"But Their Monopolization Strategy Was Legal"

The New York Times comments on Apple's antitrust verdict,

At a hearing on Friday, the department will argue that its plan to remedy Apple’s misconduct will “restore lost competition.” In a narrow sense it may, but the problem with this case all along was that the department ignored the potentially bigger anticompetitive force in the e-book market — Amazon — while focusing on Apple.

Due to the timing of its entry into the market, its dominance as an Internet bookseller, and a pricing strategy that often involved selling eBooks below cost - something Amazon doesn't appear to in other markets - Amazon managed to gain 90% of the eBook market, and was thus fairly categorized as a monopoly. The Times suggests that it was Apple's agency contracts and price matching requirements that got it into trouble, although it was the court's finding that Apple played a vertical role in an otherwise horizontal price fixing conspiracy between publishing houses that actually resulted in the antitrust finding. Apple will certainly challenge the theory of its liability on appeal, as traditionally the only vertical participants accused in such conspiracies were major participants in the market, while Apple was merely considering entering the market - and quite reasonably would likely have declined to do so had it not been able to break Amazon's pricing stranglehold such that its eBook operations could actually be profitable. Also, the government's theory focused on the "most favored nation" clause of the contract (allowing Apple to match in its bookstore the lowest price offered by its competitors), despite the fact that such clauses are not uncommon and appear to have never before been found to form the basis of an antitrust violation.

The editorial speaks of the Justice Departments proposal as being about "keep[ing] Apple from getting back to its old tricks", but in context Apple would be a one-trick pony. The controversy over agency pricing extends to the book market only because of the way Apple entered the market. The agency model, which is Apple's consistent "trick" is otherwise a perfectly legal, appropriate business model. The Times notes that the danger of penalizing Apple in this context is that the net effect may be to restore Amazon's monopoly:

[The Justice Department plan] does not address the need for a counterweight to Amazon’s dominance. Amazon controls an estimated 65 percent of the market, with Apple at 10 percent and other retailers splitting the rest. (Before Apple started selling e-books, Amazon had 90 percent.) The case against Apple has done nothing to solve that problem.

On one hand, the purpose of the plan is to punish Apple for its misconduct, and to prevent recurrence. To my eye, the plan is absurd and overreaching, but perhaps the DOJ is following the principle that you won't get what you don't ask for, or the fact that they'll almost certainly get less than they propose so why not start by shooting for the moon? But on the other hand, if the proposal ends up restoring Amazon's monopoly - and the relief requested by the DOJ would prevent Apple from entering into any contracts that would enable it to run a profitable eBook store once Amazon, shielded by the terms of the proposal, starts once again selling eBooks at a loss - the DOJ looks a bit ridiculous. Coming down like a sledgehammer on a company that broke a monopoly by establishing an even playing field for eBook vendors, in order to protect and restore the company whose monopolistic practices had previously deterred any appreciable competition.

Following the settlements with the various publishing houses involved in the conspiracy, the market has effectively sorted itself out. Amazon still controls a whopping 60% of the eBook market, prices have stabilized, and consumers have their choice of platforms and vendors. I thus think that the remedy should focus on prevention and punishment, not on trying to tamper with the markets. If the DOJ's concern is that Apple is going to profit unreasonably from its conduct over the next few years, and it can prove that theory, increase the fine accordingly. Sure, it may be that the DOJ's plan will take us back to the days when Amazon sold many eBooks as a loss to deter competition, but even if I believed prices would be lower I think we're far better off over the long-run if Amazon's monopoly is not restored.

You Can't Lose What You've Never Had

The New York Times is fretting that,

By not repudiating Mr. Adelson’s vow to spend as much as $100 million on their behalf, the two candidates seem more eager to keep the “super PAC” dollars flowing than to preserve the integrity of their campaign.

Yeah....

Justice Roberts, Apostate!

David Frum knows a little bit about apostasy. His abrupt termination by the AEI¹ was reportedly triggered by his "Waterloo" argument, that by choosing to fight healthcare reform rather than participate in the process the Republican Party missed the opportunity to potentially help craft a more conservative bill.

Since his termination, Frum has been attempting to reinvent himself as a different sort of Republican, a sensible Republican who longs for the good old days of bipartisanship (i.e., 5 Democrats joining a Republican bill) and who complains about partisanship, the unseemliness of right-wing radio hosts, and the like. His quest to reinvent himself has not found him a new home in the Republican Party, nor has his retreat from his own past excesses been forgotten by those who might be his allies but for his past attacks. But if Jeb Bush's apparent gamble on the Republican Party's return to moderation is credible, perhaps he'll seem like less of a Cassandra and more of an opinion leader.

Back in his AEI glory days, Frum appeared to be participating in what I jokingly suggested might be a contest between himself and two of his former Bush Administration speechwriting buddies, his ex-boss Michael Gerson and his fellow backbiter Marc Thiessen. The contest appeared to be, who could make the dumbest possible statement about an issue of public controversy and still be taken seriously. The AEI termination led to Frum's gradual, overall withdrawal from the contest - a choice he may regret, given that the apparent prize for the winner(s) is a sinecure on the Washington Post Op/Ed page.

I alluded to Gerson's commentary on the Supreme Court's decision upholding the ACA while poking fun at the ridiculous Peggy Noonan, but that wasn't entirely fair to Frum. Although he does see the Court's decision as contradicting the Republican Agenda, his criticism was directed not at Roberts but at the Republican Party. Once it was Waterloo, now it's a 100 Years War.

On the whole, Marc Thiessen is the clear contest winner - the guy whose arguments are usually devoid of fact or reason, with no apparent consequence to his standing as a conservative commentator. Michael Gerson's columns have gradually faded into mediocrity. It's if he can barely muster the energy to gather the kindling, leaving poor Marc not only to collect the firewood, but also to identify the heretics who must be burned.

When I saw Thiessen's piece today, titled Why is Fred Hiatt So Awful at Picking Op/Ed Columnists Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices, it seemed lucky for Frum that he had thrown in the towel. Thiessen lectures us that,

Democrats have been virtually flawless in appointing reliable liberals to the court. Yet Republicans, more often than not, appoint justices who vote with the other side on critical decisions.

If you actually follow the court, you will recall Justice Stevens' observations that his "transformation" from "conservative" to "liberal" did not actually involve his changing any of his opinions - it resulted from the court's dramatic shift to the right. Reagan's policies and politics would be far too liberal for the modern Republican Party. He appointed his nominees before the individual health insurance mandate was created and advocated by conservatives and the Republican Party, so it shouldn't be particularly surprising that his nominees represented a different brand of conservatism.

Thiessen also forgets that the task of nominating candidates for the Supreme Court belongs to the President, not to the party. Prior to G.W.'s presidency it was difficult to imagine that the Republicans would turn on a president's nominee in the manner in which they turned on Harriet Miers. Thiessen complains that Supreme Court justices don't share his preferred political agenda, and aren't consistently trying to advance his preferred agenda through their service on the Court? Maybe that's because Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush didn't share Thiessen's agenda, and thus didn't apply his litmus tests when selecting candidates. Perhaps also, Supreme Court Justices don't see their job quite the same way Thiessen does.

And that's before we get to the silliness of Thiessen's suggestion that the justices appointed by Democratic Presidents always vote against Thiessen's agenda "on critical decisions". As they say, it all depends on whose ox is getting gored.

Thiessen prattles on with the notion that "Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen." Hardly. Kennedy, generally regarded as the "swing vote" of the current court, is not hailed as a statesman. He's often characterized as having a weak and inconsistent approach to the Constitution, and of tending to patronize women. Who does he imagine he's talking about? Rehnquist? Scalia? Thomas? Alito? Because one example from one case, with cherry-picked quotes from a handful of sources, does not constitute a pattern - even if we ignore the fact that "pre-emptive" attacks are irrelevant to his argument and that it's conservatives like himself who are engaged in the behavior he supposedly deplores.

Thiessen's on a roll,

Liberal nominees can simply affirm liberal positions, while conservatives must speak cryptically in terms of their judicial philosophy.

A statement that leaves me with the firm impression that Thiessen has never read a Supreme Court opinion - majority, concurring or dissent - by any of the Justices he's attacking. If you read a typical Scalia or Thomas opinion and are left scratching your head, "Is he a conservative? It's so... cryptic", all you've established is that you're a dolt.

Thiessen whines,

But legislate from the bench is exactly what Roberts did last week. The law’s proponents consistently rejected the notion that the individual mandate was a tax. But Roberts effectively redrafted the statute, making the mandate a tax in order to declare it constitutional....

That is the kind of sophistry we expect from liberals. The left sees the law as a tool of social justice — so they start with the desired outcome and then come up with legal reasoning to justify it. That is what Roberts did last week. He decided he wanted to uphold Obamacare and rewrote the statute to fit that outcome.

Talk about turning history on its head. Two years ago when the bill passed, conservative commentators regarded it as all-but-certain to pass muster with the Supreme Court. Then, months later, a right-wing law professor invented the "activity/inactivity" distinction that became the centerpiece of the legal attack on the ACA. And it almost worked. As Thiessen knows, Roberts endorsed that newly fabricated "magic bullet" argument - the one that was supposed to take down the ACA (or at least its key elements.

Had the four dissenters joined Roberts in overturning only the mandate and the associated community rating / preexisting condition provisions of the ACA, I think Roberts would have joined with them and that hacks like Thiessen would be praising his brilliance. But Roberts had just one vote to cast. With four Justices voting to uphold the bulk of the ACA, four hungering to overturn the entire Act - including provisions that are already in effect and have absolutely no relation to the mandate - Roberts chose the more judicially conservative approach. Thiessen should perhaps address his anger at the dissenters who, as a result of their eagerness to throw the baby out with the bathwater, ended up preserving both.

No, there's no real intellectual satisfaction to "We'll call it a tax and, voila, constitutional," but that was the avenue that allowed Roberts to join with the dissenters on issues that a better legal analysis would have required him to reject. The better approach would have been either to apply a traditional Commerce Clause analysis, applying existing precedent and discussing the proposed "activity/inactivity" distinction within that framework. Although there's some debate over whether it constitutes dicta or holding, Roberts attempted to articulate a new framework - but in order to avoid a form of activism that would take center stage in Constitutional Law textbooks for decades to come, he found an alternative path to upholding the ACA.

Thiessen sees only two reasons why Roberts would have changed his vote, "[that] he was suddenly convinced by his liberal colleagues, or simply had a failure of nerve". Thiessen apparently cannot contemplate the possibility that given a forced choice between (virtually) all or nothing, Roberts chose the conservative approach - eschewing the activism that hacks like Thiessen claim to detest but, as evidenced by his poisonous diatribe, actually desire. Thiessen falls victim to self-parody,

We need jurists who not only have a philosophy of judicial restraint, but the intestinal fortitude not to be swayed by pressure from the New York Times, the Georgetown cocktail circuit and the legal academy.

Which columnists do you suppose you're more likely to find at a Georgetown cocktail party - those of the New York Times, or those of the Washington Post? Which paper does Thiessen, who is explicitly trying to punish, diminish and marginalize Roberts for voting "the wrong way" on a case, work for, again? What's the point of Thiessen's vitriol, or of his long history of seeking out heretics and calling for their destruction, if not to influence them and others - to try to intimidate them into toeing the party line? And the legal academy? Which justices adhered to precedent and two centuries of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, again? And which glommed onto a less than two-year-old theory concocted by a law professor, then championed by others, as a means of defeating the ACA? Thiessen is entitled to his own opinion column, but not to his own facts.

I was going to declare Thiessen the hands-down winner, but before I had a chance to write anything Gerson came up with a late entry. Another "facts be damned" whine about how conservatives justicescare too much about the institution of the Court to simply aren't able to ram through the Republican agenda.

Perhaps channeling his inner David Brooks, king of the false dichotomy, Gerson pontificates that there are "two varieties of judicial conservatism — institutionalism and constitutionalism".

In [an institutionalist's] view, the court maintains its power by exercising it sparingly — deferring whenever possible to the legislative branch. Institutionalism embodies a temperamental conservatism — a commitment to continuity, humility and prudence.

[Constitutionalists focus] on the rigorous application of the words of the founding document. In this view, the meaning of the text is primary, whatever the political consequences of applying it.

So within the context of this decision, in which five Justices - the dissenters and Roberts - looked at the following Constitutional language:

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

And concluded that the text includes an absolute prohibition on the regulation of what the Court determines to be the regulation of inactivity - imposing a penalty on a person who chooses not to engage in a specific form of commerce - no matter what the facts or how compelling the circumstances. The fundamental "reasoning" for the prohibition is that, although states have long imposed mandates without controversy or excess, to allow even the most modest of mandate in even the most compelling of circumstances would inevitably lead to the government forcing people to buy broccoli. That argument is neither textual nor logical.

Meanwhile it is possible to be a close adherent of the text of the Constitution while also believing that the Court needs to protect its credibility as an institution. Gerson defends the judicial activism of the justices he purports to be constitutionalists, suggesting that they're pushing back against "liberal activism", but that's a self-serving, political argument. In the present case, the concurring opinion represents both the better textual interpretation and (as Gerson concedes) the "institutional conservatism" that Gerson would have us believe is somehow solely the province of Roberts. (Sorry, Michael - Roberts has only one vote - he needed to join with four others for that vote to count for anything.)

Gerson shares, and perhaps parrots, Thiessen's complaint that Roberts turned to Congress's power to tax as his basis for upholding the law. He then presents an addle, social science argument that the mandate might work as a "mandate" but by revealing to people the supposed secret that they could actually choose not to buy insurance and pay a penalty, Roberts has made it more likely that people will regard their choice in economic terms and now be more likely to pick the penalty if they think they'll save money. Seriously? One hardly dares tell Gerson that such "reasoning" has no place in the constitutional analysis of a statute.

Gerson opened his column by casting aspersions on Earl Warren, and closes by cautioning Justice Roberts, in effect, that if he doesn't shape up and start doing what the Republican Party wants him to do, he can expect hacks like Gerson to argue that he's the "new Earl Warren".

On the whole, Gerson seems to be parroting arguments raised by others, perhaps including Thiessen, so I think Thiessen takes the round.
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1. For somebody who cherishes intellectual rigor and honest debate, being fired by the AEI would be a badge of honor... but I presuppose that such a person could get hired by the AEI.

Outsourcing on David Brooks and the "Democrat Party"

Cough, cough, hack, cough.

Sorry, something must have been caught in my throat.

Douthat Misrepresents Krugman on Deficits

Last night on Real Time, Bill Maher pointed out the fact that Republicans talk big about the deficit when they don't control the White House, but run up huge deficits when they do - that Republican deficit hawkery is not sincere, but is a tool they used to attack a Democratic President's agenda. Of Maher's three guests, two attempted to defend the Republican Party. Gretchen Hamel took the "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes approach and argued, in essence, "this time is different" - that the Republicans have learned their lesson and now sincerely want to balance the budget. Ross Douthat argued that G.W. Bush had been attacked for his deficits at the start of his Presidency, I guess to suggest that the Republican antics represent "politics as usual" and thus should be excused despite their harm to the nation?

Had Douthat stopped there, it might be appropriate to point out to him that an accusation of hypocrisy in general, let alone when you're pointing to actions taken a decade apart, does nothing to tell us which approach is correct. Even if you assume all else is equal, it could be that the Democrats learned from experience that the threat from the out-of-control deficits ushered in by Bush were overstated. That assumption, of course, would require you to be ignorant of the fact that at the time G.W. took office there was a budget surplus and an opportunity to pay down the national debt, and when he left office he had run up a gargantuan deficit and that we were in the midst of a serious financial crisis. Surely Douthat is not that ignorant.

But then, what to make of his reference to his New York Times colleague, Paul Krugman, as the sole example of left-wing hypocrisy on the issue. He alleged that at the start of the G.W. Bush presidency Krugman argued that deficits were bad, and that now that a Democrat was in office he was arguing that deficits were good. That leaves us with one of several possibilities, none of which are flattering to Douthat:

1. He has not read Krugman's columns and other writings, and is accusing Krugman of hypocrisy based upon his own ignorance of and suppositions about what Krugman has written;

2. He has read Krugman's columns and other writings, but doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand those writings; or

3. He's lying in order to score a political point at the expense of his colleague.

It's also fair to observe that Douthat's implicit suggestion that the nation's economic situation is analogous then and now, such that the issues involved in the determination of whether the nation should have a deficit were essentially the same, is false - similarly suggesting ignorance by Douthat or his deliberate intent to deceive his audience. To assume that Douthat is both informed and sincere would require that you regard him as seeing the following two scenarios as equivalent:

1. A family spends more than it earns for a decade, such that it has six figures of debt. Due to some lucky windfalls, a small lottery win, an inheritance, a modest raise at work, the family is finally able to balance its budget - $2,000 left at the end of the year. Given the choice of applying that amount to its debt, or of spending the money, the family chooses the a third path, taking a $5,000 vacation - increasing its total debt load and making its situation less sustainable.

2. A family struggles to make ends meet, and faces significant debt. It's worried about the impact of that debt on its short-term, and especially upon its long-term, financial well-being. But catastrophe strikes, mom is diagnosed with cancer, and the family needs to spend $100,000 in uninsured medical costs to keep her alive and thus goes deeper into debt.

Is Douthat truly unable to understand the difference between choosing to spend yourself deeper into debt when your financial picture is good and you have the option of reducing your debt load, and going deeper into debt in response to catastrophe? Or of the policy choices and economic consequences involved in choosing between spending that benefits the masses and tax cuts directed at the rich? If he has read Krugman, he shouldn't be. When the Bush tax cuts were initially proposed, for example, Krugman wrote,

His argument went as follows: given its projected surpluses over the next decade, the federal government may not only pay off its debt, but actually find itself using surplus cash to buy private assets. This could cause problems, he suggested, because it would be "difficult to insulate the government's investment decisions from political pressures." So we should engage in "pre-emptive smoothing of the glide path," which turns out to mean cutting taxes enough so that the federal government never does pay off its debt, after all.

Now I would quarrel with those surplus projections. I would also point out that in declaring "it is far better . . . that the surpluses be lowered by tax reductions than by spending increases," Mr. Greenspan was out of bounds. Since when is it the Fed's business to say that we should have a tax cut rather than, say, a new prescription drug benefit -- or for that matter a missile defense system? (Neither program is factored into those surplus projections.)

When the economy was souring, Krugman didn't oppose tax cuts as a stimulus measure, but instead wrote why Bush's plan would not be effective as stimulus:

Now Mr. Bush could have tried to sell his plan in terms of the ideology that the plan actually reflects. But he has never done so. Instead, he has engaged in an elaborate disinformation campaign. Part of this effort involves an attempt to deny the plain fact that the tax cuts will mainly go to the very, very well off. But the campaign's most striking feature has been the attempt to sell the tax cut as a short-run stimulus to spending -- as the answer to an economic slowdown that Mr. Bush has done his best to play up, and which his doomsday rhetoric may have worsened.

What's ironic is that the timing of the Bush tax plan makes it just about completely useless as a short-run stimulus package. In order to keep the headline numbers down, the plan delays the really big tax cuts far into the future, putting hardly any money into the hands of consumers this year and not much next year. And recently administration officials have begun to admit that if they are really serious about doing something for the economy now, they need to add an immediate tax cut onto the plan.

But then the question arises: why not adopt the add-on and forget about the original plan? Or better yet, why not implement one of the short-run stimulus plans proposed by Democratic senators, and discuss those huge long-term tax cuts for the rich at our leisure?

Douthat should also know that, as far as Krugman is concerned, he's asking the wrong question:

How did a huge surplus turn into a huge deficit? The recession, the tax cut and terrorism -- in that order -- all played a role. Also, it now seems clear that the big surplus in 2000, almost twice as large as the surplus in the previous year, was an aberration -- that tax receipts were inflated by the technology bubble. In retrospect it's hard to believe that we locked in large, long-term tax cuts based on exactly one year in which the non-Social-Security budget was in significant surplus. (Thanks, Mr. Greenspan.)

But anyway, ''Who lost the surplus?'' is the wrong question. The right question is whether the Bush administration has any plan to return to a balanced budget, let alone to honor George W. Bush's promise to use the Social Security surplus to pay down debt. And the answer is no.

That is, it should be obvious to anybody who reads Krugman that he is not particularly concerned with any particular year's budget deficit or surplus, but is instead focused on the long-term.

And if Douthat needs to be spoon fed, well how about that - Krugman has even penned a piece in response to those who "want to know why I’m blaming Obama’s deficits on Bush, and why I think Obama deficits are good, while Bush deficits weren’t." The criticism is of debt, not deficits; deficits can result from a prior administration's policies; and when it comes to stimulus spending the "zero bound" makes an enormous difference. But Douthat knows all of this, doesn't he?

Seriously, was Douthat's attack on Krugman a confession of incompetence, of willful ignorance, or of mendacity?

Shopping Safely in the Online World

In terms of customer service nightmares - from the customer side - the recent New York Times story about "DecorMyEyes" is about as bad as it gets. I mean, seriously, when was the last time you heard of an attempt to return merchandise resulting in a criminal warrant for stalking being issued against the proprietor of a business?

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land quickly pointed out how Google was addressing customer reviews in other areas of search, and suggested steps Google could take to minimize the chance of an online consumer confusing a top result in a search engine results page with the suggestion that the merchant was honest or ethical.

To Google's credit, it appears that by that time they were already on the case, attempting to develop an algorithmic solution that will detect merchants that Google believes "provide a extremely poor user experience", and... presumably prevent them from achieving top search engine rankings. But as Google notes, they won't catch everybody.

But when you're dealing with online merchants, particularly those of which you haven't previously heard, caveat emptor. Check the reviews carefully, keeping in mind that for newer vendors a series of positive reviews may be planted for the purpose of tricking would-be customers. Check the website - not just to see if it looks professional, but to see what it says about the business, its location and phone number. No business name other than the website title? No contact information other than a phone number? Watch out. If you look up the domain name for the store (e.g., through Whois.sc) do you get a real address and contact information, fake information or an anonymous registration? Real stores don't hide.

And if it’s important enough for you to have “designer” handbags, watches, eyeglasses, etc., know up front that a huge percentage of online merchandise is going to be counterfeit or, at best, gray market - it may cost more, but consider shopping through an authorized merchant.

Fritter and Waste

The New York Times is infamous for its articles expressing sympathy for people who have suffered the fall from being truly wealthy to being, say, merely upper middle class. I hardly know what to make of this one. The opening suggests that the subject of the article is living a modest, meager existence, which in fact appears to be true... for now. It then explains,

It is a far cry from the life that Mr. Martin and his family enjoyed until recently at their Adirondacks waterfront camp at Tupper Lake, N.Y. Their garage held three stylish cars, including a yellow Aston Martin; they owned three horses, one that cost $173,000; and Mr. Martin treated his wife, Kate, to a birthday weekend at the Waldorf-Astoria, with dinner at the “21” Club and a $7,000 mink coat.

That luxurious world was fueled by a check Mr. Martin received in 1998 for $14 million, his share of the $600 million sale of Martin Media, an outdoor advertising business begun by his father in California in the 1950s. After taxes, he kept about $10 million.

The article goes on to describe various indulgent and wasteful decisions that largely frittered away that inheritance, with an allusion to the housing market as if to suggest that this was simply a case of bad luck. Having poured more than half of the inheritance into building a luxury home, which is nonetheless subject to a seven figure mortgage, a prospective buyer has offered them barely more than they owe. But if they accept the offer and they're lucky they'll end up with six figures in the bank, which puts them in pretty rare company these days.

Did this heir never heard the admonition, "Don't spend the principal"? I know, that oversimplifies economic reality. Sometimes it's necessary and even sensible to spend part of the principal. But not on six figure cars and racehorses, and self-indulgent luxury housing that, even in a good market, could not reasonably be considered as an investment with a sale unlikely to result in massive losses. There is no reason a family of four cannot be set for life based on a $10 million after-tax windfall.

In seeing how people handle (and mishandle) money, I have come to the conclusion that if you redistributed all of the nation's wealth equally among its citizens, you would be back to the same, skewed wealth distribution within two generations, possibly one. Many among the wealthy would object to this "wealth redistribution" not because they reject that probable outcome, but because in their hearts they know that regaining their wealth and privilege would require luck, sacrifice, and possibly even hard work. That is, once wealth again approaches its current distribution, there would be a significant shift in who ended up wealthy and who ended up less privileged.

Balancing the Budget - The Home Game

When I followed a link to the NYTimes "you fix the budget" gimmick, I was disappointed. Not that I expected it to be a realistic exercise, but it was so full of forced and often false choices that I rolled my eyes and left the page. It's like one of those telephone opinion polls when they ask, "If you had this partial piece of information, would it make you more or less likely to vote for candidate X" - If you can believe it, they actually want you to answer "More" or "Less" instead of "Yes".

By way of example, how will cutting earmarks in fact cut the budget, when they relate primarily to how money is to be spent, not whether it will be spent? And Putting the canard of "malpractice reform" right at the top of the list for health care reform, of course, sends entirely the wrong signal about the usefulness of the exercise to anybody who knows a whit about malpractice litigation (as opposed to having internalized insurance industry propaganda). What about fraud and waste, either of which alone is a much larger cost than the entire cost of malpractice litigation? Also, why not means test Medicare - where is the option for increased copays and deductibles for seniors with substantial means, or even continuing to charge wealthy seniors a premium? Is that seriously too complex a possibility to be factored in? We must tax, cut, but not actually reform? (And those examples barely touch the surface.)

Mythago doesn't post to her blog very often these days but when she does, boy can she get to the point.

Ordinary People Retreat From the Casino

The Times informs us,

Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.

Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.

But wait a minute. Aren't these the same people who were sold mutual funds because they're "professionally managed," and that by having their money pooled and used to buy a diverse portfolio of securities they could reduce their risk? That they could select from different funds that offered different levels of risk (and ostensibly return) so as to plan for the future with a reasonable level of financial security?

How many of them have seen their financial advisers and mutual fund managers profit even as their investments have tanked? Or have seen their investments decline while the executives of the companies in the (declining) portfolios of their mutual funds pay themselves like the hereditary heirs of a banana republic?

Maybe people aren't so much "pulling back from risk" as they are recoiling at being ripped off.

Investors pulled $19.1 billion from domestic equity funds in May, the largest outflow since the height of the financial crisis in October 2008.

Over all, investors pulled $151.4 billion out of stock market mutual funds in 2008. But at that time the market was tanking in shocking fashion. The surprise this time around is that Americans are withdrawing money even when share prices are rallying.

Surprising? Perhaps they're cashing out their retirement accounts, despite financial penalties, in order to pay bills.

Government Generation of Jobs

The New York Times argues in favor of the government doing more to create jobs, implicitly arguing for a new stimulus bill. The Times should get credit for consistency on this point, having taken the position from the outset that the stimulus bill was too small and that more needed to be done. But the new editorial glosses over what would be involved in a new stimulus bill that could help boost the economy - on the low side we would be talking what? $500,000,000,000? It seems to me that the Times should be up-front about its demands, and should similarly be up front about why such a bill would not generate majority support in Congress. It's easy to observe:

Recovery, such as it is, appears to be a repeat of the lopsided growth of the Bush years, with corporate profits rebounding and jobs and incomes lagging.

Paul Krugman recently pointed to an interesting (albeit superficial) article about Japan that indicates how long-term high levels of unemployment for young adults can distort a society. That's something to avoid, if possible. Optimists argue that we must do more to reboot the economy and generate jobs before long-term unemployment becomes structural or, even more optimistically, before those opposed to stimulus spending can argue that there's no point because a @10% unemployment rate has become a structural issue that we must accept and live with.

But we are dealing with real world changes. We've exported our manufacturing base and expertise, such that formerly huge domestic industries are a shadow of their former selves. (Consider, for example, the domestic furniture and textile industries). We're dealing with an environment in which manufacturing jobs that once paid a middle class wage to young workers are now paying... not much better than running a cash register at Wal-Mart. Even if you believe the skill sets are similar, and that the only reason manufacturing jobs were better paid is the influence of "evil unions", you cannot revive the domestic consumer economy in an environment in which workers are being paid less and are working fewer hours. And yes, the concept of quickly reviving the economy through stimulus spending anticipates that the consumer economy will revive. (The mixed message: Save money, oh you spendthrift Americans, but simultaneously borrow and spend.)

Via Atrios comes a look at employer expectations in the new economy. In the eyes of the Wall Street Journal, it appears that skilled workers should be begging for scraps, not demanding decent wages. Workers should be eager to apply for jobs beneath their skill set, and should not expect job security, but employers should feel free to reject workers as overqualified.

Many of the longest-term unemployed may already be permanently displaced from the job market. Those who worked in industries that have collapsed, in which innovation has reduced or eliminated the demand for their skills, or in which employers find it advantageous to bring in younger, often lower-paid workers are not likely to find well-paying work in the new economy. Even with stimulus spending. I hate to be a pessimist, and I do not mean this as an argument against another significant stimulus bill, but these structural changes in the job market have been developing for decades and they're real.

It's been easy for other parts of the country to point to the rust belt, or similarly depressed regions, and argue that the residents of those regions are flawed, or that there's a magic trick that the government could pull off - cutting taxes, reducing regulations, offering subsidies - that would attract new jobs and industries to their states. But is it that difficult to see that the structural changes that occurred in the steel and auto industries, or the aforementioned furniture and textile industries, are not going to vanish? For the most part, factories aren't coming back. And the few that do will require far fewer workers than the factories of past generations and are likely to pay significantly lower wages. Nobody finds that surprising for the auto industry, so why do so many act like the past several governors of Michigan, plug their ears and hum when it's pointed out that the net effect of this recession has been to push a significant number of other industries in the same direction?

The entire world seems to be focused on the American consumer as the solution to the global financial crisis. When American consumers start spending again, the gears of international commerce will start to turn and, as they accelerate, everybody will once again be rolling in money. But perhaps it's time for other nations to recognize that it's not likely to happen, and certainly not likely to happen any time soon. And for our own political leaders to start paving the way for a future in which the economy rests on a more sound foundation than consumer spending.

Yes, change is scary. But change is not only coming, it has arrived.

Give Politicians and Pundits the Benefit of the Doubt?

You must be joking.

Seriously, I hear from time to time that our nation's opinion leaders are sincere. That they aren't being deceptive, disingenuous, dishonest, but are merely stating valid opinions that, if you took a step back and thought about them, are a perfectly reasonably approach to an important problem or issue. And no, I don't want to overstate my case - there are some politicians and commentators who attempt exactly that. You may disagree with them some, most, or even all of the time yet still recognize that they're making a sincere contribution to the public discourse.

But most of the time, their voices are drowned out by the cacophony of voices that are more interested in gaining or solidifying their grip on money, power, or access to those with money and power than with making anything approaching an honest contribution to the debate. Sure, with some of them you have to wonder, "is it malice or stupidity", but in most cases it's... well, malice is (usually) too strong a word - malice may be present and directed at their political adversaries or those who dare question their bloviations, but even if their actions and policy proposals could have that effect their goal is not actually to harm the nation. The better word is probably "avarice".

Looking to the political world, we've historically been assured that a lot of the rancor between politicians is a fiction - that behind the scenes they're reasonable, public political foes may be close friends (e.g., Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy), and that what we see in public is largely a dog and pony show for the benefit of the folks back home. Of course there are issues where there are true, deep disputes, but even then we were to believe that politicians were working to bridge divides.

I suspect that was more true in the past, but there is a price to that sort of deception. When you ally yourself with and make public statements pandering to causes you don't believe, use angry, dishonest rhetoric to attack your political opponents, and spend more time thinking about how to ensure yourself a gilded life once your 'service' as an elected official ends than you do thinking about how to do what's best for the nation, the behind-the-scenes comity is going to diminish. We end up with people like Evan Bayh who spend years being part of the problem - then look at the mess they helped to create, declare that their job isn't fun any more, and quit. It sure is easier to quit than it is to grab a broom and clean up, but for some reason the media now loves quitters.

Bayh is correct that we should not glorify the Senate of the past, and this is far from the first time Congress has been dysfunctional. Politicians have been lying to gain votes, influence, wealth and power from the moment somebody dreamed up the election process. The media has at times been even worse in its eagerness to pander to political leaders. But what seems to have largely broken down is the sense that there is an institution that is responsible for its members - the media as an institution, the Senate, the House of Representatives, political parties.... Sure, it's possible to cross one of the few bright lines that can cause you to suffer a career setback or to lose your job, but for the most part a Member of Congress can shoot off her mouth in the most irresponsible of manners while suffering no disadvantage - or, I hate to say it, in order to gain power, publicity, and fame.

We're at a point where a Republican candidate for office can openly admit that his campaign is based upon fear-mongering and irresponsible, inflammatory, and obviously false rhetoric, and not only have the argument be treated as reasonable, but be given column space in a national newspaper to make his case. A rebuke from his party? Don't make me laugh. Acting like a petulant child can make you the toast of your party.

The media loves itself a loose cannon. It's time to get a quote, or have somebody appear on TV to take a position on an issue. Do they want a politician who is going to be nice, respect the opposing position, politely reject false arguments from both sides, and lay out the facts and issues as she truly sees them? Or do they call a politician they know will eagerly dissemble, or one who will reliably make claims about the other side that are ridiculous, inflammatory, often obviously false, but definitely attention-getting and quotable? They'll do the latter and, when challenged as to why they show such disregard for the truth, will hem and haw about not taking stances, "letting the public decide", or about how they're actually providing "news entertainment" or are merely sharing opinions, and that their productions should not be confused with actual news.

And then check out those talking heads on TV - how the various "experts" and politicians dispatched to TV shows, and often the hosts of those shows themselves, start regurgitating a set of talking points or repeating a specific word or phrase to negatively brand an issue or individual. Occasionally you'll see somebody call out the proponents of such a phrase - something that unfortunately is most likely to happen on The Daily Show than on an actual news show - but for the most part even if the host isn't joining in he's reluctant to offend his guest by pointing out to the audience that they're being fed propaganda. (Who would have dared say, for example, "Emperor Kingston, you're wearing no flag pin" - Figuratively or literally?)

Then you have the op/ed contributors from the nation's most prominent newspapers. Again, yes, some write sincere columns about important issues, doing their best to illuminate a problem and to inspire people to move to correct it. And the rest of the media world cries out, "Boring". The columnist who can be counted on to dogmatically advance the position of a political party or special interest group? Even if his only qualification is that he was once among the speechwriting team for Socks the Cat or Barney the Dog? That's interesting - that will get you on TV. And if you put on a good show, whatever the truth happens to be, you'll get invited back.

Yes, sometimes the politician or commentator has a set of preconceived notions that make him a good fit with the special interest group that is willing to pay his exorbitant speaking fees or underwrite an "educational" junket, but the goal is to clap on a set of golden handcuffs. To keep the politician or opinion leader fat and happy so that he never even considers focusing on the 10% of the issues where he differs in opinion from his sponsor, let alone takes a step back to examine his preconceived notions. The system rewards greed and laziness.

How do you even get one of those rare, highly coveted positions? Some national newspapers will claim that they are looking for balance, political left vs. political right, and to a small degree they offer that. But take a specific look at the Washington Post. You'll find that whatever the columnist's claimed political belief, no recent hire for the op-ed page has challenged the core beliefs of Fred Hiatt or his editorial board. War is good, especially in the Middle East, deficits are bad except to pay for war, we need to privatize education and kick unions in the teeth.... Predictable as clockwork. If you are somehow hired but consistently disagree with his board's stances, you can expect to be sent packing.

Over at the Times, let's just say that there's a reason Ross Douthat was hired instead of his Grand New Party co-author Reihan Salam, despite the fact that Salam is a much more interesting thinker. Meanwhile, the columnists who play ball with special interest groups can parlay their positions into lucrative book contracts, speaking engagements, etc., subject to loosey-goosey disclosure rules that are much more about preventing their editors from being embarrassed than they are about ensuring integrity.

Among the pundits who are less interested (for whatever reason) in achieving fame and building up their personal fortunes, there's an unfortunate tendency to avoid stirring the pot - on rare occasion it happens, but for the most part columnists pretend that the errors and misrepresentations of their peers don't exist. When referenced it's usually in as innocuous a manner as possible - "a recent column suggested", rather than directly addressing the errant columnist. Some columnists seem desperate for ideas - coming up with new subjects for biweekly columns can, no doubt, at times be difficult - and become part of the echo chamber, repeating a theme or story that is already in circulation. Some appear to do little more than to paraphrase the latest memo issued by a particular trade group or partisan think tank.

But digging into the issues, analyzing competing arguments and presenting cogent conclusions? For many, if not most, that's too much work. Besides, "their readers are more interested in the horse race", right? What does it matter if one side has superior policy positions, or one side is arguing contrary to established fact - the real story is in which narrative is winning. Besides, it's hard to learn stuff, and even harder to explain it in a succinct, clear manner. So why try? Isn't that somebody else's job?

So yeah - I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but only if I first get the sense that you're doing your job. If you prefer to be a hack, to lazily play "he said, she said" games rather than study and analyze the facts, cover the horse race instead of the issues, act as a stenographer for a special interest group, or pretend that everybody is honest and acting in good faith (because it's easier than taking on the peers and institutions that provide you with that six to seven figure income) on the other hand....

Made Up Statistics

Not really anything new, and given the sensational subject matter it doesn't surprise me that statistics like this get fabricated and passed around, but stop and think for a moment:

According to the Justice Department, an estimated one million children in the United States are abused yearly in the production of child pornography, a $3 billion business annually.

The appeal to authority doesn't make the obviously false statistic any more true. There are approximately 62.84 million children below the age of 16 living in the United States. The entire market for legal pornography in the U.S. is approximately $12 billion per year. Not surprisingly, there's nothing even close to this claim anywhere on the Justice Department's CEOS subsite.

This is probably one of a handful of subjects where getting the facts wildly wrong is going to be excused by most people with the question, what difference does it make? And if we're honest, everybody gets things wrong at times, and everybody has at times accepted at face value statistics that have absolutely no basis in fact. But I do think the letters editor of a major newspaper has a responsibility to take note of obviously erroneous claims both when deciding which letters to publish and when choosing whether or not to attach a note disclaiming a false statement or presenting an accurate statistic. That is perhaps most important in a context such as this, where the emotional appeal of a statistic is more likely to inspire its acceptance at face value.

How Did This Get Published?

When you see a really silly editorial published in the New York Times you think... well, at least it's not the Post. But sometimes you really have to wonder about the agenda. By way of example, a guy who runs an insignificant company in England was given space to rant and rave about how his company is pretty much invisible to Google, speculate that it's because of a "penalty", and present absolute claptrap about how Google has no business advocating for network neutrality if his company can't outrank superior, vastly more popular websites.

Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.

The author's missive is directed at Google, not at Yahoo!, which seems odd given that Google is much more algorithm-driven than Yahoo!, is disinclined to "hand edit" even embarrassing search results (as compared to Yahoo!'s hand-editing, including to self-promote.

Moreover, in this quest for "neutrality", the author fails to specify what that concept means or how it could be measured. For example, one factor Google considers is whether people link to a site or its internal pages. If nobody's linking to the author's site, it's quite likely that the site isn't worthy of links - or that there are superior alternatives that get the links. Another big factor is unique content - sites like the author's, that rely almost exclusively on product feeds for their content, have virtually none. The author's site invites ratings, but I see no evidence that anybody has ever added a rating - theoretical unique content is not unique content. What do you get if you browse the site? Product listings, vendor information about the products, and affiliate links. Hardly a paradise for the consumer. And an overall site design and architecture that's not particularly search-engine friendly, relying heavily on iframes.

Reading the New York Times editorial you might be confused, and think that this is a big company that has invested in a serious innovation, yet cannot break through Google's iron wall. Hardly. This is a website founded by the author and his wife, with programming assistance from a family friend. It's the type of site a skilled programmer could knock off in an afternoon. It is no surprise to me that the site felt "punished" by Google, as a few years ago Google modified its algorithm to diminish the presence of sites just like the author's - sites that have essentially nothing to offer to the consumer beyond recycled information and affiliate links. Frankly, I personally think that too many site's like the author's still show up in Google's search results - and remain far too prevalent in Yahoo! Search and Bing. Unless and until it started to offer some real value, my ideal search engine wouldn't just relegate his site to the far reaches of the search results. My ideal search engine would exclude his site altogether.

Here's something I find odd. The author has been whining about problems with Google for years. The site was featured in a Guardian article several months ago. For all of the energy the author puts into complaining, it doesn't appear that he's expended any effort into improving his own website. Instead he whines in response to the suggestion that his site needs to present unique content that his site's replication of information easily found on other sources "is, in essence, all that Google itself does". Cute. Except Google tries to drive consumers to sites that match their search needs, rather than confining them to a set of affiliate merchants. And, unlike the author's company, Google does it well. And of course the author is begging the question - the issue is not that Google doesn't incorporate sites like his into the search results. The issue is that when there are tens, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of sites with the same content, those that offer nothing more than replication of the third party content deserve to rank at the bottom.

Further, the author claims to be in the same business as Google - the search business - and then complains that Google favors its own shopping search engine results over his. With all due respect, isn't that what you would expect a business competitor to do? But really, his site isn't a competitor with Google. People go to Google looking for information on products, and he hopes that they will come to his site from Google, follow an affiliate link, and make him a commission. Few people come to his site first, and none of them are directed to Google. From a search engine standpoint, he's an unnecessary middle step between the person searching for a product and the desired product - cut him out of the middle and the search engine user experience improves.

But don't just take my word for it. After the Guardian ran its story, there was a significant upward spike in traffic to the author's website. Even coming into the Christmas buying season, that spike didn't translate into any subsequent increase in traffic. That is, for the most part people seem to have taken a look and asked themselves, "That's all they have to offer?", then forgotten about the site.

The author also blames Google for a loss of traffic to MapQuest. I used MapQuest, often through its partnership with Yahoo!, quite regularly before Google Maps came out with its innovative AJAX interface and blew MapQuest's socks off. Google maps was a vastly superior product. Yahoo! doesn't even partner with MapQuest any more - is that Google's fault as well? Now it may hurt to be running a company and have a competitor produce a far superior product and take away your market share, but that's the way the markets are supposed to work. The same goes for the author's complaint that the share price of TomTom has dropped now that Google is making available a free turn-by-turn navigation service - what duty does Google owe TomTom's shareholders? Should companies be forbidden from giving away a service if a (sort-of) competitor would prefer to charge for a similar service? Should TV Guide be allowed to forbid cable companies from providing their customers with on-screen channel guides?

The author also whines that Google acquires technology from other companies. So what? Mergers, acquisitions, and the purchase and licensing of intellectual property play a big role in how companies operate.

Beyond that, the author's back to complaining that Google's cutting out the middleman - promoting its own search products through Universal Search instead of directing people to a third party website that it does not control in the hope that the third party will responsibly direct the consumer to an appropriate destination. Don't get me wrong here - Google's ability to leverage its way into new markets is a subject for valid concern - but it's not surprising that they favor their own sites when they're striving to provide a consistent, quality user experience.

So how did the story cross the pond, with no mention by the Times that the author is writing about a tiny, U.K.-based website? In my opinion, because the story was picked up by the industry groups that oppose network neutrality, and who hope that this type of idiocy can cloud the picture. We even get a silly parallel term, "search neutrality".

Google was quick to recognize the threat to openness and innovation posed by the market power of Internet service providers, and has long been a leading proponent of net neutrality. But it now faces a difficult choice. Will it embrace search neutrality as the logical extension to net neutrality that truly protects equal access to the Internet? Or will it try to argue that discriminatory market power is somehow dangerous in the hands of a cable or telecommunications company but harmless in the hands of an overwhelmingly dominant search engine?

There is absolutely no parallel between network neutrality and this nebulous concept of "search neutrality". None. You will not be able to get two people in a room to agree as to how a given set of websites should be comparatively ranked, let alone "all of them." Search engines have good cause to keep the details of their algorithms secret - it prevents people from gaming the system and spamming search results. For all the complaints about "how more transparency would be nice," this article from 2002 still does a pretty good job of what you need to do to make your site succeed. Sure, it's easier to take the author's approach and spin up a program that creates a website automatically from content created by others, but no secret here: it's rare at best for that approach to bring about long-term success.

More than that, in his zeal to attack Google, the author flips the idea of network neutrality on its head. Without network neutrality, the companies that offer Internet bandwidth can charge people at either end of a digital "transaction" for the privilege of sending their data over its wires - and without payment they could slow the transmission of the data down to a crawl or cut it off entirely. (Of course they could - and would - allow their own competing products across their networks, unimpeded.) You could pay more as a consumer for broader bandwidth, but perhaps still have your service provider narrow or cut off the bandwidth to sites or services you want to use. The service provider could also pay a fee for increased bandwidth.

Nobody's going to pay an extra penny to get access to the author's website, and he doesn't have the money to pay in their stead. Network neutrality will cost Google money, as it pays for the bandwidth - but they have the money with which to pay. And that will serve to cement their position (and that of companies like Microsoft) at the top of the heap, while a new, prospective competitor to Google - the tiny company that grows based on word of mouth, just as Google did as it quickly gained acclaim and displaced former search leader AltaVista, is unlikely to even have a chance.

So will the New York Times tell us, what lobbyist or telecom industry insider convinced them to run the editorial? (I'm not holding my breath.)

Influence

The Atlantic 50 claims to list "the most influential commentators in the nation". It's a fascinating list, not merely due to the inclusion of many mediocre commentators, but by the way it highlights how the columnists of a handful of prominent publications almost automatically gain "influence". The definition of "influence" is a bit scary,

A survey of more than 250 Washington insiders – members of Congress, national media figures, and political insiders – in which respondents rank-ordered the commentators who most influence their own thinking.

Well, it's not the definition that's so scary, but the implications of "members of Congress, national media figures, and political insiders" admitting that they follow the lead of the likes of Rush Limbaugh. But then, they rank Paul Krugman #1, and if his thinking is influencing Congress and the media these days you would hardly know it from current policy proposals and their associated media coverage. And to their credit, the triumvirate of former Bush speechwriters didn't rank.

And boy, what a handicap it is these days to be a white male.

He's President of... What Country, Again?

The New York Times editorializes that despite Obama's effort to move forward on the issue of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, the various actors involved have been resistant to his requests. They conclude,

Israeli leaders do not often risk being at odds with an American president, but polls show broad support for Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance. President Obama, a skilled communicator, has started a constructive dialogue with the Islamic world. Now he needs to explain to Israelis why freezing settlements and reviving peace talks is clearly in their interest.

No, actually, he doesn't. His job is to explain to Netanyahu the current position of his administration, why he expects certain steps to be taken by Israel in the interest of U.S. foreign policy interests, and the consequences that will follow from Israel's choice to stand in the way of those interests. It's then Netanyahu's job to justify his own administration's response to Obama's requests and demands, and why Israel might be better served by non-compliance than by cooperation.

I would be fascinated to read a New York Times "draft speech" for Obama, explaining in their terms why Israelis should support the Obama Administration's policies. I am having a hard time imagining any such speech that would not come across as patronizing, condescending, and ultimately prove counterproductive. Does the New York Times truly believe that Israelis don't understand the nature of the settlements, or that those who have chosen for more than forty years to disregard the realities of the settlements are going to suddenly change their mind in response to a speech by a foreign leader - even a U.S. President?

The New York Times tiptoes around the issues of settlements, mentioning growth but deliberately omitting the numbers that could give its readers perspective on why the settlements are such a big issue. But, what a surprise, Fred Hiatt's gang at the Washington Post, doesn't even offer a limited context. The Times notes,

Under pressure from Washington, Mr. Netanyahu’s government has dangled a possible compromise: a temporary freeze in new construction, as long as 2,500 units now in process can be completed and Arab East Jerusalem is exempt. It is a weak offer.

The Post doesn't much care how weak the offer is:

Rather than pocketing Mr. Netanyahu's initial concessions - he gave a speech on Palestinian statehood and suggested parameters for curtailing settlements accepted by previous U.S. administrations - Mr. Obama chose to insist on an absolutist demand for a settlement "freeze."

By "administrations", the Post really means "Administration" - specifically the second Bush Administration. It certainly isn't describing the policy toward settlements advanced by the first Bush Administration. And to the extent that it means to allude to what happened under Clinton, it should be observed that at the start of peace talks under Clinton Israel had about 200,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and by the end it had about 400,000 settlers. Under Bush, that grew to about 500,000. A more honest gang than Hiatt's would acknowledge that one of the reasons Obama is moving away from the "parameters for curtailing settlements accepted by previous U.S. administrations" is that they've been a total failure.

At the end of the day, both papers should accept the self-evident: That Barack Obama is not the President of Israel, and his job is to advance American foreign policy. The whys and wherefores, this time around, should be self-evident to anybody conversant on the issues. Appearances to the contrary, I believe the anonymous authors of both editorials understand that. But Obama's explanations are owed to the American people - the people who elected him to advance their collective interests. I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice if there were a magic speech Obama could give that would transform Israeli public opinion, but to the extent that it's the job of any political leader to explain to the Israeli people the costs and benefits of following U.S. policy toward Israel's settlements, that leader's name is Netanyahu.

Old And Not Improved

The New York Times takes Obama to task for his changes in position from the primary to the regular election. Some of their complaints are valid; others are exaggerated.

• "First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election." - except, of course, that wasn't his promise. The promise he broke was to work with his opponent to stay within the public financing limits, and it's fair to criticize him on that - but where's the piece lambasting McCain for walking away from everything he supposedly believes in, in relation to campaign finance reform, lying about his commitment to public financing during the primary campaign, and possibly breaking the law in his hasty retreat from that promise?

• "The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11." - I think that's a fair criticism, particularly given the New York Times' consistent advocacy against an immunity provision. But why is it that the Constitution is seen as something Democrats must defend but that Republicans are free to ignore? I can't help but wonder, if major newspapers held some Republican feet to the fire over their disdain for civil liberties, this dispute would have ended a long time ago in favor of the Constitution. The "he said, she said" framing of issues by the media also contributes to the problem. "Democrats say important freedoms are at stake. Republicans say that the only freedoms the Democrats want to protect are those of terrorists, that Democrats agree that not closing FISA loopholes poses a danger to this country, and all they are trying to do is to prevent trial lawyers from bringing frivolous lawsuits against companies that were acting in good faith and trying to help protect the nation from terrorism. You decide."

• "The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations - a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation." - As I understand the proposal, Obama is proposing rolling back some of Bush's excesses, and expanding upon the approach to funding religious charities that existed even before Bush took office. Further, there is no contradiction between "stand[ing] before interest groups and tell[ing] them tough truths" and recognizing that religious charities can offer a significant contribution to the public welfare. McCain seems to be all for continuing Bush's existing policies - again, why are only Democrats supposed to oppose positions that, in the Times' words, "violate[] the separation of church and state"?

• "Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms. But it was distressing to see him declare that the court provided a guide to 'reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.'" - So here there's no actual contradiction, but the Times takes the position that the Heller decision was wrongly decided, and that Obama shouldn't support an opinion that could restrict "handguns, or requiring that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mortal threat to children". I think it's very much an overstatement to suggest that Heller provides a guide to what type of regulation is reasonable, but this is neither a flip-flop, nor is it sensible for Obama to try to turn this into a major issue by reversing his stance on individual rights and implicitly promising to appoint justices who will reverse or limit Heller.

• "We were equally distressed by Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s barring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder." - That's fair also, particularly in contrast to his embrace of Heller - what's his standard for picking and choosing which Supreme Court decisions to support or decry? But again, what's the distinction here from McCain? Why, if this is such an important civil rights issue, does McCain get a free ride?

The Times carries on,

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

McCain has made similar representations about himself -a maverick, independent, able to work across the aisle. So where's the similar analysis of his flip-flops and contradictions, even if not a similar attack on his disdain for civil rights and liberties?

This type of piece is part of the problem, not part of the solution. When it's convenient, the mainstream media ignores major differences between the candidates - such as with the false suggestion in 2000 that Al Gore and G.W. Bush were essentially the same on all the issues. When it's convenient, false and scurrilous attacks on a candidate turn into fodder for entertainment, not analysis - such as with the "Swift Boat Liars" and their attack on John Kerry. Now, it seems to be convenient to accuse Obama of having insufficient respect for civil rights and to be chaning his positions in order to get elected, while giving McCain a free pass on similar, perhaps greater, sins - and giving the entire Republican Party a free ride on the issue of civil liberties.

Please, go right ahead - savage the candidates, and try to make them honest. But do it to both sides, and don't reduce critical points of distinction between the candidates to an afterthought.
___________
Update:

As if I needed a "case in point" for the worst sins of the media, read Matt Yglesias on Charles Krauthammer's latest display of mendacity.

Almost Seven Years Late....

You know what would have been a suitable time for the New York Times to advocate a gas tax? The months following 9/11. Instead we seemed to get what amounted to a quiet endorsement of Dick Cheney's position, "Conservation may be a personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

Gas Taxes

Following the lead of Charmas Friedhammer, the New York Times opines,

Expensive gasoline is not good news for most American families. In some rural areas where people must drive long distances, and a pickup is more of a necessity than a lifestyle choice, filling up the tank can eat up nearly 15 percent of a worker’s take-home income. Pricey gasoline is acting as a brake on the economy and pushing up the price of food and other goods.

Still, Americans’ response to rising gasoline prices makes an excellent case for a gas tax. It proves that drivers will change their behavior in response to high fuel prices. And even if Detroit doesn’t buy global warming, drivers can help persuade it to embrace fuel efficiency.

Right. Because there's no better time for new, regressive taxation than when working Americans are already struggling.

It's Official - Luttwack Is Full Of....

Well, semi-official, but the New York Times public editor has softly agreed with the idea that Edward Luttwack's smear of Obama was not "fit to print". Some of the column is amusing,

Many Times readers saw the article as irresponsible (“gasoline on the fire,” said Paul Trachtman of Tierra Amarilla, N.M.) or false (“Islam is not like our hair or the color of our skin, which we inherited from our parents,” said Ali Kamel of Rio de Janeiro). The blogosphere lit up with assertions that Luttwak did not know what he was talking about.

But you have to read down three more paragraphs before you find out, the blogosphere was right:

I interviewed five Islamic scholars, at five American universities, recommended by a variety of sources as experts in the field. All of them said that Luttwak’s interpretation of Islamic law was wrong.

Luttwack attempted to defend himself with reference to an anonymous scholar of Islam who... also seemed to believe Luttwack was wrong:

Interestingly, in defense of his own article, Luttwak sent me an analysis of it by a scholar of Muslim law whom he did not identify. That anonymous scholar also did not agree with Luttwak that Obama was an apostate or that Muslim law would prohibit punishment for any Muslim who killed an apostate. He wrote, “You seem to be describing some anarcho-utopian version of Islamic legalism, which has never existed, and after the birth of the modern nation state will never exist.”

The editor of the Op-Ed page, David Shipley, seems to be brimming with lame excuses for running anti-Obama propaganda:

David Shipley, the editor of the Op-Ed page, said Luttwak’s article was vetted by editors who consulted the Koran, associated text, newspaper articles and authoritative histories of Islam. No scholars of Islam were consulted because “we do not customarily call experts to invite them to weigh in on the work of our contributors,” he said.

What, exactly, did they consult? The collected works of Daniel Pipes? Really, I would like to hear the specifics.

Shipley, the Op-Ed editor, said he regretted not urging Luttwak to soften his language about possible assassination, given how sensitive the subject is. But he said he did not think the Op-Ed page was under any obligation to present an alternative view, beyond some letters to the editor.

I do not agree. With a subject this charged, readers would have been far better served with more than a single, extreme point of view. When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.

I'm still wondering, how did Shipley decide that Luttwack's column was suitable to print in the first place? What was the process by which the column ended up in the New York Times? I suspect that story's at least as embarrassing as the fact that Luttwack was regurgitating the propaganda of Daniel Pipes.

Contempt For Free Speech

The Times editorializes in relation to Joseph Lieberman's attempts to coerce Google into deleting "videos produced by Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters" from YouTube, and his apparent anger that they only removed videos that were not consistent with their terms of service,

While it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the “Homegrown Terrorism” bill and related efforts “could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet.”

Not only do these efforts contradict fundamental American values, it is not clear if they would help fight terrorism. Even if YouTube pulled down every video Mr. Lieberman did not like, radical groups could post the same videos on their own Web sites. Trying to restrain the Internet is a game of “whack-a-mole” that cannot be won, says John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Having the videos on YouTube may even be a good thing, because it makes it easier for law enforcement officials, the media and the public to monitor the groups and their messages.

The Times seems to be missing the forest for the trees. The issue here probably isn't so much Lieberman's fear of terrorism. It's likely more a manifestation of Lieberman's ignorance of and contempt for the First Amendment.