Dissecting The Lizard Brain

Two researchers have run the data on Jimmy Carter's contention that race is playing a role in the anger over health care. It's bookmark-worthy:

Our research favors Carter's interpretation and adds some hard data to the debate. In fact, the partisan divide today is even more troubling than if it was driven by race alone.

Americans' views of political issues and their partisan attachments are being increasingly shaped by gut-level worldviews. On one side of many issues are those who see the world in terms of hierarchy, think about problems in black and white terms, and struggle to tolerate difference. On the other are those who favor independence over hierarchy, shades of gray over black-white distinctions, and diversity over sameness.

We call this dividing line an authoritarian one, and we find that what side of the line people fall on explains their positions on a wide ranging set of issues, including race, immigration, gay rights, civil liberties, and terrorism. This is because what lies behind these preferences is a larger difference in worldview, where people understand reality in starkly different ways. This, in turn, leads to rancorous and irreconcilable-seeming political conflicts.

As evidence of the link between health care and racial attitudes, we analyzed survey data gathered in late 2008. The survey asked people whether they favored a government run health insurance plan, a system like we have now, or something in between. It also asked four questions about how people feel about blacks.

Taken together the four items form a measure of what scholars call racial resentment. We find an extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform.

Among whites with above average racial resentment, only 19 percent favored fundamental health care reforms and 57 percent favored the present system. Among those who have below average racial resentment, more than twice as many (45 percent) favored government run health care and less than half as many (25 percent) favored the status quo.

No such relationship between racial attitudes and opinions on health care existed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton effort.

I would say that in general, opposition to any social insurance program for the less fortunate meets head-on with racial animus. Whether the presumed leader of this policy shift is white or black, a substantial portion of those with racial resentment pictures that leader as delivering their tax dollars to the undeserving other, which can be pictured in their minds as a black family, a Hispanic immigrant family, or really anyone who doesn't share the same features. It's no accident that opposition to Obama is clustered in the South, given such a reading.

What these professors are really probing is the lizard brain, the tribal identifiers that often bubble to the surface, in unguarded moments, as racism. It's almost too neat and simple to simply call it racial in intent. It goes much deeper to a visceral resentment, a put-upon persecution complex, this constant paranoia that someone else is getting a better deal, and that such inequity can form the basis of all the nation's problems. It's purely an emotional release to explain whatever personal failings or lack of compassion already exists. That this frequently codes racially is a symptom of the relationship between race and class, as well as the other longtime signifiers of identity that have been hard-wired into our brains for centuries.

I found this via DougJ last week, and it really summed up a lot of what I think animates modern conservatism, and it's not particularly or singularly racial:

“Those who have known him [Cheney] over the years remain astounded by what they describe as his almost autistic indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others. ‘He has the least interest in human beings of anyone I have ever met,’ says John Perry Barlow, his former supporter. Cheney’s freshman-year roommate, Steve Billings, agrees: ‘If I could ask Dick one question, I’d ask him how he could be so unempathetic.’”

There's an almost studied uncaring. And of course, Randian teaching gave those predisposed to uncaring a way to order their lack of compassion intellectually, to create virtue in selfishness and convince themselves that the less privileged are better off receiving no help from them. This anecdote from Rand (nee Alissa Rosenbaum)'s early life is fascinating and instructive:

Anne C. Heller, in her skillful life of Rand, traces the roots of Rand's philosophy to an even earlier age. (Heller paints a more detailed and engaging portrait of Rand's interior life, while Burns more thoroughly analyzes her ideas.) Around the age of five, Alissa Rosenbaum's mother instructed her to put away some of her toys for a year. She offered up her favorite possessions, thinking of the joy that she would feel when she got them back after a long wait. When the year had passed, she asked her mother for the toys, only to be told she had given them away to an orphanage. Heller remarks that "this may have been Rand's first encounter with injustice masquerading as what she would later acidly call ‘altruism.’ " (The anti-government activist Grover Norquist has told a similar story from childhood, in which his father would steal bites of his ice cream cone, labelling each bite "sales tax" or "income tax." The psychological link between a certain form of childhood deprivation and extreme libertarianism awaits serious study.)

These children grew up to want to maintain that state of retarded adolescence, of a belief only in their own self-interest and greed, and Rand built a philosophy around it so they could justify their inhumanity and relieve the burden of their own consciences. They flipped morality on its head and built statues to the virtuous capitalist, and a drive for permanent growth that benefits only himself which is seen in this inverted pyramid as a glory to all mankind. In short, they have no compassion because they are told they have no need for it. It is a philosophy that served masters. And if taken to extremes, it can become profoundly sociopathic, as the desires of the individual trump social norms or conventions.

Is that racial in nature? It's certainly an argument that benefits the super-wealthy by relieving their guilt, makes it moral to hoard wealth and provides an element of superiority for anyone in the ruling class. That's definitely tribal. And class and race have become profoundly mixed in this culture. The teabaggers eat up Randian thought because they can easily justify their selfishness and identify a group with which they can hold some level of superiority. There's a comfort in a common enemy, in a tribal clustering against the other, armed with a philosophy that you can wield as armor to protect yourself from feeling any human emotion about that other's suffering. They may be the dreaded "populists" who Rand and her ilk would bar the door to the mansion to keep out in the rain; but they can internalize both halves of this at once, especially when they share the same enemies.

These thoughts have taken decades if not hundreds of years to wind through the American lizard brain. It will take perhaps as much time to wind them out. If race is what makes wingers uncomfortable with their own beliefs, then perhaps that's the proper line of attack. But it's much deeper than that.

Someone Fax This To Congress

Yet another poll shows overwhelming support for a government-run option to compete with health insurance companies.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector [...]

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized health coverage and lead to the rationing of care.

But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support a public plan, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats.

The whole poll is here.

There remains the dichotomy of a high number of folks (77%) describing themselves as satisfied with their own health care. But given the overlap, considering that "85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt," clearly people will support a policy they believe to work for them and not for CEOs. Most important, we are starting to see the end of the Randian virtue of selfishness:

In a follow-up interview, Matt Flurkey, 56, a public plan supporter from Plymouth, Minn., said he could accept that the quality of his care might diminish if coverage was universal. “Even though it might not be quite as good as what we get now,” he said, “I think the government should run health care. Far too many people are being denied now, and costs would be lower.”

Obama needs to reassure people that their care would not suffer and is in fact already insufferable. But even if he cannot, over 70% of Americans, and you can barely find 70% to agree on the color of the sky, support government involvement in the health care system.

Health care is maddeningly complex, and defenders of the status quo exploit that complexity to spin out all kinds of theories about what this plan or that plan would actually do. It seems that the goal should be to stress how the status quo is irretrievably broken for far too many people, businesses and the government, and that as a matter of basic morality, we should offer everyone the access and opportunity to quality health care without exception. Clearly the public will be receptive.

Another point. In most people's minds, a 70-20 issue on which even Republicans offer plurality support would be among the easiest for swing-state Democratic Senators to get behind. But for some reason, that only works if the issue falls within the elite consensus. Anything remotely progressive, and the polls suddenly no longer matter.

Brooksley Born And The Financial-Political Complex

I almost missed this one yesterday, but the WaPo had a profile of Brooksley Born, the lawyer who, while the Clinton Administration's Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, foresaw the coming crisis in unregulated derivatives, including credit default swaps, and staged an ultimately futile campaign to rein them in. Within this article are some of the most fascinating and unbelievable quotes from the men who led our financial efforts then - and some who continue to do so now.

You expect a house organ like the Wall Street Journal to respond to Born's concern over derivatives by saying, "the nation's top financial regulators wish Brooksley Born would just shut up." But this line just absolutely floored me:

Born's baptism as a new agency head in 1996 came in the form of an invitation. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan -- routinely hailed as a "genius," the "maestro," the "Oracle" -- wanted her to come over for lunch.

Greenspan had an unusual take on market fraud, Born recounted: "He explained there wasn't a need for a law against fraud because if a floor broker was committing fraud, the customer would figure it out and stop doing business with him."

This is the Randian mindset of the perfection of the market that has caused so much pain for so many millions of people. Greenspan either was literally so in thrall to the Masters of the Universe and his perfect little system that he found greed written out of the program, or so clever that he used transparently idiotic theories to simply allow legalized theft. Either way, everyone should know that this is the philosophy under which the United States, and really the world, financial system operated for three decades, directly from the mouth of its most powerful practitioner. Andrea Mitchell should resign in shame.

Sadly, however, it doesn't stop there.

That was just the beginning. By early 1998, Born had also tangled with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his deputy, Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission head Arthur Levitt, not to mention members of Congress, financial industry heavyweights and business columnists. She wanted to release a "concept paper" -- essentially a set of questions -- that explored whether there should be regulation of over-the-counter derivatives. (Derivatives are so-named because they derive their value from something else, such as currency or bond rates.)

They warned that if she did so, the market would implode and predicted tidal waves of lawsuits. On top of that, Rubin told her, she didn't have legal authority to regulate the derivatives anyway [...]

In early 1998, Born's plan to release her concept paper was turning into a showdown. Financial industry executives howled, streaming into her office to try to talk her out of it. Summers, then the deputy Treasury secretary, mounted a campaign against it, CFTC officials recalled.

"Larry Summers expressed himself several times, very strongly, that this was something we should back down from," Waldman recalled.

In one call, Summers said, "I have 13 bankers in my office and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II," recounted Greenberger, a University of Maryland law school professor who was Born's director of the Division of Trading and Markets. Summers declined to comment for this article.

The discordant notes crescendoed in April 1998 during a tension-filled meeting of the President's Working Group, a gathering of top financial regulators that periodically met behind closed doors at the Treasury Department. At that meeting, Greenspan and Rubin forcefully opposed Born's plans, Waldman said.

"Greenspan was saying we shouldn't do it," Waldman recalled. "Rubin was saying we couldn't do it."

The rest of it reads like a Hollywood potboiler, with Born trying to outmaneuver her more powerful counterparts, ultimately falling short even after being partially vindicated by the failure of Long Term Capital Management, and finally resigning. We're living with the consequences.

But surely you recognize some of the Democratic named involved in shutting Born down. Now let that color your impressions of this report (subs. req.):

Some banks are prodding the government to let them use public money to help buy troubled assets from the banks themselves.

Banking trade groups are lobbying the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for permission to bid on the same assets that the banks would put up for sale as part of the government's Public Private Investment Program.

The lobbying push is aimed at the Legacy Loans Program, which will use about half of the government's overall PPIP infusion to facilitate the sale of whole loans such as residential and commercial mortgages [...]

Some critics see the proposal as an example of banks trying to profit through financial engineering at taxpayer expense, because the government would subsidize the asset purchases.

Surely, Larry Summers would follow the refrain of the Maestro, that there couldn't possibly be any fraud because the customer would figure it out and stop doing the business. Of course, in this case, the "customer" and the vendor are... the same people.

James Kwak has more on this plan, which I pretty much expected (what's to stop the banks from using shell companies to buy up their own assets at the right price, with government guarantees, even if the Feds break precedent and reject this?). Kwak has a good short version of this: "It allows a bank to sell half of its toxic loans to Treasury – at a price set by the bank."

And he wants Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair to reject this. But the experience of Brooksley Born suggests that the problem with the incestuous political-financial complex is one of mindset. They view the goals of the banksters as superior to the goals of the country, or at best relatively aligned. And thus, regulating those complex financial instruments, or blocking clear giveaways of public money, somehow equals hurting the greater economy. Whether through dime-store philosophy or simply looking out for the interests of the wealthy - and themselves - we've become completely subservient to oligarchs who clearly value their success over that of the country. Which is fine for them - but there's nobody advocating for the greater public, warning of the dangers of runaway capitalism, arguing for a return to the core mission of finance, to smoothly flow capital to those who need it, rather than the Wild West show we still see today. In other words, there are no more Brooksley Borns. And even if there were, the system is so rotted that not even someone of her talent and determination can get the message through. Despite the worst financial crisis since the Depression.

But never mind, because we have "green shoots."

Here's the coda to the Born article, by the way:

Born keeps informed, but she has other concerns, bird-watching jaunts and trips to Antarctica to plan, mystery novels to read, four grandchildren to dote on. "I'm very happily retired," she says. "I've really enjoyed getting older. You don't have ambition. You know who you are."

Duly Noted

Ron Paul's son, who is considering a Senate run in Kentucky, is named Rand.

CA-48: Could Beth Krom Beat John Galt?

Last week, OC Progressive (which has really attracted a good group of writers and provided a vital progressive voice in Orange County) revealed that Beth Krom, an Irvine City Councilwoman, is considering a run against Rep. John Campbell. In a subsequent post, Joe Shaw explained why Krom would make a worthy challenger.

She can win elections.
Beth Krom has won five campaigns, In 2006, she garnered 60% of the vote in her re-election as Mayor and in 2008, won her current City Council seat with 8000 votes more than the next candidate.

She gets things done.
We need elected officials who have experience getting things done for their constituents. Beth Krom is a strong advocate for environmental stewardship. Her vote was instrumental in cleaning up the water along the Orange County coast: she was the first "inland" representative to advocate for full secondary treatment of the effluent the OC Sanitation District pumped out into the ocean and was the "swing vote" in getting the board to fund implementation.

She's a visionary.
Beth Krom understands that Orange County needs leadership that will advance innovative, integrated transit solutions, sustainable development practices and green technology and jobs initiatives.

She can work across party lines.
Beth Krom has the respect of so many people throughout Orange County because she works with people, regardless of political affiliation, to get things done.

Irvine is one of America's best run cities.
What other Orange County elected, at the local, state or federal level, can lay claim to the legacy of forward-thinking leadership that Beth Krom has provided in the City of Irvine? "Safest City in America" four years straight; a balanced budget and more than tripling city reserves during her term as Mayor, and advancing a project of regional importance - the Orange County Great Park.

I'm a little gun-shy to out and out predict victory in these California Congressional races. We are know that they are tough slogs, and were disappointed by the performance of many promising candidates last cycle. Nonetheless, we cannot leave these red areas behind, and there's no question that the threat of candidates like Bill Durston and Debbie Cook forced the national GOP to spend money where they didn't want to spend it, leading to other losses around the country. Everything is connected, and thus solid candidates should continue to be recruited everywhere.

What's more, President Obama actually beat John McCain in CA-48, despite the district's Republican tilt. And, far from distinguishing himself, Campbell has most recently looked to Ayn Rand novels for inspiration in setting public policy:

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” told me today that the response to President Obama’s economic policies reminded him of what happened in the 51-year-old novel.

“People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” said Campbell. “The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them.”

It would be a terrible thing if the titans of industry that have burned through trillions of dollars in American wealth were to pull back and not be so ambitious, wouldn't it? And it's certainly a rational reaction, to forcibly crumble what's left of the American economy due to an increase of 4 cents in the top marginal tax rates. Even more certainly, there's no question that it would turn out just like the fictional novel - that every high-earner would leave their job and nobody would pick up the slack. Conservatives are nothing if not selfless. And daring, rational men who live by their minds.

This guy is obviously a buffoon, but we know that is sadly not enough in these districts. And repeat candidates, who have built up their name ID and volunteer base, always have a better shot. If I were to forecast the early prospects for a flipped seat in California right now, I would go:

CA-44: Bill Hedrick is already announced as a candidate, and he lost by just 2.6% to Ken Calvert last time.
CA-03: The trendlines in the district are favorable, but it's unclear if Bill Durston will make a third try.

And then, pretty much, nothing, until there's clarity about who's running. Charlie Brown writing an op-ed in the Auburn Journal trashing Tom McClintock suggests he might try again in CA-04, but I'm not sure. Given the current state of affairs, I'd say CA-48 isn't looking too badly, though it's early.

The Sadness Of Alan Greenspan

Today our ex-Master of the Universe had his "nobody could have anticipated" moment.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan called today for imposing some of the same sorts of regulations on mortgage securities he resisted when he was in office, acknowledging that the current financial crisis had exposed "a flaw" in his view of how the world and markets function.

The absence of significant controls on how mortgages are repackaged into larger and more complex securities has been cited as a central cause of the current financial crisis.

In testimony before the House Government Oversight Committee, Greenspan said that as a result of the current situation the United States is heading for a "significant rise in layoffs and unemployment" and a continued downturn in home values as the world works through a crisis that is "broader than anything I could have imagined."

Greenspan, who called the current financial crisis a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami," said that he remained "in a state of shocked disbelief" that banks and investment firms did not do a better job of analyzing the risks involved with investing in home mortgages extended to less creditworthy borrowers.

Under questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman, Greenspan acknowledged that the failure of that expected self-regulation represented "a flaw in the model" he used to analyze economics. "I was going for 40 years or more on the perception that it was working well."

Here's that key moment.



Is he really this stupid? He predicated his entire economic philosophy on the premise that greedy people wouldn't act greedily? This free market fundamentalism might work in computer simulation, but in the business world you pretty much have people who want to get ridiculously rich as a matter of projecting power. Also, to suggest that Greenspan had just nothing to do with hyping adjustable rate mortgages and deregulation is absurd. This is his problem and he ought to be slow roasted for it.

If men were angels, no laws would be necessary, to borrow a phrase. But regulation exists for creeps like this:

CONVERSATION OF THE DAY....Between Rahul Dilip Shah and Shannon Mooney, a pair of analysts at the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's, chatting via IM back in 2007:

RDS: btw: that deal is ridiculous

SM: I know right ... model def does not capture half of the risk

RDS: we should not be rating it

SM: we rate every deal

SM: it could be structured by cows and we would rate it

I actually don't think Greenspan is this dumb, he just wanted to let the party keep going until he retired or died so he wouldn't have to be pinned with the blame. Tough break, Alan.

Digby is great on this.

Being able to pass on all your risk to someone else while personally coming out on top is a pretty glaring and obvious flaw in the system unless you think that wealthy people are too wise and moral to ever do such a thing. The only people who believe that are Randians and Joe the Plumber. Everybody on Wall Street certainly seemed to know the score and acted accordingly [...]

Uncle Alan is in his 80s and he's just learned that his heroes aren't what he thought they were after all. No wonder he's in a state of "shocked disbelief." It's a wonder he didn't keel over.

I know people are focused on Hank Paulson and what a poor job he's doing, but focus some attention back on this Randian fool Alan Greenspan. He deserves to have his entire reputation destroyed.