Wonks Anonymous

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Chris Martin — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:18:00 GMT

As a trained Keynesian Economist Wonks Anonymous must confess that we are, as a lot, woefully ignorant of the realities of politics and the general corruption of this Glorious Capitalist System that we live under.

He will note the middle class and upper middle class background and a sheltered life lived among the groves of academia can explain a great deal of this ignorance. Most working class students exit their principles classes early.

He is therefore cheered to see that, for all the misery that it has caused, our current crisis has ombued a number of excellent economists with almost revolutionary sentiments.

Anything that radicalizes Paul Krugman cannot be all bad.

Deficit Reduction

Chris Martin — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 18:44:00 GMT

The United States currently pays $20 billion dollars per year in direct farm subsidies. Most of the money goes to corn which mainly goes into the corn sweeteners that make us all fatter and push many people into type 2 diabetes. The second biggest crop is cotton which is grown mainly in the Central Valley of California with subsidized water.

As the glorious biPartisan Deficit Commission sets its sights on the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction and the tax exemption for employer provided health care because these represent aid to people who are not in dire poverty and distort economic choices we should note these forgotten sources of waste and inefficiency.

Why are we paying large landowners to do things that emphatically do not need to be done? Why are all of our "Free Market Economists" and assorted very serious people so silent on this particular form of domestic Crony Capitalism. Where are agricultural subsidies in Paul Ryan's Roadmap For America?

Wonks Anonymous imagines that the dinners thrown by the agricultural lobby for the folks in D.C. must be very grand indeed.

The Brief for Secession

Chris Martin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:52:00 GMT

While the nation turns toward Republicans and austerity the SF Comical notes the the GOP in California actually suffered major defeats. They lost the Governorship and two seats in the legislature and the ability to hold up the state budget with the nay votes of only one third of the legislator.

The Comical, being the Comical, goes on to report the usual blather spouted by GOP operatives about reaching out to Hispanics and touching the suburban voters and so on but Wonks Anonymous believes that there is a more serious divide operating here.

Here in California we have become another country, dividing from the rest of the nation. We have moved apart in the only way that nations and people move apart. We have crossed a spiritual divide while the rest of the nation has chosen to stay where they were.

Denominations and creeds do not matter that much, they are not the essence of spirituality, what does matter is the fundamental view of the world.

The old spirituality is founded on the belief in limited good. There are only a certain number of places in heaven. Love must be guarded and limited by laws since it is only spent and never renewed or enlarged. Prosperity also must be held tightly or it too will vanish.

God has created a narrow chartered world and we must obey his laws and submit to him if we want any hope of love, prosperity and salvation. If gays are allowed marriage then there will be less love for straight people. If workers are paid more then there will be nothing left for entrepreneurs. If the rigid rules of conventional JudeoChristian religion are not enforced by the state then believers will no longer be assured that they have places in heaven.

In this religion there is no room for human love or creativity because we are fallen and our hearts can create nothing but evil. There can be no renewal and growth because the wellsprings of growth have been blocked and condemned at every turning.

By contrast the Left Coast has developed its own haphazard spiritual orientation, compounded of scraps and patches of Paganism, Christianity, Psychology, 12 Step Programs and Tree Hugging Dirt Worship.

And, whatever form it takes, this spirituality recognizes one fundamental thing. That is that human love and creativity are good and that they have infinite potential. We are not sinners in the hands of an angry God. We are good, working in cooperation with whatever gods there may or may not be to improve ourselves and to create a better world.

Welcome to humanism, secular or otherwise.

And now, more than ever, we face a fundamental social and economic crisis that is rooted in the selfishness and restrictions of the old spirituality, Thousands sit in enforced idleness because the nation fears to spend hoarded tokens of value and these tokens, unspent, become meaningless pieces of paper and metal. For the economic details of this see Krugman's excellent blog.

The rest of the nation is destroying itself with its belief in human evil and limited good. We do not believe in these things. Is there any reason that we should go down to hell with them?

Defining Devience Down

Chris Martin — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 16:27:00 GMT

So the ever ready with an excuse, Debra J Saunders of the SF Comical tells us why we should love Carly Fiorina:

The senator also is going after Fiorina for laying off 30,000 workers and outsourcing jobs when she was at HP's helm - then taking a $21 million severance package when the board fired her.

Which makes Fiorina guilty of - what? - having been a Silicon Valley CEO.

So my candidate sent thousands of jobs off, mainly to a repressive regime that routinely arrests dissidents and harvests their organs to sell to rich westerners. So she forced the board of a large corporation to give here $21 million to get rid of her thus making the corporation even less able to generate jobs. Everybody in her circle does stuff like that.

Sure my client just killed 10 innocent people but hey, that's what serial killers do! What do you expect?

Besides, Society made Carly do it. Here she was, ready to create jobs and prosperity, another John Galt. Listen to her own words:

Fiorina doesn't run away from her record. At the only televised debate of the race, Fiorina told a former HP employee, "This is the 21st century. Any job can go anywhere. And what worries me deeply is the jobs we lose now may not come back. And so we have to fight for every job. The truth is that California has a higher than average unemployment rate" - it's 12.4 percent - "because we are destroying jobs and others are fighting harder for our jobs.

If you guys would stop asking for decent pay, pensions and public services we could just roll up our sleeves and get to work creating an upper class paradise with low taxes and a competitive economy. Then we could really live well like the rulers of China in our walled compounds with plenty of cheap servants and lots of people to look down on.

Why Obama Will Never Be a "Christian"

Chris Martin — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 03:22:00 GMT

Even a blind sow stumbles on an ear of corn every once in a while and Wonks Anonymous notes that Ross Douthat has come a cross a serious, important observation on American Christianity.

Readers may remember that there has been a great deal of recent controversy over the shocking ignorance of devout believers of the main points of their faith and the doctrines of other faiths. Which ignorance ill intentioned atheists have roundly mocked.

Ross has an answer quoted from someone who is on the faculty of Calvin College:

I continue to be suspicious of such surveys and reports precisely because they reduce religion to “knowledge.” … But what if religion is not primarily about knowledge? What if the defining core of religion is more like a way of life, a nexus of action? What if, as per Charles Taylor, a religious orientation is more akin to a “social imaginary,” which functions as an “understanding” on a register that is somewhat inarticulable?

Now Wonks Anonymous wholehearted agrees with this idea and he would go on to describe the social imaginary of activist modern American Christianity. The sort of religion practiced by The Catholic Church and most Evangelical sects.

First that the distribution of wealth and power in this world is, with some few exceptions, divinely ordained. Except for Hollywood and George Soros, the wealthy are given their wealth and their dominion over us by God and only on the rare occasions when Democrats do get into office is there a reason to question God's providence in the political sphere.

Likewise poverty and disease are God's punishments for sin.

Second, in all matters of faith and morals the masses do best by blindly obeying the teachings of religious professionals. This is explicit in Catholicism. Despite evangelical traditions of dissent it is also true of Protestantism. pastors of each television ministry may have slightly different interpretations of scripture but the masses had best follow.

Third there are only two sins: disobedience and disobedient sex. Which sins are quite naturally tied to the deepest and most ineradicable human impulses, autonomy and pleasure.

For American Christianity - no I do not include the Unitarians or the milder sects that take the peaceful teachings of Jesus seriously - we are all damned from the start and only a life of misery in submission to the churches and the rich can purify us of our stiff necked rebelion and make us worthy of heaven.

Hence the increasingly moralistic approach to our increasingly miserable and dysfunctional economy and the continued propagation of hate against sexual minorities.

No matter how hard he may try Obama believes in people, he believes that the misery of this world can be lessened. He believes that the distribution of power and wealth in this world can be made to serve human happiness and do not represent the ineffable plan of an uncommunicative God with anger management issues.

Obama does not get it and he should stop trying. Better to be hung as a neopagan than try to feign an inhuman and damnable Christianity.

God's Punishment

Chris Martin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:20:00 GMT

For several years now we have had a perfectly good vaccine for HPV - that would be the virus that causes genital warts - but it has recently come to Wonks Anonymous attention that this vaccine is not approved for men over a certain age.

Which can be an issue since genital warts appear on areas not covered by condoms.

The thinking behind this, if we may call it "thinking", seems to be that most men of a certain age will have caught the virus during their misspent youth and, if they have not, they really ought to just settle down, follow social norms, and shut up.

Indeed the threat of an embarrassing, disfiguring but not necessarily fatal retrovirus should serve well to keep our society moral.

As to women of a certain age who have contracted HPV, why they should either be in a monogamous relationship or off in a nunnery repenting their sins.

Sigh!

Profiles In Waffling

Chris Martin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:38:00 GMT

So candidate for governor Meg Whitman - I made a bunch of money as a crony Capitalist now let me run your state - has kind of come out sort of strongly against Marriage Equality. I quote from an article by Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli in today's SF Comical:

Whitman's first definitive statements on how she would handle the issue as governor came hours before she spoke at the opening of the three-day state GOP convention in San Diego, where she is facing open hostility from conservatives over her positions on illegal immigration and climate change.

"I think the governor of California and the attorney general today have to defend the Constitution and have to enable the judicial process to go along ... and an appeal to go through," Whitman said. "So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court."

Whitman was referring to District Judge Vaughn Walker's decision earlier this month that struck down Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban, as unconstitutional. It is being appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where neither Schwarzenegger, the GOP governor, nor Brown, Whitman's Democratic rival for governor, is defending it. In an unusual circumstance, the organization that sponsored Prop. 8 is defending it in court.

Now Marinucci and Garofoli are fine political reporters but I can hardly agree that the statement reproduced above is definitive. Rather it seems designed to convey some kind of vague legal posture that seeks to relegates gays to second class citizenship while placing the blame for this barbaric discrimination on California voters.

Indeed, if it were not surrounded by the context provided by our reporters, the statement would be perfectly incomprehensible.

I would do my duty and enforce this law even if I, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, think it is silly and maybe even hurtful. Because why? Because the initiative process is sacred and anyway I need to throw some red meat to the brown shirts who form my political base.

Note that Whitman never said that she thinks gays are out to destroy the family or that she supports the intent of Proposition H8. If she said that she would lose all of the gay Republican vote.

Instead Whitman would like to have it all, gays and fundamentalist fanatics.

When I am not certain if someone is lying to me or to someone else I find it a good rule of thumb to assume that they are lying to me.

Love Wins A Battle Against H8

Chris Martin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:57:00 GMT

So Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled on California's little experiment in bigotry and found, as a matter of fact and law, the Proposition H8 - remember the one that sought to prevent gays from marrying like everyone else - is unconstitutional. This is reported by John Schwartz in the NY Times

Better still the opinion is careful and devastating to the case for Prop H8. Reviewing the evidence presented by the proponents of Prop H8, Walker finds no reason for preventing same sex marriage other than personal moral disapproval of gays and lesbians by the proponents of the proposition. His task was made easier by the failure of proponents to present any case beyond "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve and besides we are in a majority."

He rightly observes that personal moral disapproval is insufficient to enact discriminatory laws.

Now Wonks Anonymous has had some rather serious personal experiences that have led him to conclude that Christians of the sort that supported proposition H8 are immoral hypocrites who actively recruit children to their perverted cult. He prays for the day when a majority share his views.

If that day comes Wonks Anonymous will be sorely tempted to ban Christian marriages. He thanks Judge Walker for preventing this possibility and he would recommend that the proponents of Proposition H8 thank Judge Walker as well. You will not always have as many votes as you do now.

Piety

Chris Martin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:25:00 GMT

Every day I wake up and pray that Paul Krugman will be shown to be profoundly, spectacularly wrong.

It's not that I don't worship and adore the good professor. It's just that life would be so much better if all of his dire predictions did not have a habit of coming true.

Is it too late for the Vulcans to land with an insatiable demand for our quaint products?

It Gets Better

Chris Martin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:30:00 GMT

I just noticed the final paragraphs of the piece on the revolutionary from Tuolumne County who just paid a visit to the Bay Area and got involved in a little fire fight with the Highway Patrol.

A quote from his mother, whose guns and truck he used:

Janice Williams said she kept the guns because "eventually, I think we're going to be caught up in a revolution." But she said she had told her son many times that "he didn't have to be on the front lines."

She said she had no explanation for his actions.

Read the full story by Bob Egelko and Henry K. Lee here .

Revolution

Chris Martin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:43:00 GMT

Byron Williams of Tuolumne County was angry at left wing politicians in Washington so he put on his bullet proof vest, emptied his mom's gun locker and drove his pickup to Oakland. When the Highway patrol tried to stop him from exercising his constitutional right to speed and weave in and out of traffic on the freeway he started shooting at them.

Check out the story by Bob Egelko and Henry K Lee of the SF Comical here.

No officers were shot, thank God, Also it is nice to know that he was stopped before he could get to SF and gun down left wing voters with the handgun, rifle and shotgun he was packing.

But it gets better. This guy is a convicted felon who thanks to the NRA, has access to ample supplies of guns of all kinds from mom. Also, thanks to the NRA, no one would even think of holding mom accountable for the fact that her felon son got a hold of her guns.

Maybe when the gun advocates talk about keeping guns out of the hands of felons they mean non white, left wing felons.

Because all the white, right wing felons need their family guns to overthrow the evil, unamerican left wing government.

David Brooks Is Ignorant

Chris Martin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:10:00 GMT

But the members of the Stanford and Harvard Economics Departments whom he quotes in today's column should just be ashamed of themselves.

Brooks has joined the crusade of "serious" people who are actively promoting fiscal austerity in the face of stable prices and 10% unemployment. Because studies by various conservative hired guns from these same economics departments show that, in the 1990's the US economy grew while fiscal policy created a surplus. Plus, in the 1980's Ireland and somewhere else had a similar experience.

Wonks Anonymous wonders where Mr. Brooks was when GW Bush and Alan Greenspan were preaching tax cuts and deficits in 2000 but let that pass.

The fact is that in the 1990s, before deficit reduction measures came into play, a large investment boom had already begun to get up steam. In these circumstances Bill Clinton did the right thing by creating a surplus which freed up funds for private investors. Likewise, in the 1980's Ireland and other nations could rely on the glorious US Supply Side budget deficits to fuel demand in their own economies. In the meantime the US manufacturing economy was going down the toilet because of these same deficits.

One would expect an opportunistic political hack, like Brooks, to get this wrong. The economists should know better. In particular Robert Hall, who argued in the 1990's editions of his Macro text that deficits do not matter, should at least try to be consistent.

The Way To A Man's Health

Chris Martin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Lies somewhere south of his stomach.

Wonks Anonymous beloved and gentle spouse has lovingly suggested that Wonks Anonymous would be ever so much sexier if he were to lose say 20 pounds.

Wonks Anonymous has lost 12 so far.

Solidarity

Chris Martin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:27:00 GMT

Back in the 1980's when the Poles were striking to save the Gdansk shipyards our government and our press were all about the right of workers in Poland to form independent unions free of government control.

So years have passed - the Iron Curtain fell, Poland is now a free market Catholic paradise and the unions and shipyards are mostly gone.

Meanwhile Keith Bradsher reports in the NY Times about workers at a Honda parts plant in China who are striking for higher wages and their fight to form - guess what - a labor union free of government control.

Wonks Anonymous awaits the outcry from our betters. Perhaps he should get his hearing checked?

BJ Miller

Chris Martin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:28:00 GMT

Was an awkward kid. He was overweight and he bred dogs. He also tended to share way too much information about this process with anyone who might listen. BJ made Wonks Anonymous uncomfortable.

Then one day a story spread through Wonks Anonymous fine Catholic high school that gave BJ a new nickname. That nickname would be Blow Job.

The rest of the story is brief. A little later - a few weeks, a month, on Christmas break - BJ had an accident. His car went off some lonely California road. He was found dead.

In case you all didn't get it, all you folks who long for the days before the sexual revolution, you people who want to see gays safely back in the closet so that you can practice your religion without being offended by people who believe and act otherwise, Wonks Anonymous is signifying. You are the targets.

For all of your talk about rationality and God's plan for us, for all of your loving kindness and forgiveness, sex is a powerful, elemental drive. You cannot channel it into the narrow confines that your laws set for it without the brutal use of force. That would include physical punishment but, more important, shame, guilt and verbal abuse. There is no smart bomb to control sex the way that you want to control it.

Most of us who grew up in the golden years of sexual repression survived and carry the scars today. Mostly we carry them alone. Some did not make it. BJ was collateral damage.

Wonks Anonymous Has Had Other Things To Think About

Chris Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:14:00 GMT

But he is beginning to worry about the sudden mass mania for austerity - would that be an anti-bubble?

Fortunately Paul Krugman is there for you even if Wonks Anonymous is occupied elsewhere. Readers are urged to check out his blog.

Immigration Fantasies

Chris Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 02:45:00 GMT

Rent Boy, like Wonks Anonymous a regular denizen of the comment threads of the NY Times, offers an extensive comment on Wonks Anonymous modest proposal on immigration:

This is a kooky idea. It would work but the country would suffer a beating in international diplomacy and human rights concerns. It would be like legalizing human trafficking. Terrorists and Criminal elements would gain the system and loan the money to potential immigrant with onerous interest rate they would never be able to pay back. And it would be legal. The immigrant families would suffer all because of the approval of the US for the trade traffic.

While under the current system no one ever charges immigrants to cross the border and they never take out massive loans to make it across the border. Also human traffickers never smuggle unfortunate women into the country to live as prostitutes.

Which leads Wonks Anonymous to conclude that Rent Boy is not only reality challenged but also reading deficient. In Wonks Anonymous proposal the immigrant owns the green card and she or he is free to walk away with it at any time. To keep human trafficking at a minimum Wonks Anonymous would add an entry interview for every green card holder. Interviewers would be trained and have at hand referral resources for people, particularly women, who seemed to be going into exploitative situations.

Excuse me miss but you appear to have been lured into the US under false pretenses. You can cash in that green card for a trip back to your native land or you can talk to Ms Dworkin here in the next room.

Instead Rent Boy would have us set up five immigration courts that Wonks Anonymous imagines would work 24/7 to process all the illegals that someone - we don't know who but someone - was catching. In addition we would throw criminal immigrants in jail. Because California isn't spending most of its money supporting prison guards already.

Meanwhile we do need more guest workers because businesses always need people who they can dump at will. Which will protect less skilled US citizens how?

At the same time we would need to cut social insurance to finance our immigration reforms.

Those kooky economists.

California Cares

Chris Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 02:06:00 GMT

About Wonks Anonymous and would like to make sure that he will be comfortable in his senility, and not burden his family or the state with the costs or his care.

In order to insure this happy outcome California would like to introduce Wonks Anonymous to several fine insurance companies who will collect regular monthly premiums from him in return for a, most likely incomprehensible, contract that purports to promise to pay for care during Wonks Anonymous dotage.

Except of course if the stock markets go south again in which case Wonks Anonymous accumulated premium payments will no doubt vanish. Or the company is bought out by an investor group that wants to increase returns and puts a bank of phone flunkies on the task of repeatedly denying payments due under contract. Or maybe someone's drunken uncle will just mislay the investment portfolio.

In which case Wonks Anonymous will be thousands of dollars poorer and the California will still wind up paying for his dotage.

Wonks Anonymous suggests that the state eliminate the middleman and take taxes from Wonks Anonymous to pay for the long term care of current dotards.

But what would the insurance salesmen, actuaries and phone flunkies do? The worlds saddest song. . .

That's How They Get You

Chris Martin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 19:25:00 GMT

From time to time Wonks Anonymous is foolish enough to answer the door to eager missionaries from the local Alameda Christian Center. Now, since these fine folks want the schools to protect their kids right to harass kids who do not meet their gender standards, the conversation is usually short.

Go away, you hate my gay friends and if you knew me any better you'd hate me too.

To which the response is inevitably: We don't hate them. We love and forgive them. We are ready to accept them into our church if they repent their sins and join us.

Which sets Wonks Anonymous thinking about the fundamental dynamic of Christian though control. Which dynamic he is quite familiar with, having been raised in the bosom of the Mother of All Churches. That being The One, Holy, Catholic and Appalling Church.

Most Christian sects work like this: On the one hand you have the Bad Cop. That would be the Law of Moses, a bloody, intricate and oppressive tribal code dating back to the more barbarous currents of the stone ages. On the other hand you have the Good Cop. That would be the impossibly sweet Jesus who knows you are a sinner and stands ready to forgive all of your past and future sins. Provided you buy in to the essential justice and righteousness of the laws of Moses.

Because the Law, in all of its variants, is impossible for any natural human being to follow we are all sinners, lower than dirt and living in fear of an angry God. Which tempts the more sensible young believers to follow Huck Finn and decide: Well, I guess I'll just go to hell then.

Except that Jesus stands ready to forgive you and bring you back into the fold. Provided that you make every effort to behave like a good little sheep. Which means going to Church events, voting for candidates backed by the Church and making lots of contributions to whatever priesthood happens to run your particular sect. Did I mention that you also have to buy in to the whole law thing and tell yourself and everyone else that you are a horrible sinner?

Nothing like self loathing to make folks docile.

If this improved human behavior it might be justifiable but, because the law is fundamentally opposed to most human impulses, people never really learn to integrate their instincts into personal and social relationships. They try to follow the rigid rules, they fall into "sin", beg forgiveness and try again. Naturally the sin is often spectacular and destructive. The rigid and unnatural "goodness" is always deadly and damaging.

British Petroleum Gets A Makeover

Chris Martin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:01:00 GMT

Wonks Anonymous got this from his beloved spouse who is a world famous graphic designer in her own right.

New, more appropriate branding for BP.