With all the commentary on the debt limit negotiations, nobody seems to be mentioning that it’s just a continuation of normal Republican tactics: when they’re in the minority, they do everything they can to prevent government from functioning unless they get their way. What we’re seeing now is just a continuation of what we saw after the 2008 election, where Republicans used the filibuster as a sort of universal veto. With the filibuster, and with their willingness to risk consequences that no sane, patriotic person would, the Republicans (the party that controls only one half of one branch of government) and the Tea Party (only a fraction of the Republicans) have created a situation where pretty much nothing can happen unless they allow it.

So either they shut down the government (which would be quick national suicide) or they get everything they want (which would be slower, but no less certain).

The frustrating part is that this has all happened before. Consider Poland, which had an elected monarchy and an elected legislature long before they were popular. The Polish constitution had one quirk: the “liberum veto,” which was sort of Poland’s version of the filibuster but even worse—it meant that every legislator had to sign off on each year’s legislation. As long as that was a mere formality, Poland was a powerful, enlightened country, but once Polish legislators—often paid by Poland’s enemies—started refusing to sign off, thus paralyzing the government, it wasn’t too long before Poland was partitioned and disappeared. (Poland was replaced as the chief power in Eastern Europe by the notably less enlightened Russia.).

The Founding Fathers, with their deep knowledge of history, were well acquainted with the Polish experience and others like it. Thus, the Constitution departs from the principle of majority rule only in very limited cases (overrunning vetoes and signing treaties are all I can think of).

This was a very careful choice; Alexander Hamilton could have been describing today’s Republicans and their filibustering ways when he said:

To give the minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision) is in its tendency to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number. . . .This is one of those refinements which in practice has an effect, the reverse of what is expected from it in theory.

The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations of a respectable majority.

In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must in some way or other go forward. If a pertinacious minority can controul the opinion of a majority respecting the best mode of conducting it; the majority in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will over-rule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence tedious delays—continual negotiations and intrigue—contemptible compromises of the public good.

And yet in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: For upon some occasions, things will not admit of accommodation: and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savour of weakness—sometimes border upon anarchy.

(Federalist Papers, Federalist 17, Paragraph breaks added)

Today we’ve forgotten those lessons. How long until we re-learn them, painfully, by watching our nation collapse around us?

So some time ago I had this flash that maybe the 1990s drop in crime was not due to the improving economy (really, the economy during the Clinton boom stank by the standards of the 1970s), or because of legal abortion meaning fewer unwanted criminal babies (as Freakonomics would have it) but because of lead.

Specifically, lead in gasoline.

The more I thought about it, the better the idea seemed to fit the data:

Lead was first put into gasoline in the 1920s, thanks to one Charles Kettering, who also invented freon (a CFC, the ozone-destroying thing) (and who is probably the single person who had the most influence on the composition of our atmosphere since James Watt). But then came the Depression, when people weren’t driving so much, and then WWII, when driving was discouraged by various measures (I don’t think gas was rationed, but rubber was, which had the same effect). Then the war ends, the auto industry starts churning out cars in unheard-of numbers, and half the freaking country starts the move to car-intensive suburbs. Exactly twenty years later (1965), just as the first kids to breathe all that lead as infants hit their most crime-prone years, the crime rate suddenly shoots up, ghettos burst into riot, and high crime becomes a simple fact of life in America. And oh, yeah–the first riots were in Watts, Los Angeles, which totally baffled observers at the time–Watts was apparently far better off than the ghettos that flared up later. But if lead was the culprit, that would be exactly what you would expect: Watts was in LA, whose residents breathe far more car exhaust than pretty much anyone else in the country.

So why the gripey title? Well, right before I started to write this post I thought I’d do a search on the idea to make sure it was original. And no, it’s not.

Grumble grumble.

For a long time it was a cliche, one that was reasonably close to the truth, that the reporting at the Wall Street Journal was excellent, while the editorial page was a disgrace–a constant stream of right-wing lies.

Now it’s pretty clear that the reporting is infected as well.

Exhibit A is today’s piece on the “ground zero” “mosque”, which, although largely factual (in the sense that it simply quotes people who make insane statements, or statements about what insane people will do) says that Obama’s remarks “nationalize” the debate. As if, somehow, this had been an internal New York debate before that.

Really, of course, all this fake outrage isn’t playing well in New York–national politicians have been behind this bullshit since it began.

Edit: Here’s a pretty good timeline of how things really went down.

Here’s an article I missed about how Chase treats its customers. I’ve experienced the same disregard. They never got to the point of outright stealing from me (they just gave me a loan in the free-money days of 2006-2007 at reasonable interest “for the life of the loan” and then demanded it back), but then, I got my money out before they got the chance.

Seriously–Chase treats its depositors as just another revenue stream, and not a very valuable one unless they can be squeezed. If you have money there, get it out before they squeeze you.

I love any combination of economic commentary and cartoons (for obvious reasons); I was particularly tickled to see this a week or so ago–it’s Chris Ware’s rejected cover for Fortune’s May issue. Check it out–it’s worth savoring.