Austerity: No Pain, No Gain or No Brain?

After a little bit of discussion, in the clip above, about whether or not Greece will abandon the Euro, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli comes on with Harry Dent (The Great Crash Ahead) to talk about Austerity. The clip is a mixture of interesting observations and Santelli's Old Time Austerity Religion.

First, Harry Dent observes that the EU countries should anticipate a future of slow growth for demographic reasons (a reasonable observation). But then Santelli goes on to "make it easy for his listeners to understand" by claiming that Austerity cannot be pursued without some pain (Dent agrees). This would be a vacuous observation except that it is pretty clear Santelli means "pain for somebody else." Since increases in taxation would reduce the Government Debt -> Austerity link and since Santelli is rabidly opposed to any increases in taxation (especially if that pain falls on the upper classes), he hopes to administer pain on the lower classes who are more dependent on the social programs he would like to see cut. CNBC has provided a great platform for Santelli's no-pain-in-my-backyard platform. This is also the Tea Party platform, for whom Santelli presumes to speak.

To cap things off, Harry Dent argues that what we need is a return of the Iron Lady (Margagret Thatcher) to help us impose Austerity on the lower classes. The last I checked, British Austerity as a response to the Financial Crisis was not going very well. Mr. Dent might reconsider using British economic history as a positive example of what happens under a right-wing Austerity regime.

WI Recall Candidate Lori Compas Wins Bimbo Bakery Award

HORSHAM, PA. Lori Compas, running against WI Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, has won the prestigious Bimbo Bakery award in the category "Best Campaign Ad, Wisconsin Recall Election." The Compas video (above) ran in rebuttal to a Wisconsin State Journal article (here) in which Fitzgerald commented that Ms. Compas' husband, Whitewater Professor Eric Compas, union bosses and protest groups were behind the campaign. In the video, Ms. Compas finds Fitzgerald's comment about women "bizarre and a little bit offensive" but typical of the right-wing mentality.

Traditionally, the Bimbo Bakery does not give out awards for actual achievement, but Ms. Compas' ad was so directly on the mark and used humor so effectively that it received the award. In a field of ads showing blow-dryed gassbags making vacuous promises and "pants-on-fire" claims, Ms. Compas' ad was truly refreshing, especially since sarcasm is lost on children, the Tea Party and certainly Scott Fitzgerald, R-WI.

The Hogan-Missing-Piece Swing vs. S&T Swing

Over the last few years, working with Stack & Tilt (S&T) I've had periods of inconsistent results and I've never really been sure what was going on. After playing a lot of golf this last week, I think I have some new insight.   When S&T hasn't been working, I have sometimes switched to V.J. Trolio's   "Hogan's Missing Piece" swing (http://www.thefinalmissingpiece.com/) with mixed results.

The background for the "missing-piece" swing was that Trolio found that video images of Hogan's swing after the car accident that damaged his pelvis and his legs, showed that Hogan had altered his golf swing to compensate for the injuries. And, he went on to play some of his best tournament golf despite the career-threatening injuries. The critical key to Hogan's altered swing action was the straightening of his right leg on the backswing (see the video of V.J. above).

The straightening of the right leg is also a component of the S&T swing but it doesn't have the status of a "missing piece". However, for me it turned out to be the missing piece. Conventional golf instruction forbids straightening the right leg. I have had real trouble breaking this ingrained prohibition and it has negatively impacted my S&T swing.

What I essentially did this week, after much practice-round struggle, was to use the standard S&T action (stack-tilt-standup), but concentrated exclusively on straightening my right leg on the backswing. I got here by first realizing that I wasn't getting a very good hip turn. Concentration on the hip turn, however,  produced uneven shot quality, particularly some bad pushes and over-hooks. As V. J. points out in the "missing-piece" book, straightening the right leg gets your hips into a very stable position that allows to you to swing pretty aggressively at the ball with much higher consistency (something, of course, Hogan was able to do quite well).

If you're having trouble with S&T consistency, check your right leg on the backswing--especially if you've had many years trying to master conventional golf instruction prescriptions!

Climate Feedbacks and Climate Change Denial

The NY Times recently ran an article titled Clouds' Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters. What was interesting to me about the article was not only the right wing's reasoning behind climate denial but also the rather sophisticated appeal to climate change feedbacks as a reason not to worry about CO2 emissions. We've come a long way from arguing that GHG emissions don't cause global warming to the "last bastion" of climate change denial, the Iris Effect proposed by Richard Lindzen.

As the directed graph above shows, the right wing has now conceded that CO2 emissions increase global temperature. However, Lindzen argues that warming will increase rain at the equator, depriving cirrus clouds of the moisture necessary for their formation. Since cirrus clouds have the effect of warming the Earth by preventing heat from escaping to space, fewer cirrus clouds could mean a cooler Earth as the Iris opens.

Unfortunately, there is no data to support Lindzen's arguments. Although the feedback effect might exist, it is either (1) too weak to deal with the massive amount of CO2 that is being pumped into the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel burning or (2) actually a positive loop.

The good news is that, supposedly, this is the right wing's last best argument. The bad news is that we're probably going back to one of the old irrational arguments.

Compare US to the EU: Stimulus vs. Austerity

Last Sunday, Fareed Zakaria (above) did an instructive comparison between the economies of the US and the EU in the aftermath of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. The histories of the two economies are different: the US followed an expansionary fiscal and monetary policy while the EU embraced austerity. Expansionary economic policy involves decreasing interest rates, increasing government spending and increasing the deficit. Austerity involves fighting (imaginary) inflation, reducing government spending and decreasing deficits. As far as historical experiments go, the results are pretty clear. The US is forecast to grow modestly next year while the EU is forecast to contract.

These lessons of history are hard for the right wing to understand: expansion means growth and austerity means contraction. The presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has been preaching austerity for the US as the correct response to the Financial Crisis (here). The Tea Party movement is also preaching austerity (for example, Rick Santelli of CNBC and Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI). Their arguments are based on Rick Santorum's Old Time Religion: when you've been profligate, you need to repent. Their arguments are just not based on history as it is unfolding or did unfold during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

Medicaid, The ACA and the Mandate

Two recent articles in the New England Journal of Medicine brought up a new perspective on the US Health Care debate. The first article (here) suggested that the 26 Republican Governors challenging Medicare may be up to more than simply squirming under new Federal mandates. The second article (here) also suggested that the challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) involving the mandate reveal how little the right-wing justices understand about insurance and how much they really wish to limit the power of the Federal government. I would go even further and say that the 26 Republican Governors and the four right-wing Supreme Court Justices might really be intent on destroying the Federal government.

I'm not sure what makes a mandate to purchase health insurance different when it comes from the State of Massachusetts or the Federal government. From a citizen's perspective, it's still a government mandate. The argument that there is some benefit in keeping government closer to the people in the States is, for me, also a little weird. Living in a State (Wisconsin) that has been hi-jacked by the extreme right wing is hardly more inclusive government. Somehow in Wisconsin it is more important that people carry concealed weapons rather than carry health insurance.

Basically, the 26 Republican Governors and the four right-wing Supreme Court justices might seem to be arguing that the Federal government cannot mandate anything. That would be a radical idea about government. Actually, I don't think that is what they are doing. The Federal government can mandate things the right-wing likes (military conscription, invasions of privacy in the name of Homeland security, concealed-carry shootouts at the OK Corral, etc.) and cannot mandate things the right-wing doesn't like (health care, spending for the poor, spending for the elderly, etc.).

It is interesting how the edifice of obscure constitutional arguments is being erected around such a simple, naked, political agenda. A nation with a corrupt legal and political system does not have a great future.