Some scattered links I squirreled away during the previous week:

• Ryan Cooper: Delisting an Islamo-Marxist Terror Cult and Elite Decline: Looks like the big lobby effort behind the MEK is succeeding -- it will be hard to ever forgive Howard Dean, in particular, for this.

  But the fact that Giuliani, Dean and company would choose to associate themselves with this organization in such an obviously corrupt way is indicative of the general decline of elite quality that is afflicting this country. Islamist, terrorist, Marxist, and cult are probably the four most toxic adjectives in American political discourse, and yet we have literally an Islamo-Marxist cult with a history of terrorism, including murdering American soldiers, that has bought its way off the terrorist organization list. And recent history is stuffed with examples of this sort of enemy-of-my-enemy thinking blowing up in our face! Does anyone remember how arming the Afghan mujahideen in the 80s worked out?

  Cooper missed one big thing, which is that the reason MEK has gotten so much support is Israel: much of the bogus "intelligence" that Israel has trumpeted on Iran's "nuclear ambitions" has come from their alliance with the MEK. It's also likely that Israel views the MEK as not just a good way to sabotage Iran but as a prospect for regime change -- which is what many Israeli security gurus see as the ultimate solution to their Iran problem. Another big point is that approval of MEK shows the world that for the US terrorism has more to do with who you target than with the act itself. As long as MEK was listed, the US could argue otherwise (admittedly from shaky grounds -- cf. Cuba, Nicaragua, a lot of cases, including Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda, all of which have tempted the US to cross the line). With this embrace of the MEK, that line is an even more transparent joke.

• Paul Krugman: Notes on the Political Economy of Redistribution: Somewhat wonky, and I'm not sure the model really holds up, partly because there are more to the question of how government redistributes income (e.g., patents redistribute up). But beyond the model:

  In particular, imagine yourself as a hired gun for the right tail of the income distribution. What would you do in an effort to stop the median voter from realizing that she would benefit from a more European-style system? Well, you'd do everything you can to exaggerate the disincentive effects of higher taxes, while trying to convince middle-income voters that the benefits of government programs go to other people. And at the same time, you'd do everything you can to disenfranchise lower-income citizens, so that the median voter has a higher income than the median citizen.

  So far, efforts along these lines have been remarkably successful. But operatives on the right are clearly worried that their three-decade run of success may be coming to an end. Indeed, the whole panic about the lucky duckies and all that can be seen as reflecting a great fear on the part of the right that any day now the median voter will realize where his true interests lie, and start supporting much more redistributionist policies.

• Andrew Leonard: Romney's Ohio Problem: The political problem is globalization, a problem for both candidates, but more so for Romney, especially if you consider his tax returns:

  Consider: 267 out of the 379 pages of Romney's return detail his holdings in 34 offshore foreign corporations and partnerships -- including 15 in the Cayman Islands, as well as Bermuda, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland. In 2011, Romney reported $3.5 million in foreign income out of total of $13.7 million. He paid $88,853 in foreign taxes -- an effective tax rate of a minuscule 2.4 percent. He also applied for and received a foreign tax credit in the U.S. -- so he actually lowered his U.S. tax liability by getting a credit for the low taxes he paid on investments parked outside the United States.

  This also underscores a big problem with trickle-down policies like tax cuts and easy credit for the rich: even when they turn around and invest that money, they're more likely to invest it abroad, because that's where the returns are, and the tax breaks are just gravy on top of that.

• Patrick Tyler: Defusing Israel's "Detonator" Strategy: The "detonator" is a Moshe Dayan concept: basically, Israel tries to bully other nations into doing its bidding by threatening to make an even bigger mess if they have to act alone. It is unlikely that an Israeli strike can seriously disrupt Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but attempting to do so is certain to make a region-wide mess, not least for the US.

  "The philosophical underpinning of U.S. policy toward Israel," President Ford said, "had been our conviction -- and certainly my own -- that if we gave Israel an ample supply of economic aid and weapons, she would feel strong and confident, more flexible and more willing to discuss a lasting peace." But after serial wars and a strong aversion within the ruling elite to compromise, Ford lamented, "I began to question the rationale for our policy."

  Israel deserves our attention and protection. But 60 years after its founding, it remains in the thrall of an original martial impulse, the depth of which has given rise to succeeding generations of leaders who seem ever on the hair trigger in dealing with their rivals, and whose contingency planners embrace only worst-case scenarios in a process that magnifies the sense of national peril, encourages military preemption and covert subversion, and undermines any chance for a more engaging diplomacy based on compromise and accommodation.

  By the way, Tyler has a new book out, Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country -- and Why They Can't Make Peace. I've ordered a copy.

• Matthew Yglesias: Plossers "Warns" That QE 3 May Lead to Economic Recovery:

  QE 3 skeptic and Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Charles Plosser gave a very strange speech outlining his opposition to monetary stimulus which I think can best be summarized as starting with concerns that it won't work and ending with dire warnings that it might work. Perhaps the strangest part comes when he warns that aggressive monetary stimulus in today's era might lead to consequences similar to those seen in the mid-1930s, when FDR's stimulative monetary policies broke the back of the Great Depression.

  The sense you get from bankers like Plosser is that we already have the perfect recovery, aside from the lose end of disposing of the Democrat in the White House. The big banks are flush again, more concentrated than ever; profits are back up to pre-recession levels, companies are sitting on piles of cash, and the stock market is higher than ever, so business (and Republicans) are quite content with doing nothing more. After all, the vast increase in unemployment isn't their problem -- if anything, it's their blessing, as it weakens labor markets, allowing businesses to demand more givebacks from labor.

Links for further study:

• Brian Beutler: A History of Mitt Romney and the 47 Percent

• Ryan Cooper: Democrats and Hunters: A Natural Alliance: Actually, hunters have long been concerned about environmental depradations (except, of course, their own, but even there not without exception).

• David Corn: Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He Really Thinks of Obama Voters: on the freeloading 47%, the "takers" who are in thrall to Obama's socialist largesse.

• Nicholas Lemann: Transaction Man: Long piece on Romney, but only the abstract is online.

• John Quiggin: The White Working Class: Unraveling confusion about who supports the Republicans: nothing correlates more than money, but there is a bump for non-college-educated white men over college-educated at the same income levels. The former are fortunate to have gained their success without education credentials and connections, and so are eager to believe their success earned, where much of it is arguably luck. Quiggin posted a follow-up, A Quick Update on the White Working Class, where he admitted that most of the Republican trend in this class so defined is concentrated in the South -- no big surprise there.

• John Quiggin: The Golden Age: Major article on whatever happened to all that leisure science, technology, and capitalism had promised to economic thinkers like Keynes.

• Mark Thoma: Nontaxpayers Are Overwhelmingly the Elderly and Students.