Chuck Brown, the legendary musician who is known as the "Godfather of Go-Go," passed away Wednesday, his daughter confirmed to ABC7's Sam Ford.

- More -

Chuck Brown in Performance

DC Celebrates the Life and Art of Chuck Brown

Adam Smith's invisible hand raises the tide. As to whether your own boat floats or is swamped by larger vessels is a combination of good luck, brains, and diligence. It's your boat and it's every boat for himself.

Mitt Romney did not screw over anyone, at least not on purpose. Just as he did not create any jobs on purpose. Destroying jobs, creating jobs, neither was Mitt Romney's aim. Jobs were not his job. Mitt's job was to create a profit, no matter who was hurt, no matter who happened to be helped along the way.

- Burr Deming, May 16, 2012

What is special about being a so-called job creator?

Republicans still sometimes elect people with little to no business experience even over others who do have it. It's clearly not an essential quality to the very people who trumpet it. In fact, most of the support for Romney has nothing to do with his business experience, but instead with getting rid of Obama. Otherwise, the likes of Perry and Santorum would never have had the lead over him.

More importantly, the label of "job creator" doesn't come with details: How were the jobs created? How long did it take? Who else deserves credit? Why were jobs created? How much money did they pay? How long did they last? Were jobs destroyed as well? Can the methods by which one created jobs be replicated today?

In any case, the only special knowledge a job creator brings to the table concerns his specific industry. Even then, a president can simply surround himself with people who are knowledgeable where he is ignorant. Romney would have to do the same.

The idea of a job creator--a sort of savior--hides a pretty important component of job creation: demand. Without it, there is no profit; without profit, there are no jobs. Therefore, insofar as I fuel demand, I am a job creator as well. It may not be my intent to create jobs with my purchases, but that is fine; it was not Romney's intent to create them either. Such benefits were incidental to his self-interested pursuit of profit.

I already miss the days when people simply said that they have business experience. Now we have to deal with the myth of the job creator, a wise, conservative hero who acts alone and without altruistic motives but expects our praise and admiration anyway.

But perhaps Romney deserves a round of applause for his work. What is the sound of one invisible hand clapping?

Ryan writes for his own site, where wisdom is intentional and applause is robust, two-handed, and deserved.

Please visit Secular Ethics.

It seems that Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA) is a tad out of the loop on matters of Middle East peace. If it were up to him, Israelis and Palestinians would restart peace talks under the guidance of their respective leaders, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat.

His advice does not seem to take into account the fact that Arafat died in 2004 and Sharon has been in a coma since 2006.

- More -

A typical Gingrich run carried a narrative augmented by worker voices but, unlike the Obama ad, had melodramatic music, a sneering narrator, and brief appearances by actors portraying menacing cigar smoking job destroyers. The Obama ad lets those workers carry the narrative. There is low key music to convey sadness, and brief shots of candidate Romney giving speeches about how joblessness just breaks his heart.

The ad by the Obama campaign is more subtle than the Republican ads of the primaries in the same sense that a chainsaw massacre would be more subtle than a thermonuclear attack. The moralism is left to the viewer. And it really doesn't take much prodding to feel for those who worked hard and lost everything.

The Romney folks have responded on a number of fronts: That Obama has done his own share of damage, that the economic recovery would have been more robust if a European style austerity had been imposed, that Obama just doesn't understand a free market.

That last is a bit of shorthand, permissible in political campaigns. A more accurate response, the long form, would not have been not as effective. Complete explanations seldom are. The economic message that Mitt Romney embraces is not complex. Most certainly the President understands it. The ad featuring workers just does not convey that understanding.

On the other hand, neither do Mitt Romney's. In his campaign for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, Governor Romney claimed to have created 10,000 jobs. He made the assertion to the point where friend and foe alike could recite it from memory. It wasn't hard, it was short, it was easy. 10,000 jobs. That's what Mitt had created. How many jobs had Kennedy created? Throw him out and elect a job creator.

At the core, the economic principle that is Romney's own is straight out of Adam Smith in the 1700s. All the graphs, all the intersecting lines as supply and demand get to an equipoise of balance, all the benefits, come from self-interest. People operate selfishly. They end up doing good, a great deal of good, so much good that all boats are raised in the resulting tide. But it is incidental to each person's motivation.

The number of jobs Mitt Romney has created tends to grow in explosive force with each new campaign season. Mitt Romney has not been in the business of business since the anti-Kennedy days. But those 10,000 jobs have become a claim of 100,000 jobs in the campaign for President. A ten fold increase with no effort, in fact without a glance.

The exact number is a myth, such results being hard to measure. The deeper truth is that is exactly the way the free market works, when it works. Jobs are created without effort because there is no effort to create jobs. They are a side effect of an effort of the Mitt Romneys of the business world to create bigger bank accounts with their names on them.

In the short term, sometimes people get hurt. Overall, in the aggregate, with many thousands of Mitt Romney's at play, more people get jobs than lose them. Most of the time. Recent times are an exception, we hope. The workers whose lives were harmed so profoundly were, in theory, earlier exceptions. Even in good times, there are winners and losers.

Adam Smith's invisible hand raises the tide. As to whether your own boat floats or is swamped by larger vessels is a combination of good luck, brains, and diligence. It's your boat and it's every boat for himself.

Mitt Romney did not screw over anyone, at least not on purpose. Just as he did not create any jobs on purpose. Destroying jobs, creating jobs, neither was Mitt Romney's aim. Jobs were not his job. Mitt's job was to create a profit, no matter who was hurt, no matter who happened to be helped along the way.

Mitt Romney did his job. It is the same job he will do as President. Aside from profits for his wealthy investors, his job was to not care.

He was very good at it.

There is an appealing intuitive lesson involved, a sort of moral hazard avoided. Those who behave irresponsibly on the economic front must eventually pay for their spendthrift ways. Time to bite the bullet. Anything else is an affront to common sense.

Germany led the way, dictating to Greece and Italy the harsh medicine they would be forced to swallow. If they were to follow Ireland on the pathway to health, they would have to endure dramatic slashes. Republicans in the United States pointed to Europe as leading the path the US must follow to get out of recession.

Belt-tightening, austerity, bravery in the face of hardship, bite the bullet until your teeth crack. Then enjoy a well earned prosperity. The key word was "earned".

A couple of weeks ago, John Peet, an influential editor of The Economist, was asked about the economic future of Europe.

Well, I think Germany continues to be the absolutely key country in Europe. It's by far the biggest and it's also currently doing best. But the debate in Germany is not very sort of pro-growth at the moment. Some countries not in the eurozone, like Poland and Sweden are doing pretty well. And of the countries that were in trouble, I would say Ireland looks as if it's the best at the moment because Ireland has implemented very heavy austerity programs, but is now beginning to grow again. So there are some examples but when you look at countries like France, Spain, Italy, there's an awful long way to go.

Glowing references to Ireland are harder to find among US pundits these days. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman posted figures from Ireland's own Central Statistical Office, showing a shocking decline in Irish well being. (Note to our friend John Myste: the data is in chart form, so you may wish to discard it without looking.)

Xenophobic resentment toward Germany's Nazi past, resistance to cold-light-of-day economic reality, and just plain laziness were seen as major reasons for major upset elections in Greece. Hard won austerity measures necessary for economic health were in danger. Italy had already gone down.

French austerity measures as an approach to recovery were a major cause for the electoral defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy. And on Sunday, Angela Merkel, Chancellor and chief economic moralist of Europe got slapped around, as the parliamentary election in North Rhine-Westphalia got taken over by a united opposition. This part of central Germany has been politically divided since approximately the beginning of Creation. This week the Social Democrats and the Green Party together got a majority of votes cast.

It was a major embarrassment for Chancellor Merkel.

The big argument, the only real argument, at least on paper, that conservatives have presented for the anti-Keynesian measures has been investor confidence. If painful austerity measures were put into place, investors would see a seriousness of purpose. Severe grownup policies would signal an end to the self-destructive juvenile joyride. Investors would respond. Growth would come quickly.

Investor confidence turned out to be more measured than the austerity measures had been intended to produce. As more sober thinking takes over, it appears that investors had waited to see what actual numbers were produced. They didn't like the economic activity they saw. What mainstream economists derisively call "the confidence fairy" does not always produce automatic results. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" does not always translate to the opposite formula. Confidence does not always feed on a confidence that originates from a demonstration of severe resolve.

These are dicey times. The impending doom feared by the current economic masters of Europe may come true as the careful plans of mice and economists go off the charts (with more apologies to friend Myste).

Or, or, or. It may be that, just as the pleasant dreams of austerity promoters failed to materialize, so their fears might also slip away. The best outcome, the best newest hope, may be that somehow Europe will settle into textbook style Keynesian recovery. Deficits followed by recovery followed by a disciplined, but far less painful, austerity with surpluses all around.

That last part may be the harder sell. The elusiveness of austerity during good times is the best argument conservatives have. Oddly, it is never heard.

For now, the bold European experiment in harsh economic policy has given us its first tentative lesson. Starving the patient back to health has produced less health than hunger.

For almost half a century, Don Ritchie would approach people contemplating suicide at the edge of The Gap, just 50 metres from his home in Watsons Bay, his palms facing up.

Mr Ritchie told his daughter Sue Ritchie Bereny he would smile and say: "Is there something I could do to help you?"

- More -<>

He was speaking to a group of employees in New Hampshire and began expressing his own disregard for political adversity. The hardship of others was the important thing. The rock musical "Evita" about the political evolution of Evita Peron from Argentina's first lady to a sort of activism for the poor had had a successful run on Broadway and was still playing in dinner theatres across America. So the President, in a moment of semi-hipness, used a phrase from one of the Evita songs to express the thought that the real trials were felt in the homes of Americans, not by him. "Don't cry for me, Argentina," he said.

Most Americans are not into cutting edge phraseology. So the point was getting lost in the weeds. The staff, trying to get on track, supposedly put up a cue card, to get the President back on target. Express in clear, emotional terms an empathy for people hurt by the economic downturn.

The cue card read, "Message: I care."

President Bush saw the card and went from the baffling "Don't cry for me, Argentina" directly to what he saw. "Message, I care," he said obediently.

The moment was a small one, but it became iconic. It was used as a minor line in a larger theme. Democrats were successful in portraying the President as artificial and uncaring, having to be cued into caring, and stepping even on that. "The economy, stupid" was really "They don't care about the hardships you face."

The perpetual awkwardness of Governor Mitt Romney sends a similar message. It aligns with policy, but transcends it. For the most part, he does well in prepared speeches. It's the unscripted moments that cause him to trip over his shoelaces.

He laughs at the cheap makeshift rain gear worn to NASCAR events. He tries to make it up with a sort of kinship with the masses, telling folks that, like them, he also enjoys stock car racing. He is personal friends with some of the wealthy NASCAR owners. He can chuckle, while meeting with unemployed workers in Tampa Florida, at the pain of unemployment, because he is also unemployed. Little joke there. He tells the Detroit Economic Club how much he appreciates GM, because his wife drives "a couple of Cadillacs."

When I heard about the bullying incident, I was a little sore. The major purpose of growing up is to mature. And part of the completion of that maturity is the development of a decent respect for the personhood of others. Attacking Mitt Romney as a child, even after that child is grown, is out of line.

And I was irritated from a partisan point of view as well. It was so transparently unfair to bring up events from teenage years, that another Hilary Rosen controversy seemed to be brewing. Attack Mitt Romney for a horrible bullying incident from when he was growing up? Mitt Romney could hit it out of the park in a solemn acknowledgement of the pain he must have caused for this callused, youthful cruelty. That was then, this is a regretful, mature, empathetic now.

Instead, he reminded me of the villain Boone in one cinematic version of The Jungle Book. Immediately after a fellow traveler dies horribly in quicksand, Boone remarks casually, "Well, let's not be discouraged by every little thing."

Romney said the following, chuckling as he began:

They talked about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school, and they described some that, boy, you just say to yourself, "Back in high school," you know, "I did some dumb things." If anyone was hurt by that or offended by that, obviously, I apologize. But overall, high school years were a long time ago.

It was a bit jarring that he still considers an instance of teenage cruelty to be a prank. What doesn't come across in the print version is the mirth he seems to feel. He laughs in another interview as he protests his lack of memory those pranks. The amused chuckles may be a simple nervous reaction, an awkward, ever awkward, mark of not quite knowing what to do or say.

But they are also reminders of earlier chuckle at what cannot simply be written off as a nervous reaction. When he told what he said was a humorous incident, it was about his father as CEO of American Motors closing a plant in Michigan, throwing people out of work. Mitt chuckles at the humorous story of his father's discomfort at reminders to Michigan workers of the incident as he later campaigned for governor.

Certainly a high school teenager might consider his cruelties to be pranks. That's part of the immaturity of youth. We grow out of that view to a grownup regret for hurtful actions we took as kids.

Conservative publications were able to find an incident of cruelty from Barack Obama's book Dreams from My Father. When a group of students teased ten year old Obama, jeering that he was the boyfriend of a girl he just met, he pushed her away hard enough so that she stumbled back. His reward was that he suddenly switched to the jeering majority, leaving her as the victim. His 1995 rendition is tinged with regret. Later in his book, his young self-examination led him to conclude that fear had been the motivator and that he needed to overcome fear to be a complete human being.

The importance of childhood cruelty fades to triviality with time. A bullying incident from half a century ago does not demonstrate a lack of character or compassion in an adult today. A laugh does not prove a lack of compassion, especially if it is a simple nervous reaction. A series of awkward moments does not show to a certainty an out of touch lack of caring. We look instead to adult values, sometimes including how such things are remembered.

Those of us who are Christians are joined by others who are mindful of our own cruelties, and have a strong belief in the power of redemption. Governor Romney is now presented with an opportunity to demonstrate a level of introspection, empathy, and regret at the pain we as children often cause to others as we grow toward a compassionate adulthood.

So far, Mitt Romney seems determined not get caught up in ancient tales of youthful pranks. Let's not be discouraged by every little thing.

Ryan, who writes for Secular Ethics, also graciously contributes to this site from time to time. He points to a cautionary trend, the decline of participation in the labor force. This is often raised by conservatives as evidence that things are so bad under the Obama Presidency that people have given up on finding work. Ryan's comment:

It is good that this trend has reversed, but labor force participation is another story. It has been falling since Obama took office. At that time, it was 65.8% (February of 2009); now it is 63.6% (April of 2012), which is the lowest since 1981.

Tim McGaha, who writes with a scientific bent at Tim's Thoughtful Spot, responds that labor participation is not a direct indicator of labor despair. In fact, it does not differentiate between diverse motivations:

Some of that may be due to a weaker employment picture, but some will also be due to the Baby Boom generation entering retirement. Without some way to untangle the confounding factors, I'm not sure that the participation rate is all that useful as a figure of merit.

As it happens, Tim might find some backing in research conducted by the Urban Institute and published by the Department of Labor, albeit with disclaimers. The decrease in labor participation is heavily impacted by an increase in older workers, more likely to retire, and by young adults who seek more education than ever before.

In fact, an increase in retirement was forecast by the Director of the Congressional Budget office as Obamacare was scheduled to take effect. The forecast of retirements was based on a sad fact, that many older workers continue working because they can't afford to lose their group insurance; and a happy future development, that they will be able to retire when health care becomes available. Conservatives put their own twist on that testimony, broadcasting that Obamacare would cost 800,000 jobs. That 800,000 figure was actually based on the CBO estimate of newly freed workers who could finally retire.

Ryan comments, reasonably enough, on the uncertainties of cause and effect.

Since I do not fault Obama for the decline in labor force participation, I cannot fairly credit him with restoring the total payroll employment to the level at the beginning of his term. For all I know, that number is improving despite his policies, not because of them.

He points, fairly, to the clear liberal bias of this site:

Now, Raymond did not claim that Obama's policies have had any effect at all on total payroll employment. He merely posted a graph. But this is a generally liberal blog, so it's reasonable to conclude that the intent was there.

Ryan's got us on intent. We try to present facts fairly, but he is correct about our preferences.

In fact, I am comfortable making us a little more vulnerable to that criticism. As long as I can remember, Republicans have supported policies with a definite tilt. The rationale, when I was a youth, was that we all would benefit by favoring the wealthy because people with lots of money create jobs. It was called trickle down economics by detractors, pro-growth by advocates. After all, who could be against growth?

In the late 1970s a bell shaped curve was introduced by Professor Arthur Laffer, who famously drew it on a napkin at a dinner of Republican notables. Supply side economics was born, and has metastasized from tax revenue theory into economic growth theology. The primary belief now is that we all would benefit by favoring the wealthy because they create jobs.

Democrats have stayed with dreary old Keynesianism. In and out of fashion, they have stuck like glue to the pages of Economics 101. In downturn, increase government spending, in good times, cut spending and balance budgets.

Facts can be stubborn. In this case, as Ryan wisely points out, the facts don't prove either case to a moral certainty. They do tend to support only one side. The fact is that in the half century plus one year since John Kennedy took office, Democrats have produced more than twice as many jobs each year they were in office than have Republicans when they have held office. It looks worse for Republicans if you include the Great Depression and the Roosevelt recovery. So let's just look at half a century instead of a hundred years.

From Bloomberg News:

Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans. Through April, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans.

But you never know. Could be coincidence. And you can't judge these things too quickly. Trickle down economics or Supply Side theology might still work. Just give Republicans a few hundred more years to prove their case.

When a crime was deemed so heinous it deserved a punishment more horrible even than crucifixion, the millstone sometimes came into final use. The Gospel of Matthew makes reference to that form of execution in describing the souls of those who would make advances on children, enticing them into sins: "it were better for him that millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Largely because of that stray reference, the millstone came to a place in our language. It became known as a heavy, painful, perhaps fatal burden. It later evolved into its current definition: the traditional Republican attack on the patriotism of Democrats.

I thought about it this past week as conservative blogger John Houk reviewed a piece I had forwarded to him. He derided the very idea that "that a Liberal could possess Patriotism..." I suspect John may have meant "liberal." You know, with a small "L"? Anyway, he goes on:

Making ugly epithets about military personal is not an abundance of Patriotism (you know e.g. baby killers, murderers and the such thinking).

[Italics are John's]

Even combat heroes like Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam, and John Kerry were attacked as unpatriotic by opponents who had never served. Max Cleland opposed an anti-Union provision of a portion of Homeland security legislation. So he was portrayed as soft on terrorism. Kerry was attacked by fellow veterans, most of whom had never met him. They were recruited and financed by a small and secretive group of conservative billionaires, then propped up to appear as if they were exposing some wartime fraud they had themselves witnessed.

This was a new variant, but it's the sort of thing that has been going on for as long as I can remember. Even clear personal sacrifice can be turned around and used to show a lack of patriotism.

Al Gore, who served in Vietnam as a military reporter with the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa, is routinely attacked because of his activism on global warming, for which he has been awarded the Nobel Prize. He is attacked as ... you guessed it ... unpatriotic for believing the clear evidence on global climate change.

It is the millstone around our necks. If we oppose an unwise war, we are unpatriotic. If we are pro-union, we are unpatriotic. If we are for a rational environmental policy based on science, we are unpatriotic. If we sneeze, we are unpatriotic.

One leader of the shouting is Michele Bachmann, who once begged reporters to investigate the patriotism of Democrats in Congress.

So we might not expect restraint among Democrats as Ms. Bachmann achieves a feat most of us thought was impossible, increasing the proportion of Swiss citizens in the US Congress by ... well ... how do you calculate a percentage of increase from a base of zero? She has applied for and been granted citizenship by the government of Switzerland. Yeah that Switzerland. Right in the middle (I think) of that part of Europe derided by Dick Cheney. A chocolate republic. Wouldn't stand up to the Nazis or to the USSR. Geneva Convention. Peace.

It seems she did it for the children. Her husband is of Swiss descent, which made her eligible. According to her spokesperson, "...some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family."

It seems harmless to me. Still, we can speculate what her reaction might have been had a Democrat become a citizen of a European country with a national identity known for neutrality.

We do not have to wonder about the reaction of some on the right. Their knives are sharpened, they are on the attack. Mark Krikorian, writing in National Review Online, is brutal.

The fact that even a patriot like Bachmann would do something like this is testament to how thoroughly the moral relativism of the post-national Left has permeated our culture.

Yup. You read it right. Ms. Bachmann became a European citizen because of a lack of patriotism on the part of liberals. We leftist hippies made her do it.

More proof we are unpatriotic.

At the source is technology. The Republican base is insulated from political reality. The GOP emulates Shakespearean drama. Hamlet's Ophelia, incapable of her own distress, drowns without knowing she is drowning. And the Republican Party puts on stage makeup and follows suit. Purge follows purge as the party of Lincoln rushes toward the Old Confederacy.

- Burr Deming, May 8, 2012

I believe that the RINO hunt is partly based on the belief that any compromise with Democrats ("big government" lovers) represents a victory for Democrats because the government still grows, albeit more slowly than it would if Democrats always got what they want. The solution is to create a true party of "no."

Then there is the matter of "moral" principles. The Religious Right demands that candidates reject gay marriage, abortion, drugs, sex education, secularism, non-Christian religions, the consensus in climate science, and often evolutionary science as well. These are all treated as great evils that are crippling our country by undermining our "moral foundation" and steering us away from God. There is no comparable force on the Left, which accepts more ideological variety. However, it seems to me that, perhaps in a competitive response to Republicans, Democrats are becoming less tolerant as well.

And we can't forget the GOP's hatred for Obama. It is not just his policies, but the man himself: he is an arrogant elite, a pretender, the "liberal Messiah," an opportunist, an "affirmative action President," a terrorist lover, a freedom and market hater, a Marxist communist socialist fascist crony capitalist. He signifies everything that is wrong. Consequently, everyone connected to him, from Democrats to the Republicans' very own Jon Huntsman, is poisoned.

It helps that conspiracy theorists are often either embraced (some even become politicians) or tolerated, but rarely rejected. Without them, I wouldn't have known that Obama isn't even American, which is probably why he wants to destroy our country by eliminating the private sector and introducing sharia. And did you notice that his middle name is Hussein? That's something to ponder.

Of course, liberals are also capable of developing conspiracies. But the motivation just isn't as strong when you don't think that everyone from communists to Muslims to atheists to big government is out to get you.

Given the RINO hunting, the conspiracy theorists, the religious dogma, and the Tea Party, I find it incredibly difficult to respect the GOP. I can only hope that we will soon see a backlash against these problems and the implementation of a more reasonable conservatism.

Ryan writes for his own site, where no amount of conspiracy or dogma will turn participants away from entertaining and informative debate.

Please visit Secular Ethics.