Obscure Music Friday: Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers

Best Christmas song ever! If you're tired of the same old same old, feast your ears on the Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers and their totally funky, raw version of "Christ Was Born on Christmas Morn". Bonus: the group was fronted by Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, a noted female impersonator and purveyor of bawdy songs (he wrote "Fan It" among other classic numbers). 

If more Christmas songs had this much soul, I wouldn't get so damn sick of Christmas music!

Can the EU Muddle Through?

Guest post by Judith Meyer

At this point, it's utopian to believe that the EU will be able to continue as-is for another decade. A priori it also seems unlikely that the EU will reform or that the EU will collapse, but these are the three utopias/dystopias that are typically mentioned.

And I think "continue as-is" is the least likely of all. Such a development is not sustainable, neither for Germany nor for the South. In Germany, the negative interest rates are destroying the pension funds and, more importantly, the Sparkasse model - and 50 million out of 83 million Germans have their bank accounts at Sparkasse. Even if the big fish tend to use other banks (which are struggling as well but are freer to compensate by speculating on the stock market), the German state will not be able to make good on its promise to insure the deposits of 50 million Germans.

In the South, seasonally adjusted youth unemployment ranges between 25% (Portugal) and 43% (Greece). Even France has 23% youth unemployment. And this has been pretty much since 2010. The promise of improvement "just around the corner" won't be believable much longer - many already don't believe it and have punished each establishment party that promised it in turn, or that was tone-deaf to the reality that people are living. You may well get a crisis. And consider that the IMF planned to orchestrate a close brush with a Greek credit event in summer 2016 (as they did in 2015) in order to force the EU to find a solution. They couldn't do it then because their plans were leaked, but if they were ready to do it then, who says they won't do it on another occasion.

Now when we talk EU reform, many groups and indeed heads of government have plans that won't work because they'll require treaty change, i.e. the approval of 28 national parliaments through a process that may well take several years. That is why DiEM25 has come up with innovative ways to stabilise the situation that could be implemented tomorrow morning if a few key people agreed, without the need to change any treaties.

For example the introduction of an EU-wide food stamp program funded from TARGET2 surpluses. It's not necessary to turn the EU into a federation in order to have this kind of very basic federal program, which would let off the populists' steam in the hardest-hit countries (the ones that incidentally cannot currently fund an own foodstamp program).

Or having the ECB relay its ultralow interest rates for national debts amounting to up to 60% of GDP, while debts above that amount would continue to run at the rates each country can procure. It would immediately reduce Europe's debt burden by 1/3, while not creating moral hazard for countries to get any more indebted than necessary. In fact the incentive to stay within the Maastricht boundaries would be much higher by having a great differential between Maastricht-compliant and non-compliant debt, whereas right now the worst that can happen is having a fine slapped on you.

DiEM25 also foresees hypercharging the European Investment Fund and European Investment Bank, which have a mandate to prioritise helping structurally weak regions throughout Europe, and to prioritise forward-looking investments e.g. in clean energy, infrastructure and digitalisation. Poland currently generates 75% of its electricity from locally-mined coal. Those jobs are not going to be there in the long run, so if EIF investments and expertise helped them gradually build up a clean energy industry there, we could prevent an unemployment crisis at the same time as improving Europe's ecological footprint. All these kinds of things could be executive decisions with no need to push legislation through 28 national parliaments. Of course DiEM25 also has more ambitious plans - a European constitutional assembly is one of them, in order to create a less cartel-like and more democratic European governance model in the long run - but the sequencing is clear: first we need to stabilise the situation, afterwards there may be popular support for rebuilding the EU. 

And the most beautiful thing is that this is the best course of action independent of whether we believe that the EU will continue to exist. We hope that it will, and that we will have a chance to let Europeans write a constitution for it, but even if it breaks apart, it will be better to do so in a climate of less poverty, less xenophobia and more international bonds between citizens.  

Science Fiction Saturday: Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester was an American science fiction writer active from the 1940's to the 1980's. His best work came in the 1950's, including the novel, The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo award for best science fiction novel. Here's a description of that novel from the SF Encyclopedia:

The Demolished Man tells a story which in synopsis is straightforward: industrialist Ben Reich commits murder (in a society where murder is almost unknown because Telepathy-using Espers can either detect the idea before the act is carried out or subsequently read the perpetrator's guilt), almost gets away with it, is ultimately caught by Esper detective Linc Powell, and is committed to curative brainwashing, "demolition". It is the pace, the staccato style, the passion and the pyrotechnics that make the novel extraordinary. The future society is evoked in marvellously hard-edged details; the hero is a driven, resourceful man whose obsessions are explained in Freudian terms that might seem too glib if they were given straight, but are evoked with the same New Yorker's painful, ironic scepticism that informs the whole novel. 

The novel, The Stars My Destination, is also fantastic as are his short stories. Bester's stylish and sophisticated prose was quite revolutionary at the time and it was often said of him that he helped science fiction "grow up". Bester all in all was quite a character as shown by this excerpt from his memoirs, where he encounters the great SF magazine editor John W. Campbell, Jr. and gets a bit more than he bargained for, including a lecture on Dianetics:

I wrote a few stories for Astounding, and out of that came my one demented meeting with the great John W. Campbell, Jr. I needn’t preface this account with the reminder that I worshipped Campbell from afar… I sent off another story to Campbell, one which no show would let me tackle. The title was “Oddy and Id” and the concept was Freudian… Campbell telephoned me a week later to say that he liked the story but wanted to discuss a few changes with me. Would I come to his office?….

Campbell arose from his desk and shook hands. I’m a fairly big guy but he looked enormous to me, about the size of a defensive tackle. He was dour and seemed preoccupied by matters of great moment. “You don’t know it,” Campbell said, “you can’t have any way of knowing it, but Freud is finished…”

“Oh come now, Mr. Campbell. Surely you’re joking.”

“I have never been more serious in my life. Freud has been destroyed by one of the greatest discoveries of our time. Dianetics… Come and have lunch.”

We sat down at a small table while he continued to discourse on dianetics, the greatest salvation of the future when the world would at last be cleared of its emotional wounds. Suddenly he stood up and towered over me. “You can drive your memory back to the womb,” he said. “You can do it if you release every block, clear yourself and remember. Try it.”

“Now?”

“Now. Think. Think back. Clear yourself. Remember! You can remember when your mother tried to abort you with a button hook. You’ve never stopped hating her for it.”

Around me there were cries of “BLT down, hold the mayo. Eighty-six on the English. Combo rye, relish. Coffee shake, pick up.” And here was this grim tackle standing over me, practicing dianetics without a license. The scene was so lunatic that I began to tremble with suppressed laughter. I prayed. “Help me out of this, please. Don’t let me laugh in his face. Show me a way out.” God showed me.

Quite a guy. Check his stuff out.. You won't be sorry. 

We Need to Raise Taxes Not Lower Them

Guest post by Stephen Rose

The Republicans have managed to turn a political win—lowering middle class taxes—into an unpopular monstrosity. Their proclivity to believe that the worthiest people are business people who provide jobs for the masses has led them to give the most generous breaks to corporations, small businesses (pass-through entities), and those with high income. Of course, the fact that these people are their major donors is one that they try to hide.   

The unpopularity of this bill doesn’t negate that the Republicans have won the argument over Reagan’s statement that ‘the government is the problem and not the solution.’ Faith in the federal government has been low for a long time, which makes tax cuts always popular. People don’t understand where the federal government spends its money, although they feel like that their benefits are deserved. Consequently, even if they, their parents or their children receive public benefits, they think that the government wastes lots of money and can easily do with less.

Another major reason to cut taxes is to “starve the beast". Since defense spending can’t be cut, reductions in revenues lead to bigger federal deficit which leads to calls to cut the deficit by reducing spending on social programs. Because the Republicans worry about losing the House of Representatives in 2018, they are pivoting to “entitlement reform” now rather than waiting for the deficit to rise. This is a bold move now, especially since they couldn't pass the repeal and replace of Obamacare.

The Republicans main attack line for decades against the Democrats is that ‘they want to raise your taxes’. Obama avoided this critique by saying that he would never raise taxes on households with incomes below $250,000. To avoid the claim that she would raise taxes, in 2016, Hillary Clinton also made this pledge and ran on a series of small tweaks and showed how they would be paid for without across the board tax increases.

This has put the Democrats on the defensive and allowed Republicans to do a variety of stupid things. At a time when our roads, bridges, water lines, and air ports are in need of massive infusions of money, the Republicans have kept to their “no taxes” pledge. Remarkably, they repeatedly have blocked increasing the gas tax even during years when they economy was strong and when gas prices were low.  Even though this money would be dedicated to infrastructure spending that would make our economy more efficient, keeping their no-tax pledge is more important.

            In the years ahead, more and more baby boomers will be retiring, which will drive up the costs of Medicare and Social Security. Although this is well known and has been somewhat planned for, the demands for higher federal spending are many: higher interest payments (and even higher when interest rates rise), much higher spending on seniors out of general revenue as the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds are depleted, and addressing our pressing infrastructure needs.

The bottom line is that we are soon going to need lots more revenue, and every progressive should support tax increases. A good plan would cut defense spending, increase the top marginal rate a bit (maybe 45 percent), have the upper middle class pay more, and even have a minor increase on the middle class. In theory, this ‘sharing of burden’ approach might be sellable. This is not a call for a balanced budget but an arithmetic issue: while we can sustain a federal budget deficit of 2 percent of GDP, we are facing deficits much higher than this if we don’t increase revenues.

Cutting taxes now is an abomination driven by the Republican desire to shrink government. 

Obscure Music Friday: Syd Barrett

Who was Syd Barrett? One of the original psychedelic geniuses...and casualties. Sadly, few now know that he was the original creative force behind the far, far more famous Pink Floyd. Richie Unterberger explains:

Like a supernova, Roger "Syd" Barrett burned briefly and brightly, leaving an indelible mark upon psychedelic and progressive rock as the founder and original singer, songwriter, and lead guitarist of Pink Floyd. Barrett was responsible for most of their brilliant first album, 1967's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but left and/or was fired from the band in early 1968 after his erratic behavior had made him too difficult to deal with (he appears on a couple tracks on their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets). Such was his stature within the original lineup that few observers thought the band could survive his departure; in fact, the original group's management decided to keep Syd on and leave the rest of the band to their own devices. Pink Floyd never recaptured the playful humor and mad energy of their work with Barrett.

I remember vividly that when I scored a copy of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and played it, it pretty much blew my mind. From the first cut, the haunting "See Emily Play" (the video linked to here), the whole album was, for want of a better word "trippy" and hinted at a strange, enticing world beyond my limited Silver Spring, MD horizons.  

Unlike Barrett, I  made it back from that strange world. But I still love the album and, as Unterberger puts it, the "mad energy" behind it.

Sure the Democrats Are Riding a Wave, But Won't Gerrymandering Prevent Them from Taking Back the House?

In a word, no. That is to say, if there is a decent sized wave the Democrats have an excellent chance of taking back the House, despite the fact they are disadvantaged by gerrymandering. And by a decent-sized wave, I don't mean the Democrats carrying the House popular vote by a gaudy margin of 8-10 points or more. They can probably do it with considerably less.

Alan Abramowitz shows this in an elegant little analysis just published on Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball. Abramowitz controls for the effect of post-2010 gerrymandering--which he does find is significant and large--and still finds that the Democrats could get a House majority with around 52 percent of the two party House vote (prior to 2010, the model indicates that slightly less than a majority of the popular vote--49 percent--would have sufficed).

And 52 percent looks like a pretty easy target to hit, based on results we have been seeing in the generic Congressional ballot polling. Abramowitz notes:

In recent weeks, Democrats have been averaging a lead of between eight and 10 points according to RealClearPolitics....that large a lead on the generic ballot would predict a popular vote margin of around five points and a gain of between 30 and 33 seats in the House — enough to give Democrats a modest but clear majority.

There you have it. Gerrymandering is bad....but it is far from an insuperable obstacle. 

Democratic Wave Watch: Post-Alabama Edition

The data just keep accumulating. The Democratic wave that seemed like a desperate hope in the aftermath of the 2016 election gathers at the horizon and becomes ever clearer. Here are some thoughts from various astute political observers:

1. Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic:

Jones beat Moore with a strong turnout and a crushing lead among African Americans, a decisive advantage among younger voters, and major gains among college-educated and suburban whites, especially women. That allowed Jones to overcome big margins for Moore among the key elements of Trump’s coalition: older, blue-collar, evangelical, and nonurban white voters.

This was the same equation that powered the Democratic victories in the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races. The consistency of these results suggests that Democrats are coalescing a powerful coalition of the very voters that polls have shown are the most disenchanted, even disgusted, by Trump’s performance and behavior as president….

“Anti-Trump fever is now so strong among Democrats, young voters, and independents that the GOP is likely to face a surge in turnout on the Democratic side that will make the 2018 midterms lurch toward the demographics of a presidential year,” says longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy, who advised Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he first won his Alabama Senate seat, in 1996. “That is a looming disaster that could well cost the GOP control of the House. We are in a Trump-driven worst-case situation now.”

2. Harry Enten, 538: 

The cycle that looks most like this one is 2006, when Democrats gained 30 seats and control of the House from the Republicans³ thanks to a hefty win in the popular vote across all House races. In 2018, they need 24 seats to win back control of the lower chamber. The difference between the average swing in special federal elections and the margin of the national vote for the House has averaged just 3 percentage points since 1994. It has never differed by more than 7 points. So even if Democrats do 7 points worse in the national House vote than the average swing so far suggests, they’d still win the national House vote by 9 points, which would likely mean that theyreclaim a House majority next year.

Indeed, the special election results so far this year are merely another indication of the GOP’s precarious position. President Trump’s approval rating is below 40 percent and Democrats hold an 11-percentage-point lead on the generic congressional ballot.

We’re still nearly a year from the 2018 midterms. That’s enough time for things to shift. Maybe Trump will grow more popular, for example. But historically, the environment doesn’t change much between this point in an election cycle and the midterms. So if you’re a Democrat, Tuesday’s Alabama result is just the latest special election sign that things are looking up heading into 2018.

3. Nate Cohn, New York Times:  

Over the last eight years, political analysts had come to think that Democrats were at a distinct disadvantage in midterm elections, since their younger and nonwhite coalition was less likely to turn out than older and white voters.

It is time to retire that notion. Tuesday in Alabama, Democrats benefited from strong turnout that plainly exceeded midterm levels, while white working-class Republicans voted in weaker numbers. It was enough to send Doug Jones to the Senate instead of Roy Moore, in one of the reddest states in the country.

This has been a pattern in all of this year’s major special elections, as well as in the Virginia general election. It is consistent with a long-term trend toward stronger turnout by the party out of power in off-year elections. It also suggests that President Trump’s less educated and affluent version of the Republican coalition has eroded the party’s traditional turnout advantage.

It's increasingly looking like the real question is not whether there will be a Democratic wave, but how big that Democratic wave will be. That's a happy thought, perhaps enough to put a spring in your step in what has been a dark time.