[y66]

Heather Cox Richardson said:

Today, the GAO reported that actions of the Trump administration had undermined U.S. goals in the Northern Triangle countries that are currently driving immigration to the southern border. Since 2008, the U.S. has funded development projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to promote economic development, provide security, and combat corruption. This investment was designed, in part, to slow the movement of immigrants escaping the violence and economic dislocation of the region to the U.S. border.

In March 2019, the Trump administration abruptly halted promised money, and that freeze continued until June 2020. Today’s GAO report documented how that suspension hurt 92 of the 114 projects underway under the control of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and 65 of the 168 projects operating under the State Department.

Migration to the border soared, right before the 2020 election.

[kenberg]

"undermined U.S. goals in the Northern Triangle "


These goals are? If there is a clear articulation of our goals in the Northern Triangle, I am unaware of it. I am speaking of "US goals", I realize various individuals have asserted goals.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2021-October-26, 06:20, said:

"undermined U.S. goals in the Northern Triangle "


These goals are? If there is a clear articulation of our goals in the Northern Triangle, I am unaware of it. I am speaking of "US goals", I realize various individuals have asserted goals.

My reading is there are three goals stated in the article: economic development, improved security, and less corruption.

[y66]

From Northern Triangle of Central America: The 2019 Suspension and Reprogramming of U.S. Funding Adversely Affected Assistance Projects GAO-21-104366:

Quote

Why GAO Did This Study

The U.S. has funded assistance to the Northern Triangle of Central America for many years. This assistance aims to promote prosperity, good governance, and security in the region; to address the causes of migration; and to combat transnational crime. In March 2019, the administration suspended foreign assistance funding from the Northern Triangle countries until the governments in the region agreed to take actions to reduce the number of migrants coming to the U.S. border.

GAO was asked to review the effects of the 2019 suspension and reprogramming of assistance funding to the Northern Triangle. This report (1) identifies the funding appropriated by Congress for the Northern Triangle that was suspended and reprogrammed to other countries, and how the approach to U.S. assistance to the region changed after March 2019; (2) examines the effects of suspending and reprogramming assistance funding on project implementation; and (3) examines the extent to which the suspension and reprogramming of assistance funding affected the ability of U.S. agencies to meet their foreign assistance performance targets for the region.

GAO analyzed agency funding data and performance and monitoring reports, surveyed agency project managers, and interviewed agency officials as well as selected implementing partners in the U.S. and in the Northern Triangle countries.

Quote

What GAO Found

Starting in March 2019, the Trump administration suspended most new foreign assistance funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—the “Northern Triangle” of Central America—for up to 14 months and reprogrammed approximately $396 million (85 percent) of fiscal year 2018 funding to other countries. In June 2020, the administration ended the suspension of assistance funding. After the end of the suspension, USAID adjusted its assistance portfolio to implement projects that focused on deterring migration and designed new indicators to assess the relationship between its assistance projects and migration from the region. Officials from State and USAID said their overall assistance approach of promoting prosperity, good governance, and security remained the same after the suspension.

Although some previously funded projects continued operating as planned, the 2019 suspension and reprogramming of assistance funding adversely affected 92 of USAID's 114 projects and 65 of State's 168 projects. Both USAID and State reported that commonly experienced adverse effects on project implementation were delays from planned timeframes and decreased frequency, quality, or types of services provided to beneficiaries (see figure).

USAID and State/INL Northern Triangle Projects Reporting One or More Adverse Effects Due to the 2019 Suspension and Reprogramming of Assistance Funding



USAID and State reported missing some of their performance targets due to the 2019 suspension and reprogramming of assistance funding. For example, USAID reported missing 19 percent (35 of 182) of its targets in fiscal year 2019, while State reported missing 30 percent (three of 10).

Quote

Map of Central America with the Northern Triangle Countries

[kenberg]

General thought: The country is in a mess. I think the best way forward is to be as clear as possible about goals and intentions.

1. I think one US goal with regard to immigration is to reduce the flood of people coming over the border. No doubt there are other goals, but what are they?

2. Education: Of course it is desirable for people to get a good education. It helps everyone. But more detail would be useful. I recently posted some stuff from the Seattle area about ethnomathematics that concerned me. Possibly my concern was premature, it seems to have affected the actual courses not at all.

3. Defund the police. Yes, this is old hat by now. But it was a big slogan for a while. Some of us did not like that, we think police are important. The response to our concern was that of course "defund the police" did not mean that we should, well, defund the police. A better slogan could have avoided a lot of arguments. Here in Maryland our Republican governor, Larry Hogan, has decided that police need more funding. He refers to this as "re-fund the police". I voted for him.

About fifty years ago, in my early thirties, I finally figured out that I should try to be as clear as possible. This is more important than winning an argument. People might agree or disagree with me, but at least we would know what we were agreeing or disagreeing about. I realize I am not always successful, but I think clarity should be the goal.

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:

Time for another roundup on the Democrats’ two-bill strategy for advancing their agenda. Nothing is certain, but it sure looks like they’re going to agree on a deal and then pass both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a pared back version of their “Build Back Better” plan.

Republicans think that the Democrats have been trying to get everything they want despite barely winning majorities in Congress; Democrats have argued that their majorities were dampened by gerrymandered House district lines and a Senate that empowers voters in rural areas at the expense of those in cities. The outcome, if it reflects current press reports, isn’t an awful compromise between the two sides. Score one for U.S.-style democracy, which values both majority and minority preferences.

On the other hand? The specifics matter, too. The compromise will wind up highly influenced by the happenstance that the 50th vote belongs to Senator Joe Manchin, who (for instance) does not favor some of the climate provisions Democrats want to enact. It will also presumably reflect some of the idiosyncratic preferences of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, again simply because of the effects of cumulative election results and the context they created. It’s a lot harder to find the republican values represented by those outcomes.

By the way: The filibuster was largely irrelevant to these bills. The reconciliation process is allowing Democrats to pass the second bill on a strict party-line vote, the same thing they might’ve done had there been no filibuster. That procedure does limit what can be included in the bill, and it’s possible that it will eventually have some important effects, but so far the only substantive thing stripped from the proposal is an effort at immigration reform. Indeed, that limitation might’ve saved the bill; it’s not clear that ambitious immigration proposals had the needed 50 votes, and many liberal Democrats would’ve been reluctant to drop the topic from the bill. As it happens, they had no choice, and accepted that they’d have to wait for another opportunity.

Purely on policy grounds, it appears that Republicans are going to take a big loss, just as they did in 2009-2010 with the Affordable Care Act. In some ways, that’s simply the consequence of the elections. And while they could’ve sought to cut a larger deal, allowing President Joe Biden and the Democrats to claim a more bipartisan victory in exchange for less significant policy change, it’s not clear what was available to them. In any event, I’m not sure that such a deal would’ve had much effect on the 2022 and 2024 elections. Compromise would still have entailed months of contentious arguing over details. And Biden’s approval slump doesn’t seem to have much to do with the status of such legislation. It’s at least as likely that the pandemic, the widely panned withdrawal from Afghanistan, the economy, and other factors are what’s affecting his popularity.

Of course, the whole thing could still fall apart. But if the bills do pass, don’t expect it to do anything magic for Biden in the polls or for Democrats in the midterms. There’s just not much evidence that voters grade incumbent presidents and parties on how productive they are. The real questions are whether Democrats are correct that the new policies they’re trying to enact will, like Obamacare, become sticky and difficult to repeal in the future — and whether they turn out to be successful or not.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2021-October-26, 08:26, said:

General thought: The country is in a mess. I think the best way forward is to be as clear as possible about goals and intentions.

1. I think one US goal with regard to immigration is to reduce the flood of people coming over the border. No doubt there are other goals, but what are they?

2. Education: Of course it is desirable for people to get a good education. It helps everyone. But more detail would be useful. I recently posted some stuff from the Seattle area about ethnomathematics that concerned me. Possibly my concern was premature, it seems to have affected the actual courses not at all.

3. Defund the police. Yes, this is old hat by now. But it was a big slogan for a while. Some of us did not like that, we think police are important. The response to our concern was that of course "defund the police" did not mean that we should, well, defund the police. A better slogan could have avoided a lot of arguments. Here in Maryland our Republican governor, Larry Hogan, has decided that police need more funding. He refers to this as "re-fund the police". I voted for him.

About fifty years ago, in my early thirties, I finally figured out that I should try to be as clear as possible. This is more important than winning an argument. People might agree or disagree with me, but at least we would know what we were agreeing or disagreeing about. I realize I am not always successful, but I think clarity should be the goal.

In regard to #1, I think this problem is so low on the pole of totem as to be buried six feet under the surface. Is it a problem - some. Is it our main problem. Not even in the realm of discussion.

There is only one problem worth talking about and that is that roughly half the U.S. population is fine with eliminating Western (AKA liberal) democracy and is actively engaged in doing so in the United States. Everything else is unimportant compared to that threat.

[awm]

 Winstonm, on 2021-October-26, 13:25, said:

In regard to #1, I think this problem is so low on the pole of totem as to be buried six feet under the surface. Is it a problem - some. Is it our main problem. Not even in the realm of discussion.

There is only one problem worth talking about and that is that roughly half the U.S. population is fine with eliminating Western AKA liberal) democracy and is actively engaged in doing so in the United States. Everything else is unimportant compared to that threat.

If the world becomes basically uninhabitable in a few decades, it will not much matter whether the US is a democracy or not. So I’d say climate change is the number one priority. Doesn’t seem like Joe Manchin agrees with me though.

[Winstonm]

 awm, on 2021-October-26, 14:33, said:

If the world becomes basically uninhabitable in a few decades, it will not much matter whether the US is a democracy or not. So I'd say climate change is the number one priority. Doesn't seem like Joe Manchin agrees with me though.

You make a valid point.

On a (somewhat) related point, it was discovered that some of the heating was being trapped by the deep oceans, I wondered then (and still do) if it were possible for the oceans to erupt in a Lake Nyos fashion and eliminate most life on earth.

[Chas_P]

 kenberg, on 2021-October-24, 19:03, said:

. I have more feeling for poetry now than I did when I was 16, but still I mostly ignore it.

See how you feel about this. It is a lyric poem, no rhyme, no meter, but beautiful English. I read it often and recommend it.


Desiderata


Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann c1920

[Chas_P]

I also like this; not poetic, but beautiful.

Executive Mansion
Washington, DC
November 21, 1864

To Mrs. Bixby
Boston, Massachusetts

Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic that they died to save. I pray that the Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln


This letter of the “rail splitter” President hangs on the wall of Brasenose College at Oxford as an example of purest English rarely, if ever, surpassed.

[kenberg]

No, it's different with me. I would have trouble telling you which paintings I saw in the gallery, and I would probably have to go under hypnosis to bring to mind poetry that I have liked. It's transitory. Ok, Sunflower Sutra is one I liked. My daughter suggested that I might like the novel The Nix. I did like it, and the poem plays a role in the story. And that probably played a role in my liking it. I had never heard of it before.

My likes are seriously random. You won't find the hidden me lurking in my choices.

[Gilithin]

 Chas_P, on 2021-October-26, 18:23, said:

I also like this; not poetic, but beautiful.

A short masterpiece written by John Hay.

A more modern classic: "He knew what he signed up for, but when it happens, it hurts anyway." Or you can just send a cheque for $25000 - nothing says compassion like cash. But I think the true modern classic of condolence messages has to be this blog post, written about the mother 4 days after the death of her 16 year old son. Even more than money, the highest level of condolence possible from a man to a grieving woman is surely "I wanted to f*** you." We can surely all agree on this point regardless of our political stripes.

[y66]

Heather Cox Richardson said:

Hungary is in the news in the United States because Americans on the right have long admired Orbán’s nationalism and centering of Christianity, while the fact that Hungary continues to hold elections enables them to pretend that the country remains a democracy.

In 2019, Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson endorsed Hungary’s anti-abortion and anti-immigration policies; in that year, according to investigative researcher Anna Massoglia of Open Secrets, Hungary paid a D.C. lobbying firm $265,000, in part to arrange an interview on Carlson’s show. Recently, former vice president Mike Pence spoke in Budapest at a forum denouncing immigration and urging traditional social values, where he told the audience he hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would soon outlaw abortion thanks to the three justices Trump put on the court. Further indicating the drift of today’s right wing, the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will be held in Budapest.

In their embrace of the illiberal democracy of Hungary, those on the right argue that they are defending traditional American values.

Like Orbán, they focus relentlessly on immigration; “caravans” of immigrants have once again made the right-wing news, as they always do before an election. They worry that traditional families are under attack, hence Texas’s S.B. 8, which outlaws the constitutional right of abortion by empowering vigilantes. They insist that “real” America is being destroyed by multiculturalism; hence the hysteria over Critical Race Theory, an obscure legal theory from the 1970s that is not taught in K–12 schools, and the calls for “patriotic education.”

And, crucially, those on the right are openly embracing voter restrictions and the replacement of nonpartisan election officials with partisans.

Astonishingly, John Eastman, the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and a member of the powerful Federalist Society, wrote a six-point plan for overturning the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Although he went to the reputable National Review to cover his tracks by saying his plan was just a thought experiment, just tonight a video appeared in which he told an apparent supporter that his ideas were right, and that it was Pence’s establishment biases that made him unwilling to implement them. His plan to overturn the election barely failed.

The 33 new election laws in 19 states will not fail. They are designed to replace the idea of democracy with a hierarchy in which a minority will determine our fate.

If it seems odd that a group of people who claim to be trying to “Make America Great Again” are taking their cues from a central European country of about 10 million people, it is worth noting that they are not simply talking about Critical Race Theory or Texas’s so-called heartbeat bill. We are in a larger struggle over the nature of human governments. And when American thinkers are praising Hungary, they are tapping into a long history of our own.

When the Founders declared it “self-evident, that all men are created equal,” they were making a bold declaration about the nature of governments that flew in the face of western tradition and thought. They denied that some individuals were better than others and had an inherent right to rule the rest. Governments, the Founders said, derived legitimacy not from religion, or heritage, but instead were legitimate only to the degree that those who lived under them consented to them. “[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the Founders said.

This was a revolutionary argument. It rejected not just King George III, but all kings, claiming for the people the right to rule themselves. For all its limitations—the Founders could conceive of this idea in part because they excluded from their vision women, Black people, and all people of color—it was an astonishing declaration.

And yet, the idea that all men are created equal and that governments derive legitimacy from the consent of the governed began to fall apart in the late 1820s. Southern Democrats wanted to take control of Indigenous peoples’ lands in the Southeast in order to spread the wildly lucrative system of plantation agriculture. Then, when they had displaced the tribes, they spread across those lands their economic system based on human enslavement.

But because southern leaders were outnumbered by Americans in the North who objected to their economic system, within a decade they were arguing that true democracy meant not that government depended upon the consent of the governed as a whole, but rather that local or state governments could choose how everyone, including enslaved people, women, Indigenous, and Mexican people, would live. And, of course, they limited voting to a few white men, who voted to keep themselves in power.

In 1860, southern white elites declared the American concept of democracy based in equality, government based in the consent of the people, to be obsolete. They declared they were going to start a new country, based in a hierarchy of gender and race, that they believed reflected God’s will.

In a speech in March 1861, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who would soon be the vice president of the Confederate States of America, explained to an audience that Jefferson’s belief that all men are created equal was ​​“an error” and that anyone who still adhered to that idea was an insane “fanatic.” Stephens told listeners: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

And there it was: the replacement of the idea that all people are created equal with the idea that some people are better than others, and that those people, who truly understand God’s laws, should rule.

It is not an accident that the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021, carried the Confederate battle flag.

We are today in a struggle no less dangerous to our democracy than that of the 1860s, for all that it is fought with Facebook memes and cable television rather than artillery. And when our leaders talk fondly about Viktor Orbán, or Jair Bolsonaro— former president Trump endorsed his reelection today—we would do well to listen.

[pilowsky]

Where does all of this immigrant=evil come from?

It is embedded in religious culture and goes back in history as far as you care to look.

If a person is prepared to accept the existence of a fictional figure - for which there is less evidence than the tooth fairy or Santa Claus (at least there was a tangible artefact suggesting their existence) - then it is a short step to believe that the fictional figure that you believe in also holds that you are special and more worthy in some way.

This 'specialness' is described in many ways - purity of the blood by the Nazis.
If the divine order holds that some are better than others, it is a short step to argue that "the others" are not equally human. Four legs good, two legs bad. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Shylock might bleed if you cut him, but pure blood.

The failure to understand that if you "touch one you touch all" is at the root of the failure to address problems such as climate change.

[y66]

Larry Summers said:

I hope this measure is included in the ultimate bill. It will promote fairness and efficiency and by pushing tax and corporate reporting together will promote honesty in both.

Quote

Senators offer updated plan to impose minimum levies on profitable corporations; key moderate Kyrsten Sinema endorses proposal

Corporate Minimum Tax Resurfaces as Democrats Hunt for Money

[Chas_P]

 Gilithin, on 2021-October-26, 20:05, said:

A short masterpiece written by John Hay.

A more modern classic: "He knew what he signed up for, but when it happens, it hurts anyway." Or you can just send a cheque for $25000 - nothing says compassion like cash. But I think the true modern classic of condolence messages has to be this blog post, written about the mother 4 days after the death of her 16 year old son. Even more than money, the highest level of condolence possible from a man to a grieving woman is surely "I wanted to f*** you." We can surely all agree on this point regardless of our political stripes.

Interesting, but somehow the relevance to poetry escapes me.

[y66]

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

https://messaging-cu...896ed87b2d9c72a

I recently asked researchers at Gallup whether they could put together a portrait of public opinion on abortion in Texas. To do so with a large enough sample size, they combined multiple Gallup surveys from the past decade. (That would be a problem on an issue with changing opinions, like marijuana legalization or same-sex marriage, but it’s not a problem with abortion.)

The results are fascinating.

Quote

If the Supreme Court guts Roe — which guaranteed widespread abortion access in the first trimester — the country’s laws would become even more polarized. Some red states would likely outlaw almost all abortions, while some blue states would have few restrictions.

That situation might seem as if it would match public opinion, but it wouldn’t. Even in many red states, most voters favor meaningful access to abortion. Even in many blue states, most voters favor meaningful restrictions. In a post-Roe environment, the American public would still be in the “mushy middle,” but relatively few state laws might be.

Quote

Is there any place with a legal framework that more closely matches Americans’ complicated views on abortion? There is: Europe.

“Most of its nations offer broad access to abortions before 12 weeks or so, and it gets harder to get one after that,” Jon Shields, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, has written for Times Opinion. Those laws, Shields argued, offered a potential template for an American compromise on the issue, balancing a woman’s right to control her body and a fetus’s right to live.

Supreme Court justices like to claim that they are simply enforcing constitutional law, but history has shown they are often influenced by public opinion. If they do so again in this case, the polling offers a different, more nuanced picture than many state laws.

[kenberg]

 pilowsky, on 2021-October-27, 02:16, said:

Where does all of this immigrant=evil come from?

It is embedded in religious culture and goes back in history as far as you care to look.

If a person is prepared to accept the existence of a fictional figure - for which there is less evidence than the tooth fairy or Santa Claus (at least there was a tangible artefact suggesting their existence) - then it is a short step to believe that the fictional figure that you believe in also holds that you are special and more worthy in some way.

This 'specialness' is described in many ways - purity of the blood by the Nazis.
If the divine order holds that some are better than others, it is a short step to argue that "the others" are not equally human. Four legs good, two legs bad. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Shylock might bleed if you cut him, but pure blood.

The failure to understand that if you "touch one you touch all" is at the root of the failure to address problems such as climate change.

It's an easy day today so I will wander a bit. The following is often quoted:

Quote

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Ok, but these are lines 34-40. Full chapter at https://www.biblegat...025&version=KJV

Let's go back a bit;

Quote

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:

4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

Ok, back to the 21st century. I believe we have a responsibility to make the world a better place. I am wary of accepting responsibility for the 7+ billion on Earth today, not to mention those yet to come. I think that both views are very common, and so any policy that seeks wide support has to take both views into account.

As always, we must seek a balance.

Btw I had never heard "if you touch one you touch all". I tried Google and got a rap song. Where is it from?

Short version: Thinking only of yourself is selfish, thinking only of others is foolish, how do we balance this?

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:

Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal says that the media is missing an “economic boom” and adds:

Somehow we're in a situation in which a record S&P 500, a rapid labor market recovery, a surge in household wealth, surging demand for consumer goods, rapid wage gains (particularly at the low end), manufacturers working non-stop is being depicted as evidence of a policy mistake.

So why the “somehow”?

For one thing, President Donald Trump and Republicans who now talk like him only know extremes. The economy, according to Trump, was terrible until Jan. 20, 2017, after which it was the greatest ever until Jan. 20, 2021, when it once again was as bad as it’s ever been. And of course Trump isn’t averse to making up statistics to support these claims, such as saying that unemployment was 20% or even 40% when in fact it was 5%.

This matters because many in the media are reluctant to adjudicate claims from politicians and will settle for describing reality as halfway between whatever the parties say it is. So as long as Republicans say that President Joe Biden’s policies are a total disaster and Democrats say they’ve been successful, reporters will tend to average that out to mediocre, or perhaps a bit worse.

But that’s before another media bias kicks in — which is that, as the old saw has it, All Economic News is Bad. That’s not literally true, but it’s not entirely off. A good example is when strong growth or employment numbers are reported as threats to the inflation rate. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; after all, incumbent parties are always talking up the economy, and it’s good to have some skepticism. But it does mean that reporters may be slow to recognize good economic news when it happens. Or that something like a supply-chain disruption is interpreted less as a side effect of strong economic growth, and more as a sign of impending doom.

I suggested this interpretation over Twitter, and received two more in return from Jonathan Chait of New York magazine. It’s certainly true, as he says, that Republican-aligned media is larger and louder than Democratic-aligned media; I’m not sure whether that has much of an effect on the “neutral” — that is, officially unaligned — press or not. Chait also suggests that Democratic presidents hesitate to claim too much credit for the economy because their strongest supporters may press them to recognize those still suffering, even when things are relatively good.

Finally, I do think the current skepticism has been heavily influenced by two sets of raised, and then unmet, expectations. One is that there were consecutive disappointing jobs reports in the past two months. They don’t point to economic catastrophe, but it’s not hard to see how they could negatively bias economic reporting. The other is the delta variant wave of the pandemic. Although the economy did not shut down, a general sense of disappointment may well have induced additional hesitation about proclaiming any good news.

Of course, the economy is hardly perfect, boom or not. Inflation is real, and it has had tangible effects even if it proves to be transitory — and there’s no guarantee of that. Supply-chain problems, worker shortages and other significant challenges are still out there. But I do think Weisenthal is correct that there’s a gap between the media’s pessimism about the economy and the objective statistics.