I think the last Secretary of the Treasury who had never been either a banker or a CEO/President (before Tim Geithner) was James Baker. Before Baker, you have to go back to John Connally (the guy in the car with Jackie and JFK). Feel free to look up all the bios of all the Treasury secretaries who have served this country in its entire history. I'm not an expert on this history and I don't know a lot about most of them.

I do know, however, that it's been pretty much a requirement that anyone serving as the Secretary of Treasury have experience either in the financial services industry or as the head of a large corporation. Geithner slid by that requirement because being head of the New York Federal Reserve was close enough.

Jack Lew had a year and a half stint at CitiGroup, which hardly qualifies him as an experienced banker, but does check the box.

I'm not wedded to the idea that the Treasury Department should be run by CEOs and bankers instead of economists or progressive reformers, but I do find it tiresome when people act like Jack Lew is just more of the same. He's actually quite a bit different. Geithner was a complete creature of Wall Street. Baker and Connelly really owed their positions to being the patrons of more powerful politicians: Connelly (LBJ) and Baker (Poppy Bush). Jack Lew isn't anyone's wingman. He barely got his feet wet on Wall Street. He's a wonk. You might call him an expert.

It's not like I am excited about Jack Lew for Treasury. But he doesn't fit the mold.

David Firestone is a bed-wetter.

That is all.

George Packer's article in The New Yorker about the increasing isolation of the South is interesting, but I wonder why I never see anyone mention how the GOP is just a constant annoying source of unnecessary stress for everyone. I mean it is completely unceasing. In Obama's term it has been unrelenting obstruction, hallucinatory insults, and manufactured crises. But it was even worse under George W. Bush, where it was color-coded terror alerts and duct tape and WMD's and terror terror terror and OMG GAYS and the War on Christmas and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm only scratching the surface here, but the right/south/GOP never ever lets the left get a moment's rest. We are never allowed to get to a point where we can say, 'Okay, that's settled, now we can relax for a few weeks.' The newest proposal is to have a fight over the debt ceiling every two months. I mean, what the fuck. Seriously?

I woke up when they impeached Bill Clinton. And I don't think I've felt a moment's peace since then. Not one single goddamn day has gone by since 1998 when the right wasn't doing or saying something that I found stressful.

I may be an extreme case…a political junkie who is addicted to my own pain. But, it's getting to everyone. It has to.

For the love of God, please, give us some rest already.

Benjy Sarlin has a very interesting piece up at Talking Points Memo about how unions evolved from seeing undocumented workers as scabs during the era of Cesar Chavez to seeing them, in more recent years, as an exploited workforce deserving of representation and protection. Part of the article is about the prospects that Congress will be able to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and that is what I want to talk about. As the article (and people cited in the article) points out, there is a new optimism in the aftermath of the 2012 election, primarily because it is so clear that Latinos made a decisive difference in the outcome:

While victory in 2013 is far from certain, labor leaders believe conditions have improved significantly since their disappointing 2007 effort.

For one thing, Republicans acknowledge they’re on defense this time around in a way that was not true during past reform efforts. It was easier for GOP lawmakers to minimize the role of Latino voters in their 2006 midterm losses, which most blamed on Iraq, and their role in Obama’s 2008 blowout, which many dismissed as Bush fatigue. But the 2012 results, in which Obama racked up record margins and turnout among Latinos around the country despite a sagging economy and mediocre approval ratings, are much harder to ignore.

“I think many of the politicians were saying, ‘You know, we keep hearing about this Latino giant and it’s sort of a myth,’” Medina said. “But the reality finally hit home on November 6.”

The article also points out that agricultural interests have been stung by recent anti-immigrant laws in states like Alabama that have scared away temporary farm workers. Those interests are likely to apply significantly more pressure on the GOP this time around.

Does all this augur well for a successful push on a comprehensive bill? Perhaps. But I wonder about something else that is different this time around.

Last time, the president was a Republican and his point man in Congress was Sen. John McCain. They were unsuccessful, but I imagine there was a high level of desire within the Republican caucus to help the president. There is no such desire this time.

In thinking about the changed dynamics, I couldn't help but contemplate the meaning of another article published today. This one is in Politico, and it is about the likelihood that we will see a government shutdown before the year is out. Here's a key nugget from the article:

House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser. “We might need to do that for member-management purposes — so they have an endgame and can show their constituents they’re fighting.”

I'm trying to imagine Speaker Boehner making the decision that he must shut down the government for member-management purposes. And then I am trying to imagine those same members deciding that they need to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill in order to retain the Republican Party's viability as a national party that can win the White House.

I guess what I am saying is that I distrust all political analysis that relies on the Republicans (particularly the House Republicans) acting sanely in their own political self-interest. I am reminded again of those holographic cards that show you a different image when you shift them. Sometimes I look at the Republicans and think that they are nihilists who don't believe in anything, including objective reality. Other times, I look at them and see them as total zealots who are driven mad by ideology. And I wind up wondering how both things could be simultaneously true.

In any case, I am all for a full-bore push to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill, but I can't say that I am optimistic about our chances. We are dealing with people who are much more concerned about the browning of America than they are about their own political futures. They will convince themselves that Latinos vote for Democrats anyway and that a better route to self-preservation is to screw around with the Electoral College in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where they have the power to do it and where it would confer them a clear advantage.

It's not just anonymous internet bloggers or YouTube publicity hounds. Talk of "revolution" is everywhere on the extreme right, these days. From Pat Buchanan, Larry Klayman and Alex Jones to the organizers of new gun rights coalitions and protests. The federal government is spying on millions Americans without a warrant, killing thousands in Middle Eastern wars with drones and white phosphorus bombs and death squads and mercenaries, funneling billions of dollars to corporate cronies and war profiteers who use slaves and supplied our troops with poisoned water. The same government under President Bush sponsored torture, and President Bush's signing statements, which declared that he could decide unilaterally what laws to obey or disobey, did not concern them that much, at least so long as a white Republican with a faux Texan accent was in the Oval Office.

In similar fashion, militarized police forces using extreme violence against non-violent protestors was also just fine with these folks. After all, it was not their heads being smashed, or their eyes being burned and lungs choked with pepper spray. It was only a bunch of "dirty fucking hippies" and pinko commies who deserved to have their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly trampled, not "real patriots" like them.

However, after numerous massacres and assassinations by demented individuals using guns, primarily semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines, and the ongoing day to day slaughters that don't ever reach the level of coverage by our national media because the victims are poor or minorities, it seems that we have finally found the one topic the far right considers worthy of openly calling for violent revolt against the government: a proposed ban on the military style tactical firearms typically referred to as assault weapons. For that cause, and that cause alone, it seems, they proclaim a violent "revolution" against "government tyranny" is justified.

“Our backs are against the wall,” said Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun rights group. “We are in for the fight of our lives. I have never seen anything like it.” [...]

In an open letter to President Barack Obama, [Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina] speculated that some gun owners may use violent force to resist government attempts to confiscate assault weapons.

“The real question, Mr. President, is whether you so hunger for power that you are willing to foment what might be the next American Revolution,” Valone wrote.

This hyperbolic reaction to the Obama administration's meager efforts to date to push for some reasonable regulations on guns, regulations a majority of Americans support, would be astonishing in any other country. However, this is America. What is more, it is an America in which the first African American president has been subjected to relentless attacks on the legitimacy of his presidency by right wing and conservative media outlets and politicians. The racial component of the current outrage against Obama from the right cannot be discounted. They have been calling him a Muslim, a Communist, an atheist, a non-citizen, a fascist and the head of a conspiracy to destroy America's "way of life" since before he was elected in 2008. Ludicrous claims that he was creating a secret army and that FEMA concentration camps were being prepared for white conservatives have been spread by many on the right via blogs and email. After each of his elections, gun sales soared.

Previously, these absurd fears and extreme levels of animosity had been limited to the most hard core extremists on the right. Now, the fear of actual gun control legislation or regulation in the wake of Newtown has increased the level of fear among those most susceptible to these irrational and histrionic attacks on the president. The unprecedented levels of hatred is primarily concentrated among white conservatives. One can argue that all this will pass away once the heightened fear level of these individuals subsides, and perhaps it will. But I would not be too hasty to make that assumption. Even though the talk of "revolution" may be just empty rhetoric, and the chances of any real sustained violent conflict are exceedingly small, that does not mean that those who stoke the fires of fear and loathing with their talk of "tyranny" and "revolution" should be dismissed out of hand.

The danger is not that we have a civil war brewing. The danger comes from all this talk inspiring more "lone wolf" stochastic terrorism, and possibly plots by right wing militias to use violence as an act to terrorize their fellow Americans. With the number of guns in circulation, it is not unreasonable to assume that, in the current climate of right wing media stoked hatred for all things Obama, some unhinged or desperate gun owners may decide to conduct "independent" assaults on unarmed civilians or government facilities in misguided attempts to defend their "god-given right to bear arms" and with the intention to spark the very revolution they have been told is so close at hand.

In the longer term, one must also consider the state of our economy. Our current so-called economic recovery, one which has failed to benefit most Americans, is fragile and could very well collapse given the right circumstances. Should that occur, it will increase the risk that more and more Americans will at least lend a sympathetic ear to those who promote radical extremism. Times of severe economic distress are often times when the most radical political movements thrive. Certainly with the nature of our polarized and divided government, it is hard to imagine Congress and the President passing legislation to help the great mass of Americans should an economic crisis on the scale of 2008-2009 re-emerge. This time the House is not controlled by Democrats, and thus the chance of any stimulus package to increase jobs and stop the bleeding among the poor and middle classes is effectively "off the table" no matter how many economists might agree that it would be necessary.

Another point to consider is that the last decade's wars have created a large class of young returning veterans with little hope for the future. Some are bound to find favor with the simplistic explanations of right wing extremists. This is not entirely unknown in our history. After WWI, veterans during the great Depression marched on Washington, some of whom were seduced by the rhetoric of the far left. They did not bring weapons to challenge the government, but imagine if they had. The actions of President Hoover and Douglas MacArthur to attack the "Bonus Army" provides a cautionary tale for all of us. This time the veterans are more likely to be radicalized by the right, and more likely in my opinion to arm themselves for violent confrontations with police or governmental authorities. If anyone doubts that such scenarios could occur I would remind them that we already have organizations such as the Oath Keepers that direct their recruitment efforts toward current and former members of the military. In a worst case scenario of economic collapse, their message (and the message of similar organizations) would appeal to a larger group of individuals and lead to an increase in their membership, in my opinion.

I do not know what the future holds. I do know that any talk of violent revolution is a sign of our democracy's failure to address the real problems that face our people: lack of job growth, massive income inequality, the lack of oversight of major financial institutions to limit the possibility of a repeat of the 2008 financial collapse, etc. When our government is so dysfunctional (granted such dysfunction has been caused by the extremism of Republicans in Congress), the appeal of demagogues who call for simple and more radical, even violent, solutions to our political crisis is bound to grow. The outrage and response by many gun owners regarding potential gun regulation is only a catalyst for the expression of the underlying anger that so many on the right have regarding our current political and economic crises. Obama and the Democrats have long been held up as scapegoats by the conservative media for all our nation's problems. We are witnessing the fruit of their labors. Whenever any group of people feel no connection to their political leaders, and indeed believe themselves to have been betrayed by them, the risk of politically inspired violence to redress their supposed repression will increase.

The last four years have seen an substantial rise in the number of far right wing organizations, militias, and other hate groups. Attempts by right wing groups, and by individuals motivated by right wing beliefs, to use violence to accomplish political goals is higher than any time I can recall. Does that mean civil war is at hand? Revolution? No, not at this time. However, discounting the effect of excessive and seditious rhetoric from the right would be a mistake. The powder keg's fuse may not yet have been lit, but it is certainly being primed. The next Timothy McVeigh (or worse) is out there. Best to be better prepared than we were the last time a Democratic administration and the federal government were demonized by conservatives.

I don't know if you've seen the film Lincoln or not, but one of the key elements of the plot is an elaborate bribery/patronage scheme that President Lincoln launched to entice members of Congress to vote for the 13th Amendment. These were mostly members who had just lost their bids for reelection, so they were interested in finding new jobs. Considering the cause (abolishing slavery in the Constitution and thereby hastening the Confederacy's decision to talk peace), there isn't much wringing of hands in the film (or the commentary on the film) about the morality of Honest Abe's bribery scheme.

Of course, Lincoln could have just waited for the next Congress to be sworn in and passed the 13th Amendment without bribing anyone, but new Congresses were not seated until March back then and he wanted to use the amendment process to end the war before the new fighting season in the spring. I think you can make the argument that the movie implies: Lincoln's corrupt scheme was justified because it saved lives. But I also think the movie has gone to some people's heads. For example, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is applying pressure on President Obama to do more on gun control.

That's fine, but I think he gets a little delusional (meshugana?) when he questions the president's leadership in these terms:

Bloomberg suggested that Obama lacks the relationships necessary to pass legislation in Congress. The critique is remarkable coming from a famously irascible mayor with a lackluster history of wooing lawmakers.

“Leaders cajole, bribe, threaten, slather. They build relationships,” said Bloomberg, who compared the president unfavorably to Bill Clinton, “a people person” who used the golf course as an office.

I'm with the mayor on the cajoling, the threatening, and the slathering, but what about the bribery? Do we need to have an investigation into the kinds of bribes Bloomberg has been issuing to get his way in City Hall? Are we not safe in assuming that Bloomberg would not consider himself a worthy leader if he wasn't issuing bribes?

Or maybe he watched Lincoln and got overexcited.

Everyone in our household got the flu in December and half of us are sick with not-necessarily-flulike symptoms as we speak. We are getting hammered by pre-school germs that we aren't used to, but I wonder what people think about the relative merits of getting the flu shot. I think it is a great idea for the elderly who are at serious risk of dying from the flu, but I'm not sure about the cost/benefit analysis for people in their mid-40's who are in otherwise decent health.

How do you calibrate your decision?

I don't know why everyone is going around Washington DC saying that Elliott Abrams is an anti-Semite. Frankly, I think it's preposterous. If people accused him of doing unspeakable things to goats behind the big barn, I'd acknowledge that that is probably true, but there's just no solid evidence that Mr. Abrams has a problem with Jews. It's true that he repeatedly lied to and withheld evidence from Congress and had to be pardoned by Poppy Bush for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair, but that doesn't mean he has a self-loathing hatred of Jews. I don't know why people would engage in this unseemly attack on his reputation. And why is Bill Kristol besmirching his character, too. He is a secret anti-Semite, too, now? I know both of them are well known for their fondness for underage boys and cucurbita maxima masturbatory sessions, but that's a wholly different kind of character assassination. The next thing you know, people will be accusing Chuck Hagel of losing his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.

Woody Allen is funny.

If you see an American abroad carrying an easel and some paints, he could be a CIA operative. And a good one, too.

I am only learning about Aaron Swartz now that he has hanged himself. I don't know if an overzealous prosecutor is primarily responsible, but facing a long jail sentence probably didn't help Mr. Swartz deal with his depression. Our country lost a very talented individual.

You may have heard of disturbances in Mali. Juan Cole explains what is happening.

I remember when Saddam's regime fell, people looted all the armories. So, in Syria, I think people should be concerned about more than just the stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Wait! Hitler relaxed Germany's gun laws? That's not what the wingnuts told me. Also, too, Mahablog.

People like Arthur Silber are certainly necessary. I just don't think they have really thought hard enough about two things. The first is that people differ in what animates their political activity, and making the decision to engage in electoral politics on the side of the left means that most psychic energy is going to go to winning that battle. If what you primarily want is to keep the crazy Republican Party out of power then you will behave one way. If what you primarily want is to stop the War on Terror and its attendant outrages, you will behave another way. But throwing charges of hypocrisy around willy-nilly is no more justified than it is convincing, Which leads to the second thing people like Silber need to think about. Who do they think they are talking to? Whose minds do they think they need to change? There are people who agree that Barack Obama is a serial murderer and a monster. But they aren't the people who might actually change U.S. policy.

Mithras is making sense, although I'd rather give the Republicans pizza and soda than any kind of break on the Estate Tax.

Are you shocked that David Gregory won't be prosecuted for violating DC's gun laws? Yeah, me either.

What's on your reading list?

The problem with societies that have massive income inequality isn't just a matter of fairness. It's a matter of functionality. In the 18th Century, French peasants really had no hope of improving their lives or the lives of their children. That's unfair, but it's also dangerous. Whenever food became scarce, riots were the result. The bourgeoisie could aspire to greater wealth, but they couldn't protect their interests through the acquisition of political representation. That made for an inefficient economy and the introduction of the guillotine. Perhaps the worst problem, however, was with the privileged classes of the aristocracy and the clergy. Neither group were exposed to a healthy amount of accountability, and particularly in the case of the aristocracy, they lost any semblance of work ethic because they didn't have to strive and work for their wealth. A nation run by unaccountable priests and trust-fund babies is not going to be prosperous and stable in the long run.

A healthier system has a kind of convection, with people at the bottom constantly rising, while people at the top come back down. Maybe it would be better to say "families" than people. This type of system provides hope to those at the bottom and limits complacency from those at the top. It keeps things dynamic and works against stagnation.

This is why I think it's important to have a progressive tax code, an Estate Tax, and to make investments that help people to afford an education or gain access to loans. It's the American Way. When I see a proposal from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to eliminate all income and corporate taxes and replace them with a higher sales tax, I think that it is counter to the whole spirit of America. Jindal doesn't understand why our country has been so successful.

Look, like pretty much everyone else, I've been wrong about a few things in the debate about the platinum coin, but I was right on the main things. The White House, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve have determined that it would not be legal. Look at the Treasury spokesman's, statement below (emphasis mine):

"There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default," said Press Secretary Jay Carney. "When Congressional Republicans played politics with this issue last time putting us at the edge of default, it was a blow to our economic recovery, causing our nation to be downgraded. The President and the American people won't tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy. Congress needs to do its job."

If there were any lingering doubts about how the Obama administration will handle the debt-ceiling issue, Saturday's pronouncements put them to rest. Moments before Carney offered his statement, Treasury spokesman Anthony Coley offered one of his own, declaring that "neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit."

Perhaps more importantly, I realized early on that the debate over the coin was working against us. The Republicans desperately want to avoid a complete cave-in on the debt ceiling, and the coin was giving them false hope that they could default and be bailed out by one of the most counterintuitive and difficult-to-defend stunts in the history of mankind.

They have already telegraphed that they have no stomach for another downgrade in our credit rating, but they would have loved to see our credit rating downgraded in the aftermath of the coin gambit. That way, they could shift all the attention onto the administration and their dictatorial power grab.

We were playing with fire when we created this escape hatch. The only way to get the Republicans to give up this hostage taking is to refuse to negotiate with them and have them conclude that the tactic isn't tenable. Anything that interfered with that process, was counterproductive.

Now, some people had different purposes. The $60 trillion coin guy just wanted nice things for everybody. Others wanted to teach people lessons about fiat currency and undermine the Republicans' fearmongerng about the national debt. Still others wanted to just coin enough money that we wouldn't have to make any concessions about anything.

That was never the point. The point wasn't to rejigger the whole economy and balance of powers to give ourselves a bunch of free money. The point was to get the Republicans to shut up and raise the debt ceiling. From that point of view, the Platinum Coin debate did the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

J-Rube is trying to give advice to the GOP on how to fix their "Hispanic problem." She could start by counseling them to say 'Latinos' instead of 'Hispanics.' Most of her advice is pretty good, but she doesn't figure out the main thing that the Republicans need to do. They need to make the decision that they want two Latino votes for every hateful bigot in their party. They need to pick a high-profile fight with their racist element.They need to make it clear that they don't want to be a party reliant on white supremacists and stupid people.

When they do that, they'll not only win over more Latinos, they'll win over more of everybody.

The news cycle is so boring that it is probably a good time to engage in some gold old JFK assassination speculation. After all, it is the 50th anniversary this year. And now RFK Jr. is on the record that he's convinced that there was more than one gunman. I'm convinced of that, as well. I also don't think Oswald went to Mexico City.

I'm not sure what those two conclusions lead to, however.

Conspire away!

Yes, why settle for a $1 trillion coin when you can make a $60 trillion coin? When I mentioned this possibility, I was met with a bunch of commentary about how the president couldn't buy bling for himself because he would only be paying the bills that Congress had instructed him to pay. So, how does that work for the national debt? Can we just mint a coin and pay it all off? We have, in some sense, congressional approval to pay off our debts, do we not?

I really hate to say it, but I believe Tom Maguire has exposed a real problem with the whole Platinum Coin gambit. I think a lot of people who don't know anything about the nomenclature of commemorative coins have read a statute incorrectly. I include myself in that, because I really had no idea what a bullion coin was and how it differed from other collectable coins. According to the U.S. Mint:

A bullion coin is a coin that is valued by its weight in a specific precious metal. Unlike commemorative or numismatic coins valued by limited mintage, rarity, condition and age, bullion coins are purchased by investors seeking a simple and tangible means to own and invest in the gold, silver, and platinum markets.

In other words, a trillion dollar platinum bullion coin actually would have to weigh more than the Titanic. And it is only bullion coins that the Treasury Secretary is authorized to mint.

But, whatever, might as well make it $60 trillion.

And who cares about the language in the bill. Legal scholars who know nothing about coins have already weighed in.

I don't even care anymore. I think it would be just as legal to shoot any member of Congress who won't extend the debt ceiling. The law no longer has any relevance. It's just a matter of exerting power. If the Republicans act stupidly enough, we're justified in ignoring them and the law and just running this place how we see fit. Right?

I mean, that's what they're trying to do, and they only control the House.