against “this is starting to get pathological.”

Goodman reminds us again of NBC's fascinatingly and hilariously awful mishandling of the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien-Tonight Show succession. You would think one reputation-damaging, talent-related fiasco a decade would be enough, but no, the network can't seem to get enough.

All those years of Couric’s sincerity, which seemed so false to some (ahem), might have trained morning show viewers to want a certain someone. And perhaps Curry is not that person.

But is NBC absolutely sure that Savannah Guthrie is that person? I’m willing to bet that NBC has no idea whether Guthrie is the new It Host. Whoever made this decision probably got tired of having the bean counters in their office saying: “We’re hemorrhaging money, and we think it’s Curry. You’ve got to do something.”

I don't watch the networks' nauseatingly chipper morning products so I don't know or care whether Curry was any good in her role. I'm just grateful her travails gave Goodman an excuse to unleash the snark on the hapless NBC.

If we can't have Captain Kirk ...

In the category of "I don't know if this is good news or bad news for Obama" is a survey that finds more Americans think President Obama would be better able to handle an alien invasion than Mitt Romney.

No, really: I read this in a Los Angeles Times story.

And the survey didn't stop there.

It even asked which superhero Americans would turn to first in the event of an alien invasion. (It's the Hulk.)

I happen to believe that there must be extraterrestrial life, and very likely intelligent extraterrestrial life (the universe is just too big for Earth to be the only place harboring life of any kind), but I don't believe in the Hulk, so ... I'm not sure where this survey leaves me.

Denying science in North Carolina

Politicians in North Carolina are trying to legislate not merely in ignorance of science, but in defiance of it. According to a Los Angeles Times article:

The result is House Bill 819, a measure that would require sea level forecasts to be based on past patterns and would all but outlaw projections based on climate change data.

The bill is the result of a state commission's prediction of a disturbing 39-inch rise in sea level by 2100. "[C]oastal business and development leaders" were concerned that this prediction would cost them and current homeowners millions, so they pressured legislators to do something about it.

But perhaps I'm being too harsh. Perhaps the developers have genuine concerns about the quality of the research conducted by the commission.

[Tom] Thompson, director of the Beaufort County Economic Development Commission, called the 39-inch prediction "dishonest statistically" and no better than a coin flip. In an interview, he dismissed climate change as "a phobia" pushed by environmentalists.

John Droz Jr., NC-20's science advisor, said commission scientists were "bent on promoting their personal political agenda." NC-20's projections "are entirely about the science" and have nothing to do with developers, or economics, Droz wrote in a letter to the News & Observer newspaper.

Let's see: Thompson, who does not appear to have scientific training, dismisses climate change outright, while Droz, who presumably has some kind of scientific training if he's a "science advisor", impugns the motivations of scientists with whom he disagrees (or perhaps is paid to disagree). One completely dismisses a scientific finding with plenty of evidence behind it, the other disingenuously attacks the character of the messengers. There's a pair you can rely on.

Perhaps they don't trust the commission's scientists because they know how untrustworthy they themselves are.

Or maybe they just have a lot of money on the line.

The politicians, of course, are all about the money, and I'm sure the business community has thrown plenty of it to push Bill 819.

If I lived in North Carolina, I'd be plenty sore that some of my elected representatives were behaving like jackasses, ignoring the best scientific recommendations available in favor of avowedly biased, financially motivated, antiscientific claptrap.

The great pity is, none of those elected representatives will be alive to see how wrong they were about climate change, and how devastating the consequences are for future generations. It's also a great pity that those of you who keep electing these venal, ass-ignorant politicos won't be alive to see how badly your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren fare in the damaged world you leave them in your own ignorance and willful blindness.

Aaron Sorkin being glib

I didn't think I'd be linking to a Hollywood Reporter story that wasn't written by Tim Goodman, but I had to comment on this remark by writer/producer Aaron Sorkin:

I think it [the United States] is the greatest country in the world, and a lot of it has to do with what Emily Mortimer's character said: "We are a country that keeps saying that we can do better." It's also a country where I'm allowed to write a show like this. I'm glad we're that. I'm two generations removed from being blacklisted in Hollywood, I surely would have been one of those guys called in front of the committee, and we're not that country anymore.

[emphasis added]

Really, Mr. Sorkin? Really?

You know what the surest sign is that a country is susceptible to the authoritarian thinking that Joseph McCarthy exemplified?

Denying that it's possible.

Don't ever think your neighbors — or you — are immune to the kind of hypernationalism, jingoism, paranoia, and blame-mongering that the U.S. displayed so disgracefully in the 1950s. Hell, we demonstrated these same terrible traits again in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — and some, especially the more despicable commentators and politicians who style themselves as "conservatives", continue to indulge their basest instincts along the same lines. (Some of the latter may just see dollar signs and not be true believers themselves, but they're just as despicable.)

The ugly truth is, we are still that country.

That doesn't mean there's something uniquely broken about the United States. The U.S. is no worse than most other countries in that respect.

The ugliness that McCarthy so enthusiastically spewed, and encouraged so many others to spew in their turn, is deeply embedded in human nature. To deny that is to leave yourself open to falling victim to it. That's why these dark impulses have resurfaced again and again: in the Sudan, in Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia, in India, and perhaps most tragically and unforgettably, in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

I've never watched any of Sorkin's TV shows or movies. I only hope they're not as glib as he was in this interview.

Speaking of where the jobs are ...

In the previous post, I asserted:

Tech, being concentrated on intellectual property, doesn't need a huge number of people to do anything: it needs a limited number of people to think of things. To the extent that the tech industry makes tangible goods, those goods are made overseas.

... Tech is a high-profile but totally insufficient source of employment.

I had been thinking of the kind of work performed by software companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Companies like these don't have retail arms, nor do biotech firms like Genentech. Even companies that make hardware, like H-P and Dell, don't tend to have their own stores; those that do, like Dell and Gateway (if either still has any), have a vanishingly small number.

The exception to the foregoing, of course, is Apple, which has a robust, growing and high-profile retail operation. In spite of that high profile, I confess I had completely forgotten about these stores until I ran across the New York Times' lengthy piece discussing some former workers' dissatisfaction with their pay and working conditions.

It's worth reading the whole piece, especially if you've always suspected there was something a little, well, off about the Apple fans of your acquaintance — if, in other words, you've wondered if they didn't qualify as "fanatics" rather than mere "fans". However, if you simply can't be bothered to read it, then at least note this telling statement:

The Internet and advances in computing have created untold millionaires, but most of the jobs created by technology giants are service sector positions — sales employees and customer service representatives, repairmen and delivery drivers — that offer little of Silicon Valley’s riches or glamour.

In other words, these service jobs are no more likely to elevate you into the middle class than working at Walmart or Starbucks. And yet, these jobs constitute the majority of those created by high tech. The high-paying jobs are quite few, by comparison, and totally inadequate to creating a middle class.

The Times article simply reinforces what I said in that last post: this country isn't creating things any more, but instead is providing services. Since altogether too many of those services are not worth a great deal of money, the majority of people aren't making a great deal of money — hence, fewer and fewer people can genuinely afford the kind of life that we have convinced ourselves we require. And my guess is that even if you're frugal, you're still having a tough time making ends meet on the salaries offered by most of the service jobs out there today.

To dig ourselves out of the hole we're in, we must do something either to lower our overall costs (so our limited incomes go further), or to increase our overall income. Neither of these is easy to do, and don't believe any politician who tells you otherwise (I'm looking at you, Mitt Romney).

And while we could think in terms of fixing our services-based economy to work better (again, either by lowering costs or increasing incomes), wouldn't it be nice if we started to restore our self-respect and our national security by restoring our ability to build tangible goods again at the same time? I'm not just talking about making new and modern factories: I'm also talking about not forgetting the hard-won lore and wisdom of the people who spent years observing and understanding what it takes to build things, big and small — tapping these people's brains before they're all dead and we have to relearn what they knew on our own.

What I'm talking about is anathema to free-marketeers because I'm talking about creating and implementing a national strategy, one that places the interests of the entire nation above the interests of shareholders. It's an audacious thought, to defy Adam Smith's invisible hand — and yet, this is what some of the U.S.'s most successful competitors like Germany and China have done. There are probably pitfalls to be avoided along the way (China's in particular is not a model we should emulate), but before you dismiss the idea out of hand, ask yourself this:

Has the last thirty to forty years of free-market sloganeering — in particular, the mad dash to deregulate everything in the name of unfettered capitalism — left this country better off? Has it left you better off?

If you answered "yes" to either of those questions, you're either part of the 1 percent, or you haven't been paying attention. Enron and the toxic-mortgage meltdown are the best-known catastrophes that arose from reckless deregulation in the last decade, but they're merely the tip of a very ugly iceberg. More shoes are waiting to drop (one fell on Jamie Dimon recently), and some of them could be much less abstract than the ones we've seen so far: for instance, I have a bad feeling about the long-term health consequences of hydraulic fracturing, which is not subject to clean-water regulations promulgated by the EPA (thanks to shady dealings between the energy industry, Congress and the George W. Bush administration).

Jobs, deregulation, declining wages, increasing costs: it's such a tangled web we allowed big business to weave. Yet we have to start untangling it, if we're to keep alive at least some of what makes our nation great. And time's a-wasting.

The lie of the free market

"If you work hard, you will succeed. If you don't succeed, it's because you didn't work hard."

That's essentially the credo of free-marketeers everywhere. It's intuitively appealing in part because it's such a simple formulation.

That credo rests on an unspoken assumption that remains unspoken because it seems so obvious: the playing field is level. Everybody has an even chance to climb the ladder.

It's time for us to acknowledge that the playing field isn't level. Not in the United States.

I'm not talking about the well-known phenomenon that wealth begets wealth. That has always been the case, and will always be. I'm talking about the reality that if you want to go from working at Walmart to earning a decent, middle-class living, the odds are stacked hugely against you.

Don't believe me? Then tell me: where are the jobs?

Even if you have a college degree, the jobs are scarce. And if you don't have a college degree, the jobs are not only scarce, they're totally inadequate to supporting a family.

Where are the good-paying jobs of yesteryear? Sent offshore.

Where is the seed crop, so to speak, for creating new good-paying jobs? It's either on Wall Street, figuratively and literally speaking, or in tech. The trouble is, Wall Street today is essentially parasitic and tech industries are all about intellectual property. Being parasitic, Wall Street doesn't create real value, it creates imaginary value by leveraging real assets in irresponsible ways. Tech, being concentrated on intellectual property, doesn't need a huge number of people to do anything: it needs a limited number of people to think of things. To the extent that the tech industry makes tangible goods, those goods are made overseas.

Wall Street, in other words, is a morally bankrupt source of employment. Tech is a high-profile but totally insufficient source of employment.

The U.S. economy today is geared toward providing services, not manufacturing goods. It's an emphasis that is guaranteed to spiral this country downward, both in terms of economic prowess and the difficult to measure capacity of self-respect. Except for food (and not even all of that), we don't make things for one another: we offer services to one another. The trouble with that is, we still need tangible goods.

Kevin Phillips in the 2006 book American Theocracy explains that since the 1980s, the financial-services industry has played an outsized role not only in the economy, but in policymaking. The industry skewed federal legislation and regulation to benefit itself and in the process promoted the transfer of good-paying jobs overseas. With those jobs went the middle-class standard of living.

At one time, this nation might have been the land of opportunity free-marketeers still think it is. But no longer. The playing field stopped being level twenty or even thirty years ago, and it has been tilting away from the 99% ever since. It's time for us to acknowledge that reality — and to stop calling attempts to restore some kind of equilibrium "socialist" or other phony, stupid epithets.

And it's time to call those supposed defenders of the free market who are perpetuating the distorted status quo what they are: self-interested tools who are looking out for nobody but themselves. That's the capitalist way, of course, but it only works when we all have the economic freedom to pursue our own self-interest. We don't have that today.

(This post wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been inspired — or perhaps the word is "outraged" — by tonight's episode of Moyers & Company in which Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith excoriated our too-big-to-fail financial institutions.)