Neon Derby Cars

390 parts per million. Do you know how small that is?

2012-01-22T12:36:00.000-08:00

I see, over and over again, the claim that CO2 is less than 400ppm (0.04%) of the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. That's entirely correct. The conclusion we are meant to draw is that such a tiny fraction of a sliver of a gas can't possibly have a noticeable effect on the climate.

QED, right? Can a very small amount of a substance dramatically alter the behavior of a complex system?

200-300mg of cyanide constitutes a lethal dose. A large human weighs perhaps 100kg. So the lethal dose of cyanide is about 3ppm.

0.1 mL of dimethyl mercury can be fatal. An adult has perhaps 30 L of volume, which figures out to about 33ppm.

The LD50* of ricin is 22 parts per *billion*, or 0.02ppm.

So such an argument, standing by itself, carries zero weight.

* the dose that kills 50% of the subjects it's given to.

Are Japanese people just saner than us?

2011-12-22T16:25:00.000-08:00

[context: someone claimed that the US's high incarceration rate might be a product of more effective law enforcement]

That's an interesting theory. It kinda sounds sensible, and you can make a theoretical argument for it. After all, as one of the richest countries on the planet, wouldn't we be able to afford more security than other countries, in the form of better law enforcement and lower crime rates?

Let's test it, insofar as we can, by comparing it with other countries. If our superior incarceration rate is a sign of excellent law enforcement, then we should also see America as having a surprisingly low rate of violent crime.

Let's pick Japan.* According to Wikipedia, the US has 743 prisoners per 100,000 of population. Japan holds only 58 per 100,000.

If you think about it, the theory is already starting to come apart. US law enforcement might be better at catching criminals than Japanese law enforcement. But nearly thirteen times better? Sounds fishy. Law enforcement's ability to find people to incarcerate can't be the sole difference.

Now let's turn to crime statistics. The United States has a homicide rate of 4.8/100,000 (2010, according to Wikipedia ). That's really safe compared to some third world and developing countries (Honduras is #1 with 78/100,000), but you don't see any European Union countries beating us (Sweden 3.5, Ireland 1.25, Germany 0.84).

So we're middle of the pack worldwide, and practically the bottom of the pack of relatively well-off nations.

Where is Japan? 0.83/100,000. And they are unique in that their statistics count murder attempts and "planned murders" along with actual murders. Their real homicide rate is significantly lower.

The US has an only slightly larger police force**, not nearly enough to explain anything.
So it's not that our law enforcement is better, and it's not that we chose to buy more safety. Japan seems to simply have way fewer murderers, whether inside or outside the prison system.

So here are the possibilities I can think of:

Japanese people are just better, more moral people.
The Japanese invoke the death penalty far more often than we do. (Okay, I checked, and they don't. Since 1993, they've only been executing 1-7 people per year. Before that, they were executing people at a pretty good clip, though.)
Something about American society breeds violence.

I vote for option 3. For more details, here's a blog post I wrote about a book called "The Spirit Level."

* not at random, mind you... I'm making a point here, though other countries like Finland and Iceland could be used to make the same point.

** 233 officers/100,000 vs. 197 officers/100,000 in Japan. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... It's not really significant when trying to explain the US's 13 times higher incarceration rate and nearly six times higher homicide rate.

*** Seems to be the case. Japan

Occupy Mayor Becker's inbox

2011-11-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

Update: The Mayor (or a designated representative) responds below.

Occupy Salt Lake is being kicked out of Pioneer Park in the wake of the death of a (probably) homeless man in their camp. I disagree with the decision, so I wrote the Mayor's office.

Mister Mayor,

A man died. I understand that, and I take this tragedy seriously, just as you do. But Chief Burbank appears to be casting the blame on the Occupy Salt Lake encampment, before the results of the autopsy have even been released to the public. The decision to disperse the camp is wrong.

I haven't camped overnight, but I've spent a lot of time in the encampment during the evenings and gone on several marches. I've donated food and helped people set up tents and other facilities. My impression has always been that the homeless people there are happy that the encampment allows them one place in the city where they can safely and legally set up a tent and spend the night.

Source:

Chief Burbank says we're "affecting" the city's ability to provide services, even though he admits that the homeless services of Salt Lake are inadequate to meet the needs of the population they're trying to serve. He claims that nobody has died in Pioneer Park in his memory, and that were it not for the encampment, nobody would have died there this year. He ignores the fact that fifty-plus people have died from homelessness in each of the last two years. So why would he expect that this death would have been prevented, rather than simply moved to some quiet, out of the way freeway bypass or Jordan River encampment? By the same logic, thousands of people die at the University Hospital each year...

He also seemed to claim in the video that the new, stricter anti-panhandling ordinances have somehow benefited the homeless population. I fail to see how; it may reduce the number of complaints against homeless people, but it does so only by driving them back into the shadows. We have criminalized homelessness in this city, which angers me and breaks my heart.

The services we provide to our homeless citizens are inadequate, especially for those who -- for various reasons that we probably shouldn't pass judgment on -- choose not to use the shelters. This death -- in fact, the death of any homeless person -- ought to be used as an opportunity to point out this inadequacy and lobby for more comprehensive services. Instead, I feel like the city has closed ranks and scapegoated the encampment, thereby throwing the problematic corpse in the unshowered hippies' backyard. In doing so, you're forcing a needless confrontation with a group of people who are merely exercising their constitutional right to peaceably assemble.

Dozens of homeless people are going to die this winter, if past is indeed prologue. Leave the camp open. Perhaps the services being provided by Occupy Salt Lake down at Pioneer Park will help prevent a few of those deaths. Perhaps it will bring the realities of homelessness out of the shadows. Like all of us, the homeless need more than food and shelter: they need a feeling of community, a place to belong. Giving them a place where they can come together to legally live, and keep their meager belongings without fear of having the police confiscate their campsite, could mean the world.

I'm sure you're getting a lot of flack from the angry Right. Just know that, if you choose to support us, a lot of Salt Lake residents have your back. That goes double for anything you can do from the Mayor's office to create more comprehensive and compassionate services for our homeless residents.

Bryce Anderson

http://neonderbycars.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/darth_schmoo

May you live in exponential times.

Update: Mayor Becker's response.

Dear Bryce:

I appreciate your inquiry regarding Occupy Salt Lake City, and I hope this information is helpful, please let me know if you have any additional questions once you’ve had a chance to review. I am also including an earlier statement from Friday/November 11th which you may have already seen.

The fact is I am absolutely supportive of the right to protest and for the Occupy movement to be in Salt Lake City. This is not a “shut down” of the Occupy Salt Lake City it is simply a rescinding of the exception for camping in parks.

We continue to work with organizers to figure out how they can have a continuous physical presence to occupy both Pioneer Park and the Gallivan entrance Main Street while not actually camping overnight and we are very optimistic that we can work this out.

Sincerely,

Ralph Becker

Mayor

November 11th Statement:

Mayor Ralph Becker and Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank reiterate their commitment to ensuring and protecting the essential rights of all residents of the City to peacefully assemble, protest and exercise free speech.

The decision to discontinue allowing overnight camping on public property was precipitated by much more than the tragic death late Thursday night at the Occupy SLC encampment at Pioneer Park.

Since the onset of camping at Pioneer Park, local law enforcement has responded to a dramatically increased amount of criminal activity in the park, and has made over 90 arrests in the area since early October. In addition, a melee involving over 30 people the night before the fatality led to four arrests and marked, along with the elevated criminal activity, an indication that public safety in and around the encampment has become increasingly questionable. Additionally, the amount of human and animal waste, as well as drug paraphernalia, is an escalating public health concern.

Local social service providers and advocates for Salt Lake City’s homeless population have decried the contention made by Occupy SLC that the group is somehow providing services not already available in the area. On Friday, Pamela Atkinson, an advocate for Utah’s homeless population, addressed the group on this issue.

“Many of our homeless friends have great need, but meeting those needs takes a certain amount of training, education and expertise,” Atkinson said. “We need to take care of our homeless friends in the proper way, with the most expert care that we have and this kind of tent city is not the kind of environment that helps people. You may provide food here and a caring kind of attitude, but that is not sufficient.”

A Salt Lake Tribune story (see it here), published later on Friday, included statements from shelter operators that confirmed Atkinson’s assurance that shelters and social service providers in the area of the Pioneer Park encampment were under capacity and available to provide accommodations and meals.

Salt Lake City works closely with individuals and agencies that provide services to the homeless community. Mayor Becker formed the Committee on Homelessness last year to address the concerns of those who are homeless in Salt Lake City. The committee is comprised of local, county and state representatives, as well as community advocates, and meets regularly with the Mayor.

The City, through allocation of federal dollars, appropriates funding for Emergency Shelter Grants, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. These programs aid those who are homeless those who are at risk of being homeless, and low-income families.

Net Neutrality

2010-12-23T13:58:00.000-08:00

@jasoninthehouse (Jason Chaffetz, R-UT3) has finally blocked me. Enjoy your impermeable echo chamber, sir.

Chaffetz doesn't understand the Internet. But because he's a knee-jerk conservative, he knows exactly how to regulate it: not at all.

In other words, given the choice of putting a corporation between citizens and the communication they want to access, and putting the government between corporations and the pile of protection money they'll earn from their privileged position, Chaffetz sided with the corporations.

The thing is, the Internet doesn't work. So far, the U.S. has adopted a "business-friendly" low-regulation approach, as opposed to the market-unfriendly, "Internet as a public utility" approach of other industrialized nations. According to Chaffetz' free-marketeering*, our foresight should give us the best Internet on the planet. Not one on par with Estonia's. We pay more money for less speed than just about anyone in the industrialized world.

Quick note for anyone new to Net Neutrality: It's the idea that Internet providers shouldn't be able to create toll lanes for the Internet or prioritize the traffic of some services over others. For example, Microsoft shouldn't be able to sign a deal with Comcast to make their search page load faster than Google, nor should they be allowed to throttle traffic from Hulu in order to make it a worse customer experience and drive people to their own video on demand services.

Or, to be more apocalyptic: here's the worst case scenario if we don't have Net Neutrality.

Or, to put it in terms that even Jason Chaffetz can understand: Imagine if George Soros bought out Comcast, and issued a directive to block customer access to a boatload of right wing sites like Heritage, Cato, FoxNews, RedState, WND, etc., while providing a fast lane straight to Rachael Maddow and Keith Olbermann. Nothing so dramatic has happened in the real world, but there have been plenty of cases of Internet carriers blocking access to information they didn't like, including pro-union sites and information critical of their business practices. Also, at the moment, Comcast is trying to extract money out of Netflix by threatening to charge them punitive

I'm not surprised that yet another Republican has sided with the right of corporations to make fistfuls of cash, and against an open and democratic society. But I'm disappointed.

* Which is similar to mouseketeering in both enthusiasm and lack of substance.

Is Obama or Palin more authoritarian? Facebook has the answer.

2010-12-03T07:13:00.000-08:00

Both released their obligatory "Hanukkah is awesome" greeting to Facebook this morning (Obama, Palin). The comment sections beneath the two highlights one very important difference between them.

In real life, both politicians have an active, engaged, inflamed group of citizens who hate everything about them. But if Facebook were your guide, you would think that Sarah Palin had an approval rating hovering near 100%. The only hint of an opposition comes from the fact that any time a negative comment gets through, five or six of her devoted followers post a quick STFU HATER before it gets taken down.

I know from firsthand experience that posting any hint of disagreement to Palin's notes on Facebook lead to immediate banning. I was polite, respectful, and cited my sources. Didn't matter. I only got two posts off before being banned. I still get to be counted among her "fans" and can still access to her deep thoughts on economic and foreign policy, but I must suffer them in silence.

Obama has to be censoring the most inflammatory commentors. But you can still see lots of comments that question his patriotism, criticize him for specific acts, and generally remind us that there are people out there who really, really hate him.

Being the President, it's hard to imagine that Obama just doesn't have the staff to police his Facebook activities effectively. The continued existence of the negative comments must stem from an outlook that values freedom of expression and the views of political opponents far more than Palin does.

One more data point in support of my belief that Obama wants to be President of the Whole United States, while Palin is running for President of "Real" (read: Rural) America.

I read it on WikiLeaks

2010-11-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

This is just collection of summaries of the WikiLeaks cables I've randomly stumbled into. For a full explanation of what "WikiLeaks cables" are, go here:

2008/09/08ANKARA1643 : A Turkish trade minister meets with London investors, tells them to ditch their stock in a Turkish media company that has been criticizing elected officials. Minister claims that the company will be gone soon. Too soon to tell, but smells like insider trading.

2008/10/08STATE116392 : Condie's "What we'd like to know about Palestine" Christmas list. Includes requests for Internet handles, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer account numbers for prominent and influential Palestinians. Also looking for military readiness, opinions on the peace process, etc. If you have any such information, please forward it to cia.gov.

2009/11/09MANAMA642 : This is just silly. Bahrain lobbies Gen. Petraeus to encourage Americans to participate in the Bahrain air show. A more relevant tidbit: Bahrain's King Hasam supports stopping Iran's nuclear program "by any means necessary."

2009/03/09TELAVIV654 : Qatar, UAE concerned about Iran, pushing for progress on Israel-Palestine peace process. Point out that it would make things easier on Israel diplomatically.

1972/02/72TEHRAN1164 : This tastes a bit stale. The Shah of Iran would like a squadron of F4-E's ASAP. I guess this one got lost in a filing cabinet somewhere. :)

1979/08/79TEHRAN8980 : PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM. [...] THE PRACTICAL EFFECT OF IT IS AN ALMOST TOTAL PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION WITH SELF AND LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR UNDERSTANDING POINTS OF VIEW OTHER THAN ONE'S OWN. [...] COUPLED WITH THESE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS IS A
GENERAL INCOMPREHENSION OF CASUALITY.

No worries. It was okay to be racist back in 1979, right? I wonder what they would have to say about the "psychological limitations" of the Americans who (a few short years earlier) thought they had a right to decide who ran their country.

Five down, over 200 to go, and that's just the first batch. There will be a quarter million documents in this puppy when all is said and done. Most of the documents are fairly uninteresting, and it's going to take a lot of eyeballs to find the most relevant stuff. Go to cablegate.wikileaks.org, and hope they can build some better tools for interacting with the data.

Will Sarah Palin be the next chair of the Federal Reserve?

2010-11-10T20:20:00.000-08:00

The best part of this whole financial meltdown has to be watching Sarah Palin try to pretend that she has valuable insights on monetary policy. It's kind of cute, really, like watching a four year old sitting in front of a chess board, moving the pieces around at random.

Not that I'm a grandmaster, by any means. I know just enough to recognize when someone is playing well and when someone is bouncing the knight all over the board and making whinnying noises. Krugman is putting grandmaster level stuff on his blog. Palin doesn't know how the pieces move.

Palin fears runaway inflation -- in fact claims it's already occurring -- even though the last two years have had such tame inflation that we didn't need to increase Social Security payments to keep pace. Which, if you've been watching FOX News' ongoing quest to terrify the elderly, is All Obama's Fault.

When the non-inflation was pointed out to her, she lashed out at the messengers, because someone at their very own newspaper -- don't you guys read your own newspaper? -- ran a story explaining that food prices were, well, very low but starting to creep up again. 1.4% inflation is ridiculously low by historical standards, and by any objective measure, Palin was just plain wrong.

In a second Facebook broadside, she blames our slow economy entirely on burdensome government regulation, high taxes, and businesses living in fear of Obama's next major initiative.

Which is pure idiocy. If it were Obamaphobia keeping businesses from expanding and hiring, their terror would have been assuage the moment CNN declared that the Republicans had retaken the House. Obama won't be passing any major government-expanding initiatives or oppressive, burdensome government regulations anytime soon, so by Palin-logic (as opposed to the real sort) those mountains of cash that corporations are sitting on should be on their way.

Maybe she should start listening to the actual economists, who are pointing out the blindingly obvious: companies aren't hiring because they don't see much demand for their products.

Taxes are already absurdly low. They're low as a percentage of GDP, when compared to the rest of the industrialized world. They're low by historical standards; we've paid much more in the past. We paid much more during the Clinton years, which were years of spectacular growth for people of all incomes. Bush cut taxes, and gave us a decade of anemic growth, the largesse of which went almost entirely to the wealthiest 5%. Oh, and need I mention that all that anemic growth was followed by the collapse of the whole economy?

Lastly, it shouldn't even have to be argued that more "burdensome government regulation" would have prevented much of the recent economic collapse. The fact that supposedly serious people can claim otherwise is a testament to the power of the right-wing noise machine.

Palin is a card-carrying member of that noise machine. Gears in that machine don't get held accountable for anything. Their proposals don't have to make sense, so long as the person doing the proposing sounds confident. That's why Palin can talk about how we need to be serious about paying off our national debt in one paragraph, and then demand huge tax cuts for the wealthy in the next. Actual economists know that tax cuts have never come close to "paying for themselves," and that in a situation like ours where there are mountains of cash lying idle, adding more to the pile is an ineffective way to stimulate the economy.*

Her last mistake is to imply that inflation is bad for most Americans. Actually, moderate inflation is good for just about anyone who has a mortgage. Their debts become worth less as the years go by. If you owe as much on your house as you have set aside in your 401K, inflation is robbing Peter, paying Paul, and then telling Paul to write Peter a check. As Paul Krugman pointed out (for which the Nobel-prizewinning economist received a tongue lashing from our girl Sarah) inflation did a lot to make our post-WWII debt more manageable.

Who does inflation hurt the most? People who have grotesque sums of cash lying around. Which I believe is why, even though the economy would be generally better off if the Fed targeted lower unemployment and higher inflation, they continue to choke off inflation. The Fed is run by rich people and people who hang out with rich people. The only thing that makes QE2 palatable to them is the fact that the new money will go straight to banks. If the plan were to print new money and sending it to people who would actually spend it (you and me and people poorer than you and me), they'd be screaming bloody murder.

The point is, Sarah Palin really sucks at this, and I pity the people who mistake her semi-coherent, ghostwritten Facebook posts for genuine economic thought.

* That actually *is* a problem with QE. But it's just about the only weapon the Fed has left. Normally it would be lowering interest rates to juice the economy, but they can't lower it below zero, because it rips a hole in the fabric of spacetime. We don't want that.

Barack Obama, Small Spender

2010-10-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Repost of something I put on Morgan Philpot's site, replying to this story:

There is a lot of myth to the "big spending Obama/big spending Democrats" meme.
TARP was a holdover from the Bush era, and the funds we loaned out are thankfully mostly being paid back with interest. Admittedly, it had more support from congressional Democrats than congressional Republicans.

The stimulus bill mostly went to 1) tax cuts designed to garner Republican support (which never came), and 2) shoring up state and local government budgets, so that they wouldn't have to lay off teachers, policemen, firefighters, etc., which would have caused unemployment to skyrocket and worsened the recession. Only a small fraction was left over for infrastructure investments. Read Paul Krugman's column, "Hey, Small Spender" for details.

Health Care Reform is a big-ticket item, but as the expensive parts don't kick in until 2014, it has absolutely nothing to do with the current deficit levels. Also, HCR generates a lot of direct and indirect savings that will offset the costs of the program. It will reduce Medicare costs, promote efficiency by getting medical records online, and give insurance companies less incentive to develop giant bureaucracies designed to stand between you and your doctor. According to the CBO estimate (which Republicans consider the gold standard when the numbers work out in their favor) Health Care Reform will knock $130B off the deficit over the next decade, and $1.2T off it in the subsequent decade.

The biggest area of government spending growth hasn't been in new programs, but in expansions of the existing programs that are helping people through these rough economic times: unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, etc. These programs are designed to help people who are in trouble, so it's no surprise that they would go up when more people needed them. Again, reference Krugman; see his blog from Oct. 16.

On a related note, why is Philpot criticizing Matheson for raising the ceiling on the national debt? The national debt is a long-term problem that requires a long-term solution. "Solving" it by just letting it hit the ceiling is like solving the problem of "my car is going the wrong direction" by slamming it into a brick wall. Consider what would happen to the economy if the government hit a financial crisis where it had to suddenly cut millions of workers from its payroll. [It would also require a sudden, dramatic scaling back of vital government services that people actually want, like food, water, and occupational safety, education, scientific research, oversight of industry, etc. -B]

I was a soldier training at Fort Sam Houston, TX in 1995, when Newt Gingritch and Co. shut down the government in order to try and get Clinton to agree to spending cuts in Medicare. One day I woke up, took my weekly stroll out to the base library, and found the doors locked. At that point, I was a hard-core Rush Limbaugh fan. But Newt had taken away my books. The books I was using to make myself a smarter, better-informed citizen and soldier. I would gladly have agreed to a massive tax increase to get my books back. :)

That anecdote represents one of the least-consequential aspects of a government shutdown, the sort of shutdown that candidate Philpot is demanding when he criticizes Matheson for raising the ceiling on the debt.

LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer battles the pink menace

2010-10-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

I try to stay away from "Mormon stuff" these days. But sometimes the temptation is just too much. Sometimes I hear that siren song, that sexy, gravelly voice beckoning from over that distant pulpit, saying things that are so hurtful, so distant from human decency, that unnatural desires swell within me, and I have to... blog the living daylights out of some old geezer.

In about a half hour, there is a protest near Temple Square in reaction to some things Boyd Packer said during General Conference last week. A bunch of my friends are attending, and I'm with them in spirit if not in person. I think that a protest is just what this situation calls for. Why? Because when tens of millions of people all over the world -- including by my estimation about 5600* gay LDS teens -- look to you for spiritual and moral guidance, you sort of have a responsibility to not damage them.

When you elevate a few abstract principles, such as "God will not tempt you more than you can bear," or "the Church does not change its moral positions" above the experiences of those who struggle valiantly to be true to themselves and also to the Church, you cause them agony. Because you have never had to try and deny some fundamental part of yourself to be a part of your faith, you assume that it must be easy. The lack of empathy and imagination, coming from someone I myself once revered as a spiritual leader, is saddening (if not surprising).

There is hope on the horizon. Young Latter-day Saints views on homosexuality are, if not exactly progressive, then at least nuanced. I know a handful who are even accepting of the idea of gay marriage. They see that those who want to commit their lives to each other should be allowed to do so, and that laws that separate people from those they care about most are inhumane.

So my message to the young LDS people, gay or straight, who listened to Packer's speech and found themselves concerned is this: Despite Packer's claims, the Mormon Church changes. Not quickly, not painlessly, not without struggle and courage. But one day the leaders wake up and find the ground beneath their feet has moved. They find that their membership expects that blacks will be granted the priesthood soon, that women no longer expect to submit to their husbands or sacrifice their careers for their children, that the survivalist mentality they brought across the plains has been replaced by more cosmopolitan aspirations, and that most of their members were actually relieved to set aside the practice of polygamy.

The Church has long been the master of changing its mind and then pretending that the new way is the way it was always intended to be. Just ask any bishop being confronted with an angrily highlighted copy of the Journal of Discourses: sometimes, even across the pulpit, LDS leaders speak their own opinions, not those of God.

I believe -- no, I am convinced -- that what he said last week has nothing of the inspiration of God, and everything of the cranky griping of an old man who doesn't understand the world anymore, and therefore thinks it's all going to hell. I'm also willing to bet that, before I see my 70th birthday, the Mormons will be sealing men to other men and women to other women "for time and all eternity," and the words of President Packer will be viewed as an odd relic of an earlier, more barbaric time in Church history.

Full transcript (stolen from here):

We raise an alarm and warn members of the Church to wake up and understand what’s going on. Parents be alert, ever watchful, that this wickedness might threaten your family circle. We teach a standard of moral conduct that will protect us from Satan’s many substitutes and counterfeits for marriage. We must understand that any persuasion to enter into any relationship that is not in harmony with the principles of the Gospel must be wrong. In the Book of Mormon we learn that “wickedness never was happiness.” Some suppose that they were “pre-set” and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and the unnatural. Not so. Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, He is our Father.

Paul promised, “God will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” You can if you will, break the habits and conquer the addiction and come away from that which is not worthy of any member of the church. As Alma cautioned, we must “watch and pray continually.” Isaiah warned, “Wo unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

Years ago, I visited a school in Albuquerque. The teacher told me about a youngster who brought a kitten to class. As you can imagine, that disrupted everything. She had him hold up the kitten in front of the children. It went well until one of the children asked, “Is it a boy kitty or a girl kitty?” Not wanting to get into that lesson, the teacher said, “It doesn’t matter, it’s just a kitty.” But they persisted. Finally one boy raised his hand and said, “I know how you can tell.” Resigned to face it, the teacher said, “How can you tell?” And the student answered, “You can vote on it.”

You may laugh at the story. But, if we’re not alert, there are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change lives that would legalize immorality. As if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws of nature. A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. For instance, what good would the law against – a vote against – the law of gravity do?

There are both moral and physical laws irrevocably decreed in Heaven before the foundation of the world that cannot be changed. History demonstrates over and over again that moral standards cannot be changed by battle and cannot be changed by ballot. To legalize that which is basically wrong or evil will not prevent the pain and penalties that will follow as surely as night follows day.

Regardless of the opposition, we are determined to stay on course. We will hold to the principles and laws and ordinances of the Gospel. If they are misunderstood, either innocently or willfully, so be it. We cannot change, we will not change the moral standards. We quickly lose our way when we disobey the laws of God.

* Oh, fine. 14,000,000 Mormons, 20% activity rate, 10% of which are teens, and (lowballing it) 5% of those are gay, and 40% of those were watching Conference. The math is very rough.

Reaganomics punches me in the face

2010-09-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

So I got beat up by a biker gang last night. Granted, the "beat up" was limited to two punches to the face, and the "biker gang" was really just two guys on motorcycles. Hell, one of them was just standing there ready to back his friend up. But I'm tired, my jaw hurts, and I feel I'm entitled to a bit of artistic license here.

The facts were these: I was on my bike, when two guys came the opposite direction, zipping down the Jordan River Parkway on motorcycles (illegal) with their headlights off (illegal and stupid). I yelled at them. They turned around and came back after me. One rolled up next to me as I pedaled. A conversation ensued, the most eloquent snippets being, "What the hell are you doing?" and "You don't know me!" The conversation concluded with him sideswiping my bike, me grabbing onto him, and both of us tumbling to the ground.

I got up, ready for a fight. He punched me in the face, and I no longer wanted to fight. He punched me again, and I no longer wanted to stand up. He asked me if I wanted any more. I did not. Satisfied that his point had been made, he and his friend took off, leaving me to limp home.

Like I said, my jaw still hurts, and my lower teeth feel a bit wrong. But my pride is more wounded than anything. I've always wondered how I'd do in a fight. This may be the Universe trying to tell me to embrace pacifism.

I joke now. I've got the safety of distance, and the big picture realization that I was facing a couple of kids trying to blow off steam, not hardened, merciless slayers of men. But I remember the thought that went through my head right after the second punch landed. "So, this is how I die. God, I'm an idiot." That was some scary, scary stuff, and while I'm still a bit angry, I'm grateful as hell to them for not taking it further than they did.

They say a conservative is just a liberal who got mugged. I'll admit that, comparatively puny as this experience was, I can feel the urge to rescind my trust in the general goodwill of humankind. Part of me wants to embrace the idea that there are people like me and there are people who are not like me, and that the proper role of society is to protect the former from the latter. But I'm not giving up on society. I'm not even giving up on the guy who attacked me. He's right: I don't know him.

Why do I blame Reaganomics? If you remember my post on The Spirit Level, societies with greater income inequality have higher murder rates. That correlation is clear and powerful. Less extreme forms of violence are more difficult to compare, simply because there is more variation in reporting and measurement. But I strongly suspect that if those things could be properly controlled, a correlation would pop out there as well.

So, Reaganomics basically says that people are on their own. Government won't protect them from the hard times, or help you when you're down. It won't tell your employer that they have to pay you more.

If you're rich, though, Reaganomics will do whatever it can to help you. It will keep taxes low and regulations light. You owe nothing to society beyond that which you freely choose to give back.

Reaganomics isn't heartless. It's distrustful of government, and it believes that huge income gaps are both a natural result of a free market and an incentive for hard work and innovation. It's also deaf to pleas of class envy, because hey, it's only your own sorry ass keeping you from achieving whatever level of success you covet. Right?

But the downsides of this plan are enormous. People struggle more. They fear losing what they've won. People feel alienated, hopeless, dissatisfied, and angry. The marks of societal rank become more apparent, and worse they begin serving as a mark of personal worth. The social cohesion that allows members of society to accept and trust one another begins to fray.

The Spirit Level mentioned a plausible mechanism, a sort of evolutionary context that links violence and alienation. When a person -- especially a young male -- is on the outskirts of society, with little hope of getting back in, reckless behavior can create reproductive opportunities that quiet resignation never would.

It rings true. If you have a lot to lose, you don't go picking fights with anyone who cusses you out. In fact, you don't go speeding down a pedestrian/bike path in the dead of night.

Shame and humiliation are powerful social emotions. The Reagonomics people make a huge mistake by pretending that their economic shaming plan can drive only one response: a redoubling of the person's efforts in pursuit of legal, socially responsible economic increase.

I honestly believe that, if America's wealth distribution were as narrow as, say, Finland's, my jaw would feel just fine right now thankyouverymuch. So, soak the rich, raise the minimum wage, and smile at a stranger.

P.S.: Happy Read a Qu'ran Day.

Rough thoughts on unemployment and socialism

2010-07-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

[Modified from something I tried to post on 538, but there were technical difficulties.]

The belief that new jobs will always replace old jobs is misguided in many ways.

First, unemployment is much higher than the official figures let on, and the true surplus of non-working, potentially productive people has been rising for decades. People spend more of their lives in college. People spend more of their lives in retirement. We have more people on government disability, more people in prison, more part time workers, and more people leaving the job market entirely.

Those jobs that disappeared didn't all come back.

Second, when you automate all the manual labor jobs out of existence, and replace them with more mentally taxing work, there are going to be millions of people who were perfectly capable of holding the old jobs, who can no longer provide the engines of capitalism with any service it's willing to pay for.

What is the free market answer to their plight?

1) They should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Start your own business! Be dynamic and innovative! Reach for your dreams! Or failing that...

2) Die. Survival of the fittest, you know.

If you don't have a better answer than that, then you cede that capitalism + technological progress can bring great misery and suffering to those made obsolete by technology.

We've reached a point in our technological climb that is somewhat analogous to the situation we have with oil reserves. New reserves of jobs are being found, but the old jobs are being depleted at a much faster rate.

Take the precarious position of my bro. His job at the postal service is to sit in front of a computer all day, looking at pictures of individual pieces of mail, and routing them appropriately. There are thousands of people similarly employed at routing stations across the country.

Or, at least, there were. As the Post Office's handwriting recognition software has improve, the volume of mail that needs manual routing has fallen dramatically, and center after routing center has been closed, their employees released into the wild to make their ways as best they can. Now only two or three centers are left.

Nor is it just repetitive tasks that are being obsoleted. Software development and deployment has gotten easier in a variety of ways, driving down the costs of bringing new ideas to market. A web app that might have taken a team of a hundred people a year to deploy back in 2000 could be done by a team of three people in a couple of months today. Even Facebook (a site with hundreds of millions of active users) only employs about 800 people.*

I'm not sure where the next big "growth industries" are, the ones that are going to absorb all the medical transcriptionists, all the long haul truckers, all the taxi drivers, all the delivery people, all the tech support and customer service representatives, all the janitors, all the airline reservation people, who are going to be made obsolete over the next few decades.

I see the march of technological progress as a good thing. Nobody is asking that we halt the march of technology to save jobs. But unless we find some way to "spread the wealth," to ensure that everyone can have some claim on the products of a highly automated economy, then we really will hit the crisis point that Marx predicted.

A compromise between socialism and capitalism could be forged in several ways. Guaranteed income floor, make-work jobs, wage subsidies, etc. Right wingers will fight all these measures, right up until the moment that their own jobs go on the chopping block. Then they'll see the benefits of "institutionalized theft."

* It would be 400, but they have trouble keeping their employees from goofing off on Facebook.

Would the Founding Fathers join the Tea Party?

2010-06-20T08:01:00.001-07:00

Alexander Hamilton: "An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty."

Sounds applicable to our times.

Tim Pawlenty vs. The Bong Monster

2010-06-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota and rumored 2012 hopeful, has finally convinced me that it is always, always, always a bad idea to vote for Republicans. Because it turns out that even the ones who can give the appearance of being reasonable, thinking people will quickly disappoint and then horrify you.

So I'm watching his interview on The Daily Show, and John Stewart (for no reason that I was aware of) starts making bong water jokes. I wasn't aware of the backstory on this. But it turns out that, in Minnesota they classify bong water as a controlled substance, so that law enforcement can vastly inflate the charges that they bring against citizens.

In other words, Governor Tim "Common Sense" Pawlenty thinks that a law written to apply to a guy trundling around two pounds of marijuana -- no, officer, that's not my colon -- should equally apply to a guy with one ounce of marijuana and thirty-one ounces that he would have poured down the sink if he ever got around to cleaning out his apartment.

In his "defense", Pawlenty said that the law usually didn't get enforced that way. Instead, law enforcement only uses the law when they need to put someone behind bars. Which should make you feel warm and fuzzy all over if you believe that cops are always fair-minded, objective, uncorruptable, and in possession of certain knowledge of who belongs in jail and who should go free.

For those of us with a firmer grasp on reality, the thought is chilling. In the interview, the governor expressly endorsed a law enforcement practice whereby the police, unable to marshal evidence for the crimes they believe a suspect is in jail for, can levy huge penalties against the suspect for a minor offense, and thereby get the "justice" they feel the suspect deserves.

This would almost be funny, if the practice didn't mean ordinary citizens are rotting in jail on the basis of laws that were meant to deal with large-scale distributors. Pawlenty himself apparently thinks it's a riot. The letter he sent back to the legislature along with his veto was nothing but a one-paragraph setup for a bong water pun.

DIYU v. the skepticism of the commons

2010-05-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

My Salon post about the DIYU book got noticed, the author sent me a copy, I reviewed it, and lately I've following the progress of the book through blogville in a not at all creepy or stalkerish way.

In this post, Rortybomb (aka. Mike Konczal) seems to be arguing that "free" educational resources aren't free enough. Until they're rammed down the throat of every man, woman, and child, they will serve only to exacerbate the power inequalities between people.

Okay, that's a grossly distorted characterization of his argument. Read the whole thing. But I think he overstates his case, and offers little in the way of solutions.

Two obvious points come to mind. First, open source textbooks aren't genomic data. They're written in one or more human readable languages, with pictures and whatnot. They're much easier to digest than ATGCCAGTCTCAGATTACATCGATCAAGAABAGTCCC.* Second, even if a piece of data is useful only to a handful of genetics PhDs, that's a far broader access than if it were only useful to the subset of PhDs who happen to work for a specific biotech company.

Which leads to broader point 2b: the only thing that happens when you open source something (like a textbook, or a video lecture) is that certain restrictions that would allow for monopolizing/rent-seeking/whatever-the-cool-kids-in-econ-call-it behavior. Open sourcing isn't magic pixie dust that will usher in the hippie singularity, but I'm not understanding how opening education resources can do anything to make learning less democratic. Really, it's like objecting to a public library in a town where not everyone can read.

I believe the conclusion Rortybomb is drawing from that is that some structure will still be needed to guide the students through the material, to make it accessible. That's true, but it seems like a trivial point. Do people really think that in a DIYU model, five year olds would be handed an iPhone loaded with a hodgepodge of textbooks, reference material, and video, and told to come back when they're ready to enter the job market? Judging by some of the arguments, it seems that way.

The takeaway line seems to confirm this:

Will a self-directed educational goal primarily benefit those with stable homes and the time and capital to cultivate this? Is "DIY U" accessible according to need? This is the framework I think of as I read and explore this work.

So, even under the worst-case scenario, we end up with an education that is nearly as stratified and inaccessible as the one we have today?

I often cite the statistic that, in America, the least academically successful quarter of the children from the wealthiest quarter of families are slightly more likely to graduate from college than the most academically talented quarter of the children from the poorest quarter of families. We also live in the country with the greatest disparity between the performances of the financially best and worst-off students.

The college education we offer now is too expensive, too inflexible, and doesn't fail gracefully when confronted with students whose lives are full of the disruptions and distractions caused by poverty. Some DIY U critics write as though they skipped over the entire Part I of the book -- the part that explains how the system got so screwed up in the first place -- then apply absurd standards of perfection to proposed open education systems.

How will the poor access DIY U? How do they access education now?

Where will the money come from to create all these free textbooks and course materials? Maybe from the tiny sliver of the billions of dollars that students are now paying for overpriced textbooks. It doesn't all have to go back into beer money.

But what will they read them on? Probably an iPad-like device that now costs about as much as a semester worth of books, and will be radically cheaper and more useful in five years.

How will teachers get paid at DIY U? They'll be paid for services rendered, I suppose. Relieved of much of the burden of delivering prepared lectures, creating course materials, and administering tests to assess student progress, they'll have more time to do the sort of one-on-one coaching on areas where the students need the most help. There will always be structures designed to connect those who want to teach with those who want to learn. An educated citizenry is a clear public good, and much of today's education spending is wasted. If this radical transformation requires a bit of government spending or some money from students to get the incentives right, I think it will happen.

I do worry that the open education movement might inadvertently reduce the size of what you might call "the academic class." But given that the demand for education currently outstrips the supply, I'm betting that there will be jobs aplenty for the foreseeable future.

* I'm pretty sure that string is in my genetic makeup somewhere, and that it will kill me before I turn fifty. The 'B' has me especially worried.

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

2010-05-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

During World War I and World War II, Great Britain was threatened with extinction. Enemies hounded its shores, its people lived in a state of material deprivation, and the nation mourned daily the loss of friends and family who died on the front lines.

Under such conditions, what would you imagine happened to the health and life expectancy of the non-combat population?

A) Health and life expectancy worsened.

B) Health and life expectancy improved.

Obviously, we would expect the answer to be A, but since that would be unsurprising and uninteresting, the answer is of course B. According to the excellent new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger*, the British society of that era had several characteristics that led to greater health and longer lives (with lower crime rates, too):

Full employment.
An erosion of class distinctions and class consciousness.
Greater social cohesion.
Narrowed income inequality, caused by a fall in middle class wages and a rise in working class wages.

Some of you, having read this far, may be asking themselves, "Are the authors saying that we should have more wars?" or "Are the authors advocating Communism?"

Yes. Yes they are. That is exactly what the authors are saying. Now please go away. The grownups are trying to have a chat.

In The Spirit Level, the authors collect evidence that countries with narrower income inequality show remarkably good results in a number of social metrics:

Longer life expectancy
Better health at all ages
Reduced infant mortality
Higher educational achievement
Lower homicide rates
Lower rates of petty crime
Lower teen pregnancy rates
Lower incarceration rates
Higher rates of social mobility
Lower rates of illegal drug use
Lower rates of homelessness

A few caveats and details: The authors are making comparisons only between relatively wealthy, industrialized societies. Think U.S. vs. U.K. or Norway or Japan, not U.S. vs. Cuba** or Bangladesh or Zimbabwe. Among the poorest countries, the best predictor of how well a country is doing is (unsurprisingly) median income. Among the wealthy countries studied, median income predicts almost nothing.

The authors also present their evidence in such a way that it becomes immune to the standard right-wing counterattacks that afflict most comparisons between countries. Usually, if you say something like, "The United States has the same infant mortality rate as Cuba," you could expect a cleaver critic to try to undermine the comparison by citing some difference in how the data is collected and reported, while a slow critic would just say, "But we don't want to be Cuba."

But the authors rarely compare two countries. Instead, what they do -- repeatedly, and to great effect -- is plot the countries on a chart with two axes, with the y-axis showing some rate of some metric of social well-being (obesity, drug use, life expectancy, etc.) and the x-axis showing that country's level of income inequality***, then show the trendline that best fits the data (if such a trend is statistically significant).

So if you don't like the way Italy collects its teen pregnancy stats, or think France's life expectancy is some artifact of their diet, throw both points out. The trendline remains.

They also make all the same comparisons between the fifty states of the U.S., and invariably find the same correlations between income inequality and societal outcomes. "Icelanders just eat more fish" does nothing to explain why Texas has a longer life expectancy than Kentucky, but a shorter life expectancy than Utah.(*4)

That's the beauty of statistical analysis: when you have twenty or fifty points all helping to paint the same picture, the individual quirks of given states and population tend to get averaged out.

A challenge to right-wing orthodoxy

The results really are counterintuitive, and I think they represent a serious challenge to the whole right-wing, laissez-faire, dog-eat-dog orthodoxy. Here is just one example:

Imagine two relatively wealthy, industrialized societies. In society A, the price for not getting a good education is a life of poverty and shame. In society B, there is little market incentive not to squander your education, because the government provides generous welfare and unemployment benefits.

In Society A, the wealthiest people (those in the top 20%) make about ten times as much as the poorest people (those in the bottom 20%) do, so the rewards for being ambitious and doing well in school are huge. In Society B, the same comparison shows the wealthiest members of society only make about four times what the poorest do, so there is markedly less financial incentive to do well in school.

In Society A, polls of high school students show that almost all of them want to attend college. In Society B, a large fraction of the students say that they'd be happy with trade school. Thus, you would expect students in Society A to be more motivated to excel in their college preparatory work.

No surprise, Society A is the U.S., Society B is Finland, and despite what a social darwinist right winger would say are strong disincentives against performing well in school -- no chance at great wealth if you succeed, no risk of poverty if you fail -- Finnish kids outperform American kids by a wide margin. An interesting feature of this gap is that it is narrower when comparing the children of our wealthiest to the children of their wealthiest, and widens steadily as we go down the socioeconomic ladders.

It's almost as though giving kids security about their future and their place in society leads to a more conducive learning environment. But no, that's crazy.

One other example: while highly-paid sports teams win more games than low-paid sports teams, those teams with big gaps between their best-paid and worst-paid players tend to win fewer games than would be predicted by aggregate salary.

Mechanisms

I hope you're convinced now that these correlations exist. But if they're so compelling, what causes them? I accept the explanations provided by the authors, which can be boiled down to this: we are status-obsessed monkey people who get stressed and freak out when we don't feel accepted within the social order.

This makes all kinds of evolutionary sense. In the world that molded our monkey brains, there was no more important resource -- or more pressing danger -- than the monkeys around you. If you were an accepted part of the tribe, you could expect a share of their food, protection from outside threats, and opportunities to procreate. If you were not a part of the tribe, you might be beaten, driven away from sources of food and water, or killed outright. The ability to read the social landscape, to know who was allied with who, who might be expected to return altruistic gestures, and how to keep yourself in the good graces of the tribe, were critical skills, and those who excelled at them got vast evolutionary rewards.

It's no wonder that so much of our conversation revolves around who likes who, who is fighting with who, who just broke up and why, ad nauseam. It's also no wonder that politicians spend their careers promising to do things that will increase your opportunity to improve your social status (jobs programs, homebuyer incentives, assistance with student loans, etc.) or promising to protect us from those who would reduce our social status (welfare recipients, illegal immigrants, big business) or demonizing those who seem to give their base inadequate respect (East-coast liberal elites, academics, fundamentalists of all stripes).

Studies in animals show that moving an ape from a population where he is the alpha male to a population where he is the... omega male? What do they call the animal at the bottom of the totem pole? Anyhow, moving to the other population will dramatically raise his cortisol levels, meaning that he is under stress, which has strong life-shortening, mood-altering consequences.

All this indicates that humans don't generally do well at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy.

So now what?

In light of this, what sort of policies should we be pursuing? Here are a few suggestions.

Treat conspicuous consumption as pollution. Like pollution, ostentatious displays of wealth have negative effects on those downstream.

Treat marketing as pollution. The most effective advertisements are often the ones that target your sense of social status. Your teeth are unacceptably yellowed. Your flabbiness tells others that you are lazy, and causes them to find you unattractive. What does your car say about you? A certification in the hot new field of penitentiary services is a ticket to a better life. You need makeup. Now you need better makeup. Your hair color doesn't "pop". Your acne repulses even your best friends. Your Mac tells people that you are a creative person who recognizes quality craftsmanship(*5).

There is something immoral about attacking peoples' insecurities in order to make a buck. But in the United States it is not only perfectly legal, it's tax deductible. Advertising -- even excessive, Nike-scale advertising -- is treated as a business expense. We're effectively paying Pepsi thirty cents for every dollar they spend blighting the landscape with billboards. Advertising works by trying to make people unhappy enough about themselves to buy a product, and the negative influence of advertising needs to be confronted.

We need more equal outcomes, not just more equal opportunity. The more unequal a society is, the harder a sell this one becomes. If you're already extremely conscious of social status, you're already primed to fear that such measures may reduce your ability to improve or maintain your own status. The Right will take advantage of that.

But facts are stubborn things. It's easy to speak glowingly about living in a meritocratic, equal-opportunity, colorblind society where hard work is rewarded with great wealth. It's much harder to do so while simultaneously explaining why generational wealth and poverty persist in such a paradise of opportunity, or why the United States ranks lower in many measures of social mobility than the supposedly crippled economies of Europe.

It's easy and cheap to shame the poor into believing they are wholly responsible for their lot in life. But those who want to do so are trying to lower the bar by which we judge policy; rather than demanding that policies demonstrate good outcomes based on hard numbers, they want us to be satisfied with a notion of equality that can be endlessly redefined to suit their agenda.

Attack inequality directly with greater educational funding for the poor, higher minimum wages, more generous unemployment benefits, universal health care, high taxes on excessive concentrations of private wealth, caps on CEO pay, and other measures. Replace the income and social security taxes of most Americans with a carbon tax (while expanding the EITC to fight the somewhat regressive nature of a carbon tax). Research ways to make education more affordable, effective, and accessible.

If the authors are correct, doing this will not only reduce poverty, but slim our waistlines, increase our life expectancy, reduce crime rates, and cause a whole host of other social goods.

Will it work? I think it's worth a try.

* The subtitle of the UK version was, "Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better."

** Though Cuba does have some notable features which are discussed in the book. For example, it manages to have a life expectancy on par with the United States despite living in what we would consider extreme poverty. Also, it has the highest U.N. Human Development Index rating of any country which has what the World Wildlife Fund calls "a sustainable ecological footprint."

*** I believe they use the Gini coefficient, but they claim that the specific measurement used doesn't make any difference to their findings.

**** Note that we're discussing statistically significant trends in noisy data, not perfectly linear correlations where a certain amount of increase in inequality always results in a proportional increase or decrease in obesity or life expectancy. For example, New York ranks #1 in income inequality, and it's not even a close contest. Yet it has nearly the same life expectancy of Utah (the second most equal state), and a way higher life expectancy than Arkansas.

While the authors never explicitly mention it, my impression of the many, many charts is that classic "blue states" (states with strong commitment to social welfare, that traditionally vote Democratic, like California, New York, Massachusetts, and Hawaii) tend to overperform the trendline. That is to say, they seem to do better than you would expect just by looking at inequality in isolation. Southern red states seem to underperform, though Utah seems to overperform somewhat.

I'll hazard a guess about Utah: it's the Church. We have to get our sense of social unity and equality from somewhere, and for a big chunk of the Utah population, membership in the Church provides that. I saw it as a member; no matter who you were, what you did for a living, or what marks of social status you had or lacked, as long as you were an active member you had a clear path to social acceptability.

***** Written on a Mac.

Repost: I guess the future of a Master of the Universe

2010-05-01T09:47:00.001-07:00

Specifically, the future of this guy. The missive is truly vile, and whether it was written by an actual trader or someone trying to embarrass traders, I think it comes close to the way a lot of Wall Streeters actually think of themselves. So I think he gets off easy in my version of events.

[snip]

Nor do I expect "Wall Street" to maintain his vaunted work ethic when he's earning $10-$50/hr for his efforts, and not $200-$500.

Here's how I think it might play out.

He loses his job. The collapse of Wall Street makes it impossible to find another trading position. He never set much money away because, hey, there was more where that came from, right? His girlfriend dumps him when she realizes that, without his money, he's just a kinda short, pudgy guy with a hairline that's already starting to recede.

Broken and humiliated, he moves back to his home town. He even has to live with his parents for three months while he job hunts. Finally, he manages to find a teaching position.

He soon realizes that his herculean efforts won't be rewarded with sportscars, coke-fueled orgies, or the bragging rights that come from being among the best-compensated workers in America. He figures out that he's not God's gift to the teaching profession, that try as he might he can't actually teach kids better than the middle-aged woman one classroom over. He notices that wiping the noses of third graders doesn't give him the same surge of adrenaline that he once got placing million dollar bets with other peoples' money. It dawns on him that he can't teach the kids twice as much by pounding a Red Bull and talking twice as fast. In fact, he doesn't even like his new job; most days, he'd be happy to quit, and would happily take a pay cut to be back at Goldman Sachs.

He starts thinking about how it's time to start writing that novel or taking a vacation to Europe. He notices that he has time to date. He takes up that sketching hobby that he dropped after high school, and realizes that hey, he's still got it.

He meets a girl. She's unambitious and her specialty is French literature, not corporate mergers. She's nothing like his last girlfriend, which he finds oddly refreshing. One thing leads to another. Finally, despite her misgivings, she moves in with him, and her little dog too. He thought he'd hate the dog, but soon finds out that he enjoys long walks and that "I want to be you" look that the dog gives him from time to time, the same look the waiters at those high class restaurants used to give him.

The girl drags him off to Burning Man. Amid the dust and the fire, he breaks down. The life he has been missing all these years is gone, and the new life he's stumbled into is more beautiful and more perfect than his old, unworthy ambitions deserved. He says to hell with it: he likes who he is now, and doesn't care what his old self or his old trading buddies would think.

He asks his girlfriend to marry him.

She says yes.

He's no longer a Master of the Universe. He's barely master of an unruly mob of third graders. But he's no longer consumed by the arrogance or the ambition that once caused him to write that embarrassing e-mail, so he no longer needs to be a Master. He just needs to be.

Wall Street has a uniquely unhealthy culture where money matters more than people and you're only as good as your next trade. I suspect that most of the Wall Streeters are ruthless bastards because on Wall Street, being a ruthless bastard is a mark of honor. They see themselves as the real driving force behind America's prosperity because, hey, most everyone does; everyone wants to feel like their work is important, and Wall Street Traders are no exception. They see the poor as either parasites or rubes because it's hard to sleep at night if you believe deep down that you're bilking unwary grandmothers of their pensions.

Besides, Atlas Shrugged is probably the only fiction the author has read since he got his job, and that only because everyone around him was telling him how awesome it was.

The point is, we're naturally egotistical, rationalizing creatures, and never more so than when that ego is being fueled by million dollar bonuses. It's easy to see how someone under the influence could look at their paychecks and see evidence of their innate moral worth, rather than the good fortune of having one particularly well-remunerated skillset.

Mister "We Are Wall Street," if you ever read this, I don't judge you harshly. That rant was ugly and out-of-touch, but I've written quite a few of those myself, and I know how much fun they are. Your belief that the people below depend upon your largesse, or that we should tremble to compete with you in the job market, says more about you -- or at least the culture of Wall Street -- than it does about the real world. When you decide that you can't handle another year of eighty hour work weeks, and want to try your hand at a simpler life, we welcome you to join us.

Can tweets be copyrighted?

2010-04-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

To bring you up to speed: Guy writes numerous particles of funny (funnyons). Other guy yoinks funnyons from a bunch of people, sticks them in a shoddy book. First guy gets indignant.

I'm probably making the mistake by weighing in on this, so let me preface this by pointing out that I'm not saying that anything posted to Twitter is trivial, or that information wants to be free. Nor am I saying that the book publisher behaved appropriately.

I'm not sure whether to agree with Merlin Mann's indignation at not having his permission asked. But I'm certain that he's wrong on a couple of points of copyright law. Example:

Everybody’s stuff—even the so-called “nothings”—are still THEIR stuff. And, any decision about how that stuff gets used—especially commercially—is solely THEIR decision. That’s not negotiable. And, I’m pointing enthusiastically at several hundred years’ worth of post-Magna Carta law on this matter to back me up here.

This is simply wrong, both from a factual and a moral standpoint. First, take the music business. A radio station doesn't have to ask permission to play a track from a CD. Any regime that requires such permission gives too much power to the copyright holder. Instead, the radio station pays licensing fees, fees which are set by statute, not by negotiation with the copyright holder.

There is no system of licensing fees for tweets, but I think the analogy holds: a system that allows for people to make a nugget of thought available to the public, while allowing that person complete control of how that nugget gets used afterward, is not going to be successful or fair to all parties.

[Another responder asked whether Bartlett's Quotations would be practical under such a system. He has a good point.]

Mann also draws analogies between tweettheft and actual theft, with all the troubles attending to such a comparison.

...imagine a “charity” based on pick-pocketing, or a fast-food chain that incorporates around the model of reselling all the hamburgers and corn on the cob they can manage to steal from your backyard grill.

The fact that the victim of the tweettheft still has full use of the pilfered tweets doesn't automatically excuse the thievery, but it does strain the credibility of the analogies. All it does is promote lazy thinking about copyright law and the nature of creative works.

I think that, in order for Twitter to provide the greatest possible value as a service, we cannot think of it as a stream of billions of tiny, individually copyrighted and licensable chunks of creative work. The nature of the service (API-accessible, third-party friendly, publicly visible, RSS-ified to within an inch of its life) is such that treating it so is impractical and constraining.

Twitter also has a culture that matches the ideological stance of the code. Retweeting, republishing, and favoriting are all encouraged. Things said on Twitter are usually treated as public utterances. If you direct a tweet @cnn, there is a small chance that it will get on CNN (clearly a money-making outlet). Maybe the producers ask permission to 'retweet' on national television, but I doubt it. Moreover, I doubt they'd refer to Twitter at all if they had to, though would that really be a bad thing?

The analogy isn't great, since most people who type @cnn are actually hoping to get their thoughts on TV. But the broader point is that, if someone likes a gem they saw on Twitter, and wants to repost it elsewhere -- even in a form where it will make that person money -- there should be a limit to how much effort the person should have to invest in using it. Mann's proscription: "asking permission, negotiating a license, and paying a mutually agreeable fee to the creator," seems excessive to me.

Things get especially dicey when we start asking what constitutes "making money." I think that because in this instance the infraction is in dead-tree format and available for $5.95, it adds a measure of false clarity to what should be a murky question.

What if the 'republishing' is on my website, drawing content from one of Twitter's canonical RSS feeds? Does it make a difference if I'm using my own favorites list or freeloading off of someone else's? Does it matter if I'm monetizing my website directly? Using the site to enhance my professional reputation or to publicize works of mine that are available for pay?

The worst part is, except possibly for getting ad revenue, you can do it all without leaving the confines of twitter.com itself. If you consider your Twitter feed a part of your online presence, something that makes you money and increases your reputation, then aren't your retweets a form of content theft? Interesting retweets are a big part of the value of @timoreilly's feed, and a big incentive for me to follow him.

I'm not sure I see a bright line between selling a tweet directly, republishing a tweet on an ad-heavy blog, and using it to enhance an online presence from which you derive book sales, contract work, or other monetary gain. Someone might have to explain to me where it lies.

So if the rule for Twitter was, "do as you like, so long as you attribute the source," I think that would be perfectly equitable, and easy to comply with. A rule against commercial use, on the other hand, will lead either to a minefield strewn with limb-severing munitions of arbitrary, or a near total shutdown of the culture that makes Twitter so much fun.

Repost: On the future of education

2010-03-29T02:16:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to reading DIY U by Anya Kamanetz (the author who brought us Generation Debt), after reading her interview in Salon. The letters section was at times insightful, often rancorous, and sometimes displayed the worst fruits of our current education system. I tried to step in. I figure there are some half-baked ideas in here that might be useful with a bit more time in the oven, so I'm republishing it here.

The broad themes of the letters so far

Techno-utopianism: iTunes U is gonna be great! All Web 3.0, social networked and Twitterfied, with courses straight off YouTube and papers submitted to grades.google.com.

Class warfare: Online classes are just going to be one more way for the elites to screw the working class, the way prestigious universities are now.

My job has value dammit! Mostly from cranky academic types who seem to think very poorly of the students they teach.

Kids these days: with their cell phones and their whining and their stupid, piggish faces.

Adults these days: with their lazy teaching and arbitrary grading and ridiculous salaries for telling me stuff that I could just google if I was actually interested.

Techno-dystopianism: Online classes suck. They started sucking in 1998 and will keep right on sucking until the heat death of the universe, and by the way The University of Phoenix is a perfect vacuum of suck.

It sounds like we have all the stakeholders in the room, but we're just talking past each other. I'm going to try to pull an Obama and solve the problem by throwing money at it^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W set up a common framework for the problem.

Threatened academic types: Your work does have value. But the system you work within is crippled by high costs that make your work inaccessible to many Americans, and -- given the amount of debt racked up in obtaining an education -- downright dangerous to some. We need to find ways to make your knowledge more available and allow your teaching skills to reach more people. I think technology is going to be a big part of the solution.

I doubt that anything can replace the student/teacher interaction, but technology could be used to free up your time, so you can spend it guiding specific students with specific problems.

Until the technology matures, do your students a favor and start looking for free/open source textbooks that are relevant to your classwork. You could save your students a bundle.

Online coursework haters: The online experience is only going to become more and more effective at delivering education. Those who mock the quality of online education today are repeating the mistakes of those who mocked the online shopping experience twelve years ago. Both groups look at the deficiencies of the current experience, and project them into the distant future.

Students: If you expect education to be effortless and entertaining, you're going to be disappointed. The process of rewiring your brain to take advantage of the collective wisdom of ten thousand years of human culture and civilization is an agonizing process. Nor can you expect your degree to magically grant you an exciting, fulfilling job. Life is hard, maybe harder than it ought to be, and moving classes online isn't going to change that.

I believe that 90% of the secret to happiness is learning to manage your own expectations. The other 10% is Super Monkey Ball.

Student haters: Look, we as a society have overpromised and underdelivered the future to the next generation. Grade school teachers have long motivated kids by pretending they were teaching to a room full of future presidents and astronauts. Our consumption-soaked culture has promised everyone a big house, an SUV, and if I'm parsing the subtext of commercials correctly, sex with Beyonce.

That overpromising is especially cruel to people who have drawn the short stick in the great circular firing squad of life. But it keeps people hungry, dissatisfied, and willing to work, and therefore serves our corporate masters well. Okay, starting to ramble back there. The point is, we need to build an education system that can deliver on those promises, and $8500 a semester will not do.

Yes, students need to curb their expectations and be willing to put in hard work. But as educators, you are responsible for ensuring that the education system rewards their best efforts, guides them toward the values and habits that will serve them in their later life, and doesn't cripple them with debt straight out of the gate. Right now, the education system doesn't do any of those things particularly well, and as the people who make education what it is, you need to do some self-reflection.

Class warfarers: I think the diploma-based reputation system of the past will soon be at an end. It was the best we could do with the 18th-century technology at hand. But as The Sacrosanct Sheepskin is replaced with a more nuanced, competency-based reputation system, the value of "prestige" is going to tumble. Who cares about the quality of the instruction a student received, if objective benchmarks show that he can't do what he was taught?

Note: This isn't the first time I've whinged on Salon about education.

"The line of grace now has to be horizontal"

2010-03-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

Before Glenn Beck singlehandedly poured gasoline on his career and set it on fire, Van Jones was Obama's Green Jobs Czar.* Now, after being drummed out of the executive branch for the sin of, well, having a past wherein he said and did things, he's moved on. But he gave a very interesting interview to Grist. A couple of paragraphs really jumped out at me:

It used to be, as you went through these stages in your life, you could go to the next town and start over. The only person you were accountable to besides yourself was, if you were a person of faith, God. The line of grace was vertical, between you and your creator. Now, in this age of YouTube and Google, all of us are leaving digital bread crumbs behind of the person we used to be. Anything you do or say, some silly thing you did at a college party if somebody had a cell-phone camera, can be seen by everybody, forever. You can know more than you ever wanted to know about pretty much anybody.

It requires more wisdom of society. The line of grace now has to be horizontal. We have to learn how to forgive each other and extend a certain amount of empathy as we all grow up in front of each other. At some point, there'll be enough people who have had these "gotcha" experiences, and we'll hit a tipping point. We'll have a different level of tolerance. But it's too early. We're still too new to this, we don't have the language, customs, and rituals to be able to handle all this stupid stuff we can learn about each other.

I'm not hopeful about the prospects of developing the language and rituals. When everything you do is etched into ones and zeros, your whole past becomes, well, present. If anyone holds a grudge against another person, they can find plenty of fuel around to feed their discontent. If someone wants to tarnish a reputation, Google will lead them right to whatever they need.

If we cannot forget, are we even capable of forgiving? Maybe forgetting is a critical part of the forgiveness process.

Tired. Need to think on this. Byes.

* Technically a made-up title bestowed on him by the media.

A few health care talking points

2010-03-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

Reposted from a Yahoo News comment, in reply to the following:

ATTENTION: Attention, all you progressive, liberal, democrat, "pretend-no-one-has-to-pay-for-anythings!!! Attention all you "the-government-will-make-my-life-better-for-me-so-I-don't-have-to-actually-be-responsible" democrat sheep!!! Try this exercise, PLEASE: STEP 1. Go back to the very beginning of these comments and read each comment and look at the votes on the postings. STEP 2. Do some SIMPLE math (you should not need your congressman to do simple math for you, right?) STEP 3. Realize that THESE very votes here--that are KILLING Obama and progressive comments--are a fore-taste of the votes you will be seeing in the next two election cycles!! RESULT: Bye-bye Democrats!!! Bye Bye One-term President!! READ the numbers and weep--you got SOCIALISM and HEALTH CARE for those who do not work and do not pay into the "system' BUT--and it is a BIG BUT: the government running it will RUIN it very quickly for the POOR and ILLEGALS TOO, AND, best of all, there is no recovery now for GUARANTEEING the dems LOSSES by this vote and government take-over.... Read the votes and WEEP!!!

Here's what I wrote back:

A few points, in no particular order:

* Yahoo is no substitute for a properly sampled, well framed survey of public opinion.

* If any party "pretends no one has to pay for anything", it is the party that A) went to war (twice) without raising the taxes needed to pay for it (twice!), B) passed two mammoth tax cuts without making the spending cuts to match it, and C) passed the highly popular prescription drug benefit without passing any unpopular tax increases to pay for it. A,B,and C were all Republican initiatives.

* Illegal aliens do not qualify for insurance subsidies under Obama's plan.

* In prior years, before Obama stole the idea, the right wing was happy with the idea of having an individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Mitt Romney was a fan (and signed an individual mandate into law as governor of Massachusetts. The American Enterprise Institute (also no haven of socialism) also supported the idea.

* Polls have shown that the better people understand the health care plan, the more likely they are to like it. They have also shown that Massachusetts' Obamacare/Romneycare plan is far more popular now than when it was being passed into law.

* Honestly, the differences between Obama's plan and Romney's plan are small. In other words, only a few years ago, it was considered centrist enough that a Republican governor could put his signature to it. Now, a very similar plan is socialist?

* Prior to the passage of the main bill, most polls showed the country split on health care reform, with about a quarter of the people who opposed it being disappointed that it wasn't more "socialist" (e.g., no public option or single payer). Polling also showed that a great many of the individual elements of the plan had 80% or 90% support. So you insult my intelligence when you pretend that the will of the American people has been thwarted.

The R word

2010-03-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Reposted from a Boing Boing comment

The math and the history makes exact figures difficult, but the idea behind reparations is simple: Because of preferential treatment in the past, one group of people has a position of advantage over another today. Therefore, simply ending the practices that led to the advantage isn't enough.

In pre-Civil War American South, blacks were forced to spend their lives building up the wealth of others, rather than wealth for themselves. After the Civil War, well, same thing.

When the federal government gave away the bulk of the Midwest to homesteaders (and think of the amount of wealth that represents), almost no blacks benefited.

Then, when the government gave millions of WWII vets a free education through the GI Bill, black veterans had a difficult time taking advantage of the gift. The military had been desegregated, but the colleges had not.

So even if we could call ourselves a post-racial society today (we can't), some people would be entering the era of equality as unequals. Poverty is very easy to pass onto one's children, easier than wealth in some ways.

Honestly, I don't believe that formal reparations are the answer. But I think that we as a nation make only token efforts to help poor Americans prosper, or to try to include them in society. If that ever changes, I think the calls for reparations would disappear.

Are Health Savings Accounts the answer?

2010-03-09T03:39:00.001-08:00

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels brags in the Wall Street Journal about his state's health savings account program. I'm basically undecided on the issue, but given that there were almost zero criticisms of HSAs in the comments, I just had to be the voice of discontent.

My comment:

It seems to me that health savings accounts are just another way for healthier, wealthier, younger people to partly remove themselves from insurance pools, raising premiums for those who remain. Also, I'm completely unconvinced by Daniels' claim that HSA participants aren't generating their savings in part by going without important medical care.

For those of you claiming that Obama is only skeptical of HSAs because "he loves statism," please read a bit of how HSA opponents actually think. Also, congressional testimony of another skeptic.

Numerous studies indicate that, while consumers who bear a greater proportion of their medical costs use less health services, they are almost as likely to pass on medically necessary procedures as they are on wasteful ones. I'm sure a doctor or nurse would make an outstandingly savvy consumer of health services. The rest of us, not so much.

I do have to congratulate WSJ for having an unusually high-quality comments section. Yes, it's 95% free-marketeers, but they're articulate, and seem to be managing their ODS pretty well.

Corporations

2010-03-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace, and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption will follow, and the money power will endeavor to prolong it's reign by preying upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated into a few hands and the Repubic is destroyed."

- Abraham Lincoln Some guy impersonating Abraham Lincoln

From this we learn 1) that Lincoln was a broody guy, 2) that Republican party today doesn't resemble the Party of Lincoln in the least, and 3) that ours is an endless struggle.

Update: Never mind. The quote is a fraud. I mean, it's a danged good quote, but there is no evidence that it has anything to do with Lincoln.

Notes to Sarah Palin's ghost writer

2010-02-25T07:08:00.000-08:00

I wrote a couple of posts replying to Sarah Palin's new Facebook note,
More of the Same, Only More Expensive:

In ten years, "Allowing people to buy insurance across state lines" will effectively mean, "Everybody buys insurance from South Dakota, because they have the weakest regulations on health insurers. It's exactly what happened to the credit card industry, so anyone who thinks this "free market solution" will do anything but make our health care system worse is simply not paying attention.

Second:

You link to a poll showing the current Democratic proposals to be unpopular. But you miss three crucial facts:

1) Many individual elements of the health care bill (employer mandates, ban on pre-existing conditions, the insurance exchange) poll *extremely* well. The public option also polls very well.

2) Polling has also shown that, if you give people straightforward, unbiased information (read: NOT Democratic talking points, just a non-partisan description of what the bill does) then the poll numbers improve dramatically.

3) Much of the opposition to the current bill comes *from the left.* Like me, they want to kick insurers to the curb by either giving America a strong public option or (even better) moving to a pure single-payer system.

Update: Apparently, this is the sort of hate speech that gets you a comment ban from Sarah Palin's people. My comments seem to have been deleted, and I'm no longer able to add comments.

Oh well, more time to practice my dolphin calls.

A short thingy on the merits of cap and trade (repost)

2010-02-20T21:08:00.000-08:00

Catnlion said:
Climate change, don't you like how they don't call it global warming anymore, people want to use this to put in Cap and Trade, aka Cap and Tax. On the face C&T makes no sense. The point is to lower CO2. So what are we going to do, say you have to quit producing CO2, unless you pay us? Since taxes are a business expense that are passed along to the final customer the polluter is just going to pay the tax, pass the cost along, and keep putting out CO2. How does this cut the amount of CO2?

------------------------------

You seem to be missing some essential features of cap and trade, so I'll try to explain it as well as I can. To illustrate, we'll go with a simplified form of cap and trade. The United States emits a total of 5.7 gigatons of emissions annually. To begin reducing emissions, say we implement a cap at 5.5 gigatons. Then, the government sells 5.5 billion permits, each one granting the holder the right to emit a ton of CO2. If a coal plant can't buy a permit, then it can't emit any CO2.

Within this system, individual actors can continue doing exactly what they've been doing, so long as they buy a permit from somebody, either the government or some private entity that has already purchased one.

But because there are only a limited number of permits, somebody has to reduce their emissions and sell their permits to those who wish to continue emitting. To reiterate: you have to have a permit to emit a ton of CO2, and not enough permits are available to emit as much as we did the prior year.

The companies which choose to sell permits are the ones who can most cost-effectively reduce their emissions, while those which choose to buy the permits are the ones which would find it very expensive to reduce their emissions.

Cap and trade makes great sense, because it doesn't matter at all which molecule of carbon was emitted where or to what end. All that matters is the aggregate amount. If we have to choose between two plans for stopping a gigaton of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, one which costs a trillion dollars, and one which costs six billion dollars, all else being equal we should go with the latter. Cap and trade sets a goal, and lets the market figure out the most cost-effective approaches to meeting the target.

Now, the cap and trade bill before the Senate is more complex, because it also includes unrelated research funding, but more because it has to deal with real-world issues like verifying emission levels and all the other things needed to keep people from gaming the system. But the overall effect is the same: give the market the ability to internalize the costs of greenhouse emissions.

[Originally from the comments section of David Brin's blog at Salon]

Part 3: Drowning the Government in the Bathtub

2010-02-20T18:49:00.000-08:00

The last few days -- because I'm bored -- I've been going over UT-3's (a.k.a. Jason "Hundreds of Billions for Defense, But Not One Penny for Pensioners" Chaffetz) "Contract for the American Dream.

Part 1: Pointed out that, back when the "American Dream" of shared economic prosperity was strongest, the government played a strong role in America.

Part 2: Took issue with both the sincerity of the "debt crisis"-mongers and the slash-and-burn approach they want to take to solving it.

Part 3 (current): Continuing onward, starting with the section entitled "Limited Government":

Further, it is not the government that will create jobs, wealth, or propel the United States of America to reach its fullest potential. It is the American people who will drive America forward.

I don't know which irks me more, the profound disrespect shown to the many positive roles government plays in our civic life, the implication that government employees are separate and distinct from "the American people", or the Trebuchet MS font-face it's written in. I mean, why not just mark it up in Comic Sans and be done with it?

Individuals should have the freedom to succeed or fail in this country. It is not the government's role to stand in the way of either outcome or to choose winners and losers.

Had he written that "corporations should have the freedom to succeed or fail," I might be inclined to agree. But that's not what he writes. He's saying government shouldn't help individuals who find themselves on the losing end of life. To describe government as "standing in the way" of a losing outcome is to imply that the outcome is earned, and that there is something morally suspect about preventing the suffering that accompanies losing. He's preaching Social Darwinism, the message that perpetrates so much of the misery and suffering that happens around our country: there is no such thing as systemic injustice, the world is fair, and anyone who is having a rough time of things has -- one way or another -- brought the misery upon him or herself.

Fortunately, not all Americans are as indifferent to suffering as Rep. Chaffetz. We decided, as a nation, to tackle the enormous problem of elderly poverty, by starting a program called Social Security to deliver the same. It has some kinks to work out, and yes, it's expensive. But you can't expect to lift millions of elderly Americans out of poverty on the cheap. The same goes for Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, welfare payments, and a whole host of other problems. As a tax-paying citizen, I'm glad that these programs are there to help people who need it. I want them to be run as efficiently as possible, and I'm eager to see any clever proposals for making them better.

The Contract says that it is in our nature as Americans not to sit around and wait for government to solve our problems. There is some truth to that. But neither is it in our nature to turn a blind eye to the needy and the suffering. I don't believe these two instincts need to be at war, but clearly Mr. Chaffetz wants us all to think that they are.

Jason, if you believe that Americans are a hard-working, ingenious people, ready to tackle challenges, then you should have faith that they can apply that problem-solving ingenuity in the realm of improving government. Instead, you propose that we throw in the towel; declare defeat, pare the entire thing down to the bone, sell big chunks of it off to private enterprises that literally cannot represent the best interests of the American people, and hope that somehow, somewhere, prosperity emerges.

More specifics!

Repeal TARP and commit to no more "stimulus" bills that are merely a ruse to grow government.

TARP was mismanaged from the get-go, like pretty much everything else Bush did. Obama at least came in and made it more transparent and increased oversight. Now the money is mostly being repaid, Obama is proposing a tax on the biggest banks to make sure we get the rest of it, and the Democrats are hard at work trying to craft regulations to make sure the financial industry can't wreck the country quite so badly next time. Not surprisingly, Republicans are stonewalling the effort, because despite Alan Greenspan's mea culpa, they can't imagine that the free market was capable of footbulleting itself the way it did.

In the mind of the free marketeers, the economic collapse was caused by the Feds forcing banks to give homes to black people. Or something.

The stimulus was separate legislation, though Republicans benefit greatly from public confusion between the stimulus bill (ARRA) and the bank bailout (TARP). My main complaint about the bill was that it was too small, and focused too heavily on tax cuts.

Now that we're through the worst of it, and we're pretty sure the economy is no longer going to tip over if someone exhales, the Republicans can yammer about how the money spent fixing Bush's mess was ill-spent. I'm glad things are going well enough that they have that luxury.

Meanwhile, they're in lockstep opposition to a jobs bill to help put Americans back to work. It was your own fault for losing your jobs, stupid unemployed people.

Appoint a bi-partisan "Sunset Commission" to identify at least 100 federal departments or programs recommended for elimination by December 31, 2011.

I'm all in favor of getting rid of programs that are ineffective or harmful. But when you throw out an arbitrary number to be decommissioned by an arbitrary date, you're just grandstanding.

My alternative would be, every three years each program and each department would create a report that basically justified their existence, and outlined any roadblocks they faced in fulfilling their purpose. The reports wouldn't give us all the answers, but it would give everyone in the federal government a chance to hash out which expenditures were important and why.

Reduce the corporate income tax to a flat 10%. This will eliminate the wide array of corporate loopholes, incentivize business in the U.S.A., and simplify the tax code.

Fewer taxes for megacorps, less spending on the education, health, and welfare of Americans. I'm starting to sense a theme. At least

Reject the "Cap & Trade" scheme and repeal all EPA funding related to carbon policy.

If you read this blog -- and I know both of you do -- then you know that this proposal should generate three or four blog posts in its own right. I'll just start it off by asking, does Mr. Chaffetz propose this because he doesn't believe CO2 emissions are a problem, or because he believes that free markets have the problem well in hand?

I'm guessing the former. Global warming is a textbook case of a serious problem that cannot be addressed by purely free market mechanisms. No wonder the drown government in a bathtub crowd has to keep telling itself that it's a giant hoax; if it's real, it's like the whole planet is telling them that their ideology is crap.

Sell back to private ownership the three million acres of federal land identified under the Clinton Administration as having no federal purpose.

I'd need more detail on this one. Just for reference, three million acres is about four times the size of Rhode Island. I would be surprised if Chaffetz were interested in getting maximum value from the sale, even though it would go a long way in getting us out of this manufactured "debt crisis."

I know that I've come across as a staunch defender of all things governmenty these last few posts. I'm really not. I was all over government's case back when Bush was in office, pointing out the litany of bad things government causes. I'm a huge fan of Glenn Greenwald, who is no friend to the Washington establishment.

I'd like to put my government boosterism into context. I think of government and the corporate world as two separate spheres of power with competing goals. Government at its best can act as a check on corporate power and temper capitalism with the bit of humanity it needs to avoid a violent revolution of the proletariat. But in order to do so, it has to be allied with the interests of the people, not the corporations, and it has to have the size and scope to make an actual difference. You lose the first principle, you get fascism. You lose the second, you get Somalia.

I'm on the pro-government bandwagon right now, because the current flare-up of anti-government rhetoric is so blindly, willfully stupid. Just one example: the health care bill represents a grand compromise, bringing insurance to millions of Americans while intruding minimally into our unique employer-based system, and putting us on equal footing with every other industrialized nation (who somehow manage to provide universal coverage at relatively low cost). But if you listened to the tea partiers, they sound like Obama called for the immediate government takeover of the health care industry, then started rounding people up and forcing them through medical school at gunpoint.

Government needs serious reform, but the Tea Party -- and the politicians who court them -- are indiscriminate in their outrage. In their narrow, unthinking view, all government programs are useless (except defense, which we should continue to fund at rates comparable to the spending of the whole rest of the world), all recipients of government aid are unworthy, and all the government ever does is keep free enterprise from solving our problems. That breeds cynicism of the worst sort, which discourages bright and talented people from joining public service, which eventually gives us the crappy, ineffectual government Republicans -- and their corporate masters -- want us to have.

Contract for the American Dream, part 2: The Nightmare Begins

2010-02-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

In part 1, I argued that during the period most closely linked with "The American Dream," (the 1950s), government action was key to the broad-based prosperity of that era. This was in response to Jason Chaffetz' statement called The Contract for the American Dream, which calls for taking the wrecking ball to vast swaths of government.

In part 2, I'd like to take a closer look at some of the problems he lays out in his contract, and the -- and here I really, really have to use quotation marks -- "solutions" he proposes for them.

The American dream wasn't built on higher taxes, Czars, "Cash for Clunkers," or corporate bailouts. And it wasn’t built on a limitless government credit card.

Wow, there is a lot to unpack in that bizarre statement. As I mentioned in part 1, our current taxes are actually fairly low by historical standards, especially for the wealthiest Americans. I can't find a coherent explanation of why I should be outraged over "czars", much less why I should be outraged over Obama's czars and not the dozens that Bush had. Cash for Clunkers was actually a pretty reasonable program.

But the last point, about the limitless government credit card, makes no sense from a historical standard. Let me just quickly point out that, in the aforelinked chart, Republican presidents have overseen the vast majority of the increase in debt to GDP. But the more important point is, looking at it from a historical context, we've been far worse off. America has always had an unlimited credit card. We charged World War II to it, so it's not exactly easy to max it out.

I'll agree that the national debt is a very real problem, and we have to have a long term strategy for getting it down to zero. But most Republicans didn't utter a peep back when they were the ones holding the credit card, then started screaming their fool heads off when they had to turn it over to The Kenyan Crusader. And even with the existential debt crisis, Chaffetz still believes that it is in America's most vital national interest to continue spending nearly as much as the entire rest of the world on national defense. So it's hard to believe that he's serious about tackling the debt problem, rather than using it as an excuse to jettison the chunks of the government that don't fit his ideological whims.

Rather, the best hope for the United States of America is to return to the core principles of fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense.

Adherence to these core principles will result in more jobs, more opportunity, more freedom, and consequently a better quality of life now and for future generations.

Since limiting the size and scope of government is supposed to create all these bounties for a country's citizens, I have a challenge for the good representative. Imagine that you have to leave the Socialist United States for parts unknown, and you cannot take any significant wealth with you. That is, you have to live in some other country, as one of the lower or middle class.

Now, make a list of the ten countries you could see yourself spending the rest of your life in. Now cross-reference that list with this one, showing government expenditures as a percentage of GDP. With the possible exceptions of Hong Kong and Singapore, every country you would think of as "industrialized" or as "having a health care system I would willingly subject my dog to" spends a higher fraction of their national wealth on government services. Brazil might be fun to live in for a few years, but not for reasons that have anything to do with "jobs, opportunities, and freedom."

Of course, plenty of hellholes on the list also have high shares of government spending. But consider this: France and Moldova[1] have about the same share of government spending, and France is clearly the better place to live. The Republican assumption that government spending has a powerful negative effect on the quality of life of its country is really hard to justify.

We pay approximately $600 million per day in interest payments.

That does sound like a really big number. Probably because it is. But a bit of perspective is called for. The national GDP is about $13 trillion dollars. $600M a day comes out to about $200 billion dollars, or about 1.5% of the national budget. We have a debt problem, not a debt crisis. The Republicans want it to be a crisis so that they can unravel the social safety net, as Chaffetz' statement of principles makes abundantly clear.

Imagine a federal government that treats the national treasure with respect and responsibility by living within its means-where every American pays a fair share.

Yeah, that does sound good. Unfortunately, as we delve into the specifics of his proposals, we find that "every American pays a fair share" means "tax cuts for the rich," while "living within its means" translates to "tax cuts for the rich, then balance the budget on the backs of the poor."

The specifics begin.... NOW!

Reduce total federal payroll and workforce by 10%, except for military. This action will force all federal departments to identify and eliminate waste.

That's your plan for getting the economy back on track and getting people back to work? Throw 400,000 workers out of their jobs, and jack up unemployment another half percent? It has a certain audacity to it, I'll grant you that.

He's half right. If everyone loses 10% of their workforce, federal programs will have to eliminate something. But that's the problem with the whole notion of equating "small government" to "good government." If the government is so inherently corrupt that cutting its budget can only be a good thing, then the processes by which the government decides to cut back its services in response to that pressure is going to be corrupt as well.

I'm saying that the two premises are contradictory. "Cutting their budgets will make them more efficient" assumes that the government bodies in question are able to see where their money is being wasted and that they are motivated to deliver the best services they can. "Cutting their budgets has to be a good thing" assumes that the same bodies are hopelessly incompetent and corrupt, with no interest in delivering those same services.

Of course, the whole idea that a smaller budget and staff leads to a more efficient workplace is a crock. Let me offer an anecdote from my workplace. When I first got hired on, my goal was to set up an online order system. It should have taken a few months. If I'd been able to spend all my time on it, it probably would have. But most of my time was actually spent doing the day-to-day business of the organization, because the place was hectic, because we didn't have online ordering, so it actually took well over a year.

Had there been more "waste" in the budget, in the form of people to handle a larger share of the office work, I would have been able to "waste" more of my time doing something that would only pay off in the long run. This isn't to knock my employer, but to illustrate that not every organization can be made more efficient by giving it a 10% haircut.[2] Some government programs need to be cut, sure. But others are already dangerously underfunded.

By proposing a 10% across the board cut, Chaffetz is feeding the overarching Republican narrative: the government serves no important purpose, so decimating[3] its workforce without regard for the work they do couldn't cause any damage, right?

If you are one of the millions of people who keep our borders secure, our food supply and workplaces safe, our laws enforced, our skies Osama-free, our radio transmissions clear, and our youth productively engaged, you should be deeply offended by this proposal. Because you choose to put your time and talents to use in the service of your country, you are a leech in the eyes of the Republican party.

Support a balanced budget amendment.

Require 2/3 majority vote for any tax increase.

Yeah, because it worked so well for California.

Cut non-defense discretionary spending by inflation minus 3% across the board.

Another brilliant across-the-board cut. I don't want to fall into the nasty habit of comparing the government budget to a household budget, but in this case, I'll make an exception. If a family were sitting down to their bills and seeing a 3% shortfall, they would not respond by spending 3% less on food, 3% less on clothing, 3% less on swimming lessons, 3% less on cable, 3% less on their mortgage, etc. They would cut from their budget in proportion to the value the spending was bringing to them. One family might cut the entire cable bill. Another might stop spending money on clothes, but plan to increase their vacation budget.

Across-the-board cuts make about as much sense as having a CEO fire twenty people at random, and nobody who seriously proposes such a course of action can claim to have any respect for the work the employees are doing.

Impose a moratorium on all appropriations earmarks until the process is reformed legislatively. Work to maximize openness and transparency with filters, to ensure only expenditures with a federal nexus, and prohibit allocations to for-profit companies.

I've never understood Chaffetz' obsession with earmarks. They come out to something like 2% of the federal budget, so even banning them outright isn't going to get our financial house in order. They do seem to make people cynical about government[4], so I agree that they should be reformed. But anyone who says earmark reform is a key issue is grandstanding.

Reduce the capital gains rate to 10%. This will lead to increased receipts to the federal treasury and will also increase investment in the USA.

This is nothing but a tax cut for the rich. Fewer than one in seven taxpayers pay any capital gains at all, and the wealthiest 3% of the population (minimum income: $200,000/year) paid 83% of all capital gains [source]. It is already the case that money earned by sitting on your ass and watching other people turn your money into more money is taxed at a far lower rate than money earned by busting your ass to turn other peoples money into more money.

Now the Republican signatories to this travesty want to make it even more lucrative to play the sort of financial roulette that busted our economy in the first place. Remember this when you vote in November.

Oh, and one last thing: Tax. Cuts. Don't. Increase. Revenues.

Engage in entitlement reform.

If this were being said by a Democrat, it would have very different implications. It would mean ferreting out actual waste, fraud, and abuse. It would mean cutting costs, including making the sort of long-term investments that would lead to cost savings down the road. It would mean slowing the growth of Medicare by emphasizing preventative care and building programs that would find out which treatments were most cost-effective. It would mean, well, doing the sort of things that are in the health care reform bill.

From the mouth of Jason Chaffetz, it means pay for the aforementioned tax cuts for the wealthy by cutting off assistance to the poor.

Remember, the Republicans have no serious plans for containing the cost of health care. Their plan boils down to, "Keep the government out of it, and let the free market do its magic." Which is what we've been doing lo these last hundred years, and to ill effect.

Wow. All that, and I'm still only through the first set of bullet points. I suppose a part 3 will have to be written. Representative Chaffetz, if you could refrain from saying stupid things, it would save me a lot of time, and drastically improve my quality of life.

Notes:

[1] Moldova has been cited in happiness-related studies as the single most depressing place on Earth.

[2] Except the military. We must always except the military.

[3] Literally.

[4] Which if anything is good for Republicans.

Contract for the American Dream: A nightmarish proposal

2010-02-18T22:10:00.000-08:00

Once again my favorite congressional whipping boy, Jason Chaffetz, has released -- to great fanfare -- something really icky. He calls it the Contract for the American Dream, and I guess it is dreamy, if you're rich, a defense contractor, a climate contrarian, a union buster, or someone who, after careful, measured consideration, has decided he's paying too much in taxes..

Mister Chaffetz, let me tell you about the American Dream. Arguably, the American Dream was at its healthiest back in the 1950s. There's a lot of bad things to be said about the Fifties, but I'm going to talk about the bright spots. As I do so, think about how Republicans today might feel about this America.

In the 1950s, a single man with nothing more than a high school education had a good shot at a union job that paid enough to support a family in a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle. About one in three jobs was a union job.

Between 1950 and 1970, the minimum wage rose from $7/hour (where we are today) to peak at $10/hr. Figures are, of course, adjusted for inflation.

The top marginal tax rate was 91%, and the average CEO earned 30 times the average worker's salary, not 300 times.

Millions of young Americans were going to college on the government's dime. Thanks to the GI Bill -- a government program -- education had never been more accessible. Well, if you were white.

People back then held deep, probably excessive respect for the institutions of government. I mean, they were loath to show the president's face in movies. I still think that's weird, especially given that the government had hijacked the whole economy plus most of the menfolk just a decade before.

Sure, the government was smaller back then, with government spending representing 25% of the economy rather than 40%. But it's hard to argue that 15% is the difference between liberation and servitude. More to the point, the government was doing all the things it's doing now, providing for the health, welfare, defense, education, and comfortable retirement of its citizenry, just on a slightly smaller scale.

The American Dream was never a dream of an America without government, without a social safety net, without worker protections. Jason Chaffetz clearly does not see that, and it shows in his proud, willful lack of decent ideas. Really, Jason and his Republican clones only have one idea: government bad. Everything will get better if we just cut taxes, cut spending, jettison every regulation or government department we can, and... make sure we cut absolutely nothing from our bloated, wasteful, $700B annual Pentagon budget? Republicans want to go line-by-line over your grandma's medical bills, looking for "waste, fraud, and abuse," but god forbid the people building the F-22 get the same scrutiny.

That, in a nutshell, is the Republican American Dream. More on the specific proposals later.*

* If I'm bored.

Does organic farming mean mass starvation?

2010-02-05T05:33:00.000-08:00

I hate arguing politics when I'm not jacked into the Internet. Without the Internet, you can say pretty much whatever you want, and nobody can prove you wrong. I got into an Internet-disabled political discussion last night, wherein the claim was made that organic farming techniques (if universally adopted) would lead to the starvation of one third of the world's population.

Now my first inclination was to think that there are other ways we could respond under the "universal organic" constraint. We could put more land under agricultural production. We could feed more of our grain harvest directly to people, rather than feeding it to animals at 10-20% calorie conversion efficiency. We could give everyone composting toilets, or find other new sources of organic fertilizer. We could slow the growth rate of the population, so that we don't have to feed ten or twelve billion people down the line. We could stop harvesting low- and zero-calorie foods like celery and iceberg lettuce, and eliminate the production of indigestible calorie substitutes, like Olean and Splenda. We could throw away less of the food that we produce.

Now, I can see people having various problems with any of these suggestions, but any and all are more humane and less disruptive than the mass starvation of two or three billion people.

But none of these suggestions -- desirable as I might find them -- should be necessary, because I don't believe that the premise is accurate. According to one study called "Organic agriculture and the global food supply", found here or here (PDF):

The principal objections to the proposition that organic agriculture can contribute significantly to the global food supply are low yields and insufficient quantities of organically acceptable fertilizers. We evaluated the universality of both claims.

For the first claim, we compared yields of organic versus conventional or low-intensive food production for a global dataset of 293 examples and estimated the average yield ratio (organic : non-organic) of different food categories for the developed and the developing world. For most food categories, the average yield ratio was slightly <1.0 for studies in the developed world and >1.0 for studies in the developing world. With the average yield ratios, we modeled the global food supply that could be grown organically on the current agricultural land base. Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base.

We also evaluated the amount of nitrogen potentially available from fixation by leguminous cover crops used as fertilizer. Data from temperate and tropical agroecosystems suggest that leguminous cover crops could fix enough nitrogen to replace the amount of synthetic fertilizer currently in use. These results indicate that organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture.

Right now, most of the land under cultivation isn't being farmed using the high-yield, high-input farming methods that organic's critics claim are necessary to feed our growing population. Most farmland is in the developing world, and cultivated using subsistence farming techniques. The study looked at yield comparison studies from the developting world, and found that yields generally increased when farmers incorporated organic techniques. This is wonderful news, because organic techniques are cheap as hell when compared to having impoverished farmers buy tons of synthetic fertilizer and genetically modified seeds from ConAgra.

To me, the whole "organic farming == starvation" meme seems like something designed by some nefarious right wing think tank, then bounced around their echo chamber until it got traction in the mainstream media, where basically reasonable people started getting the message. It has all the crucial elements. It paints liberals as elitists who would protect the environment even at the cost of vast human suffering. It turns the multinationals who churn out synthetic fertilizers and GMO seeds into the heroes of the starving masses. It tries to create a rift between competing progressive values (as so many bullshit right-wing memes do; they know the value of tricking the opposition into fighting amongst themselves).

This is how democracy dies

2010-01-21T22:24:00.000-08:00

Not with a scream, but with a muffled whimper, as it drowns under a flood of corporate money.

At this point, our only hope is for Google to run for president.

A modified health care bill

2010-01-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

My health care bill would consist of a single paragraph:

"Health insurance companies may no longer deny applicants coverage due to pre-existing conditions. They may not change their premiums based on a person's medical history."

This would make for a very popular bill. Of course, there would be an enormous incentive for people to jump off the insurance roles until they ran into a situation where they needed intensive medical care. That's what the individual mandate was supposed to fix.

Without a mandate to get coverage, premiums for those who remain on the insurance rolls would skyrocket, causing even more people to jump off the rolls. Within a decade, the health insurance industry would be dead.

Then we could finally get a decent Medicare-style single payer system for all Americans.

It's simple, people: If you're going to get to universal coverage (which most Americans want) and you're not going to cut the insurance industry out of the picture (which most Americans want, God only knows why) then you have to mandate that insurance companies take anyone who comes along. If you mandate that, you also have to mandate that everyone purchase insurance, in order to avoid the premiums death spiral I described above, and you need subsidies for Americans who are too poor to afford health insurance on their own.

This plan, or something very much like it, is what is needed to effect universal coverage without socializing the entire health insurance industry*.

Ask the right wingers what their ideas are for reforming health care. I've heard three ideas, none of which would work:

1) Tort reform: According to the CBO, "defensive medicine" and malpractice payouts comprise about 2% of overall health care spending. You can't make big gains there. Health insurance overheads, on the other hand, takes about 30% from the top.

2) Let insurers sell across state lines: We'll end up with something like the credit card industry, where all insurance is sold by companies based out of the one state with the fewest consumer protections.

3) Let people feel the costs of their health care decisions: Sounds market friendly in theory, and it has been shown that people who pay more out of pocket for individual treatments use less medical services. But the studies have shown that people don't have the expertise to distinguish between medically necessary and unnecessary treatments, and when exposed to greater market pressures, they are as likely to cut back on the former as the latter. Which is why health care services make for a lousy market in the first place.

The Republican idea barrel is pretty empty. According to the CBO, the Republican alternative bill for health care reform would leave the uninsured population unchanged in ten years. They have absolutely no idea how to get more people more access to health care, and they know it.

* Which wouldn't be such a bad thing. Health insurance isn't an industry where massive innovation is either needed or desirable.

Avatar: The free market speaks, calls America a douche

2010-01-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

[spoiler alert, blah blah who cares you've probably seen it already]

Conservatives are up in arms over Avatar. Does it surprise anyone that David Brooks is too?

His whole review has an air of self-pity to it. How dare James Cameron portray the military industrial complex as ruthless? Why should I have to spend a moment questioning the superiority of my culture? And how can those ingrates -- whether within our borders or beyond our shores -- enjoy the sight of a clearly American force being beaten, even killed, after all we've done for the world these last ten years? And psssh, the environment? Are we really still talking about that elitist liberal stuff? We live in a post-Climategate world, you know.

But to avoid being outed as the reactionary he is, he dresses up his objections, couching them in terms of how disrespectful the movie is to the natives. Er, yeah. The movie that shows a clearly Americanized military slaughtering the natives and pouring explosives into their holiest sites, all so they can strip mine the planet, is doing a grievous disservice to, well, whatever culture or cultures the Na'vi represent. That's what Brooks is really steamed about.

So rather than speaking plainly about how he thinks his side is being slandered, he tries to tap into the same rich vein of white guilt and use it to his advantage. Isn't it disrespectful, the way those poor, benighted Na'vi needed a white warrior to come save them? Isn't it suspicious that the white guy is not just part of the tribe, but the awesomest tribesman ever?

Not only is it sneaky, I don't think it's even a fair reading of the movie. Jake doesn't become the bravest or the boldest of the tribe's warriors, or the most skilled hunter or flier. At least, I saw no evidence of it. He eventually gets skilled enough to endure the same coming of age ritual that everyone else in the tribe underwent as teenagers.

He gets the girl, yes, but not through the power of White Awesome. He does so because they spent time together, shared adventures, and found common ground. Also, never underestimate the power of a sexy, exotic accent.

Only in mastering the "big red bird" does Jake step fully into the realm of awesome, and even then it isn't made clear why nobody else did it first. What did seem clear is that a long military career taught him to approach it as he would any tactical situation, and that he was taking a new and untested approach to the bird problem.

This is something that Brooks' criticism doesn't make allowances for. Cameron is pulling out one of the ancient archetypes/tropes: a man who shares the heritage of two worlds, and who is exceptional because he can draw on the strengths of each. Jake is exceptional, but not because he's smarter, or stronger, or braver than the other members of his tribe. He leads the attack because he has the best understanding of the enemy. He eventually wins the war not by his own strength, but because only an outsider could convey to The Great Treebrain the true nature of the threat it faced.

The point of movies like these isn't that we should all dump our iPhones and MRI machines, break out the loincloths, and go smoke peyote in the desert until we find our spirit guides. The Right just likes to spin it that way because it's easier than trying to tackle the actual, more reasonable message. You remember the line about "seeing" that Cameron drove into our heads with all the subtlety of an Irishman pounding in a railroad spike?* Maybe he was so blatant about it because that was the real message. Jake couldn't be anything to the tribe until he learned to cast aside his old preconceptions and see the world with new eyes.

A bit corny, perhaps. But eight years into the "war on terror," and our elected officials still seem unable to articulate why the terrorists want to do us harm. To the detriment of both our military efforts and the greater peace, we insist on treating Al Qaeda not just as evil,** but as moustache-twirling cartoon villains. The message is simple, maybe even simplistic, but it's relevant, and we would do well to heed it.

Yes, underneath the blue, tattooed skin of Avatar lies a blunt morality tale about respect for other cultures, the perils of technological exuberance, and the merits of a simple, peaceful life. Oh, and not invading foreign lands to secure their mineral wealth. In that way, Avatar is a litmus test of sorts. If you think the basic premise of the United States as benevolent dictator to the world is a wonderful one -- and I've always gotten the impression that Brooks does -- then I can see why you might have a problem with Avatar.

For others, for those who can see the ugliness of America's recent past, maybe a movie where we can root for the demise of that ugliness could be a small step toward recommitting to the ideals we still hope to uphold.

And for the rest of us, omigod this 3D stuff is awesome!

Afterthought: Brooks closes with the deep-sounding thought, "benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind." As condescending perhaps, but less dangerous. When America adopted the attitude that Native Americans needed our religion, our political structures, our writing, we sent federal agents to take their children, uproot them from their homes, taught our ways, and forbidden to speak their own language. When Americans adopted the attitude that we needed their culture, we sent a small army of hippies out to ask for wise words and maybe a hit of peyote.

* What? Too soon?

** Which it is, of course. But I shouldn't have to go on the record and say that, yes, it's evil to try and blow up a plane full of civilians, or to crash a plane into a tower full of people. Really, some right wingers don't seem to grasp the idea that we all hate terrorism.

Jason Chaffetz is an inspiration

2009-07-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

Well, he's an inspiration to me. He's constantly inspiring me to blog, and that counts for something.

Here's his speech from the floor of the House yesterday:

Mr. Speaker, I rise with deep concern about families of United States of America. The economics of this credit card congress are not working. Where are the jobs?
You cannot tax and spend our way out of our challenges. I fervently believe that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Democrats in Congress are taxing, spending, and borrowing too much money.

This credit card congress has now put us nearly twelve trillion dollars in debt. We're spending nearly 600 [million? billion? it sounds like he said "billion", though that makes no sense] dollars per day, just in interest on that debt. Bailouts, stimulus money by the billions it is not helping the average person at home.

And now we have a proposal to slam through a government run, Chinese-financed health care system, that puts a Washington D.C. politician between our doctor and my wife.

The tax and spend, credit card driven, Chinese-financed economics driven by the Democrats don't work. We need fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense.

We need to restore liberty to the American people and small business men and women. That's where you'll find the jobs. Stand up, America, let your voice be heard, put a stop to this credit card congress.

He was proud enough of this performance that he pointed to it on Twitter. He really shouldn't have been, because the whole speech sounds like he's attempting some sort of Republican Buzzword Bingo record, a bunch of half-baked ideas delivered auctioneer-style.

But let's focus on the substance of his comments.

First up, his deep concern for the families of the United States. Where is the concern for the families without health insurance? Or for those who have seen their premiums skyrocket? Does Chaffetz have any ideas for dealing with these?

We need fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense.

It's the only idea he's got.

The accusation that the bank bailout hasn't helped ordinary Americans seems fairly accurate to me. If the goal was to keep credit available, I think there were better ways to do it. But despite the fact that lots of fat, rich bastards got fatter, richer, and bastardier from the bailout, it did keep us from plunging off an economic abyss of George Bush's making, which was good for everybody.

But the stimulus bill is a completely different and far superior animal, and by lumping the two together, Chaffetz shows either his ideological myopia, or an actual intent to deceive. You can't talk about the stimulus package solely as money spent, or money added to the national debt. You have to go line by line, project by project, and ask if the thing we're spending the money on is a good investment. By and large, Republican attempts to show the waste and pork in these projects have left me unconvinced.

But even if the stimulus spending was wasted, it has still created jobs, and will continue to create more. Elsewhere, Chaffetz has argued that the price per job is too high. Well, we could have slashed those numbers by just giving people $30K a year, plus $30 for a shovel to lean on. But in order for those jobs to actually be investments in the future, those workers need equipment to run, material to move, concrete to pour, etc. Those things tend to drive the cost up.

The Republicans in general have been very dishonest in their handling of the stimulus jobs numbers, and Chaffetz has happily cited these arguments. Their argument essentially boils down to, "The stimulus is supposed to create jobs, yet unemployment keeps rising. The stimulus is therefore a failure." Which is akin to tapping lightly on the brakes (the stimulus was, by Paul Krugman's estimation, far too small), then saying that your brakes are out because you're still moving forward. Things would look much bleaker right now without the stimulus bill.

The "Chinese-financed" meme is making a mountain out of a molehill. China owns about $1T in U.S. debt, which isn't exactly a good thing, but that's only 1/12th of the outstanding debt. The Chinese are just a useful bogeyman for Chaffetz to invoke. Boo!

The debt presents a serious long-term problem. But Chaffetz wants to tackle it in the middle of a recession, which is a horrible idea for the same reason that raising taxes in a recession is a horrible idea. Government spending -- whether Chaffetz likes it or not -- is an important part of the economy. If that sector contracts suddenly, people lose their jobs, businesses with government contracts scale back or go out of business, and suffering ensues. Whereas if government increases its spending, these businesses flourish, which provides a buffer against economic downturns. That's Keynesian economics in a nutshell.

Government should be ratcheting up the debt right now, and tackling the debt problem when the economy is good. Clinton did that, lowering the deficit during good years. Bush did the opposite, piling up a mountain of debt when the economy was doing okay, mostly to pay for tax cuts for the rich and a war that should never have been fought.

Health care is an investment, just like the stimulus package was an investment. We should have been making these investments when the economy was doing okay. But we're stuck with the present. The investments we make in health care now are going to reap long term rewards. The bill isn't perfect by any means, but it will give us a healthier, more productive population, lower health care costs, more competition in the insurance market, and hopefully a greater focus on preventative care. Plus, when everyone has insurance, fewer people will rely on expensive emergency room visits for their health insurance needs, driving down costs for everybody.

This plan is characterized as a government takeover of health care, but it should really be talked about as a takeover of the health insurance industry. Lots of people like their doctors (Chaffetz doesn't seem to want anyone standing between his doctor and his wife, so he must be really fond of his doctor). But who has nostalgic feelings about their family HMO?

Health insurance is a market that cries out for government takeover like no other. Insurance companies compete not just on price and services, but on selecting the healthiest populations, by excluding the people who need it most, and by denying claims, regardless of whether the procedures were medically justified. In short, the free market demands that health insurance companies be very bad at what they are supposed to do: spread risk.*

Chaffetz believes -- ignoring the evidence of the last eight years -- that the government is invariably worse at choosing wise investments than the private sector. Chaffetz also fears that a "D.C. politician" will stand between his family and health care, even though his plan probably wouldn't change. Yet he cares not a whit that, for forty-five million Americans, what stands between them and the health care they need is a hospital security officer with a tazer.

He's a bit of a tool, is what I'm saying.

* Note: This is one reason why the public option shouldn't have to compete on an equal footing with private sector plans. I want a public plan that would be required to take all comers, and that would pay for medically justifiable procedures without trying to weasel out of its obligations. That puts it at a huge disadvantage in competition with private insurers.

More hand-waving on the energy bill

2009-07-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Jason Chaffitz tweeted our attention to an overlooked detail of the energy bill that just passed the House. The measure would give money to utility companies and non-profit tree planting organizations money to plant trees around homes, as a way to promote energy efficiency.

Chaffetz didn't explicitly state his disapproval, but he did link to an outraged condemnation of the provision:

What this means for Americans: Almost half a million people lost their jobs in June alone and Democrats want taxpayers to subsidize retail power providers and their tree planting programs. Runaway reckless spending is not going to get America back to work. Because of the Democrats’ national energy tax millions more jobs will be lost as American manufacturers relocate overseas, but at least homes and empty warehouses will have shade.

Which makes it sound as pointless as anything can be. Bill? Justify your existence!

(1) the utility sector is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States today, producing approximately one-third of the country’s emissions;

(2) heating and cooling homes accounts for nearly 60 percent of residential electricity usage in the United States;

(3) shade trees planted in strategic locations can reduce residential cooling costs by as much as 30 percent;

(4) shade trees have significant clean-air benefits associated with them;

(5) every 100 healthy large trees removes about 300 pounds of air pollution (including particulate matter and ozone) and about 15 tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year;

(6) tree cover on private property and on newly-developed land has declined since the 1970s, even while emissions from transportation and industry have been rising;

(7) in over a dozen test cities across the United States, increasing urban tree cover has generated between two and five dollars in savings for every dollar invested in such tree planting.

(H.R. 2454, American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, Sec. 205)

The bill takes no official position on whether Republicans are being slimy and dishonest in touting this tiny line item as a waste of money. But sources close to the bill -- speaking under conditions of anonymity -- report that the bill once asked Senator Inhofe (R-OK) if he wanted to "take it outside."

The Republicans won't argue this portion of the bill on its merits. I pointed out to Chaffetz that it was actually a very reasonable thing to spend money on, and he sent me a PM saying, "The taxpayers shouldn't be paying for it." That's consistent with Chaffetz' overall political philosophy, but that's not what he was implying to his followers. The message that came across wasn't just that it was a misuse of government power, but that the whole idea was patently stupid, and that the bill could just as well be ordering the creation of a giant ball of aluminum foil.

If you're going to point to something as a laughable waste of money, it generally helps if the thing being pointed at doesn't create jobs, increase property values, beautify neighborhoods, clean our air, and reduce energy bills.

This is such a common sense measure, I suspect that the Republicans are only drawing attention to it because they think they can spin it as "your hard-earned dollars spent on tree-hugging hippie crap." But trees aren't just fun to hug; trees -- especially the ones planted by this program -- are infrastructure, just like roads, houses, factories, and casinos. They serve human needs, and they do so in a way that will touch your heart and make that little brat look like a total user.

More important to the Republicans' political futures, people like trees. Coming out against trees is like coming out against puppies, ice cream, and "the troops." Outside of a small fringe who hate every sliver of the environmental movement, planting a tree is an act of hope for the future and generosity towards those who follow. When I see Republicans taking a stand against planting trees, I wonder at the smallness of their souls.

Given that their stance against green energy is already hurting them, I think the Republicans would do well to let this one drop. Thanks to @david_h_roberts for that last link.

Rep. Boehner on the cap and trade bill

2009-06-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

House Minority Leader John Boenher, who not surprisingly hails from the landlocked state of Ohio, recently released his Top 10 Facts on Why Speaker Pelosi's National Energy Tax Is a Bad "Deal" for America.

1) Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Impose a National Energy Tax on Every Single American

"The national energy tax will impose a national energy tax." Look, I know you paid a small fortune to have Frank Lunz focus test this "Pelosi Energy Tax" verbiage, and it would be a waste not to use it to the hilt. But come on! Pay attention to what you're writing!

It certainly won't apply to Every Single American, as there are a handful of people who are already living off the grid, but that's quibbling. The more important thing to remember is that some of the money collected by the cap and trade auctions will be returned to taxpayers as tax refunds. So if you're poor, or if you take the time to cut your personal energy consumption, you'll actually be better off overall.

Sidenote: Every one of the ten "facts" starts with "Speaker Pelosi's National Energy Tax." I realize that Pelosi isn't at her most popular right now, but I think only the Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck crowd considers her name an actual cuss word.

"Boenher," however, comes pretty close.

2. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Cost American Jobs, Shipping Them Overseas to China & India

Via some study by some chamber of commerce (sorry, I've never seen a chamber of commerce ever support the sane side of any issue) Boenher claims that we'll lose over 2M jobs every single year.

Now, back in the nineties when NAFTA was passed, Republicans were all over the idea that, despite the lower labor costs in Mexico, we wouldn't lose a significant number of jobs, because the quality and ingenuity of The American Worker was second to none. I wonder what happened to that confidence?

My guess? That confidence only manifests when exhibiting such confidence leads to wage cuts for workers and extra profits for businesses.

Business interests have a tendency to publish studies vastly inflating the costs of any new legislation, while underestimating their ability to adapt to it, and demonstrating that under such assumptions, they would go out of business. That's how the American auto industry blocked fuel efficiency standards (though historically, they adapted to previous rises in those standards quite easily). That's how they tried to block the sulfur dioxide permit sales, a program that reduced sulfur emissions by 70%, at a price that was about 1/10th of what the doomsayers predicted.

Listening to studies like these, you get the impression that businesses are fragile hothouse flowers, not the dynamic, adaptive, and innovative institutions that are supposed to drive our economy.

3. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Cause Electricity Bills to “Skyrocket.”

As evidence, Boenher points out that a major utility has already requested a rate increase, despite getting their permits for free for the next several years. Hell, despite the legislation not even being signed into law. That's some powerful legislation right there.

Googling for "duke energy rate increase" brought up several reports on Duke's request. All of them mentioned that the company had put a lot of money into upgrading their plants recently. Not one of them claims that the hike has anything to do with the climate change bill. Boenher isn't being honest with his facts.

4. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Hurt Family Farmers & Rural America

This one basically boils down to "the people who use the most energy will be hit hardest," a not unexpected result. I'd be all for a program that helps the rural poor buy more fuel efficient cars and energy efficient appliances, or even low-interest loans for home solar/wind installations. But Boenher expects us to never do anything about climate change because some people will be hit harder than others. Bah!

5. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Not Improve the Environment

Basically a rehash of the old "China and India won't do anything" argument, which is a very weak one. Despite finding a couple of out-of-context quotes that indicate their stubbornness on the issue, I think China and India will come along. There are a couple of reasons for this.

China and India have long been using our refusal to curb our own emissions as a talking point for their own delay. If we show that we're serious about cutting our own emissions, and if we're developing technology that makes such cuts easier and less costly, they'll start moving in the same direction. The Chinese don't like breathing dirty air any more than we do.

We also have to accept the fact that a large fraction of the Chinese and Indian populations live under impoverishment that Americans cannot understand unless they've seen it firsthand. It's not fair for us to say that they cannot increase their emissions, when our per-capita emissions are about for times what theirs are.

6. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Cause Gasoline and Diesel Prices to Spike Further

This talking point is brought to you by the Heritage Foundation, motto: "Actually, we are entitled to our own facts." The figure they publish -- 58% increase in gasoline prices -- makes no sense to me. Europe has already implemented the market we're trying to implement, and their prices for CO2 are about $20/ton. You have to burn about 83 gallons of gas to emit a ton of CO2, so the cost should be closer to $0.25 per gallon, rather than the $1 or $2 that Heritage is predicting.

It should be noted that a lot of the volatility in gas prices comes from the fact that we're producing as fast as we can, and still not keeping up with demand. Dropping demand should decrease volatility a little.

7. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Be A Bureaucratic Nightmare

There isn't much to be said on this. But when Boehner says that the plan involves "a long and confusing web of government agencies," I have to say two things. First, lists are long. Webs are generally described as tangled, sticky, dense, invisible, etc. Hire. Better. Writers.

Second, I'm not convinced that "long and confusing" and "long and confusing (to John Boehner)" bear much resemblance to each other.

8. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Send Billions of US Taxpayer Dollars Overseas

The criticism here is that the plan allows American companies to purchase international offsets. So, rather than paying $1m to install a more energy efficient boiler at home, a business could pay $200K to someone in Nicaragua to protect a forest, resulting in similar carbon savings. Boenher, in what can only be described as "a flat out lie" describes this as "forcing [American taxpayers] to bankroll another global bailout."

Boenher, nobody will be forcing anybody to purchase international offsets. Businesses will buy them when it makes sense for them to do so. Nor will this money be given away for nothing. You see, in a "free market," people often pay others to do things that they'd rather not do themselves. We would be sending them money in exchange for a service that they provided. This is exactly the sort of behavior you'd expect from a carbon market, and there is nothing nefarious about it.

9. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Raise Food Prices

First, I don't think that "small businesses and middle class families" aren't spending much time worrying about what will happen to food prices in 2035. I think they should be doubly indifferent to the Heritage Foundation's wild-assed guesses, since their studies invariably have a finger on the scales. After all, their cost estimates for this plan come in at around ten times the Congressional Budget Office's projections.

I think that The Heritage Foundation would predict that by 2035, the world would be a nuke-charred hellscape where a handful of survivors are hunted by killer robots, if they thought such a prediction could help keep this bill from passing.

Our current food system is too reliant on economies of scale and cheap energy. A more decentralized, localized system will be more expensive, but would also give us more nutritious food, be less susceptible to terrorist attacks, give more farmers a better living, and be more resilient in the face of an uncertain energy future. That's the direction this bill would be pushing the agricultural industry, and a direction I'd like to see it headed.

10. Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Set the Stage for Another Market Meltdown

At this point, Boenher shows some real Marxist cred. He cites an article from Mother Jones, and implies that capitalism necessarily contains the seeds of its own destruction.

The prediction here is that -- wait for it -- the legislation will create a market for carbon emissions. Maybe I should just agree with Boehner on this one. If you don't have a market, then that market cannot fail. This line of reasoning should be expanded. Comrade Boehner, your brothers and sisters in the People's Revolution welcome you!

----------------------------

Well, despite all his hemming and hawing, the bill narrowly passed the House. It now goes on to the Senate, where it will fail because the Democrats are too chicken to actually force Republicans to filibuster.

Sen. Coburn lies about the "waste" in the stimulus bill (Part II)

2009-06-16T22:17:00.001-07:00

Coburn cites two other stimulus projects as especially onerous. From his website:

2. $1 billion for FutureGen in Mattoon, Illinois is the “biggest earmark of all time” for a power plant that may never work.

...

5. $3.4 million for a wildlife “eco-passage” in Florida to take animals safely under a busy roadway.

FutureGen is a "clean coal" project. Personally, I'm against clean coal. I think we need to be pursuing other technologies instead. But a billion or so to find out if it can work doesn't seem like a lot, in the $3 trillion scheme of things.

The whole plant is supposed to be a proving ground for new technologies, so describing it as "a power plant that may never work" seems either flagrantly dishonest or just plain stupid. In his report, Coburn focuses heavily on former Energy Secretary Sam Bodman's criticism of the project, while ignoring current Energy Secretary Steven Chu's support for the project.

After poring over thousands upon thousands of projects, the #2 project on his list isn't nearly as dubious as Coburn portrays.

Regarding the "eco-passage", the latest research is indicating that fragmentation of habitat is dangerous to an ecosystem. Dividing a habitat in two (as a big highway does) can sometimes be as destructive as simply wiping out half of it. Wildlife corridors can help protect species.

If you are Republican enough, then any money spent protecting animals or preserving habitat is wasted by definition. That's probably the primary reason for putting this on the list. Either that, or Tom Coburn really likes the sound turtles make when they crunch under his wheels. But that's getting pretty damned Republican.

Sen. Coburn lies about the "waste" in the stimulus bill

2009-06-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., junior Republican senator from the unpopulated wasteland of Oklahoma, hasn't been practicing medicine for quite some time. Clearly, he hasn't seen a patient in a while, so you can understand why he might mistake a national economy for a human being, and attempt to perform an examination. From his report, entitled 100 Stimulus Projects: A Second Opinion*:

By offering 100 examples of questionable stimulus projects, worth $5.5 billion, this report does not attempt to prove that the stimulus is not working. Rather, the intent is to educate taxpayers, policymakers and the media on lessons that can be learned from some of the early missteps and prevent other questionable projects from moving forward.

So he says. I have trouble imagining a senator over the age of 60 as an Internet wiz. But he's clearly mastered the art of playing the Concern Troll. He doesn't want to help the stimulus succeed. He wants to manufacture outrage, in the hope of tilting the 2010 midterms in the Republicans favor.

If his goal was to start an honest debate about which projects were succeeding and which were failing, he would be a bit more honest about how he portrays the projects on his list. He selectively quotes this article to imply that the ARRA money actually cost the people of Perkins, Oklahoma.

Two points: the money did come with strings. But the strings are ones that support the aims of ARRA. The "strings" include better pay for workers (putting money in American pockets), a "buy American" stipulation for construction materials (again, putting money in American pockets), and increased reporting requirements, presumably to prevent all the fraud, waste, and abuse that Senator Coburn decries.

The other point: the $1.4M was just the grant portion of the funds. There was also a loan for $5.8M, at an interest rate of 2.9%, a steep discount from the 8% loans Perkins had been pursuing.

It's not clear that ARRA was a finanical windfall for this project. But it's not clear that it was supposed to be. Yes, sewer fees went up, which is counterintuitive when the government hands you a wad of free money. But the point was to get shovels moving on a shovel-ready project, and in that it succeeded. Where there used to be a set of diagrams, now something is being built, people are being put to work, and residents are getting the infrastructure they need.

In short, Sen. Coburn's #1 project -- his poster child for mismanagement and unintended consequences, is doing pretty much what it's supposed to.

One down, 99 to go.

* Cuz, you see, he used to be a doctor, and it's called "a second opinion." Har!

The $4300 energy tax: my response

2009-05-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

In case Herigate declines to publish my comment:

The $1500 in direct costs are passed on to consumers, because the government took in revenue from CO2 intensive industries, correct? And most of that money will go back into consumers pockets, through direct rebates or lowering other taxes. So won’t that money also “ripple through the economy, hitting consumer’s pockets again and again?

In the end, it should mostly balance out. The money taken from energy companies will go back into the economy, either directly, through lowered taxes, or after being spent on research into alternative energies. Once the scales are balanced, there’s very little change other than stronger incentives for energy efficiency.

It’s positively brilliant. So of course Heritage would be against it.

You might not be a Republican if...

2009-05-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

I just read this little missive from Randall Hoven over at americanthinker.com. I've never heard of him, but he and I seem to hold the shared goal of driving moderates out of the Republican party. I hope he appreciates my assistance:

If you think global warming is more than a socialist plot to control our lives, or if you suspect that the vast majority of climate scientists should be given more credit than a handful of oil-funded skeptics, you might not be a Republican.

If you think that the person who rings you up at Wal-Mart deserves to be paid well enough that she can hope to someday send her kid to college, you might not be a Republican.

If you think that government has a role in protecting us from pollution and unsafe working conditions, you might not be a Republican.

If you think government has a role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters, you might not be a Republican.

If you think that health care is something everyone should be able to access, rather than a reward for not being unemployed or impoverished, you might not be a Republican.

If you think that not all of the twelve million illegal aliens in America have come here to flaunt our laws, steal our jobs, and defile our women; if you think many of them came here to work hard and make better lives for themselves, you might not be a Republican.

If you didn't like the way the Bush administration engaged in wars of choice, undermined the government's ability to enforce its own regulations, handed out no-bid contracts to politically favored cronies, fired talented and dedicated civil servants to replace them with party loyalists, and labeled critics of these actions "traitors", you might not be a Republican.

If you heard Rush Limbaugh say that Colin Powell only endorsed Barack Obama "because he's black", and your stomach lurched a bit, you might not be a Republican.

If you think the rich should shoulder more of the tax burden, you might not be a Republican.

If you don't find the comedic stylings of Ann "We Should Invade Islamic Countries, Kill Their Leaders, and Convert Them to Christianity" Coulter hilarious, you might not be a Republican. Or you might just be a sane Republican, which is cool with me.

If you think that every person deserves society's support in making the most of their lives, you might not be a Republican.

If you think giving the next generation a clean environment and healthy bodies is more important than passing on ever bigger houses and ever wider flatscreen TVs, you might not be a Republican.

If it worries you that the United States incarcerates proportionally more of its citizens than any other country in the world, you might not be a Republican.

If you look at the military budget of the United States -- which is roughly equivalent to the military budget of the rest of the world combined -- and think that some of that money could be better spent elsewhere, you might not be a Republican.

If you think President Obama is a decent human being, an inspiring orator, and (despite some mistakes) is doing his best to fix the mess he inherited, you might not be a Republican.

If you think life ought to be a joyous journey of discovery, rather than a red-toothed battle against enemies real and imagined, you might not be a Republican.

If you think teaching children to share their toys is good parenting, rather than preparation for a life of subservience to a socialist dictatorship, you might not be a Republican.

i tweetz mah statsuses

2009-04-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

I have a twitter feed. Nobody but Barack Obama wants to follow me, though.

I've reposted the feed in the sidebar, because, hey, free RSS. Dad always taught me never to turn down free.

As seen on Salon.com!

2009-04-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

Is education being rationed?

Clearly, education is being rationed. But I don't think it needs to be. We're doing something to vastly inflate the costs of education.

Consider: what resources are required to successfully pursue an education? People in this discussion are talking about throwing out the luxurious dorm rooms and recreation centers, then dumping the multi-millionaire coaches. But we can think bigger.

Drop the library. Drop the computer lab. Drop the buildings, drop the campus, drop the frat houses, drop every damned thing until you're left with nothing but the exchange of information itself.

All you need to pursue an excellent education are materials to master, projects to practice your knowledge, and expertise to guide your study. The cost of the materials should rapidly be approaching zero. Laugh if you want, but a growing mind could do worse than a steady diet of Wikipedia articles. MIT's OpenCourseWare is putting vast quantities of course material online for free. http://www.academicearth.org/ is a warehouse of thousands of course lectures, the same lectures being given at our most prestigious universities. http://research.google.com/video.html (Google Tech Talks) let you peek in on what happens when the brainiest company in the world brings in outside experts to fill those brains. Open source books are rapidly approaching -- hell, often exceeding -- the quality of books currently being used in the classroom.

That's a lot of material. Thousands of hours of stuff to wander aimlessly through. There is no better time to be a modern-day Abraham Lincoln, someone who hungers to improve his or her mind. But it's easy to get lost, to be left in the middle of a dark forest without a map or compass.

So we need paths. We need a sophisticated, branching curriculum that guides students through entire disciplines, at least as far as a bachelor-level understanding. You want to be a computer scientist? Fine. We'll need to introduce you to the concepts of data structures and algorithms. We'll also need you to understand some basics of programming. Finally, here's the first set of math concepts you'll need. Go to it.

We also need to be able to evaluate where a student stands in regard to those concepts and materials. In short, we need tests. Exams could be very brief and very discriminating. It should be relatively easy to create software that can quickly gauge a student's understanding of a set of concepts, with nothing but a set of multiple-choice questions. Given the student's responses, it should be able to say exactly which concepts the student isn't grasping, and recommend further study materials that address the concepts.

Teachers aren't going to lose their preeminent positions, but their roles would change somewhat. They would still be defining curricula, but there would be a lot less of that. Rather than teaching an entire course to the same set of students, and figuring out how to lead one group along the entire path, they would master the art of nudging students out of their unique ruts, answering questions, suggesting projects, etc. The students would be learning at their own pace, the software would be doing the day-to-day guidance and evaluation, and the teacher would be troubleshooting from the sidelines. I would hope that there would also be much more time for research.

Once the foundational work is done -- the materials collected and organized, the curricula defined, the software written -- all that's left is for a group of people to have the huevos rancheros to step up and accredit the process, to make the bold claim that their college can give your child a quality education for a couple grand a year (plus tips).

Your children can participate from anywhere. Still living at home? Backpacking through Europe? On work release? It hardly matters. Wherever you and your Kindle are, you have the materials you need, and know what to study next.

The current model is broken as hell. Like the health care industry, we pay too much into it, and get too little out. The difference is, the process of maintaining the vast complexities of the human body is far more difficult -- and necessarily more resource intensive -- than the process of putting knowledge into a human skull. Ninety percent of it is just getting out of the brain's way and letting it work.

The WTBI trends upward

2009-03-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

Today, in my efforts to singlehandedly salvage the economy, I have devised an indicator of our overall economic health. It's called the WTBI, the We're Totally Boned Indicator. It multiplies the seasonally adjusted GDP of the United States by the consumer confidence index, then divides by the percentage of Americans with health insurance (not including Blue Cross, because it's crap), then adds the expected number of years until either The Singularity or the Zombpocalypse renders the economy moot multiplied by the eighth root of the national debt, divided by the number of times Glenn Beck used the word "socialism" on his last show. The sum is then multiplied by the Krugman inconstant, which is whatever value it needs to be so that the overall answer is 7.3 (pretty boned).

The bonededness indicated by the WTBI could spring from a variety of sources. But I think it's reacting to early evidence that the government's "bad bank" plan will be a singularly high-bonosity event. Here's the deal: You know all that money we gave to Citibank and Bank of America, so that they would be able to survive despite despite having all those "troubled assets" on their balance sheets? So that they could keep lending out money, so that the economy wouldn't go down like a submarine piloted by rabid chihuahuas?

Well, they're not loaning out the money. We knew that already, both because it's been on the news and because I'm still unable to get financing for the Samuel T. Swartwout Memorial Water Slide and Killer Robot Thunderdome.* We already knew that they were instead using some of that money to buy out their smaller, more responsible competitors. What we've just learned is that they're also using the money to buy up more troubled assets!

Why does this make sense? Three reasons:

1) The banks are gambling with taxpayer money, so hey, why not?
2) When the government starts buying the assets -- correction, starts buying the risks associated with these assets, while letting our corporate masters buy up the rewards -- the troubled assets will be selling for quite a bit more than they can be sold for now.
3) Buying new junk inflates the prices currently being paid in the market, which makes the junk already piled in your backyard look more valuable.**

That fuzzy line between "saving vital parts of our financial infrastructure" and "raining taxpayer money down on the fine Americans who smashed the machine in the first place" just got a whole lot fuzzier.

When Russia collapsed, it was because the entire country was looted from the inside by corrupt oligarchs. Fortunately, we're not Russia. Unfortunately, the main difference is that they knew how to live on vodka and borscht, and were therefore more prepared for the decline. Barack, you promised hope and change? You see what's going on here? Change that!

I'm not hopeful.

* Opens Spring 2017. Closed by health department, Fall 2018.

** Thought experiment. Say that two guys, Bill and Phil, both have a pile of rusty carburetor parts in their backyard. They both have wives, who want the crap gone. They both put up some ads on Craigslist, they each sell the other $300 worth of parts, and then point to the ads and to the successful sales as evidence that the parts are nothing short of rusty gold.

Wait a minute. I think I've found the way to revive our economy. Timmy, get Geitner on the phone!

Arrogance, Irresponsibility, Greed. AIG.

2009-03-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

Now that even the crappiest mortgages could be sold to conservative investors, the CDOs spurred a massive explosion of irresponsible and predatory lending. In fact, there was such a crush to underwrite CDOs that it became hard to find enough subprime mortgages — read: enough unemployed meth dealers willing to buy million-dollar homes for no money down — to fill them all.

-- Matt Taibbi, The Big Takeover

You mean, it wasn't poor, innocent banks being forced to hand out bad loans by an evil, socialist government? You, sir, have crossed the line.

If you want to know how we got into this mess, and which people don't deserve to be pulled out of it, read the article.

Recycling coal plants?

2009-03-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

So I was doing some research concentrating solar power (read: wandering around Wikipedia), when I clicked on a link to a supposed solar project using a fresnel collector. Huh. Looks like a coal plant. Read read read... it is a coal plant.

Why is this coal plant on Wikipedia's list of solar thermal projects? It seems so obvious in retrospect. Coal fired plants burn coal, which heats water, which drives a turbine. Solar thermal arrays heat oil, which heats water, which drives a turbine. So the plant simply set up a solar collector next to the plant, hooked pipe A up to pipe B,* and turned it into a combined-cycle coal-solar plant with 35MW of solar capacity.

Very clever. I approve.

If we can find existing coal plants in the western states that are also in particularly sunny areas, this would be a fast, cheap way to ramp up our existing solar capacity. Concentrating solar is already cheap, but this would make it even cheaper, by eliminating the need to build the actual generators. The coal plant already has them. It also eliminates the (somewhat overhyped) argument that solar is too intermittent, because the plant can always burn more coal when the solar isn't producing.

True, solar contributes less than 2% of the Liddell plant's energy production. While that's going to double soon, it still seems like a pretty small gesture. Perhaps I should wait until I hear of a coal plant switching over to 50% solar before getting excited.

But it seems like a way forward.

To kill time, I started looking for coal plants in Utah that might be suited for such an upgrade. Most of Utah's coal plants are located in Central Utah, which may limit their utility in the winter, but it's still interesting to contemplate. Thanks to the ever-helpful Sourcewatch, I found The Intermountain Power Station, a plant in Delta. Just going by the Google Maps satellite picture, it looks promising. It's in a flat area, and surrounded by empty space.

Best of all, the plant is owned by the City of Los Angeles, so it may be unusually responsive to political pressures. I think a lot of Los Angelinos would be surprised to find out that their city even owned a coal plant.

But as I said, it's a little outside the sunbelt. Arizona would probably be a more likely target.

* I believe I may be oversimplifying here.

Clay Shirky's cognitive surplus

2009-03-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

Clay Shirky's Gin, Television, and Social Surplus was written back in the dark ages of the Internet (early 2008), but I still get a kick out of it. Like me, Shirky is fascinated by online collaboration, and how it's remaking society from the ground up. Unlike me, people listen to him.

Highlights: Wikipedia was built with fewer man-hours than America collectively squanders on watching commercials on a given weekend. As infrastructure develops for capturing societal knowledge in useful ways, this sort of useful, consciously creative activity will supplant much of our TV watching time, and the results will make for a much more intricate and interesting society.

Right now, Shirky says most of the examples we're seeing are special cases: a Wikipedia here, a Facebook there. But we'll develop more general-purpose systems that can capture more of our thinking in useful forms.

Also, four year olds demand that their TVs have mice, and even Warcraft is more fulfilling than trying to decide whether Ginger or Maryann is cuter.

Afterword: Writing this, I've just realized that I'm in phase three of the road to personal technological obsolescence*. I believe the road was first described by Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy). It goes, roughly:

1) Age 0-15: this is just the way the world works. It would be unnatural for it to be any other way.
2) Age 16-22: This thing I'm doing is nifty.
3) Age 23-35: This thing other people are doing is nifty, and I think we can make use of it.
4) Age 36-100000: Bah! Why can't kids these days just do it the old way?

* Note: This is a very hard word to spell.

So, who's been president this last week?

2009-03-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Stephen Colbert for first asking the question.

The stock market is way up this week, on news that Obama is canceling his original agenda in favor of an "all tax cuts, all the time" program. He's dumped health care reform, kicked carbon dioxide caps to the curb, and brought Grover Norquist in as a special adviser.

In the right's wildest dreams. In fact, the only thing true about that paragraph is that the market is way up.

The Republicans have been piling on since Obama took office, saying that every new slip of the Dow was a vote of no confidence by the economy and -- by extension -- the American people. Forget that it started sliding nearly eighteen months before Obama took office. Forget that we're still uncovering new ways in which our financial institutions screwed us this last decade. Forget that it took Reagan -- the Right's exemplar of how to run an economy -- two years to get the Dow back up to where it was when he took office. No, Obama must immediately turn back the landslide, or be branded a failure.

Hell, that guy who wrote Dow 36,000 at the absolute peak of the tech bubble was even shoveling it out, calling Obama a "Manchurian candidate" sent to assassinate the economy. In the author bio after the article, it touts the fact that that John McCain was taking economic advice from him during the 2008 campaign. That explains a lot.

But I ask you, now that the stock market is rising, in the absence of any indication of a presidential rightward turn, will they start singing the praises of Barack Obama, Economic Wizard? Will they even admit that it might have been simplistic to link the fortunes of the Dow too closely to every presidential utterance?

I doubt it. I think that, for the duration of the Dow's recovery, those arguments will be quietly put into storage, in the hopes of keeping them sharp and free of rust for the next downturn. In the meantime, expect Sean Hannity to take to the airwaves and explain that the market isn't recovering, it's "crashing upwards."

Afterword:

Dow 36,000 guy made some interesting -- and by "interesting", I mean the opposite -- claims about how Obama's agenda would destroy entrepreneurship and innovation. He seem especially disturbed about the idea that some people might start getting free health care. I'll cut and paste my response from Dan Gillmor over at boingboing:

America's health-care system makes it all but impossible for an older worker to try something new.

Even younger startup owners who are relatively healthy and have insurance are just a half-step from disaster. The insurance industry is in the business of not paying claims whenever possible, after all, and health insurers are working hardest to find ways not to cover people who might get sick even as they deny as many claims as possible from people who've been paying premiums.

The day we have national health care is the day that we unleash a wave of entrepreneurship the likes of which we've never seen before. That's one of the best reasons for moving toward such a system.

wherein I point out that Rush Limbaugh is Fat

2009-03-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

I'm always the last to the party, but here's my take on the Obama/Limbaugh kerfuffle, with some asides on why Oprah exceeds Rush.

Also from Salon:

On Monday, at 8:30 a.m., I turned on CNBC and started watching the business channel for the first time in my life. Twelve hours later, a long stare through the peacock-colored looking glass had shaken me. I was huddled in the corner of my living room couch, arms hugging my knees, wondering why the angry faces on-screen were yelling at me. [src]

A picture is worth about 40% of what you paid for it

2009-03-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

Gather 'round, kids, while grandpappy Bryce tells you how he squandered your inheritance.

The Big Black Book o' Crazy Doom

2009-02-23T19:08:00.000-08:00

Gratuitous haiku of the day:

Exponential minds
singing to the infinite
kill squishy humans

I've recently attempted, with my puny and unenhanced human brain, to read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. It's one of those books that walks straight up to the line between brilliance and madness, and hits it with a sandblaster until it's rubbed out.

Premise: the rate of technological change is accelerating. Kurzweil believes this, and he has a ton of graphs and charts to back him up. Because the rate of change is accelerating, and because most of us make predictions as though the rate were constant, our entire society has greatly underestimated how very different the future is going to be.

Kurzweil paints an alternate future: by 2045 (give or take a few years), artificial intelligence will no longer need us. It will be good enough. It will be smart enough. And doggone it, people will like it. Like other lines mentioned earlier, the line between artificial and natural intelligence will be blurred out of existence. Some of us will have our intellects augmented, some of us will be pure software, and the Amish will have their own cyborg armies.

Our bodies -- or at least the bodies of those of us who choose to keep them -- will be full of nanomachines which will provide the same services to our bodies, only better. They'll also repair our cells faster than living damages them, effectively rendering us immortal.

Most important, the brainpower available to society will have exploded exponentially. Hundreds of billions of artificial brains, working much faster than normal brains, and not having to waste their time with sleep and bathroom breaks, will drive ever faster acceleration. Technological barriers will crumble instantly, and the gap between what humankind can do and the limits of the physically possible will slam shut.

Then we will be gods, the living music which infuses the cosmos with understanding and meaning. It will be nifty.

But I'd just settle for the robotized blood cells that allow me to hold my breath for hours.

It's a compelling vision, and very coherently argued. He seems to have glossed over a few of the difficulties, but I think he nailed the two biggest ones. I think the bulk of his vision hinges on two factors: Moore's Law* has to hold for about forty more years, and we have to invent the ability to simulate the human mind in an effective way. The first one may be tricky. Using light to burn silicon paths on a chip can only get us so far. I've seen predictions that it will run its course by 2019, 26 years too soon. Unless something supersedes it, we'd be left with computers about 1/8000th as powerful as they would need to be.

The author, of course, thinks that a better technology is inevitable. He's probably right.

The second feat -- simulating a human brain -- may turn out to be the easier half of the equation. Our tools for observing and understanding the brain have been undergoing the same sort of exponential improvements that our computers have. By the 2030s, Kurzweil figures that the tiny machines in our brains will be able to record our brains in arbitrarily complex detail, down to the structure and firings of each synapse. This will allow us to copy brains and simulate them in software. The nanobots will also be able to cause and suppress brain activity, allowing our brains to experience anything, from virtual reality to the recording and playback of sensory and emotional experiences, to a form of telepathy with other brain-hacked people.

But most important is the ability to simulate brain activity in software. If I had to guess, I would say that Kurzweil is actually being conservative about how much processing power that would take. We could very well figure out how to simulate some of the brain's substructures in a greatly simplified way. But that's the thing about Moore's Law: regardless of whether the brain simulation is a thousand times simpler than Kurzweil estimates or a thousand times more complicated, it barely alters the timeline.

If we assume that Moore's Law continues to double the amount of computational power available every two years, a thousand-fold increase in the complexity of the simulation only pushes the result about twenty years (ten doublings) into the future. A thousand-fold simplification of the problem only pushes it twenty years closer.

The amazing thing is that Kurzweil can make such fanciful predictions without striking me as a kook. That is either a tribute to his insight and rhetorical skills, or evidence that I myself am also a kook, and that we kooks often sound quite sane to each other. His conclusions also fulfill some unmet emotional needs for people who don't believe in an afterlife. When faced with an idea that I would clearly want to believe, my second instinct is to temper my enthusiasm for it.

My first instinct, of course, is to believe it. I have no idea why Kurzweil hasn't used this as the basis for a new religion. He'd make a boatload.

I'm going to make my own, much more humble prediction: someday, your cell phone will double as a universal remote. It will be a golden age of humanity.

Update: Leon says the iPhone already does this.

* I mean the soft, fuzzy, bastardized version of Moore's Law, which says that computers keep getting exponentially faster. Look upon my misuse, ye pedants, and weep.

Tim O'Reilly - Pascal's Wager and Climate Change

2009-01-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

Tim O'Reilly -- after succinctly laying out excellent arguments for responding to global warming, even if it turns out to be a hoax -- writes:

Climate critics like Bjorn Lomborg like to cite the cost of dealing with global warming. But the costs are similar to the "costs" incurred by record companies in the switch to digital music distribution, or the costs to newspapers implicit in the rise of the web. That is, they are costs to existing industries, but ignore the opportunities for new industries that exploit the new technology. I have yet to see a convincing case made that the costs of dealing with climate change aren't principally the costs of protecting old industries.

The full post is worthwhile.

Update: Welcome, new reader!

2008-12-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

Here's the steaming pile of thought I left on change.gov's doorstep. Then I set fire to it, rang the doorbell, and bolted.

Thought #1: I like filling out web forms.

Thought #2: It seems like the health care discussion usually revolves around the problem of health insurance reform. I know that lack of health insurance is a huge concern. But I believe we should be broadening this into a discussion about "health reform." Such a discussion would go beyond affordable health insurance, or even driving down the costs of running our health care system,

Such a discussion would involve every aspect of society that touched on the health and happiness of the American people.

There are a few subjects that this discussion would encompass. We need to talk about the American diet, how that diet leads to skyrocketing health care needs, and how government policies like the current agricultural subsidy system have gotten us to that state.

I'm not sure how I feel about the choice of Tom Vilsack to lead the Agriculture department. He feels like a very "stay the course" nominee, which wasn't what I expected from someone who seemed to "get" Michael Pollan's article for the NYTimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

But mainly I wanted to discuss some thoughts I had while reading a book called "Brain Rules" by John Medina. He's a molecular biologist who is fascinated by how we learn and think, and his book gives handy, everyday advice for getting the most out of our craniums (crania?).

The first thought is just for Mr. Obama and his staff: get plenty of sleep and exercise. Tired brains make bad decisions, brains with good blood flow make better decisions. We need good decisions from you folks. Moving on.

The second thought is that very little of this new research has trickled down into our everyday lives. This lack seems especially severe in our educational system. Teachers and parents need a better understanding of how learning happens, and how things like sleep, exercise, and (most important) stress can affect how children learn.

Stress is especially important, because too much stress in a child's home life can destroy his or her ability to learn in school, setting them up for a lifetime of failure.

I'm not alone in my thinking. I saw Geoffery Canada, founder of the Harlem project, on the Colbert Report a while back. One of his many inspiring missions is to get the knowledge of child development and learning into the minds of the impoverished parents whose children he serves.

I would guess that you're already familiar with the Harlem Project. Nonetheless: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E7D91030F933A15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=print

Medina understands that there is a lot that we still don't know about the brain, and a lot more that we don't know about structuring our schools and workplaces to take advantage of this new understanding. But I think that research and pilot programs should begin as quickly as possible. The payoff is a smarter, healthier, better educated American citizenry.

Thought #3: This box I'm typing into is far too small. If you want to elicit big thoughts from people, you have to give them a big canvas.

I'm not sure how effective the whole change.gov site is. Right now the comment section seems to be "all Rick Warren, all the time," which is disheartening.

The state of our tummies

2008-11-30T17:12:00.000-08:00

Here's half of what's wrong with the American diet, in one handy graph.

Mob rule comes to Salt Lake City

2008-11-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

That's what you'd think, given the reaction to the reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California. There have been excesses, like the mailing of white powder to Church headquarters. There have been absurdities, like the flaming Book of Mormon left outside a ward building.

Though these acts should be condemned by anybody with a conscience, the bulk of the anger from defenders of traditional marriage* seems directed not at such anti-democratic bullying, but to the organized protests that are not only pro-democratic, but the funnest part of living in a democracy.

I went to the second protest yesterday, held outside the City-County building, across from the main library. The protest was well attended, 100% peaceful, and 90% civil. The remaining 10% was out at the crosswalk connecting City-County to Library Square. That's where the two counter-protests clashed with the pro-gay forces who were itching for a confrontation.

Smartassery ensues. People, is this the sort of public discourse Thomas Jefferson had in mind? Really, if he'd seen this video before sitting down to pin the Declaration of Independence, he could have saved a lot of parchment.

King George,

We've decided to make George Washington supreme dictator for life.

Luvz,

TJ & Crew

P.S.: kthxbai

What frustrated me more than anything was the basic premise of the counterprotest, which boiled down to a few salient points, which I'd like to engage here. I'm sorry if I misrepresent these positions, but hey, I tried to get some more nuanced explanations from the lady in the Youtube video, and got only a splitting headache for my efforts.

The people voted, you're just being sore losers.

Now, as someone who believes gay marriage is in fact a civil rights issue, and agrees with the California Supreme Court's ruling that "civil unions" are not an acceptable substitute, I reject the notion that civil rights are subject to a vote. Alabama shouldn't be allowed to decide whether the Book of Mormon should be offered in public libraries. Massachusetts** shouldn't ask the voters whether they think Republicans should be given the vote. The Constitution sets firm limits on how much respect should be given to "the will of the people".

But the impression I got from the counterprotest was that they thought our protest was an anti-democratic attempt to overturn the vote. That's one of the things I couldn't get Loud Angry Woman to address: how exactly would that work? Nothing I saw at the protest could have or should have coerced a single person to vote against their conscience the next time arount.

One of the contras did express the sentiment that he would have been perfectly happy had the vote gone the other way, and that he wouldn't have raised a word in protest. Which is almost certainly false, though he may have believed it. People invariably believe themselves to be more fair-minded and principled than they actually are. Uhhh, except me?

The LDS Church is being unfairly singled out.

So why is the LDS Church being "singled out"? After all, other religious organizations supported Proposition 8 as well, and Mormons themselves make up a small fraction of California's population (less than 2%, the actual margin of victory).

The New York Times gives a few reasons. According to Prop. 8 proponents themselves, Mormons contributed about half the total "yes" money. Alan Ashton (grandson of David O. McKay and cofounder of WordPerfect) alone donated $1M to the Yes campagin. To be fair, another cofounder sent a million dollars to the No campaign. LDS members also constituted an amazing 80-90% of the early volunteers for the campaign.

So for those who ask why the first protest was held outside Temple Square, rather than the Catholic church three blocks east, well, there's your answer. It may be -- as some argue -- a political miscalculation. But the argument that the LDS Church did nothing to paint a target on their own backs is hogwash.

One man, one woman.

Marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman with a multi-millennial track record for societal stability, they say. What we actually have is a multi-thousand year history that includes concubines, harems, mistresses, underaged marriage, forced and arranged marriages, homosexual affairs, moratoriums on interracial marriage, divorces, ritualized non-monogamy, and Britney Spears. See the Daily Show clip below.

This isn't to object to marriage or the people who use it. But the myth of stability is just that, a myth. There is no one thing that "marriage" has ever signified. It doesn't mean that you're in love. It doesn't mean that you're raising children, or trying to have them. It doesn't mean that you're monogamous, or even that society expects you to be. The French love their mistresses. The ancient Greeks considered dude-on-dude sex a normal part of social life. In some Native American and Pacific Islander tribes, extramarital sex hardly raises an eyebrow, even if that brow belongs to the other partner.

The question is not, will same-sex marriage destroy or degrade society. It won't, and those who claim so have to avert their gaze from the litany of ways in which marriage has already been modified by society. The real question is, are homosexuals part of the human condition? Is Adam's love for Steve as deeply felt and as worthy of respect as the marriages we already validate? I say, absolutely, and to deny marriage to same-sex couples shows profound disrespect for their basic human dignity.

Civil unions are enough

I don't agree, but I think I'm persuadable on that point. But if civil unions are in every way the equal of marriage, if the difference is about the labeling rather than the product, then why all the sound and fury? The question is mostly directed to opponents of same-sex marriage, because they're the ones most likely to offer it. If I can name a laundry list of rights that marriage confers -- from hospital visitation, to inheritance rights, to the right to make medical decisions, to protections in the event of the dissolution of the relationship, and on and on -- and in every case you say, "Yes, they should have that," then who cares what it's called?

Final thought: Same-sex marriage is inevitable. The repeal of Proposition 8 is inevitable, and I would bet a good sum of money that it won't last beyond the 2012 election. I base this on a couple of factors. First, in the 2000 election, a similar repudiation of same-sex marriage passed in California by 60%, not 52%. Younger voters are replacing older voters and people are getting more used to the idea of civil unions (which California still offers), so the electorate is slowly getting on board with the idea. Yes on 8 was headed for defeat before a well-funded misinformation campaign got it back on track.

Once it's repealed, and once gay marriages have been a part of everyday life for a few years, and once the states offering it fail to catch fire or get struck by meteors, I think the fear that drove the Yes on 8 campaign will dissolve away. Other states will begin offering it, and similarly fail to feel the brunt of God's wrath. I figure by 2020, something will happen on the federal level, at least to the extent of forcing states to recognize marriages from other states.

*

It's all good, but the "definition of marriage" starts around 2:30.

** Man, I can never spell that one right.

Why I love FOX News

2008-11-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

About 6:30PM MST, Brit Hume described the Alaska Senate race by saying that Ted Stevens was convicted of seven counts of "failing to file proper disclosure forms."

Reason #17: For America

2008-11-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the election. In a few hours, polls will open, Americans will get up, cut themselves shaving, shove burnt pop-tarts into their faces as they rush out the door, and -- while hopefully wondering why we insist on doing this ritual on a Tuesday -- hit the polls. So while I wanted to make some narrower points, this seems like a good time to get all expansive and reflective.

I like to think of myself as an idealistic curmudgeon. Just ask me; I can give you a dozen highly plausible ways that our society as we know it could achieve catastrophic failure. This brings me no small measure of discomfort, and not just because several of those scenarios lead to my own horrible mutilation. The sadness comes from thinking about the unimaginable loss, not just of lives, but of hopes and possibilities.

Things feel dark right now. I can say, without feeling like I'm exaggerating in the slightest, that the next generation is about to inherit a nation in decline.

Our physical infrastructure is eroding away, as is our sense of pride. In short, America needs a revival, maybe even a resurrection. I believe Barack Obama could bring that about.

We need concerted action right now. A McCain presidency would almost certainly preside over a congress with an even stronger Democratic majority than it has now. It's a recipe for gridlock, and four more years of inaction on some very critical problems. We can't wait another four years to tackle global warming, or to start revitalizing our energy grid, or to get health care to the uninsured.

Obama, if elected, can move much more aggressively. Not just because he has the numbers in Congress, but because he's run a much more positive, unifying campaign than his opponent. He's been selling hope while McCain has been selling mostly Obamaphobia, and destroying his bipartisan cred in the process. So McCain will have a tougher time convincing those who didn't vote for him to follow his plans.

To put it more bluntly, Obama will be able to lead this country, to bring us together in a common cause, in a way that McCain cannot.

Well, I've run out of steam, before I could build up to a decent finale. 538.com had a much better idea: a reprint of Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech. Talk about uniting in a common cause.

We few, we happy few. Vote Obama.

Reason #7-16!

2008-11-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

Oops.

I assumed that nobody would notice if I stopped. I was getting busier, and my interest in the project was waning. But I got an actual complaint. Perhaps I should be flattered.

So, to catch me up, I need nine more reasons to vote for Obama. Here we go.

#7: Health care. Obama's plan is simply better. McCain's ideas appear to be nothing but warmed-over Bushonomics. The primary effect of his tax credits will be to push millions of people out of employer-based coverage and into the individual markets. Now, employer-based coverage is a weird artifact of World War II price controls, and is by definition not portable between employers. In the long term, that system has to go. But the individual market has much higher administrative costs (19% as opposed to 10% for employer-based coverage (or Medicare's 3%)).

#8: Tax policy. Yes, I know that the Right is talking about Obama and his "economy-killing tax increases." Poppycock and hornswaggle, I say. Clinton raised taxes, and the economy did fine under him. Bush cut taxes, and the economy tanked. Economists can bicker and argue over how taxes affect the broader economy, but the correlation is muddier than the screaming punditry dares to acknowledge. Obama's current plan does nothing more than reverse a narrow subset of the Bush tax cuts, returning them to a level that suited the economy justfinethankyouverymuch a decade ago.

As to the claim that increasing taxes on the wealthy is "redistributionist," so what? As Warren Buffet once said, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." The last eight years have seen stagnant or declining wages for most of us, and vast rewards reaped for the wealthiest. That picture is real, and it's an affront to any definition of fairness.

#9: McCain's campaign has gone 100% negative. It's true that Obama and McCain are spending about the same amount on negative campaigning. But Obama, thanks to vast sums of money from ordinary Americans, has about three times as much to spend on advertising. On a related note, because individual contributions under $200 aren't reported, McCain's campaign ominously refers to them as "undisclosed contributions", as though to insinuate that Obama is being financed entirely by bin Laden himself.

More startling are the things McCain has been *saying* in his negative ads. When a program to teach young children to protect themselves against pedophiles -- a program supported by the Illinois PTA -- gets twisted into "comprehensive sex ed for kindergarteners," a very disturbing line has been crossed.

I was horrified when I read about the "McCain fathered an illegitimate black child" rumor Karl Rove used against McCain in the 2000 primaries. It gave me a deep sympathy for McCain, and I thought such an experience would make him averse to those sorts of tactics. I was wrong, and that sympathy is now entirely used up.

#10: First Muslim president! Wooo!!!

#11: The environment. The environment is inextricably tied up with energy policy, and as I mentioned earlier, Obama wins hands down there as well.

#12: Foreign policy is supposed to be John McCain's strong suit, and the polls indicate that voters believe that. I think that will not be the case. Watching the debates, I didn't get the impression that Obama had any sort of foreign policy deficit against McCain. Also, McCain has made some pretty famous and repeated gaffes that make me wonder how well he actually understands the situation in Iraq.

The differences aren't a matter of competence so much as attitude. Obama has made it clear that he will rely more on skillful use of diplomacy. McCain derides Obama for this, trying to convince us that simply sitting down with other parties and listening to their positions should be a reward for good behavior, rather than just something we ought to do because it's in our own best interests.

Frankly, I've had enough of "tough foreign policy," and of its proponents. There is nothing more cowardly to me than someone who refuses to do the simplest, common-sense things for fear of looking weak

But there is another reason why I think Obama will have the better foreign policy. The world has been shocked and awed by our behavior on the world stage these last eight years. To the rest of the world, McCain appears to be a vote by the American public for a continuation of Bush's policies, an idea they find repulsive. Obama, by contrast, represents a sharp turn towards sanity, cooperation, and multilateralism. We can argue over whether this is in fact true, but when it comes to winning countries and influencing populations, Obama has a built-in advantage.

#13.0: Headsplosions!

#13.1: Rush Limbaugh's head will explode.

#13.2: Charles Krauthammer's head will explode.

#13.3: Ann Coulter's head will explode.

#13.4: Sean Hannity's head will explode.

#13.5: Headsplosions will stimulate the carpet cleaning business, and to a lesser extent the broader economy. We have to stimulate the economy.

#14: The return of regulation. The Bush administration has undermined the effectiveness of government at every turn, and for the most part they've done it without making even minor changes in the actual laws that the executive branch is supposed to, well, execute. Often, the administration has simply installed people as the heads of departments who don't believe in the missions of those departments. So we've ended up with (among others) an EPA that doesn't want to protect the environment, an ambassador to the U.N. who disagreed with the very premise of the institution, and a National Labor Relations Board that considers labor unions illegitimate organizations.

More often, the Bush administration has simply cut the budgets of the regulators to the point that they cannot effectively enforce the regulations. If McCain institutes his proposed "spending freeze," it will freeze the budgets of government programs like OSHA and the EPA at unacceptably low levels. But taking a broader view, I just don't see that McCain has enough faith in government, or its ability to act for the public good. The regulatory infrastructure that our country depends on has been degraded over the last several years, and is in desperate need of restoration. Barack Obama is the better candidate for that job.

#15: Obama is a rock star. He gives great speeches. He draws huge crowds. If you listen to the McCain campaign, these things are negatives. They're downright mockable, in fact -- though I don't see them criticizing Sarah Palin's ability to draw crowds in the tens of thousands. Governor Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan were actual actors before they turned their attention to politics. Having a president who can connect with people doesn't just make State of the Union speeches more engaging. Charisma can spur people to action, rally support, and lift hopes.

The first time I actually sat down and listened to Obama was when he was giving his speech on race, after the Jeremiah Wright thing. He blew me away, not just because he was eloquent, but because he used his eloquence not in the service of demagoguery, but to flesh out some very deep thoughts on race in a way that inspired and united, without ever losing sight of the complexities of the problems. He was so thoughtful, so averse to glittering generalities or simple solutions, that I thought there was no way in hell that he could win the nomination, much less the presidency. I assumed that people would go with the candidate who told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

I've never gotten the impression from Senator Obama that he has any intention of using words as a substitute for action, or that he's going to use his eloquence to pander to our conceits when we really need to hear hard truths. Obama has a knack for inspiring and moving people. Or, in a word, Leadership.

#16: Obama has a secret plan for getting us out of Vietnam. Or Iraq. Some country we shouldn't be in. There are several reasons for getting out of Iraq. First and foremost, we just cannot afford to stay. We've already spent $600 billion, and according to Nobel-prizewinning-yet-lefty-economist Joseph Stiglitz, the eventual total will be about $3 trillion. That would buy a heckuvalotta distressed mortgages. While that's mostly money already spent, the sooner we stop the hemorrhaging the better.

The other big reason for leaving: the Iraqi people want us to leave. Polls of Iraqi citizens indicate that Get Out beats Stay by about 4 to 1. Further, the Iraqi government has asked us to commit to timetables for withdrawl. McCain's claim that he'll stay "until the job is done" is not just misguided, but a slap at the sovereignty of Iraq.

Good enough, Jonathon? Well? WELL????

Reason #6: I don't like him all that much

2008-10-23T21:11:00.001-07:00

Barack is a little more centrist than I'd like. Position-wise, I was more aligned with Dennis Kucinitch.

That's gotta make somebody feel a bit better.

Reason #5: Obama has the better energy policy

2008-10-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

The two energy plans compared.

There are actually several points of agreement. Both favor a cap-and-trade system for regulating CO2. Though Obama sets a slightly more ambitious target, both put that target way out at 2050, making progress difficult to gauge. Neither candidate is currently proposing to open ANWR to drilling (though I'm convinced that if McCain dies in office, Palin will have it sucked dry before he's buried). Both are eager to develop alternatives to our coal-fired energy system, with McCain being far more ready to go nuclear.*

I like most of McCain's energy plan, but I think Obama's is broader and more comprehensive. There are two things I'd like to address from McCain's plan.

The first is the summer gas tax holiday. I think it's a bad idea; so bad, in fact, that I was really surprised that McCain hadn't pulled it from the plan. The government would be passing on $10 billion in lost revenues, but the money will probably go to the oil companies, not to drivers. Dropping the price would only increase demand, which would shoot the price back up to its previous levels. End result, bigger profit margins for the oil companies, same price at the pump.

The second thing is nuclear energy. McCain points to France as a model -- which has to be a Republican first. But look at the drawbacks from a right-wing perspective. France's energy infrastructure is almost entirely nationalized. I think that's an almost unavoidable consequence of choosing nuclear energy. From the enormous capital investment to the inherent danger in the fuel and byproducts, nuclear energy demands big government intervention.

Or, to put it another way, a move to deregulate the nuclear industry would be about as popular as giving Enron nuclear warheads.

So, here are the things I like about Obama's plan. He's talking about weatherizing 1 million energy-inefficient homes a year. This will reduce energy consumption, while giving purpose and direction to idle construction workers. Old manufacturing centers will be revitalized and retooled to build green tech. Obama's plan calls for ramping up fuel economy standards, while providing tax incentives for advanced technologies. That should ease Detroit's concerns that higher fuel standards will destroy their business.

In fairness, McCain proposes a slightly smaller tax incentive, though for a smaller range of vehicles.

But I have to ask. Candidates, where is my electric bicycle subsidy?

Obama's plans seem to focus more on promoting the technologies of the future, and making the United States the center of a technological revival. McCain, with his focus on expanded drilling and nuclear power, along with his "Drill, baby, drill" running mate, seem to be trying to eke out the last drops of a dirty and unsustainable technology. He won't place any more tax burden on oil companies, for fear of underfunding the next wave of oil exploration and expansion, which seems to indicate which activities a McCain administration would encourage.

* Pun intended.

Reason #4: A bunch of reasons

2008-10-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

All eloquently explained by Colin Powell.

Yeah, I was going to do energy policy today. But the news cycle demands that we talk about this instead.

Update: Reason #4.5 is actually a reason to vote for whoever you think will do worse by the economy. The glass is half full.

Reason #3: (and why not?) Because he's black

2008-10-18T19:13:00.000-07:00

Is that to say that race should be a deciding factor when choosing your candidate. If it were, then Palin's womanity would be nearly as relevant. Still, as a firmly decided voter, I think that pulling the lever for Obama is going to feel, well, historic.

We haven't had that many presidential firsts, come to think of it. Kennedy was the first Catholic. Bill Clinton was the first honorary black president. Aside from that, it's really a long, unbroken string of white males of varying ages.

There's something compelling about a role model on the national stage. Hillary Clinton helped young women dream of becoming president. Sarah Palin let middle-aged Republican women dream of field dressing a moose. I can't exactly claim expertise on the experiences of any minority group, and I know that (despite Obama's impressive ability to speak on racial issues) an Obama presidency isn't going to heal the racial divides or unite the nations in peace and harmony. That's Bono's job.

But I can imagine that an Obama presidency might give some young African-American kid permission to dream of what he or she can accomplish in this society. That's no small thing, and something I'm glad for.

Reason #2: Also the economy

2008-10-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

I promised to talk about "trickle up economics." Ideally, it means that money is put in the hands of poor and middle-class people, the money is used to buy things, and that helps the wealthy to flourish.

For a long while now, the other sort of trickle-up has been at work. We've cut social spending and indebted our grandkids in order to finance tax cuts for those who have the most. The incomes of the wealthiest have skyrocketed, while the median income is actually falling (adjusted for inflation). The folks on Forbes' list of the 400 wealthiest Americans have amassed more wealth than the bottom 20% combined.

Wealth inequalities of this scale don't just incite envy. They degrade society, by giving the privileged the power to rewrite the rules in their favor, to control the discourse that is vital to a democracy, and to increase their advantage by dipping directly into the public trough.

All this might be an acceptable trade-off, if lavishing such rewards on the few really drove the economy. But I don't find the claim credible. Talent and work ethic are far more equitably distributed than that. Moreover, the people who are the best at their jobs are usually the ones who are doing what they love, and couldn't be lured away from their profession for a small pay raise. If anything, outrageous pay would lure the greediest to try and trample over more effective leaders and more intelligent decision-makers.

That seems to be happening now. I've seen an amazing graph, which I can't seem to find right now. It plots worker productivity and median income over time. In the decades after World War II, the two rose in lockstep. As individuals were better able to create wealth, they reaped some of the reward for their own wealth creation.

But for the last, oh let's say eight years, a different picture has emerged. Productivity still increases, but median income goes flat, perhaps even trending down a bit. Does this mean that only the upper crust were doing more and better work, which only they were rewarded for? Or did the owners of businesses simply decide to redirect more wealth into their own wallets?

Just as Democratic presidencies create more jobs (see Reason #1), they also raise the median income nearly twice as fast as Republican administrations do. Only the truly wealthy see their lot improve under Republican presidencies.

So reason #2: vote for Obama, cuz I'd really love to buy me a dune buggy.

Reason #1: The economy

2008-10-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog, gentle readers. I've gathered you here today to answer a challenge given by certain beloved parties: Give me reasons to vote for Obama. In keeping with a time-honored, downright hokey format, I'll attempt to put up one reason each day between now and the election. Think of me as an advent calendar for the Democratic messiah, but without the fun toy surprises.

Today's reason: Democrats are better for the economy.

Now, there are many ways to judge the overall health of the economy, from the total economic activity, to the ever-jittery numbers of the stock market, to the number of people employed. Each of these measures may say something different. Stocks often go up because a company announces plans to lay off workers. But as I've written before, I don't find the first two to be particularly useful as measures of "how we're doing."

Not so with employment numbers. As happiness researchers have discovered, short of the death of a loved one, almost nothing is as injurious to a person's happiness as losing his or her job. My personal experience confirms this. Being unemployed just sucks.

So we get to the meat of reason #1. Democratic presidents have an astonishing history of creating more jobs than Republican ones. Here's a recent article from the LA Progressive: Who creates jobs? Democratic presidents do. The figures show that even the worst-performing Democratic job creator (Kennedy) quite evenly matched with the best Republican job creators (Nixon and Reagan).

Toward the bottom of the article, the author points out that, on occasions where the Democratic party controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress, job growth has been a rocking 3.8%, compared to Reagan's 2.3%. He also indicates that, while the correlation is less clear for Congress, Democratic congresses have tended to outperform Republican congresses.

Let's call this the trickle-up theory of economics. When you do things to improve the lives of the impoverished and the middle class, the economy improves. When you expand access to health care, you create jobs in the health care industry to feed that demand. When you raise the minimum wage, you make employment more desirable, and put money in the hands of people who will use it to buy goods and services, rather than sending it chasing across the globe in search of some unsustainable 20% return on investment. When you invest in public infrastructure, you create jobs today, and build the things which will support the economic activity of tomorrow. When you invest in public education, you do the same.

For the last eight years, the Republicans in Washington have been fighting for their own form of "trickle-up economics." Only now it's become a torrent, which has led to many of the problems we see today. More on that tomorrow.

Final note: this blog has often been written without accounting for possible consumption by my family. I usually write angry, and I sometimes express worrying opinions, and use bad words to do so. Go ahead and explore, but be warned.

Blame Freddie Mac and ACORN for everything

2008-10-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

There is an emerging mythos among the Right, pinning the whole of our current financial crisis on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As the tale is told, these two institutions, under pressure from the government to make more loans to the poor and minorities, forced banks to lend to unqualified applicants, and those bad loans eventually drove the market into free-fall.

Daniel Grossman of Slate vehemently disagrees. So does ummm.... I guess his name is Barry Ritholtz. And also some guy named Robert Gordon. Who cares who they are. They're saying what I want to hear.

More to the point, they say it very convincingly. No regulation anywhere required anybody to make loans without vetting an applicant's credit or verifying his or her income. In 2004, Bush weakened the Community Reinvestment Act, weakening the supposed government pressure to lend to minorities. Yet subprime activity accelerated. Finally, most of the subprime loans were made by institutions that weren't under government pressure at all.

The fact is, these are loans that the financial industry wanted to make, no government coercion necessary. Why? Because even the riskiest loan could be packaged up into a AAA-certified package. Thanks to skyrocketing housing prices, even if a loan went bad, the mortgage owner would simply foreclose on a property that was now worth far more than they'd loaned out. Complex mortgage insurance schemes meant that the financial world could delude itself into believing that there was absolutely zero risk.

The two causes I see are 1) Greenspan's super-low interest rates, which made lending cheap, and stupid lending enticing. 2) Government deregulation, especially as it applies to the regulation of the sort of "innovative" financial schemes that allowed lenders to take $150,000 loaned to a paranoid schitzophrenic named Wilbur, package it up with a hundred other risky loans, and sell the whole rickety package in what amounts to a risk-laundering scheme.

The second part of the myth involves John McCain "sounding the alarm". How did McCain actually act on his prescience? According to a random source, McCain launched into action. He gave one speech on the senate floor, which basically regurgitated the contents of a recent investigation, and added his name to a bill that subsequently died in committee. That's a pretty weak response, if you truly believe that McCain had the foresight to see all this coming two years ago. At least with Obama's overblown claims of foresight, he chose the more appropriate target (subprime lending itself).

Reading the news coverage back then, it sounds like the problems with Fannie Mae had more to do with massaged earnings reports than risky lending practices. In other words, it's not the same poison that is rattling the economy today.

In this time of deepest national crisis...

2008-10-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

...McCain's campaign decides to go crazy negative. For the good of the country, of course.

Let's start with this attempt to smear Obama using guilt by association. Obama did work with William Ayers, though the very New York Times article Palin is bragging about having read discounts the extent of their association. That work entailed serving as a board member for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which helped create local school councils to give parents more influence over their kids' schools. Real sick, dangerous, revolutionary stuff, let me tell you.

William Ayers is

Let's turn now to Sarah Palin's own unsavory associations. Her husband, Todd, was a member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002 (at which point he went all wishy-washy, putting himself down as "undeclared"). The party (a subset of the Constitution Party, whom I find absolutely reprehensible), believes that Alaska is not legitimately a U.S. state*. They believe Alaska has full right of secession, along with the right to nullify any federal laws they don't like.

Sound familiar? The U.S. fought a civil war over those last two principles.

Of course, Todd Palin never killed anyone in pursuit of those principles. But, Obama didn't marry William Ayers and have five kids with him. I humbly suggest that Todd Palin's warped political principles have a stronger influence on his wife than Ayers' had on Obama.

Now on to Palin's other scandalous association:

In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?”

Given the source of the question, the irony here is unbearable.

1) Did John McCain engage in bombings? Of course. He probably detonated more explosives in one bombing run than The Weathermen did in the entire history of their organization.

2) Could those bombings have killed innocent people? Of course.

But, McCain never went out and targeted civilians. But then, The Weathermen generally avoided civilian targets as well. So we're left with two major distinctions between Ayers and McCain: social approval, and funding. Ayers had neither, McCain had both.

Am I knocking McCain's military service, or military service in general? I suppose, though not as harshly as reader(s?) might suspect. The desire to protect your country from threats is honorable. I served in the Army, so I understand the emotion on a gut level. But I also see the pervasive U.S. military presence around the world as a destabilizing influence that makes it more difficult to achieve our objectives peacefully.

But that's a long, long tangent. The main point is, that desire to protect is honorable. But sometimes that desire to protect, or to right some grave injustice, simply doesn't have a socially approved vehicle to convey it. The early abolitionists sometimes resorted to violence and mayhem. Anti-abortion activists have killed doctors, the ELF has torched houses, and animal-rights activists have vandalized businesses, all in the name of that same desire to protect the innocent and stop atrocities.

Sometimes this emotion goes horribly wrong. Sometimes we disagree over whether it has gone wrong. Lefties see it subverted when someone joins the Marines to "fight the terrorists" and ends up invading a country where no terrorists reside, or when they kill human beings in defense of a fetus which has only the potential for humanity. Righties consider anti-war and pro-nature violence illegitimate in much the same way. But at least when we're being reasonable, we can accept that these ill actions flow from healthy motives.

That's what bugs me about the clip. Governor Palin seems to be trying to shove Ayers into a box marked "EVIL", then shoving Obama in the same box for having associated with him. I guess Obama should have cut all ties to Ayers, just like he ought to cut ties with Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Spain, and Finland until they become not-evil.**

This is unlike Joe Biden, who claimed in the debate that he made friends in the Senate by not questioning the motives of his opponents, Palin clearly has no compunctions about attacking the basic decency of her opponents, and her supporters (at least the ones at that rally) clearly love that fact.

The crowd is clearly acting on behalf of the same instinct, the desire to protect the U.S., the beacon of hope and democracy, from its' enemies. But in this case, those "enemies" are the New York Times, the Obama campaign, and -- let's face it -- the half of the country that doesn't ascribe to their worldview. After eight years of an incredibly divisive presidency that successfully pit us against each other, we should reject four more years of this sort of leadership.

Bah. Have a funny:

* This is based, if my understanding of their site is correct, on their assertion that the U.S. violated U.N. laws governing self-determination. Funny, this is the first time I've heard of such a group treating U.N. declarations as anything but toilet paper.

** Yeah, Finland. They know what they did.

Palin reflects McCain's judgment and character

2008-09-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

Which is to say, that he may not have either anymore.

It showed a certain character when he went with Sarah Palin -- the veep who could help him win -- rather than Joseph Lieberman -- the one he thought would best serve the country. Whether McCain thought that winning was more important than choosing the best person for the job*, or he is just so weak within his own party that her nomination was forced upon him, neither supports his "principled maverick" mythos.

The principles McCain claims to represent are at odds with both Palin's views and his choice to nominate her. McCain and Obama have both been echoing the mantra that Washington needs to change. While nominating a female candidate and Beltway outsider might superficially appear to support McCain's "change" agenda, look deeper and the illusion disappears.

Sarah Palin first ran for mayor of Whatabigmoosie** in 1996, a town with a population of about 9000 people. She won by a margin of about 600 votes to 400. Yeah, she was a small-timer, but what she won isn't as important as how she won it. You would think that a local election like that would be about local issues like potholes, good schools, and why the police have to go out to Leroy's sports bar twice a week. Wholesome, small-town issues being debated by wholesome, small-town men and women. Over mooseburgers. At a hockey fight.

The actual picture is one of a woman who won what was supposed to be a non-partisan position by focusing on the Republican wedge issues of God, guns, gays, and gestation. [source] During the campaign, she claimed she would be Walawala's first Christian mayor, which led the incumbent to later ask just what he was.

Once in office, she immediately fired several key city employees who weren't loyal to her very right-wing agenda, including the head librarian of Watchagonnadoaboutit. The librarian's firing was revoked after a public outcry. But if you can think of a less agenda-driven job than small-town librarian, you have more imagination than me. Exhibited Bushian levels of paranoia and demands for loyalty, she banned city employees from speaking to the media without her approval.

In short, this is a person who puts party above country, who is willing -- hell, eager -- to inflame political tensions for her own gain. Partisan rancor is, by admission of both presidential candidates, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to getting things done. But those political tensions, that divisiveness, seems to be this woman's lifeblood. She has more in common with Ann Coulter than her running mate.

Her record on earmarks doesn't live up to her reformist hype or her running mate's famous criticisms. As mayor of Watutsi, she hired a cutthroat Republican lobbyist to get her a bucket of that sweet cash flowing out of Washington. Her town ended up with as much earmark cash as Boise, Idaho, a city with ten times the population.

Once she became Governor of Alaska, she did say "no thank you" to the Bridge to Nowhere". But that was after she first said "i can has bridj to nowher?", then "kthxbai".*** She only said "no thank you" after making sure she would be able to use the money for other Alaska projects, rather than give it back to the Treasury. What a sacrifice.

Washington: "Here's a bunch of money, but you have to spend it on something stupid."

Palin: "Thanks."

Washington: "Ummm... actually, we just realized how stupid the stupid thing really was. We're canceling the stupid thing."

Palin: "You must feel like an idiot right now."

Washington: "Can we have the money back?"

Palin: "Just how would that be fair?"

Palin's nomination is the last and best proof you need of the long road McCain has traveled, from the man who would denounce Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance" in 2000 to a man who would choose an agent of intolerance as his VP today. From a man who tried to introduce a climate change bill in 2003, to a man who nominated a woman who doesn't believe in climate change today. From a man who fought with the rightmost wing of the Republican party a few years ago, to a man who kowtows to them now.

To elect McCain now is to elect an empty suit, wholly under the control of the same forces that he himself ran against in 2000, and the same forces that have made the last eight years an unmitigated disaster. The tragedy is almost Shakespearean. McCain's tragic flaw is his own belief that this country needs him, and his willingness to sacrifice everything to make that happen. Without the things he sacrificed, he's no longer the man for the job.

* In his mind, not mine, though I would vastly prefer Lieberman as vice president.
** Whatever. Really, why care?
*** Stolen from Stephen Colbert, then translated into lolspeak to cover my tracks.

"Community organizer" as a slur

2008-09-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

"He worked as a community organizer. What?" --Rudy Giulliani

"I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer except that you have actual responsibilities." --Sarah Palin

In Rudy Gulliani's world, "community organizing" is when a SWAT team arranges a gang in a neat line against a wall in the projects. To Sarah Palin -- whose stint as let her help organize the Wasilla public library into "righteous" and "flammable" -- doesn't seem to think that community organizers have any actual responsibilities.

I guess that, to the right-wing hate machine, you aren't really serving your country if you're not dropping bombs on somebody. General Custer? Hero. Mahatma Gandhi? Loser, rabble-rouser, and probable druggie. We get it, thanks.

But I loved Barack's response, carried in the Washington Post:

"They're talking about the three years of work that I did right out of college, as if I'm making the leap from two or three years out of college into the presidency. I would argue that doing work in the community, to try to create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job training programs in areas that have been hard hit when the steel plants closed, that that's relevant only in understanding where I'm coming from. Who I believe in. Who I'm fighting for. And why I'm in this race. And the question I have for them is, why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? They think the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives, is somehow not relevant to the presidency? Maybe that's the problem." [source]

Another global warming myth debunked

2008-06-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

Myth: In the 1970s, scientists were predicting global cooling. Therefore, scientists are full of it, and there is no reason to believe them now.

Fact: Between 1965 and 1979, when climate scientists were supposed to be panicked about imminent, frigid death, papers predicting warming were about six times more common than papers predicting cooling.

Full details here.

Me + Electric bike + Jordan River Parkway = wheeeeeee!

2008-06-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

So UTA decided to jack up their bus fares again, just as rising gas prices were threatening to make my transit habit economical as well as ecological. $2 each way, going as high as $2.50 come winter? This last indignity, coming just after the loss of my old morning bus driver, who let people ride for free, was just too much to bear.

Of course, I blame the Republicans up on the Hill. I always do. Every time my cell phone dies unexpectedly, I silently curse Chris Buttars and Gayle Ruzicka. Given the increasing need for alternative transportation, and the 9% increase in ridership since last year, they could have seen this as an opportunity to help our hurting pocketbooks and the environment all at once. Plunge some more money into the system, start turning Salt Lake's bus system into something we can be proud of. Is that too much to ask?

Yup.

Psychologically speaking, I came to a tipping point when I heard about the increase, which takes effect July 1. I had sighed and checked a few twenties out from the bank, so I could get a small stockpile of tokens before the increase hit. I must have gone to four or five TRAX stops, only to find that every machine was empty.

Fuming, mind roiling with conspiracy theories and implausible revenge fantasies, I gave up. They'd beaten me. Those Republican bastards and their hand-picked UTA board lackeys had beaten me. I was powerless, unable to protect my pocketbook from their ingenious conspiracies.

Then I remembered "the nuclear option." There is more than one form of personalized transportation, at least for the adventurous. My bicycle is a lousy commuting vehicle, given that the ride to work is forty sweaty minutes each way. There are certain smells that I'm just not willing to inflict on my co-workers.

But I'd been lusting after an electric bike kit for the longest time. I couldn't justify the cost in my mind, since the money spent could buy a lot of bus rides. But now UTA seemed to want to price itself out of the transit market, and anyways, it was no longer about the money.

It was about revenge. Sweet, zippy, electric revenge.

I bought myself a Bionx kit from EcoMoto and let them do the install. I walked in the door with an $80 bike -- okay, that's probably optimistic -- and walked out with a lean, green transit machine. 350 watt lithium ion battery, brushless motor, regenerative braking. Squee! On days when I'm too hot and lazy to do it myself, I can just nudge the throttle, and it will take me the seven miles to work with no assistance from me. All on less than $0.10 of electricity round trip.

Some people will just see a cheap bike with a gray plastic blob sticking off the frame. But I see an elegant vehicle for a more civilized age.

Sure, it will only be economical if I make it my primary means of transport. I probably will, at least until the snow demons invade.* But there are some things you can't put a price on. For me, the looks on peoples' faces as I zip past them, feet clearly not touching the pedals, is worth more than a bucket full of UTA tokens.

* Bush is trying to protect me from them.

Are oil companies overtaxed?

2008-05-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

I talked with someone today who seemed to think so. Exxon earned $40 billion last year, but according to him, they paid about $120 billion in taxes.

That sounded a bit far-fetched to me, so I discussed it with Google. Google pointed out that, in 2007, Exxon earned $40B in after-tax revenues, after paying $30B in taxes. I asked for specifics, and it obliged like the obedient, loyal, golden retriever superintelligence that it is. I asked Google, "If they owed $30B in taxes, why did they only pay $10.6 billion of that out of pocket, with the rest socked away under 'deferred income tax liabilities'?" Google politely redirected me to a video of a sleepy cat. It was adorable, but also Google's way of telling me that I'm asking questions way above its pay grade.

I don't have the financial understanding to say which number is more accurate. But I do know that ExxonMobil claims a 32% "return on average capital employed." Does that mean that deferring for even one year is effectively a 32% tax cut? I'm sure it's far more complex than that.

Meanwhile, Google was pointing out how the increases in fuel economy over the last few decades makes gasoline a much better bargain. The blog post repeats a claim that gas today moves cars 50% further. In other words, with the fuel efficiencies of 1973 in place today, it would be as though oil was $172/barrel. Since it was a free-marketeer's blog, I left a reminder to thank their neighborhood meddling bureaucrat, and remind them that if 2020's fuel standards were in effect today, it would save hundreds of billions every year.

Ever loyal, Google brought me this report of about $2.5B/year worth of tax exemptions to the oil companies. I don't think that those loopholes even scratch the surface. Every one of the 1.8B barrels we extract from the U.S. every year lived under land that was at one point considered the sole property of the United States (or at least the white, bewigged predecessors of said entity). Much of that land was given away before we knew oil was important, or before anyone realized that said commodity existed under said parcels. But even today, a lot of oil comes off federally-owned (read, you-owned) lands, yet oil companies pay little or nothing for the privilege of extracting it. If America was actually acting like we owned the oil (rather than merely providing the illusion of technical ownership), we'd all be raking it in.

I also consider the excise tax on gasoline a big windfall for the oil industry. Think about it. Most of the tax is spent on roads, so the government is effectively taking the money from us and using it to expand the market for petroleum products. Sure, we benefit in the able-to-get-from-point-a-to-point-b sense. But without roads, the market for oil is minuscule.

In a weird twist, it's even worse in Houston. One of Tom DeLay's last acts in his all-to-unbrief political life was to forbid Houston from using even a penny of excise tax money for mass transit. Honestly, did that man have a single decent bone in his entire body? No wonder he rose to the top of the Republican Party.

Thank you, Google, for keeping me up two hours later than I'd intended. Now here's your chew toy.

The Historical Jesus

2008-05-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Argument breaks out on Internet. Film at 11. I used to spend a lot more time arguing about these sorts of things, and a lot of the details are a little fuzzy these days. I've read a couple of books that claimed Jesus was an entirely mythological construct, and never found them terribly compelling. I read a couple that claimed that the Gospels are perfectly historical, and Jesus did exactly the things they say he did, dammit. Those were laughable.

Between the two poles, there is this fuzzy middle ground where we can be pretty sure that Jesus existed, but we can't be sure enough of his doings or sayings to base our lives on them. Most Christians admit that their religion requires a leap of faith at some point, but I'm arguing that you have to make a big first leap in order to get to the point where you can make the second leap.

These questions used to be a big part of my life. Not anymore. I did my brain dump, and I probably won't contribute further to that discussion.

Obama FTL

2008-03-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about Obama's speech about race in America. The speech was an absolute masterpiece. It spoke to the best in every one of us, without getting weighed down with sentimentality, without pandering, without simplifying. It recognized the deep anger many Americans carry over racial issues, without letting anyone off the hook for them. Above all, it was a challenging speech, speaking to Americans as though they were adults capable of coming together to reason about complex issues.

No way in hell are we going to elect this guy president.

Michael Pollan lectured at Abravanel Hall

2008-03-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

The audio can be found at KCPW's website, at least until they get bought out and turned into a Christian rock station. No, really. It's in danger of happening.

Flanked by a pair of backup photosynthesizers, Pollan gave an insightful lecture about our food system, and what we need to do to reclaim it. Well worth listening to.

Reason #276 to be a vegetarian

2008-02-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post:

The tape, made secretly by a slaughterhouse worker and provided to the Humane Society of the United States, showed electric shocks and high-intensity water sprays administered to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own, and the use of forklifts to roll such animals.

And the kicker? Most of the meat went to kids in school lunch programs.

LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley, dead at 97

2008-01-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

I got the news from a cousin over IM. President Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet to millions of Mormons around the world, inventor of the cotton gin, and a basically nice old fella, stepped down as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (them Mormons), in order to spend more time with his wife. We here at Neon Derby Cars wish him all the best in his future endeavors, and ask that he drop by when he gets a chance, as he can settle more than a couple of bets for us.

I left the LDS Church about twelve years ago, and I have to say that the parting wasn't exactly amicable. The custody battle was vicious. In the end, I kept my soul and it kept the girlfriend. A lot changed in the years that followed, and mostly the Mormons dropped off my radar as I found new and shiny things to distract my hyper-acute sense of outrage.

When Jerry Falwell died, I let out a sigh of relief, and uttered a quiet "Don't let the door hit your fat ass on the way out." I stand by the sentiment. Sure, he was beloved by many, but he was also an angry, small-minded man who would vent his rage against feminists, homosexuals, and non-Christians, and encourage his followers to do the same. Hinckley was a different sort of religious leader. Whatever our differences were (and given the years that have passed since I lost interest in the exmormon scene, those differences have become quite fuzzy), he struck me as a basically kind guy who wanted everyone to get along and be happy. The world has a bit less of that now, and we're the poorer for it.

P.S.: My third thought upon hearing the news was, "How will this affect the Romney campaign?" But that's a subject I'll probably forget to write about another day.

Twenty minutes to kill

2008-01-17T11:54:00.000-08:00

I went up to the state capitol building, where the Coalition of Religious Communities was giving a tour-slash-presentation on how to harass legislators effectively. Yeah, yeah, I'm an atheist. That doesn't mean that I felt at all out of place. They're looking to pass a couple of laws this session, which I wholeheartedly support. They want to do some things to rein in payday lenders, get some protections for mobile home owners (right now, the land can be sold out from under them with almost no warning, and if they don't have the time or resources to move their home, tough). They want to make sure that the inevitable demonization of illegal immigrants (six separate bills are being considered this session) doesn't make it impossible (or even criminal) to provide charity to illegals.

So now I'm up here, waiting for a bus, and playing with [cutesy laptop nickname to be determined later]. The capitol has free wi-fi, which means there has never been a better time to flummox your representatives with a citation from Wikipedia.

In Mitt's 'symphony of faith,' I'm the guy who forgot to shut his cell phone off.

2007-12-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

Mitt, meet me over by camera three.

Listen, Mitt. I don't think this campaign should descend into bickering and arguing over whose sect is an abomination in the sight of whose God. Frankly, who cares if you think you'll ascend to godhood after you die, or that your church may or may not believe that Jesus is married to multiple wimmins? As Kennedy's speech illustrated, we can get past our differences, and come together in the pursuit of a society that tolerates and values every citizen, regardless of their nutty beliefs.

Damned fine speech Kennedy gave. Yours? Not so impressive.

Nothing against your speechifying, mind you. Perhaps a little effete and uppity for us plainspoken folk here in the West, but you do know how to turn a phrase. It's not the wrapping paper that got to me, but the... how can I put this... the dead puppy inside the box.

Couldn't you have cut me an airhole or two?

I'm an atheist. I used to make a big deal about it, but these days I'm working on a live and let live attitude. You know, cultivating that "tolerance" thing you paid such rapturous lip service to in your speech. But your speech didn't make me feel tolerated, much less valued.

On the surface, you and Kennedy look like similar cases. Like him, you're a member of a distrusted minority religion with somewhat autocratic impulses. Like him, you've got great hair.^[1] But where Kennedy appealed for a nation where we politely refused to elevate one form of religious belief over another, you cravenly admitted that you were fine with a nation that honors any belief -- no matter how kooky -- over no belief at all.

Under the Kennedy principle, nobody should have a moment's hesitation about your ability to serve as president of the entire United States. Under the Romney principle, only those who believe in God, those who kneel in prayer before the Almighty, can properly guide this country. Therefore, it's perfectly legitimate for each citizen to ask, "Does this candidate practice a form of worship that my God finds acceptable? Does my God hear Mitt Romney's prayers?"

Given the crowd you've been so cravenly sucking up to these last few months, I doubt it. Anyone remember this?

I agree that nobody in this country should vote or fail to vote for any candidate simply because of his or her privately held religious beliefs. I wish you felt the same.

[1] I mean, damn but you've got good hair. I swear, if your hair went off and ran for president by itself, it could easily get 15% of the vote.

You don't have to be crazy to vote Democratic, but it helps.

2007-12-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

Gallup did an interesting, if not necessarily illuminating poll, showing that Republicans are way more likely to report themselves as being in "excellent" mental health than Democrats. The blogosphere took the news with its usual humility, and good grace, by opening a polite and nuanced discussion about whether Democrats are insane, or Republicans are conscience-disabled sociopaths. I gave my opinion, though to be completely honest, nobody asked:

No, Jeff. The comments here only show that all of us tend to interpret news in self-serving ways. Had the Democrats fared better than the Republicans, which side of the aisle would be playing up the disconnect between self-reported mental health and actual mental health?

You cite Louis' letter, which describes Republicans as optimists and Democrats as gloomy. But shift your perspective a bit, and it's reasonable to make precisely the opposite case. Which party is more optimistic about the government's ability to affect lives for the better? Which party believes that we can have a country that is both safe from terrorism and a staunch defender of civil rights? Which party believes that we can engage in a respectful foreign policy, rather than bullying everyone who disagrees with us?

The Republicans strike me as hopelessly negative, whether it be their acceptance of torture, their increasingly shameless efforts to keep us angry and fearful towards our enemies by invoking 9-11, immigrant hordes, "Islamofascism," and "East coast liberals" (the rallying cry of Utah's recent attempt to pass school vouchers). The message of Republicans seems to be, "Be afraid. Be afraid of the gays, the immigrants, the secular atheists, the abortionists, the environmentalists who want to take your jobs and give them to spotted owls. But above all, be afraid of a Hillary presidency."

Either party can be spun as the party of optimism. I don't think that explains the poll results. None of the explanations offered so far really satisfy me, though a difference in introspectiveness comes close. My guess (which is probably self-serving) is that Republicans tend to be less affected by reports of suffering, not because they're discompassionate or sociopathic, but because they tend to ascribe personal suffering to the consequences of the sufferer's poor choices rather than systemic problems.

Therefore, it would make sense if Republicans were less troubled by bad news than Democrats. As someone who believes that there are severe systemic inequities in the world, such a dismissive, "I gots mine" attitude seems heartless and naive. But it might also give Republicans a feeling of greater control over their circumstances and a more positive outlook. They may also be optimistic because they compare the world around them to a world where everyone lived under Sharia law, or everyone is broke because liberals dismantled the economy and used the scrap to make hemp farms. Democrats are more prone to compare it to the more just, equitable, and sustainable world that they're hoping will emerge, and get frustrated and dissatisfied.

More grist for the discussion: a Pew Research poll indicating that Republicans rate themselves as happier.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet

Is it better to increase your mental well-being by turning a blind eye to suffering? Or to let yourself be dragged down by things you cannot control?

On Vouchers

2007-11-07T07:41:00.001-08:00

Now that Utah's voucher bill has gone down to epic, humiliating defeat (67% against vs. 33% in favor), I'm taking a few minutes away from my latest conspiracy theory[1] to think on what that means.

Honestly, what does it mean? On paper, it looks great. The reddest state in the Union overwhelmingly repudiates one of the far-right's most important pet projects, saving itself from the same sort of privatization schemes that brought us Enron, Halliburton, and Blackwater! Go Blue!

I hadn't seen the polls in the run-up to the referendum, and I was sure that voters were going to buy into the "liberal, east-coast unions want to trap your kids in their failing schools" chatter on TV. When state rep. Greg Hughes said, "This is a Ronald Reagan solution, this is a Mitt Romney solution, this is a Governor Huntsman solution... lets trust those we've elected, and let's follow their advice, and let's vote for it,"[2] I thought the "follow the prophet" mantra would be convincing to a lot of people.

Something is going on here, something that doesn't jive with my impressions of Utah as a state that is actively hostile to "big government", and a state that wouldn't put much stock in the church-state issues that plaguevoucher proposals. The most kooky, right-wing reason I could think of was "fear of government-funded madrassahs"[3], but that's an argument I never heard. A lot of rural voters voted against it simply because there were no private schools in their areas. The 100+ mile commute was a bit of a dealbreaker for them.

My current theory is that the public school system isn't what most Utahns envision when they think of "big government." I don't mean that in the "keep government's hands off my Medicare" sense, but in the "we're too busy thinking about arrogant political bureaucrats and welfare queens to think about our neighborhood elementary school." Or maybe voters really do recognize the value of the public education system as the foundation of a diverse, egalitarian society.

Naaaah.

Let me close with the words of Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, who donated more money to Parents for Choice in Education than the rest of the country put together: "[Utahns who voted against Referendum 1] don't care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don't care enough about their kids to think outside the box."

He also said that the state failed its IQ test. Can you say "sore loser?"

Notes:

1) The writer's strike is a transparent attempt by liberal unions to derail Stephen Colbert's presidential campaign.

2) KCPW's vouchers debate, closing arguments. (mp3)

3) Islamic schools with a reputation for backward and anti-Western teachings.

Some sorta enviro-bloggy dealie

2007-10-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

Cory Doctorow says that today is Blog Action Day, and everyone is supposed to blog something about the environment. But it's late, and I've got nothing, so I guess I can just link to No Impact Man instead of doing anything constructive myself. He's good.

The return of St. Krugman the Outraged

2007-09-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

After two years in the wilderness, I am mere hours from being able to read Paul Krugman's columns again (Tom Friedman I didn't miss so much). That's right, folks: the New York Times' TimesSelect experiment is dead.

Since NYT put its opinionators behind the Great Wall, I've seen almost nothing of Krugman online. It's been a huge loss, because I think his opinions on social justice and income inequality really deserve a broader hearing. His opinions on Bush and Iraq are also noteworthy, though folks like Sidney Blumenthal and Gary Kamiya are acceptable substitutes, so I don't feel the lack so keenly.

Anyhow, welcome back to the bloggytubes, Paul. Watch out for freepers.

Have a patriotic Burning Man!

2007-09-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

The theme for Burning Man 2008 is American Dream. I wrote this back to the Element11 group. It feels good to just wallow in idealism from time to time.

Catching up on old mail here. Like you, my initial reaction was one of shock and awe. "Why? Why do they hate us so? They must hate us for our freedoms! That's it!" But I quickly came around to Jodie's line of thinking. We've really reached a nadir of national pride, especially among the left. I can't ever remember a time when it was so hard to say, "I'm proud to be an American." Someone mentioned elsewhere (in the 'assholes at Burning Man' thread) that we tend to dissociate ourselves, both physically and mentally, from people whose behavior bothers us, when it might be better to try and connect. The last several years, we've seen increasingly incomprehensible and heartbreaking behavior from our country, starting with the twice-over election of an incompetent warmongerer to the White House, and culminating in a brutal and utterly unnecessary occupation of Iraq that has killed hundreds of thousands of their citizens and thousands of our own military men and women, with a thousand shameful steps along the way. So it's unsurprising that many of us have lost faith, severing (or at least straining) our connection to the vast, sprawling, infinitely intricate idea poorly contained by the words "The United States of America." The actions of the United States in the world and at home seem like the outbursts of a lunatic, not behaviors that we would voluntarily associate ourselves with. So we dissociate ourselves from America, leaving behind the land of televangelists, guns, SUVs, depressing suburbias, preemptive wars, and rapacious, self-entitled consumption. It's not us. That's not what we're about. So we go do "something else," things that we hope will make the world a better place, something that sets us apart from the nightmare America that shames and haunts us. Whether it's creating art, doing volunteer work, trying to be more environmentally aware, or political activism, we revel in the feeling of being a bit "unpatriotic," as though we're going against what everyone thinks it means to be "American." I guess that's the magic of America. The concept is huge enough to incorporate this broad current of selflessness and creativity, to let it flow in and draw strength from it. Whether your thing is organic foods, hyperlibertarianism, mass transit, socialist utopianism, gay rights, human rights, animal rights, eco-communities, or just committing yourself to being less of an ass than Bill O'Reilly, your dreams and your longings are as much part of the American Dream as the dreams of any avaracious financier or cookie-cutter suburbanite. So I like the theme. There is room for great creativity and expression in it. Together we can explore the America that once was (or maybe never was), the America that we fear and love today, and the "city on a hill" that we keep climbing towards, but seem unable to reach. It forces us to take a deep look at ourselves, and to help us understand and accept our connection to this concept of nationality. In doing this, in redefining and reenvisioning what it is to love our country, maybe it will give us the strength and the passion that we'll certainly need to undo the fear and anger that has driven this nation these last several years. I'm ready to burn Red, White, and Blue. Anyone else?

2007-09-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

Front page over at Salon.com: Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Technically, it would be more correct to say that the CIA gave him very compelling evidence that there were no WMDs, and Bush chose to believe a taxi driver and con artist named Curveball instead.

Still, what's done is done, and it only divides the country when we start asking impertinent questions about how we got into this quagmire in the first place, right? The fact that the administration lied to Congress and the American people about why we needed to invade Iraq shouldn't mar their credibility when they say we need to stay in Iraq. None whatsoever.

Rise of the environment-killing pedestrian zombies

2007-08-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

Why are most of my blog posts just repostings of letters I wrote to the forums at Salon.com? Maybe because I expect that someone will actually read. Or maybe it's because I need a fire lit under my butt before I produce anything I consider worth reading.

Today's kindling is brought to you by "leading environmentalist" Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life and foremost proponent of the new and evil "driving is more eco-friendly than walking" meme. I attached this lengthy letter to Andrew Leonard's skeptical analysis of the claim.

Goodall's basic claim is that, if you have to choose between walking to a grocery store 1.5 miles away and driving the same distance, the food needed to replenish the burned calories has a bigger greenhouse gas impact than the gasoline burned.

There are obvious problems with this research (beyond the fact that his book's website breathlessly announces this conclusion as "new research", without mentioning that the research is entirely his own). First, and most suspicious, he assumes that all the calories come from factory-farmed beef, which has enormous environmental impact when compared to eating lower off the food chain. The other factor which severely undermines his conclusions is this: once a person decides on a car trip, it becomes very easy to travel further. Rather than the three miles in Goodall's calculations, they might go ten miles to take advantage of the two for one sale at a competing grocer, or a few more miles to go to multiple grocers, or another dozen miles to Costco to stock up on soy milk (guilty as charged).

There are other, less pressing inaccuracies, some of which actually help his case. He forgets that starting up a cold engine for a short trip uses more gas than a car's MPG rating would indicate. He also ignores cycling as an option (cycling burns about half as many calories per mile as walking). He forgets that you would burn more calories walking back, because you're carrying a lot of groceries. He seems to have made a mistake converting from miles to kilometers. A three mile walk should burn 300 calories, not 180. 180 is more likely from a three kilometer walk.

This crappy, back-of-the-napkin calculation doesn't warrant near the publicity it's receiving; it certainly shouldn't drive anyone's lifestyle changes. When I first heard of this, I (like Andrew Leonard) assumed that the calculation was just hyperbole designed to show how woefully inefficient our industrialized food production is. But reading Goodall's own "research", he mentions replacing walking with driving as the environmentally friendly option, not replacing that slab of factory-farmed steak with some peaches from the local farmer's market[1]. Sure, towards the end he makes a wistful comment about "reduc[ing] the greenhouse gas intensity of our foodstuffs." But it is supremely irresponsible for anyone who touts himself as a "carbon-reduction guru" to make "walk less, drive more" his only concrete suggestion.

Elsewhere, he has compared carbon credits to medieval indulgences[2], and has been commissioned by the Times of London to do a "carbon audit" of Prince Charles (a celebrity climate change crusader, somewhat akin to Al Gore on this side of the pond). Such behavior makes me suspect that the damage Gooding is doing to environmentalism is due to malice, not incompetence.

Update:

After a timely e-mailed response from Mr. Goodall, and a deeper perusal of lowcarbonlife.net, the author strikes me as sincerely committed to helping people reduce their environmental impact. I still worry that, on this particular issue, he's framing the story in a disastrous way, and a lot of people are going to take the message the wrong way. But I think his book has a lot of timely information, and it will be good for everybody if it sells well.

Notes:

[1] In several places in Gooding's report, he goes to great lengths to equate factory-farmed meat to all foodstuffs. Elsewhere, he calls ruminant-based food production "particularly damaging".

[2] I don't trust carbon credits yet, but I do believe that with better science, more auditing, and international agreements to give them more standing, they're going to become a key part of the fight.

From Salon: We're all going to die!

2007-08-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Malthus fascinates me. When someone mentions him, I have to chime in. Reposted from here for anyone who doesn't want to click on the link:

I'm in the "Malthus was right" camp. To me, the lack of a population crash thus far isn't evidence against his theory. Let me explain.

Malthus was certainly right in the trivial sense: exponential population growth cannot continue forever. But was he wrong for failing to predict the rise of the industrial agriculture and chemical fertilizers that have managed to feed our exponential growth? No. These developments didn't negate Malthus' theories. In fact, these discoveries may have worsened their eventual consequences.

Humans didn't find a brand new way to permanently increase our food supply. Instead, we started a straightforward oil for food program, where we pumped oil and natural gas from the ground, changed it into fertilizer and pesticide, and sprayed it all over the planet to increase our harvests. It's akin to the difference between getting a better job and finding a pile of money under a rock.

As a non-renewable resource, oil is a terrible basis for population growth. Once it runs out, the population supported by oil will need to either change their food source or shrink until it comes back in line with what the Earth can sustainably produce. If the supply of oil drops too suddenly, you end up with six or seven billion people living on a planet that can only really support a billion, all looking for their next meal.

Having that temporary infusion of resources has allowed humanity to far exceed the numbers that the planet can legitimately support. Malthus predicted that as we reached the limits of growth, there would be increasing downward pressure on the population, to the point that we could never overshoot carrying capacity by much. What he didn't foresee was a situation where the population didn't just reach the limits of subsistence, but rocketed past them, making the consequences of the eventual crash far more calamitous.

That's why I was a bit rankled by this post. Malthus' "limits of subsistence" are defined by the amounts that humans need in order to survive. It seems possible to reduce population growth by allowing each individual to consume far, far more resources than survival dictates. But whether the increased demands on resources come from our increasing numbers or our increasing consumption per capita, we're still putting ever greater stress on the planet's ability to sustain us.

Solving the population problem by bringing everyone up to a First World standard of living is a non-starter. The planet cannot keep up with the demands for resources humanity currently places on it. We need to scale back resource usage by either cutting back on people or resources used per capita.

Ah, for the good old days of government waste and mismanagement.

2007-07-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Conservatives, in the belief that government does things inefficiently, have outsourced waste and mismanagement to private contractors. Sure enough, they're far more efficient at wasting and mismanaging that money than the public sector ever was.

http://www.savannahnow.com/node/317101
http://www.supplymanagement.co.uk/EDIT/Top_stories_item.asp?id=16448
http://www.ciobinternational.org/en/news/1155

From the government report:

"The value of Federal contracts awarded without full and open competition has more than tripled since 2000. For the first time on record, last year more than half of Federal procurement spending was awarded through no-bid and limited competition contracts."

Not surprising that this trend has seen so much of an upswing since Bush took office. His tendency has always been towards greater privatization and less oversight.

Democrats are promising to look into this waste and abuse. Indeed, this report is a good start. I'm cynical enough to believe that this is intentional on the part of the Bush administration. No-bid contracts funnel taxpayer money into the pockets of shareholders, while bankrupting the government so as to make it incapable of providing for its citizens (as Grover Norquist put it, this helps make the government "small enough to drown in a bathtub"). Also, because we're getting so little bang for the buck, it makes the government look like a terrible mechanism for solving societal problems, which is how Bush-style conservatism wants us to view our government.

We need to demand oversight and accountability on every cent that the government spends, whether directly or through private contractors.

The Internet thinks I'm Gandhi.

2007-07-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

The results of my latest Political Compass test puts me ideologically close to Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and The Dalai Lama. I'll take that as a compliment.

Take your own Political Compass test.

I was surprised that I was categorized into the strongly libertarian camp, since I've gleefully criticized libertarians as self-aggrandizing morons. My impression is that most of them want the world should be one giant dog-eat-dog brawl where that they can better indulge the fantasy that they are the biggest, scariest dogs out there.

I distrust government power somewhat, but I distrust corporate power far, far more. The former needs to be powerful to act as a check on the latter. But government power also needs to be both highly responsive to the will of the people and highly respectful of personal individual rights. I respect the idea of voluntary, regional collectivism, but I don't see how it can answer the problems of global problems like global warming.

"Forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked"

2007-07-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Hardcore Zen yesterday, then tried meditating for the first time in a couple of years. When I opened my eyes again, the world looked strangely blue-filtered, and it seemed to me that I had some interesting ideas rolling through my head.

My brief foray into zen mastery accomplished little, but it made a certain blogosphere mini-controversy particularly relevant to me. Yesterday, the proceedings of the U.S. Senate were opened for the first time by a prayer from a Hindu cleric. As he tried to begin, the prayer was disrupted by angry shouting from three protesters.

Talking Points Memo has the YouTube video and commentary. The TPM story says that the anti-abortion group "Operation Rescue/Operation Save America" claimed responsibility for the protest, but I don't see an indication of that in the press release they sent out. All I see is unwavering support for their actions, and a chilling manifestation of a Talibanesque mentality right here in the U.S. As published on christiannewswire.com:

Theology has moved from the church house onto the floor of the United States Senate, and has been arrested.

Contact: Dr. Pat McEwen, Operation Save America, 321-431- 3962

WASHINGTON, July 12 /Christian Newswire/ -- Ante Pavkovic, Kathy Pavkovic, and Kristen Sugar were all arrested in the chambers of the United States Senate as that chamber was violated by a false Hindu god. The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ. This would never have been allowed by our Founding Fathers.

"Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood. They stood on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! There were three in the audience with the courage to stand and proclaim, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' They were immediately removed from the chambers, arrested, and are in jail now. God bless those who stand for Jesus as we know that He stands for them." Rev. Flip Benham, Director, Operation Save America/Operation Rescue

To Schedule Interviews with Rev. Benham:

Contact Pat McEwen: 321 431 3962

In the defense of the evil, backsliding, cowardly senators, all reports indicate that the Senate chambers were mostly empty. That's hardly unexpected, since half our senators are busy running for president. Anyhow, our senators are only paid the paltry sum of $141,000 a year. When you're paying such paltry wages, you have to expect a bit of sloth and indifference from your employees.

Cynical tangent aside, the press release sends a clear message. This government is the sole and exclusive property of our God, and any recognition of religious plurality defiles the original intent of our Founding Fathers.

I don't buy the whole "our Founding Fathers established a Christian nation" argument. First, whatever their personal beliefs about religion and spirituality, their intentions for the country can best be derived from the Constitution itself. The Constitution says surprisingly little about religion, except that religious tests are forbidden, and Church and State should keep their grubby paws off each other. If the Founders really believed as the righteous rednecks claim, they had ample opportunity to fill our nation's supreme document with all manner of pro-Christian items. They could have easily formalized the Constitution Party's belief that only believing Christians should be allowed to hold office. They could have easily forbid the government from passing laws contrary to the Bible. They could have required that all proceedings begin with a prayer by a Christian minister, to keep "a prayer of the wicked" from ever being uttered in the hallowed chambers of the Senate.

They didn't. Hell, when they were drafting the Constitution, they didn't even start their own proceedings with a prayer^[1]. If their goal was to create a nation founded on Christian principles, it seems like that would be the first order of business.

They didn't found a "Christian nation," because they knew that political power corrupts religion, turning it from a source of solace and inspiration into a tool for oppression. To imagine the country the Founding Fathers were striving mightily to avoid, just put yourself in the head of a protester who would shout "Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight," and imagine what sort of country he would found if given the chance.

Notes:

[1] Yes, we're all aware of Benjamin Franklin's famous plea that they do so. When I was a teenager, I was taught on numerous occasions (Church, Boy Scouts (basically the same thing)) that this speech marked a turning point in the Constitutional Convention. According to the legend, after he gave that speech, the logjam was broken and compromise became easier, all because God was now present at the proceedings. Perhaps his eloquent words did make people more generally inclined to compromise. But the hagiographical version of this story never fails to eave out one critical fact: Franklin's proposal was never voted on, and according to his own recollections, "except for three or four persons, [the attendees] thought prayers unnecessary." [source]

Of course, it's more complex than I'm letting on. It always is.

[Note: Blogger has Ctrl-P mapped to "Publish", when my EMACS-trained fingers think it merely means "move cursor to previous line". So when you see a half-written post, you now know precisely how I screwed up.]

[Frak! I did it again!]

Ask your doctor if incarcerex is right for you.

2007-06-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRPxN7DGy5c

Anonymous cowards

2007-06-20T03:27:00.000-07:00

Andrew Leonard's How The World Works is my favorite globalization blog. His most recent entry on the housing bubble notes this bit of weirdness from the New York Times.

“We don’t really know the ripple effects,” said one industry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity and gravity of the situation. “It is causing a revaluation of the securities, some of which may lead to additional liquidations. That’s possible, but it’s not set in stone.”

Now, I realize that the financial gurus who invested heavily in sub-prime mortgages are feeling a little nervous right now, and there are a lot of people looking to find a lot of other people to blame. But unless the next sentence out of his mouth was, "Also, the upper management of Goldman-Sachs keep a gaming preserve where they shoot hobos for sport," this self-styled industry official is saying something pretty innocuous. He sort of reminds me of that friend everyone has; you know, the one that makes a big deal about some secret that he simply must not share. Then, when he reluctantly and ever-so-dramatically spills his guts, it's completely anticlimactic. It's something you already knew, or it's simply not the juicy gossip he thinks it is.

Anonymous sources played a key role in the run-up to the Iraqi occupation, especially in cases where the always chatty "Senior Administration Official"
pseudonymously towed the Administration party line. Since then, we've seen other mind-bending abuses of anonymous sourcing. The most hilarious example has to be when "Senior Administration Official" gave an interview in which he defended the honor of Sith Lord Dick Cheney. It was unmistakably clear from the quotes that "Senior Administration Official" sounded like a bit of a Dick himself.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let me just make one editorial comment here. I've seen some press reporting says, "Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them." That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.

We don't expect much from the Vice President anymore (aside from the faint smell of burning sulfur when he enters the room), but can't we at least expect the competent handling of pronouns?

In my mind, anonymity should only be granted when a source faces potential retribution for revealing information, and there is nobody else willing to come forward with that information. In "Industry Official's" case, there have to be a number of people in the industry who would be willing to say what every last one of them must be thinking. In "Senior Administration Vice Pres-- er, Official's" case, there were clearly no grounds for granting anonymity. The protection of anonymous sources is for protecting the powerless from retribution by the powerful, not for protecting the powerful from accountability for their own words.

But it's not hard to understand why Cheney would want anonymity. Greenwald calls it an exercise in imperious power; he paints a picture of a veep so crazed with power that he demands no person be allowed to utter his name. I think there is a much simpler explanation: given Cheney's shaky credibility, everything sounds more believable when it doesn't sound like it's coming from him.

I'm going to start collecting these weird uses of anonymous sourcing, because the topic interests me, and because it's faster than composing an entire long-winded rant. Gotta keep the content comin'.

On a related note, I got my first anonymous troll. It's good to know that someone is reading.

Climate crusader ... Rupert Murdoch?

2007-05-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

Rupert Murdoch is going carbon neutral, and wants to take all of News Corp. with him. It's like waking up one morning to the headline, "World's Bunnies Picketing Major Cities: Demanding 40-hour Work Week, Carrots." It's as though the West Antarctic Ice Shelf of my brain has detached from the firm ground of reality, and is sailing off into the ocean of hallucination, to melt and raise the oceans of insanity until they drown this whole crappy analogy.

What I'm saying is, it was unexpected. In retrospect, it shouldn't have been. Murdoch is a businessman, and environmentalists have long argued that heading off climate change makes good business sense. Yet I find myself surprised that anyone was listening, much less someone with such a reputation for no-holds-barred right-wingery.

He's also an Australian, and as he mentions in the interview, Australia is in the middle of its worst drought in 100 years. That must hit close to home. He was also greatly influenced by his son, who has been arguing the issue with him for a while now.

News Corp going carbon neutral is laudable. But I'm more excited -- and more concerned -- that Murdoch wants to use his media outlets to give global warming greater coverage. I'm not worried that Fox News will take this as a directive to give more camera time to uber-skeptics like Richard Lindzen. In fact, I'm sure that this time media consolidation -- and FOX News' unique brand of "fair and balanced" journalism -- will work in my favor this time around. But it's a tiny bright spot amidst an overwhelmingly negative trend.

I, for one, look forward to seeing Sean Hannity call someone Un-American for driving a Hummer. It'll warm my heart.

First it's men marryin' men, then it's men marryin' goats.

2007-05-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

I tried to post a response to Dinesh D'Souza's strange piece that seems to claim that gay marriage makes polygamy unavoidable, and somehow Mitt Romney is responsible for it all. I had trouble getting the posting to work (further evidence of the vast, right-wing conspiracy to silence me), so I'm reposting here (somewhat modified):

I would agree that, once gay marriage is widely accepted -- something I very much hope will happen -- it's a pretty short logical and ethical jump to get to polygamy. But in your lazy analysis, you're glossing over several factors that make it unlikely that polygamy is inevitable or even likely:

1) Whereas gay marriage simply requires a few deletions of gender references (as there is very little legal distinction between the "husband" and "wife" roles), polygamous marriage requires that every piece of legal code factor in the possibility of a third interested party.

2) Very few of the people fighting for gay marriage are taking up arms in defense of polygamy as well. In fact, many advocates are downright hostile to polygamy.

3) In turn, many of the most strident practitioners of polygamy (those who practice it out of a sense of religious duty) are hostile towards gay marriage, or any combination that involves more than one man.

In short, once gay marriage becomes a mainstream legal entity, polygamy will not simply be an unintended consequence. Despite being the next logical step, it would still face huge legal hurdles. You could just as easily say that, because most arguments for banning marijuana are equally applicable to cigarettes, we're just a razor's edge from legalizing the former or banning the latter.

Another problem with your simplistic, slippery-slope thinking: any such argument requires that you demonstrate that the bottom of the slope is a terrible place to wind up. If two men and three women did decide to enter into a lifelong, committed relationship, why is that horrible? It doesn't affect your relationship with Mrs. D'Souza. I don't see any widespread social ills arising. Hell, you can't even say that The Lord Almighty finds the practice offensive; there are just too many biblical counterexamples.

It's pure sophistry to pretend that the various restrictions on the practice of marriage are equally subject to revision. You list four:

1) "It requires that only two people be involved"

2) "It requires that they be adults"

3) "and not closely related"

4) "and (except in Massachusetts) it insists that one of the parties be male and one female."

Why not add some more?

5) "Marriage must be between members of species homo sapiens."

6) "Marriage must be entered into by the consent of both parties."

If gay marriage passes, are those two restrictions in imminent danger as well? Surely not. Allowing gay marriage won't open the floodgates for plural marriage, brother-sister marriages, man-on-child marriages, forced marriages, or marriage between a man and a box of pencils. Each is a different situation with different social and ethical ramifications, different supporters and detractors, and each would require separate changes to the law to enact. To pretend otherwise is just crap punditry.

I bid you adieu, and wish you nothing but poor luck in your defense of the Inviolable and God-Ordained Sanctity of the subset of possible marriage customs that were openly practiced and socially accepted in the 1950's-era U.S.

Though I failed to add it, I thought it was odd that homophobic views would be found 'neath a banner that says, "News Bloggers: Hard News, Raw Opinions, Penetrating Perspectives." Somebody over at AOL must have had trouble keeping a straight face when they pitched that slogan. Also, pay particular attention to comment #4 beneath the story; it contains some of the most insightful commentary on the sex-crazed gay menace that you'll ever see.

Rumblings from the icy fields of Greenland

2007-05-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

The debate thus far: In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore popularized the rather alarming vision of a twenty foot rise in sea level. That's how much rise we'd get if the water tied up in either the West Antarctic Ice Sheet or the Greenland ice went into the oceans (or half of each). It's not easy to forget that graphic showing the water moving inland into Florida, or the idea that millions of senior citizens might have to move back in with their kids.

That picture acted as a great big two-by-four to the skull of America's collective consciousness, summing up in a few seconds the many varied potential devastations our inaction might cause. It was too effective to go unanswered. In the journalistic travesty that was "Exposed: Climate of Fear," Glenn "Prove to us that you're not working with our enemies" Beck tried to stem the damage[1]:

BECK: Now, what about that really cool animation of Florida and Manhattan drowning? Huh, cool, huh? You`ve seen these horrific scenarios everywhere based purely on catastrophic hypotheticals that dramatically exaggerate even what the U.N. says. It`s Al Gore`s best supporting actor, the word "if."

GORE: If we have an increase of five degrees, if Greenland broke up and melted...

... if this were to go, sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet.

MARIO LEWIS, PHD, GOVERNMENT POLICY ANALYST: Where he`s misleading is that he gives the impression that this is something that is likely to happen. The likelihood of this is next to nil.

DAVID LEGATES, PHD, CLIMATOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE: The IPCC report is that the upper limit of sea level rise by the year 2100 is going to be about 23 inches.

HORNER: That`s why Al Gore makes up 20 feet. The truth isn`t scary.

BECK: Just look at the difference between Greenland`s ice melt in Al Gore`s scenario when spread out over a century versus what the IPCC projects.

CHRISTY: To come up with 20 feet is really grasping at straws, I think, but it does make a dramatic image.

Indeed, the IPCC report does say that 23 inches of sea rise is the most we can expect, and 2100 seems awful far away. Time doesn't come to a stop at the end of this century, and sea rise would continue over several centuries, eventually leading to the rise that Gore reported in the movie. But twenty feet doesn't sound that dangerous, if we have a millennium to adapt or fix it.

But that's just the question: will it take millennia, or decades? We know that if present warming trends continue, we are eventually going to lose major portions of both ice shelves. The real controversy is exactly how long it will take and how much we will lose.

Enter the reassuring IPCC figures on global sea rise -- the only part of the IPCC report that climate skeptics seem to take seriously. Beck's posse wants us to believe that the twenty foot scenario is laughable to anyone who actually understands the issues. To do that, they fundamentally misrepresent the findings of the report.

RealClimate.org (as always) does a great job reporting on this issue. It's especially interesting to see which contributions to overall sea level rise are factored into the IPCC figures.

But let's just focus on the critical weasel words:

Dynamical processes related to ice flow not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing future sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude. -- IPCC Report (Summary for Policy Makers)

In other words, the IPCC is being very conservative in their sea level estimations. In these words, we see that the IPCC recognizes that the ice shelves are not well understood, and may slide into the ocean far faster than their projections would indicate.

What the global warming deniers are contractually obligated never to acknowledge[2] is that these IPCC reports are very conservative documents. They do not go beyond the evidence available in the published literature, and in fact they have to set a date after which they don't accept new research (to avoid having to rewrite the report). New evidence -- which didn't make it into the report -- suggests that the Greenland shelf is becoming highly unstable.

Recently, geologists discovered an unusual class of earthquake, associated with the movements of ice sheets. In Greenland, they're highly seasonal (occuring mostly in the summer months), and -- more worryingly -- the number of incidents has more than doubled in the last few years.

More information can be found here. It's too soon to say whether the ice will melt gradually or crash into the ocean in a few sudden rushes. The science isn't in yet.

While we're waiting to find out exactly how bad it's going to be, and how quickly we'll have to rush to build twenty foot high walls around our coastal cities, everyone get out there and start shopping. For Hummers. Because the most important thing we can do to prepare for the future is to grow the economy so big that we can pay for any problems that arise. And keep watching Glenn Beck to get "the other side of the story." That boy's a straight shooter.

Notes:

[1] Beck is far from a neutral source on the issue. Of the nineteen "experts" he's brought on his show to discuss global warming, only two of them supported the consensus position [source]. While he's hardly the first skeptic to take on the topic of sea levels, his approach is representative of the techniques used.

[2] Standard Noncorporeal Essence Transferrence of Ownership Contract, Article IV, subclause 3. Requests for sample copies of this contract can be made to the Legal Affairs Department of the Third Circle of Hell.

The steady-state economy

2007-05-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly recovered from my carpal tunnel surgery. While I was busy being incapacitated, I got quite a few books read, including two books by an economist named Herman Daly, called For the Common Good and Steady State Economics. I highly recommend the first, as well as the first half of the second (the second half, consisting of several essays where Daly interacted with various critics, were a bit repetititititive, and therefore only recommended to the hardcore).

So, what is The Steady State Economy? I think the best way to start is by describing the neoclassical model, to which the SSE is intended to be an alternative. In the standard model, you have consumption and production, with an arrow going from production to consumption, and another going from consumption to production. When you buy something that has been produced, you're consuming, and the money you pay goes to finance more production. It's kind of like The Circle of Life you saw in The Lion King, if Disney had hired Milton Friedman to write the screenplay.

The first thing that Daly points out is that the diagram shows a perpetual motion machine, which thing cannot exist according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law says that you can never get as much useful work out of a system as you put into it[1]. So if you find a system that gives the appearance of running forever, you have to look and figure out where new useful energy is being fed into it, and where the waste energy is being deposited.

The Steady State model does exactly that, adding two more arrows and two more nodes. An arrow points from resources to production (because you need to obtain natural resources from the environment in order to produce), and another points from consumption to "waste sinks", because you cannot consume any service without some amount of waste to the environment.
These two additions don't just save the model from charges of blasphemy by physicists; it also returns the concept of "environment" to the field of economics, which has otherwise been sluggish to pay attention to the ecological supports that prop up our economic activity.

In the neoclassical picture, economic growth is an easy sell; why have less when you can have more? Choosing less economic activity is tantamount to choosing poverty. Resource limits are unimportant, because a lack of natural capital can always be offset by greater intellectual capital. In other words, if there is a shortage of some resource X, we can overcome it merely by devoting more study to the problem of making Y perform the same function.

This is the core of the problem: while relative prices is a great mechanism for optimally distributing a given set of resources among a set of people, it has no way of regulating the total resources to be distributed. Say you have an ocean that can produce a thousand tons of herring every year without impacting future catches. What happens to the price of an additional ton of herring once the quota is caught? The price goes down a bit, but certainly nothing in the price of ton 1001 indicates that any sort of important limit has been reached.

To put it another way: if there were but one breeding pair of Bengal tigers left in the world, if there was just one acre of forest left, there would still be a market-induced incentive for harvesting them.

Daly compares the economy to a cargo ship. The market distributes resources relatively efficiently, which is akin to loading the ship evenly to prevent it from tipping and capsizing. But no matter how perfectly the weight is distributed, the ship can only carry so much.

The main question that needs to be asked is: which of the two economic visions can best provide for human happiness? Daly argues that his model is better, and I'm inclined to agree simply because it better represents the physical reality of our situation. But he made one point that really drove me to his side on this question: future people cannot bid in current markets. No matter how useful a member of the graduating class of 2107 might find a certain barrel of oil in the ground (say they'd be willing to pay $500 for it) they can't actually make that exchange, because somebody from the present bought it out from under them for $50.

For any given resource that future humans might need, the only way to ensure that it will be there for them is for present humans to draw from the resource pool at a rate that can be sustained into the indefinite future.

But that leaves us with far fewer resources to work with in the here and now, and that will have a huge impact on our current standards of living. I see that as a problem with the lifestyle itself, not for the economic theory. Still, Daly proposes the beginnings of a solution, which derives from his distinction between growth (aggregate size of the economy, as measured by resource use) and development (an increase in the fulfillment of human desires). Using a given resource stream, development occurs when manufacturers find ways to make their goods more durable, more recyclable, and more efficient at delivering the intended service. The circle in the middle of the diagram is still expanded, but without altering the flows that enter or leave the system.

Unlike the neoclassical model, the steady-state economy requires that an upper limit be placed on the number of people that can be allowed to share the globe at the same time. Just like the last paragraph, this fact makes steady state a tougher sell, but doesn't alter its fundamental truthfulness. Daly supports a plan by one of his fellow travelers, which suggests that each woman be given a certain number of credits, each bestowing the ability to bear one tenth of a child. Collect ten, and The Man won't give you any grief about your spawn.

It's certainly better than, say, a strict "one child per family" policy, which doesn't make any allowances for personal preferences. It also encourages the blessed state of affairs where children are being raised by the people who most want to take on the role. But lots of people find any sort of government meddling intolerable when it comes to such deeply personal choices. Of course it's a deeply personal choice with society-wide implications. I certainly sympathize. However, if population limits are needed (and it's hard to argue otherwise), this plan seems to offer the best hope for allowing people to make the choices that best suit them.

Steady-state Economics is an amazing book, and I don't think I'll look at economics quite the same way again.[2]

Notes:

[1] I don't remember where I read it, but I once came across a very handy shorthand for the Laws: 1) You can never win. 2) You can never break even. 3) You can never leave the game.

[2] For the Common Good also touches on this topic, but in addition it provides interesting material about politics and community. I should probably address it in another post.

That whooshing sound overhead?

2007-04-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

It may in fact be the sound of a joke whizzing by.

Last week, singer Sheryl Crow unveiled a plan to help save the Earth and all the fluffy critters on it: limit toilet paper usage to a single square:

Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required. When presenting this idea to my younger brother, whose judgment I trust implicitly, he proposed taking it one step further. I believe his quote was, "how bout just washing the one square out."

She was clearly joking, but her humor was a bit too subtle and nuanced for many commentators on the right, who reported it as an earnest suggestion.

So Sheryl Crow, singer turned anti-global warming warrior, wants to limit everyone’s toilet paper use to “one square per restroom visit.” Surely she jests. -- Margery Eagan

Now from a website branding itself as "the intelligent alternative":

That said, let's get on to your other tasteless and calculatedly sensational grab for publicity. Come on, Sheryl, you cannot honestly believe that someone like yourself, who travels in high society, actually practices what she preaches, in claiming that everyone must save the planet by using only one sheet of toilet tissue per bathroom visit, no matter where or when it's made. -- Joan Battey

Good name, Ms. Battey.

The best coverage had to come from the crack team over at Newsbusters. The story was important enough to require no fewer than five separate updates. Ken Shepherd spent a lot of time today thinking about Sheryl Crow's butt. I suppose it's a nice gig, if you can get paid for it.

Spend even a minute in the story's comments, and you lose all hope for both Newsbusters and for humanity in general. It's all "Don't shake hands with a liberal!" and "No wonder Lance Armstrong dumped her!" Classy crowd over there. Almost nobody has the simple sense to wonder if maybe Crow wasn't being entirely serious[1].

No, Crow must think she's come up with a powerful, world-saving idea all by herself, utter nitwit that she is. Amazingly, one guy marvelled at how oblivious she must be to not notice that her own brother was poking fun at the idea.

All this raises the question of why so many failed to notice the tongue in the cheek. My theory is that the proposal fits the right-wing mythos of out-of-touch, wealthy, emptyheaded eco-nuts telling other people how to live. It's a useful stereotype to distract people away from serious proposals like mine:

Before eating potatos or lemons, wire them into your house's electrical system until they're fully discharged.
Compost things rather than throwing them out. Compostable items include dryer lint, newspaper, copies of Ann Coulter's Treason, your neighbor's SUV, and surplus children. This population problem isn't going to just solve itself.
Solar powered helicopters!

Addendum:

Best. Coverage. Ever.

Surgery went well, but until I get these braces off, I can only hunt 'n peck. It's frustrating.

Notes:

[1] The one guy who brought up the possibility then spent a couple of paragraphs detailing why a TP-rationing law would be difficult to enforce. So he's still a bit thick.

typng wth nose

2007-04-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

crpltunl srgry noblog 4now

I do tend to ramble.

2007-04-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote yet another I-can't-believe-you-can-believe-it's-not-global-warming rant in response to Paglia's latest article. It's the longest letter I saw in the comments section, and it probably got starred for that reason alone. But hey, a star is a star.

Mainly it was in response to her overall attitude that, hey, it's a big universe, and we're all tiny-puny. It's the attitude I was trying to dispute in my WWJD post. So if you like one of the rants, you might like the other.

On an equally self-involved note, I started a personal blog called Banned Sorcery. That's where I'll be stashing the non-environmental stuff.

We want a free ride

2007-04-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

UTA is planning a massive redesign of Salt Lake's bus system, eliminating lots of routes and apparently reducing the number of buses traveling to and from the University of Utah. Then they're going to raise rates just as my school transit pass expires. Nicole over at Where's my bus, UTA has been working hard to raise public awareness. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to attend most of the public events UTA has scheduled, but I did manage to fire off a public comment taking them to task for the poor job they're doing engaging the public.

It's been more than a little disillusioning to see our public servants in action. They didn't bring the public into the process until they had decided on most of the details of the service cut, and at best they seem interested in minor tweaks to their awful plan, not comprehensive critiques. I asked how we'd know that our comments had been taken seriously, and their representatives basically said to look at the differences between the current proposal and the final proposal. That advice is only a bit more helpful than telling us to consulting an Ouiji board.

UTA has also dragged their feet in providing information that should have been made public from the beginning (ridership statistics, facts about the overall changes in bus capacity, surveys of bus drivers, etc.). They seem to believe that the less the public knows, the more easily they can ram the proposal through. That's never a good sign.

So I'm here to suggest a disruptive alternative to the current fare structure. It's a much simpler structure, and it's sure to promote the primary goal of increasing ridership: everything is free. Let's call it the FreeUTA plan.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

There are several key advantages to free service. The first and most obvious is that you no longer have to collect fares. If ten people get on at a stop, and they each spend six seconds just putting change into the machine, that's a full minute delay. As a frequent bus rider, I've seen people fumble for change, drop change (sometimes straight out the bus doors), miscount change, argue over change, beg other riders for change, and get thrown off for having insufficient change. All that sturm and drang takes time, time that could be better spent moving people from place to place. Free service is faster service.

Other people use tokens, which are much faster. I use an EdPass, which is the fastest because I just flash the card at the driver as I amble on. TRAX riders buy their tickets before the train shows up, and fares are (occasionally) checked as the train is moving. The downside of that is that you end up paying police officers to ride TRAX all day, checking for fares and issuing citations.

The current fare structure effectively penalizes short trips. If you can hop a bus to get yourself four blocks, but to do so you have to pay as much as if you'd ridden it all the way downtown, you probably feel like you've gotten less service for your money than you should have. But four blocks is still further than most people want to walk[1], so most likely people will hop in their cars. Any time a person is weighing the decision of how to get somewhere, and their solution is "the car", it should be seen as a small transit system failure.

It should go without saying that the FreeUTA plan is a huge incentive for riders. But the disincentives in the current structure need to be pointed out. If you double the cost of a bus ride (as the current proposal does), you're getting into territory where there is little reason for car owners to take the bus. A trip downtown, including all-day parking, might cost the driver five bucks. For the bus rider, it would cost four bucks. That's hardly worth the hassle, and for new customers who haven't mastered the whole mass transit experience, there isn't much of an incentive to learn.

UTA is trying more and more to run the transit system like a business. But the simple fact is, it's not a business, it's a public service. Transit users are heavily subsidized -- fares only account for about 20% of UTA's operating budget -- which only makes sense, since many of the benefits being purchased fall on people who aren't paying fares. Drivers benefit from decreased congestion. Everyone in the Salt Lake Valley benefits from better air quality. Everyone everywhere benefits from reduced CO2 emissions. Employers benefit from increased access to employees who might not be able to afford or drive a car, and businesses get a similar benefit from greater access to customers. Downtown Salt Lake and the University of Utah both benefit from less demand for parking spaces[2]. It's only right that riders -- who don't reap all the benefits of the system -- shouldn't pay all the costs. In fact, if the public benefits alone are enough to justify a given mass transit plan, then charging fares seems counterproductive at best.

I don't have hard numbers to back up my intuition that a 100% subsidy would be a net gain (even without the other benefits I mentioned). But I do know it is pure insanity to see riders as "customers" who we should extract as much money from as possible. That's just the approach UTA seems to be taking.

Instead, the goal should be to get as many people out of their cars as possible. In the long term, that's going to require a major rethinking of our current land use policies. Sprawl makes effective mass transit virtually impossible. And walking. And biking. And pretty much every conceivable not-car solution. In the near term, however, we should be making mass transit as attractive as possible to riders. The FreeUTA program is going to take a good deal more money than UTA's budget has. I'd always figured that such a change would have to go through the state legislature (unlikely, given that the legislature is filled with road-happy chimpmonkeys), but I've heard a couple of proposals floated where the Salt Lake City government would pay UTA to maintain the service the city needs.

Update: I've just received a copy of the market research on which UTA based the redesign. I'm only a few pages in, but it's giving me a better understanding of what the people at UTA are thinking.

Notes:

[1] I'm a bit of an exception in that regard. I don't really consider walking a burden for the first six blocks or so, and I'm willing to walk as much as ten blocks if I've got the time.

[2] As Nicole points out in this post, service to the University will be effectively reduced under the proposed changes. Parking space is already at a premium up at the U, and many of the roads up there are already heavily congested during peak hours. If we don't stop the current plans, and begin improving transit service to the University, we'll be forced to pay anyways, for wider roads and more parking.

Deep Economy

2007-04-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

KQED San Francisco had an outstanding interview with ecology author Bill McKibben [here]. Available as an MP3 or audio stream. The high points:

To avoid nasty, pointy death, we need to start consuming far, far less.
That sounds scary, but it's really not. All our excess consumption isn't making us happier.
In fact, it's done a lot to erode our sense of community, which significantly harms our quality of life.
Part of the solution involves rebuilding local, small-scale economies (farmers markets being a good example).
The McKibben family is facing a Beanie Baby overpopulation crisis.