Good morning.
- Ms McArdle, a former(?) fan, on Geithner.
- One idea for Lent, stop breathing?
- The Pope to Vietnam?
- Two approaches to economic stress compared.
- As Mr Obama keeps stressing the “crises” we’re in … one wonders if Mr Emanuel’s remark of using a crises to seize power is part of this play.
- Demons replaced in metaphor.
- St. Polycarp? I think the significance of his martyrdom was he was the last alive at one degree.
- A book list.
- An oil deal.
- If it’s really a Ponzi or bubble, buyout/buy-in is not the solution, I think.
- The importance of being
Earnest, err, stupid. - His purpose.
- Fisking Krugman.
- Our irresponsible AG?
- Uncertainty.
- Emulating Mr Soprano.
- A quote.
“As Mr Obama keeps stressing the “crises” we’re in … one wonders if Mr Emanuel’s remark of using a crises to seize power is part of this play. ”
Mr. Emanuel made no such remark about seizing power. Are you simply unable to tell the truth or is this yet another round where because you imagine something was said in a way it wasn’t that makes it true? Or are you going to try the old “when I link to it I’m not endorsing it” routine?
Boonton,
Mr Emanuel said “a crisis should not go to waste, that a crisis is an opportunity to do things that you could not do otherwise” which I interpret in “doing things that you couldn’t do otherwise” in that manner, taking power which one couldn’t in ordinary circumstances. You may interpret that differently, but that is my take.
So your take is essentially dishonest then.
Taking power is taking the means or ability to do something. For example, staging a mutiny onboard a boat is taking power. That may happen because of a crises but is not necessarily related.
On the other hand, consider the fact that after Pearl Harbor the US Navy shifted from a battleships as the preferred form of capital ship to aircraft carriers. You have a classic example of a crises (an attack that damaged or destroyed a significant portion of the fleet) that yields an opportunity (shift to a better mix of ships). Seizing power, though, is not needed. The gov’t had the power to increase aircraft carriers before the attack but did not do so for a host of institutional reasons.
This is not a matter of interpretation but of what words mean. Mr. Emanuel did not say what you said he said. Your statement is therefore dishonest. You may claim he actually meant what you said but you choose, instead, to go the route that you did.
Now as to your larger point, do you have anything coherent to say? Are you saying opportunities are not present during a crises? Or are you trying to say there is no crises? Either argument would require a bit of serious support.
Boonton,
Stop being insulting. “Do you have anything coherent to say.” Please.
Look, Mr Emanuel is saying, to my view, this is an opportunity to enact social reforms/policies that we want unrelated to fixing the crises which we would have difficulty doing in ordinary times. For example, using this as cover to roll back welfare reforms enacted in the 90s.
Another example might be the establishment of TSA in the wake of 9/11. If Bush had said, “Well, 9/11 is a good opportunity to do things we couldn’t normally do during ordinary times” and you connected that the Patriot act (or FISA matters) that wouldn’t be out of bounds. He didn’t say that, yet such accusations were made.
Why is the reverse observation in the light of specific remarks of that nature made by Mr Emanuel thought incoherent by yourself?
The left, and likely you as well, didn’t think Mr Bush was enacting policy for the good of the country in good faith. That suspicion in an of itself is a valid accusation when made by the loyal opposition. However sustaining that accusation requires some evidence, which was I think lacking. It is also not out of bounds to make the same or analogous accusation of the current Administration. Lots of provisions noted and touted in the recent “stimulus” bill give credence to the notion that economic stimulation was not the sole aim of the bill, and that it is also intended to enact and put in place social reforms that the left has desired for a long time. I think that was an act of bad faith, that is doing exactly what Mr Emanuel is being accused of.
“Look, Mr Emanuel is saying, to my view, this is an opportunity to enact social reforms/policies that we want unrelated to fixing the crises which we would have difficulty doing in ordinary times. For example, using this as cover to roll back welfare reforms enacted in the 90s.”
OK this, though, is not ‘seizing power’.
“Another example might be the establishment of TSA in the wake of 9/11. If Bush had said, “Well, 9/11 is a good opportunity to do things we couldn’t normally do during ordinary times” and you connected that the Patriot act (or FISA matters) that wouldn’t be out of bounds. He didn’t say that, yet such accusations were made”
Accusations of what? Seizing power? Well the TSA was clearly within the power of the Federal gov’t as was the reorgnization of several dozen departments into a single Dept. of Homeland Security. Some of the FISA matters, though, might have been an example of using the crises to take a power that the gov’t didn’t have….in which case a person can make an honest accusation that Bush ‘seized power’.
“Why is the reverse observation in the light of specific remarks of that nature made by Mr Emanuel thought incoherent by yourself?”
Observation is objective. Asserting Mr. Emanual said something he did not say is the very opposite of an observation. Trying to confuse the difference between policy changes (good or bad) that are made in response to a crises and ‘seizing power’ in response to a crises is likewise not an observation. As for coherence, trying to confuse something is the opposite of coherence. Since your argument depends on the reader confusing two different things as one thing it’s very essence is incoherence.
“The left, and likely you as well, didn’t think Mr Bush was enacting policy for the good of the country in good faith. That suspicion in an of itself is a valid accusation when made by the loyal opposition.”
Give me a break, if I or someone tried to say “Look Bush said he was going to seize power” you’d jump on top of that. Since we don’t know what goes on inside people’s heads accusations of impure motives are easy to make and are likewise usually greeted with a lot of skepticism. Knowing this you tried to sell an accusation of impure motive as a direct statement of intent. Don’t cry because you’re getting called out on it now.
Boonton,
“If Bush had said” … but Mr Emanuel did say that this was an opportunity. Bush didn’t call 9/11 an “opportunity”. That’s the difference. If he had said, “Gosh, 9/11 is an opportunity” and then used that political capital to, say, curtail abortion” you’d squawk. This is exactly the sort of legislation that snuck in under the cover of “stimulus”. So … Mr Emanuel didn’t just say what I think he did, he and the Democrats in Congress did exactly that.
I’m not asserting he said something he didn’t say, I’m interpreting what I think he meant when he said “this is an opportunity”. You are welcome to disagree. If you want to think that calling a crises and opportunity is a misreading. Fine. But, it is not incoherent.
““If Bush had said” … but Mr Emanuel did say that this was an opportunity. Bush didn’t call 9/11 an “opportunity”. That’s the difference. If he had said, “Gosh, 9/11 is an opportunity” and then used that political capital to, say, curtail abortion” you’d squawk. ”
If Bush had said “9/11 is a chance for me to seize power and overturn Roe.v.Wade by Presidential fiat” I’d squark. If Bush said “9/11 is an opportunity for me to appoint justices to oppose Roe” I’d likewise squark. If Bush had said “9/11 is an opportunity for us to reorganize our security system for a new era” I may hold the squark until I saw the details.
But not all squarks are equal. If Bush did the second item, it would be legit to squark that such a policy has no relationship to 9/11 but it wouldn’t be legit to claim Bush had said the first thing. To work with your hypothetical, if Bush had said the third thing but I claimed he said the first thing my squark would be even more illegitimate….even though there may be perfectly valid objections to his proposed reorganization (and if you recall some details of his 9/11 related proposals were ‘opportunities’ to implement right wing agenda items like gutting union protections, environmental regs etc.)
“I’m not asserting he said something he didn’t say, I’m interpreting what I think he meant when he said “this is an opportunity”. ”
Someone who writes every day should understand that “He said” and “He meant” are two different verbs. He made no remarks about seizing power. This is not a matter of interpretation but a statement of fact. You are free to argue he meant seizing power, although you haven’t actually presented a single example of seizing power.
“If you want to think that calling a crises and opportunity is a misreading. Fine. But, it is not incoherent.”
I don’t see what you’re trying to say here. Criseses do open up opportunities. “Taking advantage of an opportunity” is a different verb phrase than “seizing power”. This is all quite coherent. Your assertion that you can attribute false statements to someone else because you are thinking that’s what they “really mean” is not.
Boonton,
I should note for clarification, that by “do otherwise” I mean not related to fixing the problem/crises as hand. Quite a number of things in the stimulus bill are not exactly related to actually dealing with the stimulus (some, such as Pelosi’s (I think) defense of money for condoms, were removed when noted). Those are the sorts of insertions and to the opportunities to which I think Mr Emanuel referred.
Boonton,
But I didn’t make any such false assertion. You write: Someone who writes every day should understand that “He said” and “He meant” are two different verbs. But I didn’t say either he said or he meant except in the comments. What I wrote was “Mr Emanuel’s remark of using a crises” and provided a link from which one can find actual text and discussion of that remark. Clearly reading the linked material and what follows that my “seizing of power” is how I infer Mr Emanuel’s remark on opportunity to mean and seeing how the bill turned out my inference is likely exactly what he meant.
I should note for clarification, that by “do otherwise” I mean not related to fixing the problem/crises as hand.
Since the idea of a stimulus bill is to preserve overall spending in the economy by filling the gap in collapsing private sector spending basically anything that spends money would qualify. Hence the mismash of items in the stimulus bill that ranged from the rather obvious like unemployment insurance benefits to things like picking up a share of state Medicaid spending (of which family planning would be a part since some states do provide this….forget Pelosi’s mangled ‘explanation’, she was clearly unprepared for the question and tried to wing an answer that fell flat).
Obviously you can have a stimulus bill that is more right wing (say a crash program to restock military supplies) as well as a bill that’s more left wing (say free day care for a year). I don’t see how you can honestly describe that as ‘seizing power’, unless by seizing power you mean that election results actually have an impact on the laws passed. (Also wouldn’t this apply more to House Democrats who added much of what you’re citing as examples of stimulus you find negatively stimulating? Mr. Emanual, in case you haven’t heard, works for the President)
But I didn’t say either he said or he meant except in the comments. What I wrote was “Mr Emanuel’s remark of using a crises” ….
You mean like: “I disagree with Mark’s remarks in the first comment from him on this thread about how he thinks it would be great if we legalize the rape and murder of children and make cute little puppies into meat pies.”
Boonton,
The final bill was over 1000 pages long. How much debate? How much debate over the final bill which had numerous alterations? What was the ostensible reason for the rush (for a bill which the sponsors admit won’t provide much stimulus until well into 2010 … at which point the question why a few weeks debate and public exposure over items … and breaking a campaign promise in the meantime)?
I think this was an overreach of power using the crises as “an opportunity” to effect policies which were loosely or not directly connected to stimulus. The point is unlike my remarks to your first comment and your puppy-pies the notion of an abuse of power (seizing) and an “opportunity” are not unconnected. In fact, in direct opposition to your notions that this was a “mistake on my part” confusing “said” and “meant” you knew exactly what I was implying that Mr Emanuel was getting at in his remark. You happened to disagree but my point was made and understood.
I happen to think an honest stimulus bill to effect an immediate recovery doesn’t include spending on infra-structure and developments that will only effect the economy decades down the road. Rolling that into a emergency stimulus bill is an abuse. A “seizing of power” if you will.
As to your remark that Mr Emanuel works for the Administration and is not a House Democrat … uhm, duh. They are on the same “team”. It’s not a personal opportunity but a “party” opportunity. And unless you’re claiming Mr Emanuel is not a Democrat that is an, uhm, incoherent observation.
The final bill was over 1000 pages long. How much debate? How much debate over the final bill which had numerous alterations?
Quite a bit it would seem. Compare this to the TARP bill which spent just about the same amount of money and was only three pages long…basically to say the Treasury Sec. can do anything he thinks will work with the money. The 1000 pages is a product of the debate and give and take. You know better than to present the false idea that legislative debate is about carefully reading a bill and debating the language from there. Legislation is similiar to HTML code. At the end of the day everything on the web is put into HTML code but you don’t write in HTML code to work your blog. The code itself exists as a back office function. Yes it is essential, yes there are times when it is necessary to focus on a single line or handful of lines but you do most of your work on this thread by not reading the code line by line.
I think this was an overreach of power using the crises as “an opportunity” to effect policies which were loosely or not directly connected to stimulus.
Since stimulus is by definition spending money the only way to support this argument is to show that the items in the bill don’t spend money. This would be kind of awkward since one of the major arguments agaisnt the bill was that it spent too much money.
I happen to think an honest stimulus bill to effect an immediate recovery doesn’t include spending on infra-structure and developments that will only effect the economy decades down the road. Rolling that into a emergency stimulus bill is an abuse.
Well the infrastructure stuff is something like 10-20% of the bill last time I checked. Not for nothing but ‘building a bridge’ or road is like the standard textbook example of ‘fiscal stimulus’ as well as the classic image of fiscal stimulus from FDR’s day. It makes for a good visual image to get the point accross but it can also lead to a distorted impression that most of fiscal stimulus is about pouring concrete. Either way, it’s kind of strange to say a stimulus bill is dishonest because it includes road building. Kind of like saying a tax cut bill is dishonest for lowering tax rates. You can argue the theory if you want but you’ve demonstrated theory is not your strength here.
As to your remark that Mr Emanuel works for the Administration and is not a House Democrat … uhm, duh.
Well you failed to support your claim that Mr. Emanuel said he was seizing power. In your effort to prove that he meant that you cite examples of things…well actually just one thing…that House Democrats put in the stimulus bill. Unless your claiming that Mr. Emanuel was twittering the bill page by page in a marathon session of micromanagement you need to do a bit better.
Boonton,
Huh? They had all of five hours. That’s how many seconds per page? 18? Gosh that’s quite a bit of debate.
The “doesn’t matter” what it is spent on hearkens back to the Japanese/Napoleon attempts to bolster the economy which apparently didn’t work then and won’t work now … alas. Sucks to be us, I guess is the moral of this particular story.
Actually road building is an interesting example. In FDR’s day road building did indeed both create a lot of jobs and ultimately build infra-structure. But today, road crews aren’t human intensive like they were 80 or so years ago. They are machine/capital intensive but not so clearly ones which will actually create many jobs.
Actually Japan did seem to dodge a depression. Your definition of ‘didn’t work’ seems to take utopia as the baseline and measure all deviation from that as failure. But to declare that something ‘didn’t work’ you have to have a reasonable way to estimate what probably would have happened had the policy not been implemented.
As I said, I’m not familiar with Napoleon attempts to bolster the economy. The one story you provided I only heard applicable to FDR and not post-Revolutionary France. If I have time today I’ll try to read up on it a bit more.
But what certainly isn’t applicable here is that Japanese/Napoleon policies were not failure because lawmakers did not make an exceptional attempt to read the raw langage of their code. There was no lack of knowledge of what the stimulus bill was spending money on. No lawmaker can honestly claim his vote would have been different if only he had an extra week or month to read the entire bill.
You’re right about road building, which is part of the reason it seems to make up something like 10% of the stimulus package while it’s used as 80% of the hypothetical examples of stimulus, probably because it makes for an easy visualization. But I would point out that:
1. There’s a lot of ‘road building’ we’ve put off that should be done whether or not we need stimulus. So we have a case of killing two birds with one stone. As I pointed out stimulus can be a pure waste of money (one guy digs a hole, another guy fills it), but it’s better if you stimulate AND get something in the long term.
2. There’s no economic rule against capital stimulus. In fact if you read Keynes he identifies the problem in depression economies as a shortfall of investment. In a sense direct consumer/worker stimulus is turned on its head. By giving people checks the gov’t has to hope that individual consumption will be sufficient for businesses to make investments in their capital. Hiring a company to do something capital intensive (like road building) spurs the investment directly.
3. You are, I think, working with a somewhat distorted image of road building in FDR’s time. Huge projects in the 30′s and 40′s were not quite like building the pyramids. They had capital then too and if you ever watch old footage of the Hoover Dam or the Panama Canal being built you’d see men with shovels was a bit of a idealization even then.
“That’s how many seconds per page? 18? Gosh that’s quite a bit of debate.”
You’ve got the reality backwards. The code isn’t written and then debate, the idea is debated and the code written in response to the debate. Someone says I think the housing problem is the key to this so I want a tax credit for buying a new house like they did in the early 70′s. The guy wins so they tell the staff to write in an $8K tax credit for new home buyers. The idea may require a page or two to summarize but the staff lawyers will need to write 50 pages. I think the HTML analogy is apt here. You decide to do something like add a color to your site or insert a link or picture and it takes you a second but the HTML code as a result goes by numerous lines.
Boonton,
Evidence of what I refer from the leftt.
My point is that none of those items in the parenthesis are stimulus as such, but were part of an opportunity seized in an crises. I think it’s an abuse of power. You it seems disagree. That’s fine, it’s just that what I’m saying is certainly not incoherent, which was your initial claim.
It seems to me that in the last 80 years quite a bit of change has occurred in how we do large scale construction, and that a lot less people are involved. In fact I think there have been significant changes in the last 20 years.