The return of the scutie

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night while I was talking on the phone, I idly looked up towards a lighting fixture and noticed with horror that It Was Back.

The scutie, that is, my revolting house guest from last year (follow the link for a photo; I refuse to publish it again). My phone companion helpfully suggested it might have been the very same one I escorted out in a cup last year and released into the wild. But if so, it’s had a terrible year, worse even than Obama: although still quite large, this one was significantly smaller than the previous enormous Scutigera coleoptrata (common house centipede) that had chosen to enter my humble abode.

This one, however, received the same treatment as before: catch and release. Why did I not kill the scutie, you might ask? Same reason as last year. There are limits to the size of the creatures I will voluntarily crush, and the scutie exceeds that limit by a significant amount. It’s hard to say exactly where I draw the line, but if something will squish and ooze in significant fashion rather than a simple neat and unitary splat, the impulse to crush seems to depart from me.

You may notice, however, that last night I bravely dealt with the scutie by myself. Oh, I’m not averse to asking the resident male to take over, if there happens to be a resident male around. But when none’s in sight, I step up to the plate and take my bugs outside like the trouper I am.

And then I write about it.

About extending those Bush tax cuts

The New Neo Posted on by

Lots of blah, blah, blah in Washington about whether or not to extend those Bush tax cuts, and to whom, and for how long.

The problem with arguing about such things, of course, is that no one really knows what the effect of each course would be. At least, I haven’t seen anything that convinces me that anyone knows. I’m already on record as saying that economics is not my strong suit, but I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s anyone’s.

Here’s why: in economics, what seems obvious ain’t necessarily so. The economy is one of those extraordinarily complex systems that make predictions exceedingly hard to get right. Oh, somebody always seems to have been correct—ex post facto. The problem is knowing ahead of time whose prediction is the one to (literally) bank on.

Here’s the dilemma we face right now: we’ve got a number of huge economic problems, high among them being unemployment, an economy that needs stimulation in terms of confidence and spending and investing, and the need to restrain a huge and growing deficit. What might help the first two (spending, lower taxes rather than higher) might harm the third.

Furthermore, we’ve got uncertainty about the actual effect of tax hikes and/or tax cuts. It is intuitive to think that raising taxes raises revenues. But it’s not always correct—and even when it is, it’s not always correct to the extent expected and depended upon.

In other words, sometimes raising taxes doesn’t do what it’s meant to do, and can even have large and unintended consequences (such as people not working so hard in order to keep their incomes in a lower bracket, fleeing the state or the country, finding effective ways to shift money around so they avoid taxes, and so on).

If you look at discussions of the topic around the blogosphere, you’ll find that the arguments tend to split not only on political lines between conservatives and liberals, but between those who think it’s most important to stimulate the economy by keeping money in the pockets of the people (rich and poor and in-between), those who think it’s most important to reduce the deficit by raising taxes, those who think it most important to reduce the deficit by cutting government spending, and those who want to combine some of these approaches.

The real question is: who’s more correct? Which approach will help most? I’m for a combination of extending the Bush tax cuts and cutting spending. But hey, I’ve already said I’m no expert. The trouble is that neither are the experts.

Shooting the lame duck

The New Neo Posted on by

Ah, those obdurate Republican naysayers, trying to hold up progress during the lame duck session:

FOX has obtained a letter being circulated to Senate Republicans that calls for a filibuster blockade of any legislation not directly related to time-sensitive votes on taxes and spending.

All 42 Republican senators have signed on to the plan, which would effectively end Democratic hopes to push through controversial measures like allowing gays in the military to express their sexualities and offering amnesty to illegal immigrants who attend college or volunteer for the military.

…”We are now less than a month away from a huge across-the-board tax increase for every American and just days away from running out of operating funds for the federal government,” one [Republican] aide told Power Play. “It doesn’t seem unreasonable to insist that Democrats focus on those things instead of the remaining items on their failed liberal agenda.”

No, it doesn’t.

Nor does it seem unreasonable for the wounded Democrats to at least try to cram in as much of that failed liberal agenda as possible before relinquishing power. After all, the die is cast, the vote is over, and they’ve been turned out; why not get a few licks in before they actually have to clean out their desks and surrender their keys?

Lame ducks are widely thought to lack power and influence because of their outgoing status. But, paradoxically, they also enjoy the advantage of not having to answer for their actions by being vulnerable to loss in elections, since the loss has already occurred.

Defiant lame duck activities have a hoary history, after all. For example:

Such actions date back to the Judiciary Act of 1801 (“Midnight Judges Act”), in which Federalist President John Adams and the outgoing 6th Congress amended the Judiciary Act to create more federal judge seats for Adams to appoint and the Senate to confirm before the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated and the Democratic-Republican majority 7th Congress convened.

Other actions often involve executive pardons, such as the huge number issued by Bill Clinton as he left office.

I’m not so sure, however, that there’s ever been a case of the electorate roundly repudiating an entire party in control of Congress, and then that very same Congress attempting in its subsequent lame duck session to pass seminal legislation that it knows the voters don’t want (if any of you history buffs are aware of such cases, please offer examples in the comments section).

Usually, even parties that have been voted out of power remain cognizant of their own future, trying to protect it for next time by not insulting and thwarting the will of the voters. This Congress, however, has been different almost from the start. It has defied the wishes of the American people and become an overbearing majority, as presciently described by Madison in Federalist Paper #10.

Lame duck status won’t change that impulse. The only thing it may affect is their ability to realize it, especially if the situation emboldens some Democrats who managed to escape the voter’s wrath in 2010 to defy their leaders’ kamikaze plans.

Go be-swan yourself

The New Neo Posted on by

Whenever I get blue, and want a little pick me up, I visit GoFugYourself, and am almost never disappointed.

Today is no different. Feast your eyes on this:

grayswan.jpg

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…it’s…it’s a cross between a a tutu and a corset and camouflage for lying in wait in a duck blind.

Wikileaks and the Obama administration

The New Neo Posted on by

Predictably, Sarah Palin calls Obama out for not doing something about Wikileaks sooner. It’s a good question; why hasn’t he?

There are those who believe that it’s because Obama is so intent on sabotaging the United States and its standing in the world that he’s secretly happy about the embarrassment of the latest Wikileaks dump. But those people ignore the fact that it’s the Obama administration itself that is most revealed, and most damaged, in its ability to use diplomacy and communicate with its allies. As Heather Hurlburt points out in the New Republic, the lack of protective secrecy will have a chilling effect on what she calls “progressive” foreign policy: i.e. Obama’s reliance on and faith in diplomacy.

It is telling that it’s only now that the Obama administration seems to care about Wikileaks. When the dump was just about the military, his objections were ho-hum. Now they seem to have a little more bite, because it’s getting personal—especially for Hillary Clinton.

Whether or not anything will come of threats by Holder to “investigate” whether Assange has violated the espionage or any other act (no doubt he’s shaking in his shoes in Sweden or Switzerland or Iceland, thinking about a nice warm vacation in Ecuador) remains to be seen.

One of the hallmarks of the Obama administration so far has been a curious lead-footedness, a slowness to react to breaking events. I’m not sure whether it is due to Obama’s personal indecisiveness, or some problem with his chain of command, or his desire to placate all sides by not taking a stand until the last possible moment, or all of the above, or some other factor. But this slowness has been quite noticeable in many arenas, and is part of the perception of weakness and hesitancy that Obama and company have engendered.

I doubt very much whether Julian Assange feels Obama and Holder to be any sort of threat at all to his safety. And my guess is also that, even though the recent dump was widely telegraphed by Assange in advance, Obama had trouble believing it would actually happen to him. After all, he’s the good guy—he’s not Bush; he’s Obama, the one who means well, the one who keeps apologizing for America abroad and who wants to end American exceptionalism.

Nothing in Obama’s previous life has prepared him for anything but worldwide adulation and approval from the likes of someone like Assange. When Robert Gibbs remarked that it’s an understatement to say that Obama was “not pleased” by the most recent Wikileaks disclosures, one can be fairly sure he’s telling the truth. Not pleased, and surprisingly surprised.

More Wikileaks

The New Neo Posted on by

Another day, another Wikileaks dump. And it will go on until there are negative consequences with teeth in them for such acts.

At the moment, secret communications seem easy to obtain and to leak, and no one seems all that afraid of punishment. Julian Assange is sitting pretty and free as a bird. Newspapers run no risk. And, although Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence underling who seems to be the original Wikileaker, was arrested last spring and charged with “transferring classified data” and “delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source,” which could carry a maximum sentence of 52 years in jail, no one else seems especially perturbed by the idea of prosecution. His trial has not begun, and I, for one, doubt he will receive anywhere near that sentence.

Does anyone really think Rep. Peter King’s calls to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act, or to designate Wikileaks a Foreign Terrorist Organization (the better to go after those who help and fund them), will be heeded? Not I. And it’s interesting that this is happening under Obama’s watch, perhaps because he is even less feared than his predecessor.

The US has become a paper tiger in this respect, even before Obama. There should be huge and negative consequences for those who do this sort of thing. But it’s been clear for quite some time (since, perhaps, Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers) that no significant punishment will be forthcoming for the self-proclaimed whistleblowers who just can’t stand the hypocrisy of a government that fails to live up to its highest principles.

That means the targets of groups such as Assange’s Wikileaks can only be Western nations that aspire to something close to morality, who seem to have principles, not the bad guys who are unapologetically bad. And of course, it’s the unelected, self-appointed heads of Wikileaks, the NY Times, and Spiegel who can best decide what’s in the public’s interest to know, what will be harmful and what helpful.

Somehow it will always be something they hope will embarrass the West and especially the US. Isn’t it odd how it works out that way?

[NOTE: I mention Daniel Ellsberg, and it’s not a coincidence. This sort of thing started during the Vietnam era, and is being actively fostered today by people such as Ellsberg and what he calls his “Truth-Telling Project.”]

More on marriage and kids

The New Neo Posted on by

I almost hesitate to write about this topic anymore, it unleashes such a storm of vitriol.

But here are some facts to ponder about marriage and children (from the recent Pew study I previously discussed here):

Only 64 percent [of children today] live with married parents, as compared to 87 percent in 1960.

Some 41 percent of babies are born out of wedlock (an eight-fold increase since 1960).

Today 72 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock.

These statistics chronicle the breakdown of the institution of marriage as a vehicle for child-rearing, especially in the black population but among Americans as a whole. And once broken, can the family—like Humpty Dumpty—ever be put back together again?

In practical terms, many of the motivations that used to foster marriages have almost entirely disappeared, or at least weakened. They were sexual, societal, and economic. When it was far more difficult for a man to have sex with a woman who wasn’t a prostitute, marriage provided sex. When it was far more difficult to be part of polite society when your “wife” was your mistress and your children that quaint old term known as “bastards,” marriage provided respectability and a community of like-minded acquaintances. And when women didn’t have many other economic options because the doors to most professions were closed to them, marriage provided financial support for them and whatever children they bore.

Notice I don’t say “then let’s go back to the good old days.” That’s because (a) in many ways they weren’t so good; and (b) even if we wanted to, it doesn’t work that way. You go through certain doors and they close behind you.

On that recent thread on this topic, a few commenters jumped in to say that divorce should be made more difficult, including the elimination of no-fault divorce and a return to a fault basis (at present, all states—including New York, the last straggler—have no-fault divorce as an option).

I don’t see fault divorce as a solution for a host of reasons, among them the following:

(a) Fault divorce often encouraged perjury, because the majority of divorces even then did not involve marital “offenses” such as an affair, and such events had to be staged and lied about. This will occur if no-fault divorce is eliminated. Most people will get out of marriages if they need to and want to, and fault divorce will not stop them.

(b) Fault divorce did not exist in a vacuum. It occurred in the context of the other incentives for marriage mentioned above. These are now largely gone. Therefore, if divorce becomes slightly more complicated to obtain and fault-based, one of the possible results is that the marriage rate will go down even further. Why marry at all?

Why, indeed? If you watch TLC’s TV show “Say Yes to the Dress” (as I must confess I sometimes do), the answer would appear to be, at least for some women: “so I can wear a sexy wedding gown that costs big bucks.”

That’s the cynical answer. The real answer is because it addresses human needs in one of the deepest ways possible, one that has stood the test of time and is probably the best way to further the stability and happiness of children. And the well-being of children is necessary for the continuation of any productive society.