becky sarwate

I am not an economist. Although I appreciate data of all kinds, especially the economic variety, as a useful tool for driving policy, I’m not into hard number crunching as a form of amusement. I leave that in the capable hands of experts such as Nate Silver, Nobel Prize-winning guru Paul Krugman and others who may interpret the statistics through a liberal lens, but abstain from playing games with the raw facts.

The aforementioned Krugman has referred to the 2014 “it” text of economic circles across several of his Winter and Spring New York Times columns. I’m speaking of course of Thomas Piketty’sCapital in the Twenty-First Century. In Krugman’s March 23 piece, “Wealth Over Work,” he describes Piketty’s book as doing “more than document the growing concentration of income in the hands of a small economic elite. He also makes a powerful case that we’re on the way back to ‘patrimonial capitalism,’ in which the commanding heights of the economy are dominated not just by wealth, but also by inherited wealth, in which birth matters more than effort and talent.” Just prior to this description, Krugman labels Piketty’s work the most “important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade.”

They don’t go around handing out Nobel Prizes for nothing, so when Krugman speaks in these terms, sensible people (real ones, not the Paul Ryan pretenders) tend to listen. And predictably, the right wing cottage industry that is dedicated to undermining Krugman and others who argue that their much vaunted “job creators” aren’t generating much besides personal wealth, have to articulate and repeat some sort of disingenuous response.

Enter Ross Douthat, Krugman’s ideological adversary at The Times. On Easter Sunday, the pundit offered “Marx Rises Again,” in which he is careful to label Piketty a “social democrat” (you can almost see and hear the ensuing spit take of disgust). Douthat goes on to offer his own description of Piketty’s work, one infused with a derisive, elitist, Modernist tone which suggests that any text widely read must be garbage. The columnist characterizes the book as “that sweeping interpretation of modern economic trends recently translated from the French, and the one book this year that everyone in my profession will be required to pretend to have diligently read.”

I’m not sure why, but reading this passage immediately brought to mind a frustrated and sneering John McCain pointing to his opponent, Barack Obama, during the 2008 Presidential campaign debates, then referring to him as “that one.” Maybe it’s because the circumstances are somewhat similar.

An idea that has popular support and which contradicts the exclusive, anti-populist platform of today’s GOP must be rejected and ridiculed to the point of anger. After all, how could the unwashed proletariat fail to see that what’s good for the one percent is good for the ECONOMY?! Nevermind recent painful memories of pesky incidents like the burst of the housing bubble, the 2008 stock market crash, the collapse of the auto industry and the virtually jobless economic recovery from the Great Recession. Like some sort of fantastical Jedi Mind Trick, Douthat and his cohorts (he is far from the worst) would still have us believe that the only problem with free markets is regulation. Even after all we have seen with our own eyes and felt through our own broken American Dreams.

Douthat and his fellow partisans can keep insisting that the playing field remains level, but it’s insulting and absurd. He offers “Piketty’s dark vision relies, in part, on economic models I am unqualified to assess.” But assess he does anyway, as though a lack of fact mastery has ever stopped anyone on the right from offering an”expert” opinion.

Climate change. Female reproductive rights. The social safety net. Inequality. These forces, and the need to recognize them, are real. And I would caution conservatives to recall history. When great empires are brought down by the ignorance and greed of the few, everyone fails together. There are no survivors. The little white lies you tell yourselves and feel the need to repeat to the rest of us won’t offer you any protection when it all comes tumbling down.

While CNN busies itself covering every non-development in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Newt Gingrich. He makes for amazing treadmill grist.), the world continues to turn. And as much of the nation’s news apparatus is rightfully preoccupied with a triumphant conclusion to Obamacare’s first enrollment test, it’s been another busy week for foreign policy.

Such is one of the many perversities plaguing the Obama era. Every time the beleaguered POTUS wants to shine the spotlight on domestic issues, international unrest just won’t have it. Thankfully, he has arguably the modern era’s most unflappable State Department leader by his side. There seems to be no number of hairy, potentially history changing crises that Kerry cannot attack at once.

Secretary of State John Kerry is a busy fellow. Last week the former Presidential candidate was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for what I am sure were tense discussions regarding the years-long Syrian conflict, ongoing negotiations with Iran and a host of other topics. Apparently a glutton for punishment, Kerry was halfway home this past weekend before turning his plane around and heading for Paris.

According to a report from Matthew Lee of the Associated Press, “Kerry [was] to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Sunday evening at the Russian ambassador’s residence. Kerry spoke to Lavrov on the flight to Shannon after President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a call on Friday to have their foreign ministers meet to discuss a possible diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine situation.”

Seriously, if the only channel one watches is CNN, it’s easy to become transfixed by the Flight 370 black box countdown and Richard Quest’s virtuoso ability to make floating jellyfish sound like a break in the search. But change the station. There’s plenty of other stuff not happening.

John Kerry is definitely the ‘don’t put off until tomorrow that which can be done today’ sort. I like this Kerry, the urgent, sincere, and dare I say bold Secretary who can juggle multiple serious imbroglios without misplacing a strand of that lovely silver hair. Would that he had been half so interesting in 2004.

Apparently opposed to a good night’s rest, Kerry was up and at it early Monday morning. According to a report from Shira Schoenberg of The Republican, “As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry jetted to Israel on Monday in an attempt to revive faltering peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli members of parliament visiting Boston reacted with mixed emotions, ranging from cautious optimism to strong pessimism.” That’s right. Kerry can mix it up with naysaying Israeli lawmakers talking to the press on two different continents. Boom.

And because North Korea needs to make sure the world still knows it exists every few months, the communist nation exchanged fire with its neighbor to the South in the early part of the week. While North Korea’s aggression in the event, according to Kashmira Gander of The Independent, is attributable to “an expression of Pyongyang’s frustration at making little progress in its recent push to secure international aid,” The White House and the State Department are expected to formulate some type of official response. Kerry’s got this.

Obviously some of my remarks have been semi-serious, but my respect for John Kerry’s energy and leadership is completely genuine. Others might have deemed following the celebrity and competence of Hilary Clinton’s turn in the Cabinet a daunting task not worth the undertaking. But Kerry accepted the challenge and even afterward, could easily have chosen to play it safe. Instead, with everything else on his international plate (and by extension ours), the man continues fighting the good two-nation, Israeli/Palestine fight. He seems completely unburdened by previous decades of failure to achieve a solution, and if he doubts his own eventual success, it doesn’t show.

I don’t mean to suggest that the combustible situations unfolding across the globe aren’t deadly serious. They are and it’s precisely because so much is at stake in so many regions that I am grateful for Kerry’s cool-headed, thoughtful, yet unwavering direction. He may not know it all, but he’s a thinker, a statesman, not a trigger happy cowboy. I think he’s found his calling.