On American political parties held captive by their interest groups and ideologies

In the comments to Dark Age America: The End of the Old Order, Purple Tortoise asked the following.

Given the widespread obvious discontent, I have been surprised to see that no mainstream politician has really gone for grabbing the populist center and run on reining in the banks, restricting offshoring and immigration, and ceasing involvement in foreign wars. It seems like it would have been a great vote-getter to me. What am I missing?

Tortoise was quite obviously playing with Greer's idea that fascism is a totalitarianism that grows out of a disenfranchised center, a topic I elaborated on in The Archdruid on Fascism, part 2.  Neither Greer nor anyone else answered him directly for five days, so I decided to chime in.

What you're missing is that none of the top four parties in this country will support that combination of positions. Each party will support some or even most of them, but will find at least one of them anathema, so there is no home for that platform among them.

The Republican Party won't consider reining in the banks or ceasing intervention in foreign wars; the closest one got to those positions in the GOP was Ron Paul, who was interested in "Ending the Fed," but I don't know what he thinks about other big banks. I don't recall his son Rand continuing that policy. Both are still anti-interventionist, and both make the mainstream power brokers in their party furious. Note that Ron Paul didn't even get as far as either Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich in the 2012 primaries. [His son Rand] is going to have an uphill fight getting through them in 2016 as well.

The Democratic Party won't support strong restrictions on immigration; they're having enough trouble on illegal immigration. Restrictions on immigration would be considered an expression of racism, and the Democrats include racial and ethnic minorities in their coalition, some of whom would be most displeased by an anti-immigrant stance.

The Libertarians would find restrictions on the banks, outsourcing, and immigration against their principles. The party actually advocates for open borders for both money and people.

The Greens might go for restricting immigration except that they don't want to be seen as racist, either. Since being pro-redistribution and anti-racist are both Left positions, it's hard to be anti-immigrant and be seen as Left in the U.S. these days.

The largest party in the U.S. who might be for all those things is the Constitution Party. Any politician in that group who can wrap those ideas in a flag while carrying a cross will get away with them. Pity the party is the personification of amateur hour in politics.

Neither Purple Tortoise nor Greer had anything to say about my comment, but they had the excuse that it was approved on Wednesday morning, and Greer and all of his readers were probably already looking forward to his next essay.

Just the same, consider Purple Tortoise's question and my response an explanation of why, despite Duverger's Law working, people are frustrated by the major parties and may not even be able to find a fit in the minor parties.  Not all possible combinations of positions can be accomodated within them, so those who do have those collections of views have no one to represent them.  Getting rid of the current two major parties won't solve that problem.

Ron Paul rides off into the sunset

Ron Paul suspended his campaign the day before yesterday. WOOD-TV used that piece of news to begin And then there were two.






This makes for the fourth GOP candidate for whom I've bothered to make a label on this blog to leave the race. In honor of this occasion, I will bid him adieu, just as I did when Gingrich, Santorum, and Cain exited the contest. Join me over the fold for Ron Paul's greatest hits on Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

Game of Thrones: 2012 Campaign Edition

Eric Kain at Forbes had an intriguing flight of fancy over at Forbes.

[W]hat if instead of Romney and Obama, the candidates were characters from the popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire and its HBO adaptation Game of Thrones?
...
[T]here are spooky parallels between the fictional series and the stranger-than-fiction political figures of our times.

As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words….

He's not kidding.

Examiner.com article on the Michigan primary

As I just wrote:

As for my analysis of last night's primary, stay tuned. I'll link to and post an excerpt to an article I just started writing for Examiner.com.

The article is posted. Here is the link and lede paragraph.

Romney wins Michigan and Washtenaw County but splits delegates with Santorum
Washtenaw County Elections 2010 Examiner

For the order of finish of the top four Republican candidates, their vote percentages, and the splitting of the delegates between the top two candidates, Washtenaw County mirrored the results of the state of Michigan as a whole. On the other hand, the turnout, percentage of the vote cast in the Democratic primary, and order of the lower ranked candidates on the Republican ballot differed significantly from the rest of the state and displayed Washtenaw County's distinctive take on politics. Elsewhere in the state, Democrats crossing over to vote in the Republican primary may have had an effect on the result in at least one Congressional district.

For the rest of the article, surf over to Examiner.com. My blog here isn't monetized, but Examiner.com is.

As for anything I left out of the article, note that I assign part of the responsibility for Santorum's splitting the delegates between the Republicans in the Michigan legislature, who came up with the redistricting plan that moved Calhoun County out of the 7th District and replaced it with Monroe County. That worked to protect my former representative Tim Walberg from a challenge by my other former representative Mark Schauer, but it also made the district more friendly to Santorum. Without that slick move, Romney would have won that district and its two delegates. The rest I give to Democrats crossing over to vote in the Republican primary, although the clearest example involves Democrats voting for Ron Paul, not for Rick Santorum. Sorry, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, Operation Hilarity wasn't as effective as you thought it was, despite your bragging. Even so, the video is hilarious.






In other news, one of my New Year's resolutions was to resume writing for Examiner.com. As you can see, I finally got around to it.

The GOP Circus returns to town

The elephants came to Michigan for a debate last November, which produced one of the epic fails of the campaign so far. However, that was only for one night. The remaining four candidates have returned to Michigan, this time for two weeks until the primary on February 28th. WXYZ on YouTube reports.





GOP Contenders Campaign In Michigan

While the candidates themselves have just arrived, their campaigns have been active here for weeks. Ron Paul's campaign has been canvassing since the middle of January, when I found a flyer from the Michigan campaign chair on my door. Also, Newt Gingrich's campaign was running ads at the beginning of the month. However, those aren't the candidates WXYZ has been covering. Instead, the station is devoting its airtime to the two front-runners, Romney and Santorum. Native son Romney, who grew up in Oakland County, is getting marquee treatment, both from the station and the local GOP establishment. In fact, Governor Snyder endorsed him, as shown in this WXYZ clip.





Michigan Governor Rick Snyder endorsed Mitt Romney as he visits Michigan.

Romney even sat down for an interview with WXYZ's Val Clark.





Val Clark talks one on one with Mitt Romney.

Romney may be the native son, but Rick Santorum is the front-runner, so he gets his own segment.





Presidential candidate Rick Santorum appeared in Michigan to campaign.

Looks like The Froth has risen to the top again.

Gingrich shoots for the Moon while campaigning in Florida

Yes, really.





WESH-TV on YouTube has a better video, but it doesn't embed. Too bad, as it shows Gingrich using the idea of reviving the space program as a major selling point of his campaign in Florida, especially along the Space Coast. I don't know if it has helped him with Republican voters, but it certainly is getting him more attention.

Auto sales as economic stimulus

In my previous entry, I quoted Calculated Risk on how auto sales will have contributed to GDP when it is computed and released later this year.

Growth in auto sales should make a strong positive contribution to Q4 GDP. Sales in Q3 averaged 12.45 million SAAR, and sales averaged 13.46 million SAAR in Q4, an increase of 8.1% over Q3.

I also made the following promise.

Stay tuned for more news about the NAIAS and a digression about the importance of auto sales as part of increasing demand in an economy.

It's time to follow through by expanding on the second point by demonstrating how important consumer spending in general and auto sales in particular are to GDP, as well as make a point about how necessary demand is to keeping the economy as it is currently structured afloat.

Here is Calculated Risk's latest line graph of U.S. auto sales showing their relationship to recessions for the past 45 years. Note that auto sales declined both before and during each recession, although some of the declines during recessions have been more marked than others, as some of the milder recessions, along with those that began with already depressed sales display more stagnation than decline. Also note that auto sales rose coming out of every recession, sometimes even during its late phases.






Did you see the two sharp spikes at the ends of the past two recessions? Those are the results of government intervention to stimulate the economy, although of very different sorts, both consistent with the philosophies of the parties in power at the time. The first one occurred when George W. Bush told everyone, in so many words, to keep shopping.

Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't -- where we don't conduct business, where people don't shop.

By memetic mutation, this became "go shopping or the terrorists win." Even if Bush didn't say exactly those words, people responded. Just look at the graph of real retail sales below.






Look at the big spike right at the end of the 2001 recession. People responded to their president's suggestion by whipping out their credit cards and spending. Within a month or two, the recession was over. Honestly, it was exactly what a party with a free enterprise philosophy should advocate, and it worked.  It also showed that Bush was far more afraid of a recession deepening than he was letting on at the time.

By 2009, just about everyone's credit card was tapped out, so that strategy wouldn't work. However, the government sill had credit and other incentives available, and the party in power believed in goverment intervention. So instead of just urging people to spend, it instituted Cash for Clunkers. That worked, not only in stimulating car sales, but increasing real retail sales as a whole. That it also removed a bunch of gas guzzlers from the roads was a bonus. Both instances show that increasing demand works. Keynes was right. So, no, Ron Paul, we're not all Austrians now.

Last night was the beginning of the primary/caucus season for 2012

It was also the beginning of the end for some of the candidates, too.

WXYZ-TV on YouTube reposted the summary of last night's events from ABC News.





WOOD-TV on YouTube has the details on what Iowa's caucus results mean for the rest of the campaign, including here in Michigan.





Good riddance to Michele Bachmann! In fact, I don't have kind words to say about any of the candidates who actively campaigned in Iowa. Here's what I wrote about the field on Kunstler's blog Monday and reposted on Is this it?, the only other politics blog on the January 2011 Nablopomo blogroll.*

The Republican candidates are a bunch of clowns. Rick Perry is so dumb, a zombie was walking down the street in Des Moines the other day, saw Governor Goodhair, and turned away to look elsewhere for brains. Newt Gingrich doesn't even have the organization to get his name on the ballot in the state where he now lives, Virginia. Bachmann is exactly the kind of maniac that would promise cheap gas to keep suburbia alive. Ron Paul is stopped clock who is right twice a day, namely at 4:20. Rick Santorum is famous because his surname is a synonym for froth. Romney is a corporate robot who will do whatever his programmers tell him to do. Poor Huntsman had to sign on to climate denial in order to stay viable. Finally, when I tell people about Buddy Roemer, who has the closest thing to James's "My Tea Party" platform, the response is "who?"

Other than Huntsman and Roemer, neither of whom competed in Iowa, these candidates make me glad that I haven't been a Republican or conservative since 2000.

*It's only the 4th, and I'm already the only politics blogger actively participating in Nablopomo. Is this it? gave up after only two days. Too bad. She showed promise. Instead, I'll be reading The Crunchy Wife, who is very much about sustainability on the personal level.

The Austrian School: Faith-based economics and pseudoscience

Since Ron Paul is leading the polling in Iowa, it's time to examine some of his ideas. My wife did that the other day with Paul's economic philosophy, which is based on the Austrian School, and posted these two links on my Facebook wall.

Rational Wiki: Debating an Austrian: Handy List of Terms

One of the questions every great biologist invariably faces is "Do we debate the creationists?" Similarly, all great economists must ask themselves the question "Do we debate the Austrians?" John Maynard Keynes did it in the '30s and won. Now the Austrians are whining that liberal economist Paul Krugman won't debate them. Anyway, whether or not you want to debate one, here is a handy-dandy list of Austrian terms/dog-whistles that can either act as a brief dictionary or help you avoid a fruitless debate (and debating Austrians is always fruitless) by recognizing undercover Austrians.

LMAO! That certainly puts their school of thought into perspective. Faith-based economics, indeed!

Now the second link:

Slate:The Hangover Theory
Are recessions the inevitable payback for good times?
By Paul Krugman|Posted Friday, Dec. 4, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

(Yes, the debate is that old--P.S.)

A few weeks ago, a journalist devoted a substantial part of a profile of yours truly to my failure to pay due attention to the "Austrian theory" of the business cycle—a theory that I regard as being about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire.

In addition to using another analogy that's just about as bad as comparing Austrian School economics to creationism, Krugman delivers a devastating takedown of the Austrian School's ideas--and that was 13 years ago. Events since then have demonstrated that Krugman was right and the Austrians even more wrong. As Senator Vreenak would say about the Austrian School:

Paul Krugman's and Robin Wells' gifts for GOP presidential candidates

In Political Holiday Gifts, Paul Krugman describes the gifts he and his wife Robin should be given to the GOP candidates this holiday season. They came up with some real winners:

Newt Gingrich fill-in-the-blanks divorce papers.

For beachwear, Mitt Romney flip-flops.

A Ron Paul Austrian-English dictionary.

For pet lovers, a Romney dog-on-car carrying case, and a Rick Santorum man … I think I’ll stop right there.

A Jon Huntsman invisibility cloak, just like the one he already wears.

A Rick Perry three-piece brain booster set, containing smart water, vitamin B12, and something else (we can’t remember what).

As you can see, he and his wife didn't think of appropriate gifts for Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, but he did ask his readers for suggestions. There are currently 141 221 comments, so I'm sure there are plenty of good ideas among them.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

On his FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times, Nate Silver performed an analysis of all the GOP candidates' statements as graded by Politifact. Here is a graph showing all six grades (pants on fire, false, mostly false, half true, mostly true, or true) for the top eight candidates.





And here's one where all the "false" and "true" claims have been lumped together.





As you can see, the least truthful candidate is Michele Bachmann. I'll let Iago have the first word.





Thank you, Iago. My reaction is "Madame Representative, the voices in your head are not reliable sources."

Santorum is down there with her, and the two Georgians, Cain and Gingrich (at least we won't be subject to a GOP ticket that has both of them on it), aren't much better.  In fact, Cain is the only candidate without a completely true statement in the sample.  As for Perry, he barely has more true statements than false ones. As someone on Daily Kos pointed out, Perry's true statements during the debates have been about other candidates, while the false ones have been about President Obama. Compared to this crowd, Romney (you can't spell Romney without "money") looks reasonable.

Of course, the paragons for telling the truth have been Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. My appraisal of Ron Paul in 2008 was that the man can see the country's problems clearly. It's just that his solutions are delusional. I've also said that Ron Paul is a stuck clock who is right twice a day. It looks like that's enough to make him the second most truthful politician in the room during GOP debates. As for Huntsman, he has avoided making any completely false statements. Too bad for both Paul and Huntsman that neither will be nominated.

For comparison, here is the analysis of President Obama's statements on Politifact.





The good news is that he's generally truthful and more truthful than most of the GOP candidates. The bad news is that Politifact grades Ron Paul as being more truthful than President Obama. If the Paulturds find this out, we'll never hear the end of it.

Tell me now, which deity do the Dominionists really worship?

In the middle of this week's missive of doom, Kunstler inserted this passage about being in Mexico City and visiting the Pyramid of the Sun in the old Aztec city. It made quite an impression on him.

I was in Mexico City mid-week and sojourned behind the Zocolo at the ruins of the Templo Mayor, headquarters of the New World's champion people-eater, Huitzilopochtli, a bad-ass muthafucka of a god if ever there was one. The Aztecs had everything going for them except their reality, at the center of which was this bloodthirsty hallucinated monster demanding fresh beating hearts by the hundred-weight. And so, consumed by this insane myth, a half a million of them allowed themselves to be destroyed by three hundred adventurers from Spain.

Strange to relate, the environs of the ruined pyramid was the most tranquil spot in the entire super-gigantic permanent catastrophe of Mexico City. Old Huitzee would like these times, I thought: a bad moon rising and plenty of fresh meat everywhere. The way the stars were lining up, a pitiless deity could really get his mojo on. It made my skin crawl, I hardly know where to start this week.

I decided to tie his insight with what he wrote about Perry the week before, dropping one of the freakier ideas about who Dominionists really worship in my response for good measure.

Remember last week's comment about Ponzi Perry's being a Dominionist? A friend of mine has a wild hair of an idea that ties that idea together with your comments about Huitzilopochtli. My buddy thinks that while the Dominionists think they're worshiping Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, they've been hoodwinked, and Huitzilopochtli and a couple of his buddies from the Aztec pantheon are receiving the Dominionists' devotion instead. That could explain why the biggest applause line of the night during last week's Republican debate was when Ponzi Perry mentioned executing more prisoners than any other sitting governor. It was the kind of sacrifice the deity they really worship would approve of. Jesus, not so much.

That's a very strange idea, but one that received another example in support of it last night.

LOL, Robert Morrow

Here is another post in the vein of Christine O'Donnell's "Troublemaker" living down to its name, which isn't about sustainability in Detroit, but does fit the Nablopomo theme of Fiction and the listing of this blog under politics on the Nablopomo blogroll. Also, it's about an intra-Tea-Party spat. Since I see the Tea Partiers as obstacles to achieving sustainability, it's not as off-topic as one might first think.

Go over the jump to see why I labeled this one "Fiction." Believe me, it deserves it.

Elaine Meinel Supkis uses anime and draws fan art to make sustainability points

In James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too, I mentioned another blogger in passing.

By the way, was one of the people who objected to your protrayal of women your neighbor up on the hill, Elaine Meinel Supkis?* I know she thinks you got it wrong about dogs in the "World Made by Hand" and I agree with her.
...
* Elaine Meinel Supkis blogs on Culture of Life News. I reviewed her old blog on my LiveJournal. She is another great example of a blogger swimming against the tide who deserves her own post, and I'll have to review her new blog later this month. Yes, my plate continues to fill up.

I may as well repost that brief review.

I present to you Elaine Meinel Supkis, the weirdest financial blogger I've read who still makes any sense.

Yeah, she wears a tinfoil beanie, but in my years of following weirdos online, I've learned how to spot the ones who actually know what they're talking about and should be taken seriously. She's one of them.

One of her most endearing traits is that she uses anime characters to make her points, something that goes over most of her readers' heads, but not mine. Here she is using Risky and Safety.

Killing Corrections Can Be Fatal To Economies

Here she is using Fullmetal Alchemist.

Terrorist Threats to Goldman Sachs And Financial Threats From Within
THE END OF TIME...

And here she is using Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo.

Treasuries Fall To Japanese Levels: 0.02%

FWIW, she's probably the person holding up the "Fail" sign in this photo.





As you can see, she manages to be simultaneously amusing and terrifying while she informs her readers. What a great find!

It turned out that she wasn't the one holding up that sign, but one of the Ron Paul followers sitting near her. Darn.

However, she did draw her own Risky and Safety for that first post I linked to. Yes, a 50-something woman was drawing anime fan art to make a political and economic point. Here's the image.





And here's the actual Risky and Safety from the anime for comparison.  Oddly enough, it's from a poster my youngest daughter and I used to possess.





She got close enough so that anime fans like me could recognize the source material, yet be using her own character designs. I thought that was really cute. I still do, and I'll have to see if she continues to draw fan art and posts it at her new site.

The Livejournal entry I posted above wasn't the only time I mentioned Elaine outside of her blog. I did so in this Usenet post. The heart of that post came from the comments to the post I cited as an example of her using Gankutsuou. I mentioned to her that she should also watch Fullmetal Alchemist, as the show was "very much about what happens when people raid the Cave of Wealth and Death." I found her response both illuminating and revealing.

Full Metal Achemist starts out as a 'child's story' and ends up being this terrifying and amazing tale about time travel and the Cave of Wealth and Death, Naziism, hyper-scientist exploitation of natural forces and magic.

It is one of the most comprehensive reviews of modern magic. Far, far, far more potent and powerful than the stupid Harry Potter series.

And the anime ends literally with Eric seeking out the real-life fathers of the GERMAN rocket program with the hint that Eric will return to his alternate universe via the US space program after meeting my dad in Germany in April, 1945!!!!!

I nearly fainted at that part since the story was aimed at the idea, Eric would find someone who could time travel in the Outer Darkness....and so on. HAHAHA. He had to do this at China Lake and it involved nuclear bombs outside of Las Vegas......my childhood....

Actually, I am not invisible in Japan.

My reponse was incredulous.

*Blink*

These two are your parents?

It turns out they were.  Truth is stranger than fiction, as reality has no editors.

As for her telling Kunstler that he was wrong about dogs in his post-peak-oil future, she did so in her review of "A World Made by Hand." It's a long post, and she has even more to say about dogs on both her old site and her new one, so look for my commentary on those posts later.