Our Asymmetrical Parties
Jonathan Chait
Michael Gerson has a pretty interesting column noticing that the Democratic Party is riven in two, while the Republican Party is unified:
Republican leaders have proved themselves capable of producing proposals that unite perhaps 90 percent of their congressional delegation, losing just a thin margin at each end of their ideological spectrum. But the job is made easier by the narrowness of the Republican ideological spectrum. A party that used to range from moderates to Reagan conservatives now ranges from Reagan conservatives to Tea Party conservatives, both offended by President Obama’s fiscal excesses.
On fiscal issues, the Democratic Party is really two parties. One consists of European-style social democrats, represented by leaders such as Nancy Pelosi. ...
The other Democratic Party is socially liberal and pro-business. These Democrats attempted to weed out the excesses of Obama’s health reform in the Senate.
Gerson doesn't attempt to explain the cause of this asymmetry, which has long interested me. My argument is that it reflects two interrelated things. Economically, the GOP has a relatively unified base: business. Of course, businesses can disagree with each other, but the business perspective is relatively unified on economic questions. The Democrats, by contrast, have an economic base holding together business as well as labor and environmentalists. It's a highly fractured coalition.
The ideological asymmetry, which in many ways stems from the underlying economic asymmetry, is that the Republican Party is the political arm of the conservative movement, whereas the progressive movement -- to the extent one even exists -- is merely one actor jockeying for influence within the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has a coherent economic philosophy -- government intervention bad -- whereas the Democratic Party is primarily a catchbasin for those who disagree with the Republican philosophy. (One result of this asymmetry is that, as Jacob Weisberg notes, the GOP is uniquely prone of constructing an alternate reality impervious to expertise and data.)
Naturally, Gerson imbues his argument with a pro-Republican spin. The GOP is the party of fiscal seriousness, he argues, belying the entire history of the last three decades, and especially the history of the presidency he worked for. Gerson argues that most Democrats are European-style social Democrats, citing as his evidence the fact "that they would have preferred a single-payer health-care system." It's a telling example. By Gerson's definition, nearly everybody in every advanced country except the United States is a socialist. Canadian conservatives favor single-payer health insurance. British conservatives favor state-run health insurance. Health care is just so inherently filled with market failure that it's possible to favor heavy government intervention there without having a general disposition to "increase the size and role of government," as Gerson writes. Indeed, it's impossible to oppose a heavily government-directed system of health insurance unless you share the theological fealty to free market superiority that is the unique province of the American right.
The people who lead the Democratic Party need to be able to craft policies that appeal across a fairly wide economic spectrum, and are usually mashed together under some forgettable slogan attempting to communicate the basic idea that markets usually work but we should correct them when they don't. The people who lead the Republican Party need to appeal to a coalition of business leaders generally interested in lower taxes and regulation, and they compete to embody a governing philosophy that takes a straightforward position that small government is good. The structure of the Democratic Party isn't always going to get things right, but the structure of the Republican Party is almost guaranteed to wind up advocating policies heavily tilted toward the interests of a narrow economic elite.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Freedom Rides
There were two freedom rides: one in 1961 and one in 1964. I am reading a book about the one in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The 1961 one took place across Alabama. It is important to know the story of both.
Freedom Riders in Montgomery after 50 years find a better city, a better state, a better people
Published: Friday, May 20, 2011, 2:44 PM Updated: Friday, May 20, 2011, 3:26 PM
By Christine Kneidinger, al.com al.com
Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary
MONTGOMERY, Alabama — On May 20, 1961, John Lewis and Jim Zwerg were among Freedom Riders beaten at Montgomery's Greyhound station.
This morning, five decades after the two rode to end segregated transportation, they arrived in Montgomery again.
They talked about what the 21 riders achieved 50 years earlier and celebrated the opening of The Freedom Rides Museum at 201 S. Court St.
Lewis and Zwerg today were joined by a throng of supporters.
Lewis, a U.S. representative from Georgia, was in 1961 a 21-year-old seminary student who had joined other riders to end segregated interstate transportation.
The small station-turned-museum commemorates a large achievement, Lewis said.
"I think the Freedom Rides have changed America forever. The City of Montgomery is a better city, Alabama a better state and now we are a better people," said Lewis. "I say thank you, because now we are now one people, we are one family and we are one bus."
Zwerg, then 21, was an exchange student at Beloit College in Wisconsin. He was violently beaten by members of the Klan that day. He was hospitalized and did not continue his journey. But he remembers the day for more than the violence he endured.
"Montgomery was a city of firsts for me," Zwerg said this morning. "It was the first time I ever got the crap kicked out of me, yes, but it was also the first time I ever got a bouquet of flowers. One of you folks sent me flowers in the hospital, and I'll always remember the card: 'Not everyone in Montgomery is like those who met you at the bus station'"
Inside the museum sits the old "colored entrance," now completely shut and bricked over, but still standing as a reminder of what the Freedom Rides accomplished.
A sign beside the exhibit reads: "This is what the Freedom Riders wanted to change. And they did."
The work of 16 artists adorns the 1951 bus station as part of a yearlong "Road to Equality- 1961 Freedom Rides" exhibit.
Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said it's key to remember what the travelers went through in their effort to open the highways and the minds of the South.
"It's important to tell the story of what happened for those who weren't there and those who will come in the future," said Strange. "May we never repeat anything like that horrible part of history."
Freedom Riders in Montgomery after 50 years find a better city, a better state, a better people
Published: Friday, May 20, 2011, 2:44 PM Updated: Friday, May 20, 2011, 3:26 PM
By Christine Kneidinger, al.com al.com
Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary
MONTGOMERY, Alabama — On May 20, 1961, John Lewis and Jim Zwerg were among Freedom Riders beaten at Montgomery's Greyhound station.
This morning, five decades after the two rode to end segregated transportation, they arrived in Montgomery again.
They talked about what the 21 riders achieved 50 years earlier and celebrated the opening of The Freedom Rides Museum at 201 S. Court St.
Lewis and Zwerg today were joined by a throng of supporters.
Lewis, a U.S. representative from Georgia, was in 1961 a 21-year-old seminary student who had joined other riders to end segregated interstate transportation.
The small station-turned-museum commemorates a large achievement, Lewis said.
"I think the Freedom Rides have changed America forever. The City of Montgomery is a better city, Alabama a better state and now we are a better people," said Lewis. "I say thank you, because now we are now one people, we are one family and we are one bus."
Zwerg, then 21, was an exchange student at Beloit College in Wisconsin. He was violently beaten by members of the Klan that day. He was hospitalized and did not continue his journey. But he remembers the day for more than the violence he endured.
"Montgomery was a city of firsts for me," Zwerg said this morning. "It was the first time I ever got the crap kicked out of me, yes, but it was also the first time I ever got a bouquet of flowers. One of you folks sent me flowers in the hospital, and I'll always remember the card: 'Not everyone in Montgomery is like those who met you at the bus station'"
Inside the museum sits the old "colored entrance," now completely shut and bricked over, but still standing as a reminder of what the Freedom Rides accomplished.
A sign beside the exhibit reads: "This is what the Freedom Riders wanted to change. And they did."
The work of 16 artists adorns the 1951 bus station as part of a yearlong "Road to Equality- 1961 Freedom Rides" exhibit.
Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said it's key to remember what the travelers went through in their effort to open the highways and the minds of the South.
"It's important to tell the story of what happened for those who weren't there and those who will come in the future," said Strange. "May we never repeat anything like that horrible part of history."
Ryan's Innumeracy
Paul Ryan's Innumeracy
Jonathan Chait
Ryan pens an op-ed to defend the Republican budget against the charge that it will harm the poor:
President Obama accused us of wanting to leave children with disabilities to "fend for themselves."
This rhetoric is not just overheated – it is flat-out false. Our budget – "The Path to Prosperity" – strengthens the safety net by directing more assistance to those who need it most. It provides the chronically unemployed with the incentives and tools they need to bounce back into self-sufficient lives.
You can read Ryan's entire column, but -- strangely for a man so prone to boasting of his wonkery and love of numbers -- it contains zero numbers attempting to substantiate his claim that his budget "strengthens," or even fails to shred, the safety net.
If you want actual numbers, you need to go to places like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which lay them out:
Cuts in low-income programs appear likely to account for at least $2.9 trillion — or nearly two-thirds — of this total amount. The $2.9 trillion includes the following three categories of cuts:
$2.17 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care. The plan shows Medicaid cuts of $771 billion, plus savings of $1.4 trillion from repealing the health reform law’s Medicaid expansion and its subsidies to help low- and moderate-income people purchase health insurance.
$350 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans (other than Medicaid). Chairman Ryan’s budget documents show that he is proposing $719 billion in cuts in mandatory programs other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but do not specify how much will be cut from various programs (although they imply that cuts in the Food Stamp Program will be large). In this analysis, we make the conservative assumption that savings from low-income mandatory programs (other than Medicaid) would be proportionate to their share of spending in this category. Thus, we derive the $350 billion figure from the fact that about half of mandatory spending other than for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security goes for programs for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. This likely substantially understates the cuts that the plan would make in low-income programs. The Ryan documents show that $380 billion in cuts would come from mandatory programs in the income security portion of the budget (function 600), and the overwhelming bulk of the mandatory spending in that category goes for low-income programs. The documents also show $126 billion in mandatory cuts in the education, training, employment, and social services portion of the budget (function 500), which, based on the discussion in those documents, would likely come mainly from cuts in the mandatory portion of the Pell Grant program for low-income students.
$400 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs. The Ryan budget documents released on April 5 showed the plan containing $1.6 trillion in cuts in non-security discretionary programs, but again did not provide details about the size of cuts to specific programs. (The documents did identify some major low-income program areas, including Pell Grants and low-income housing, as prime targets for cuts.) Here, too, we make the conservative assumption that low-income programs in this category would bear a proportionate share of the cuts. Thus, we derive the $400 billion figure from the fact that about a quarter of non-security discretionary spending goes for programs for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. (Rep. Ryan added $193 billion in cuts in non-security discretionary programs before the budget resolution went to the House floor, but Ryan said these additional cuts would come from freezing federal employees’ pay and reducing the federal workforce, so we do not include them when estimating reductions in programs for low- and moderate-income households.)
I'd deconstruct Ryan's attempt to rebut any of these figures, but he doesn't have one. There's a little bit of hand-waving about turning control over to the states, but he doesn't even try to explain how this would compensate for the massive cuts. Does he think that the federal government is skimming money from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), and that giving states control would somehow overcome the 20% cut? He doesn't say. Does he have an argument that giving states control of Medicaid, which is extraordinarily cheap and has grown much slower than private insurance, would somehow compensate for the trillion dollars in cuts he imposes? No data there, either.
Ryan does, hilariously, argue that he would prevent something terrible happening to funding for the poor:
Mounting debt also threatens our poorest and most vulnerable citizens, because those who depend most on government would be hit hardest by a fiscal crisis. Harsh austerity would be the only course left. A broke government unable to finance its spending commitments would be forced to make indiscriminate cuts affecting current beneficiaries of government programs – without giving them time to prepare or adjust.
The argument is that, if there was a fiscal crisis, it would entail huge and immediate cuts to programs that aid the poor. Therefore we must enact huge, immediate cuts in programs that aid the poor. Oh, and also preserve the Bush tax cuts for top-income earners and cut the rate another ten percentage points. For the sake of the poor.
Jonathan Chait
Ryan pens an op-ed to defend the Republican budget against the charge that it will harm the poor:
President Obama accused us of wanting to leave children with disabilities to "fend for themselves."
This rhetoric is not just overheated – it is flat-out false. Our budget – "The Path to Prosperity" – strengthens the safety net by directing more assistance to those who need it most. It provides the chronically unemployed with the incentives and tools they need to bounce back into self-sufficient lives.
You can read Ryan's entire column, but -- strangely for a man so prone to boasting of his wonkery and love of numbers -- it contains zero numbers attempting to substantiate his claim that his budget "strengthens," or even fails to shred, the safety net.
If you want actual numbers, you need to go to places like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which lay them out:
Cuts in low-income programs appear likely to account for at least $2.9 trillion — or nearly two-thirds — of this total amount. The $2.9 trillion includes the following three categories of cuts:
$2.17 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care. The plan shows Medicaid cuts of $771 billion, plus savings of $1.4 trillion from repealing the health reform law’s Medicaid expansion and its subsidies to help low- and moderate-income people purchase health insurance.
$350 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans (other than Medicaid). Chairman Ryan’s budget documents show that he is proposing $719 billion in cuts in mandatory programs other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but do not specify how much will be cut from various programs (although they imply that cuts in the Food Stamp Program will be large). In this analysis, we make the conservative assumption that savings from low-income mandatory programs (other than Medicaid) would be proportionate to their share of spending in this category. Thus, we derive the $350 billion figure from the fact that about half of mandatory spending other than for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security goes for programs for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. This likely substantially understates the cuts that the plan would make in low-income programs. The Ryan documents show that $380 billion in cuts would come from mandatory programs in the income security portion of the budget (function 600), and the overwhelming bulk of the mandatory spending in that category goes for low-income programs. The documents also show $126 billion in mandatory cuts in the education, training, employment, and social services portion of the budget (function 500), which, based on the discussion in those documents, would likely come mainly from cuts in the mandatory portion of the Pell Grant program for low-income students.
$400 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs. The Ryan budget documents released on April 5 showed the plan containing $1.6 trillion in cuts in non-security discretionary programs, but again did not provide details about the size of cuts to specific programs. (The documents did identify some major low-income program areas, including Pell Grants and low-income housing, as prime targets for cuts.) Here, too, we make the conservative assumption that low-income programs in this category would bear a proportionate share of the cuts. Thus, we derive the $400 billion figure from the fact that about a quarter of non-security discretionary spending goes for programs for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. (Rep. Ryan added $193 billion in cuts in non-security discretionary programs before the budget resolution went to the House floor, but Ryan said these additional cuts would come from freezing federal employees’ pay and reducing the federal workforce, so we do not include them when estimating reductions in programs for low- and moderate-income households.)
I'd deconstruct Ryan's attempt to rebut any of these figures, but he doesn't have one. There's a little bit of hand-waving about turning control over to the states, but he doesn't even try to explain how this would compensate for the massive cuts. Does he think that the federal government is skimming money from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), and that giving states control would somehow overcome the 20% cut? He doesn't say. Does he have an argument that giving states control of Medicaid, which is extraordinarily cheap and has grown much slower than private insurance, would somehow compensate for the trillion dollars in cuts he imposes? No data there, either.
Ryan does, hilariously, argue that he would prevent something terrible happening to funding for the poor:
Mounting debt also threatens our poorest and most vulnerable citizens, because those who depend most on government would be hit hardest by a fiscal crisis. Harsh austerity would be the only course left. A broke government unable to finance its spending commitments would be forced to make indiscriminate cuts affecting current beneficiaries of government programs – without giving them time to prepare or adjust.
The argument is that, if there was a fiscal crisis, it would entail huge and immediate cuts to programs that aid the poor. Therefore we must enact huge, immediate cuts in programs that aid the poor. Oh, and also preserve the Bush tax cuts for top-income earners and cut the rate another ten percentage points. For the sake of the poor.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Bruce Watson - Freedom Summer
The summer of 1964 was the so-called Freedom Summer when hundreds of young people descended on the state of Mississippi in an effort to educate and register African-Americans to vote. This book about that amazing summer is electrifying.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Another Doctor
This time it's a dermatologist. Since I had a melinoma, a cancer of the skin, I suppose it makes sense to see a skin doctor. He takes two biopsys. Results in a week. I doubt anything comes of it. This doctor is too serious. No sense of humor it seems. I like people with a sense of humor.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
On Using the Language
Robert Lane Greene
Loving The English Language, Or Loving To Complain About It?
Posted: 05/14/11 08:22 AM ET
Everyone has a language peeve. Mine is "literally," a great word with no close synonym. When used as a mere intensifier or to mean simply "It felt as though..." it has almost no kick at all. And when misused, it can be spectacular: what Lindsey Graham recently said of an American program to turn weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel for peaceful energy. Truly this is a good thing, but Graham probably shouldn't have said that "the United States is literally taking nuclear swords and turning them into plowshares." My first thought was that it was pretty sweet that DARPA had finally invented nuclear swords. My second was, "But who wants a nuclear plowshare? Would you eat vegetables out of a field plowed with one?"
So I'd like to keep "literally" meaning "not figuratively," and every time I see it used to mean "figuratively" I sigh a little sigh. You certainly have your peeves too. Maybe it's "Between you and I." Maybe it's "Jenny and myself are going to have to think that over." There are enough to fill many books, and indeed they have filled many books--some of them bestsellers. All of us who love language hate to see it used incompetently.
But I got the idea for my recent book by noticing that there seemed to be more than defending the language going on when people talked about this or that usage. Take Black English: linguists have long known that it's a regular dialect of English with its own consistent internal rules, like Scots or Southern White English. But while most people know that it's unacceptable to make fun of someone's skin color, they feel free to make fun of their language. Zach Galifinakis has a joke about using lots of Axe body spray, though since he lives in a black neighborhood, he calls it "Ask". It's a pretty good joke, and he defuses it by saying "If you didn't get that, you're not a racist." But many people really think that "aks" in Black English is mouth-breathing stupidity, rather than merely dialectal. It has a long history in English, even appearing in Chaucer: "I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housbond to the Samaritan?"
In other words, there's nothing wrong with treasuring good English. But people confuse "grammatical" and "good." "Correct" English is often plodding or incompetent. Meanwhile, many people who aren't one hundred-percent fluent in standard English are nonetheless brilliant, charismatic and persuasive--I should know, as my father, who could charm a fish out of water, was an earthy, profane southerner, and not exactly Henry Higgins when it came to "proper" English.
Too many people take the step beyond caring for their language to enjoying laying scorn on others who use it differently. This is several different problems at the same time. One is, as mentioned, the bigotry against dialectal English, apparently the last form of prejudice acceptable even in polite, liberal company. It's important for African-Americans (as for all Americans) to master standard English, but part of that bargain should be accepting that their language, like my dad's Southern White English, deserves a place too, and one without scorn.
The second way in which people go wrong with language peeving is simply picking the wrong peeves. There are many "rules" that are "known" to copy editors and sticklers everywhere that simply aren't so. Famously, the ban on splitting infinitives and another on ending sentences in prepositions have both been known to be bogus by quality grammar-book writers for at least a century. But these "rules" seem unkillable. So do many other more rarified ones, which seem to live on so that copy-editors can one-up each other: Use "each other" for two people but "one another" for three or more. Use "that" for restrictive clauses like "the house that Jack built", but "which" for non-restrictive ones like "the house, which Jack built,..." But these and so many others are not "rules": they began life as one grammar-book writer's fetish and made their way into print to plague us with an endless game of grammar-gotcha.
So by all means, treasure language. But don't let your love for good English mean disdain for people who don't use it exactly as you do. Part of a healthy love for language is an understanding of the many different forms it takes. Dialects are healthy parts of real communities. Changes to a language are natural, not simply degrading. Even if my friend "literally" doesn't survive, quality English will.
Loving The English Language, Or Loving To Complain About It?
Posted: 05/14/11 08:22 AM ET
Everyone has a language peeve. Mine is "literally," a great word with no close synonym. When used as a mere intensifier or to mean simply "It felt as though..." it has almost no kick at all. And when misused, it can be spectacular: what Lindsey Graham recently said of an American program to turn weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel for peaceful energy. Truly this is a good thing, but Graham probably shouldn't have said that "the United States is literally taking nuclear swords and turning them into plowshares." My first thought was that it was pretty sweet that DARPA had finally invented nuclear swords. My second was, "But who wants a nuclear plowshare? Would you eat vegetables out of a field plowed with one?"
So I'd like to keep "literally" meaning "not figuratively," and every time I see it used to mean "figuratively" I sigh a little sigh. You certainly have your peeves too. Maybe it's "Between you and I." Maybe it's "Jenny and myself are going to have to think that over." There are enough to fill many books, and indeed they have filled many books--some of them bestsellers. All of us who love language hate to see it used incompetently.
But I got the idea for my recent book by noticing that there seemed to be more than defending the language going on when people talked about this or that usage. Take Black English: linguists have long known that it's a regular dialect of English with its own consistent internal rules, like Scots or Southern White English. But while most people know that it's unacceptable to make fun of someone's skin color, they feel free to make fun of their language. Zach Galifinakis has a joke about using lots of Axe body spray, though since he lives in a black neighborhood, he calls it "Ask". It's a pretty good joke, and he defuses it by saying "If you didn't get that, you're not a racist." But many people really think that "aks" in Black English is mouth-breathing stupidity, rather than merely dialectal. It has a long history in English, even appearing in Chaucer: "I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housbond to the Samaritan?"
In other words, there's nothing wrong with treasuring good English. But people confuse "grammatical" and "good." "Correct" English is often plodding or incompetent. Meanwhile, many people who aren't one hundred-percent fluent in standard English are nonetheless brilliant, charismatic and persuasive--I should know, as my father, who could charm a fish out of water, was an earthy, profane southerner, and not exactly Henry Higgins when it came to "proper" English.
Too many people take the step beyond caring for their language to enjoying laying scorn on others who use it differently. This is several different problems at the same time. One is, as mentioned, the bigotry against dialectal English, apparently the last form of prejudice acceptable even in polite, liberal company. It's important for African-Americans (as for all Americans) to master standard English, but part of that bargain should be accepting that their language, like my dad's Southern White English, deserves a place too, and one without scorn.
The second way in which people go wrong with language peeving is simply picking the wrong peeves. There are many "rules" that are "known" to copy editors and sticklers everywhere that simply aren't so. Famously, the ban on splitting infinitives and another on ending sentences in prepositions have both been known to be bogus by quality grammar-book writers for at least a century. But these "rules" seem unkillable. So do many other more rarified ones, which seem to live on so that copy-editors can one-up each other: Use "each other" for two people but "one another" for three or more. Use "that" for restrictive clauses like "the house that Jack built", but "which" for non-restrictive ones like "the house, which Jack built,..." But these and so many others are not "rules": they began life as one grammar-book writer's fetish and made their way into print to plague us with an endless game of grammar-gotcha.
So by all means, treasure language. But don't let your love for good English mean disdain for people who don't use it exactly as you do. Part of a healthy love for language is an understanding of the many different forms it takes. Dialects are healthy parts of real communities. Changes to a language are natural, not simply degrading. Even if my friend "literally" doesn't survive, quality English will.
Breaking Down
Technology is a wonderful thing. I suppose most products are better today than they used to be due to improved technology, but many things are not better because they are built to break down to force you to buy a new one. My Lazy Boy is a case in point. It's been good for 8 years, but it seems it's starting to break down. They don't make reclining chairs like they used to.
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