Reason Magazine - Staff > Matt Welch > Hit & Run Posts

Rearranging the Cow Tails on the Titanic

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:32:00 EDT

I may have written and edited a few critical things about Arnold Schwarzenegger over the years, but I find him among the smartest and most interesting politicians I've ever covered. Unlike most pols, he can be pretty damned funny, especially during those increasingly frequent (of late, anyway) occasions when he says something with which I agree. For instance:

Follow Arnold on Twitter! And the You-Tube! Listen to David Bowie pronounce "Warhol" the same way Schwarzie pronounces "cow tails!" And read Reason's archive on the cyborg here.

WashPost Peddling Access to Health Care Reporters?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:05:00 EDT

According to a flier obtained by Politico from a health care lobbyist, the Washington Post is selling access to its top employees. Literally.

"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth ... Bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama Administration and Congressional leaders ...

"Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama Administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. ...

"Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters' CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 ... Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. ... A Washington Post Salon ... July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m."

This is actually shocking, from a Journalism Ethics point of view (the paper is offering you the chance to pay money to "alter the debate" on health care at an "off-the-record dinner" with its own "health-care reporting and editorial staff members," and I just don't see any way to pretty up that concept). I'll be curious to see whether the story is confirmed.

Link via Drudge.

UPDATE: Confirmed, and cancelled.

"What this is about is a personal issue that happened late in the campaign relating to a close, personal friend of Bill Kristol"

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:14:00 EDT

In case you needed any fresh reminders of why the gang at The Weekly Standard should never be within drop-kicking distance of the Oval Office, this Politico article about the Palin Wars within the McCain campaign last fall should do the trick. If Sarah Palin emerges as a 2012 front-runner for the GOP, her intrigue-fomenting, audibly panting WS kingmakers would be reason enough to run screaming for the exits. Though in fairness to the former in-flight magazine of Air Force II, for whatever managerial or temperamental reasons, John McCain's political campaigns have frequently been riven by messy civil wars.

Read the Vanity Fair Palin profile that kicked off the latest spat here. More on the Weekly Standard and John McCain here.

McCain and Feingold Sitting in a Tree, C-h-o-k-i-n-g

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:20:00 EDT

Even as the Supreme Court signals a readiness to roll back still further the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's restrictions on political speech, the law's famous backers, Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold, are threatening to take their ball and go home if President Obama doesn't stack the Federal Election Commission with McCain-Feingold enthusiasts. From Politico:

Feingold (D-Wis.) and McCain (R-Ariz.) have placed a hold on the FEC nomination of Democratic labor lawyer John Sullivan, POLITICO confirmed Tuesday. [...]

In a statement issued in response to POLITICO's inquiries, the lawmakers signaled they would release the hold only if Obama taps two additional nominees to fill expired seats on the six-member independent panel, which critics contend is systematically deregulating campaign rules.

"The FEC is currently mired in anti-enforcement gridlock," read the joint statement from Feingold and McCain.... "The President must nominate new commissioners with a demonstrated commitment to the existence and enforcement of the campaign finance laws."

Over at the website of the pro-speech Center for Competitive Politics, CCP Chairman and former FEC head honcho Bradley Smith responds:

This vindictive move by McCain and Feingold is akin to announcing they won't vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court unless Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are replaced, too. FEC Republicans, including apparent hold target Don McGahn, are faithfully exercising their duties in light of legitimate concerns about their constitutional and statutory authority, not simply bulldozing ahead with burdensome campaign finance regulation despite Supreme Court rulings rolling back portions of McCain-Feingold and the reach of campaign finance restrictions as a whole.

This move by Sens. McCain and Feingold is congressional meddling with the independence of the FEC at its worst. Demanding the President appoint FEC commissioners who will toe your pro-regulatory line despite clear Supreme Court precedent isn't 'reform,' it's the last gasp in an effort to defend failed government speech controls on Americans' First Amendment rights.

Smith wrote about "John McCain's War on Political Speech" for Reason in 2005, was interviewed in 2001 and 2003, and sat down with Reason.tv last year:

Even in Death, Elvis Beats Jacko Like a Drum

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:10:00 EDT

So, Michael Jackson will be buried at Neverland, and freaky or campy couples of the future will be getting married near his remains, right? Think again:

Joe Jackson...said Michael would not be buried there, and Don Loper, director for the Loper Funeral Chapel in nearby Ballard, had a succinct answer to the question.

"No," said Loper, explaining that, legally, only ranches with grandfathered personal cemeteries may be used to bury remains. [...]

The possibility of a Jackson museum put Santa Barbara County Supervisor Doreen Farr, elected on a slow-growth platform, on the political hot seat, caught between music fans and her pro-green supporters. Speculation about a Jackson museum ignored one King Kong-sized if prosaic issue, however: zoning.

Reason on zoning here; on MJ here.

D-Day for States

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:36:00 EDT

Today is when the gong strikes 12 for various statehouses who have spent most of this decade on an extended bender.

Indiana is one of five states -- along with Arizona, California, Mississippi and Pennsylvania -- bracing for possible shutdowns this week as time runs out for lawmakers to close billion-dollar gaps in their fiscal 2010 budgets.

Of the 46 states whose fiscal year ends today, 32 did not have budgets passed and approved by their governors as of Monday afternoon, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In the headline-making train wreck of California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, several years too late, appears to be pushing for significant cuts in public-sector pensions, and digging in his heels against a dominant Democratic Party that keeps sending him tax hikes.

"I will never sign those kind of things, so why waste the time and why run out of time and then all of a sudden we have to hand out the IOUs?" Schwarzenegger told reporters. [...]

Schwarzenegger has drawn several lines in the sand: He says he will not raise taxes, wants to address California's entire projected $24-billion deficit at once and wants a number of fundamental changes to state government.

Reason on "failed states" here.

California State Assembly Speaker, on Talk Radio: "I don't know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist"

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:31:00 EDT

Funny, how dominant political parties tend to tar their marginalized opponents as "traitors" and "terrorists." Actually, it's not funny at all. Here's California State Assembly Speaker Karen Bass having a friendly conversation with L.A. Times columnist Patt Morrison:

How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature's work?

The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: "You vote for revenue and your career is over." I don't know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it's about free speech, but it's extremely unfair.

Hat tip to (the properly outraged) Chris Reed.

The $2.7 Billion Tax Break for Captain Morgan, and Other Lowlights From TARPy McStimulus

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:08:00 EDT

Step 1: Watch the government panic. Step 2: Be a rich company. Step 3: Profit!

Here's your daily must-read, for the masochists among you: "Bailout of U.S. Banks Gives British Rum a $2.7 Billion Benefit." It's a grisly tale not of unintended consequences, but rather consequences that were perfectly intended by lawmakers who tucked various giveaways into the increasingly misnamed Troubled Assets Relief Program.

The hurried legislation adopted by a Congress voting under the threat of sudden global economic collapse led to hidden tax breaks for firms in dozens of industries. They included builders of Nascar auto-racing tracks, restaurant chains such as Burger King Holdings Inc., movie and television producers -- and London's Diageo. [...]

Congress inserted the tax benefits for companies other than banks in a fog of confusion and panic after the House of Representatives rejected the first attempt to fund the bank support effort urged by then President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. [...]

That legislation included $20 billion in tax breaks for companies that produce energy from wind and other alternative sources as well as $1.6 billion in relief related to the tax treatment of canceled debt for Sprint Nextel Corp., the third- largest U.S. mobile-phone-service company, and other firms. [...]

The $2.7 billion Diageo tax break in the October bailout bill gives the most financial aid to a non-U.S. company.

"I don't think that the taxpayers knew they were investing in Captain Morgan when the Congress was considering the first bailout bill," says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based government watchdog group.

It's not just TARP, obviously. The stimulus bill was a corporate welfare love-in as well:

The legislation, which includes dozens of narrowly written provisions, created a new class of bailout beneficiaries.

One, championed by Michigan Representative Dave Camp, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and supported by [Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max] Baucus, is saving Nascar track builders $109 million in taxes this year by allowing more generous write-offs.

Other tax breaks backed by Baucus help restaurant franchises make renovations by shortening depreciation schedules. Another shaves $478 million during the next decade from tax bills to movie and television producers as a better way of encouraging them to shoot in the U.S.

Remember this, the next time some politician or editorial board talks of "the cost of doing nothing" (which will be today, tomorrow, and every day that Congress debates health care and climate change). This list above, multiplied a thousand times, is the routine and utterly predictable cost of doing something. Politically connected industries and companies will be given micro-targeted tax breaks and subsidies, while the rest of us shlubs will not only pay for them, we'll get an earful of sanctimony from the Washington Post, David Brooks, and even the Wall Street Journal editorial board, especially those who have the nerve to say "Hold on a sec."

Whole Bloomberg story here. Reason on the bailouts here.

Did Michael Jackson Liberate the Masses from Communism, or Did He Merely Replace Stalin?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:15:00 EDT

The video evidence for this important HIStorical question is distinctly ambiguous:

Though the underlying commie music therein is certainly better than Jackson's execrable "Stranger in Moscow" from that period. Furthering the confusion, Jackson in 1996 erected a 35-foot statue of himself in Prague (pictured below) in the exact same spot that once housed the world's largest statue of Stalin himself.

R.J. Eskow "won't claim that Michael Jackson overthrew Albanian Communism," but avers that pop music "didn't hurt." Radio Free Europe, in a truly weird piece of reporting, gives us these tantalizing morsels:

It has been reported that even though Russian President Dmitry Medvedev favorite rock act is Deep Purple, he's had a weak spot for Michael Jackson ever since his early student years. [...]

For reasons that were never fully understood, Jackson received an unofficial blessing from communist censors, who allowed "Thriller" to be licensed and issued as a vinyl record by the Soviet recording company Melodia in 1985. [...]

Jackson's popularity in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s was matched only by that of supergroup ABBA from Sweden. His stunning video clips and original dance moves inspired a generation of performers in the former communist bloc. His live concert in Moscow in 1993 sparked near-hysteria among scores of Russians hungry for a taste of Western culture.

Ilya Shapiro reminds us that:

Michael Jackson's death allows us to remember that such phenomenal career achievements can only be possible in an economic system that rewards and harnesses talent.

The King of Pop's creativity allowed him and his family to make hundreds of millions of dollars, yes, but it also created thousands of jobs in the music and marketing industries and brought joy to fans around the world. Whatever his personal eccentricities — perhaps, in part, as a result of them — Jackson represents a capitalist success story.

No central planner could have invented him, and no government bureaucracy could have transformed pop music in the way he did.

Tell it to Karel Gott, comrade!

As a confirmed backer of the Dallas-overthrew-Communism school of interpretation, I remain unconvinced. However, for those genuinely interested in exploring the intersection of Western pop culture and non-Western liberation, I heartily recommend reading Michael Moynihan on Red Elvis, and Charles Paul Freund's classic "In Praise of Vulgarity."

House on Verge of Global Warming Vote

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:53:00 EDT

So says Reuters, and the rest of the Internet. Which is mostly a pretext to run this photo, which virtually screams out "Caption Contest!" The only caveat: The winning entry must refrain from working explicitly blue.

Reason's vast archive on global warming begins here. For our latest blowout piece on the topic, please bookmark Science Correspondent Ron Bailey's great June cover package on alternative energy schemes of past, present, and future.

Richard Posner: Expand Copyright Protections to Save Newspapers!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:53:00 EDT

Judge Richard Posner, pondering (Posnering?) the troubled current state of what was one of the most profitable industries of the 20th century, attempts to think outside the bun:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

I'm with Jeff Jarvis: Good God. The scary thing here is not necessarily that we will see some new federal law requiring that the L.A. Times give expressed written consent every time I link to one of its pieces, but rather that some damn fool freedom-reducing scheme like this is likely to be introduced at the federal level in the not-too-distant future, given the economic and political clout of these very large, very troubled, and very connected organizations. And the fact that a respected judge is so breezy about jigging the nation's laws to prop up a single struggling industry reminds us afresh how ingrained is the bias toward seeing the government as a cost-and consquence-free solution to anything perceived as a problem.

Reason on Posner here; on media issues here.

Just How Old Was Michael Jackson?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:18:00 EDT

Even moreso than his fellow '58ers Madonna and Prince, Michael Jackson had a long and bizarre relationship with age. He was old enough to be in the public eye for more than four decades, young enough to live in a children's zoo. He recorded his first number-one single just two months after man first walked on the moon, yet sang like a castrato and surrounded himself with tweens. Young enough to have never developed a beer gut, old enough to have a decline phase lasting a full quarter-century. So just how old was Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson was older than Appalachian wanderluster Mark Sanford, older than beloved Slate columnist Eliot Spitzer, and older than the 44th president of the United States. He was older than silver-haired Congressman Mike Pence, silver-bearded Nespresso pitchman George Clooney, and silver-tongued trial lawyer Erin Brockovich. Remember John Kennedy, Jr., the George magazine publisher who died in a plane crash 10 years ago? He was younger than Michael Jackson. As are Magic Johnson, Tai Babilonia, and Stan Van Gundy. Not only was Michael Jackson older (though perhaps less cryogenically enhanced) than Glenn Reynolds, David Frum and Michael Fumento, he was older than Randi Rhodes, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and even ancient soul Eric Alterman. I don't know if that hurts you, helps you, or makes you reach even quicker for the Demerol.

Speaking of Bruce Springsteen, I presume many in my mourning cohort of Generation Xers who grew up listening to dinosaur rawk presume that it was The Boss who first done funked up "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." As I (alas!) only recently discovered, Michael, who was a musical genius before T-ball age (and before there was T-ball), had Bruce beat by a half-decade at least.

George Will: "Countless" Green Jobs, Literally

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:33:00 EDT

The Washington Post columnist writes about that recent Spanish study that concluded green investments had led to higher, not lower, unemployment:

Still, one can be agnostic about [such] reports while being dismayed by the frequency with which such findings are ignored simply because they question policies that are so invested with righteousness that methodical economic reasoning about their costs and benefits seems unimportant. When the president speaks of "new green energy economies" creating "countless well-paying jobs," perhaps they really are countless, meaning incapable of being counted.

For fervent believers in governments' abilities to control the climate and in the urgent need for them to do so, believing is seeing: They see, through their ideological lenses, governments' green spending as always paying for itself. This is a free-lunch faith comparable to that of those few conservatives who believe that tax cuts always completely pay for themselves by stimulating compensating revenue from economic growth.

Sample the lengthy Reason archive on Obama's "green jobs" here.

Iran, Cold War Revisionism, and Vaclav Havel

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:03:00 EDT

Over at The American Prospect, foreign policy commentator Matthew Duss goes much further than I did yesterday in criticizing hawkish reactions to the recent events in Iran (which seems to have taken an ominous turn today). But in lamenting conservatives' Cold War revisionism, Duss indulges in a bit of his own:

[I]n a recent Politico profile, [Charles] Krauthammer scoffed at the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s as "hysteria," which is the orthodox view among Reaganites.

The views of actual Communist dissidents, however, tell a different story. Such leaders as Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel and Poland's Adam Michnik, among others, have acknowledged that the cultural and intellectual exchanges that grew out of the anti-nuclear movement were important for the training and morale of their organizations and for preparing them for peaceful transitions of power after the Soviet Union collapsed. In a 1995 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, historian Mary Kaldor noted that the peace movement of the 1980s "was unprecedented in scale and in its transnational character," and in the way it made explicit links between peace, democracy, and human rights "[in seeking] links with individual dissidents and groups in Eastern Europe."

Actually, Havel in 1985 wrote an essay, entitled "Anatomy of a Reticence," about just this topic. And the conclusion was just about the opposite:

How much trust or even admiration for the Western peace movement can we expect from a simple yet sensitive citizen of Eastern Europe when he has noticed that this movement has never, at any of its congresses or at demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of participants, got around to protesting the fact that four years ago, one important European country attacked a small neutral neighbor and since that time has been conducting on its territory a war of extermination which has already claimed a million dead and three million refugees? Seriously, what are we to think of a peace movement, a European peace movement, which is virtually unaware of the only war being conducted today by a European state? As for the argument that the victims of aggression and their defenders enjoy the sympathies of Western establishments and so are not worthy of support from the left, such incredible ideological opportunism can provoke only one reaction–utter disgust and a sense of limitless hopelessness.

That quote and more beside are included in my 2003 Reason appreciation of Havel, "Velvet President."

So what has Havel saying about the Iranian crisis? From a recent interview he gave to Bloomberg News:

"The Iranian president does not represent any religious nor national or other ideas," Havel said. "In my eyes he is a man possessed. Unfortunately we are living at a time when a man possessed could easily inflict damage to a lot of people, due to modern technology.

"It is important that the West should not consider oil to be more important than human rights," he added.

The West could consider embargoes or boycotts aimed at the Iranian government, taking care to ensure they don't harm the people, Havel said. [...]

"What is possible and what I would repeatedly warn against is the policy of compromise and the notion that if we don't provoke evil, it will just go away by itself," Havel said. "On the contrary, that would just make it stronger."

Probably the Worst Video in the History of YouTube

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:12:00 EDT

Tremble for the Washington Post when you reflect that God is just:

Link via Wonkette.

New at Reason: Matt Welch on John McCain's Iranian Game of Chicken

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Former campaign rival John McCain has been President Barack Obama's biggest critic during the remarkable protests in Iran. But as Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch argues, much of McCain's rhetoric reflects the fatigue of internationalist conservatism. Moreover, had McCain, the author of "rogue-state rollback," been able to test out his doctrine from the Oval Office, we might not even be talking about Iranian protesters this month.

Read all about it here.

Workaday Media Bias, and State Budget Crises, Example #2

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:48:00 EDT

Here are the first four paragraphs of an Associated Press article about education spending in California.

California's historic budget crisis threatens to devastate a public education system that was once considered a national model but now ranks near the bottom in school funding and academic achievement.

Deep budget cuts are forcing California school districts to lay off thousands of teachers, expand class sizes, close schools, eliminate bus service, cancel summer school programs, and possibly shorten the academic year.

Without a strong economic recovery, which few experts predict, the reduced school funding could last for years, shortchanging millions of students, driving away residents and businesses, and darkening California's economic future.

"California used to lead the nation in education," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during a recent visit to San Francisco. "Honestly, I think California has lost its way, and I think the long-term consequences of that are very troubling."

Not mentioned anywhere in the entire 1,093-word article: "[S]pending for kindergarten through 12th grade education in the Governor's proposed budget for 2008-09 [was] $7.4 billion higher than it was five years ago - and average daily attendance during that same period has declined by 74,000 students." Nor is there uttered the phrase "Proposition 98," which is a 20-year-old law that locks in K-14 education spending at 40 percent of California's budget. Considering that the California budget between 1990-91 and 2008-2009 grew by an average of 5.91 percent, compared to an inflation+population growth rate of 4.38 percent, that has resulted in two decades of robust education funding increases.

More relevant data, care of the Reason Foundation [pdf]:

To read some reports in the media, one might think that education is the perpetual whipping boy of the state budget process. In fact, education spending—for both K-12 and higher education—has seen a steady and significant increase, especially in recent years. From FY 1990-91 to FY 2008-09, General Fund K-12 education spending increased 191.5 percent (6.11 percent a year on average)—a greater rate than the overall General Fund budget grew.

Also not mentioned in the article are the $48.9 billion in school construction/maintenance bonds passed this decade alone (at a time of decreasing enrollment), or that firing teachers is a perennial California scare story, one that almost never results in significant amounts of teachers actually getting fired. (This is due in part to the fact that in many districts, it's nigh on impossible to fire a teacher.) Might this latter factor contribute to California's wretched K-12 academic performance? The article does not dip a toe in any such analysis, relying instead on a two-pronged explanation of slashed funding and under-educatable immigrants:

The unprecedented budget cuts mark a new low for a once highly regarded public school system that began its decline in 1978, when voters approved Proposition 13 [...]

about a quarter [of public school students] do not speak English well, and nearly half are considered poor under federal guidelines.

I don't doubt for a second that teaching poor immigrants with ESL needs adds strain to a public education system. But nor do I doubt that in a better world, articles from straight news organizations might sound less like press releases from the California Teachers Association, and more like searching assessments of a complicated issue.

Well, at least the AP story wasn't picked up by 193 news outlets or anything.

Yesterday's example of workaday media bias here. Also, read the Reason Foundation's great education analyst Lisa Snell talk about California Democrat "budget-cutting" proposals here.

Workaday Media Bias and State Budget Crises, Example #1

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:49:00 EDT

Here's how a New York Times article today lays out the states' budget crisis:

In Hawaii, state employees are bracing for furloughs of three days a month over the next two years, the equivalent of a 14 percent pay cut. In Idaho, lawmakers reduced aid to public schools for the first time in recent memory, forcing pay cuts for teachers.

And in California, where a $24 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year is the nation’s worst, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing thousands of prisoners early and closing more than 200 state parks.

Meanwhile, Maine is adding taxes on candy and ski tickets, Wisconsin on oil companies, and Kentucky on alcohol and cellphone ring tones.

With state revenues in a free fall and the economy choked by the worst recession in 60 years, governors and legislatures are approving program cuts, layoffs and, to a smaller degree, tax increases that were previously unthinkable.

"These are some of the worst numbers we have ever seen," said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers[.]

The only bit in the entire 1,283-word article that even references the widespread and routine state spending increases before the crisis hit is this brief attributed paragraph, presented as if the natural order of things is government growth above and beyond that of inflation and populuation:

While state general fund spending typically increases by about 6 percent a year, it is expected to decline by 2.2 percent for this fiscal year, Mr. Pattison said. The last year-to-year decline was in 1983, he said, on the heels of a national banking crisis.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where it takes producers of opinion journalism, in this case Reason, to point such basic context as:

In 2002 total combined state revenue was $1.097 trillion.... In 2007 this figure had risen to almost $2 trillion. That's an 81 percent increase, at a time when prices plus population increased 19 percent.

Note that this wasn't just attributed off-hand to a participant in the debate; this was counted. It's all in the public record, waiting for truth-seeking news organizations to do their jobs.

I understand partisans and rent-seekers not wanting to deal with the uncomfortable fact that states right now would have had enough money for increased recession-triggered services plus a combined half-trillion dollar tax cut if only they had kept spending growth at the rate of population plus inflation for just five recession-free years. But newspapers?

Iran Update

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:14:00 EDT

* The Revolutionary Guard threatens to crush protesters.

* Tehran expels and detains various foreign journalists.

* Ten incredible YouTube videos.

* YouTube's collection of videos from over the weekend.

* Andrew Sullivan's daily Twitter report has been a remarkable new media thing.

* Speaking of Sullivan, he's right: This video is awesome:

Truth, Goodness and Beauty...and What Really Happened When The Cure Sang About Tiananmen

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:37:00 EDT

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary, riffing from a bootlegged tape my wife has somewhere in storage of a concert The Cure gave 20 years ago in which lead singer Robert Smith improvised a bunch of weird, emotional lyrics during the song "A Forest," culminating with the repeated line "We will never forget!" Which is a good enough story, except for how the song wasn't "A Forest," and Smith never said "We will never forget," and in fact ended on the more existentially ambiguous "This means nothing! Means nothing! There's nothing left but faith."

Perhaps demonstrating what Michael C. Moynihan noted earlier this evening about the Internet enabling ever-faster corrections of gross factual errors, my dear friends in Cure-freak nation have not only fact-checked my ass, they've provided a handy link that gives us the correct concert date (June 4, the actual day of the massacre), city (Rome), and even the full text of the still-haunting ad lib. Give 'er a read, and I swear some day I'll find the cassette and convert it into an audio file.

On a distantly related note, for those interested in totalitarianism and shoddy memory, I can heartily recommend Timothy Garton Ash's great book, The File.

Apologies for the error, and thanks to Emily Schuna for pointing it out.

UPDATE: Well, that was quick. Here's the audio link. He does say "And don't forget!" at the end, turns out.

The Passions of Richard Wolffe

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:58:00 EDT

Contained within this Andrew Ferguson piece in the (no longer Rupert Murdoch-owned) Weekly Standard about obsequious mainstream media coverage of Barack Obama comes a welcome bit of LexisNexis deployment against triangle-headed Newsweek toff* and serial Keith Olbermann contributor Richard Wolffe. Who, Ferguson discovers, was lobbing love sonnets in George W. Bush's general direction as recently as four years ago:

One story Wolffe wrote to accompany Bush's second inauguration in 2005 carried the headline: "He's hands-on, detail-oriented, and hates 'yes' men. The George Bush you don't know has big dreams--and is racing the clock to realize them." The article added detail to this account of Bush's unbridled virility. "President Bush is by far the biggest agent of change in his own cabinet," Wolffe wrote.
Whether he's remaking his team or plotting his second-term policies, Bush's leadership style belies his caricature as a disengaged president who is blindly loyal, dislikes dissent, and covets his own downtime. In fact, Bush's aides and friends describe the mirror image of a restless man who masters details and reads avidly.
And so on, each layer thicker than the last.

Eight months later Hurricane Katrina hit, Bush's ratings tanked, and new orders came down. Wolffe now filed his dispatches for stories that declared: "Bush's leadership style and the bureaucratic culture combined to produce a disaster within a disaster.... It is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty."

Speaking of Bush-era jock-sniffery from Manhattan's finest, in searching for that classic Vanity Fair photo spread of Dubya's virile cabinet just after 9/11 [possibly pictured], I noticed something peculiar about the mag's self-styled "huge archive of Bush-administration articles" -- ain't nothing in it between October 2000 and September 2003, even though there are nearly 50 articles afterward. Did VF really not cover the Bush administration through September 11 and the Iraq War? I sure don't remember it that way....

For journo-pundits especially, but I think all of us too: Life really is better lived when you reserve your love for the deserving people you know, rather than the undeserving politicians you think you understand.

* A media pal of mine with more passports from the British Isles than I writes to say that Wolffe is "a Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jew. Don't assume all English accents betoken toffishness."

Net Spending Cuts, Everywhere Except Where They Were Promised

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:26:00 EDT

Via Instapundit comes this banally infuriating Politico story about belt-loosening in Washington:

While businesses across the country are cutting back, members of the House saw their own office budgets increase by an average of 7 percent between 2008 and 2009.

House officials say the increase is because of — not in spite of — the nation's economic woes.

If I can wade briefly into unscientific anecdote, a recent West coast swing through Portland, Palm Springs and Los Angeles revealed a startling proliferation of "for lease" signs and noticeable decraptitude since the last time setting foot in all three; meanwhile here in D.C. gentrification seems to roar on uninterrupted.

Radley Balko wrote about "Washington's wealth boom" in January and February.

Cut to the Bone!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:40:00 EDT

A snapshot of pared-to-the-bone governance in California, courtesy of the L.A. Times:

Los Angeles County government has more than 8,000 phones that never ring. The annual cost to taxpayers? At least $1.5 million and climbing.

Officials worry that some lines may have never served a county purpose. One was registered to a now-defunct ticket brokerage in Hollywood called Theatix. For 14 years, the bill for the line -- currently $38 a month -- has been paid by taxpayers.

Give them some time; they're living in twilight:

New Middle East Events Prove it: Obama Right About Most Everything

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:32:00 EDT

Hendrik "Rik" Hertzberg, last seen around these parts burbling about President Obama's "metaphorical call to duty" and "redefinition of patriotism" in the face of that dreaded "strain of ideological conservatism that wields market fundamentalism as a sword and cultural populism as a shield," is back at his New Yorker "Comment" perch declaring that every recent positive bit of news out of the Middle East just might be the result of Obama's June 4 speech in Cairo.

The words of an American President, even one from Chicago, were not necessarily foremost in the minds of the Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, and Christians of many theological varieties and political persuasions who lined up to cast their ballots and dip their thumbs in ink. But most analysts...agreed that Obama's speech, and the carefully constructed edifice of public diplomacy of which it was the keystone, was a factor in the outcome.

Meanwhile, as this was being written, a joyfully energized electorate was awaiting the results of a vigorously contested election for President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. No matter who wins—the jingoist-populist-obscurantist incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or his comparatively moderate main opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi—ultimate power will continue to rest with the "supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his council of unaccountable theocrats, who kept liberal challengers off the ballot. But Iran is not a completely closed society. Change is in the Tehran air, and the American President's openness is part of it.

This is one of many reasons why my eyes tend to glaze over when New York- or D.C.-based commentators write with confidence about events in the Middle East. Apparently the greater the distance, the easier it is to just ditch the whole correlation/causation stuff, throw in a couple of "to-be-sure"s, then carry on to the conclusion that the policy and/or politician you support is creating whatever positive "effect" is currently taking place (you'll note that the headline on Hertzberg's piece is "The Obama Effect"). It was the same when Libya abandoned its nuclear weapons program back in 2003, and it would have been the same if this week's remarkable events in Tehran had happened in 2008 instead of 2009. I say this as someone who (so far) prefers Obama's Middle East approach to that of either his predecessor or challenger.

Aside from inducing fatigue, this all-too-routine confirmation bias (evident in just about all sides of every foreign policy debate) has the unfortunate side effect of reinforcing the narcissistic, practically imperialistic and only occasionally half-accurate notion that every notable event in a faraway land is at least the indirect result of Washington policy. Sometimes it really ain't about us.

More scenes from inside Hertzberg's tank, this time illustrating almost perfectly how it really is the singer, not the song:

The Cairo address had the qualities we have come to expect from Obama's best speeches: empathy, frankness, respect for his listeners' intelligence. This time, he had an inherited advantage. Many of the words and phrases he used would have sounded strained and pandering coming from any other Western leader, ever. But Barack Hussein Obama's personal history drained the condescension from his recitation of the contributions of Islam to world civilization and of Muslims to American life. He sprinkled markers of respect: Islam was "revealed"; a mention of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad was followed, as in Islamic custom, by "peace be upon them"; the Koran was "the Holy Koran," as holy as the Holy Bible.

Michael Moynihan on Obama's Cairo speech here.

"Progressives need to stop worrying and learn to love taxes"

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:42:00 EDT

That's the subhed on an American Prospect essay by Matthew Yglesias of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the Obama administration. From the opening paragraph:

In most developed democracies, taxation is a necessary evil that finances the services that make for a fair and dynamic society. Taxes let people take risks with their lives, guarantee a financially secure retirement, educate children, keep our roads drivable, pay police, and help ensure that the benefits of prosperity are broadly shared. But starting in the late 1970s, political entrepreneurs on the right helped launch a broad "tax revolt" that completely changed the public's view of taxation.

Don't recall seeing the taxes=dynamism argument before, let alone the concept that they "let people take risks with their lives," though I suppose one could argue that they have enabled CEOs and money managers to take enormous risks with their too-big-to-fail companies....

Wittingly or no, Yglesias then gives us even more reason to fear Obama's massive budget deficits:

For the moment, that's all for the best. The administration argued, correctly, that its proposed increases in spending are vital to transforming the country's health, energy, and education sectors. The mere fact that the 2010 budget document implies unduly large deficits in 2014 or 2017 is not a problem in 2009 when the bleak macroeconomic outlook calls for large short-term deficits. The moderates were not off base in their concerns about long-term deficits. But, having drawn attention to a real problem, they were unwilling to face the only realistic solution: higher taxes. [...]

The United States already does about as much as any other country to curb inequality through the tax code. Where we fall short is in fighting inequality through government spending -- we just don't spend very much. If you care about inequality, in other words, the thing to focus on is not soaking the rich through the tax code but rather ensuring that there's enough tax revenue to finance generous public services. Broad social-insurance schemes like Social Security and unemployment insurance, as well as government operations more generally, are strongly progressive in their impact.

Do increased "government operations" actually lead to those "generous public services," let alone positive outcomes in the broader economy? If so, I'm still waiting to see a shred of evidence cited in the progressive wonderland of California.

I debated Yglesias on Bloggingheads back in March.