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Fuzzy math

Thursday, April 15, 2010

An interesting problem in mathematics:

How many left wing demonstrators does it take to equal one tea party demonstrator?

Today’s Boston Globe makes Sarah Palin’s tea party appearance, before at most 6,000 people front page news. Okay, the home town paper. So how explain the front page article in today’s Times, earnestly trying to explain the source of this whipped up “discontent”, without mentioning the Republican honchos that whipped it up and without mentioning the obvious: racism.

These tea party rallies have, by and large, attracted anemic crowds when compared with those staged by leftists. You could fit almost everyone who has ever attended a tea party rally in the crowd that was in New York to protest the Iraq war at its commencement, not to mention the number of protestors who showed up in January 2001 to protest the stolen election. And did you know that tens of thousands of people were in Washington last month to rally in favor of immigration reform? Well, you would if you had gone to page A16 of the Times that day, where, by the way, you would have had to go many years ago to read about the millions who were protesting the Iraq war here and around the world (250,000 in New York), not to mention the crowds that show up to protest globalization. Despite the numerical disparity in these numbers, the media has bestowed a legitimacy and importance on these crackpots that is disproportionate to their numbers.

Besides the differences in the amount and placement of the ink spilled on the tea party types, there is a pronounced difference in the way these folks are treated in the media. Despite the fact that they are philosophically incoherent, they are accorded respect, and, by and large, allowed to assert unchallenged that they somehow represent a majority of Americans, despite the fact that the only core belief they seem to share is a belief that the man the majority of us put in the White House is illegitimate. Funny, but Bush really was illegitimate, but anyone who said it was immediately marginalized, as are those against wars, corporations, and globalization.

Perhaps the pundits and the press feel an affinity with the tea partiers. The punditocracy is made up overwhelmingly of people who have climbed ever higher by being ever wronger. Why should they waste their time talking about people who keep turning out to be right, when they can spend their time obsessing about people who are so much like them.

So, how many left wing demonstrators does it take to equal one tea party demonstrator?

I sure as hell don’t know.


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Some memes never die

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

They just evolve.

Remember Lucky Duckies?

Lucky duckies is a term that was used in Wall Street Journal editorials starting on 20 November 2002 to refer to Americans who pay no federal income tax because they are at an income level that is below the tax line (after deductions and credits).

They’re back, in a new guise. They’re the 47 per-centers:

Forty-seven percent.

That’s the portion of American households that owe no income tax for 2009. The number is up from 38 percent in 2007, and it has become a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio. With Tax Day coming on Thursday, 47 percent has become shorthand for the notion that the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole.

But, as David Leonhardt goes on to explain, the talking point is as untrue now as it was then:

The 47 percent number is not wrong. The stimulus programs of the last two years — the first one signed by President George W. Bush, the second and larger one by President Obama — have increased the number of households that receive enough of a tax credit to wipe out their federal income tax liability.

But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and investment taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.

Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Officedata suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

The entire article is worth a read.

But does the truth matter? After all, like the genes which inspired the concept, memes care for nothing but one thing: survival. As Jon Stewart demonstrates here, this meme is thriving in all the usual places:


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This doesn’t sound good

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

From an email I received a few minutes ago:

Hello. I hope that you will help me in researching a possible story for the Hartford Courant.

You are receiving this message because you are listed on the constituent database at the Secretary of the State’s office in Hartford. I have obtained that database via a request under the state Freedom of Information Act.

One of the categories in the database is labeled “HOLIDAY CARD.” There is a notation under that heading of either “TRUE” or “FALSE” next to people’s names – and next to your name in the database, the notation says “TRUE.”

I would be grateful if you would answer BOTH of these questions:

1. Did you ever SEND a holiday card to Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz. If so, how many years did you send her a card?

2. Did you ever RECEIVE a holiday card from Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz. If so, how many years did you receive a holiday card from her?

Again, I appreciate your time and attention. Please respond by reply e-mail. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them, either by e-mail or on the phone. You can reach me by calling 860-241-6524 at The Courant.

Sincerely,

Jon Lender

I won’t be responding, but I assume I’m not the only one to get this email.

UPDATE: For some strange reason, the questions did not get reproduced when I cut and pasted the email. I tried several times to cut and paste only the questions, and each time they resisted. I had to reproduce them long hand. Any idea what would cause that? In any event, I have corrected the post. Thanks to Connecticut Bob for pointing that out.


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I’m not making any accusations, but…

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

My wife informs me that a certain corner of the tweetosphere is -well, all a twitter- about this post at the Atlantic. Everyone who’s anyone is linking to it.

This has raised our ire, or at least our suspicions, because it is ever so similar to this post, to which I’ve linked in the past, authored by none other than our much beloved son. Not only are the quotes pretty much the same, but the links to those quotes are the same.

Just saying.


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JJB Dinner-A review

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

We SE Connecticut Liberal Drinkers managed to fill a whole table at the JJB Dinner last night. Our table was several miles from the speaker’s podium; it was indeed tied with the table at the extreme other end of the room for farthest from that seat of honor. We console ourselves with the belief that this slight to our dignity was unintended. Surely there must have been someone there less important than us, though the more I think about that proposition, the more I doubt it.

But I put aside my offended pride to do my bloggy duty. Leave it to others to pick apart the speeches. I shall review something far more important-the swag left on our chairs by the various candidates.

Let me start off by saying this was a dismal year. I shall, by and by, bestow the Best Boodle Award, but let me hasten to assure that the feat was comparable to a two legged runner winning a race against amputees.

So, what did we have. First, as threatened, Denise Merrill gave absolutely nothing, preferring instead to throw her money at a charity. In an excess of highmindedness, she didn’t even leave a note on our chairs telling us what she was doing.

Now, proceeding upwards toward the award (setting aside the Cynical Swag award, which I shall bestow last) here’s what we got:

Malloy: Nothing, at least nothing that I saw.

Kevin Lembo: A piece of cardboard from which one could cut out “nerd glasses”. Lembo gets a pass because he has no money.

Nancy Wyman: She still hasn’t run out of jar openers, so we have another one to add to the collection. Nancy gets a pass, however, since she is not opposed, and therefore has no incentive to bribe.

Jonathan Harris and Dick Blumenthal, tied with a cheap plastic cup and a cheap plastic pen respectively.

Ned Lamont: First of all, Ned’s minions failed to shed even a portion of his wealth on our table, but we snagged some of his miniature basketballs somewhere along the way. Now, I will be casting my vote for Ned at the convention, but I’m sorry to say that it will be in spite of, rather than (as it should be) because of a JJB Dinner bribe. There must be some connection between politics and basketball, but I can’t figure it out.

George Jepsen: A pocket copy of the constitution. As a plus, it’s relevant to the job he seeks, but really, paper is so 20th century. I already have a constitution on my Iphone.

Let me pause before announcing the winners, and lament what might have been. Gone are the days of chocolate treats and… Well, damn it, that’s all that matters, the chocolate treats. We shelled out $175.00 and the best thing we got was:

The winner: Mary Glassman, who bestowed a useful little book containing post it notes on each and every one of us. Yes, that’ it-post it notes wins the day. Pathetic isn’t it? Maybe I should become a Republican.

Now, for the Cynical Swag award, won hands down by Susan Bysiewicz, who gave each one of us a tote bag, guaranteeing that each one of us would at least appear to be supporting her as we left the convention with our paltry prizes stowed in her bag. If only Susan’s legal experience matched her political savvy.

I should note that Lee Whitnum was making the rounds, looking all the world like a left wing Orly Taitz. Poor Ms. Whitnum is running for the Senate nomination, and is in the unenviable position of being far in Merrick Alpert’s rear view mirror. You can’t get much farther back than that. Merrick, of course, declined to dine with us “fat cats”, though he did post his juvenile chicken outside the entrance hall. Needless to say, no loot from him, either.

UPDATE: Grant Ritter shows off the winning entry:


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Hat in the Ring

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Having lost my ill fated bid to replace the last Pope (and look what’s come of that!) I feel some trepidation in announcing my candidacy for the next Supreme Court appointment. Nonetheless, for the good of the country, I must put personal considerations aside, throw my hat in the ring, and place my name in contention. After all, if I don’t, who will? I’m confident that Obama won’t repeat the mistake that the cardinals in conclave must surely now regret.

In all modesty I believe I have the three traits necessary to enable the spineless Democrats to overcome the expected Republican filbuster. I am:

  • White
  • Male
  • Christian.

Now, some faithful readers of this blog might question the last assertion, but I must remind them that I was baptized into the Catholic Church by a fully accredited priest. At least I must trust the word of my mother that it is so, as my own memory is somewhat hazy. As everyone who took catechism knows, baptism leaves an indelible mark on the soul, so for better or for worse, whether they like it or not, I’m a Catholic, and that means I’m a Christian (we Catholics invented Christianity, after all), so I have all the qualifications the Republicans think you need to be a Supreme Court Justice. Also, not that it matters, but I’m a lawyer.

As a candidate for this exalted office, I promise to honor the time honored tradition established by those nominated by Republican presidents. I promise to say nothing about my legal positions, and if cornered, I promise to lie about them. I pledge to affirm that there is no reason to believe that my legal positions will be consistent with, or affected by, the legal and political positions I have espoused in the past. I trust and expect that the Republicans will swallow those assurances just as the Democrats did in like circumstances.

But I have even more to offer. Last year we learned that empathy is an undesirable quality in a judge. Well, I am totally lacking in empathy! Just ask my wife, or anyone who knows me. I’m perfectly capable of judging, while holding the absolute conviction that I myself should not be judged. I have a deep and abiding respect, almost to the point of worship, for those legal precedents with which I, and by extension, the Founders agree (or would have agreed in their case). I am possessed of a preternatural ability to discern the inmost thoughts of those long dead sages, and will thus be able to discern precisely what they all would have wanted the court to do on any given issue (because they all agreed completely on all issues). Notwithstanding the pledges contained in the preceding paragraph, let me hasten to assure the Republicans of the following: I believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception straight through to the moment of birth. I believe that the Founders would have wanted even the insane to carry submachine guns with them at all times, in all places, but that they would have been appalled at the idea of restricting the government’s right to read everyone’s email. I believe that the First Amendment gives us freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, and I know that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would have agreed. I believe that Amendments Four through Eight were only intended to apply to white male Christians, and that the same should hold true today, when convenient.

I know these positions put me slightly to the left of the court’s present majority, but, after all, Obama is a Democrat, and you can’t expect him to go with an out and out conservative. Still, on balance, I believe that I am more than nominally qualified, holding as I do, views far closer to the mainstream than do those potential nominees that are more often mentioned. I stand ready to answer my nation’s call, plus, the job pays well.


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So many liars, so little time

Saturday, April 10, 2010

A few minutes ago one of my wife’s friends forwarded an email to her filled with what appeared to be ludicrous claims about the cap and trade bill. Among the obvious whoppers:

Beginning one year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this “Cap & Trade” bill, passed by the House of Representatives. If it is also passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced.

The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded.

The emphases are in the original, but they are only that. There are no links. The email suggests:

Take a look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and Trade bill).

Well, my wife’s friend was somewhat concerned (she was dubious) that this load of crap might be true, so I decided to look into it. And, silly me, I took the emailer’s advice. I “took a look at H.R. 2454”, a daunting task, considering it is 1427 pages long. I downloaded a PDF and started searching for the obvious key words and, predictably, found no evidence for the email’s claims. Finally I got smart, and pasted one of the above quotes into google, where I found this article debunking these claims.
Turns out this email has been circulating for awhile. It’s of a piece with the others that are forwarded to my wife on a regular basis. It’s rather amazing that otherwise intelligent people are ready to give credence to these sort of absurd claims simply because they get an anonymous email, and are ready to forward them to others, thereby giving an implicit endorsement of their contents1 .
I’m sure it has happened, but I’ve never heard of stuff emanating from the left. It appears to be a device of the right. We are all ready to believe what we want to believe, but the ignorant masses to which this sort of thing is addressed are more susceptible, since they never question something that is both written (and therefore authoritative) and consistent with their paranoid world view. One would think, however, that it would at least occur to them that if even Fox isn’t spreading it, it must be a whopper indeed.

UPDATE: As a partial response to a comment, I think it’s a bit inaccurate to say that the article merely says that the $6,800.00 number was not generated by the CBO. The CBO actually did come up with a per person number for the cost of the bill-about minus 40 dollars for the poor to about plus $340.00 for the very wealthy. That doesn’t take into account, of course, the benefit obtained by way of a salvaged (we hope) environment. The article also links to another article, in which it debunked the additional claim that you would need a license to sell a home. My own efforts to determine the truth of that claim were limited to doing a search for “license” and “retrofit” in the bill, both of which terms appeared multiple times, but never in relation to single home sales. I think it would be nice if the bill was “transparent”, if that means easy to understand, but that’s an impossibility when you’re talking about a highly technical bill. The Obama administration has made a lot of mistakes, but a lack of honesty about what they are trying to do in major legislation is not among them. As with the health care bill, the cap and trade bill has been deliberately misrepresented. Given the total lack of intellectual honesty on the part of present day Republicans, that would happen if the bill consisted of a single paragraph with words of no more than two syllables.

  1. I don’t include my wife’s friend in this bunch; she was clearly unconvinced and made that know.??


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Ipad-First Impressions

Saturday, April 10, 2010

This is a bit late of course. The Ipad is so last week. Mine arrived with the first batch delivered, but I was away so I didn’t get to play with it until yesterday. It’s not an original observation, but I’ll make it anyway: it’s great at providing content, but the jury is still out on whether you can use it effectively to create anything. It’s pretty difficult, for instance, to create a blog post, at least using WordPress in Safari, and it’s not possible to add picture to a post at all. At least for the present, there is no way to navigate through the file structure to, for instance, get a photo to insert.

The on screen keyboard takes some getting used to. I’m not sure if it’s really feasible to use it for serious typing, primarily because the screen is so touch sensitive than it’s difficult to avoid “hitting” keys by accident.

All that being said, the thing is great for surfing the web, reading and responding to email, watching movies, and, yes, reading books. There’s a huge number of free books (classics, etc. ) available, by the way. It would have been perfect to bring on our recent vacation, in lieu of a computer. It’s also great for draining your wallet a few dollars at a time, though I have taken a vow that (after just one more) I won’t be downloading any more paid apps at least through the weekend.


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A few pictures from our Nation’s Capital

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Some picture taken Thursday, the one full day we spent in DC. Since pretty much everyone has seen the major landmarks, I’ll stay away from those, and in fact, we stayed away from the physically as well. We went to the Natural History Museum to see what turned out to be rather disappointing exhibit on Darwin. Elsewhere in the museum I was struck by this, a 35,000 year old sculpture. It’s age alone is rather awe inspiring:

Next door to the museum is the sculpture garden. I don’t know if the sculptures there are permanent or temporary exhibits. Many of them are whimsical. Among my favorites:

Lastly, what looks like a naked Uncle Wiggily pondering the idiocy swirling around him at the Imperial Capital.

We did make one foray into a souvenir shop. Normally these shops make an effort to be bi-partisan, but we chanced to stumble on one that made no such pretensions.

No “Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain” shirts here. The only Republican in sight was on a deck of cards featuring a cross-dressing George Bush.


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Ted Mann does it again

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Best reporter in the state.


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