It was only a matter of time before somebody provided the malefactors of great wealth an excuse to dismiss Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Chris Giles of the Financial Times accepted the contract and dutifully cranked out an analysis that cast doubt on Piketty’s entire book, including his premise about rising income inequality. It was all just a math error. Nothing to see here. Move along.

How serious are these charges? It appears there are some data errors, but it also appears that for the most part they don’t make a whole lot of difference, with the exception of the data on Britain. There is a data gap in Piketty’s analysis of the U.S. that other people had already noted, but other economists who have looked at all the data on the U.S. say that the inequality is even worse than Piketty says it is. Krugman says that the data on the U.S. show an unmistakable pattern of inequality even without Piketty’s data. Giles may indeed have found some errors, Krugman says, “but The point is that Giles is proving too much; if his attempted reworking of Piketty leads to the conclusion that nothing has happened to wealth inequality, what that really shows is that he’s doing something wrong.”

See also Justin Wolfers, “A New Critique of Piketty Has Its Own Shortcomings.”

Picketty’s alleged errors (which do not all appear to be errors, exactly), are being compared to the Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff paper on government debt and growth, in which the authors’ findings were based entirely on data entry errors. In Picketty’s case, however, it’s not so clear that corrected data would change the picture, and there are other studies by other economists that come to the same conclusions.

However, as we know, the Right only needs one tiny and inconsequential flaw to discredit the entire book at “debunked.” It’s what they do with climate change and evolution; if they can find any part of theory that isn’t “settled” they feel they can ignore science entirely. (However, I don’t think science is ever settled.)

Mel Brooks looks back at making Blazing Saddles:

It was about a dozen executives at a screening room at Warner Brothers and, no, there were two guys that laughed. Now, not so loud, they didn’t want to hurt the other people’s feelings. But the ten other guys in the room didn’t laugh and at the end Leo Greenfield, who was in charge of domestic distribution — nice guy, I got along with him — but he said, “I have to voice my feelings, I think we should bury the picture and eat the money and not release it. It’s disgusting and I don’t want the Warner Brothers logo on it.” And [John] Calley [who ran the film division] said, “Well, let’s have a screening,” and that was a big, big hit. Right from the opening credits — the WB logo burning through and Frankie Laine singing and the whip cracks — that was it, we were home free. The hell with executives, the hell with politically correct. The manager said he’d never heard laughter like that in that movie house.

There’s more about the blogger who videoed Sen. Thad Cochran’s wife at TPM. As Josh Marshall said,

I think you’ll actually end up feeling sorry for the guy – a seemingly otherwise decent enough guy with a family nevertheless encased in a polycarbonate bubble of derp and fanaticism where the all crazy about the progressive Kristallnacht and the KKK Democrats comes to settle.

The guy could end up doing serious jail time over what was really poor judgment more than anything else. “Polycarbonate bubble of derp” pretty much says it.

Three other men connected to the McDaniel campaign have been arrested on charges relating to nursing home-gate. Josh Marshall continues,

Now, it’s hard to figure how anyone wouldn’t realize that invading the privacy and dignity of this woman wouldn’t backfire in an explosive way or that it constituted one or more serious felonies. But remember, we’re pretty deep in the Tea Party derp bubble here which involves what can only be called a proctological route to self-awareness which ends in confusion and can be irreversible. But if you’d really bought into this attack on Cochran and thought it would resonate with people you can see at least the bare outlines of how you could convince yourself that this visual would land the fatal blow to his credibility and campaign.

Heh.

Ta-Nehisi Coates won the Internet today with his long article, “The Case for Reparations.” I’m only part-way through, but it is gripping.

Now the Right is trying to pump problems in VA medical care into an Obama scandal. For background into who and what are really to blame, I recommend a couple of articles:

Alec MacGillis, Republicans War-Monger, Then Complain When We’re Overwhelmed By Sick Vets

For starters, there is the matter of funding. If there’s been one side pushing for greater resources for the Veterans Administration in the age of austerity these past five years, it hasn’t been the Republicans. It was the much-maligned economic stimulus package of 2009 that included $1 billion for the V.A. While the V.A. itself was protected from the budget sequestration that Republican fought to keep in place last year, many other veterans programs—providing mental health services and housing, among other things—were hit hard by the sequestration cuts. And when the Senate was poised to pass a $24 billion bill for federal healthcare an education programs for veterans three months ago, Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, blocked it in a filibuster, saying the bill would bust the budget and complaining that Senate Democrats had refused to allow an amendment on Iran sanctions to be attached to the bill.

But there is a whole other level of context to consider here as well. There is a pretty basic reason for backlogs at V.A. facilities and in the disability claims process, the other ongoing V.A. mess. Put simply: when you go to war, you get more wounded veterans, and in a country without a universal health care system, they are all funneled into this one agency with limited capacity. Every one of the Republican leaders quoted above attacking Obama for the V.A. backlogs strongly supported launching the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that resulted in nearly 7,000 fatalities and a huge surge in medical needs and disability claims. …

… Something, it appears, happened around 2003 that caused the rate of traumatic brain injuries in the U.S. military to spike. Now what could that have been? Whatever it was, it happened while Barack Obama was in the Illinois state Senate, giving an obscure speech against invading Iraq.

The other article is by Jordain Carney and Stacy Kaper, Who Really Broke Veterans Affairs?. It all boils down to several administrations, from the current one going back to John Kennedy and every administration in between, Democratic and Republican, that in one way or another either added to the VA’s burdens or made policies that made it harder for the VA to function. This is a bipartisan malfunction.

And then there is Congress:

The VA could be overhauled to better address the needs of modern veterans, including reforms to the way it processes claims, assesses the performance of its employees, and measures its overall performance. But putting many of those reforms in place would require an act of Congress—and thus far those haven’t happened.

Instead, Congress has taken a more reactive approach. When incidents—such as the recent hospital deaths—capture public attention, lawmakers hold hearings where they berate VA officials with juicy sound bites they can later play back for their constituents. It’s good political theater, but it’s unclear that the payoff is anything other than political.

So, blame where blame is due.

Federal courts throughout the land have been striking down same-sex marriage bans so quickly it’s hard to keep up. A federal appeals court just this afternoon issued a stay in Idaho, so that same-sex marriages cannot be performed or recognized in Idaho until the appeal is decided. But that’s been the only speed bump so far. Now the entire northeast U.S. is gay-marriage friendly.

A judge who just ruled in favor of recognizing same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania is not only a G.W. Bush appointee; he also was endorsed by Rick Santorum.

The Pennsylvania judge and some others have been citing a dissent by Antonin Scalia, who warned that striking down a portion of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, would pave the way for states to do the same and allow same-sex marriage. Looks like Don Scalia was right, for once.

Truly, martyrdom is in the eye of the beholder.

and yeah, Millennials are the worst when they wont let Iraq War architects bask in glory, http://t.co/U3KS29m9Jr pic.twitter.com/d0iRUeA5c9

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) May 14, 2014

Lots of tsk-tsking about graduates protesting commencement speakers. Lots of punditing about “college is about listening to other viewpoints blah blah blah.” But we’re not talking about classwork; we’re talking about commencement. The “education” part of the program is over. This is a celebration for the graduates, not an extension of American History 304.

And I realized today I do not remember who spoke at my graduation from the University of Missouri, class of 304 BC. Not a clue. All I remember was that my parents were there and us J-School grads were cutting up through the whole ceremony. Great fun. I’m not even sure there was a speaker; I just assume there must have been. But, y’know, that’s how it ought to be. Once in a great while somebody gives a genuinely memorable commencement address. Most of the time the speech is just something you have to sit through so you feel properly commenced, and then you can get together with your family and go out to dinner.

But I understand not wanting to sit through a speech you find genuinely odious. If my commencement speaker had been Henry Kissinger, say, I’m sure I’d remember the day much less fondly.

So I am not the least bit bothered by the fact that Condi Rice isn’t the speaker at the Rutgers commencement this year. And whoever invited her was an idiot who ought to be reprimanded, if not fired.

I realize it’s probably difficult to find a speaker who won’t piss off somebody, but that doesn’t mean you might as well get someone broadly considered to be a disgrace to humanity; nay, vertebrae. If you can’t find somebody who has accomplished something praiseworthy, then get somebody entertaining. How hard is that?

If Rice had been invited to give a talk to some foreign policy graduate class, that might be different, especially if she agreed to answer questions. I assume anything she might say would be self-serving bullshit, but I could be wrong. And like her or not, she is a real historical figure whose work had real-world consequences. I also think it’s important for historians to study pro-slavery arguments of the antebellum South and the intellectual basis of the development of fascism in Europe, because we need to fully appreciate how bad stuff happens. If we could reanimate Jefferson Davis I’d certainly be interested in what he had to say for himself, even if I think it was morally repugnant. But in a class, not at a commencement.

Studying Condi Rice is one thing; honoring her is something else.

I also don’t blame Haverford students for protesting Robert J. Birgeneau, who as chancellor of UC Berkeley during the Occupy demonstrations chose to support the police instead of the students. On the other hand I’m not sure Christine Lagarde of the IMF deserves all the vitriol thrown at her by Smith students, and I’m not sure they are objecting to her as much as to the IMF. But I am heartened that students are questioning The Establishment, in all its many forms. That’s an important part of the college experience, too.

I’m disappointed in Timothy Egan for writing this:

In that sense, the lefty thought police at Smith, Haverford and Rutgers share one thing with the knuckle-dragging hard right in Oklahoma: They’re afraid of hearing something that might spoil a view of the world they’ve already figured out.

If Rice, Birgeneau and Lagarde were outsiders who never had a chance to explain themselves in news media and books and many other venues, Egan might have an argument. But they aren’t. These are all people who are or have been in positions of power, and they have been heard plenty and have many ways at their disposal to being heard some more. They are not “silenced.” As Steve M says, “the fact is that millennials can’t silence people with whom they disagree. You may choose not to listen to warmongers in the federal government or policymakers at the IMF, but, even if you’re a millennial, you’ll have to live in the world they make.”

In other words, the graduates have their whole lives ahead of them to listen to powerful people spout self-serving bullshit, and most of the time they’re not going to have a choice about it or a means to answer back. I say whenever you do have a chance to tell them to bleep off, take it.

Regarding this weekend’s planned coup d’etat, I bring you this quote —

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both. — Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951)

In The Book (Rethinking Religion: Finding a Place for Religion in a Modern, Tolerant, Progressive, Peaceful and Science-affirming World) I turn to this quote several times in discussing mass movements and religious violence. It seems to me that the holy cause/fanatical grievance combination is at the center of just about any violent mass movement I can think of, whether political, religious or other.

For example, when people hear about violence perpetrated by a religious faction there’s a common assumption that religious doctrine is somehow at the center of the animosity, that I think that is rarely the case. This is especially true on the “fanatical grievance” side of the equation. The roots of the Islamic jihadist “fanatical grievance” have more to do with history, culture and politics than with Islam, for example.

In the book I devote a large part of a chapter looking at violence being perpetrated by Buddhists, including monks, in Burma (Myanmar) and Sri Lanka. These violent mass movements make a particularly good case for my theory, because there is absolutely, positively no justification for what they are doing in Buddhist doctrine. The Buddha was far more uncompromising about not causing violence than were the various authors of the Bible, for example. There is some limited allowance for self-defense, but being an aggressor in a violent situation is a clear violation of the dharma. Yet there are Burmese and Sinhalese Buddhist monks fomenting violence and declaring they are doing it to “defend Buddhism” in their overwhelmingly Buddhist countries. To understand where this is coming from you have to look at history, politics and culture (which I do, in the book).

Note that a “holy cause” doesn’t have to be religious. Nationalism and patriotism will do, especially when mixed into belief in the presumed virtue of racial or ethnic purity.

Another common factor in violent and/or totalitarian mass movements is a kind of messianic worldview, or a belief that current struggles will lead to a glorious destiny. This doesn’t have to involve religious doctrine; you can see messianism in the communist and fascist movements of the 20th century. Where religion is present it can act as a kind of accelerant, however. When people believe their cause is not only just but holy, it’s a lot easier to light the fuse or pull the trigger.

The point is that, as absurd as the “American Spring/Bundy Ranch” crew might be, all the violence factors are present. And I don’t see anything on the horizon that is likely to discourage them. Even assuming the May 16 coup d’etat is a dud, they’re likely to keep trying.

What they lack, which is notable, is some genuinely charismatic and articulate leader who is smart enough, or at least tethered to reality enough, to organize these clowns and grow the movement beyond fringe status. I think Ted Cruz could fill that role, if he wanted it, although I suspect even he realizes that if the public ties him to right-wing domestic terrorism he can kiss his political career goodbye. However, that could change in the future. And if it ain’t Ted, it could be somebody else who steps up. We’ve been lucky so far.

Even without a charismatic leader, barring unforeseen developments I suspect the anti-government militia movement will grow increasingly violent as participants become increasingly frustrated. We can’t assume they’re just going to go away.

Along these lines, do see “Spitting, Stalking, Rape Threats: How Gun Extremists Target Women.” It’s interesting that a common factor in fundamentalist religious movements is an obsession with keeping women under control and thoroughly subjugated. Here we see gun rights extremists targeting women who oppose them. It may be this is because more women than men are stepping up to oppose them, but one wonders if there isn’t something else going on with them than merely feeling opposed.