I think that Harold Meyerson should have ended his column with this sentence (in reference to the grand jury that determined not to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson):

That jury may have had reasonable grounds for declining to bring an indictment.

but he followed it up:

But that failure to indict came as a culmination of a string of unpunished killings, going back to Trayvon Martin’s, in which young black men were summarily gunned down by police or neighborhood-watch zealots.

continuing with a string of half-truths, over-generalizations, false analogies, and speculations. He should have quit while he was ahead.

Whatever because of the presumption of innocence? What the rioters knew of Trayvon Martin or Rodney King or, in most cases, even Michael Brown is what journalists like Mr. Meyerson have told them. In a very real sense the riots were caused at the urging of those journalists.

There is no excuse, repeat no excuse, for the burning of auto parts stores and bakeries owned by individuals who live in the community who are just trying to get by. Trying to clothe wanton destruction in the garments of the greater good is heartless, grotesque immorality.

I think that this is probably the biggest piece of wishful thinking that I’ve read today:

“The Democratic Party’s message is not being heard from us. It’s being heard from others,” Kamala Harris, the attorney general of California who’s widely viewed as a rising star in the party, told me. She and many other Democrats point to the success of minimum-wage ballot initiatives in several states as proof that the same voters who chose Republican representatives actually wanted Democratic policies.

I don’t think that’s true at all. Quite to the contrary I think that actions speak louder than words. I look forward to Ms. Harris’s explanations for how bailng out the big banks, that none of the heads of the big banks have been brought up on criminal charges (despite a law tailor-made for the purpose), sweetheart deals to Democratic fundraisers and bundlers paid out under the auspices of the ARRA, raising payroll taxes, and just about everything else done under the present administration demonstrate that they’re populists who are champions of the little guy. I’ve always enjoyed fantasy.

True or false? In reference to the “Ferguson hoopla”:

It’s about the base. And it’s not about the Democratic Party’s base, but about certain leaders’ base within the Democratic Party. This may be best understood as an intra-party struggle. Obama is the champion of the urban-black wing of the party, and because of him that wing has been on top. But his star is fading, black voters are beginning to realize that they haven’t benefited economically, and the next Dem nominee — whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb, or Elizabeth Warren — will be from the white gentry-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The riots, the marches, the traffic-blocking are a way of telling them that the Sharpton wing is still a force to be reckoned with, and to improve its bargaining power between now and 2016. At least, that’s the only way this — not at all spontaneous — street theater makes sense.

I have a problem with it on a number of grounds. First, while Barack Obama may be the hero of the “urban-black wing” of the Democratic Party, I don’t think he’s in any way its champion. The figures really don’t lie on that subject.

But just as significantly I’m not sure there is a “white gentry-liberal wing” of the party. I think there’s a multi-racial gentry-liberal wing of the party whose members have much more in common with each other than they do with most other Americans.

I realize I’m treading on thin ice here but I’ve never believed that President Obama was an Afro-American, to deploy the useful term coined by the sociologist Charle Moskas, by which he meant Americans of sub-Saharan African descent who were the descendants of slaves. I don’t think he’s had in any way the same experience as they have and I find that any assertion that he has smacks of the “one drop” rule. I think it’s racist.

I also think that Barack Obama is actually the champion of the gentry-liberal wing of the Democratic Party is just incontrovertible. Go back and look at the statistics.

Maybe it’s just a weak choice of words on Glenn’s part but I would give his statement three Pinocchios.

I have an odd question. If the only gauge of whether a law should be enforced is whether those violating the law have families to support and just want a better way of life for themselves and their families, how many of our laws should be set aside?

It seems to me that Bernie Madoff fits neatly into that category. Should swindling be legalized?

Why don’t more Americans understand this?

We have a hybrid welfare state, partly run by the government and partly outsourced to private markets.

If there’s one thing we should have learned over the last dozen years, it’s that these public-private hybrids are deeply flawed. They result in great fortunes being paid to private individuals, the gatekeepers of these hybrid operations, out of the public purse.

I didn’t want to let some of the reactions to the rioting in Ferguson go by without commenting, either. First, when you throw rocks or Molotov cocktails or set cars or businesses on fire, you are no longer a demonstrator. You are a rioter and a criminal.

Second, when you defend rioters and criminals on the grounds that people are angry or that it highlights persistent racial tensions, it is deeply immoral. The people who’ve been injured or whose property has been destroyed or damaged are persons. When you take the side of the rioters in the name of some putative higher good you are turning persons into means rather than ends and that is immoral. President Obama muffed that on his remarks on Monday evening but got it right yesterday.

Third, the people have spoken. Our system of law has now cleared Michael Brown’s killer of criminal charges and you weren’t present for the grand jury’s deliberations. Criticizing the grand jury at this point undermines the system, fanning the flames. Let it go, for goodness sake. Why are there so many would-be Madame Defarge’s? Are they just thirty for blood? I don’t hear a desire for justice but a desire for vengeance.

I didn’t want to let New York Sen. Charles Schumer’s remark to the effect that the Democrats erred in turning their attention from the economy to enacting the PPACA in 2009 without comment since I said that back in 2009.

1. The empirical evidence that the stimulus package, the ARRA, “worked” is slim to nonexistent. What the actual evidence seems to show is that the various infrastructure projects funded by the ARRA just allowed state and local governments to replace their own funding sources with federal funding.
2. The recovery had already begun before the first dollar of ARRA infrastructure project spending had occurred. If you’re going to promote a Keynesian explanation for the recovery, don’t promote the ARRA. Look to the Bush Administration’s earlier stimulus efforts. I don’t think that either administration’s efforts had much effect because of their structure and timing and I think what we’ve experienced was an ordinary cyclic recovery.
3. The Democrats lost the Senate because of the PPACA. Scott Brown was narrowly elected and a major reason for his victory was the PPACA.
4. The ARRA should have been much more targeted. Rather than spending $800+ billion over three years for maximum effect the stimulus should have been concentrated into 2009.
5. There were no shovel-ready projects in 2009. There still aren’t (at least that aren’t already approved and funded). This isn’t the 1930s. Our system just doesn’t work that way any more. The president has already acknowledged that and I don’t know why his supporters are still flogging this dead horse.
6. The only practical way to get the full $800+ billion into a single year was by lifting both sides of FICA temporarily or permanently. I believe that Republican support was available for that. Can you imagine the entire Republican caucus going on record as opposing a tax cut? Me neither.
7. Even its supporters acknowledge that the PPACA is a deeply flawed law and it has not received the continuous tuning that its supporters claimed it would receive but which it was obvious that it would not. In all likelihood the prospects that the PPACA will receive a major tuneup before 2024 are slim. Just as I’ve said all along. In other words the Democrats traded a more robust recovery, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and the House for a bad healthcare reform law that still may not pass constitutional muster.

The grand jury considering the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson has decided not to bring charges against the police officer who shot him:

FERGUSON, Mo. — The streets were quiet but fires continued to burn Tuesday following a night of violence triggered by a grand jury’s decision not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for the August shooting death of unarmed, black teen Michael Brown.

Demonstrators taunted police, shattered windows and set fire to two St. Louis County police cars at the protest’s furious peek. Scattered, intermittent gunfire was also reported.

and, predictably, a riot has broken out. People are protesting because they are angry. What do they want to happen? Vengeance, maybe. What policy change would have altered the outcome?

Ferguson’s mayor and police department have handled the situation badly from the very start but Ferguson is a tiny, nothing town that has suddenly had big city problems thrust upon it in the form of protesters, some peaceful, some just wanting to raise hell, coming in from outside. I sincerely believe that most of the residents just want to protect their lives and property and wish the whole thing would go away.

Question: What are you protesting?
Answer: What have you got?

Alan Blinder laments the slow growth productivity that’s dogging the economy:

Attention nowadays is focused on the degree of slack in the U.S. labor market. The financial news is full of stories about payroll employment, the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rates, quits, initial claims for unemployment insurance, and the like. Fed staffers devote thousands of hours to combing the data for hints about how tight or loose the labor market is or might become. Investors devote millions of hours to divining what Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues think about these matters.

Meanwhile, another variable that is just as important to the forecast is being almost completely ignored. I refer to labor productivity.

Just as important? Yes, because the Fed wants to forecast the so-called GDP gap—that is, the difference between actual and potential gross domestic product. Potential GDP, in turn, depends on the number of hours of work the economy would have at full employment, which is what all the fuss is about. But it also depends on the future track of output per hour of work (labor productivity). The Fed and the markets could err in forecasting potential GDP either by getting the availability of labor wrong or by getting productivity wrong.

Yet oddly, while enormous amounts of research, energy and chatter are poured into analyzing and forecasting the labor market, hardly anyone is talking about productivity—though that may be the greater source of uncertainty.

Allow me to provide several possible explanations.

First, the percentage of the economy that relatively unproductive sectors, e.g. healthcare and education, has risen. These are both highly compensated labor-intensive sectors and, practically by definition, the growth in productivity in them is slow. Changing that would require the abandoning of artisanal medicine or education and preserving those is the object of the game.

Second, we import too much. Retail is not an area in which we can expect sharp growth in productivity and over the years America has slowly been transforming from a country that makes things to one that sells things. Think you’re buying a car made in America? Think again. Odds are that the engine of the “Made in the U. S. A.” car you’re driving was manufactured in Japan or South Korea.

Third, due to the reliable supply of low-cost unskilled or semi-skilled labor, rather than requiring fewer, more expensive hours but more capital investment jobs are being structured to require more, less-expensive hours at lower capital investment.

It’s the policies, stupid.