Across the Great Divide

Fade to Black.

Hal Davis sends me this bleak time-lapse graphic of the deepening rate of unemployment across America since January 2007.

I link to it with my standard caveat — that population-based data projected in geographic space can be misleading.

It's the same point being made by dueling cellular network ads for Verizon and AT&T.

What Would the Free Market Do?

I suppose the free market has a good solution for this problem, if we'd only let it work.

The state of Idaho has an estimated 846 gray wolves — compared to Minnesota's 2900.

Now, if you're thinking, "good, the wolf population in the west is starting to recover," you're not thinking like a westerner who loves the Constitution. The proper response is, "where's my gun?"

High Country News reports that Idaho has sold 24,925 wolf tags to residents and another 640 to non-residents. The quota is 220, so the hunt is suspended once a quarter of the population is killed. (Montana has fewer wolves (497) but the ratio of in-state hunters per animal is roughly the same.)

Clearly, there are going to be a lot of disappointed consumers this holiday season.

Ain't it high time, we started following the Constitution and limited the federal government's powers to what the Founding Predator Harvesters intended?

Top 10 Recipes for Disaster.

I saw this link to Nora Ephron's "Top 10 Thanksgiving Recipes You Didn't Cook Last Year That You're Cooking This Year" post at HuffPo, and figured it would be a parody of the GOP's Top 10 Things That Didn't Win Last Year But We'll Insist Candidates Do Next Year.

But nope — recipes.

How to Pull a Caddy from Slough in 68 Steps.

Slow news day in Fergus Falls. Photos here. Video here.

Robert Elliot, 18, managed to escape his 1992 Cadillac Monday morning, Nov. 23 after it ended up in a slough along County Road 88. The accident happened near 190th Street around 6:30 a.m. after Elliot swerved to miss a deer and went off of the road, entering the slough. Wayne's Towing of Underwood hired a diver to help retrieve the vehicle.

No, there's no big payoff, like for the crane accident that circulated a few years ago (and was half-fabricated).

Is Boehner a Reverse Sandbagger?

Politico says the well-tanned Ohio Rep. John Boehner is a prolific fundraiser and golfer whose political action committee has spent $82,998 on golf outings so far this year.

The story says Boehner is a "pretty good golfer" with a 7.9 handicap.

That would make him a decent golfer, provided he kept his handicap properly, but I'm suspicious.

The USGA records show that Boehner has posted all but one of his scores at his home course. His 20 scores go all the way back to June 2007, with only eight scores for this year.

Maybe he only plays in scrambles when he's away from home, so he can't post his scores, but I don't know any golfers with a single digit handicap who live in two places, travel and play so little, at just one course.

Boehner's handicap may be legitimate, but to me it has the markings of the "reverse sandbagger" who only posts his best scores so he can maintain his self-image as a pretty good golfer. 

For you non-golfers, a sandbagger is someone who inflates his scores in order to have a higher handicap that is advantageous in competitions. A reverse sandbagger is more concerned about looking good in the bar, so he's only cheating himself.

Come to think of it, that's not very GOP-like.

Take Job Numbers with a Jigger of Salt.

I was standing near the front of a long line waiting to be called for my turn. Two clerks out of about 10 were helping only business customers, and one, whose station was open, began calling the names of various companies.

No one responded.

Then, he spotted someone just behind me. "Bob, I've worked with you a number of times. Come on up."

Bob was a tall, 50-ish man dressed with Man Men formality. His nose and eyes were red and he was more than slightly drunk. He was complaining about the taxes he had to pay and even more about the paperwork involved in filing.

I saw three actual checks; they were all for nominal amounts.

A window opened for me, and the first question I was asked was, "Do we have your travel agency on file?"

If it's not apparent by now, this is a slice from last night's dreams. (Some people dream about sex, and I have nightmares about the economy. That's what I get for reading James Howard Kunstler before bed!)

I got up and found this link (h/t Hal Davis) to a financial blogger's complaint that job losses during the recent downturn had been underestimated because the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a flawed model to estimate the jobs impact created by the birth and death of companies.

Dead companies don't do a very good job completing monthly paperwork. It can take awhile for evidence of their demise to sift through bankruptcy filings, unemployment claims, etc. 

New "companies" often get created by people who are cut loose from their jobs. These one- or two-person companies don't immediately show up on the federal bureaucratic radar. And, of course, even fewer of them actually feature what we like to think of as "jobs" — regular work activities that bring in revenue and produce a regular paycheck.  

The monthly job change numbers for major industries have to be adjusted for these lags based on a statistical model (see the link for the numbers). But when an fierce economic cycle is accompanied by radical restructuring of industries, those old jobs don't necessarily pop up again. Ever.

So, yes, whether you look at the current carnage through a model or through common sense, job estimates should be taken with a jigger of salt.

Just ask the former journalists, mortgage brokers, construction framers, hospital workers, airline personnel, auto workers, yellow pages salesmen and travel agents about their new jobs.

[After I wrote this, I saw Hal had sent me another piece by the same blogger that spells out in gory and depressing detail the longer-term employment picture I've alluded to here.]

"Recovery" and Economic Other Fantasies.

If James Howard Kunstler seems to be spending all his time tilting at windmills, maybe that's because he's practicing for the future. Globalism, growth and recovery are just fantasies that get in the way of dealing realistically with the world we are going to face.

What's going on in the US economy is a slow-motion convulsion from which we will emerge as a very different nation with a different economy.  The wild irresponsibility of the media in pretending otherwise is only going to make the convulsion worse, more painful, more socially and politically destructive. The convulsion can be described with precision as one of compressive contraction. Historic circumstances are requiring us to change our behavior, to make new arrangements for everyday life in all the major particulars: capital accumulation and deployment; food production; commerce; habitation; transport; education; and health care. These new arrangements must be organized at a smaller and finer scale, and on a much more local basis.

The main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "peak oil." We've come to the end of our ability in this world to increase energy inputs to the global economy.  The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible.  Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, et cetera - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.

Financial PAC Money to Democrats — Less Than Meets the Eye?

Here's the kind of transparency report that annoys me because it seems to come with a point of view attached.

The House Financial Services Committee voted yesterday to give regulators the authority to break up large financial firms that create too much systemic risk, in an effort to prevent future financial crises. The vote passed by a 38-29 margin, but three Democrats joined with all Republicans voting no. Those three Democrats--Melissa Bean (D-IL), Dan Maffei (D-NY), and Gregory Meeks (D-NY)--received an average of $99,483 from banks' PACs in the last two years, 119% more than the average of $45,358 received by the 38 Democrats voting for tougher regulation.

Comparing the averages implies that the financial industry exerted a disproportionate influence over the three Democrats voting against the regulation.

But the top three Democratic members who voted for the legislation collected more than $435,ooo from the banks PACs, versus only $298,000 for the three Democrats voting against. Committee Chair Barney Frank and bill co-sponsor Paul Kanjorsky together took more PAC money than the breakaway three.

And when you look at the total dollars paid out by the industry to the top 15 recipients — which includes all three "no" voters — the 12 Democratic supporters of tougher regulation among that group collected almost $1.126 million. The other "yes" voters got another $1.384 million.

It's just possible the three Democrats voted the interests of their districts or their consciences. Looking at the money alone doesn't tell us that, but the analysis makes a dark inference.

As for the Republicans, we don't know how much they got. The analysis doesn't tell us the average amount that "bought" the GOP votes.

Does Income Inequality Make a Society Sick?

Here's another study to make conservatives crazy, but progressives should be wary of pushing the findings too far.

In an analysis of previously conducted research on inequality and health studies, epidemiologists have found support for the ideas that income inequality affects health and that there is a threshold of income inequality beyond which adverse impacts on health begin to emerge. They found that individuals “living in regions with high income inequality have an excess risk for premature mortality independent of their socioeconomic status, age, and sex.”

In other words, inequality may affect everyone in a society, not just the poor. It may be that income gaps create psychosocial stresses — beyond the obvious nutritional and material differences — that diminish the health of all. The researchers say their findings "need to be interpreted with caution."

In the medical journal BMJ, an editorial by the authors of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better says "the controversial question is not whether more equal societies really do have better health, but why they do" and whether inequality itself is a reason some places are healthier than others.

A review of The Spirit Level reminded me of Wellstone's "we all do better when we all do better":

A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued – such as low wages, low benefits and low public spending on education, for instance – will allow a flourishing of human potential.

One more thing I'm sure the free market should be able to clear up for us.

Via Sam Pizzigati with h/t to Norwegianity.

About Dithering.

If I google the word "dither," I get 238,000 hits. If I search within those results for "dither Obama," I somehow get about 597,00 hits.

And who says there's a right wing echo chamber?

Our glorious hardass ex-vice president, whose administration essentially ignored Afghanistan for eight years, now accuses Pres. Obama of "dithering" over the decision to commit more U.S. troops there.

Saying Mr. Other Priorities turns my stomach is the most even-tempered thing I can come up with right now.

Bill Moyers recently played recordings of President Lyndon Johnson as he was "dithering" over committing more American troops to Vietnam. Johnson — who inherited the commitment from the previous administration, who wanted to focus on domestic policy, who was hounded by right wing opponents who wanted to bomb North Vietnam back to the stone age, and who had the example of the French failure before him — had countless advisors tell him what an unwinnable mess he had on his hands.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? What, what, I'd like to hear you talk a little bit.

[Senate Armed Services Chairman] RICHARD RUSSELL: Frankly, Mr. President, if you were to tell me that I was authorized to settle it as I saw fit, I would respectfully decline and not take it.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: [chuckles]

RICHARD RUSSELL: It's a, it's a, it's the damn worst mess I ever saw, and I don't like to brag. I never have been right many times in my life. But I knew we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don't see how we're going ever to get out without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles [...] I just don't know what to do.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Well, that's the way that I've been feeling for six months.

RICHARD RUSSELL: It appears our position is deteriorating. And it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less that they're willing to do for themselves [...] It's a hell, a hell of a situation. It's a mess. And it's going to get worse. And I don't know what to do. I don't think that the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. And if it came down to an option of just sending the Americans in there to do the fighting, which will, of course, eventually lead into a ground war and a conventional war with China [...] If it got down to that or just pulling out, I'd get out. But then I don't know. There's undoubtedly some middle ground somewhere [...]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: How important is it to us?

RICHARD RUSSELL: It isn't important a damn bit, with all these new missile systems.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Well, I guess it's important to us-

RICHARD RUSSELL: From a psychological standpoint.                          

[...]

RICHARD RUSSELL: Of course you'd look pretty good, I guess, going in there with all the troops and sending them all in there, but I tell you it'll be the most expensive venture this country ever went into.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: I just haven't got the nerve to do it, and I don't see any other way out of it.

RICHARD RUSSELL: It's one of these things where "heads I win, tails you lose."

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Well, think about it and I'll talk to you again. I hate to bother you, but I just-

RICHARD RUSSELL: I wish I could help you. God knows I do 'cause it's a, it's a terrific quandary that we're in over there. We're just in the quicksand up to our very necks. And I just don't know what the hell is the best way to do about it.

In another conversation with Russell

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: But they say that, well a fellow like A.W. Moursund said to me last night, -damn, there's not anything that'll destroy you as quick as pulling out, pulling up stakes and running, that America wants by God, prestige and power. And they don't want-I said, yeah, but I don't want to-I don't want to kill these folks. He said, I don't give a damn. He said, I didn't want to kill 'em in Korea, but said, if you don't stand up for America, there's nothing that a fellow in Johnson City-or Georgia or any other place-they'll forgive you for everything except being weak.

RICHARD RUSSELL: Well there's a lot in that. There's a whole lot in that.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Goldwater and all of 'em raising hell about go on, let's hot pursuit. Let's go in and bomb them [...]

RICHARD RUSSELL: It'd take a half million men. They'd be bogged down in there for ten years. And oh hell no.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: We never did clean Korea up yet.

RICHARD RUSSELL: No it ain't clean yet. We're right where we started [...] I didn't ever want to get messed up down there. I do not agree with those brain trusters who say that this thing has got tremendous strategic and economic value and that we'll lose everything in Southeast, in Asia if we lose Vietnam. I don't think that's true. But I think as a practical matter, we're in there and I don't know how the hell you can tell the American people you're coming out. There's just no way to do it. They'll think that you've just been whipped, you've been ruined, you're scared. And, it'd be disastrous.

It wasn't Johnson's dithering that killed more than 50,000 Americans. And it isn't Dick Cheney's bravery on the talk shows that is going to accomplish what he could not do in power.

You could take the Moyers transcript and change the names, and we'd be heading back to the same damn place, only drier.