Using the Broad Authority He’s Been Granted

Secretary Paulson, in written remarks delivered orally today, advocating a policy of “give away money first and ask questions later”:

“And to adequately reform our system, we must make sure we fully understand the nature of the problem which will not be possible until we are confident it is behind us.”

The implication in October, recall, was that “the market,” and life as we know it, would collapse if action wasn’t immediately taken. There was no time for deliberation because disaster was imminent.

If your small child, the analogy might go, was standing on the tracks in front of an oncoming train, absently nibbling her lower lip and oblivious to the danger at hand, would you call your spouse and discuss whether you had, as a parenting unit, set appropriate boundaries and sufficiently inculcated the dangers of standing in the way of moving vehicles, particularly those that can’t possibly swerve or stop in a timely fashion?

You’d do no such thing and waste no such time. Same for any child, right? Even ones you don’t personally know. You wouldn’t take time to speculate on how she got there; you’d move her to safety, then ask questions.

I submit that this is no child we’re saving, Mr. Paulson. It’s an already plummeting stock market, a prostitute masquerading as a maiden, a foundering economy, a boy who cries wolf, a overvalued credit-default-swap.  And there is no oncoming train. You would have all of us pile on the tracks in front of the train to save the child, and assess the mess when the smoke clears.

I understand I may be ignorant—perhaps more so than I even know. And my voice may be puny. Nevertheless, I hereby deny your statement. I do not accept it as necessary and proper. And I suspect I am not alone. I shall pursue those peaceful means I choose to express this to the wider world. One lonely citizen shaking his fist at a monument is not protected, in my view, by any first amendment. I don’t believe such a right is in your power, or anyone earthly else’s, to grant.

 

Christening a New Fallacy

If you’re a teacher of rhetoric, as I am, one of the skills you’d like your students to have is the ability to identify an argumentative fallacy so they can critique other arguments and also avoid fallacies in their own writing. There’s a standard list of fallacies you can use, and our culture seems to specialize in a few of them. It’s easy, for example, to show a youtube clip of Bill O’Reilly committing the ad hominem fallacy, or of the Shrub perpetrating a guilt by association fallacy (which he can do without evidence even of association). The consequences of such fallacies are dire—in some cases they lead to protracted, deadly, trillion dollar wars.

Others include begging the question, slippery slope, and hasty generalization. They all serve to divert the reader or listener’s attention away from the issue and make them focus on something else. Begging the question calls your attention to syntax; a slippery slope has you fearing what’s next; a hasty generalization lets you revel in the comfort of simple things.

In doing some tv-watching, strictly for research purposes, last night, I identified a new fallacy, and it seems to me the most pervasive one on cable TV news, but it rears its head regularly on NPR, talk radio, and even the New York Times.

I’d like to call it the donk-e-phant fallacy, in honor of the mascots for our two major political parties. As implied above, journalists commit this fallacy with frightening frequency by “reporting” an issue by: a) naming the issue b)explaining what the Republicans say about it and c) explaining what the Democrats say about it. b) and c) are sometimes reversed. The donk-e-phant fallacy precludes the idea that there might be some real investigating to do with respect to the issue and it also renders the journalist impotent—he or she can’t possibly point out that one group or the other is being disingenuous, deceptive, or is just plain wrong.

This would all be silly fun if the donk-e-phant fallacy didn’t lead to disastrous compromises such as the bailout, where both sides got what they wanted: increased spending combined with tax cuts. This policy stew only seems like compromise, and the fallacy helps it masquerade as such. Hopefully, it makes us sick enough to revisit some long-lasting problems.

Even though it’s against my very nature, I count myself among the hopefuls and quixotics who believe miscegenation has brought us a man who demands—deriving respect by commanding it—that we be better and neither support nor fall for the news outlets who perpetrate and perpetuate these fallacies.

 

National Garage Sale – Social Security, Bureaucrats, Other Valuable Merchandise Available

While most people believe that the $700 billion bailout actually represents a move toward the nationalization of banks and financial institutions, it actually is part of the grand privatization scheme of neo-cons and others that’s been in the works for many years.

Our president tried to let us do it the easy way. Remember a couple years ago when he travelled the country trying to sell us on the privatization of Social Security? (If it had worked, by the way, I’m not sure millions of 70-year-olds wouldn’t be storming the White House right now.) Thankfully, he failed, perhaps because he’d squandered too much political capital on the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.

This—what we have now, and what’s coming—is the hard way. The government, deeply in debt, will have no choice but to sell the banks it bailed out, as well as other assets. Some private corporation will be perfectly willing to buy the shell-game that is Social Security and refashion its obligations and revenue streams in the capitalist mode. This will have us looking back fondly on the times when Bush was at least making it seem as if we had a choice.

 

Newscasters Everywhere Practice Saying “700 Billion Dollars!” into Their Mirrors

One doesn’t have to turn over very many rocks to find the number 700 billion in other contexts. Few of them are relevant, but this one is apposite, I believe. It’s from Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck:

Subsidized automobile use is the single largest violation of the free-market principle in U.S. fiscal policy. Economic inefficiencies in this country due to automotive subsidization are estimated at $700 billion annually, which powerfully undermines America’s ability to compete in the global economy. (see this brief excerpt for a fuller description)

Free-market supporters usually defend de-regulation by claiming that government intervention prevents the market from pricing goods and services. The market, they believe, is the most efficient mechanism for arriving at fair prices and for rewarding risk, incentivizing hard work, and nurturing good ideas. This may well be the case.

What I find myself trying to convince free-marketeers of lately is that government intervention is already much more significant than they suppose it to be. It’s difficult to persuade them because government intervention with markets is so big one can hardly even see it.

Our society has evolved by subsidizing certain industries—automobile, insurance, and especially big oil—at a huge cost to the American taxpayer. Concerned taxpayers and campaigning politicians are justified in getting hot and bothered by, for example, the ethanol subsidy.

But what about a much larger subsidy that encourages the continued dependence on greenhouse gasses when most Americans favor R & D for new energy technologies that will limit toxic emissions? Further, all sorts of other problems, that many Americans, again, would like to avoid, inhere in the auto subsidy, namely: foreign entanglements, landscape destruction, and the emerging idea that our car and suburb culture isn’t sustainable or even aesthetically agreeable.

(Expanded explanations of the auto and other subsidies is available in this Newsweek article.)

The question isn’t whether the government should “interfere,” it’s how and where they should. The government interferes for car-driving and alters the “free market” by around 6% of GDP. I applaud those in Congress opposed to the financial bailout, but their reasoning, if based on defending free markets from government interference, is suspect. If the effect of their opposition will be to put all government subsidies on the negotiating table, their misguided posturing might be productive.