Category Archives: Commentary

All written commentary.

Op-Ed: The Problem With Billionaires

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My latest op-ed from The Globalist:

In the 1980s, the supply-siders became ascendant in Washington D.C., preaching voodoo economics as “the way, the truth and the life.” Their central claim was that rich people create jobs, while high taxes on the rich leave them with less money to create jobs. Therefore tax cuts for the rich equal job growth.

In reality, this hasn’t borne out. Neither the macroeconomic data nor academic studies have shown much evidence of a direct correlation between rich people having more money and using it to create jobs.

Instead, they mostly just use it to speculate, because it’s essentially extra wealth well above and beyond any other spending or genuine investments they could possibly conceive of.

Read the full op-ed here.

Australia was spying on Indonesia

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New NSA/Five Eyes-related revelations in the Guardian: “Australia tried to monitor Indonesian president’s phone”

I’m not really surprised to find out the Australian government was spying on senior leadership in Indonesia. I think I’d be more surprised to learn they were definitely NOT.

That being said, the new jackass Prime Minister had a pretty weak response, besides incorrectly (see below) brushing it off as the work of the other party from whom he just took power. The government’s primary excuse? Australia’s activities were not so much “spying” as “research” [and] “We use the information that we gather for good, including to build a stronger relationship with Indonesia.”

Oh ok then. So you just needed to hack phones to find out their pets’ names or … what?

I really enjoy this “research” for better relations excuse. I mean, it’s seriously like saying Australia was just trying to Facebook-creep on Indonesia to see if Indonesia was “in a relationship” with anybody. 

And about the claim that this is all the other party’s fault? The docs show the spying on Indonesia actually started the very day the previous PM from his party left office, meaning their own party would have been in office when it was planned, even if Labor technically had taken office by the time it began.

Is the new UN Congo mission working?

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Tough to assess, but there’s a big reason to be skeptical of the progress they can make. The math.

With the stepped-up and increasingly militarized United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, launched earlier this year, there are now 19,000 UN troops on the ground. That still only works out to per capita coverage of about 47 square miles per soldier. For comparison, the U.S. alone brought 148,000 troops in 2003 to invade Iraq, a nation less than one fifth the size of the DRC. It’s unclear how many troops the DRC government has under its command at any given point, but on the low end they only have 144k troops, most of which aren’t particularly useful or competent at securing the peace.

African Al Qaeda now more funded by Europe than Persian Gulf

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In the past ten years, the GSPC/Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has made an estimated $116 million in ransom money. They now get more money from Europe than from the traditional source of Persian Gulf terror financiers.

I’m not a hardliner who says “we should never negotiate with terrorists” — never say never — but we’ve got to stop buying back prisoners for huge amounts of money. I can’t imagine how terrible it must be for them and their families, but that is an awful lot of money going to terrorists for financing and arming insurgencies all over Africa. A lot more innocent people will die because of all these ransom payments — and probably more people will be kidnapped.

Shutdown Myth 2: The Debt Ceiling Can Stop Spending

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Reality: The debt ceiling is a limitation set by Congress (originally in World War I) on the executive branch’s ability to borrow money to pay for expenses Congress has already authorized. Failure to raise the debt limit does not prevent these authorized expenditures happening because the executive branch is constitutionally required to spend the money Congress has ordered to be spent. Instead the executive branch is forced to attempt to borrow more money while halting re-payments on existing debt. This wouldn’t work very well and the world financial markets would go into a panic, since it’s tantamount to the government of the largest economy filing for bankruptcy, i.e. inability to pay creditors (while still trying to buy things!). Again, no new money is being spent when the ceiling is raised so this doesn’t somehow rein in the spending. It’s merely a cap on the ability to borrow to pay for expenditures Congress already directed the executive branch to make. It’s an idiotic device to have in place outside of the wartime blank-check appropriation context for which it was created. But as long as it exists, Congress needs to vote to raise it. It shouldn’t be subject to negotiation, because there’s nothing to negotiate.

Shutdown Myth 1: It’s about Obamacare costs

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Reality: The Affordable Care Act has 10 years worth of self-contained funding and existing appropriations in it. It has no direct impact on the government shutdown, nor does the government shutdown affect it. Republicans have only linked the two by holding the shutdown as a hostage to try to force renegotiation on the ACA. It’s frustrating reading uninformed comments of people insisting that the problem here is the President and Senate Dems being unwilling to compromise on an unrelated program that is already paid for. The actual problem centers on agreeing on new spending for other things, so there’s no functional need to bring up the ACA at all. It’s purely a political connection, not a fiscal one.

Afghanistan 1978-79, unearthed

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Dutch crimes-against-humanity investigators have published a list of 5,000 names of Afghans (out of tens of thousands) summarily executed by the Communist government between their April 1978 coup and the December 1979 Soviet invasion. The wave of executions was launched in response to a massive rebellion against the new government, in which 40,000 troops defected to the jihadists and rebels. Many of the victims of this Terror were given one-word charges, according to the documents, and buried alive in mass graves, according to soldiers who took part. The release of the names has provoked a huge reaction (of many emotions) this month, particularly since many senior ex-Communists are in the current government.