Not a conservative

Good article at The Atlantic, pointing out that Rush Limbaugh did not advance conservatism:

As a proponent of conservatism in America, Limbaugh was a failure who in his later years abandoned the project of advancing a positive agenda, culminating in his alignment with the vulgar style and populist anti-leftism of Donald Trump. Character no longer mattered. Budget deficits no longer mattered. Free trade no longer mattered. Nepotism no longer mattered. Lavishing praise on foreign dictators no longer mattered.

All that mattered was owning the libs in the culture war, in part to avenge a deeply felt sense of aggrievement. Limbaugh and Trump were alike in attaining great wealth and political influence while still talking and seeming to feel as though society was stacked against guys like them....

....the proposition that Limbaugh helped conservatism thrive or grow is unsubstantiated. National Review and Barry Goldwater reinvigorated conservatism in postwar America. The high-water mark of American conservatism, Ronald Reagan’s presidency, was over before Limbaugh was a force in American politics.

Over the ensuing decades, as Limbaugh grew in fame and gained as much influence in the Republican Party as anyone, the conservative movement suffered from political and intellectual decline. “In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar,” a writer at The American Conservative once complained. “Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right.” The seesaw of partisan politics gave conservatives occasional victories, such as the 1994 Republican takeover of the House and the 2010 Tea Party wave, but once in office the GOP tended to squander those victories quickly and never accomplished much conservative change. The government kept getting bigger. The country kept getting more socially liberal. The right delighted in the fact that the left was never able to create its own Rush Limbaugh, despite various attempts. But perhaps that supposed failing has helped progressives make gains.

Read the whole thing.

 

Economists and what they don't know

I have being muttering here for perhaps a couple of years now that it seems that there is some sort of unacknowledged crisis in macro economics in which economists (probably on both sides of politics, even though Laffer-ish Right wing economists have been wronger for longer) aren't really admitting to not understanding some fundamental things that are pretty damn important.      

See these two stories which back up my theory.  From Axios:

The world's debt-to-GDP ratio rose to 356% in 2020, a new report from the Institute of International Finance finds, up 35 percentage points from where it stood in 2019, as countries saw their economies shrink and issued an ocean of debt to stay afloat.

Why it matters: The increase brings numerous countries, including the U.S., to extreme debt levels, well beyond what economists have called untenable in the past.

• Nonfinancial private sector debt alone now makes up 165% of the entire world's economic output.

What they're saying: "The upswing was well beyond the rise seen during the 2008 global financial crisis," IIF economists said in the report.

• "Back in 2008 and 2009, the increase in global debt ratio was limited to 10 percentage points and 15 percentage points, respectively."

By the numbers: Global debt increased to $281 trillion last year, with total private and public sector debt rising by $24 trillion in the 61 countries IIF follows.....

Why the debt matters: While worries about significantly pushing up inflation and borrowing costs have not come to pass, slow growth and diminishing returns have, and the world's already high debt levels look to be inhibiting economic growth and threaten to hold back a full recovery from the pandemic in the long run.

• Further, almost all of the debt issued in 2020 was to deal with present circumstances rather than to invest in forward-looking projects or growth, making future investments in such projects more difficult and potentially more costly.

Where it stands: The CBO projected U.S. GDP growth over the next 10 years will be largely below 2% (with the notable exclusion of 2021), and that annual budget deficits will increase.

• The federal debt is set to exceed the size of the economy this year for only the second time since the end of World War II and grow to 107% of GDP by 2031.
• That projection was made without including President Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

And this reminded me of Noah Smith's recent take on the question of economists and debt:

No one knows how much the government can borrow

Some extracts: 

Remember that some people thought that government borrowing and spending during the Great Recession, facilitated by quantitative easing (Fed bond-buying) to keep interest rates low, was going to lead to substantial inflation. But it didn’t.

Would it have led to inflation if the government borrowing and spending had been 10x what it was? 100x? 10000000000000000000000x? Where’s the cutoff?

We don’t know. David Andolfatto, writing at the St. Louis Fed blog, lays it out:

There is presumably a limit to how much the market is willing or able to absorb in the way of Treasury securities, for a given price level (or inflation rate) and a given structure of interest rates. However, no one really knows how high the debt-to-GDP ratio can get. We can only know once we get there…There is no way of knowing beforehand just how large the national debt can get before inflation becomes a concern.

So when the government borrows more and more from the Fed and spends the money, it’s like our country is walking down an infinite corridor towards an invisible pit. We know the pit is out there somewhere in front of us, but we just have no idea how far we have to walk before we fall in.

Noah then notes that there is far too inadequate research on the issue.  He lists some papers which might give some indication, but his conclusion is this:

Just because the U.S. hasn’t had inflation for a long time doesn’t mean borrowing constraints aren’t a pressing, even urgent research question. There are so many pieces of the puzzle that need investigating. Do deficits matter in the absolute sense, or does it just matter how much is financed by the central bank? Is the start of central bank financing of deficits what kicks off the inflation, or something else? Does it matter what government spends the money on? Are policy regime changes of the kind Sargent talks about actually detectable in the data? And if so, what do they look like? Why hasn’t Japan, with its debt of 240% of GDP, had even the tiniest glimmer of inflation?

And so on.

We need the top minds working on this now, not waiting until after disaster strikes and then analyzing it after the fact!

His take on the matter sounds very plausible to me.

A Seoul problem

Just one of the unusual things you learn by watching Channel News Asia:   housing costs in Seoul have been climbing dramatically in recent years:

 

If you can't be bothered watching the video, the description of the story: 

Home prices in Seoul have risen more than 50% in the last four years. President Moon Jae-in has been under fire for failing to cool the housing market, despite introducing dozens of measures including tax hikes and loan limits. His latest plan to increase the supply of affordable housing has also not been well received. In South Korea, public rental housing refers to small-sized apartments purchased by the local government to be rented out to low-income groups at below market prices. 

The video, which features some people saying that they doubt that those who live in public housing can "fit in" in the local area indicates that the sort of social problems depicted in Parasite are pretty real.

 

About Texas energy

This article in New York Magazine No the Green New Deal did not cause the Texas power outage strikes me as one of the most balanced and comprehensive discussions of the issues.  

It does end with this fair enough point, for example:

Progressives need clear answers about how a green transition can make America’s electric grids more robust against the coming storms. The Week’s Ryan Cooper, drawing on the insights of climate wonk Dave Roberts, sketches out what such an answer might look like. Specifically, Cooper argues that America can achieve electricity resilience by exploiting its vast size and climate diversity through a nationally integrated power grid.

Update:   Oh - 

(Bloomberg) -- Federal regulators warned Texas that its power plants couldn’t be counted on to reliably churn out electricity in bitterly cold conditions a decade ago, when the last deep freeze plunged 4 million people into the dark.

They recommended that utilities use more insulation, heat pipes and take other steps to winterize plants -- strategies commonly observed in cooler climates but not in normally balmy Texas.

“Where did those recommendations go, and how were they implemented?” said Jeff Dennis, managing director of Advanced Energy Economy, an association of clean energy businesses. “Those are going to be some pretty key questions.”

As investigators probe the current power crisis in Texas, which has left millions of people without power or a promise of when it will be restored, questions are sure to be raised about how the state responded to the urgings from the 2011 analysis, issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North America Electric Reliability Corporation, which sets reliability standards.

All the news

*    I don't use Facebook, and suspect the world would be a better place if no one else did, too.

So it worries me not one bit that the company run by an alien (no other way to explain that haircut) has stopped Australian news feeds (or links?). 

Anything that makes Facebook less popular is fine by me. 

*   This sexual assault in Parliament is a very weird story (the circumstances around the entry into Parliament House, the aftermath, the way the politicians first tried to handle it) that reflects badly on how the Morrison government handles internal scandal.   And if this is true, it only gets worse:

*  Why does Scott Morrison retain a quite high approval rating?   And why does he have that, but his party doesn't lead in voting intention?   (I think some polls still show a slight lead?)  I think Morrison has been able to avoid scrutiny due to COVID keeping more eyes on State premiums than him, but gee I find him unimpressive.   I disliked Tony Abbott more, because he was more "in your face", and put up a pretence of being a political deep thinker, and he was a disgrace in his treatment of Gillard when he was Opposition leader.   But Morrison is so....superficial.  

* Rush Limbaugh has died.   No tears from me, and no criticism of anyone who attacks him before the body is cold, either.   (Many are pointing out that he more-or-less pioneered the "all liberals are evil and only want to hurt and crush you" fear based political narrative amongst conservatives which has poisoned politics in American and a slab of the Australian Right.  Quite despicable.) 

Top notch propaganda

I recently subscribed to CGTN (China Global Television Network) on Youtube, and so have been watching some of their huge output of pro-China content.   (Given there seems a 50/50-ish chance that the country will dominate the globe within the next 40 years, I recommend everyone subscribe and hit the "like" button a lot on the assumption that it is being recorded on a government computer somewhere in Beijing and will give you a good "social credit" rating when they become our local overlords.  Or even if you  plan on taking a holiday in China and get arrested for having the wrong bookmark on your phone browser, it probably wouldn't hurt.)

Seriously, I do think it is worth watching because it's startling to see a such a slick, completely unsubtle,  government run pro-China PR project to win global hearts and minds and attack all criticisms.   It's just not something we are used to seeing outside of a war setting, really.  

And it is surprising how they use Caucasian people to do some of the work too.  They are even sometimes resorting to sarcastic mockery rather than just ranting.   See this one about the BBC, with whom they are feuding since England banned them from TV broadcasting:

 

They also have a lot of content designed to humanise the Chinese people.  Like this one:

Uncle Hanzi? 

I think I find this interesting partly because it seems rarely explained in the West how propagandistic the Chinese government is with their own people.  I guess this channel gives us an idea, at least.

The rise of intense, uncritical nationalism within any country is always a worry, and it seems odd that we in the West are not being told much about that aspect of Chinese life.   I think I read a brief comment somewhere recently that modern Chinese nationalism is all based on a narrative of finally getting back at the West for its terrible and humiliating treatment handed out in the Opium Wars.   I wonder if that's right - it sounds kind of plausible, but I have never seen anyone explaining the content of Chinese schools' history books.

I do know that Chinese nationalism makes for some very unwatchable Chinese movies.  (And, I have to confess - as well as apologise in advance to my future overlords - that I do find spoken Chinese one of the most grating languages to the ear in foreign cinema.)   

Anyway, it's all fascinating and a bit of a worry.   I do still side with the idea that engagement is better than attempting isolation. 

 

Does Trump take the "credit" for this?

From the BBC:

China is now the EU's biggest trading partner, overtaking the US in 2020.

China bucked a wider trend, as trade with most of Europe's major partners dipped due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trade between China and the EU was worth $709bn (€586bn, £511bn) last year, compared with $671bn worth of imports and exports from the US.

Although China's economy cratered in the first quarter due to the pandemic, its economic recovery later in the year fuelled demand for EU goods.

 

Wait, what?

 

Yet Bannon has swung back to being a Trump supporter??

A perfectly normal White House.

Update:  from the report in The Guardian on the same story - just how nutty is Bannon though?

Rosen said Bannon had “great frustrations with Trump”, who had been “throwing him under the bus”, particularly over an interview Bannon gave to Time magazine.

Bannon, he said, regularly cited a New York Times column by David Brooks, in October 2017, which said some Republicans visiting the White House suspected Trump might have Alzheimer’s disease – but gave him a standing ovation anyway.

“Bannon kept saying this, and he wanted to do something about it,” Rosen said. “Now, the secret was that Bannon crazily thought that he could be president.”

Asked to what extent Bannon’s claims represented “legitimate news versus Bannon just kind of trying to get attention”, Rosen said: “That’s exactly the trick in trying to deal with Steve, because a lot of it is to draw attention to himself.”

This is why politics is not working properly in the USA

 Part 2::

 

Some days, you do just wish that the government ran power stations and electricity grids

The sudden winter black out problem in Texas is leading many American journalists to make comments like this:

 which I think is pretty applicable to my feelings about understanding Australia's electricity grid/power generation issues too.

Back when I were a lad, I think it was all under direct government control, and if you had too many blackouts, you knew who to blame.  

It's rare to see any summary as to when and how that all started to change.   In the 1980's, was it?  

The whole electricity market thing with spot prices, etc, just always seems too complicated to understand fully, given that it is tied up with grid issues too.

Anyway, back to Texas.

The true story seems to simply be that that State never expected wind to generate much power for an event like this, but the back up from natural gas in particular just hasn't been there.   

I have read many times that Texas didn't bother with buying winterised wind turbines, like other, colder, states do;  but it remains unclear as to what difference that would have made to this particular crisis anyway.

As for my wish that electricity was just a public utility like it used to be:  I do qualify that by noting that it always seems to me that we had a hell of a lot more blackouts in the suburbs of Brisbane when I was a child than we get now.  They do seem really rare to me over the last 20 or 30 years.  So maybe the more complicated system does something right.

Ex-cellent

Trump (tries to) hit back at McConnell (my bold):

Trump unleashed a torrent of insults at McConnell, who just a few days ago voted to acquit Trump but also said the former president bore responsibility for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In a lengthy statement, Trump eviscerates McConnell, claiming the Kentucky Republican “begged” Trump for his support in his 2020 reelection bid and threatening to back primary challengers to lawmakers who aren’t aligned with Trump.

“Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership,” Trump warns.

Safe bet that Trump didn't write that string of words himself.

Oh, apparently this is even admitted further down:

The statement on McConnell was edited by a “bunch” of people and the entire process took several days, according to the adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

 More:

The former president says he “regrets” giving McConnell his endorsement last year and claims the veteran politician would have lost had it not been for Trump. McConnell won another term by nearly 20 percentage points over Democrat Amy McGrath.

Trump then blames McConnell for Republicans losing two Senate seats in Georgia, where Trump continued to perpetuate unfounded claims that the presidential election was rigged.

“He doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will,” Trump says in the statement, hinting at his role going forward.

“This is a big moment for our country," Trump says, in closing, "and we cannot let it pass by using third rate ‘leaders’ to dictate our future!”

 Yeah, there are bits in there that are Trump's own words.

Go on, Donald:  make a third party.  Split the GOP vote.  Please?

Not a good sign for a Trump return

News of a poll post the impeachment:

Over half of Americans (58%) say that Trump should have been convicted, which tracks with the 56% who said the same last week before the 57-43 Senate vote to acquit left Trump free to possibly run for office again. Last year, after Trump was acquitted in his first Senate impeachment trial, Americans were evenly split on the outcome, with 49% approving of the Senate's judgment and 47% disapproving, according to a Monmouth University poll....

The seven Republicans, who make up 14% of the GOP conference in the Senate, mirrors the 14% of Republicans nationwide who believe Trump should have been convicted and barred from holding future office in the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

I had to check again - how popular was the idea of Bill Clinton's impeachment back in the day.   It was never very popular at all, as noted in this Gallup article written about Trump's first impeachment:

Americans' support for the Senate convicting Clinton in 1999 was much lower than current support for convicting Donald Trump. Gallup's Jan. 22-24, 1999, survey (one of a number we conducted while Clinton was on trial) found 33% of Americans in favor of Clinton being found guilty and removed from office, while 64% were against. Our latest survey on Trump shows 46% in favor of his conviction.

In the 1999 survey, Clinton's job approval rating was 69%, much higher than Trump's current 44% approval. So, the lower support for Clinton's conviction went hand in glove with his approval rating: 64% were against conviction compared with his 69% approval rating, and 33% were in favor of conviction juxtaposed against a 29% disapproval rating.

Thus, as is the case now for Trump, Americans' views on Clinton's impeachment largely reflected their overall assessment of the job he was doing more generally. Clinton had a high job approval rating and a concomitantly low "convict" rating; Trump's approval is lower and his "convict" rating higher.

No meat Saturday

Had these for lunch:

They were good.  Made in Malaysia.   

 

Made this for dinner:

That's my latest attempt to make a vegetarian/vegan burger patty that sticks together well.  It worked better in that regard, but I still was not completely happy with its texture.  

 

For my future reference, this time I sort of followed the Youtube recipe that appears at the previous post I linked above, but with some variation:

 

1 can black beans

1 can lentils

1/2 can of chick peas

1/2 cup or so of grated raw beetroot

1/4 cup of rolled oats

1/4 cup of nutritional yeast (that stuff's not cheap, by the way)

Some re-hydrated dried shitake mushrooms (probably barely 1/4 cup by the time I squeezed the liquid out - next time I would add much more)

2 tablespoons of coconut oil 

2 teaspoons of tapioca starch (for binding effect - I think it worked, but could still go with more next time)

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

salt (I forget - I think 1/2 teaspoon)

pepper (I ran out - was intended to be 1/2 teaspoon) 

 

Of course, the ingredients were blitzed (with a hand blender this time) to a rough consistency - you don't want a smooth paste, of course.

Next time, I propose dropping the lentils, perhaps just going with a full can of beans and chick peas, more shitake mushrooms, a bit more tapioca starch, and add some crushed walnuts at the end for more texture.  I am perhaps inclined to put in a bit less smoked paprika and add some other herb too, but I am not sure what.

Speaking of Carlson

I agree wholeheartedly with Max Boot's recent column: 

In office, Trump was the greatest threat to U.S. democracy. Now it may be Tucker Carlson.

The Right and UFOs

Hey, here's a enjoyable article at Slate:

What UFOs and Joe McCarthy Have to Do With the Assault on the Capitol

which covers some stuff I hadn't read about before - the Right Wing interest in UFOs and their representation in 1950's science fiction, and then moving forward into Right Wing interest today in paranormal stuff and (in particular) Tucker Carlson's interest in running UFO content too.

This is a bit of a worry, given my own interest in UFOs - although I don't really follow the topic closely now.  I was more on board when it was a liberal interest:  I mean, Close Encounters of the Third Kind paints the aliens as merely misunderstood and somewhat child-like.   (As was ET a few years later.)

I guess there were plenty of Right wing style aliens to be feared in the late 70's, early 80's too (I suppose Alien could readily have been seen as a communist analogue if it had been made in the 1950's).   But interest in UFOs in the 60's and 70's was more a liberal, alternative lifestyle, alternative religion sort of thing.   Perhaps it was in the 1990's (with X Files and the whole alien's are into anal probe or changing our DNA stuff) that it started taking on the more paranoid Right wing character.