Psychopolitik 2.0

I recall a long time ago posting something about the intellectual divide among statist-progressive bloggers & their usual audience.  Well, here’s another example:

As you know by now, Milton Friedman recently passed away at the age of 94.  While I had my quibbles with his methods*, he did at least get a foot in the door for embrace of a market order.  Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly, a well-known progressive blog, had this to say about a famous statement of his — “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”:

Is it? I was influenced a few years ago by David Hackett Fischer’s The Great Wave to suspect that Friedman was wrong about that, but I haven’t read any further on the subject and I don’t have the economic chops to draw any conclusions on my own. What’s more, as with all interesting economic questions, I suppose the correct answer is “opinions differ.”

Still, since that sentence is one of — if not the — most famous thing Friedman said, surely it deserves a bit of discussion upon his death? Or is it too old hat to merit any further interest? DeLong? Mankiw? Sawicky? Cowen? Thoma? What do you say?

He has his view on it, and though oppositional he invites reasoned discussion on it.  His audience, well…

I say that Milton Friedman didn’t know shit because he lived in a dream world where he thought everything should be for sale. […] I consider Friedman to be a discredited quack, like Leo Strauss, whose selfish, greed-based philosophies have been shown to be abject failures.
-”the Conservative Deflator”

High priest of the Cult of the Invisible Hand dies.
Film at 11.
(I can’t wait until this religion starts generating Suicide Bombers - if it hasn’t already)
-”Extradite Rumsfeld”

I thought Milton’s other famous quote was something about how efficient armies would be if they were privatized.  What a damaging idiot he was.
-”craigie”

On the bright side, some people further down tried to steer the discussion at least somewhat into being about ideas instead of insults.  But then some trolls jumped in & started calling everyone commies…ugh.

(* - Two things in particular: his involvement in Chile [if I were him I would’ve refused, seeing it as lending legitimacy to the US’ meddling], and his conclusion on central banking that didn’t begin & end with “abolish it”.  I sorta see Friedman morally the same way I see someone like Thomas Jefferson, who had such elequent words on liberty yet pursued it lopsidedly while holding slaves — the best part is that they left behind something to build on, even if we now disagree on how they themselves followed their rhetoric.) 

UCLA library. A “random” security sweep & ID check. A student, a US citizen of Iranian descent, questions the concept, and asks for proof that he’s not being singled out for his race. The result? The campus cops say “gee, we never thought about it like that”, and quit in disgust, feeling they cannot contribute to such a prejudiced & half-assed security status quo anymore…

Oh, wait, that happened in Bizarro World, my bad.

What really happened is they grabbed him as he was about to comply with their order & leave (for not having shown ID), Tasered the living shit out of the guy, and threatened to taser onlookers. Video of it ended up on YouTube, and the story has now gone national.  Dude is suing.

WTF is it with LA cops? I mean, there’s police brutality all over, but police in Los Angeles seem to revel in it to an extent that’d make Eric Cartman blush. To these bastards, & anyone else out there that’d emulate their example: Hell no, we will NOT respect your “authoritah”, you do not deserve it.

Apparently some guy got caught at the airport in Detroit with some suspicious stuff:

A man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after officials say they found him carrying more than $78,000 in cash and a laptop computer containing information about nuclear materials and cyanide.

Sisayehiticha Dinssa, an unemployed U.S. citizen, was arrested Tuesday after a dog caught the scent of narcotics on cash he was carrying, according to an affidavit filed in court.

When agents asked him if he had any cash to declare, he said he had $18,000, authorities said. But when agents checked his luggage, they found an additional $59,000. When they scrolled through his laptop, they said they found the mysterious files. (emphasis mine)

The issue w/ the cyanide & nuke info is vaguely understandable.  Having found that, there’s the possibility the guy was up to something.  That said, the route to finding that information prompts a question:
Why in the hell is it a crime to have money in your luggage & not tell people you have it?
Also, how did smelling drugs on his money get them authorization to look at his laptop?  What’d they think, he was meeting a connect for yayo & had his transaction history on a convenient little spreadsheet? I distinctly recall a study done awhile back saying most 100-dollar bills in circulation have trace amounts of cocaine on them, you have enough of ‘em on you then it’s conceivable the dog could smell it anyway, even though the average Joe isn’t grindin’.

Seriously, my brain is giving off “does not compute” signals here.

Oh how hollow the strategy:

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned Congress Wednesday against setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying it would impede commanders in managing U.S. and Iraqi forces.  The assertion by Gen. John Abizaid seemed to put him at odds with some Democrats pressing the Bush administration to begin pulling out of Iraq. […]

In arguing against a timetable for troop withdrawals, Abizaid told the committee that he and other U.S. commanders need flexibility in managing U.S. forces and determining how and when to pass on responsibility to Iraqi forces.

“Specific timetables limit that flexibility,” the general said.

Abizaid also said he believes U.S. troop levels, now at about 141,000, should stay steady but may have to rise temporarily to train and advise Iraqi military units. No reductions are adviseable until the Iraqi security forces become more capable of dealing with the insurgency, securing Baghdad and dealing with the Shiite militia problem, he said. (emphasis mine)

Considering how in many cases the Iraqi military is turning out to be complicit in sectarian violence, I’d say “flexibility” is the least of your worries, John…

Self proclaimed “conservatives” after the midterm became a referendum on Bush, the Iraq war, & the republican party: “Bush wasn’t a real conservative! That’s why we lost! True believers shall show the way!”

Glenn Greenwald: “Gee, that’s just peachy. How ’bout a nice cup of soul-burning ether?”

In my travels on the ‘net I found quite the gem of Stupid.  It can be summarized with one quote:

Legalization should be recognized for what it is: a cause for corporate capitalists.

Yeah, because Walgreens is just itching to sell cocaine…

Funny thing about it is not long after that line comes another one that completely undermines the “point”:

Drug abuse – that includes alcohol – is not a benign consumer choice, nor is it a byproduct of the law.  It is a social problem, with or without the drug war, and should be acknowledged as such. (emphasis mine)

This has been exactly what many legalization advocates have been saying for years.  There’s a deeper reason that people abuse drugs, one that no law can touch.  We know what the law HAS done though, and it’s been terrible, progressive criticism of the fallout from the “war on drugs” is one of the few things they still get correct.  But there is a lesson to be learned from that, one that applies well beyond the drug issue: the political arena is unfit for addressing what are moral concerns.

Abu al-Muhajir sez “Thanks, Bush!”:

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in a new audiotape on Friday to have mobilized 12,000 fighters and said the group was winning faster than expected.  “The al-Qaida army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, and they have vowed to die for God’s sake,” said Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, in an audiotape made available on militant Web sites. […]
He said Bush’s policies had allowed Iran to spread its influence in Afghanistan and Iraq after Washington toppled their Sunni rulers, and expanded Iran’s reach into Syria and Lebanon. […]

Challenging the Bush administration, he said: “I tell the lame duck do not rush to escape as did your defense minister …  stay on the battleground.” (emphasis mine)

Watch this get misinterpreted by the wingnuts as reason to stay rather than confirmation of the point that the realist crowd among the opposition was making years ago…

Flipping through channels earlier, stopped on C-Spans Washington Journal. Chris Shays was on and actually made a surprisingly reasonable point about “purple america” instead of the stereotype of Red vs Blue.

And then the air got sucked out of the room…

Some guy called right afterwards from Indiana and launched into a tirade best described as part neo-imperialist, part theocrat, saying “ignore these stupid ‘purples’ an’ the libruls, they don’t know anything. It’s a religious war, we need to kill them, the muslims, invade Iran…” It went on, but my ears were begging for mercy.

Gee, wonder who he voted for…

Last night I was watching my (former) favorite team the Pistons stumble into an ugly loss against Sacramento.  Sometime during the game, there was a sideline interview of the Maloof Brothers, owners of the Kings.  What took place says a lot about how corporatists view the idea of a free-market…

Apparently there was a ballot initiative in Sacramento on election day asking approval of a sales-tax increase to fund a new arena — an’ it got curb-stomped:

After months of contentious wrangling and bitter public debate, county voters were poised to reject Tuesday a tax increase that would have partially financed a flashy new Sacramento Kings basketball arena.

Ballot measures Q and R proposed a quarter-cent sales tax boost to help raise public funds for a downtown arena and other projects. With 91 percent of precincts reporting, nearly 72 percent of voters opposed Measure Q and more than 80 percent opposed Measure R.

The thoughts of the Maloofs on this?  Insinuation that they’re going to move the team, interspersed with complaints like “it’s hard to raise taxes these days” & “we don’t know what to do next, can’t stay in Arco much longer”.  There’s only one word for describing that sentiment: balls.

For starters, the Maloof family is worth over a BILLION dollars — that’s with a B — and owns not only the Kings, but the Palms casino, a television production company, a distributorship for Coors, and a chunk of Wells Fargo.  They say that they need taxpayer dollars for a new arena, so how much would one cost?  For a convenient baseline, take the most recent arena built for an NBA team, the one for the Charlotte Bobcats: its estimated cost is $260 million, and it hosts everything from basketball games to concerts to professional wrestling.  Surely with all their investments & connections they can cobble together at least that much from private funding, right?  After all, the current Arco Arena was entirely privately funded, what’s wrong with doing that again?

Stupid question, I know.  Expecting billionaires to make investments with their own money, how silly of me.

If the structure of their operation is such that they need more money than they have at hand, here’s a novel idea: sell shares in a new arena w/ premium tickets to games & events.  Their own website says last year they got almost 2 million fans coming through, they can offer this and then finish off the new arena funding through traditional investment.  Here’s the best part of it all: it wouldn’t involve state-sanctioned THEFT…

Luckily I don’t vote, otherwise I’d be kinda pissed at the Libertarian Party.  In that race for Tom Delay’s old seat Bob Smither came in 3rd w/ a single-digit total, behind someone who wasn’t even on the fucking ballot, in a district so red they probably blame the Democrats when it rains.  Meanwhile, a former LP member in Florida ran as a Democrat & got 41%.