"The Great Game"

Maureen Dowd goes to the theater to see “The Great Game,” a seven-hour play that uses "real and fictional characters, actual transcripts and imagined scenes, to trace the trellis of foreign involvement in Afghanistan from 1842 to the present."

Here's my comment, scotched again by the Times moderators:

Herman Melville saw the folly of outsiders trying to take Afghanistan. Early in his most famous book, Moby Dick, published in 1851 (nine years after the 16,000 Brits & Indians lost their lives near Jalalabad), there is a scene in which the narrator Ishmael takes account of his place in the world:

 And doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Here, Ishmael imagines the headlines:

     Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States

     Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael

     Bloody Battle in Affghanistan

Only the headline that describes Ishmael's whaling voyage is fictional. Throughout recorded history, many have tried to conquer Afghanistan, and many have taken it for a short time -- from Darius I in about 550 B.C.E., to Alexander the Great (probably the greatest military leader in history, Alexander took three years to conquer Afghanistan) to various Eastern tribes, to the Moors in the 7th century C.E. to the Turks in the 10th century C.E., etc., etc., to the British in the 19th century to the Soviets in the 20th. The Afghans usually just wait 'em out & commit sabotage & other mayhem in the waiting. They'll do the same with us.

I'm aware that the justification for continuing the Longest War in Afghanistan is our fear of a nuclear Pakistan. But might I suggest that subduing Afghanistan & propping up one more hated dictator (who is stealing millions of U.S. tax dollars) is not the best foreign policy strategy for deterring Pakistani nukes? Let's save our soldiers' lives and direct our attentions, through diplomatic negotiations and other means, to the source of the problem.

The Graveyard of Empires is not the best place for the United States to die.

The Commentariat -- February 16

They had to know. But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ -- Bernie Madoff, about the banks & hedge funds with whom he did business ...

... Diana Henriques of the New York Times: "Mr. Madoff ... maintained that family members knew nothing about his crimes. But during a private two-hour interview... on Tuesday, and in earlier e-mail exchanges, he asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow 'complicit' in his elaborate fraud, an about-face from earlier claims that he was the only person involved.... He also claimed he had been helping the court-appointed trustee who is seeking to recover lost billions on behalf of his swindled clients."

Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has responded quite differently to two embattled governments that have beaten protesters and blocked the Internet in recent days to fend off the kind of popular revolt that brought down Egypt’s government. With Iran..., the administration has all but encouraged protesters to take to the streets. With Bahrain, a strategically important ally across the Persian Gulf from Iran, it has urged its king to address the grievances of his people."

They Knew. Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal: "Early last year, a group of U.S.-based human-rights activists, neoconservative policy makers and Mideast experts told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that what passed for calm in Egypt was an illusion.... The[ir] correspondence was part of a string of warnings passed to the Obama administration arguing that Egypt, heading toward crisis, required a vigorous U.S. response. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's 82-year-old dictator, was moving to rig a string of elections, they said. Egypt's young population was growing more agitated. The bipartisan body that wrote to Mrs. Clinton, the Egypt Working Group, argued that the administration wasn't fully appraising the warning signs in Egypt."

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the CIA as the informant "Curveball," was the single source for the main justification the U.S. used to initiate the 2003 Iraq War. In his famous 2003 address before the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Curveball's claims as his primary evidence that Iraq was holding biochemical weapons. Now al-Janabi, a chemical engineer by training, admits that he made up the whole story in an effort to topple Saddam Hussein. BTW, the CIA never talked to al-Janabi before Powell made his WMD claim; all of Curveball's conversations were with Germany's secret service, the BND. Here's the print story -- and the interview:

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the Department of Defense of allowing a military culture that fails to prevent rape and sexual assault, and of mishandling cases that were brought to its attention, thus violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. The suit — brought by 2 men and 15 women, both veterans and active-duty service members — specifically claims that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, 'ran institutions in which perpetrators were promoted and where military personnel openly mocked and flouted the modest Congressionally mandated institutional reforms.'”

NEW. Joe Klein of Time: because it is technically an earmark, "Teach for America, the brilliant program that has sent tens of thousands of elite college graduates to work in the poorest, toughest schools, is about to get stiffed by the federal government."

Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times: "Criticism mounted at the start of a House debate [on the FY 2012 budget] as Democrats took aim at GOP plans to maintain tax breaks for oil companies and the wealthy while cutting medical research, community policing and funding for 'Sesame Street,' calling the proposal a 'mindless' exercise that would do little to address the nation's $1.5-trillion deficit." ...

... Glenn Thrush of Politico: for Congressional Democrats, President Obama's omission of entitlement cuts "was a gift, in their view, the setting of a political trap for a Republican Party divided between conservatives pushing for major changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and a GOP leadership wary of the political peril of tinkering with Americans’ retirement security."

If some of those jobs are lost, so be it. -- John Boehner, on job losses resulting from House budget cuts

The Million-Man Unemployment Budget. Dana Milbank writes that about 650,000 government jobs would be lost under the House budget plan & 325,000 indirect support jobs would go, too. "... the cuts Boehner and his caucus propose would cause a shock to the economy that would slow, if not reverse, the recovery.... The dirty truth is that a stall in the recovery would bring political benefits to the Republicans in the 2012 elections.... 'So be it' is callous but rational." Oh, and BTW, Boehner plans to protect his home state of Ohio from job losses: "Rather than take a so-be-it attitude toward jobs his constituents may hold, he's acking an earmark-like provision in the spending legislation to keep funding the unneeded GE engine, [which is built in Ohio]." ...

... UPDATE. Mark Thompson of Time: "... The House ... voted 233-198 against $450 million in funding for a second engine for the F-35 warplane.... The move is a blow to House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, whose state would garner thousands of jobs from building the engine." Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly said he didn't want the project to go forward. ...

... NEW. CW: for his insupportable claim that President Obama added 200,00 federal jobs, I'm giving the Boner a --

     ... According to Ezra Klein -- who delves into facts, the actual number of jobs added isn't even close to Boehner's figure, & in fact the federal government is shrinking jobs by about 4 percent, outside of security & military personnel. Klein writes, "... the jobs that Boehner is deriding are, broadly speaking, jobs related to the military and homeland security, with perhaps a few more in the Justice and State departments. But the money Boehner is cutting from the government -- which is what his comment is in reference to -- comes from non-security discretionary spending. So the new jobs are coming in the part of the budget Boehner is protecting, not the part he's cutting." ...

     ... Oops, looks as if PolitiFact, the originator of the Pants-on-Fire designation beat me to it. They gave Boehner a mere --

... Mike Hall of the AFL-CIO: "Like their colleagues on the state level, Boehner and his Republican cohorts are trying to demonize and dehumanize public workers, in this case federal employees from aviation workers and food safety inspectors to nurses, immigration officers and teachers. They claim they are going after a so-called “bloated” federal workforce. But the Washington Post reported last September there were only 20,000 more federal employees under Obama in 2010 than under George W. Bush in 2002—and that, on a per capita basis (federal employees per 1,000 Americans), it’s at the lowest level at least since 1962." ...

... Steve Benen: "That's a rather extraordinary acknowledgement. Confronted with accusations that his own budget plan would kill jobs, Boehner not only conceded that the charges are correct, he went on to say he simply doesn't care." ...

... Democracy for America invites you to take on Speaker Boehner & "Join the campaign to stop cuts to vital programs, invest in jobs, and make sure everyone pays their fair share."

What we have is $1.6 trillion in new tax increases, $8.7 trillion in new spending. He's going to be adding $13 trillion to the debt over the course of his budget.
-- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Budget Committee, chair on President Obama's proposed budget ...

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "It's bad enough to toss around 10-year figures. And Obama could be faulted for not submitting a budget that gets federal government spending back to the 20.3 percent of the gross domestic product. But to demand that he meet a standard no modern president has ever met -- and then label it as 'new spending' -- is highly misleading."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a Washington Post op-ed: "Democratic governments, including our closest allies, do not always agree with us. Yet they share our most fundamental belief -- that people must be governed by consent. It is as true today as it was when I said in 2005 that the fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty. We have only one choice: to trust that in the long arc of history those shared beliefs will matter more than the immediate disruptions that lie ahead and that, ultimately, our interests and ideals will be well served." ...

... Craig Whitlock & Kathy Lally of the Washington Post: "Egypt geared up Tuesday for a breakneck rush to democracy as its military rulers vowed to hand authority to an elected civilian government in six months and ordered legal experts to draft a revised constitution in 10 days. The announcements are the latest signal that Egypt's generals are serious in their pledges to quickly transform the country and relinquish the power they seized when President Hosni Mubarak resigned last week after 18 days of street protests." ...

... How'd They Do That? James Glanz & John Markoff of the New York Times: "For all the Internet’s vaunted connectivity, the Egyptian government commanded powerful instruments of control: it owns the pipeline [CW: it's a series of tubes!] that carry information across the country and out into the world. Internet experts say similar arrangements are more common in authoritarian countries than is generally recognized."

Here's something that will cheer you up: the President & Mrs. Obama honor the 2010 Medal of Freedom winners. CW: I used to know one of the winners, so I was immensely pleased:

Here's a list of the recipients. Here are brief bios of the recipients.

Local News

More on America's Worst Governor from Michael Grunwald of Time: "Florida Governor Rick Scott just killed the Obama administration's marquee high-speed rail project, giving up a whopping $2.4 billion in federal funds for a Tampa-Orlando bullet train. This was the nation's most shovel-ready high-speed project, and the state wasn't required to spend a dime to build it; running through the heart of the politically sensitive I-4 corridor, it had bipartisan support in South Florida, where it was seen as a precursor to a long-awaited Orlando-Miami line." CW: a reminder to Floridians: Scott cannot be impeached.

Today We Are All Cheeseheads. WTAQ, Green Bay, Wisconsin: "Present and former Green Bay Packers are among those urging the Legislature to reject Governor Scott Walker’s proposed union cutbacks.... They called the right to negotiate wages and benefits, most of which Walker would take away, a, 'fundamental underpinning of our middle class.' And they said the current setup has worked for Wisconsin since the 1930’s."

News Ledes

New York Times: thousands of angry public workers stormed the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, as new Republican Gov. Scott Walker "forge[d] ahead with the plans that had set off the uprising: He wants to require public workers to pay more for their health insurance and pensions, effectively cutting the take-home pay of many by around 7 percent. He also wants to weaken most public-sector unions by sharply curtailing their collective bargaining rights." ...

... Wisconsin State Journal: "Schools and teachers were a central focus at a third day of protests at the Capitol on Wednesday as Madison teachers and students joined thousands of public union workers to blast a plan to strip them of collective bargaining rights. The Madison district canceled school Wednesday after nearly half the district's 2,600 union teachers had coordinated a sickout by late Tuesday."

New York Times: "Funds belonging to the family of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, or his senior ministers have been discovered in Switzerland, a Swiss government official said Wednesday. But the official declined to specify how much money had been identified or who controlled the account."

New York Times: "The Federal Reserve revealed Wednesday that its policy makers had substantially upgraded their forecasts for how much the United States economy will grow this year, even though they expect that unemployment will remain painfully high for some time."

New York Times: in Manama, Bahrain, "... hundreds of people carried pro-democracy protests into a third straight day on Wednesday, joining a procession to mourn a demonstrator killed in a clash with security forces.... Around 2,000 people camped out at the major road junction in the city center demanding a change in the government of this strategically-placed Persian Gulf kingdom that is home to the United States Navy’s 5th Flee. Police massed nearby but did not intervene...." ...

... AP: "Yemen sent 2,000 policemen into the streets of the capital on Wednesday to try to put down days of protests against the president of 32 years, a key U.S. ally in battling al-Qaida. The policemen, including plainclothes officers, fired in the air and blocked thousands of students at Sanaa University from joining thousands of other protesters elsewhere in the capital who were holding a sixth straight day of demonstrations." ...

... New York Times: "The wave of turmoil and protests sweeping the Middle East appeared on Wednesday to have reached Libya, ruled for four decades by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to news reports." ...

... New York Times: "A day after the largest antigovernment protests in Iran in more than a year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday dismissed opposition attempts to revive mass demonstrations as certain to fail, while members of the Iranian Parliament clamored for the two most prominent leaders of the protest movement to be executed." ...

... AP: "Labor unrest ... flared again Wednesday in Egypt despite a warning by the ruling military that protests and strikes were hampering efforts to improve the economy and return life to normal."

We're Too Damned Cheap, Sez Brooks

David Brooks writes one of his usual pseudo-intellectual columns, this time about how someone who died in 1974, whom Brooks names "Sam," had a different outlook on life than does fictional Sam's fictional grandson "Jared." Brooks attributes the country's economic woes to all the Jareds of today. I thought I did a darned good job of ripping into Brooks' thesis. I guess the Times moderators thought so, too, because they scotched my comment. So here it is:

As you so commonly do, Mr. Brooks, you contradict yourself in this essay. After claiming that Jared isn't doing much to create jobs, you say that one thing that makes him happy is that "Every few months, new gizmos come out." You also imply that Jared, like others of his generation, "has spent much more on health care." You also say Jared "lives beyond his means."

Who do you think produces "gizmos"? It's people you describe as "down the income scale." True, our corporate laws and trade policies being what they are, nine out of ten of those gizmos are probably made entirely outside of the U.S. Still, they are generating wealth for the American corporate bigwigs who import the gizmos & for the American merchandisers who sell them.

In addition, almost all of the money you say Jared spends on health care stays in the U.S., and a good deal of that money goes into job creation: medical personnel, yoga instructors, health food store workers, etc.

And we know Jared is a big spender because you say he's living beyond his means. While that's not a good idea, spending every penny & then some does produce jobs.

In short, you disproved your own theory. It looks to me as if Jared has created more jobs than his more circumspect, cautious grandfather did.

So what has caused "The Great Stagnation"? Is Tyler Cowen right? Partly. He's right about this:

There was the tremendous increase in education levels during the postwar world. There were technological revolutions occasioned by the spread of electricity, plastics and the car. Those factors were causes of much of the improvement in our standard of living.

And to the extent that we have quit educating our children -- and we have -- and have fallen behind on technological innovations -- less so -- these factors contribute to economic stagnation.

But by far the greatest cause of stagnation is the work of your friends and neighbors, a/k/a the Congress & the President & the gentlemen of the Supreme Court (I say "gentlemen" because very few of the gentlewomen on the Court have been serially culpable.) Cowen uses a cutoff date of 1974. I would make it a few years later, but why quibble? Our economic policies, beginning with Jimmy Carter, & much exacerbated by every Administration & Congress since, are directly responsible for our falling behind other nations.

The most obvious factor is the tax code, which Congress has repeatedly made less progressive, so that the wealthy pay only a bit more than the middle class (tho with creative deductions, many pay less). The free ride we give corporations is a scandal. (G.E., for instance, pays about 3.5% of its profits in taxes; I pay a heckuva lot more in income tax, & I'm no Jeff Immelt.) In addition, we let corporations get away with moving jobs and profits overseas. And now the Supremes have given corporations individual rights! They're not even corporations anymore except when it comes to getting tax breaks.

Our trade policies are anti-American. The revolving door between Wall Street & other businesses on the one hand and government "regulators" on the other, is but one of the many disincentives for regulators to do their jobs. (Right now the Obama Administration is promising to cut regulations & the House is planning to underfund the S.E.C., for instance.) If businesses skirt the law, everybody -- except the big businessmen -- loses. The big guys get richer, through cheating, and we get comparatively poorer.

The Congress has modified our estate tax law to ensure a permanent aristocracy. The Congress's and state legislatures' restrictions on unions are unconscionable. Cutbacks on education funding at every level explain "why Johnny can't think." All of these factors, and more, explain why the U.S. has become a second-tier economy. In a country in which laws have been amended to leave only a small minority with discretionary income, it is only that minority who can afford to spend. Our governmental policies have put the brakes on a once-vibrant economy. And they keep on making matters worse.

Jared is in debt, not necessarily through his own doing, but because our governmental bodies made him poor. If he takes pleasure in other aspects of life, it's partly because that's all that's left to him. These other activities are coping mechanisms, not raisons d'êtres.

Update: Paul Krugman takes a different tack from mine, & his post is well worth reading. He says of Brooks' hypothesis: "My immediate reaction was that this is all wrong — that people like David’s hypothetical Jared are actually rare, that the reality is that we’re more into the rat race than ever before." Krugman backs up his "immediate reaction" with data. What a novel idea!