From the Rodney Dangerfield School of Public Policy

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Reading some of the commentaries about how we've dumbed-down America, how kids nowadays are all over our lawns, how we can't get no respect--you know, the Rodney Dangerfield line of talk--is a commonplace. Archaeologists have even found similar complaints on the walls of the ancient Egyptian tombs--yep, even ancient Egyptian younger generations were disrespectful. 

Are (young) people actually dumber, or is something making them dumber? For example, pulling an all-nighter reduces IQ, and poverty does that too. Being bombarded with problems that are unsolveable without money doesn't make poor people confident, or smart.

It turns out, the dumbing down also appears in the public policy apparatus. In Newt Gingrich's congress, Speaker Gingrich cut funding for congress's technology advisors--and no subsequent congress, regardless of the party in power, has reinstated that expert advice. That's why Congressmen and Senators asked the CEO of Facebook about whether he was monitoring phone calls.

Poverty is at least part of what impairs our thinking, and artificial poverty--the "we're running out of money" excuse--is a lie, but it's typically the excuse for public policy austerity. Sabotage is part of warfare, and the war on poor people has been unrelenting. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich conspired to turn AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children) into TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families), a much more restrictive type of welfare. Of those needing public assistance, 76% got AFDC, only 26% got TANF. 

Incidentally, there's good evidence that better welfare prevents crime more effectively and cheaper than policing or punishment, but as US population increased 42% between 1982 and 2017, spending on policing and incarceration increased 187%. One other fact of interest: The US has more than a half million medical bankruptcies annually, Canada has none. Canadian per-capita incarceration is roughly one seventh the US rate, yet their crime rate is lower. Could taking better care of people make them smarter too?

Part of the problem with such complaints is that they are a response to what the Buddhists call "mental formations." Everyone know Artificial Intelligence hallucinates, but natural intelligence does too. Optical illusions, plausible explanations, hypnosis and especially nostalgia--yearning for better days that seldom really existed--are all part of the human condition. 

Human minds formulate self-preservation tactics based on past experience. Yet experience something new, and all bets are off--and our minds will tell us whatever we confront threatens our survival, and wouldn't it be nice if things were like they used to be. This is the basis of "Make America Great Again." And even that slogan was a reboot of a Reagan-era campaign saying.

But we're not just confronted with the same old circumstances. Keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs is a part of life's lessons. Making mistakes is to be expected.

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For those needing the ultimate in Rodney Dangerfield lament about the fate of modern culture, here are the Four Yorkshiremen.

 

The Genuine Homeless Problem(s)

 

Where did the millions spent on affordable housing go?

 

 

 

Update: Exclusive: LA Poured Over $1 Billion into Homeless Housing—But Thousands of Units Sit Empty

Excerpt: "

"These three properties, totaling more than 200 rooms, were funded through California’s multibillion-dollar Project Homekey initiative, which was launched during the pandemic and intended to provide fast, permanent shelter to unhoused individuals and families. Not a single person lives in them.

"These are not isolated cases. Westside Current spent months visiting project sites and poring through documents, only to find a litany of unrealized, high-budget projects. Although the City of Los Angeles has spent about $820 million in Project Homekey funds to acquire approximately 1,237 units, 44 percent remain vacant.

"The conversion rate is even worse among the 32 Project Homekey properties the county paid $550 million to acquire. Of the 2,157 rooms purchased, 1,538—or 71 percent—remain vacant.

"The empty buildings pock the landscape. In Compton, the 41-room Travel Plaza Inn was acquired in 2020 for $6.5 million under Homekey. It was supposed to be rapidly converted into supportive housing. Today, it remains vacant, a victim of delays in permits, funding and inter-agency coordination."





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The Difficulties of Persuasion

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The likely answer to facts is far too often denial. People aren't interested in facts, they're more committed to tribal loyalty, or already-decided opinions...exactly like the fact-free prejudice they decry in their opponents.

It's hard to persuade others. A few counter-factual examples:

• Athletes tend to attribute their victories to training, strength and stamina, and their losses to unfortunate circumstances.
• 74 percent of drivers consider themselves better than average
• 94 percent of university professors think they are better than average (and these are the smarties, not the dummies!)
• Half of all students in one survey predicted that they would protest upon hearing an overtly sexist comment. When secretly tested, just 16 percent actually did. (from The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science by Will Storr)

Motivational Interviewing  is a counseling approach developed in part by clinical psychologists. It's a way to address disagreement with patients when the outcome can either be death (fantasy) or life (facts). It's been tested in persuading drug addicts to abandon drug use (or die), and advising heart patients to revise their diets and exercise routines (or die). Essentially it advises to work from agreement first. Fights, arguments and partnership are modes of conflict in order of increasing effectiveness.

As far as the effort to overcome the prejudice and inertia in disagreements, intellectual humility has many benefits, but comfort isn’t one of them, and it’s often hard work. Nevertheless, it has benefits:

• Novel solutions to problems often originate in not knowing (curiosity). 
• Relationships and tolerance improve–making others wrong seldom makes them eager to connect.
• More accurate self-knowledge is another result. Humility can unlock authenticity and personal development. 

(from The Curious Joy of Being Wrong – Intellectual Humility Means Being Open to New Information and Willing to Change Your Mind - By Daryl Van Tongeren, Associate Professor of Psychology, Hope College. Originally published at VoxEU)

Informing people contrary to their prejudices is a daunting enterprise, and one that often may not be possible in the short run. The alternative is to wait for the wheel of history to turn and make that persuasion easier. The presidency of LBJ was full of deception, lies, war crimes and turmoil. LBJ himself was a bigot, a philanderer with multiple mistresses, and never shy about deceiving to achieve his goals. In fact he was a lot like Donald Trump. Nevertheless, LBJ got civil rights legislation, Medicare, and the war on poverty. 

The biggest difference between LBJ and Trump is that Johnson grew up poor. Perhaps the poverty visited on the US by Trump's ham-handed management of the its economy will produce a new LBJ. In the meantime, counting on people to change their minds looks at least like a persistent difficulty.

The Obama Scandals

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

One of my Democratic friends sent out a picture of Obama and his family descending from an airplane, subtitled with a nostalgic wish for the "scandal-free" Obama administration. I've protested that Obama wasn't scandal free, but received "Well, you're entitled to your opinion" in reply.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is full of scandals, whether they originate with my opinion or not.

Scandal 1: "Obamacare" - A Republican Plan

Obama's signature legislation, passed during the halcyon days when he had majorities in both houses of Congresss, was the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." This was a healthcare scheme initially proposed by Richard Nixon. It was codified by the same Heritage Foundation now responsible for Project 2025 that guides the Trump administration attacks on government, and prototyped by (Republican) Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.  It's not a Democratic healthcare plan.

Medicare, on the other hand is something in line with traditionally Democratic thinking. Obama had the chance to pass the Public Option--a chance to buy Medicare coverage even if you're not yet 65--and had the votes to do it, too. It didn't need to defeat a filibuster since it is a revenue measure, and the majority of both House and Senate were Democrats. But Obama had a deal with Big Pharma not to propose any such thing, so the White House let congress know it didn't want that amendment.

How bad is keeping the current arrangement of health insurers between doctors and patients? To fully grasp the badness, read Matt Stoller's article about the United Health Care insurance company--one so reviled people actually cheered when its CEO was assassinated.

Update: "Did you know that because of something called S-PAYGO, the republican budget bill could trigger nearly $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare. Not Medicaid." - Stephanie Kelton (economist advisor to the Senate's budget committee) Obama signed that bill making Medicare cuts possible with the current Trump budget attack on everything not the military.

The Question: Who was Obama representing? a) The American public, which polls say overwhelmingly supports single-payer healthcare like Medicare-for-all, or  b) Either Big Pharma, which currently charges the public roughly twice what other countries pay for their medications, or big healthcare insurance that profits from denying patients care.

Scandal 2: The Global Financial Crisis (the GFC is the sub-prime/derivatives meltdown) 

Thanks to Clinton's and Newt Gingrich's deregulation of Wall Street, legalizing derivatives, and getting rid of the Glass-Steagall impediment to banks gambling with FDIC-insured money, Obama inherited the largest economic, financial and political crises in American history. 

The previous such big scandal was the Savings & Loans (S&Ls) in the Reagan/Bush years. This was an average bank scandal made worse because Reagan deregulated the S&Ls in hopes they would grow their way out of trouble. They just made more bad loans.

But the Reagan/Bush regulators actually did something. They filed 30,000+ referrals for criminal prosecution and the Justice Department prosecuted 1200+ cases with a 90% conviction rate. They got big fish, too, Mike Milken and Charles Keating among them. 

So...fast forward to the GFC. In financial terms it's 70 times bigger than the S&Ls. The effects on the economy were widespread, and as bad as the Great Depression, except now we have social safety nets. America's net worth declined 40%. There were 8 - 10 million foreclosures of bad loans. To save the financial sector, the Federal Reserve extended $16 - $29 trillion in credit to Wall Street. For only $9 trillion, it could have paid off everyone's mortgage, but saving the banks was more important.

So...how many referrals for prosecution from the Obama regulators for this orders-of-magnitude-larger than the S&Ls  scandal? Answer: zero. There were about a dozen prosecutions, all small fish, and one (Swiss) banker went to jail. 

The template for what the Obama administration did to the malefactors responsible for what's arguably the largest theft in human history was this: The Attorney General threatened prosecution, then settled for dimes on the dollar of the thieves' loot. Angelo Mozilo who made nearly a half billion dollars running Countrywide Mortgage into the ground paid $20 - $65 milion in fines, with no admission of guilt. He recently died, but his family gets the benefit of nearly $400 million from his estate, and without an admission of guilt the civil cases by those damaged are much more difficult to prosecute.

Question: So who was Obama representing here? a) The people of America, or b) Wall Street banksters and their accessories in what's arguably one of the world's biggest thefts?

 Scandal 3: Bombing Libya, Syria, and the "surge" in Afghanistan

At least the first two of these are war crimes. I've read Hillary Clinton encouraged the bombing of Libya, even though Gaddafi abandoned his quest for an atomic weapon at the US' request. This doesn't particularly distinguish Obama from most other post-World-War-II presidents. War criminals are the rule, not the exception.

Question: Who was Obama representing here? a) The people of America, or b) the Military-Industrial-Prison-Media-Complex?

Scandal 4: Gutting Habeas Corpus

From the ACLU website 12/31/2011: "President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law today. The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision." Habeas corpus is a legal procedure that allows a person to challenge their unlawful detention or imprisonment in court. It ensures that a detainee can be brought before a judge to determine if their detention is lawful.

Question: Who was Obama representing here? a) The people of America, or b) the Military-Industrial-Prison-Media Complex?

Scandal 5: "Modernizing" the Smith-Mundt Prohibition against Domestic Government Propaganda

"For over sixty years, the Smith–Mundt Act prohibited the U.S. Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) from disseminating government-produced programming within the United States over fears that these agencies would “propagandize” the American people. However, in 2013, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban, which has led to a heated debate about the role of the federal government in free public discourse. Although the 2013 repeal of the domestic dissemination ban promotes greater government transparency and may help counter anti-American sentiment at home, it also gives the federal government great power to covertly influence public opinion." - From Northwestern University's Law Scholarship. 

Question: Who was Obama representing here? a) The people of America, or b) the Military-Industrial-Prison-Media Complex?

Scandal 6: Deportations

Trump's deportations are unauthorized and purposely cruel. The Obama administration tripled the level of deportations of his predecessor, and built the detention facilities later administrations used.

Question: Who was Obama representing here? a) The people of America, or b) bigots and xenophobes?

Scandal 7: Foreign Policy

The imperialism of the US has been a constant throughout its history. Between 1798 and 1994 it's responsible for 41 changes of government south of its borders. Typically, we'll create a lot of military and political refugees, then persecute them when they arrive in the US. One example: the Nixon administration supported a coup in Chile on 9/11/73. Tens of thousands were assassinated as we helped depose the elected government of Salvador Allende. His niece, Isabel Allende currently resides in California, where she writes novels.

Reporters asked the recently deposed Evo Morales, the elected leader of Bolivia, whether he could detect a change between the foreign policy of Obama and Trump. His answer: "No." Elon Musk famously tweeted that "We [the US] will coup who we want" when protests about the Morales coup appeared in Twitter.

Scandal 8:  Hope = Nope (Campaign Contributors)

Obama campaigned on a platform of hope and justice. He governed for the sake of his donors, and at the head of the donor list was Goldman Sachs, the ruthless financial organization Matt Taibbi calls the "vampire squid, sticking its blood funnel anywhere that smells like money."

Question: Who was Obama representing here? a) The people of America, or b) Wall Street. 

Scandal 9: Neocons Running Foreign Policy (Ukraine, Bolivia, etc.)

The Obama administration maintained the same neocon personnel in its State Department that urged the war in Iraq. In Ukraine, this contingent was led by (neocon) Victoria Nuland whose embarassing phone call provoked Russia. When reporters asked the Bolivian leader that the US evicted from office, Evo Morales, could he detect a difference between the foreign policy of the Obama administration and the Trump administration, his answer was direct: "No."

Conclusion: Trump & The Attachment to False Narratives

Here's something from the 2016 election that still resonates today:

Why 70 million votes for Trump? (Trump won 74 million votes, nearly five million more than any previous presidential candidate) Says Thomas Greene (from Noteworthy): “Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge.....Workers now sense that economic justice — a condition in which labor and capital recognize and value each other — is permanently out of reach; the class war is over and it was an absolute rout: insatiable parasites control everything now, and even drain us gratuitously, as if exacting reparations for the money and effort they spent taming us. The economy itself, and the institutions protecting it, must be attacked, and actually crippled, to get the attention of the smug patricians in charge. Two decades of appealing to justice, proportion, and common decency have yielded nothing." 

Worth noting: from this point of view, Trump voters aren't just stupid bigots. They're angry and frustrated, and have no better response than to wreck the system that was so biased toward Obama's wealthy donors.

This means people elected a wrecking ball president because there was something worth wrecking. Obama doesn't bear the entire responsibility for the mess he left, but he did so little to clean it up, that it's hard to imagine a Trump presidency without the scandalous Obama presidency to precede it. And of course "Genocide Joe" Biden was a continuation of the Obama legacy, with the limitations imposed on anything progressive provided by (Democrats) Manchin and Synema. 

Update: "How Biden Set the Stage for GOP Budget Cuts" excerpt:

"[The] Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, ...was backed by all but one Democrat (Rep. Ocasio-Cortez). The final budget enacted by the Democratic trifecta should be infamous for two main reasons: First, two-thirds of the massive $1.7 trillion bill went to military and law enforcement. Second, it triggered historic reductions in food assistance and public health insurance coverage."

In the various discussions I've had with my Democratic friends about these facts, a constant response is that "Well, you're entitled to your opinion." But this isn't opinions any more than the law of gravity is a suggestion. It's the stuff that happened. It's not a leap of faith or opinion to imagine the fallout and blowback inevitable for such fecklessness. 

The similarity between Trump voters and Obama or Biden/Harris voters is that they are equally difficult to convince. Everything's "opinion," even if it's actually facts. 

As Will Rogers used to say "If it weren't for lies, there wouldn't be any politics." And the voters' disgust with the political system shows in the turnout numbers on election day. Here are the electoral college vote tallies for 2016, with eligible voters who "Did not vote" clearly leading.

In modern public policy debates, some voters may finally realize that self harm is the object of most of the political ads, and may turn away from it. But Thomas Frank wrote What’s the Matter With Kansas? about how red-state Republican voters regularly backed the GOP even though it was against their personal interest. They did so for a while, too. 

Capitalists Only Respond to Threats

From Ian Welsh here. Excerpt:

Let’s look at another of my favorite charts:


Oh hey, having powerful organizations taking the part of workers matters.

Something happened right after Reagan took power:


Then there’s this:



(The numbers have gone down since then, but are still vastly high, and far, far higher than China.

Break the unions and lock up the people who won’t obey bullshit (aka. drug) laws.

Class war is real, and constantly ongoing, and elites have won that war.

Power and fear is all that capitalists ever respond to.