Douthat on Movies

Ross Douthat wrote a rather silly column about the movie Avatar, which left me wondering if it was written before he actually saw the film. But I just stumbled across one of his related blog entries....

Sci-fi spectaculars deserve to be taken seriously, as pop art if not as high art, and not just patted on the head for putting on a good show. That doesn’t require comparing a James Cameron film to, say, “The Rules of the Game” and finding Cameron wanting. But it means recognizing that there’s a world of difference between a truly great special-effects driven fantasy — like “The Matrix” (the first one, not the sequels), or Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings,” or “The Empire Strikes Back” — and a gorgeous disappointment like “Avatar,” which succeeds at being eye-popping but doesn’t succeed at very much else.

I recognize that Douthat's obligated to praise the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as it's a Christian allegory. But most of that film's physical beauty arose not from special effects, but from its being filmed in New Zealand. And with due respect, at least to me, The Eye of Sauron was a huge disappointment. There are roughly equally compelling special effects on the back of a one dollar bill. Also, with no offense intended to its fans, I found the Matrix to be very much like Avatar - a very simple, not particularly compelling plot wrapped up in a beautiful package of special effects.

But what really caught my eye was Douthat's endorsement of "The Empire Strikes Back". Plot summary: "Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father." Beyond that, you could pretty much skip from "A New Hope" to The Ewok Adventure "Return of the Jedi" without the loss of any significant plot detail. Sure, you might spend a few minutes wondering why Han Solo was frozen in 'carbonite', and where the little green muppet guy came from, but otherwise? Really, back in the day I enjoyed the film, but because it was exciting and eye-popping.

Well, At Least His Head Can Hold Inconsistent Thoughts....

Ross Douthat lectures us that, while the U.S. may have had a miserable decade, other nations did okay.

A billion-odd Chinese had a pretty good decade, and so did a billion Indians: their economies just about doubled in size, minting new millionaires and lifting countless peasants into a growing middle class. Brazil boomed, Indonesia prospered, and even Africa enjoyed a season of substantial growth. Nobody would mistake Vladimir Putin’s Russia for a liberal democratic paradise, but most Russians seem to prefer its stability to the basket-case republic Putin inherited from Boris Yeltsin.

Douthat drones for a while about the Bush/Obama approach to bailouts - fairly attributing the policy to Obama, but eliding that it was a continuation of the prior Administration's policies and not the departure he suggests, concluding,

Social democracy has its benefits, but global competitiveness isn’t one of them.

Let's see... He just got through telling us how great things went in China and Russia, and in the economies of India, Brazil, and parts of Africa, and he's lecturing against "social democracy"? Communism and totalitarianism "good", social democracy "bad"... except in India and Brazil? Meanwhile, Douthat ignores that emergency spending polices don't reflect long-term strategy - for all of his whining about Democrats, it was Reagan who started the massive run-up of the deficit, Clinton who restored fiscal sanity, and G.W. who massively expanded entitlement spending, initiated the bailouts, and broke the bank.

I know what Douthat is trying to argue, or perhaps I should say would be trying to argue if I believed he had an understanding of the topic - that in a developed nation's economy, there is a trade-off between employment and productivity, and if you tilt the balance toward full employment and greater wages and benefits for workers you're going to see a reduction in productivity and likely a shift of manufacturing jobs to nations with lower costs of labor. Mind you, you're going to see that shift anyway - that's another chapter of the story - but you may be able to claim a higher percentage of your GDP as resulting from manufacturing as you diminish compensation for labor-intensive manufacturing or implement labor-saving technologies that boost productivity at the expense of jobs. For all of Douthat's loosey-goosey usage of terms like "global output", he should keep in mind that auto manufacturing represents about 4% of GDP. So when he cites a source that brags that, from 1947 through 2001, U.S. manufacturing output consistently hovered around 14% of GDP, he should consider how well that brag would work had GM and Chrysler been allowed to fail. His source likes to speak of "economic output per person", something that has been grossly inflated in the U.S. by the financial sector - had that sector been allowed to collapse as a consequence of its own incompetence, how much of that "economic output per person" would remain?

Douthat's source, although better written, can be equally silly:

From 1980 through today, America's share of global output has been constant at about 21%. Europe's share, meanwhile, has been collapsing in the face of global competition — going from a little less than 40% of global production in the 1970s to about 25% today. Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world. The economic rise of the Asian heartland is the central geopolitical fact of our era, and it is safe to assume that economic and strategic competition will only increase further over the next several decades.

Yeah. Because nobody could get confused and draw the ridiculous conclusion that the U.S. has ceded jobs and "global production" to nations like India and China. Unless they actually think about it. But fortunately the financial sector has made up for the losses....

Douthat offers up his source's conclusions,

Unwind the partnerships forged between Big Business and Big Government in the wake of the 2008 crash; seek financial regulations that “contain busts,” by segregating high-risk transactions from lower-risk enterprises; deregulate the public school system, to let a thousand charter schools and start-ups bloom; and shift our immigration policy away from low-skilled immigration, and toward the recruitment of high-skilled émigrés from around the globe.

Were Douthat more courageous, he might have noted that his source doesn't just want the U.S. to "unwind the partnerships" resulting from bailing out failed and failing industries - he wants the U.S. "to take the loss and move on". That is, he's flat-out endorsing lemon capitalism. I think it's more than fair to ask how it benefits capitalism, competitiveness or responsible business management if we allow industry to privatize profits and nationalize losses... but apparently that's not a concern for Douthat's brand of conservatism. Industry demands the bail-out, the Douthats of the world screech about "social democracy", then industry and the Douthats join in a chorus of "remove the strings from the bailout money to totally socialize our losses while 'freeing' us to 'compete' as irresponsibly as before." Douthat also fails to mention that his source not only wants to avoid any further stimulus spending - he wants to roll back the existing stimulus programs. For all of the Republican caterwauling about stimulus spending (that most are happy to take credit for obtaining for their districts), what responsible economists are saying that less stimulus spending would presently be good for the economy. Anyone?

The second idea, regulation that "contains busts" and prevents the interconnectedness that would cause massive losses in one sector to spill over into others, is pure pie in the sky. Giving due credit to Douthat's goal of making the pie higher, how do we do that? We can talk about "tiers" of risk, "so that a bust in a higher-risk tier doesn't propagate to lower-risk tiers", but isn't that what we were promised would be achieved, for example, by securitization of mortgages? And how well did it work for AIG to segregate its highest-risk, least sensible operations into its financial products division - they still managed to take down the entire company.

As with the first, Douthat omits pretty much every relevant detail from his source's third "solution". His source sees voucher programs as likely to fail over time because eventually "taxpayers will appropriately demand that a range of controls and requirements be imposed on the schools they are ultimately funding". That is, he recognizes that if programs like "No Child Left Behind"... Republican social democracy... are imposed on schools accepting vouchers, many will very quickly demonstrate themselves to be substandard. His alternative is to move public schools into a decentralized model, with funding following students and teachers freed from NCLB and similar initiatives such that "far broader discretion is permitted to those who actually teach and manage in our schools". He suggests that we look to Europe, specifically Sweden and the Netherlands, as models. Yes, we should look to Europe.¹ But while Sweden insists that the "same standard of education is to be provided throughout the country", Douthat's source apparently prefers that we do away with standards. Both the Netherlands and Sweden allocate per pupil funding to students in independent schools, forbidding the schools from charging additional tuition to parents, so we're back to that "social democracy" thing - nothing approximating a free market system. It's also a faith-based solution - faith that charter schools will suddenly start producing outcomes that exceed those of public schools, faith that the core problems in our school system can be addressed by charter schools, faith that the system won't succumb to profiteers and opportunists...

Beyond that, it seems fair to ask, if you look at overall school performance, why would we model our reformed system after nations that aren't on top? Why aren't we looking at Finland and Canada? Could it be, because the "solution" is based on ideology, not facts? By the measure of what supposedly makes for a great school system, at least in Douthatian terms, Finland seems to get a lot of things wrong.²

Douthat and his source also favor shifting immigration away from low-wage workers to "high-skilled émigrés" - something akin to what Canada does. His source laments,

We have chosen a strategy that provides low-wage gardeners and nannies for the elite, low-cost home improvement and fresh produce for the middle class, and fierce wage competition for the working class.

Perhaps it's because European Ph.D.'s aren't interested in performing migrant field labor, or cleaning the houses and swimming pools of the wealthy? But isn't it closer to the truth that a lot of highly skilled people have emigrated to the United States, which historically has been a magnet for talented people who want to further their educations, start companies, join high tech firms, etc.? But that changes in the global economy have opened doors for those same people closer to home, while post-9/11 immigration reforms have made it harder for them to come to the U.S. either to study or work? Companies that might have brought foreign workers to the U.S. can now open overseas branches, or contract with firms in other nations, and have those same people work for them doing the same work at lower wages. What actual strategy does Douthat actually propose to turn things around?

Douthat can't help himself, and adds a couple of proposals of his own:

To this list, I would add tax reform and entitlement reform. The former should broaden the tax base while cutting taxes on work, childrearing and investment. The latter should means-test both Social Security and Medicare, reducing both programs’ spending on well-off retirees rather than questing fruitlessly for their privatization.

Douthat doesn't tell us what he means when he speaks of broadening the tax base, beyond describing it as part of "a right-of-center agenda". It's thus safe to say that he doesn't anticipate raising taxes on the rich, capital gains (he's in fact promising cuts), estate taxes.... And he's apparently also promising to cut income taxes. What magical population of untaxed people will Douthat "broaden" the tax code to reach? I have a child, but wasn't aware that I was paying a tax on childrearing... please, Ross, tell me more. And pray tell, how will your tax cuts balance the budget?

As for means testing Social Security, why not be honest? That's an undisguised part of the program to break it down as a social insurance program, separating the taxpayers from the beneficiaries, so that we can get the usual Republican class warfare - "Why should you pay Social Security taxes that only benefit them."

A better case would be made for means testing Medicare benefits if, in fact, everybody paid equally into the program during their working lives. But higher wage earners pay higher premiums throughout their working lives. I will grant, a case can be made for means testing for deductibles and copays, but I am skeptical of the political viability of such a reform. After all, when we start talking about "right-of-center" agendas, we should recall that the Bush Administration massively expanded Medicare through the prescription drug benefit without so much as a thought for how it would fund the expansion - and while legislating away the government's right to negotiate over drug prices. Social democracy, indeed....
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1. Douthat's source also laments that we're not more European when it comes to unmarried couples raising children - unmarried European parents are much more likely to live together. One could argue that it's part of the trade-off between social stablility and economic growth - when a society does more to ensure that its people have stable jobs, it likely helps ensure that family units, married and unmarried, are more stable.

2. They might respond, "How can something so wrong feel so right?"

That's Quite a Floor

A German company offers hardwood flooring based upon the natural grain of the wood. How does it fit together? Like a jigsaw. It's custom made for your room.

Connecting the Dots

Kathleen Parker instructs us,

If Bush could be blamed for the dot-connecting inadequacies that helped enable the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, eight months into his administration, then Obama can fairly be held responsible for the incompetence that allowed a disaffected jihadist to get explosive powder onto a plane.

Except somebody, oh... who was it again... Oh yes, Kathleen Parker doesn't actually believe it's fair to blame Bush or his administration for failing to connect those dots. Is she applying a different standard to President Obama - a new standard that, by implication of her own words, is unfair - or has she somehow forgotten the amount of slack she repeatedly extended to Bush? One of the biggest unconnected dots leading up to 9/11, "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US", was given to Bush while he was on vacation. Yet it appears that no words of criticism have ever crossed Parker's lips.

Similarly, Parker offers no criticism of Jim DeMint for blocking confirmation of the new head of the TSA, DeMint apparently finding it more important that TSA workers be blocked from unionizing than that the TSA itself be effectively managed. No dots to connect there.

Parker also whines that President Obama is on vacation, didn't make a public statement about the incident for two days, and... well, responded in much the same manner as Parker, focusing on institutional failures instead of the incident itself. Parker dismisses the attempt itself as banal, and is full of 'wit' in her description of the terrorist, "Was this fellow computer-generated by a cartoon character", and incident, "If it weren't all so bloody horrifying, the incident would be ridiculous" - yet one can imagine what her reaction would have been had President Obama made similar comments. She probably would blast him for displaying a demeanor that in these circumstances borders on inappropriate - no, wait, she did that anyway.

Many have pointed out that Bush took six days to make a public statement over "shoe bomber" Richard Reid's December 22, 2001 attempt to take down an airliner - an incident that seems remarkably analogous to what Parker describes as "the underwear bomber" of December 25, 2009. Obama, with three days more experience when the incident occurred, and with one day less experience when he made the statement, should have... um... well, I'm sure "it's different". In fairness, Bush had other issues on his mind at the time that he may have deemed more important.

Parker is also horrified that President Obama was on vacation with his family over Christmas. Unthinkable. G.W., the most vacationed President in U.S. history was... well, on a "holiday retreat" when Richard Reid attempted to take down a plane, sure, but surely that's also "completely different".

Parker's largest substantive criticism of Obama, if you can call it that, is, "The cool detachment that was so attractive when political opponents were trying to rile Obama is suddenly becoming annoying." She doesn't "need bombast and flared nostrils" and notes that "Calm in the face of potential disaster is laudable," but... shouldn't he be declaring a war, or something? Seriously. So let's take a look at an appropriate reaction - none of that calm detachment stuff - from GW's statement on Richard Reid:

First of all, I wish everybody a Happy New Year; 2002 is going to be a great year for America. And we will continue to pursue our mission in fighting terror. We'll work hard to make sure our economy rebounds. But most of all, the Nation will continue to embrace the culture of compassion, which really, really flourished right after September the 11th.

I'm looking forward to an early evening tonight. I guess at the age of 55, it's expected that--or it's okay for a guy to go to bed at about 9 p.m., maybe 10 p.m. So I don't plan anything glamorous for New Year's Eve.

I've got to tell you, there's nothing more relaxing than being in Crawford, Texas. I'm spending as much time outdoors as I can. I spent-- after my briefing this morning with National Security Council, I was able to spend about 3 hours in the canyons, cleaning underbrush. And I feel refreshed and fortunate that we've got such a beautiful piece of land to live on.

Hm. Well maybe he is less detached, with appropriate level of nostril flare, when he speaks directly about Richard Reid?

The FBI, the whole culture of the FBI has changed, for the better. The FBI's main task now is to protect Americans from further attack. The country is on alert. And a classic case was the person who tried to put the bomb in his shoe, and a flight attendant on the American flight alertly notified people, and they got it. And he's now--we're now giving him a chance to tell us what he knows about terror and about Al Qaida.

That's so much better than "A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable". After all, if you make a "low key response" to an incident like this you're "trying to pretend" that the nation is not at war, right?

All in all, the editorial is typical of Parker's work: Late to the story, parroting the standard Republican Party talking points even after most of the points have been discredited, regurgitating her usual personality-based criticisms of President Obama, ignoring all facts that contradict her assertions.... Pretty much everything it would take for Fred Hiatt to deem her "highly qualified".

Mass Extinctions? No Worries!

In what appears to be an unstated expansion of his arguments against the science of climate change, George Will takes a "what, me worry?" attitude toward cataclysmic disasters and mass extinction.

Today, we know there is a lot of play in the joints of the Constitution and that every 40 million years or so asteroids more than half a mile in diameter strike Earth. Yet the Constitution still constitutes, and the fact that flora and fauna have survived Earth's episodes of extreme violence testifies to the extraordinary imperative of life.

Except everything in human history tells us that our Republic will not last forever. And, yes, life will almost certainly go on after a huge meteor strikes the earth or "dust and water vapor [have] a 'greenhouse effect,' holding in heat and cooking much life out of Earth". Life exists in the deepest parts of the ocean and, as they say, cockroaches are resilient. But I, personally, am more interested in whether human life will continue.

Top Posts of 2009

Looking back on 2009, the most popular posts for visitors to this blog (excluding people reading through the RSS feed) were:

1. Amendment vs. Revision of the California Constitution - pondering whether the amendment process for the California Constitution should be amended. (Really, it should be. What a tangled mess they've made.)

2. Does "Teach for America" Suck? - Give a post an inflammatory title and people just keep coming. ;-)

3. Cue the Final Jeopardy Music - is it that people want to read about Richard Cohen's poor reasoning, or are they actually looking for the music?

4. Dennis Prager's Conservative Man's Guide to Sex - "On the other hand, if she's already in bed...."

5. AIG's Long History of Responsible Conduct - "Mistakes were made".

6. A Teach for America Ambush Interview - I personally think TFA should get over itself and offer better support to struggling corps members, as in them become successful.

7. The "Least Bad" Solution to Illegal Drugs - Is decriminalization or even legalization better than the status quo? Could it be worse?

8. Michelle Rhee's Secret Plan for Teacher Pay - We don't hear much any more, about the giant raises Rhee was going to give to teachers for giving up tenure.

9. Medicare vs. Private Plans - But perhaps the real problem, for some pundits, is that (other) people have health insurance at all.

10. "Direct Government Subsidies" as the "Conservative" Solution to Health Care - A flashback to the earlier days of the healthcare reform debate, during which time conservative commentators were demonstrating a distinct lack of ideas. Plus ça change....

Happy New Year.

Charles Krauthammer, Liar

If you didn't already know that, see the NonSequitur on his latest round of whoppers.

The Missing Element

Josh Marshal ponders why people are willing to

ethnically profile, do all sorts extra-judicial surveillance, maintain massive databases of hundreds of thousands of people who have some vague relationship to extremism, torture captives, condemn people to hours unable to go the bathroom on planes, even launch various foreign military adventures

while we hesitate to implement backscatter body scans

that might show a vague outline of boobs or penises (almost certainly no more than is exposed in most bathing suits)

and concludes,

It just tells me that at some level we're not really serious about this.

Really, though, the difference is obvious. With stuff that happens behind the scenes, we're comfortable assuming that it only happens to other people. Proponents of torture don't anticipate that they will ever be tortured. Proponents of racial profiling anticipate that it will only happen to other races - consider the recent spate of calls for the profiling of any person with an Islamic-sounding name, even though most made no similar demand for people with names like "José Padilla" and none that I know of made any such demand for people with names like "Richard Reid". The rule forbidding going to the bathroom on an airplane during the last hour of a flight - an idea that is unworkable (or potentially really messy) for people with certain medical conditions or for small children? It's already out the door. Now the decision is up to the discretion of the airlines.

It's simply another form of the anti-civil liberties retort, "If you're not breaking the law, you've got nothing to worry about" - which roughly translates to "If it's not happening to me, I don't care."

It should also be noted that the privacy technology for backscatter has improved, and will continue to improve, to the point that "nudity" is becoming a non-issue. Several years back, when I first heard about the use of this technology by the federal government, and the privacy issues it was raising, I asked, "Why not adjust the software to erase as much of the human body as possible - after all, you don't care about the body - just what's on it"? It took some time for others to hop on the clue bus, but that's the way the technology is heading. Note that the technology is anything but perfect - it won't see through fat folds, nor will it look inside body cavities - it's just another tool in passenger screening.

A Strange Form of Extortion

Governor Schwarzenegger is threatening the people of his state:

If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back -- if not eliminate -- CalWORKS, the state's main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.

I'll say it again:

If more federal aid is offered to the states, it should have clear strings attached: tax reforms likely to create and sustain a balanced budget starting in, let's say, 2011. The CBO can crunch the numbers.

Schwarzenegger could start by convincing his own party to cooperate with efforts to balance the budget, as well as working to overturn some of the insanity that has been made part of California's state constitution.

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.)

An Odd Headline

Woman knocks down pope at Mass; Christmas celebrations begin.

Happy Holidays

Repealing Reform Before it Occurs?

Josh Marshall opines that "resurgent Republicans could get the chance to repeal [healthcare reform] before the public gets a chance to experience any of its benefits". Not so much. Unless and until they recapture the White House, their legislative initiatives are subject to veto.

Even granting that many provisions don't go into effect until 2014 (unless they're accelerated by future legislation), we've just seen how difficult it can be for a President with a sizable majority in both houses of Congress to get things past if the opposition party says "no". I doubt that even in their grandest dreams, which no doubt do include retaking the White House, the Republicans believe they can have 60 Senators by 2014.

Because He's Such a Serious Man....

John McCain isn't bothered by Sarah Palin's scribbling his name off of a visor she wore during her Hawaii vacation.

Sen. John McCain brushed off the semi-controversy over his former running mate's visor Sunday, attributing the blog and talk show chatter about Sarah Palin's vacation attire to "hysterical attacks" from the left.

Yeah, which is why you only get coverage of the "story"....

Finally former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential and presidential nominees Sarah Palin. Made a potential political fashion faux -- while vacationing with her family in Hawaii. Palin was photographed wearing a visor from John McCain's failed presidential bid with the words McCain for president blacked out apparently and magic marker.

from left-wing sources like Fox News.

McCain, though, isn't very good at deciding what is or is not a "hysterical attack". I mean, if you're going to make a hysterical attack over somebody's vacation in Hawaii, you couldn't do much better than McCain's own campaign team and party.¹ McCain also doesn't seem to understand that his recent false, hypocritical attack on Senator Franken qualifies.
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1. That is, unless you're Cokie Roberts.

Passing Sound, Popular Legislation Would Be a Handicap?

David Broder represents the mindset that got the Democratic Party into its present predicament:

I think Obama deserves more help than he is getting from his fellow Democrats in Congress, given the boost he provided them in the last election, the difficulty of the problems he inherited and the stiff-arm he has received from Republicans.

But the reality is that, the closer we get to the midterm elections, when they will be on the ballot and he will not, the more members of Congress -- and not just Pelosi -- will judge what is best for themselves and the less they'll be swayed by Obama.

But here's the thing: if the Democratic Party were to work together to pass some really good legislation, rather than taking the "every man for himself" approach most visible in the Senate, they could be seen as efficient, organized and capable, instead of clumsy, incompetent, undisciplined and self-defeating. Which face would better serve them in the midterm elections? If you're not sure, remind me again, what happened to the Democratic Party in Clinton's first midterm election?

Yes, other factors were involved, but it certainly didn't help that the Democrats had frittered away their control of Congress, fighting their President instead of working with him and defeating his legislative agenda.

People Unclear On The Concept

The concept of creative destruction is that innovation and entrepreneurship are what drive long-term economic growth, even though the value of established companies may be diminished or destroyed. George Will doesn't quite get it:

You must remember this: In 2006, the last full year before this downturn, when the economy grew 2.7 percent and the unemployment rate was just 4.6 percent, 3.3 million people lost their jobs to the normal churning of a dynamic economy. This "creative destruction" has human costs but no longer is optional.

George, when there's no innovation behind the crumbling edifices of established industry, they must be propped up with huge government subsidies and bail-outs to keep the situation from becoming significantly worse, and the economy is sputtering, that's not creative destruction. It's just destruction.

Update: Tom Burka's take on things: Democrats To Actually Vote For Own Bill.

Um... Dana?

Dana Milbank warns that imposing any consequence on Joe Lieberman for what Dana describes as a career-long pattern of backstabbing his former party would put the Democrats on the same path as the Republicans have taken:

Republicans, who recently floated a purity test for GOP candidates, know where this road leads: to a 40-member minority in the Senate. If Democrats wish to remain the majority party, they should avoid the loyalty trap. Lieberman may be a monster, but he's their monster.

Um... Dana? Lieberman's not a member of the Democratic Party. He deliberately chose not to change his party affiliation after his reelection. He is talking about running in the next election as a Republican.

And you're way too smart to be making this argument - Lieberman has already been shown exceptional largesse. In history, how many politicians have been allowed to actively campaign for the opposition in a national election, giving a full-throated endorsement of the opposition party's leader, then face no meaningful consequence when their preferred candidate lost?

Also, it's not an ideological litmus test to insist that members of your party, or those who caucus with you, actually support your party and not threaten to filibuster its most important legislative initiatives. That's basic "party discipline". Why do you think we have political parties if you think that everything that comes after election is legitimately an every man for himself free-for-all?

You know, Dana, I agree with you on this: Lieberman has always been a self-serving, narcissistic wretch. But I think it's well past the time where it makes sense for the Democratic Party to stick with the devil they know. He certainly hasn't stuck with them.

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

I appreciate the push-back coming from the left on the gutting of the healthcare reform bill. It's a shame that the bill has been gradually stripped of elements that could constrain costs and increase competition due to the disgraceful conduct of certain members of both political parties. I don't have a great deal of sympathy for the idea that we should accept a bill full of table scraps as reform. But if the good outweighs the bad, passage of a seriously flawed bill is better than doing nothing. Howard Dean, the new public face of "the present bill is crap" movement, has made that point.

Michael Tomasky lists provisions that he believes will be in the final bill and asks why anybody on the left would oppose a bill that includes those provisions. If those provisions are all that are in the bill, he's right - the political left should embrace it as a starting point for reform. But add in poison pills, such as a mandate to buy overpriced, inferior insurance,¹ or various elements that can be exploited by employers to increase the cost of insurance beyond what their "less fit" employees are able to pay, and the calculus shifts. It's unreasonable to attack people for not seeing the benefits of a bill that has not been finalized, and with each passing day is stripped of provisions that would benefit significant numbers of Americans.

A word for those on the left who supported Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign and have stated or implied since that time that she would be a better President, and use healthcare reform as an example, remind me again... which of the remaining reforms were passed into law during President Clinton's push for reform? That's right - none of them. Really, get off the idea that the President has magic powers that can make Senators with secure seats (that is, virtually all of them) fall in line.

For those who howl, "You should have used reconciliation" every time something negative happens in the legislative process, think about it. There are provisions in the current proposed legislation that could not be passed through reconciliation, even assuming the Senate had been willing to pursue that path - and it wasn't. So again, if there's enough good in this bill that it's worth passing, stop whining about how reconciliation would have been better, and start pressing for a follow-up bill that fixes this legislation's most serious problems (to the extent possible) by reconciliation. It's not as if we pass a bill and then the Earth stands still.

I'm with Paul Krugman in relation to the attacks on those who would favor passage of a flawed but helpful bill as being "just like the 'liberal hawks' who supported the Iraq war". Even if we assume that there were no good reasons to support a war in Iraq (and I for one thought the probable downside outweighed the possible upside), there's no meaningful parallel. It's a dubious tactic - poisoning the well. If you want to argue that people are wrong, fine, but if you can't do better than that - if you can't logically substantiate your analogy - what do you think you're accomplishing?

On the other hand, I disagree with Krugman that just because the passage of any healthcare reform seemed like an impossible dream after Bush's reelection, we should just the current bill by comparison to nothing. It's a profound disappointment that the Democratic Party, particularly a handful of shameless self-aggrandizers and opportunists in the Senate, have not worked hard to make this the best possible bill instead of being so self-absorbed, so dim-witted, and/or so in the pockets of industry that serious concessions had to be made from the outset and we continue to shed helpful provisions from an what has gradually become at best a mediocre bill. Robert Reich has a more accurate assessment, that "We are slouching toward health-care reform that's better than nothing but far worse than we had imagined it would be".

Frankly, the behavior of the Republican Party, from top to bottom, has been disgraceful. The party of "no" - no ideas, no cooperation, no cost savings... A handful of Republican Senators could, right now, come across the aisle with a set of serious cost-savings measures and, as long as they were willing to accept the majority of the terms of the present bill, could squeeze the obstructionists like Lieberman and Nelson out of the picture. Instead they obstruct and obfuscate, and openly hope that the bill fails because they anticipate that its failure will bring them political advantage. Screw the people. "The uninsured don't vote for us anyway".

To get a sense of the significance of even what's left of the reform bill, take a look at some Republican commentary on the subject. First, after pretending to be thoughtful, David Brooks gives his inevitable "thumbs down" - like the liberal critics of the bill, he doesn't need to see a final version of the legislation to know that he opposes it.

If you pass a health care bill without systemic incentives reform, you set up a political vortex in which the few good parts of the bill will get stripped out and the expensive and wasteful parts will be entrenched.

So what do you think he and his party offer up as an alternative? One joke after another? The Republican Party presently offers little more than a head count: forty Senators, at least thirty-seven of whom (and arguably all of whom) are stuck in their "terrible twos".

But at least Brooks has enough self-respect not to pull this trick, Matthew Dowd begging us not to throw the Republican Party into the briar patch. Aw, shucks, it's always wonderful to have a Republican operative tell the Democratic Party, "Don't let your lying eyes or Michael Steele's lying words deceive you - if you pass healthcare reform, you'll only hurt yourselves." Wow. The only way that sort of caution might be more credible is if it were penned by Karl Rove or Bill Kristol. I mean, that would be convincing.

Come up with a health-care bill that draws real bipartisan support.

Remind me again, Dowd, what brilliant initiatives the Republican enfants terribles in the Senate have brought to negotiations for bipartisan reform? I mean, even if they didn't recognize the joke earlier, that zinger would push it over the top for pretty much everyone, no?
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1. I recognize the importance of a mandate to reform, but the quality of insurance available to the public must be at least adequate for that to be a fair requirement - there's potential that people will be forced to choose between paying a penalty or overpaying for garbage.

Making Better Bricks

Yet another battle between parents who support their tot's freedom of expression and individual style, versus a school board that wants boys to have conventional haircuts. (Why is it that the adults involved in these disputes so often seem less mature than the kids?) But still....

On its Web site, the district says its code is in place because "students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live."

Suspending a four-year-old from school because his hair is too long or, as seems more likely, because the style is not appropriately masculine? (Check the picture in the linked article.) I guess the principal decided, he don't need no education.

Speaking Truth When You Have Power

Recently, Senator Al Franken was given a rather blunt message that his actions in advocating for his anti-rape bill, he had crossed a line with Republican opponents of the bill.

In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle.

You see, instead of smiling and saying, "They're representing their constituents," or at worst, "They're doing what they need to do to get reelected," Franken challenged the PR spin of opponents to the amendment on their merits. That simply isn't done.

Seriously, when a scandal breaks about a Senator or Member of Congress, how often do you think that the underlying material isn't common knowledge on Capitol Hill? When a Senator or Member of Congress goes on a TV or radio show and makes claims that are absurdly false or stupid, how often does one of his peers point that out rather than pretending that a serious point had been made? How often have you heard the "strange bedfellows"-type story - Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy were close friends. Bad behavior is kept under wraps because neither side would benefit from full disclosure of the personal foibles of their peers. And when somebody says something absurdly stupid or just plain false, that's supposed to be treated as a necessary act to represent the voters from their district and not as a particular act of venality.

Recall how mild rebukes from President Obama had Republicans seething in their seats, with Rep. Joe Wilson engaging in a childish breach of decorum (that make him the toast of the town with the childish wing of the Republican Party)? By the twisted logic of Wilson and, really, the Senate as a whole, the more serious offense appears to have been by President Obama. The truth? Irrelevant! How dare he come into Congress and suggest that, to oppose his agenda, any number of its elected members were flat-out lying? He should have respected that they were merely representing their constituents. Nancy Pelosi worked hard to prevent a censure. (Hardly atypical of how Congress enforces its ethics rules on its members.)

This type of "collegiality" doesn't just harm the public debate, it also blinds Senators to problems in their midst. Case in point, Joe Lieberman. Any number of his peers seem to be able to convince themselves that his public behavior is somehow divorced from what he will do when it's time to vote, that their past friendship means that he'll work with them. Many who know better refrain from speaking out, or speak only in the mildest of terms, apparently lest they damage their ability to work with their peers. There's no political price to pay within the institution in sitting quietly on your hands - or even for applauding - when a Trent Lott suggests that the nation would have been better off had Strom Thurmond's been elected President on his segregationist State’s Rights ticket in 1948. The damage comes when the public hears about the comment and creates an uproar - that's why the institutional demand on Senator Franken is "sit down and shut up".

When Senator Debbie Stabenow voted in favor of a constitutional amendment against "desecrating the flag", it would have been fair to comment, "She's doing what she needs to do to get elected." It wouldn't quite be the whole truth, mind you, as the Senior Senator from Michigan, Carl Levin, voted against it. The rest of the truth is that he's a lot more popular and effective than Stabenow, and is thus a lot more secure in his seat. But still, it would have been nice to see somebody display the courage of calling her out on the vote, as engaging in the worst form of pandering. I don't believe for a minute that she was "voting her conscience" on that one. In my opinion she knew the vote would fail, so she viewed it as an opportunity to try to build some credibility with those Michigan voters who support an anti-flag burning amendment. It would have been nice if somebody from among her Senate peers had called her out on that. No, it ain't gonna happen. And do I even need to mention the likes of Michelle freakin' Bachman?

The fact is, the brand of "collegiality" that is expected in Congress weakens it as an institution and as a legislative body. We don't need Senator Franken to "learn the rules, lest he be made an outcast" - we need a lot more senators like him, on both sides of the aisle.