Day 1002 And the Flops Just Keep Coming

Day 1002 And the Flops Just Keep Coming

397 Days until the 2020 election and 479 days until the Inauguration

A quick scan of the headlines was typical. In entertainment, people I don’t know are saying dumb things about other people I don’t know.

Trump is doing more stuff to show why he should be impeached. This time asking China to interfere.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican who was going to be speaker until he made up a name of a country that didn’t exist and tried to pass it off as the real thing (like someone wasn’t going to check?) has called on the real Speaker to suspend the impeachment inquiry because “it lacks transparency.” When old Kevin made up the name of a country I decided right then and there that he was dumb. Not dumb like Rick Perry, who tried to polish his image by wearing smart glasses, but a different kind of dumb. This was a “I’m stupid and I don’t care” kind of dumb. Or a “I’m gonna try to appear to be smart” kind of dumb. But it’s dumb. He’s newel post kind of dumb: hard and upright, clueless and uncaring.

There’s a saying that you can’t fix stupid. The same applies to dumb, but there’s a difference. With stupid there is some cognition that what you are saying or doing isn’t quite right; with dumb any awareness is gone.

Let’s take Kevin’s request to suspend the impeachment inquiry because it lacks transparency. I get the idea of accusing your accusers of the exact thing you are doing, but here one would have to ask WTF is he talking about? Maybe, he could elaborate? 

The problem with McCarthy’s stance is that there’s nothing to be transparent about. The president did a criminal thing. He admitted it and the White House backed it up with a transcript. What would Mr. McCarthy like as being more transparent? 

The difference between dumb and stupid is knowing. Rick Perry knows he’s stupid. He gives you a little “ah shucks” wry grin when he’s caught trying to think. Kevin McCarthy has none of that self awareness. He tries to appear being smart by doubling down and that’s when he gets himself in real trouble. 

In other news, there’s a second whistle blower. This one is dealing with Trump’s taxes. Shockingly, the IRS was not completely on the up and up with Trump’s taxes. Don’t know what that all means – yet.

The questions on why the ambassador to Ukraine was suddenly let go and what the special envoy to Ukraine was doing are now starting to emerge from the swamp dreck. Rudy was going over to the Ukraine. Rudy put all kinds of conspiracy theories in Trump’s head. Not that it was all that hard. If you want to know what they were I think you can go to any of the right wing web sites to find them. Apparently, the “urgent” request that Congress got from an IG was a bunch of folders marked Trump Hotel that Rudy had assembled and stuffed with conspiracy theories. It is this stuff that Barr and Pompeo have been going abound the world asking friends and foes for help in supporting this stuff. 

Imagine you are a foreign leader and one of these three come to you asking for help with something you can look up in thirty seconds on Google and find out is nonsense, what do you do? Well, first off you try not to laugh. Then you probably try to see if they are serious, if they believe, or are they just saying something that they have to say. In the case of Rudy, I think he really believes. Pompeo? I don’t know. I get the sense that he thinks some of it is real and some is BS. In the case of Barr, he doesn’t care he’ll say whatever.

Imagine, just imagine you are a leader of another nation, or a high ranking minister and one of these clowns shows up?

There was another headline that grabbed my attention. There’s a study reported in Forbes where the city of Stockton gave poor folks $500 a month to see what they would do with it. I remember when this first started. The mayor of Stockton saw a lot of poverty and said the solution to poverty was to give people money. He decided to do a test case to see what happened. The article I read was in Forbes, which has a conservative capitalist viewpoint. The idea of giving people money would be an anathema to them. How did they report it? 

Let’s start with the headline: “A California City Tested Universal Basic Income. Here’s How Recipients Spent the $500 in Free Money.”

Okay. Not positive, not really negative, but not really revealing what was the outcome. First off there’s video box with the headline saying that this kind of program would cost $3.8 trillion a year if adopted nationwide. Then there’s the leading paragraphs. The first three describe the program: privately funded, 18 months long, 125 families, $500 a month. The mayor said he wanted to see where these folks spent that money. He thought it would show that they spent it on necessities and not drugs and partying.

Then you get two paragraphs saying that the study didn’t tell you much because of the limited scope and duration. The next paragraph quoted someone saying that people aren’t likely to change their behavior if they know the money is going to stop in 18 months and then this fellow goes on to say that it’s more about storytelling than social science. Really? So who is this guy? Oh, he’s a professor and likes to talk and teach libertarianism. In fact he’s the co-founder of a website called bleedingheartliberarians. He’s sponsored colloquy entitled “Give Brexit a Chance.” I would say this guy has an agenda, and it’s not favorable to giving people money.

But what he did finally say was that previous studies have shown that people don’t spend the money on frivolous things. 

What?

But then he throws in his monkey wrench of well of course it doesn’t measure long term effect or duration. Well duh. 

Then we finally get to what the study was trying to do and what they observed and discovered. 

First off, they weren’t trying to see if the money changed people’s behavior. They were trying to see if the money impacted their physical and mental health, which the researchers are still looking at.

Where was the money spent?

40% was taken out in cash, the researchers then queried the folks how they spent that money.

But over all here is what the article did say the people spent money on:

40% on food,

24% sales and merchandise,

11% on utility bills,

9% on auto repairs and fuel.

The rest went to services, medical expenses, insurance, etc.

Hum, it seems that if you give people who don’t have enough money to live they spend it on things to help them get out of the hole and not on drugs and partying.

Who knew?

Well, anyone who has studied basic economics could have guessed this result. One of the bulwarks of economic thought is that if you want to stimulate an economy give people money (typically it is said increase welfare  but that’s kind of a demean

ing way to say it don’t you think?)

So to the bleeding heart libertarian I would say that another way to do this would be to let industries stand on their own two feet and stop subsidizing them. What do you think? You know like the oil and gas industry that gets all kinds of government assistance. What if we instead gave that money to poor people who are struggling? 

In another interesting tidbit Rachel talked a little bit about her new book on Stephen Colbert. One interesting fact she discovered was that a resource rich country becomes poorer when that countries resources are extracted. What? Turns out the extractors pay the people in power and those folks keep the money and the people in the country get nothing.

Capitalism and libertarianism at work. Right on!

PS Here I am!