The Origami Congressman

By: John Caruso

Several entirely unexpected things happened yesterday: the sun rose, the Earth continued spinning on its axis, the Globetrotters beat the Generals, and Dennis Kucinich submitted to the demands of his party superiors and personal ambition:

I joined with the Progressive Caucus saying that I would not support the bill unless it had a strong public option and unless it protected the right of people to pursue single payer at a state level. It did not. [...] I have decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation.

Now, I like Kucinich.  Really I do.  But the only question with the guy isn't if he's going to fold, but when (and will it be a crane, or a fish, or a frog? Hey, cool, a panda this time!).  As with the Iraq war platform plank sellout in 2004, so with the health care vote now.

Congressional Progressive Caucus members like Kucinich achieve nothing because their threats are empty, and everyone knows it.  They achieve nothing because they're willing to risk nothing.  They're taken for granted because they are in fact granted.

As with Progressive Democrats, so with progressives who vote for Democrats.  Yes, they're angry about Iraq and Afghanistan and civil liberties and bailouts and drone strikes and health care and every other atrocity the Democrats sponsor or support, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference, because everyone knows that no matter what happens they'll still dutifully vote for those same Democrats.  And until the day comes when they finally decide there is some shit they will not eat, they'll continue to lose.

ADDING: In order to spare the jellyfish from Ohio further embarrassment I omitted his claim that "I kept my pledge and voted against the bill"—meaning the original bill, that is.  What a kidder!  For reference, Kucinich's pledge said that in order to win his support, "any legislation that moves forward through both chambers, and into a final proposal for the President’s signature, MUST contain a public option" (my bold, their caps).  But "any" there was just one tiny little word in a big long letter, so you can see how he might not feel that it invalidates his claim.

— John Caruso

All Is For the Best

By: Seth Ackerman

Yesterday, Brad DeLong posted this graph without comment:

I guess in the grand scheme of things, unemployment right now isn’t all that bad.

Except that - hey, what’s with the legend along the left side of the graph? “Percent of non-farm labor force”? Don’t we usually talk about the unemployment rate as a percentage of the total civilian labor force, not the non-farm labor force? (Yes, we do.)

Fortunately, the economic historian David Weir, the source of Brad’s data, produced unemployment estimates using both definitions. Even more fortunately, they’re conveniently available via Cambridge’s Historical Statistics of the United States, which you need a subscription to, via a fancy university such as Stutts .

The graphs below show Weir’s unemployment rates reported both ways. Weir originally published his data only up through 1990, so I’ve added in a horizontal bar showing today’s current unemployment rate of about 9.7%:

Yup. Pretty bad. Pretty world-historically bad.

So, how should we construe these two different unemployment definitions? What’s the difference? Well, a hundred years ago agriculture accounted for a much bigger portion of the labor force – about a third. So not only was a large segment of the population relatively sheltered from the labor market, and thus immune from unemployment, but if you did get thrown out of work, you might be able to return to the old homestead and make ends meet there for a while. Nowadays, you probably can’t. The magic of the market is all we have.

As helpfully explained in the interpretive essay on unemployment data included in Historical Statistics of the United States:

Unemployment is the condition of someone who is willing and able to work but who cannot find employment. For the self-employed, there is always something to do, even in slow times. Unemployment, therefore, presupposes a class of workers who are dependent on wage or salary earnings for their livelihood. Even as late as 1900, only about two thirds of the labor force were wage and salary workers.

The essay goes on to reference Alexander Keyssar’s pioneering study of the early history of American unemployment:

Early production of manufactured products took place within an agricultural setting in which any reduction in industrial employment could be offset by reallocating labor into some alternative sphere. The appearance of modern unemployment, in [Keyssar’s] story, required the abandonment of agriculture for full-time industrial work.

So there you have it. Sorry for being so long-winded to make a fairly straightforward point. I just didn’t want to see Brad’s graph become the basis for some Frankenstein talking point.

—Seth Ackerman

A Little Visual Flair for Universal Health Care

By: Aaron Datesman

Point #1: According to a Harvard study, 45,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have insurance and can’t get access to health care.

Point #2: There’s around a gallon of blood in the human body. The blood of 45,000 people would fill a swimming pool 20 feet by 30 feet in size to a depth of about 7 feet, which is pretty gross.

Point #3: They approach politics with a bit more visual flair in Thailand.

Anti-government protesters poured a small amount of blood at the headquarters of the government in Bangkok on Tuesday, but the demonstration did not live up to their threat to douse the ministers' offices in blood.

The protesters intended to collect 1,000 liters (1 million cubic centimeters) and then throw the blood on the grounds of the Government House, which houses ministerial offices, at 6 p.m. (7 a.m. ET).

Point #4: The US Capitol Building is very pretty, and (like the Founders) very, very white. Why is this? Was this a good idea? It seems to me that ten thousand or so pissed-off health care activists armed with gallon jugs of pig’s blood could create some very arresting imagery.

Although I like numbers, they don’t move me. Why can’t we take a page out of the Thai playbook? The Reflecting Pool filled with blood - that would grab my attention. Hopefully, it would also bring to the fore the idea that the failure by Congress (and by the Obama administration) to enact universal health care IS KILLING TENS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS.

— Aaron Datesman

An Update on the Wind Energy Resource

By: Aaron Datesman

It turns out that the Department of Energy just wrapped up the first review of US wind energy resources conducted since 1993.

The new study.....finds that the contiguous 48 states have the potential to generate up to 37 million gigawatt hours annually. By contrast, total U.S. electricity generation from all sources was roughly 4 million gigawatt hours in 2009. The estimates show the total energy yield that could be generated using current wind turbine technology on the nation's windy lands.

This does mean what it seems to mean - that the available resource of non-polluting renewable energy dwarfs (by nearly a factor of ten) the demand for energy (considering only electrical energy in this case). Although conversion, distribution, storage, and transport are all hard problems, the scale of the resource is so great that we ought to be discussing powering the US entirely by wind energy.

The map below illustrates the US wind resource. The primary difference between this survey and the 1993 survey is the height of the wind turbine towers, which have increased from 50 meters in 1993 to 80 meters (as tall as a 26-story building) today.

— Aaron Datesman

I Love This Joke

FAIR has an great advisory about the incredibly gross conduct of the New York Times in their recent "reporting" on ACORN and James O'Keefe, and the even grosser conduct of their Public Editor Clark Hoyt when challenged. You can contact Hoyt at public@nytimes.com and (212) 556-7652 and see if it's possible to get them to print the truth.

The best part, of course, is Hoyt's reaction when asked about this sentence in a recent NY Times story:

Mr. O’Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group Acorn...

Why, Hoyt wants to know, should they correct it just because O'Keefe was never dressed as a pimp while filming inside ACORN offices? As Hoyt explained to Brad Friedman, the article "says O'Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on ACORN counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time."

I know this is old news and many people have taken a crack at it already, but I haven't had time until now:

Clark Hoyt took off all of his clothes and walked into the offices of the New York Times

Clark Hoyt wet his diapers and contentedly settled down to write his column for the New York Times

Clark Hoyt gathered courage to say "I am in love with you" and rang the doorbell of Bill Keller's house

On the one hand, human beings are fundamentally broken, but on the other hand I LOVE THIS JOKE.

—Jonathan Schwarz