Cromwell

According to Ezra Klein, the cost of day care rose 2,000 % between 1972 and 2007. While I let that figure sink in, I will raise the pertinent questions: how did that happen, and what can we do about it?

Since day care centers are typically small, family-run businesses (maybe that should change), it wasn’t the result of an abuse of market power. I think it comes down to four things. First, on the demand side, more women were going to work. Second, on the supply side, the informal ties within families were eroding; you can’t ask your parents to help with the kids when they live in The Villages. Third, there just aren’t enough workers available to fill more day care centers, particularly since the job pays poorly. Finally, there may be an element of overregulation present here that impacts supply.

So what can be done? I would say there are three options–all of them on the supply side. You can increase the number of workers available by liberalizing immigration laws; you can take a hard look at the regulatory schemes in each state, with an eye to cutting unnecessary costs; and you can provide federal subsidies to encourage capitalists to move into this field.

After the inauguration, President DeSantis and the new GOP Congress got to work. The first priority, of course, was a national ban on abortion, which Mitch McConnell facilitated by acquiescing to the repeal of the filibuster. The second major initiative was a new Test Act. This legislation, modeled on the one adopted in England in the 17th century, required all federal employees and officeholders to provide proof that they had attended at least one service at a church in existence in 1791. The Act was later amended to include Mormons in order to accommodate a large right-wing group that didn’t exist at the time the First Amendment was approved.

The new legislation was challenged as being a clear violation of the Establishment Clause. DeSantis argued that it was constitutional in that it provided the plaintiffs with numerous religious options; it did not create any sort of national church. Furthermore, he contended that the Founding Fathers were pious Christians who had no time for agnostics and atheists. He thus insisted that the legislation was valid if one correctly applied an originalist approach.

How do you think this turns out, based on the Supreme Court’s latest decisions? And don’t say it is too extreme even for the GOP; this is what reactionaries really want, and the frontier is moving fast.

Ezra Klein argues that inflation in services has been a serious problem for decades; it has just been hidden in an avalanche of cheap imported goods. The cost of health care, housing, day care, and education has skyrocketed for the average person, thus making a middle-class lifestyle unaffordable. The Democrats would be wise to emphasize these issues in the coming campaign, and the foreseeable future.

Klein is right. Over the next few days, I will be discussing what the government could actually do to solve these problems.

As I’ve noted many times before, the GOP isn’t capable to devising a plausible approach to climate change, because it is too ideologically wedded to the notion that government action deprives us of our freedom and turns us into mindless slackers. With that in mind, what would a GOP response based on the cult of self-reliance look like?

We would get rid of FEMA, agricultural assistance programs, and the Federal Flood Insurance Program. Property destroyed by a hurricane? Too bad, Jack! You should have known better than to live there. Coastal areas turning into ghost towns because nobody can afford insurance? Tough noogies, guys! Grin and bear it. Can’t figure out how to get the same yields in your fields? Work smarter, not harder. Everyone leaving your state, because they can’t stand the heat? Well, as they say, get out of the kitchen.

This will never happen, of course, because the GOP doesn’t have the courage of its convictions, and there are too many right-wing voters out there who will be impacted by climate change. Instead, the GOP believes in subsidizing the people who contribute to climate change, and then paying hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize the victims after the fact, which makes absolutely no sense.

The most powerful Joe in America is really an independent, not a Democrat. He says he wants to bring back moderate, bipartisan legislation. That sounds noble in theory; how is it working in practice?

In order for Manchin to bring the parties together, he needs to play hardball with the right as well as the left. There is precious little evidence of him doing that; he tells off the progressives, and then repeatedly engages in hopeful, but ultimately unproductive negotiations with the GOP. He never engages in coercion. He doesn’t threaten, for example, to vote to abolish the filibuster to get concessions from the right on fundamental issues such as voting rights.

The result of this is a gridlocked legislative process, not a bipartisan one, which plays into the hands of the Republicans. And while Manchin may be McConnell’s favorite senator today, wait until the GOP wins a majority in the midterms. Once Mitch has 51 Republican votes in his pocket, the most powerful Joe in America will become Mr. Irrelevant, wandering around alone in a bipartisan universe of his own mind.

Janet Yellen and Nancy Pelosi have come to the White House to discuss policy and political responses to inflation.

B: So, you’re here to help us deal with stagflation!

Y: Not exactly. We’re a long way from the late seventies.

B: The Republicans don’t think so. They’re making me out to be the new Jimmy Carter. What a load of malarkey!

P: I agree, Mr. President. Things aren’t nearly as bad as they were then, and the problem will go away in time.

B: I remember those days. I bet you do, too. It seemed some new group was marching on Washington to demand more money every day. The country was falling apart. The economy’s not that bad now, although the political situation is worse, with Trump and all.

P: That’s about the size of it.

B: So what can we do that we haven’t already done?

Y: Unfortunately, not much–what we need is patience and an end to the war.

P: Patience is in short supply these days.

B: But surely we can do something–particularly on gas prices.

Y: You’ve jawboned the Saudis and released oil from the reserve. Public responses to high prices will take care of the rest. Prices are already coming down. Not that we’re getting much credit for it.

B: What about food?

Y: Rising prices are tied to the war, the weather, and oil prices. There is an issue with oligopolies in the food industry that could be addressed, but it would take years. The only possible way to deal with it now is by jawboning.

B: Rent?

Y: Supply problems were caused by high prices for materials, local government regulations, and a lack of construction workers after the Great Recession. You could deal with the last one by encouraging immigration. As an aside, you could also reduce prices in a variety of ways by getting rid of the Trump tariffs.

B: As you know, those are both politically sensitive areas, and I can’t do anything on immigration on my own. Nancy, do you have any ideas?

P: We need to do a better sales job with the economy we have. The important thing here is that the Republicans don’t have any idea of how to deal with inflation. All they want to do is cut taxes, which would make things worse. We also need to explain that inflation is a worldwide problem; it wasn’t caused by anything we did here.

B: Anything else?

P: You can blame big, greedy corporations for driving up prices. Go on TV every night, single out the worst offenders, and show the public you’re really on this issue. They need to see what looks like leadership, even if it doesn’t have any direct and immediate impact on inflation.

B: I’ll consider it. Thanks for coming. (They leave)

It’s 2023, and the new GOP Congress is approaching a debt ceiling cliff. In Scenario 1, the Republican majority in the House is very small, so McCarthy depends on the votes of his extremists to keep him afloat. In Scenario 2, the majority is larger, and McCarthy can afford to ignore MTG, Gaetz, et. al.

In which of these scenarios is it more likely that the debt ceiling will ultimately be raised? That’s right–the crazoids hold the balance of power in Scenario 1, and they won’t hesitate to burn it down.

Manchin just dealt a death blow to the little that remained of the Democrats’ ambitious agenda. The election almost certainly will make it official. For the next two years, the GOP will be playing offense in Congress.

How should the president react? By creating contrasts and exposing GOP extremism. By appearing to be fair-minded and reasonable in the face of right-wing nihilism. By offering to work with the GOP on issues of mutual interest, but refusing to back down on matters of principle, particularly if his position polls well.

It is a perfect role for Biden. He isn’t a great salesman for his underappreciated accomplishments, but he excels at looking moderate when the rest of the world is going nuts. He is just the president the Democrats need for the next two years.

The combination of rationing and full wartime employment during World War II meant that American households accumulated large amounts of savings and had few consumer goods to buy. As a result, when price controls were lifted, inflation skyrocketed, reaching levels that were much higher than they are today, and the GOP won control of both houses of Congress by complaining about it. Inflationary pressures eventually eased as American manufacturers started producing regular consumer goods again, but the process took two full years.

You don’t have to be a genius to see the analogy between these events and our current situation. The silver lining in the story is that Truman won the 1948 election by attacking the GOP Congress. It could happen again.

The most powerful Joe in America has struck again! The climate change provisions of the BBB are now dead. Progressives are distraught, as well they might be, given that the Supreme Court is waiting to kill any new regulations on carbon; putting money in the budget to fund innovation was the only way forward to prevent environmental disaster.

Three observations are pertinent here. First, since Manchin is effectively an independent, he has every right to tell the left where to go, but his habit of stringing out negotiations and moving the goal posts is incredibly annoying. He doesn’t have a right to do that. Second, this episode should make it clear even to the most diehard progressives that Joe Biden is not their problem–the lack of 50 real Democrats in the Senate is. Third, the best way to deal with Manchin is not to scream at him or drive him into the GOP; it is to make him irrelevant by electing more progressives in states that are bluer than West Virginia.

The grumpy cat is getting grumpier by the day. The January 6 committee is sending out a clear, crisp message that is making Trump look bad. This is largely due to the fact that there is no one to defend him on the committee. That, in turn, is the result of a decision by McCarthy to refuse to participate in the process.

McCarthy will never, never have the nerve to say this in public, but I’m sure he would love to see the back of Trump as soon as possible. Could his decision to boycott the committee have been in any way motivated by that desire? Or, to put it differently, is McCarthy a Machiavellian?

No. He isn’t that smart. Mitch is capable of pulling that one off, but not him.

In the misguided belief that GOP rhetoric about the importance of supporting families was sincere, Mitt Romney proposed a child tax credit that would apply to all families, including those in which the mother stays at home. His hope undoubtedly was to overcome the usual right-wing objection to child subsidies–that providing public money for child care encouraged women to work and thus undermined traditional families–by sweeping the net as broadly as possible. His proposal was roundly rejected by Victorians in the GOP who insisted that any credits should be tied to work requirements. But when he completely revised the proposal to meet the Victorian objection, it was also met with indifference from the right. Why?

Because the GOP believes in the cult of self-reliance, not the protection of families, of course. Giving people free public money that was originally earned by hard-working capitalists only encourages sloth and dependency. If children, to whom this argument cannot logically be addressed (they are already dependents, by definition) suffer in the process, they are acceptable collateral damage in the bigger picture.

The average reactionary thinks that the risks and sacrifices of childbirth are a necessary deterrent to promiscuity; the wages of sin is birth. That reasoning logically shouldn’t apply to rape; however, state legislatures in deep red states are increasingly enacting abortion bans without exceptions. Why is this happening?

There are three possible explanations, which are not mutually exclusive. First, in the GOP, the extreme right drives the train, and in this case, that means the genuine pro-lifers. Second, the reactionaries think rape is a loophole that will inevitably be abused. Finally, some reactionaries probably believe the typical rape victim provokes her attacker, and thus gets what she deserves.

Putin will be meeting with the Iranians next week, presumably to beg for drones and ways to escape sanctions. Since the Iranians obviously don’t need oil from him, the only thing he has to offer in return is diplomatic and military protection from Israel and the US–in particular, advanced Russian nuclear, missile, and anti-aircraft technology. If a deal of that sort is made, it will have far-reaching implications throughout the world.

My observations are as follows:

1. The American New Right should find this meeting highly embarrassing; after all, they have historically viewed Muslims as the cultural enemy of Christian America. My guess is that they will blow it off; after all, the progressive left is the real enemy, and the ayatollahs, for all their faults, aren’t exactly woke. Bannon, Putin, and Ayatollah Khamenei have that in common.
2. The transfer of state-of-the-art Russian missile and nuclear technology to Iran would be a game-changer. Iran would become, at a stroke, a truly existential threat (which it isn’t today) to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel would have to strike before any new weapons become effective, and the US, in spite of Biden’s wish for peace, would have to assist. In short, it would mean war with Iran, and soon.
3. War with Iran would infuriate the American left, but pacify some of the right. The domestic political calculus would change significantly, particularly if it happens before the election.

So, stay tuned!

The UK is in a bad way. The combination of Cameron’s budget cuts and increased demands from the pandemic has left public services hanging by a thread, and demographic changes will only make things worse. Under other circumstances, it would be time to increase public spending. But the deficit is sky-high, GDP growth is abysmal (largely due to Brexit, of course), and inflation is roaring. The public is getting restless. What should the new government do?

One group of Conservative constituents will be calling for a new burst of Thatcherite rigor: major spending cuts, largely aimed at the elderly, and deregulation in order to ramp up the growth rate. Another group will call for more spending, inflation and the pound be damned. The next PM will probably zig and zag between the two at first, but in the end, the choice cannot be avoided.

My guess is the Thatcherites will win, and what used to be the “red wall” will be so again. We’ll see.