I tend to agree that a cap would be too arbitrary, too hard to enforce, and would simply result in a good deal of migration or renaming of jobs.

Rather, a temporary but fairly fierce tax on incomes (including capital gains, deferred compensation guaranteed, and benefits) over, say, $10 million from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2009, might be in order -- income over that threshold might be taxed at say, 50%, rather than the curren mid-30s. This would recover something for the treasury from ALL overpaid executives, and would especially hit anyone who got a golden parachute in the last two years...

Not sure whether ex post facto limits might apply -- that's a serious consideration, and there are issues of fairness to non-executive compensation (athletes, entertainment, etc.), but a temporary tax hike on very very high incomes would probably be pretty popular, right now, and have less distorting effects than a salary cap.

Posted at September 23, 2008 2:58 PM in response to Stupid Idea: Capping Financial Execs Pay

While I reeled through the Reagen years in shock and amazement, I still remember when I realized that the Republican party and its base had teetered off the edge into full-fledged insanity.

On election night 1992, California TV cut at one point to the state Republican headquarters in Orange County -- and behind the talking head, young activist types were holding up signs saying "Impeach Clinton." This was, of course, before Clinton had been inaugurated, so by definition, he could not possibly have committed the sort of political 'high crimes and misdemeanours' that impeachment is intended for.

In short, they were insane. It's sad to see how that tradition of florid delusion lives on.

Posted at September 16, 2008 9:51 AM in response to The Polls Are Wrong--A Little Dose of Reality

I think that having McCain whine about how mean the Democrats are being is a positive...first, because it puts him and his campaign on the defensive, and also because it raises a high stink of hypocrisy that pretty much anyone outside the koolaid drinking base will recognize.

Posted at September 15, 2008 10:16 PM in response to Top Democrats Privately Urging Major Donors To Fund Outside Groups To Attack McCain

Thanks, I think there's a lot of wisdom in your comment.

I also think that the 'sex' and 'wolf' ads are beyond content -- they are manipulation of atavistic fears intended to sway the 'gut feeling' voters and undecided voters in a way beyond issues or even personalities.

The pushback needs to get hard and merciless -- but not necessarily nasty. Obama is doing better on the 'lipstick' issue -- he should keep raising it, mockingly, because it makes McCain look whiny.

Likewise, they need to push back on the atavistic manipulation by ensuring that advocated and media make it clear: "They are trying to manipulate you". Nobody likes being a puppet, after all.

There are ways to respond, beside denial (the least effective means), and Obama's campaign had better start. I hope that the delay has been intentional, part of a strategy to pull McCain over a line where counterattack becomes 'legitimate', but we'll see.

Posted at September 10, 2008 3:59 PM in response to Dear Barack: The Dust Will Not Settle

The Republicans will attack Obama as attacking motherhood and virtue no matter WHAT he says.

He is doing exactly the right thing -- and should keep right on doing it, bringing up 'lipstick' in every media opportunity and public event, in the context of explaining his attack on McCain's ideas. Not just the verbal and rational dimension of pushback is important; so is the emotional and interactional.

Posted at September 10, 2008 3:53 PM in response to Obama's Double-Entendre Lipstick on a Pig

I have to disagree that this is just lies, or just throwing mud to see what sticks.

McCain and Schmidt are systematically running ads designed to provoke strong atavistic emotions (even if only for a second). A viewer may watch the 'kindergarten sex education' ad or the 'wolves' ad, and afterwards say "Well, that didn't seem right, or fair." But while watching, the image of a lone alien male connected to issues of sexuality and children, or the image of a helpless woman facing a pack of wolves, and their ripping her flesh, have laid down a track in our memory, one reinforced by near-instinctive feelings of fear or disgust.

Now, for many voters, these tracks won't have much impact, since their deliberative faculties will override the impact. But for someone undecided -- especially for a low-information undecided voter who enters the voting booth not quite sure, and ready to 'vote his/her gut feeling', those strong fears tied to one candidate can make a difference. And the election may well be decided by exactly such 'independent' and gut-feeling voters.

This is not just mud and lies, I'm convinced -- even more so when TWO such ads come out in two days. This is a carefully calibrated strategy, one driven by research on the emotional reactions of focus groups using lie-detector-like technology. Even if the focus group doesn't 'agree' with the ad, McCain/Schmidt's people have measured their non-verbal emotional reaction, and they are tuning their ads for maximum impact at that level, and don't give a flying f*** about the ads' content or truth or even muddiness.

Posted at September 10, 2008 3:26 PM in response to McCain Ad Cites Discredited Claim That Dems Sent Team to Dig Up Palin Dirt

I continue to hope that the Obama campaign planned for the onslaught of emotion-driven filth that is coming. Waiting for it to rise to nauseating levels could well be part of the plan. We'll see.

But what I see going on, really, is two profoundly different modes of campaigning. So far, even in attack mode, the Obama campaign has carefully worked issues, and tried to drive up fear of 'the same policies.' The McCain campaign, since the Rove team took over, has been exclusively about emotion. Thus, the McCain ad about sex education may sound (to Democrats) like its about an 'issue', and if you look at it this way (like various debunkers of the facts do), then it deserves to be attacked as a lie.

But I'm fairly certain that Steve Schmidt and his people carefully focus-test these ads, and pay absolutely no attention to what the focus-group responders say in their responses. That is, if people respond to a potential McCain ad by saying "I think that's not true", or even "I think that's unfair", Schmidt and McCain do not mind as long as their biometric monitors showed a strong fear/flight/disgust reaction as the focus-group viewers watched.

In this light, it seems plausible that the key to the latest dishonorable McCain ad is it's association with sexuality and children. These are things that evoke strong instinctive reactions in all human beings, and the point of the ad is to connect an strongly negative emotional reaction of fear/disgust -- "kids involved with sex" -- with Obama, regardless of details or facts or verbal/cognitive reactions that viewers may also have. The paydirt for McCain is to awake the instinctive fear that humans (for good historical and evolutionary reasons) have about 'alien' males attacking family, especially children.

Given the history of the United States, there is also clearly a racist dimension to the response that McCain and Schmidt hope the ad will evoke, particularly in low-information white swing voters. Naturally we all know that lynchings continued in the United States until World War II -- but it's not always stressed how often a sexual dimension was at the forefront of lynchings, both as a justification for the mob crime in the first place, but also in the form of sexual mutilation of the victims. I hate to say this, but I fear that the McCain campaign intends to evoke this kind of emotionally violent fear through their ad -- which again, links children and sexuality with a particular candidate. It's not the content of the link that matters to them, but that the link is created at all.

Now, McCain and Schmidt would obviously deny any such motivation, and will probably deny (much less plausibly) that they're going for fear reactions, not content, in their advertisements. Even if they copped to the latter charge, they might claim, we just ran the ad that triggered a strong reaction of the kind we're looking for, and we had no idea why it happened.

Then again, if you believed their denials, I'd want you to contact me immediately about some wonderful swampland I'd like to sell you.

Posted at September 10, 2008 12:35 PM in response to Obama has timed this perfectly

Ambinder names a few big progressive 527s -- but where would a donation be most effective and put to use most quickly, I wonder?

Anyone who knows this world should offer some guidance!

Posted at September 9, 2008 7:15 PM in response to New McCain Ad Falsely Suggests Obama Wants Kids To Learn "About Sex Before Learning To Read"

I hope no one is even a little surprised. What does anyone think it meant when McCain fired his previous staff and brought on Rove's proteges and imitators?

It will get worse...much worse. Count on it. I just hope that the Obama campaign has been counting on it, and has a strategy and tactics ready to go.

Posted at September 9, 2008 7:13 PM in response to New McCain Ad Falsely Suggests Obama Wants Kids To Learn "About Sex Before Learning To Read"

I noticed a quotation of McCain's friend Robert Woods Johnson IV (of the Johnson and Johnson Johnsons), who insisted that John is a great guy. From the New York Times:

'Mr. Johnson plays down the access he has, saying he is no different from anyone else.

“You can call the senator, too,” Mr. Johnson said.'

Fits right in with your argument: some can call the Senator. Others call a community organizer!

Posted at September 5, 2008 4:44 PM in response to The Need for Community Organizers: Not Everyone Can Afford to Buy Politicians