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And you thought the term “Happy Republican” was an oxymoron

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Umm, there are times when it appears that our “liberal media” bends over backwards to be “fair and balanced” to our red state brethren. A good example in today’s Times, in which David Leonhardt gives a boost to what we in the legal biz would call “results oriented” research by a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. The article begins:

W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist, has written two recent papers noting that children in conservative parts of the country are more likely to grow up with both parents than in liberal ones. In both articles, he challenged the view that blue states are more conducive to stable family life than red states.

Now Mr. Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia, has published an analysis of data about individual families rather than geographical areas. And he argues this data continues to support his case that the so-called blue-state family model is overrated.

Professor Wilcox bases his latest conclusions on self reports by self-identified Republicans and Democrats. Given the rather uneasy relationship between Republicans and the truth (great example here) one must question the methodology. Of course it is always possible that the high rate of divorce (which must, of necessity, translate into one parent households) in red states (see here, where researchers concluded that the rabid religiosity of the folks in the red states is to blame) and teen pregnancy in red states is confined to the minority Democratic population in said states, while the Republicans in said states live happy, contented lives characterized by two parent families with children born only in wedlock. That doesn’t explain the low rates of divorce and teen pregnancy in blue states though, since if it’s Democrats causing the high stats in the red states, we here in the blue would presumably be packed to bursting with precisely the kind of people that are producing one parent households and pregnant teens in the low IQ states.

And as for being happier, that seems improbable for another reason. You see, Republicans are different than you and me:

Peering inside the brain with MRI scans, researchers at University College London found that self-described conservative students had a larger amygdala (link is external) than liberals. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that is active during states of fear and anxiety. Liberals had more gray matter at least in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain that helps people cope with complexity.

The results are not that surprising as they fit in with conclusions from other studies. Just a year ago, researchers from Harvard and UCLA San Diego reported finding a “liberal” gene. This gene had a tiny effect, however, and worked only for adolescents having many friends. The results also mesh with psychological studies on conflict monitoring.

Yes, fear and loathing certainly seems to characterize Republicans better than happy, “optimistic” or “charitable” (believe it or not, Wilcox uses the latter two words to describe Republicans). There are 16 Republicans running for president. Not a one of them is running a campaign that can be objectively characterized as “optimistic”, “charitable” or particularly designed to appeal to people who are happy. These politicians don’t know much, but they know their audience better than Wilcox.

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Why the right wants to means test  Social Security

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Several years ago I attended a discussion group led by a formerly radical professor at a Swarthmore reunion (my wife went to Swarthmore). During the discussion one inquisitor, probably also a former radical, asked the good professor whether it might not be a really good idea to means test Social Security, to which the professor gave an affirmative answer. I raised my hand to protest, but drew back when I realized that among my competition to dissent was Dean Baker, a Swarthmore alum, who proceeded to explain why the good professor was full of shit.

Recently, Dean has explained why Chris Christie, who has also suggested means testing social security, is also full of shit. Baker’s reasoning hasn’t changed much, it goes like this:

The key point is that, while the rich have a large share of the income, they don’t have a large share of Social Security benefits. That is what we would expect with a progressive payback structure in a program with a cap on taxable income. When we did the paper, less than 0.6 percent of benefits went to individuals with non-Social Security income over $200,000. Since incomes have risen somewhat in the last five years, it would be around 1.1 percent of benefits today.

However we’re not going to be able to zero out benefits for everyone who has non-Social Security income over $200,000, otherwise we would find lots of people with incomes of $199,900. As a practical matter, we would have to phase out benefits. A rapid phase out would be losing 20 cents of benefits for each dollar that the person’s income exceeds $200,000.

This would mean, for example, that if a person had an income of $220,000, they would see their benefits reduced by $4,000. This creates a very high marginal tax rate (people are also paying income tax), which would presumably mean some response in that people adjust their behavior since they are paying well over 50 cents of an additional dollar of income in taxes. If this was a person who was still working and paying Social Security taxes, the effective marginal tax rate would be over 70 percent.

By our calculations, this 20 percent phase out would reduce Social Security payouts by roughly 0.6 percent of payouts, the equivalent of an increase in the payroll tax of around 0.09 percentage point. That’s not zero, but it does not hugely change the finances of the program.

In other words, unless you set the income level at which means testing wipes out benefits to a very low point, you don’t save any real money, the ostensible purpose advanced by people like Christie. Baker and his colleagues are entirely correct, but I think they miss the larger point.

Now, I don’t know what Christie is thinking here; he has decided that being a brave straight talker is his schtick, and nothing says bravery more among the elites that demanding sacrifice from those less wealthy and powerful that yourself. Like the other 15 candidates he’s pretty much just spouting talking points without ever having bothered to bone up on the policy one way or another. But the Christies don’t matter, it’s the billionaires who own them who do, and they know precisely what they want and why they want it.

So I still believe that the point I was going to make at Swarthmore is one that must be made in tandem with Baker’s argument, because the call for means testing is not really about saving money. That’s merely the typical right wing smokescreen. One thing you have to say for the right, they plan for the long term. They are very well aware that Social Security is popular because it benefits everyone. Some people don’t really need it, but it’s nice to get it. If you means test it then some people won’t get it, after having paid payroll taxes all their working lives. They will resent that fact, and they’d have a point. The Republicans would play on that resentment. The could more easily categorize Social Security recipients as welfare recipients, making it even easier to destroy the program, which is the ultimate objective. That’s why they don’t really care whether means testing would or would not save money initially. They aren’t looking to save money. They are looking for levers with which they can totally destroy the program.

It is still a mystery to me why the Koch Brothers and Druckenmillers of the world feel it necessary to impoverish millions of people by destroying a program to which they themselves contribute perhaps 5 minutes of their yearly income. Wait, that’s not really true. It should be a mystery, but it’s not. As I’ve said before, their guiding philosophy is clear: It is not enough that they succeed, everyone else must fail.

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Debate Wrapup

Friday, August 7, 2015

First, let me say that I didn’t watch the “debate”. Now, you may think that, given that admission, I have no right to express an opinion about the goings on in Cleveland. But this is America, a place where everyone has the right to express their opinion, regardless of their state of ignorance. In fact, there are people who are paid big bucks to express their opinions, even though they almost always turn out to be wrong. If one were to look back over my blog posts over the years, you’d find, I’m sure, that my batting average is far better than the average talking head on the Sunday morning shows, even if you add Paul Krugman into the mix.

Anyway, this morning one of our houseguests read a portion of Frank Bruni’s column in this morning’s Times to us, in which he praises the Fox folks for doing what no other television reporters can do: hold Republicans to account. If anyone else does it, you see, they are accused of bias, a situation Bruni appears to feel is the natural order of things. According to Bruni, Donald Trump was mauled by the righteous folks at Fox, starting with his refusal to rule out a third party run:

Trump alone wouldn’t make those promises, even though the moderator who asked that question, Bret Baier, pointed out that such a third-party run would likely hand the presidency to the Democratic nominee.

And thus, in the first minute of the debate, Trump was undressed and unmasked, and he stood there as the unprincipled, naked egomaniac that he is. He never quite recovered. His admission of political infidelity was the prism through which all of his subsequent bluster had to be viewed.

…

I do think that Trump lost: He said nothing, not one syllable, that infused his candidacy with any of the gravitas that it sorely needs, and there was something pouty and petulant about his whole performance. Some of his rivals managed, even under the Fox fire, to look grateful to be there and to enjoy themselves, at least a bit. Marco Rubio did.

Now, I’d already read Josh Marshal’s take on the debate. Josh, not being a highly paid talking head on a major network news show also happens to be right more often than he’s wrong, so I was willing to tentatively accept his conclusion that Donald Trump did just fine:

On balance, I think this debate went about as we’d expected. Donald Trump dominated the debate. Even when he wasn’t talking. Fox took it upon itself to go after him hard. But mainly they didn’t land a punch. With one key exception (when and how he became a Republican), Trump managed to parry pretty much all the questions sent his way, despite most answers totally lacking any substance, lacking any logical coherence, or in most cases not even addressing the questions. Perhaps I’ll be wrong. But I don’t think his refusal to pledge not to run as an independent will hurt him. He didn’t equivocate. He just said it. More than anything, he knows his audience.

This sounds right to me. Methinks Mr. Bruni is approaching this as if the people Trump and his opponents are trying to impress are rational people who care about things like “gravitas”. They’re not. As Krugman rightly points out today, as he has on so many occasions, the modern Republican Party is not about facts or gravitas:

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

Oddly enough, the folks at Fox seem to fail to understand the political world they have created. For some reason, the thought of a Trump candidacy scares them. Not so the possible candidacies of the other loonies that have come forward to offer to complete the destruction of the Republic. Trump is the natural outgrowth of the Fox phenomenon. He is giving the people what they’ve been taught to want. The folks at Fox don’t want him because they see him as an ultimate loser. But do they have any reason to think any of the others are ultimate winners? In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and say that, at this point, from the Democrats point of view, Trump is no longer the dream Republican candidate. That prediction is tentative, but I’d put some money on this one: nothing that happened last night will hurt Trump with the Republican base. Sooner or later, the folks at Fox may have to swallow hard and line up behind the Donald. He’s taking advantage of the fact that his opposition is made up mainly of people who have never successfully finished their apprenticeships.

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Debate Wrapup

Friday, August 7, 2015

First, let me say that I didn’t watch the “debate”. Now, you may think that, given that admission, I have no right to express an opinion about the goings on in Cleveland. But this is America, a place where everyone has the right to express their opinion, regardless of their state of ignorance. In fact, there are people who are paid big bucks to express their opinions, even though they almost always turn out to be wrong. If one were to look back over my blog posts over the years, you’d find, I’m sure, that my batting average is far better than the average talking head on the Sunday morning shows, even if you add Paul Krugman into the mix.

Anyway, this morning one of our houseguests read a portion of Frank Bruni’s column in this morning’s Times to us, in which he praises the Fox folks for doing what no other television reporters can do: hold Republicans to account. If anyone else does it, you see, they are accused of bias, a situation Bruni appears to feel is the natural order of things. According to Bruni, Donald Trump was mauled by the righteous folks at Fox, starting with his refusal to rule out a third party run:

Trump alone wouldn’t make those promises, even though the moderator who asked that question, Bret Baier, pointed out that such a third-party run would likely hand the presidency to the Democratic nominee.

And thus, in the first minute of the debate, Trump was undressed and unmasked, and he stood there as the unprincipled, naked egomaniac that he is. He never quite recovered. His admission of political infidelity was the prism through which all of his subsequent bluster had to be viewed.

…

I do think that Trump lost: He said nothing, not one syllable, that infused his candidacy with any of the gravitas that it sorely needs, and there was something pouty and petulant about his whole performance. Some of his rivals managed, even under the Fox fire, to look grateful to be there and to enjoy themselves, at least a bit. Marco Rubio did.

Now, I’d already read Josh Marshal’s take on the debate. Josh, not being a highly paid talking head on a major network news show also happens to be right more often than he’s wrong, so I was willing to tentatively accept his conclusion that Donald Trump did just fine:

On balance, I think this debate went about as we’d expected. Donald Trump dominated the debate. Even when he wasn’t talking. Fox took it upon itself to go after him hard. But mainly they didn’t land a punch. With one key exception (when and how he became a Republican), Trump managed to parry pretty much all the questions sent his way, despite most answers totally lacking any substance, lacking any logical coherence, or in most cases not even addressing the questions. Perhaps I’ll be wrong. But I don’t think his refusal to pledge not to run as an independent will hurt him. He didn’t equivocate. He just said it. More than anything, he knows his audience.

This sounds right to me. Methinks Mr. Bruni is approaching this as if the people Trump and his opponents are trying to impress are rational people who care about things like “gravitas”. They’re not. As Krugman rightly points out today, as he has on so many occasions, the modern Republican Party is not about facts or gravitas:

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

Oddly enough, the folks at Fox seem to fail to understand the political world they have created. For some reason, the thought of a Trump candidacy scares them. Not so the possible candidacies of the other loonies that have come forward to offer to complete the destruction of the Republic. Trump is the natural outgrowth of the Fox phenomenon. He is giving the people what they’ve been taught to want. The folks at Fox don’t want him because they see him as an ultimate loser. But do they have any reason to think any of the others are ultimate winners? In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and say that, at this point, from the Democrats point of view, Trump is no longer the dream Republican candidate. That prediction is tentative, but I’d put some money on this one: nothing that happened last night will hurt Trump with the Republican base. Sooner or later, the folks at Fox may have to swallow hard and line up behind the Donald. He’s taking advantage of the fact that his opposition is made up mainly of people who have never successfully finished their apprenticeships.

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Greetings from Vermont

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Blogging has been non-existent here, as I have been on vacation in the great state of Vermont, home of Ben and Jerry’s, the world’s finest cheddar cheese, Lake Champlain chocolates, lakes of crystal clear water and lakes of craft beer, and, last but not least, home of Bernie Sanders, who, if this were at all a sane country, would be the next President of the United States.

The world of politics has not tempted me. Even the upcoming prospect of the “debate”, scheduled for tonight, as I write has done the trick. Well, if truth be told, I’m honestly not up to the task of describing the field of 16 (last count, but subject to change), each of whom is out to prove that the answer to the following question is yes: Is it possible for the United States to elect a worse president than George W. Bush. Even Jeb!, who was supposed to be the smart brother, seems determined to prove he can do even worse than his little brother. Not only did he learn nothing from his brother’s serial failures, he appears to have unlearned plenty, if that is possible.

So, I am going to share something completely unpolitical that I found out today when I finished my two hour bike trek (all, uphill, at least it seemed that way to me) into one of our favorite spots: Hapgood Pond National Forest.

So, on to the something new I learned today. Did you know that in 2009 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first cross country auto trip by a woman? Well, we did, and not only that, we’re apparently still celebrating, as the pictures below will show. Her name was Alice Ramsey.

I found out about Ms. Ramsey when the very car in which she made her cross country trip pulled into the parking lot at Hapgood. A 1909 Cadillac. It was being driven by one of her relations, whose wife, Dana McNair, recreated Alice’s trip in this very car in 2009. It’s hard to say which trip was harder. Alice had to negotiate a network of mostly dirt roads and a country filled with men whose attitude toward women drivers was only slightly more enlightened than a Saudi sheik. Dana, following roughly the same path, had to navigate the interstates in a car whose top speed is roughly 40. Anyway, here are some pictures of this magnificent machine.

   
    
 
Hard to believe it made it across the country, and even harder to believe it has survived to this very day, but there is is, and if you follow the link to Alice’s Wiki page it seems clear that this car is in fact the car she drove.

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There’s good in everyone

Thursday, July 30, 2015

I recently clicked on a link to an article about a woman who is being shunned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a cult from which she has been expelled for being a lesbian, at the instigation of a man who sexually abused her as a child. Sounds terrible, right. Still, there is good in everyone, and there is something really good about the Witnesses.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded by a con man who kept predicting the end of the world. It never came, but hey, everyone makes little mistakes. Apparently they have nothing on the Scientologists when it comes to disciplining the apostates among them:

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, with more than 8 million members worldwide, believe that an imminent apocalypse will end Satan’s reign on earth for 1,000 years, leaving those dead and alive to face judgment by Jesus Christ. Those who break Jehovah’s laws and don’t repent will be destroyed. For more than a century, the organization has leveraged that scenario to compel the loyalty of millions of Witnesses around the world. For the devout, disfellowshipping is literally a death sentence.

via Reveal

As I said, sounds bad, but they have one redeeming feature shared by far too few of their fellow whackjobs, that warms my heart:

Witnesses live by a litany of Scripture-based regulations that, if broken, can result in disfellowshipping. Among the activities that aren’t allowed: smoking, stealing, gambling, violence, gluttony, greed, idolatry, slander, drunkenness, drug use, voting, military service, acceptance of blood transfusions, birthday or holiday celebrations, speech against the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization, and all sex except that between married heterosexual couples.

Emphasis emphatically added. To this we must all agree: if Jesus were able to speak from the grave, he would tell us he wouldn’t want them voting either.

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Bonus points for discretion

Monday, July 27, 2015

Every once in a while you read about something that is both jawdroppingly outrageous and, at the same time, not at all surprising. This story, out of Methuen, Massachusetts, is one such item. It seems that folks applying to be cops in that town are asked whether they would treat a drunken friend or police officer differently at a traffic stop than they would treat your average Joe. I’ll bet you think you know the right answer, but I’ll also bet you don’t.

Methuen asked candidates how they would handle a situation in which where they found a driver in a crash who appeared to be intoxicated. The candidate was then asked if the response would change if it involved a relative or a police officer they knew from a neighboring town. The questions are obviously designed to elevate honest officers but was instead used to select dishonest ones. When candidates said they wouldn’t arrest family or fellow officers, the hiring panel noted the person “knows discretion.” Indeed, Bowman said that “Some of the interview panelists actually heaped high praise on those candidates who stated that they would arrest a stranger but not arrest a friend or family member based on the same facts, citing their understanding of ‘discretion.’”

Now, if you follow the link in the post to which I’ve linked, you’ll get to another article in which the graders expand on their reasoning. It isn’t just that the cop wannabes in question understand the use of “discretion”, it’s that anyone who answers differently can be presumed to be a liar and/or giving what they think is the correct answer. That type of disingenuousness can’t be tolerated in a potential cop; better to restrict the field to those who are upfront about their refusal to treat all comers equally.

It occurs to me that this logic can, and probably should, be extended beyond the drunk driver hypothetical. Shouldn’t any potential white cop who claims he would treat brown or black people the same as a white person be excluded from consideration on the same grounds? And what’s the correct answer to this multiple choice question: if you suspected a very obese, unhealthy looking black man of selling cigarettes would you a) exercise your discretion and ignore him because you have more important things to deal with, b) exercise your discretion and give him a warning or a summons, or c) exercise your discretion and choke him to death. If you’ve read this whole post, you now know that the correct answer is c.

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All the euphemisms fit to print

Friday, July 24, 2015

The New York Times was never able, so far as I can recall, to refer to enhanced interrogation techniques by the more direct term torture. This was, of course, regrettable, because the word torture conveys the reality more directly and accurately than the euphemism. However, the Times’ avoidance of the T word was somewhat understandable, though not forgivable, since we must assume the Times wanted to avoid admitting that we torture, and, lest we forget, the Times had some responsibility for legitimating the war in which torture became official government policy. Torture is something that other people do, and so the newspaper of record (and most other newspapers too) took shelter behind a euphemism. To my mind our use of the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques” was reminiscent of the use of the term “ethnic cleansing” by the Serbs (or was it the Croatians) after the fall of Yugoslavia. Amazingly enough, the Western press fell into line then too, and used the term in place of the more accurate, and more informative word genocide.

Okay, we have now arrived at the point where I will make my point. In this morning’s Times we learn that there’s a lot of human trafficking taking place in Bangladesh and other Asian countries. There’s another term for human trafficking that conveys the reality far more clearly (and isn’t conveying information what newspapers are supposed to be about) than the words the Times chose to use. The term is slave trade. Now really, was that so hard. It’s not like the Times need to cover for the U.S. in this instance. After all, we’re not engaged in the slave trade anymore. It would be interesting to know why the Times feels the need to sugar coat this activity, even a little bit.

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A case for Obviousman

Sunday, July 19, 2015

If you read the comic strip Non Sequitur you are no doubt familiar with the Superhero who makes occasional appearances in the strip. Obviousman’s super power consists in the ability to spot the obvious. This may not seem like much of a superpower, but he’s got something over today’s media, that’s for sure. He could help them answer this question, which Media Matters tells us they’re all asking:

“Why Only Now?”: Media Ask Why Trump Drew GOP Candidates’ Ire For McCain Remarks, But Not Anti-Immigrant Rants

Here’s what Obviousman would tell them: If these guys (and the one gal) criticize Trump for racism, they run the risk of alienating the racist base to which they all want to appeal, albeit in somewhat subtler fashion than Trump. The McCain flap gives them safe ground from which to mount an attack on Trump; not because they despise his racism, but because he’s a threat to them. The base doesn’t particularly like McCain, but they won’t be offended by attacks against Trump on that ground.

The modern day Republican Party is the party of racism, the natural result of Nixon’s Southern Strategy from many years ago. At the present time it is death for any person seeking the Republican nomination to sincerely condemn racism. This is OBVIOUS, and if in fact the national media are unaware of this fact they are far stupider than they have any right to be. Indeed, their question might be turned on them: Why Not Now: Why doesn’t the media acknowledge the reality of the Republican Party instead of continuing to insist that both parties are equally to blame for what ails us? The fact is they are fully aware of this reality. They simply prefer not to mention it, as doing so would make their corporate masters uncomfortable.

Addendum: Paul Krugman makes some of the same points here. I love it when I can link to someone saying the same things as me after I’ve said it. Of course, in this case it’s not such a big deal, because it’s all so OBVIOUS.

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Hillary’s for what I’m for, unless, of course, she’s not

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Hillary Clinton’s strategy has been obvious for a while. That strategy, just to be clear, is to get as many people as possible to believe that she is for what they are for, without actually committing herself to anything. You don’t really need to do a statistical analysis of her speeches in order to demonstrate this basic fact about her campaign, but it doesn’t hurt, and if you’d like to see such an analysis, check it out here.

Clinton is hardly unique among politicians in adopting this strategy. In fact, the cynical among us might say that it differs not at all from the strategy employed in 2008 by our current president. We have all seen those bumper stickers asking us how we like all that hope and change stuff. The sad fact is that those stickers make a point, though not the point intended by those who display them. We heard what we wanted to hear in 2008. It just turns out that what we heard wasn’t what Obama was saying. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything much. It remains to be seen whether Clinton can get away with the same strategy this year, given her baggage, which includes close and notorious ties to our Wall Street oppressors. Obama had close ties too, but they weren’t notorious and Wall Street wasn’t in as bad an odor then as it is now.

In a world tending more toward the perfect than our own, it would be the job of the press to pin Clinton down. But that’s not a job in which the media has much real interest. Sure, they’d like to bring her down, but they want to do it on their own terms, through overblown scandals, insinuation and a sense of personal aggrievement. They moan about a lack of access, but if they get it, they want to ask questions about Benghazi or emails, not about things that matter to the American people. So, one can’t complain about Hillary keeping them at arm’s length.

Still, I’m an optimist. (No, really, despite what opinions to the contrary you may have formed by reading this blog.) Hillary is going to come under pressure to declare herself, not from the press, but from the other Democratic candidates and the people. People are fed up, and I think they’re tired of bullshit, which is precisely what Hillary is selling these days.

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