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MCCAIN's MIGRAINEIs His VP Choice a "Natural," Or An Eagleton/Quayle Combo?James S. Henry and Matthew Maly

By law the US is required to have a Vice President. Do we really want it to be this one?  

Many serious countries with Presidential systems -- like Finland, Germany, France, Ireland,  and South Korea -- have long since dispensed with the role of Vice President completely.

In the wake of the uproar -- indeed, shock and awe -- provoked by John McCain's  surprising selection of 44-year old Gov. Sara Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, on top of all the hoopla over Barack Obama's dissing of Hillary Clinton and our collective nightmare with "Darth" Cheney, some pundits have  suggested that it may be time for the US to follow the Finnish model and have no US Vice President at all.

With each day's new revelations about Gov. Palin's complex personal life and rather extreme views, some pundits have also suggested that she may quickly go the way of former Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton, who lasted just two weeks as George McGovern's VP pick in 1972 -- or perhaps worse yet for the Republicans, a reprise of the legendary Indiana lightweight, Dan Quayle.

They are wrong.

Ms. Palin's nomination is a perfect demonstration of the incredible entertainment value that only the VP role can provide.

At a time when our economy is in serious trouble, state and federal budget deficits are out of control,  energy costs are unaffordable, the US Constitution is under attack, tax evasion is at a record level, we're still tied down in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tensions are mounting with Russia, social inequality is soaring, environmental calamities abound, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are about to fail, our education system is broken, the drug wars continue unabated, and millions of Americans lack jobs, decent housing and health care,  filling the VP slot with this more-or-less unknown quantity adds a nice soupçon of uncertainty to the entire situation.

It permits the whole nation to "double down" at once,  experiencing a kind of risk-taking that none of us would ever be able to achieve on our own.

This is precisely the kind of entertainment that government, at its best, is supposed to offer.

Indeed, Sara's selection is bound to make our peculiar "imperial electocracy"  the envy of the world -- once again!  

I. FINALLY A BABE!

Ms. Palin may not yet be a household name, but upon closer examination, her qualifications for the Vice Presidency --  just one bad biopsy away from the world's most powerful office -- are overwhelming.

First and foremost, just take a look -- this woman is a looker, a true MILF!

Carla Bruni, where is thy sting?  Angela Merkel, bite your knuckles!  

To paraphrase Joe Biden, Ms. Palin is an "articulate, bright, clean, good-looking" white woman.

And young! Why she was only 4 years old when 72-year old John McCain was bombing peasants from 30,000 feet, and 9 years old when he was released from the POW camp in 1973.

Indeed, Sara was first runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant, after being voted Wasilla Alaska's "Miss Congeniality."

True, back then,  Wasilla only had about 5000 residents. But so long as you were not a moose or an environmentalist,  Wasillans were the most congenial people on the planet. And Ms. Sara was the most "congenial" of them all.

Anyone who has ever attended public high school knows what that means - religion or no.

We think we can all trust "Bomber" McCain's judgment on this one.  John may have only met his VP choice two or three times,  but he is an expert on beauty queens.

His first wife Carol was a model  and  his second wife Cindy was Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona in 1968. 

(Just in -- McCain has also  reportedly expressed interest in naming Sherri McNealley, the real winner of the 1984 Miss Alaska contest, as his future Secretary of State, but so far she's still MIA.

He's also expressed interest in appointing Wasilla's current mayor, Dianne M. Keller, to be his Attorney General, once she completes her law degree.)

In any case, unfortunately, this VP choice will probably not swing Hillary's disaffected female supporters to the McCain camp. Most of them are die-hard feminists who have serious issues with Palin's political views -- for example,  her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape or incest, and her unsympathetic description of Hillary Clinton as a "whiner."   (Where on earth would she get such an idea?)   

From a strictly male hormonal perspective, however, this may be the best VP selection in history -- precisely the kind of candidate we need to arouse our interest and get us up off the couch. After years of enduring so many talented but extraordinarily plain women in national politics (viz Senators Clinton, Hutchinson,  Mikulski, Boxer, and Feinstein, for example), -  finally the US Senate will be presided over by someone who still leaves something to the imagination.

II. SHE'S HYPER-PRODUCTIVE!

Sara Palin is a doer, not a talker.  Not only is she the Governor of Alaska, but she is a "hockey mom" with five children by birth (but no adopted ones, unlike the 72-year old McCain). These include an unmarried pregnant 17-year old, a son on the way to Iraq, and a 5-month old infant with Downs Syndrome. She hunts and fishes. She runs 5-10 miles a day.  She's under investigation by Alaska's State Ethics Commission for "using her public office to settle a private score." (Who could resist doing that?) 

When Sara was pregnant with her fifth child, her water broke while she was attending a Republican Governors' conference in Dallas, and she flew all the way back to a Wasilla Alaska hospital to have the child delivered at home.

That's precisely the kind of crazy, life-threatening behavior that we need much more of in the highest echelons of the US Government! Shock-Treatment Tom (Eagleton), we hardly knew ye!!!

Adding the burden of the US Vice Presidency to this full plate will no doubt give us a shining example of just how to precisely strike that delicate balance between family life, work life, and blind ambition -- as well as the many benefits of the "Just Say No" approach to birth control!

(c) Submerging Markets, 2008 

 

BUSH HEADS SOUTHReceives Rousing Welcome In Argentina...Fox News Analysis

President Bush received an incredibly warm welcome at the 34-nation Summit of the Americas in Mar de la Plata, as thousands of ordinary people from all over the Continent turned out to hail his presence.

The effervescent US President was clearly buoyed by polls that showed that he still commands the support of an incredible 80 percent of Republicans -- otherwise known as his "base."

True, "non-base" support is reportedly a little less certain. Overall, in this week's latest polls, 59 percent expressed "disapproval," while 42 percent expressed "strong" disapproval." A quarter of the US population surveyed reported "violent morning sickness...."

However, knowledgeable insiders have called this a "temporary setback" that will be easily corrected if and when Presidential advisor Karl Rove, recently distracted by the Pflame investigation, starts covering the bases again.

The President, speaking through an interpreter, voiced optimism that "Free trade and liberal investment policies, plus a few billion dollars on defense, corn subsidiies, and our brand new military base in Paraguay" would completely change the lifestyles of the estimated 100 million Latin Americans who remain below the $1 per day world poverty line.

Said Bush, "These policies have only been tried for a decade or two. They need to be given a chance. Right here in Argentina, you've seen how well they've worked, right?"

Bush's sentiments were echoed by Vincente Fox, Mexico's amazingly popular lame-duck President, and Paul Martin, the astonishing Canadian PM, whose own popularity ratings have recently been taken to record levels by the Gomery Report, which documented the disappearance of $250 million of government funds, mainly by way of Mr. Martin's own party.

Said Martin: "We are quite pleased to have become a wholly-owned subsidiary of US multinationals. We didn't think we'd like the sensation, but it has become an experience that we really look forward to every night. You will also learn to enjoy it. Now if only the US would pay us that $3.5 billion...."

Said Fox: "Yes, it is true, millions of Mexican small farmers have been wiped out by free trade. But this criticism is baseless. Just look at all the remittances they are sending back home from the US !"

Meanwhile, the US President had an especially warm greeting from Diego Maradona, the famous Argentine soccer star, now in recovery. Maradona used a colloquial Argentine expression to describe just how delighted he is to finally have this particular American President visit his country.

Elsewhere, Cuba's Fidel Castro, who was not permitted to attend the summit, was reported to have decided to remove all restrictions on US trade and investment with Cuba, after having listened to President Bush's persuasive arguments.

Said the aging inveterate leftist leader, "I knew we were doing something wrong. Now I finally know what it was. We were way off base!"

After a prolonged negotiating session on Saturday, in which Summit delegates basically agreed to continue to debate the merits of free trade for a long time to come, Bush departed for a Sunday meeting in Brasiia with yet another embattled President, Luis Ignacio da Silva ("Lula.")

Brasilia is a pretty lonely, desolate, and distinctly un-Brazilian place on a Saturday night, because all the whores and politicians have flown back to Rio or Sao Paulo for the weekend, and one is just left with all these 1950s-vintage monuments to Brazil's cement industry. But perhaps President Bush will find a little solace taking a moonlit walk on the empty esplanades, wandering through the otherwise flat, lifeless landscape that Robert Campos once called "the revenge of a Communist architect against capitalist society."

(c)SubmergingMarkets, 2005

TIME'S ARROWA Media Conglomerate's Fateful Decision to Undermine Investigative JournalismJames S. Henry

It was disappointing, but not really surprising,  that Norman Pearlstine, Time Inc.'s Editor-in-Chief since 1995, decided last week to comply with a federal subpoena and turn over documents to the federal government that will probably burn one of his own leading journalist's sources.

As discussed below, this spineless decision was a cardinal sin against investigative journalism and the First Amendment. 

But it was entirely in keeping with Time Warner's long-standing passivity and obsequiousness toward the powers-that-be. 

It also reflects this media conglomerate's increasingly entangled interests with governments and corporations around the world.  Thank goodness that Matt Cooper wasn't working for Time's China subsidiary!

Our condolences go out to the dwindling crop of serious investigative journalists at Time, People, Sports Illustrated, and TWX's other 130 publications, as well as CNN and HBO. 

There is, however, one ray of light in Pearlstine's otherwise cowardly, inexcusable decision. We may finally get to learn the identity of the White House felon who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA relationship to the press. Already there's been some very interesting speculation....!

IRAQ’S ONLY ELECTION More Lipstick on the Pig?James S. Henry

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On Sunday January 30, at least 8 million Iraqis, or 57 percent of Iraq’s 14 million registered voters, seized the opportunity to participate in a “free election” of sorts. They voted for candidates and parties that most of them had never heard of, marked ballots that a majority of them could not read, walked for miles to secret polling booths under the watchful eyes of a foreign occupation army that had “collaterally” killed, injured or brutalized tens of thousands of their fellow citizens, and defied threats from thousands of other blood-thirsty, anti-democratic insurgents.

About 243,000 of those who voted were located outside the country. But the rest were willing to brave all these difficulties, including more than 260 attacks and 50 fatalities.

Clearly the Iraqi people deserve much credit for this bravery – especially those who tried to vote in more heavily Sunni Arab  districts where the insurgents have been most active.

Indeed, for once, this display of bravery was something about Iraq that mostinternational leaders could agree on.

In President Bush’s words, “The Iraqi people themselves made this election a resounding success.” The UN’s Kofi Annan described the Iraqi people as “courageous.” Britain’s Tony Blair reported that he was “humbled” – no mean accomplishment in itself. Even Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, perhaps anticipating a Shiite victory, and hoping that this will accelerate a US withdrawal, pronounced the elections a "success" and a "sign of nobility of the Iraqi people.”

It is clear as well that the long-suffering Iraqi people also deserve our respect for simply having survived more than three decades of costly wars, occupations, international embargoes, and a brutal dictatorship – aided, armed, and abetted by several of the very same foreign powers that are today boasting about being the midwives of Iraq democracy.

Despite all the collateral damage, the security forces -- mainly unknown young Iraqi, American, and British soldiers -- who protected these voters also deserve credit. Without this protection, even with all the Iraqi bravery, there would have been no election. These efforts go a long way toward repaying the moral debt that is owed to the Iraqi people   for the Great Powers’ decades of complicity with authoritarian regimes in Iraq, their failure to reckon with Saddam much earlier, and the fact that the Bush Administration and its friends have otherwise thoroughly botched this latest intervention so thoroughly.

Does anyone else deserve credit for this achievement? Precisely what has been accomplished, at what cost? And when will the Coalition be able to withdraw its troops? Our answers may surprise you.

Maximizing Gross National Happiness Rethinking the Economics of Growth and InequalityJames S. Henry

Each year, by the terms of Jeremy Bentham's 1832 will, his mummified corpse is wheeled out to sit with faculty and students at the University of London.  Apart from this peculiar celebration, however, few people today remember the 18th-century economist and social critic whose life's work consisted of trying to make the British legal system serve "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

Indeed, most modern economists, under the influence of the Chicago School's homespun version of behaviorism and positivism, have long since abandoned the direct study of "human happiness."

In the economic development arena, this has led many economists to focus on technical policies that are supposed to increase overall efficiency, output, and measured growth, without regard to the distributional consequences.

In this "neoliberal" view, one person's subjective pleasure is another's pain, utility functions are unobservable, so interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible. Distributional questions are therefore purely matters of "personal preference," to which "positivist economics" has nothing to add.

One suspects that this stance causes poor old Jeremy Benthem, who dedicated his life to identifying social polices that would increase human happiness, to turn somersaults  in his Auto-Icon.

Fortunately, modern psychologists, anthropologists, and public opinion pollsters have recently stepped in where most economists have feared to tread. 

NEO-BENTHAMITE PSYCHOLOGY AND ECONOMICS

Using a combination of survey research techniques and objective measures of individual economic and social status, these social scientists have begun to study the determinants of subjective happiness levels directly -- both within and across countries. 

Among their most important findings:

• Beyond a certain level of per capita measured income -- about $15,000 per year -- reported happiness levels don't improve very much across countries. There is also a great deal of variation in reported subjective happiness levels poorer countries at similar income levels. In other words, making "measured growth" the sine qua non of economic policy makes little sense.
  

• High-income groups report somewhat higher "very happy" levels within countries at any given point in time. But among First World countries,  increases in average real per capita income have not led to increased happiness levels over time.

• Indeed, since the late 1940s, increased real income levels among First World countries have been accompanied by rising levels of alcoholism and drug addiction, depression, and crime  -- an indication of a growing gap between trends in income and happiness.

• Changes in real income may lead to short-time increases in subjective happiness at the individual level.  But people become "habituated" to new levels of material income quickly -- in less than a year. Since they also tend to underestimate such "habituation" effects, they probably also spend too much time on the job, and too little time with their families.
  

• Measured income has much less impact on subjective happiness than many other determinants of happiness --  especially employment, job security, family status,  and health. The country of Bhutan has reportedly already recognized this fact by declaring that its national goal is to maximize "Gross National Happiness" rather than GDP per capita.
  

• Relative incomes and "rivalry" are other important determinants of subjective happiness. This depends on one's reference group. For example, reported happiness levels among residents of East Germany plummeted after 1990, when they went from having the highest incomes among Soviet-type economies to the lowest incomes in Germany.

• While genetic factors may help to explain differences among individuals in subjective happiness within any country, differences among neighboring countries -- say, within Europe -- are far too substantial and persistent to account for on the basis of such factors.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

From the standpoint of Bentham's original goal of designing social institutions to maximize human happiness, the implications are many.

They include new justifications for: 

(1) Progressive income and wealth taxation;

(2) Polices that help to provide job security, social security, and health insurance;

(3) Using non-material incentives to reward people for doing a good job;

(4) Encouraging people to spend more time with their families; and

(5) Paying more attention to "non-material" development goals like democracy, family values, work force participation, and human rights -- in striking contrast to the materialist path that now seems to unite both China and the World Bank/IMF on the goal of blindly maximizing measured GDP per capita.

In other words, all this adds up to a pretty interesting justification for -- in effect -- Europe's "high tax/social insurance/long vacation" welfare state version of capitalism. 

From a competitive standpoint, however, since the US, China, and other ruthless global competitors are unlikely to adopt such a model any time soon -- and, indeed, moving in precisely the opposite direction, the question is whether any of these Neo-Benthamite policy implications stand a snowball's chance in hell. They may, but only if those of us who are located in neoliberal vanguard countries are able to push social policies in a more progressive -- and happier! -- direction.

(For a concise summary of the literature, see the following three lectures by LSE's Professor Richard Layard:) 

• Download  Lectur 1

• Download Lecture 2

• Download Lecture 3

***

© James S. Henry, SubmergingMarkets™, 2005

 

Letters from the New World #7: “Post Office Manners” Denis Beckett (JBG)

Five or six customers were waiting in the Post Office line. Everybody was in the second half of life’s span. Everybody had had the vote since before ’94. Nobody was joyous.

I had tried to be slightly joyous. I offered a greeting when I arrived, but people mmmphed in that embarrassed bourgeois manner, scandalized at unlicensed breaching of queue silence. So I like everyone was a stalagmite, separate to the other stalagmites, waiting in our separate spaces while the counters proceeded with lo-o-o-ong transactions.

Then a girl came in, a black girl in a school uniform. She looked around in the manner of someone in an unfamiliar place.

“Excuse me”, she said to the tannie  (Afrikaans for 'Aunty') at the back of the queue, “Where do I go to send a parcel?”

If she’d whispered it  the tannie might have whispered back. As it was, she said it out loud, unconcerned about putting the tannie on the spot in front of the other members of the queue.

So the tannie had an attack of Middle Class Frost, and couldn’t say anything. She gestured the girl in behind her. “Thank you”, said the girl, without irony.

And we stood. The big batch customers up front were taking time. After a while, the girl said, to no one in particular, “Excuse me, has something gone wrong or do we just keep on waiting?”

Everyone laughed a bit, including the clerks behind the counter. Several people mumbled something reassuring. One of the clients at the front turned and apologized for the hold-up. Ostensibly he was apologizing to the girl, but in fact he was apologizing to us all.

We felt better that he did apologize. We had been working up a resentment. Had it not been for the girl, he would never have made the apology. He would have walked out of there with all our glares daggering into his back. But now the glares were defused.

We resumed waiting, but it was different. The stalagmites were thawing. The tannie at the front of the queue called to the girl: “Don’t you have to be back at school by quarter past?” The girl said “Yes, but if I don’t send it now my granny won’t get it in time.” The tannie at the front said: “You’d better come up here, then. I’m sure these nice people won’t mind.” And she beamed a beam at the rest of us in the queue, and people nodded and murmured assent and beamed reciprocal beams.

The girl moved up the queue, politely thanking each person as she passed them. As she got to the front, the apology guy finished and went off with waves and goodbyes. The girl took his place and started explaining her needs in Sotho, calling the clerk “ntate” (Mr.) in every sentence. Apparently it was fairly lousy Sotho, because the clerk switched to English – he was explaining express services – and she was clearly relieved.

Meantime, the tannie at the front explained that she had recently retired from the school. The guy behind her said yes, he thought he recognized her; she had taught his child. Conversation spread. It’s not that everyone was vocal, but that the stalagmites had melted into a brand of community. The feel had been isolation; it became connection.

When the girl finished she did a curtsy to the ntate at the counter, a curtsy to the queue, thanked everyone, and hurried off. The rest of us stood differently now, relating better to each other, better even to the clerks.

Funny, I felt, how in 1994 and for a while beyond, we in the pale gang thought that the big change was an act of generosity; that we were leaning down, holding out the hand of friendship to pull them up.

These days, I find it humbling and thrilling to see ever more evidence of the two way street, the ways that white lives are enhanced by living in Africa.

èèè

© Denis Beckett, Submerging Markets™, January 05

          [email protected]

THE HORROR OF CHRISTMAS II The Social Pathologies of Our Grandest "Holiday"James S. Henry**

"Christmas has us all by the throats..." -- Noel Coward

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When I was a kid in Minnesota, my family had a huge Scandinavian feast every Christmas Eve, complete with more than two dozen relatives, three feet of snow, a mountainous evergreen that was trimmed to the top with popcorn balls, candy canes, tinsel, and hundreds of precious once-a-year decorations, a six-course dinner with lutefisk, ham, turkey and eight or ten pies, long-winded after-dinner stories about baseball, the space race, and World War II, and, of course, lots of brightly-wrapped presents.

It has taken more than three decades of rigorous training in economics and law and life on the East Coast for me to shake off the nostalgia of those warm, festive occasions.  But I am now willing to say out loud what I expect many Americans are muttering all across the country at this time of year: Christmas is a real net loser as a socio-economic institution.

Although for decades the observance of Christmas has been justified on the grounds that it is “merry,” rigorous quantitative analysis proves that precisely the opposite is the case. Despite numerous claims by its proponents that this holiday promotes a desirable “spirit,” and makes people “jolly,” the hard data clearly demonstrate that the yuletide period is marked by environmental degradation, a sharp increase in unfortunate encounters with hazardous products, massive congestion,  tedious, time-consuming travel,  and the abuse and inefficient use of vast numbers of animals, birds, trees, and many other valuable resources.

Moreover, the number of people who are rendered truly “joyous” by Christmas is almost certainly exceeded by the number who are made to feel rather blue. Nor does Christmas truly fulfill its purported distributional objective: the transfer of gifts to those who really need them.

Finally, it turns out that this so-called “holiday” may make a significant contribution to America’s dwindling savings rate, unsustainable trade deficit,  declining competitiveness, and the movitation for a great many property crimes – not to mention our appalling appetite for elevator music from the likes of Bing Crosby, Michael Bolton, and Kathy Lee.

In short, although Christmas may be an important source of religious inspiration for some, and a genuine source of wintertime fun for others -- mainly children, who would probably be having fun anyway -- it fails the test of social cost effectiveness.  It is high time for those of us who are serious adults to take a good long holiday from this overblown annual ritual.

REPORT FROM KIEV - A DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION?Monday Nov. 22, 2004Matthew Maly

THE BEST WEEK IN UKRAINIAN HISTORY? KIEV REPORT #2Matthew Maly

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Ukraine has just had perhaps its luckiest week in its history -- a week where everything went right, and the educational process was so intense, so logical, so marvelously cogent that the country went through a hundred years of political evolution. It is now, by right, a part of Europe, a part of the Western cultural tradition, a true democracy! This has been not merely a week in life of one country, but an entire page in the history of the world -- and, let us hope, global democracy!

Democracy in America and Elsewhere:Part IIIB. Campaigns, Voting, and Representation

James S. Henry and Caleb Kleppner** Download PDF Version

As we began to explore in Part IIIA of this election-season series, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the United States of America actually has a great deal to learn from other countries – especially several young democracies -- about designing and operating electoral institutions that are truly democratic. This part of the series continues our comparison with one of those countries, Brazil.

There was perhaps a time when much of the rest of the world viewed the United States of America not just as a militaristic crusader, but as a role model for advocates of liberal democracy everywhere.

These days, however, as former President Carter’s recent caustic comments about the likelihood of continued rigged voting in Florida this year have underscored, the American beacon of liberty is flickering in the wind.

Increasingly the US is viewed by the rest of the world -- and by some of its most astute internal critics -- as an arrogant, hypocritical, sclerotic plutocracy, whose own electoral institutions, as former President Carter correctly observes, are at risk of no longer meeting even minimal international standards for democratic elections.

Meanwhile, the US has the temerity to lecture other countries (as it did, for example, just this week with respect to Hong Kong) about the meaning of “democracy,” and to selectively intervene in the affairs of other countries in the name of democracy, whenever it suits perceived US interests.

As shown in Table A, this concern with democratizing the world may be a preoccupation of US policy elites, or it may just be pure rhetoric.

A recent poll by the Chicago Center on Foreign Relations shows that for the American public at large, the goal of bringing democracy to other nations ranks last on a list of fourteen major US foreign policy goals, with only 14 percent believing it to be “very important.” This made it less than one fifth as as important as securing energy supplies, protecting US jobs, or fighting terrorism. Even among policy elites, “democratization” ranked 12th on the list.

Once again, our aim here is to help Americans understand why their own electoral system has become so anachronistic and dysfunctional. We also hope to encourage them to take more interest in the rest of the world, be a little more modest, and understand that they too live in a “developing country” – one whose own particular version of “democracy” is in dire need of rejuvenation.