Classic Monty Python [Bryan]

Movie Recommendations [Bryan]

Looking for some good movies?  Ellie and I both strongly recommend the following flicks we've seen recently: 1. The Lives of Others -- A German movie about living under the surveillance state in East Germany. 2. Children of Heaven -- An Iranian movie about a boy who loses his sister's shoes. (I know it sounds boring, but it isn't).

Budget Blogging [Bryan]

A dialogue on the federal budget:

Friend: So, Bryan, have you seen the Obama administration's proposed budget? Looks like a huge move to socialism to me. I warned you about him. He is Karl Marx incarnate.

Bryan: Everything about his budget proposals are in line with his campaign promises. Everything. The energy policy, the health care policy, the education policy, and tax policy...everything. I know actually following through on campaign promises is new to people, but that is exactly what he is doing.

Friend: But he is stealing from the rich to give to the poor. He is raising taxes on the wealthy -- those that invest and innovate. He is a communist I say!

Bryan: This is nonsense on stilts. Absolute and utter nonsense. Below is a listing of the top marginal income tax rate across the decades. The far right column is Obama's proposed increase (up to 39.6%). Even with Obama's tax increase, it is lower than it has been for most of American history. It is lower than most of the time it was under Ronald Reagan (it was a 50% rate for most of Reagan's presidency). Was Ronald Reagan a communist? Was Eisenhower, Truman, or Nixon? Notice that America often prospered under a much heavier tax scheme. People who think this is new or radical simply do not know what they are talking about.

Friend: But is it wise to raise taxes in a recession?

Bryan: No, you're right, it wouldn't be wise. That is why the tax increases (or, more accurately, the expiration of Bush's tax cuts) won't take effect until 2011. If the economy is still in recession at that point, the budget can be revisited.

Friend: Wouldn't a better policy be a spending freeze, like Republican Rep. John Boehner (House minority leader) has recently proposed?

Bryan: No, in fact that would be the absolute worst thing that anyone could enact. A recession occurs because, for whatever reason, people stop spending. Because people aren't spending, nothing can be produced, jobs are lost, and so forth. If the also government cut spending, things would be catastrophic. This is actually what Hoover did (and, to be honest, what FDR did in 1937), both with the terrible consequence we now call the Great Depression. The fact that Boehner proposed such a thing, frankly, shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican party.

Friend: But I've also heard that the Obama budget would reduce the tax deduction that the wealthy can take for charitable giving. Won't that take money away from charities when they need the money the most?

Bryan: First, none of this will happen until 2011. Second, it simply reduces the deduction to rates to those present under Reagan (reduce it to 28 cents on the dollar for people earning over $250,000). Third, it has been calculated that the reduction in charitable would be about 1% -- a small price to pay for a start toward universal health care. Fourth, although this is not Obama's position, I have doubts about the wisdom of this deduction anyway. There is almost no accountability behind the groups that allow you to claim this donation.

Friend: But Obama is really adding to the budget deficit. In the long run, this will cause inflation and dry up funding for private investment.

Bryan: I don't think we should be worried about inflation right now. For one thing, there is no sign of anything approaching inflation. For another, we seem to know how to handle inflation fairly well through monetary policy.

True, there is big deficit over the next couple years. The Obama plan has a deficit of about $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011. Fighting two wars and a huge financial crisis doesn't help things. The deficit is projected to then drop to $533 billion by 2013. This still sounds high, but it is only about 3% of GDP which (I'm told) is fairly manageable. It is not even that big by historical standards.

Let's be clear: we are facing huge problems as a country, problems that every president since Reagan has let fester and get worse. It will take time and money to correct our course.

Remember, a budget deficit cannot be evaluated unless you figure out what you are getting for the deficit and if that spending supports long-term growth. Is the president's projected deficit a good investment or not? If we are making progress in areas like health care, global warming, education, infrastructure, and so forth, we are setting ourselves up well for the future. If we are funding pointless wars, we are not. I haven't read the whole budget, but there are lots of good things therein from what I have read, things that seem like really good investments. In the area of education, for example, there is more money for college education and for preschools. These sorts of investments will make a big difference.

Friend: I see the light now, Bryan. Thanks for enlightening me.

Baby doing well (with pics) [Bryan]

Baby Stephen is almost three weeks old already and doing great. He is sleeping 6-8 hours at night. He usually wakes up once and then goes right back to sleep for 2-4 more hours. This makes for a good night sleep for us! Stephen rarely cries and so far is an ideal baby.

One cute thing: Andrew has taken to reading him stories. Andrew sits next to Stephen, points to a picture and talks about it, and then puts the book right in front of Stephen's face. Picture below.

Stephen had his "baby blessing" in church this Sunday -- I thought of changing his name then to "Spencer Grant" but Ellie would have killed me. Grandma and Grandpa Warnick came out to visit us and it has been wonderful to celebrate with them.

Interested in a slimmer government? [Bryan]

There has been much talk lately about how we can reduce the budget deficit over the long run. Hmmm, let me think...

Triology Meter [Bryan]

This chart measures the "quality" of each installment of a movie trilogy. I can't say I disagree with any of it -- although, to be sure, I haven't seen all the Mad Max movies. Interesting how the third movie is always the worst, and the second is often the best. I wonder why that is.

I love charts [Bryan]

To be sure, much of how one reads this chart depends on what is meant by evolution being the "best explanation" of human life. But it was still shocking to me. We Mormons have a huge number of scientists among us, compared to others. We also have scriptural tools and resources that suggest the creation accounts are not to be taken so literally (we have 5 distinct creation accounts, after all, each one different from the last!). And yet, we are more fundamentalist than almost anyone on this issue. What's up with that? Yikes.

That captures the recent use of the filibuster by the Senate Republicans. Looks like the Republican strategy is this: obstruct anything and hope things get a lot worse. Country first indeed!

Americans seem to think the current health care system just isn't working.

Baby Pictures [Bryan]

Stephen arrives and is rushed to the NICU -- but was released quickly.

Here he is -- doing well now.

Nora is going to be a great big sister...

...and Andrew a great big brother.

Dad with that overwhelmed feeling.

He has arrived! [Ellie]

Just wanted to announce the birth of our newest little Warnick, Stephen Ray. He was born Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 5:39 a.m. He weighed 9 lbs. and a little bit and was 20 3/4 inches long. Just like I'd hoped, I went into labor myself--for the first time. I arrived at the hospital dilated to a 7! My water even broke!

Things continued to be exciting, though, and Stephen had to come out via emergency C-section. He was big, transverse, and distressed. Fortunately, all is well now.

More details and pictures to come.

Recent pictures [Bryan]

Due date is tomorrow!

After church

Andrew got a toolbox for Christmas, along with safety glasses.

Mitt is (probably) wrong [Bryan]

Apparently, Mitt Romney has been in the news again lately talking about the alleged benefits of tax cuts as economic stimulus. Normally, I would ignore this, but I know a lot of people who seem to respect his opinion. Well, here is a reading list for Mitt:

1. Steven Pearlstein (Washington Post business columnist) explaining the rationale for spending as stimulus in clear, concise, and accessible language.

2. The much-discussed congressional testimony of Mark Zandi (pdf) of economy.com -- see particularly page five for a comparison of the types of stimulus. Most tax cuts, he concludes, are ineffective as stimulus.

3. Analysis from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Doubts about most forms of tax cuts as stimulus are expressed here. Their helpful chart of the stimulative effect of the tax cut and spending provisions in the House and Senate plans are here -- complete with A-F grades.

4. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman on the myths of the stimulus debate. See Kurgman also here and here. Krugman is a partisan, to be sure, and you can find Nobel Laureates disagreeing about these things, but Krugman seems to have been right about a lot of issues from the beginning.

5. Criticism from the Economic Policy Institute relating to the regrettable Senate "compromise" bill that increases largely ineffective tax cuts and reduces much needed spending in things like schools, research, state aid, etc.

6. On the nearly unanimous public support for new infrastructure spending.

The verdict? Mitt's analysis seems to go against what most economists are saying about stimulus. We need spending for stimulus, nearly everyone agrees that we need new infrastructure to stay competitive, so why not just do it?

Naming our baby [Bryan]

Ellie and I have had a difficult time naming our new baby (due date Feb. 9). Nothing seems to match right. We've played around with many names: Stephen Ray Warnick, Geoffry Bryan Warnick, and so forth. We are not entirely happy with what we've thought of.

My dad recently gave us a good idea, though. Some of you might know that I recently received a grant from the Spencer Foundation. It is a small, but prestigious award, and it may very well help me get tenure someday. We were very happy to receive a Spencer grant.

Now, every month Dad puts out a family newsletter and asks us by email what news we want to contribute. On my list of news items from our side of the family, I put down simply "Spencer Grant" remembering that Dad and I had talked earlier about the award. I was proud of it, and I wanted the family to know the exciting news. Apparently, though, Dad forgot about our earlier conversation, got confused about what I meant, and wrote in the newsletter that we had apparently decided to name our baby........Spencer Grant.

It has a nice ring to it actually.

Ignorance on Parade -- Updated Thrice [Bryan]

This is not a stimulus plan, it's a spending plan. It won't create the promised jobs. It won't activate our economy.

Senator Mike Johanns (R)

I have rarely seen such breathtaking displays of ignorance as I have in the past few days. I am trying to decide who is dumber when it comes to the economic stimulus package, the media or the politicians like Johanns. It's a tough call.

Let's review where we are at . The economy is in serious, serious trouble. This is reflected in economic data out today, as well as personal experience. I know several families who have lost their jobs. How did we get here? Well, in 2005 the housing bubble pops. House prices decline. Banks heavily invested in bad loans nearly go under, and people see their equity evaporate or turn negative. Credit almost completely freezes. No one lends money and people feel poor. Businesses and families start to restrict spending, and investors get stingy. Businesses then need to cut back on production. Jobs are then lost. Due to this unemployment, people then buy even less, leading to more production cuts and more failing businesses. More jobs lost. This leads to yet more cuts in consumer spending and investment...and so forth and so on.

One way to deal with this problem is for the Federal Reserve bank to lower interest rates -- this makes lending easier and can entice spending. Alas, the Fed has lowered interest rates to zero and things keep getting worse. To break this cycle, somehow spending needs to pick up again, but no one is going to start spending or investing on their own in this climate.

Luckily, since John Maynard Keynes was around, we now have the idea of "counter-cyclical fiscal policy" solutions. When spending takes a nose dive, Keynes realized that the government can step in a make up the difference. The government can increase spending directly or lower taxes and hope that people will spend themselves. What happened in the Great Depression was that spending was cut and taxes raised at very inappropriate times (thanks to both Hoover and FDR), which is why it turned out so bad. Now we know better. We even know what kind of budget expenditures work best as stimulus: aid to low income families, unemployment benefits, and infrastructure investment (see chart below, which shows the amount of effective stimulus per each government dollar spent).

Now, most Republicans want to exclusively cut taxes for stimulus. While some tax cuts are necessary for quick stimulus, they are less preferable for two reasons. First, notice from the chart that tax cuts don't stimulate all that effectively -- people (understandably) don't spend their tax cut in tough times unless they need to. Second, tax cuts miss the chance to spend money in ways that help us to solve our big social problems. Last year, when the stimulus tax rebate checks arrived, pornography sales increased 20-30%. Imagine: instead of stimulating with porn, we invest that money in medical and clean energy research, broadband expansion, Pell Grants, roads and schools, bridges, high speed trains, and so forth. This is the stuff that makes for long term economic success. Porn doesn't. Tax cuts alone can't make the community investments that really make a difference.

It is maddening to me, not that people like Johanns disagree about the details here, but they don't even seem to understand the basic principles at issue. Either they do not understand, or they want to embarrass the other side so badly that they are willing to let the country burn to score a political victory.

Behold the fall of civilizations.

Update: I should add that expected shortfall in demand from the current recession is a whopping $1-2 trillion. So the problem with the current $900 billion stimulus is not that it spends too much; rather, it spends too little.

Update 2: So it looks like the Republicans have pushed for less spending on food stamps, state aid, and infrastructure. This is all a very bad idea. It is the opposite of what we want to do.

Update 3: I was talking to some guys today who said (1) we should worry that the government is just printing money (presumably this is a worry about inflation), and (2) just giving money to people in food stamps makes them dependent.

With regard to (1) I should point out that inflation is the least of our worries right now. If our currency does start to lose value (and prices rise) we should worry. But the Consumer Price Index has been falling recently. Deflation is the worry right now, not inflation. With regard to (2), I should point out that this is all about economic stimulus. Poor people need the money and will spend it. If that is the goal, you can't stimulate any better way. The increase is temporary whatever the case.

Speaking of Nirvana

One of the coolest guitar rifts riffs of all time:

Now I feel old [Bryan]

So, Nirvana's album "Nevermind" was a huge album during my formative years. The album cover depicted a naked baby swimming after money. Apparently, that baby is now 17 years old.

Things I will celebrate tomorrow [Bryan]

I will celebrate the first time anyone I have ever voted for has actually become president. My voting so far has been: 1996 for Bob Dole (yup!), 2000 for Gore, 2004 for Kerry -- one loser after another.

I will celebrate a resurrection of my faith in America and the ideal of democracy. I feel like I (we) made a difference this time.

I will celebrate an end to the Bush administration. Bush was a very ordinary man when we need an extraordinary man. He was small-minded, stubborn, incurious, and defensive, easily manipulated by the powerful people around him. He was completely lacking in self-knowledge, completely convinced of his own righteousness, and completely unwilling to take responsibility for any failure (like most of us). Instead of unifying the country in perilous times, he took every opportunity to exploit tragedy for political gain. I no longer hate Bush, like I did (I am ashamed to admit) during the height of the War. He seems a sad little pathetic man now, and I pity him. But Mr. Bush should never, ever, be given any sort of responsibility again.

I will celebrate the beginning of the Obama administration. Obama is the first contemporary politician I have ever admired on a personal level. He is a man who, unlike Bush, has done the hard mental and experiential work necessary to understand himself, to understand the world in which we live, and to understand other people and nations. He won't be perfect, and he may deeply disappoint us, but right now I am ready to trust somebody again.

I will celebrate that people within our own country and across the globe can see themselves in our new president. I do not only mean racially, although that is a big part of it (I continue to hear reports from across the country about how urban schools have been recharged by Obama's election). I also mean that anybody who comes from broken homes, anybody that wasn't born with silver spoons in their mouths, can enjoy this moment. I also mean that geeks, nerds, and, well, readers everywhere can enjoy this moment -- a true intellectual for president! I also mean that basketball lovers everywhere can enjoy this moment, and revel in the basketball loving cabinet that Obama has put together (this sounds corny, but I think basketball, above all other sports, teachers you a lot about team play, grit and determination, and respect for special expertise and excellence).

I think the next few years will be the last chance for America to restore its moral stature and become again a civilized nation. People worldwide are ready to give us one more chance.

Tomorrow can't some soon enough.

Ellie as Poet [Bryan]

I was rummaging through some old boxes yesterday and found some old papers from Ellie's undergraduate days, including from her creative writing classes. I was impressed. Here are two poems.

Aesthetic (1998)

we are trying
to find what is
which is not
to ignore what is
not but
to peel it
peel it away
peel it away and remove
feathers and veils and sequins
aprons and glasses and clothes
hair and skin and fat
muscles and tendons and organs
bones and cartilage and blood
and
Words
to pour out the
glass of mere existence
to find what is
still full
when everything is emptied
to keep eyeballs and
hold them in
our hands
to keep their big round
black spots
looking at us
to see something in
the Blackness


Poetry Is (1998)

Words that tingle
in the fingers,
Words that tickle -- a feather
in the throat;

Words that pulse red
in the chest,
Words that escape
from guarded thoughts;

Words that hollow
out sensations,
Words that live
in one world and another;

Words that track wet prints
on hard, dry sand,
Words that irrigate, flow
through clouded minds;

Words that seek assurance
in obscurity,
Words that blindly hit
on the mark;

Words that bloom beautiful
in fields of ugliness
Words that float answers
in oceans of questions;

Words that cry with the baby
in the night,
Words that hold the bitterness
of the failure of lifetimes;

Words that tell truth --
Poetry is.

What I'll be doing tomorrow [Bryan] -- Upated

I should add that Obama continues to do exactly what he said he would do -- bring the country together. From the New York Times today:

As contenders for the presidency, [Obama and McCain] had hammered each other for much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq. (He’d lose a war! He’d stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. McCain’s advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?

It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr. Obama’s transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, Mr. McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

From the Sunday Times:

From the shallow brittleness of George W Bush to the supple strength of Obama is a revolution in temperament and style not seen since Jimmy Carter gave way to Ronald Reagan 28 years ago. It signals the kind of administration that now looms before us: a conciliatory, inclusive, pragmatic form of liberalism. It’s a liberalism eager to learn from the insights of conservatives, and it is pioneered by a president-elect shrewd enough to know that generosity of spirit means more leverage and influence, not less....

We cannot know whether he will succeed, whether partisanship and America’s culture war will slowly eat him up, or whether in government, as he makes decisions with winners and losers, his aura will evaporate. But what we can say is that, so far, he shows every sign of meaning what he said about leaving that divisive, destructive froth behind. Just reading the papers every morning, we see every sign that the gravity of the crisis his predecessor bequeaths him makes this necessary.

The Washington establishment still doesn’t know quite what to make of him. For almost two decades the town has been divided ideologically and culturally — red and blue, neoliberal and neoconservative — shying and plunging in mood swings and feuding. For 16 years, under the guidance of political hatchet men such as Bill Clinton’s Dick Morris and Bush’s Karl Rove, these divisions have been seen as ways to wedge your way to short-term political advantage, to exploit American difference for electoral or PR gain.

The press learnt that cynicism was the only reliable guide to understanding politics and that world-weariness was the same as wisdom. That fear of seeming naive was what inhibited many in the press from greater scepticism about Saddam’s alleged arsenal in the run-up to the Iraq war.

It was an emotionally familiar and comfortable rut. The baby-boomer generation, reared and suckled on post-Vietnam divides, staged their battles like bitter spouses after years of a failed marriage who never really planned on divorce. Now, with this first post-boomer politician, the children who witnessed their parents’ endless fighting have taken over. And it’s the children who seem like adults.

Take a few largely symbolic things that Obama has done since November 4. He gave his chief rival and fierce competitor, Hillary Clinton, the biggest job in his government. He reached out to John McCain, his opponent in the autumn campaign, and will hold a dinner in McCain’s honour soon. He asked a powerful evangelical voice, Rick Warren, to give the inaugural invocation.

Last week he dined with a group of Republican columnists who endorsed his opponent. The dinner was at the home of George Will, the closest America gets to a Tory mind. He did this before he talked to any journalists who had actually supported him. At the Pentagon, Obama has asked Bush’s appointee, Robert Gates, to stay on. He asked Mark Dybul, Bush’s only openly gay appointee, to remain as global Aids co-ordinator. This is not Karl Rove’s America. In so many ways, it symbolises its undoing.

Obama acts like a kind of antacid to the American stomach. He has walked through the churn of racial and cultural and religious polarisation and somehow calmed everyone down.

Last spring he faced his biggest crisis — the exploitation by the Republican right of his incendiary former pastor Jeremiah Wright, a man whose penchant for polarisation was pathological. At a moment of extreme emotion and political peril, Obama found a way to give a speech that remains the greatest of recent times, to remind Americans of their complex and painful racial past, and not to condescend or cavil. The intellectual achievement of the speech was impressive enough — sufficient to provoke Garry Wills, the Lincoln scholar, to compare it to the Gettysburg address. That Obama wrote and delivered it as he heard in his ears every racial stereotype that had pummelled his psyche for his entire life bespoke an emotional maturity that still shocks....

He doesn’t charm like Clinton did and Bush tried to. Unlike both men, but especially Clinton, he appears to have no need to be loved by everyone in the room. He often finds it hard to disguise how tired he feels. He is capable of evoking enormous inspiration, but he has yet to be able to hide it when he is bored. There is a wryness to his conversation and a dryness to his humour, both of which are sustained by an intellect of power. The revered liberal jurist Larry Tribe has said that in decades of teaching at Harvard Law School, he has never had a cleverer student than Obama. I don’t think he’s exaggerating. Intellectually, Obama is in Bill Clinton’s league. But what he has over Clinton is emotional intelligence to buttress his grasp of policy.

What he gets, what he seems to intuit, is how to make others feel as if they are being heard. This is simple enough in theory but hard to pull off consistently in practice. His model is to figure out what another person needs and, if it helps Obama to get what he wants, to provide it.

He sensed that Hillary Clinton needed independent respect in defeat. He couldn’t give her the vice-presidency, which she desperately wanted, because it would have given her a dangerous rival power base if they succeeded. So he offered her the next best thing, and she, unlike her husband, was smart enough to say yes.

He realised that Rick Warren was an egomaniac and wanted some kind of platform, so he gave him a largely symbolic role at the inauguration and allowed Warren to preen. He knew that what Washington pundits really craved was not the truth, but a sense of their own importance. So he let them throw him a dinner party.

He sensed that McCain was in deep emotional withdrawal after his horrifying and crude descent into raw partisanship last autumn. And so he celebrated the old, bipartisan McCain and asked for his support in the Senate.

This is not typical for politicians in any climate and era. In the post-Clinton, post-Bush divide of the US, it’s a shock of sorts, and one most Washingtonians have yet to absorb. More shocks, I suspect, are to come, as people begin to realise that the new politics Obama promised is actually more than just a marketing device for a campaign....

How a president acts [Bryan] -- Updated

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

President Goofus and President Gallant - Peer Pressers

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Recent pictures [Bryan]

I must say, kids look really cute when they are all bundled up.

Andrew's third birthday party

Nora recently lost her first tooth

Goofy Andrew

Nora's first piano recital

Family Kazoo recital