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Where will all our money go, long time passing?

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Isn't it odd how so many plans to help the American worker involve giving their money to Wall Street?

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Another map of the stupid

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

And more glory to our part of the country. Just recently I wrote about a recent study that purported to explain the red state divorce rate as a by-product of religious fanaticism. Well, here's a few more studies proving that we blue people are superior.

First, check out the map at this link, which shows the locations of publicly funded schools that teach creationism. There is some disturbing data there, in that the stupid appears to be infecting parts of Indiana and Ohio. I can understand Indiana, which has a redneck history from way back, but I'm hoping that Ohio will get disinfected when they throw out the tea party legislature they so improvidently elected in 2010 or thereabouts. Anyway, nice to know that Medieval thinking is alive and well- somewhere else.

But wait! Here's more data to make your chest swell as a proud blue stater, even prouder Northeasterner, and ultra-proud New Englander. Check out the map and data list here, rating the urban areas of this country by religiosity. The survey was done by a religious group, so it's probably suspect, but I'll take it. In the list, the first, so to speak, shall be last, and the last first. I.e., the truly godless, and therefore superior, are toward the bottom, and New England holds two of the bottom (remember, that means “top”) five spots, and the Hartford/New Haven area comes it at number 6! God only (well, he doesn't really) knows how Cedar Rapids, Iowa got into such august company, but they're welcome to the party. If they earned it, they deserve the glory.

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Fuzzy math

Monday, January 27, 2014

Yet another entry in the totally not surprising category. Times Reporter Catherine Rampell reports that she has been totally unable to get at the numbers behind the oft repeated estimate that the NYC area will benefit from the Super Bowl to the tune of $550 to $600 million. Seems everyone who repeats the number has simply heard it from someone else, but when you reach the end of the line, there's no there there.

The closest I got to the source of the numbers was this: Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman for the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee, using careful, passive-voice syntax, said the estimate was commissioned several years ago as part of the local bid to host the event, which takes place next Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. But, Ms. McGillion added, “a decision was made” not to release the study that generated the numbers. She could not say why it was never released, who created it, what the underlying assumptions were, or even whether it represented just benefits or included costs. After a while, she stopped returning my calls and emails.

Which is perhaps not unexpected, because virtually every time a government or athletic organization describes the economic benefits of hosting a major sports event, economists pick apart the calculations as flawed, myopic or outright fraudulent.

via The New York Times

This is yet another example of rent-seeking, which perhaps reaches its most obnoxious peak in the sports arena. Andrew Cuomo was all set to throw $200 million at Syracuse University to build a football stadium, but does anyone believe that he would throw that kind of money at a state of the art research or teaching facility? Detroit is bankrupt, but as Bloomberg News reports, Michigan Governor Snyder “approved a plan to put public money toward a $450 million downtown arena on behalf of the National Hockey League’s Red Wings and their billionaire owners”. Meanwhile, astoundingly, the NFL actually gets away with calling itself a non-profit, while it is, in fact, all about profit. We in Connecticut are not exempt, of course, with our boondoggle football stadium in East Hartford and our highly paid basketball coaches, one of whom was given a multi-million dollar contract before he ever nailed down a winning season. To put it in perspective, that's enough to pay the measly salaries of about 30 adjunct professors.

So, back to the Super Bowl. Chances are that the New York economy will never net anything close to $600 million off of the Super Bowl, but there's a good chance the Nonprofit Football League will, since New Jersey and New York will dutifully absorb all the costs.

Credit where it's due: Tom Coburn, of all people, has introduced a bill to strip the NFL of its non-profit status. Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks.

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No such thing as a corporate terrorist

Monday, January 27, 2014

Tom Tomorrow’s latest:

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Defining Normal

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Dean Baker has a lot to say about an article in this morning's Times about the current housing market, which, as he points out, seems to be written from the perspective of the mortgage lending industry.

Dean quotes this statement from the article:

“Tighter lending standards are shutting out close to 12.5 million consumers who would qualify in normal times.”

One thing Dean doesn't point out is that the article never defines precisely when it means by “normal times”, but the implication is clear. Later in the same article, as Dean points out, the article states:

Mortgages are roughly seven times harder to get than they were five years ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s credit availability index, and they show few signs of getting easier.”

So, apparently 2008 was normal times, a time when the mortgage industry was permeated by fraud, was at the top of a ready to burst bubble, and anyone with a heartbeat could qualify for a loan.

Some people might argue that we have returned to normalcy, that while it might be inconvenient for some to be unable to qualify for a mortgage, and for others to not have the values of their homes balloon by 15% to 20% a year, for the rest of us it might be convenient to avoid the negative effects of yet another housing bubble and the inevitable mortgage industry bailout that must follow.

Here's an example of what was once actually normal: The first time I ever applied for a mortgage my wife and I were interested in buying a newly renovated home in the historical district in Mystic. The price was something like $38,500.00. The house is surely worth 10 times that today. We were turned down because the banker felt the house was overpriced by $500.00. Of course, he would have approved us in a second if he didn't have to worry about us re-paying the mortgage, as was the “normal” situation in the bubble years. But he did, so we didn't get the loan. You could argue that he was a bit too conservative, and maybe he was, but then again, that bank still exists and it got exactly $0 in bailout funds.

 

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Friday Night Music

Friday, January 24, 2014

What can I say? It is cold outside.

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Scientific proof that red states are full of yahoos

Thursday, January 23, 2014

There is nothing quite so satisfying than having your preconceptions scientifically confirmed. Of course, when they are so confirmed, you don't question the solidity of the science.

I've written numerous times about the fact that there is a clear difference between red states and blue states. By almost any commonly agreed metric, we are better than them, and to boot, statistics seem to show that the red states in particular fail to practice what they preach. They preach fiscal austerity and personal responsibility, for instance, but absorb far more tax dollars than they emit. They preach religious virtue, but in practice, well…

Among other things the rate of divorce, teen pregnancy, etc., are all higher in the red states than the blue. How can this be, you might ask, when those states are full of devout family values Christians. Well, it is no surprise that divorce and teen pregnancy rates in the red states are higher because those states are full of devout family values Christians:

In a new study titled “Red States, Blue States, and Divorce: Understanding the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Regional Variation in Divorce Rates,” which will be published later this month in the American Journal of Sociology, demographer and University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Glass set out to discover why divorce rates would be higher in religious states like Arkansas and Alabama – which boast the second and third highest divorce rates, respectively – but lower in more liberal states like New Jersey and Massachusetts.

It was previously thought that socioeconomic hardships in the South were largely to blame for high divorce rates, however Glass and her fellow researchers concluded that the conservative religious culture is in fact a major contributing factor thanks to “the social institutions they create” that “decrease marital stability.”

Specifically, putting pressure on young people to marry sooner, frowning upon cohabitation before marriage, teaching abstinence-only sex education and making access to resources like emergency contraception more difficult all result in earlier childbearing ages and less-solid marriages from the get-go, Glass writes in the paper.

“It’s surprising,” W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, told The Los Angeles Times. “In some contexts in America today, religion is a buffer against divorce. But in the conservative Protestant context, this paper is showing us that it’s not.”

via The Huffington Post

Unlike Mr. Wilcox, I'm not at all surprised. I would, however, be interested in knowing the “contexts in America today” in which religion really is “a buffer against divorce”.

So, as I said, this confirms my preconceptions, so it must be correct. Actually, you could probably arrive at the same result through the process of induction (or is it deduction? …whatever) without the rigorous science that I'm sure went into this study.

In any event, yet more proof, if any were needed, that we don't need no religion round here.

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You can always judge a person by the company they keep

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

I am among those who believe Chris Christie is now toast, so, as my good news post of the week, I pass on for your consideration a few thoughts about what we may have avoided. Via naked capitalism, I came across this article, which gives us chapter and verse on the Christie threat. We are reminded once again, as our parents taught us, that you can learn a lot about somebody by the company they keep:

Wall Street was unable to mask Mitt Romney’s cloying sense of entitlement and elitism, along with his Mr. Rogers blandness. But Wall Street sees in the profane, union-busting New Jersey governor the perfect Trojan horse for unfettered corporate power. Christie, eyeing a bid for the presidency in the 2016 election, has been promised massive financial backing by the Koch brothers; hedge fund titans such as Stanley Druckenmiller, Kenneth C. Griffin, Daniel S. Loeb, Paul E. Singer, Paul Tudor Jones II and David Tepper; financiers such as Charles Schwab and Stephen A. Schwarzman; real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman; former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso; former AIG head Maurice “Hank” Greenberg; former Morgan Stanley CEO John J. Mack; former GE Chairman Jack Welch; and Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone. David Koch has called Christie “a true political hero” and said he is “inspired by this man.” Rupert Murdoch, whose ethics seem to align with Christie’s, is similarly besotted with the governor.

Talk about the scum of the earth. But it's not just the rich that are drooling at the prospect of a Christie presidency. Even die hard Watergate fans will concede that Nixon looks like a kind and gentle soul next to Christie, and as to his potential abuse of the national security state, Nixon can only turn jealously in his grave. The CIA would love the guy.

Do read the entire piece. It's great fun. I agree the Kochs and their ilk will probably get to choose the next Republican nominee, but Christie is one they had a chance to sell to the country, and now that chance is gone. It will, thank the stars (or whatever controls our fates) take them, like the pundits, a while to understand that. They won't want to believe it, cause the pickin's are mighty slim with Christie gone, and they will waste precious time trying to salvage Christie before they accept reality.

I never thought much of Christie's chances, even before Bridgegate, but, if you buy into the theory of alternate universes, there is at least one where, absent the release of those emails, Christie would have become president, and that universe might have been ours. (Okay, if we grant that theory, there's still at least one where he ends up as president, but that strains credulity. )

So, good news. We have likely avoided what could have been (lets face it, still will be, but not as bad) a terrible four years.

But, of course, if he somehow gets elected anyway, I will have to eat these words, though it will be the least of all our problems.

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Thou may shoot thy neighbor (certain conditions apply)

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

It will be interesting to see if a recent Florida case gets the same attention as the Trayvon Martin case or whether, as I predict, we have all grown used to the idea that it is legal to murder people in hoodies in Florida:

On Thursday, an Orlando man shot and killed a 21-year-old who was fleeing his yard. He didn’t appear to be stealing anything, according to witness accounts. He didn’t appear to be threatening anybody. But Claudius Smith said he feared he was a burglar, followed him over the fence to a neighboring apartment complex, where he shot him after he said he felt threatened, according to a confession documented in an Orlando Police Department report. Smith even said he feared victim Ricardo Sanes was armed “because his pants were falling down” and his hands were in his hoodie pockets, according to a report obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

…

According to statements by Smith’s girlfriend, Angela Kemraj, to police, the incident started when she saw a man in the yard on surveillance cameras and reported it to Smith. She said they saw the individual in dark clothes and a hoodie leaving their yard without anything in his hands, and climbing over the fence to a neighboring apartment complex. Smith then left the apartment and climbed over the fence. Two minutes later, Kemraj said she heard gunshots. Soon after, Smith came back to the apartment and said Sanes tried to rob him, without mentioning the shooting. During initial police questioning, Smith later denied knowledge about the shooting, and only later confessed, claiming he shot in self-defense.

via Think Progress

This particular article does not give us the information we need to determine whether the legal prerequisites for a “stand your ground” defense have been established. One element of the defense is that the shooter be white; another that the victim be a color other than white, though the range of permissible colors is quite broad. We aren't told whether the victim was unarmed, which also appears to be a necessary element in the defense, though, to be fair to the reporter, that element is at least implied. Here we know neither the shooter's color, the victim's color, or the extent of the victim'sarmed status, so it is really quite impossible to say whether the defense actually applies, though my guess is that it does and will.

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Time to ditch the constitution (or large parts of it)

Thursday, January 16, 2014

It is sometimes amazing how, in the most unlikely places, we find a tendency in our government to find ways to shovel money to those least in need. Latest case in point, at least latest case to come to my attention:

Greg Noll, a senior at Columbia University, balances his engineering major with a federally subsidized “work-study” job at the university’s fitness center, where he fills spray bottles, wipes sweat off the machines, and picks up towels for twenty hours a week. The $9-an-hour wage he’s paid is underwritten by the federal work-study program, which was launched in 1964 to support low-income students who would not otherwise be able to afford college.

While Noll and his counterparts at Columbia and other pricey, top-tier private colleges and universities no doubt benefit from the program—Noll says he uses the money to buy books and food and to go out with his friends on the weekends—they are not necessarily the intended recipients of aid from the $1.2 billion federal program. Noll’s family, for instance, makes $140,000 a year, which he says, rightly, puts them squarely in the upper-middle class. In fact, researchers at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, have found that only 43 percent of students who receive work study meet the federal definition of financial need as determined by whether they also receive Pell Grants. Work study “disproportionately benefits the students who need it the least,” says Rory O’Sullivan, research and policy director at the youth advocacy organization Young Invincibles.

A major source of the problem stems from the fact that the work-study program uses a fifty-year-old formula to determine how federal funds are allocated. Unlike other federal financial aid programs that distribute money according to how many students at a university actually need aid, money for the work-study program is based instead on how much a university received the previous year, and how much it charges for tuition.

That perpetuates a system under which the universities that get the lion’s share of federal dollars are not the ones with the most low-income students but, rather, those that have been participating in work study the longest and charge the highest tuition. Consequently, nearly half of work-study recipients attend private, nonprofit universities and colleges.

via The Washington Monthly

Perhaps one reason civilizations decline is that they become ever more encumbered by irrational impediments to progress. This is a small example, but the near certainty that nothing will be done about it illustrates the broader problem. How often are civilizations able to sweep away outdated traditions and policies that no longer serve a broader purpose but do serve entrenched interests? It can happen. Consider that England did, among other 19th century reforms, get rid of rotten boroughs. But we face impediments England did not, prime among them our written constitution , which is showing its considerable age, but which has become, in its main elements, unalterable holy writ. It was not always thus, we changed the way Senators were elected at a time when plutocrats were quite literally buying Senate seats. The plutocrats are in charge again, but we seem powerless to turn on them.

Addendum: After writing this, I put it aside. I probably would have left it aside, until I came upon an article in Harpers (can't find a link) by a Frenchman (and surely we needn't iisten to one of those), Jean-Philippe Immarigeon, who suggests that what we need is an injection of the parliamentary system's ability to call new elections at the drop of a hat, so to speak. The theory is that if Congress obstructs, the president can call for elections to try to break the logjam. Optimistic, I think, as we'd quite likely get an even worse Congress. Really, while it might help somewhat, the real problem lies in the fact that the states where the people are (which are or will be primarily blue) are woefully under represented in the Senate in addition to be gerrymandered into powerlessness in the House. But Immarigeon does perform a useful service by calling for the unimaginable: an overhaul to our antiquated form of government. It won't happen if no one talks about it. It probably won't happen if we do, but it's at least possible.

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