Fun Math Facts

And those are Fun Math Facts!!

Abuse of the Franking Privilege

The image on the right is a scan of an oversized 12"x9" piece of mail I received from my representative in the House, Erik Paulsen. The tiny notation up at the upper left reads "This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense." His signature appears in the upper right corner of the original, but doesn't show in the image because the mailing is bigger than our scanner bed.

This guy used my tax dollars to print a blatant campaign ad and then used the franking privilege congressmen enjoy to have the US Postal Service deliver it to my house for free.

Isn't the Post Office in enough trouble without guys like this adding to its burden?

The irony is that he's talking about a "tidal wave of spending." He should know, he's contributing to it.

He then goes on to talk about getting America's financial house in order, which is also ironic considering how the Republican Party in Minnesota is millions in debt and had to work out a special deal with its landlord because they couldn't pay the rent on the party headquarters.

The back side of the flyer has more yapping about "wasteful Washington spending," high gas prices and bullet points taken from the Republican Party platform.

This guy has had no credible opposition for the three years he's been in office, and has amassed a huge campaign warchest of millions of dollars. Why does he have to spend my money to send his campaign literature to me?

I've got one Republican congressmen and two Democratic senators. I get crap like this from this guy all the time, but I've never gotten anything like it from the Democrats: the only time I get franked mail from them is when they respond to my letters.

I was going to speculate on how much this cost the taxpayers, but instead of just guessing I'll contact him and find out exactly how much of my taxpayer money he spent on this. We'll see how well his "constituent service" works.

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Bristol Palin Is from What Planet?

The other day I was at a park with some friends. One guy got into a big argument with his girlfriend. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and he left to take her home. The reaction of the guys was incomprehension: they couldn't understand what her deal was. But it was totally obvious: she had been dragged to the park, her boyfriend was ignoring her, she was bored and felt taken for granted. Throw in whatever other baggage they had and it was perfect kindling for a blowout.

Situations like this have made the idea that men and women cannot  understand each other a central tenet of popular culture. This notion is especially popular in conservative circles, and the essential truth of it borne out again and again (and again and again) with guys like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.


In this worldview marriage and intimate relationships are cast as a competition rather than a collaboration. Husbands refer to "the wife" or the "ball and chain" and constantly contrive to escape from them like James Bond escaping from a Goldfinger death trap. Wives have keep an eagle eye on their weaselly husbands to keep them from screwing up and running out.

Reading various reactions to President Obama's support for gay marriage, I happened upon Bristol Palin's. She wrote:

In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage.  Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.

Bristol Palin got knocked up by a dolt named Levi that she has since accused of date rape. They planned to get married, until McCain lost the election, then they split, then they got back together, then they split again. Then she sued him to gain sole custody of their child.

This is where the thousands of years of thinking about marriage has gotten her? Fathers bestow upon their sons the worldview that women are psychotic whiny bitching boat anchors only good for one thing. Mothers portray husbands as cheating drunken liars who are only after one thing.

I don't begrudge Bristol Palin for what happened to her. She's got a tough row to hoe. But I can begrudge her sanctimonious sermonizing on the topic of marriage, of which she has utterly no understanding.

Marital discord and divorce can scar kids for life. If, as so many people seem to believe, men and women cannot understand each other, what business do they have getting married? Wouldn't it better for children to be raised by parents who grok each other at the most basic level, regardless of gender? If so many man really can't understand women, they have no business marrying them.

The irony is that if Bristol Palin had been a lesbian, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place. She wouldn't have embarrassed her mother and made a mockery of everything she and the Republican Party claim is most holy: the revered institution of heterosexual marriage as the only acceptable situation for child rearing.

Conservatives have long blamed women's rights, divorce laws and the ever-more important role of women in the economy for the problems marriage is facing. And now they insist that the threat of gay marriage is somehow ruining the institution for heterosexuals. It's like me saying that eating has been ruined for me because Adolf Hitler also ate. Perhaps what conservatives fear most is the prospect that men will no longer be lord and master of the castle, or that women won't need men at all.

In the end, the real problem has nothing to do with gays, or women in the workplace, or Mars/Venus incompatibility. It is selfish people who put their own happiness and needs ahead of their spouse's or their family's. People who perceive their partner in marriage as an opponent instead of a team mate. People who are rigid and unwilling to compromise, to give an inch, or to meet another person halfway to achieve a common goal.

Remind you of anyone?

Fun Math Facts

From 1960 to 2005 the gross domestic product measured in year-2000 dollars rose an average of $165 billion a year under Republican presidents and $212 billon a year under Democrats. That's a 12.6% under Democrats versus a GOP increase of 10.7%.

And that's a Fun Math Fact!!

Not

Ah, yes...The Walking Taco...a sign that our nation truly is on the decline....

What's To Be Done?

The recent shenanigans at JP Morgan Chase have revived calls to break up the banks and bring back Glass Steagal. Considering that the former is coming from the National Review should give everyone some pause. Yet Kling begins down a path here that I think is worth exploring. Actually, it reminds me of another debate which ultimately proved that having two such diametrically opposed viewpoints locked in a narrow minded ideological struggle is fruitless.

Like the seemingly endless debate between Keynesian and laissez faire economics, realism and liberalism (in terms of foreign policy) were locked in opposition as to how to deal with the Soviet Union. Realism explained the world as being in a constant state of anarchy and only through military power and constant distrust of other states will order and peace prevail. Liberalism called for international cooperation amongst the states of the world through peaceful, non-militaristic means.

Both of these ideologies completely failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. One day, the Soviets simply gave up. It was not due to military pressure nor was it due to an international cooperative entity like the UN. It happened because of new thinking and out of the box ideas beginning with the simple fact the world's structure isn't set in stone and is, in fact, constantly in flux.

It is this sort of constructivist thinking that should be applied when considering the relationship between government and the financial sector...indeed, government and the free market in general. Neither Keynesian nor laissez faire economic theories (nor the various offshoots) can adequately explain the global marketplace today. Returning to the type of regulation called for Paul Krugman may not be effective for a wide variety of reasons. And clearly allowing banks like JP Morgan to continue to take the risks that they do isn't an option either. So, let's take a look at ideas from each of the pieces I've linked and see if there is a solution.

First Kling.

I believe that our best hope lies somewhere other than making our largest financial institutions impossible to break. Instead, I think we need to make our financial system easy to fix.

This would eliminate the need for more and more regulation. Kling's idea is to restrict the size of banks but I'm not sure that's the best way for it to be implemented. Wouldn't that be detrimental in the increased competition of the global marketplace?

Next we have the editorial staff at the Trib Review calling for a return to Glass Steagal. Why?

As The Small Business Authority puts it, "We ... need to get back to a capital asset pricing model where high-risk ventures are financed with a higher cost of capital and not government-guaranteed deposits ... ."

If the cost of capital were higher, wouldn't that make the system easier to fix? I honestly don't know. That's why I'm asking.

That brings us to Krugman.

It’s clear, then, that we need to restore the sorts of safeguards that gave us a couple of generations without major banking panics.

Exactly. But again, not the way he is suggesting with more government backed guarantees. Safeguards need to be in place but what sort of form should they take?

The reason why I am asking here is that I want to try to see if we can chuck the old schools of Keynes and laissez faire and adopt some new thinking and new ideas based on the identities that have been defined by the global marketplace.

Falling back into old ideological traps simply won't serve us.

A Survey about Surveys

I usually take the results of polls and surveys with grain of salt, and now there's good reason that you should too.

A study published by the Pew Research Center indicates that only 9% of households sampled respond to surveys. This is down from 36% in 1997. However, the study concludes that even with this abysmal response rate surveys still adequately represent the population at large.

I am doubtful. The population that responds to surveys is completely self-selected, and certainly has behavioral and preferential differences from the overwhelming majority of the population that doesn't respond to surveys.

The question is, does it matter? The study found that people who respond to surveys are more engaged in civic activity. Which probably means that people who actually go out and vote are more likely to respond to polls, which could mean that polls may still be somewhat accurate gauges of electoral outcomes, even if they don't represent the general sentiment of the population.

But that isn't a given, and it's basically impossible to determine the accuracy of that hypothesis because the tool you need to measure it with doesn't work.

So, exactly why are more people refusing to respond to surveys?

1. They don't want to waste the time.
2. They figure it's a gimmick or someone is just trying to collect demographic data in order to sell them something.
3. They don't think their opinion is anyone's business.
4. They really don't have an opinion or don't vote or buy a product so they would just be wasting everyone's time.
5. They don't want to burn cellphone minutes (polling now tries to balance cellphone and land-line respondents).
6. They are tired of being constantly interrupted.
7. They believe that poll and survey questions are intentionally slanted to achieve a desired result and are therefore not accurate gauges of their opinion in the first place.

I've declined to respond to surveys for most of these reasons at one time or another, but I'm particularly bothered by "push polls," which have become de rigueur. The the integrity of many polling firms has come into question because of the obvious political slant of their questions and outcomes that tilt consistently in one direction year in and year out.

It's interesting that in the age of Facebook, where everyone is constantly baring their innermost secrets for all the world to see, the number of people who are willing to respond to questions from someone who actually wants their opinion has shrunk dramatically.

I'd ask everyone to respond to the question above, but I know only 9% of you would do it, and the results would be worthless.

A Reset of the Table?

Interesting news on the health care front. 

In 2009 and 2010, total nationwide health care spending grew less than 4 percent per year, the slowest annual pace in more than five decades, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. 

VERY interesting. But why? 

Much of the slowdown is because of the recession, and thus not unexpected, health experts say. But some of it seems to be attributable to changing behavior by consumers and providers of health care — meaning that the lower rates of growth might persist even as the economy picks up.

Because Medicare and Medicaid are two of the largest contributors to the country’s long-term debts, slower growth in health costs could reduce the pressure for enormous spending cuts or tax increases.

I'd say that's pretty good news. Even more interesting...

Still, the slowdown was sharper than health economists expected, and a broad, bipartisan range of academics, hospital administrators and policy experts has started to wonder if what had seemed impossible might be happening — if doctors and patients have begun to change their behavior in ways that bend the so-called cost curve. 

If the growth in Medicare were to come down to a rate of only 1 percentage point a year faster than the economy’s growth, the projected long-term deficit would fall by more than one-third. 

If this continues to be the case, all of the arguments we have heard about health care may be going out the window. Wow. 

Automotive Virtue

Last week George Will wrote about Paul Ingrassia's book on cars and the American dream. In America cars have long been considered symbols of their repressed sexual urges, or expressions of angst by middle-aged men who are suddenly cognizant of their own mortality, or expensive fashion accessories required to keep up with the Joneses.

Right out of the gate Will derided Prius owners as people who preen before the  benighted drivers of Ford F-150 pickup trucks. This reminded me of a conversation a few months ago with a conservative Republican at a dinner party at his house. My wife and I had arrived in her Honda hybrid, and almost immediately he asked me about "my Prius."

It's not mine, it's my wife's, I explained, and it's not a Prius, it's a Civic. As I described the technical differences between the Prius and the Civic he seemed to lose interest, perhaps because it was soon obvious that her choice of vehicle is purely practical rather than ideological. He had a big honking four-wheel drive pickup truck, which was parked in the driveway in front of the garage, alongside a big SUV (they have two kids). He was a nice enough guy, but when we left for the evening he had to make one last snarky comment about our car.

I've encountered people before who seem insulted because I drive fuel-efficient cars (mine is a 12-year-old two-door manual transmission Civic with standard gas engine that gets 35-40 mpg; yet it's miraculously twice the size of the so-called Smart car that gets the same mileage). They seem to think that I'm somehow attacking them by choosing not to waste money on an excessively large, ostentatious and wasteful vehicle.

I learned to drive during the oil crisis in the Seventies. My dad had a big battleship of a pimp-mobile that guzzled gas. The deal was that I could drive it as long as I put gas in it, so I learned early on to prefer efficient cars. Plus, I was always bad at parallel parking, which is so much easier in a small car.

I don't have a problem with people who actually need a pickup to regularly haul stuff for work—it makes no sense to have two cars when one will do. Or people who have six kids and have to get an SUV or minivan to fit everyone in. Or people who live in the boondocks at the end of a muddy, rutted driveway. Or even people who own fishing boats and need a vehicle with a big engine to haul the boat around.

But I just don't get people who commute to work in shiny four-wheel-drive pickup trucks or Hummers that they never use for anything resembling real work. In 33 years we've almost always bought small cars, often hatchbacks, and it's amazing how much stuff you can put in them (we once brought a dishwasher home in the back of a Chevette). When we needed to haul a lot of stuff, we rented a moving van. When we buy furniture or appliances we have the store deliver it (which is also a great way to avoid putting your back out).

People who commute in pickups could save a couple thousand bucks a year in gas money if they drove a regular car and rented a truck from Home Depot for the one time a year they need to haul plywood.

Like George Will, a lot of these people expect me to be smug and superior about the car I drive. I'm not. It's just a conveyance to get me from point A to point B. Perhaps I'm just immune to the automobile industry's cynical marketing ploys, in which they implore you to consider how good you'll look in their car or reduce the whole thing to a ridiculous mathematical equation: Drive = Love.

But let's say that there are Prius owners out there who are smug and proud of their purchase. Just like there are conservatives who are smug and proud about being American and Christian. Why is it wrong for Prius owners to be proud that they made a conscious decision to save money, generate less pollution and use less gas? And why is it right for American Christians to be proud of something that they lucked into, simply by being born here, completely beyond their control?

It's often said that when a middle-aged man buys a red Ferrari it represents his lost youth. If a conservative buys an F-150 to commute in does it represent his independence and toughness, or his vanity, selfishness and wastefulness? If a liberal buys a Prius it represents what? Efficiency? Moderation? Thrift? Economy? Frugality? Abstemiousness? Self-sacrifice? Aren't these all positive conservative virtues? Conservatives are ever more frequently compelling others by force of law to follow the virtues they hold dear with marriage and abortion. Why is it wrong for liberals to encourage others to pursue similarly positive virtues of efficiency and thrift that will produce cheaper gas and cleaner air for all? Why is it acceptable to curtail marital and reproductive freedom, and unacceptable to mandate greater fuel efficiency standards?

For their own completely selfish reasons conservatives should be encouraging others to drive efficient cars, take the bus, and build light rail systems: if more people did the price of gas would go down. The Iranians and the Saudis and the Venezuelans and the Russians and the Iraqis—the foreign powers that conservatives always fret about—would get less of our money. Fewer people would suffer from emphysema and asthma and health care costs would go down.

From any practical perspective, it makes no sense for conservatives to denigrate efficient cars and those who prefer them. Yet they seem insecure unless others validate their purchasing decisions by emulating them. If they think hybrids are an insult to them, perhaps it's their guilt talking.

Many people justify buying big cars by saying that they need more power. Or that SUVs have better traction. Or that small cars are dangerous, or they're uncomfortable, or they don't have the features, etc. I have a friend who's 6'5" and 350 lbs who drives a Volkswagen beetle. Big people can fit into small cars just fine. Hybrids have all the modern technological and safety features.

Passengers in SUVs are much more likely to die in single-vehicle rollovers than in regular cars. SUVs are also more likely to cause deaths in other vehicles. If you buy an SUV to be safer because your car is bigger, it's only true if you hit a smaller car, which means you're much more likely to kill someone else. Isn't thinking your life is more important than someone else's a selfish, sinful pride? There could be little children in that Prius you cream, or a pregnant woman whose fetus might be killed! And if you hit another SUV the advantage disappears. Arms races typically result in mutually assured destruction.

And if safety is the real concern, reducing the speed limit from 70 mph to 55 mph would reduce the force of automobile collisions by more than 60%. That's because the kinetic energy of a collision is proportional to mass times velocity squared. That would save thousands of lives every year, as well as reduce gas consumption significantly. And there's a precedent: Dick Cheney's conservative hero Richard M. Nixon pegged the speed limit to 55 during the Arab oil embargo in 1973.

Here in Minnesota many people insist that they need a big four-wheel drive car because of the snow in the winter. I've lived here all my life, and front-wheel drive is all you need in the city or the suburbs. But a lot of people just don't understand physics: they think that four-wheel drive will let them start and stop on a dime. It just ain't so.

About a dozen years ago I was driving across town in a terrible snowstorm. I saw a state patrol car stopped on the freeway, lights flashing, warning off other drivers from a small pileup in the left lane just after my exit. I moved to the right and slowed down. While I watched, a big four-wheel-drive pickup truck came up from behind, sped past me and ran smack into the rear end of the cop car.

That happened partly because of the false sense of confidence drivers get from the feeling of control they think they have in four-wheel drive vehicles. They might be able to get you going, but with all that mass they can't stop on slick roads any faster than regular cars. As my dad always says (and I roll my eyes when he says it), the most important part of the car is the nut behind the wheel.

Metaphorically speaking, this country is obliviously tooling along in the left lane, about to smack into the rear end of climate change and $5 a gallon gas. The people buying fuel-efficient cars are just getting into the right lane and slowing down to avoid the massive pileup. Don't hate on them: the lives and money they save may be yours.

Fun Math Facts

Since 1932, Democratic Presidents have created 73.4 million new jobs, Republicans have created only 34.8 million. That's an average of 1.7 million jobs a year for Democrats and 967,000 jobs for Republicans.

In case your having trouble with the math that's 38.6 more jobs under Democrats since FDR which is more jobs than the Republicans have created all together during that time.

And that's a Fun Math Fact!

The President of RandLand

The New York Times' recent piece on Paul Ryan confirms that he is the best candidate for my new country of RandLand.

His prescriptions in the Republican budget plan he devised have become his party’s marching orders: cut income tax rates and simplify the code, privatize Medicare, shrink the food-stamp and Medicaid programs and turn almost all control over to the states, and reduce domestic federal spending to its smallest share of the economy since World War II.

I can feel the erections sprouting up around the right wing blogsphere.

What do you say, folks? Let's get RandLand formed and put this man in charge!

Sunday Funny

Fun Math Facts

Since this is an election year and I'm continually reminded that I'm not a logical or mathematical thinker, I thought it would be entirely appropriate to start an ongoing feature here at Markadelphia: Fun Math Facts.

The first one comes from Bloomberg News.

The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures.

For those of you logical mathematical minded folks, that's a difference of 18 million. Wow!

And that is a Fun Math Fact!!!

Help Me To Understand

OK, help me out here folks. Yesterday, Neal Bootz wrote

Obama really has nothing at all to campaign on. He has NO record of success on the one issue that in poll after poll turns up on the top of the list of voter’s concerns; the economy. Obama has the worst economic record of any president since World War II, and he knows it. It’s a record he knows he cannot run on.

Now, obviously there are many more than Neal that share this sentiment. Last in lines chides me constantly in the same manner even though he can easily click on "Obama's policies" in the tag below and see a veritable plethora of posts.

So what goes through Neal's brain (and others like him) when they see this.

And this...

The second picture I pulled from here....the president's own web site!

Help me out, folks. Is this like a nervous tick or something? "No record of success" the economy? "Worst economic record of any president?" "A record he knows he can't run on" even though it's right there on his web site and he mentions private sector job growth almost as much as Rudy Giuliani mentioned 9-11?

Seriously, WTF???!!!??

Bachmann A Go Go

Nikto has covered the Michele Bachmann "I'm Swiss-I'm not Swiss" story quite well but I wanted to throw an extra thought into the mix.

Her hurried and nervous retraction is further evidence of how powerful the right wing media industrial complex is in those circles. In short, she knows who her sugar daddy is...:

Here's Wonkette's take on the whole thing which is a fucking riot!

Bachmann Is Really a Double Agent!

After claiming Swiss citizenship in March of this year, Michele Bachmann has defected back to the United States and renounced her Swiss citizenship.

In her inimitable style, Bachmann again blamed it all on someone else:

In her statement, Bachmann said that "my dual Swiss citizenship ... was conferred upon me by operation of Swiss law" when she married her husband, Marcus, in 1978. 

and

Bachmann spokesman Becky Rogness said confusion arose over Bachmann's citizenship because the couple "recently updated their documents." She declined to elaborate.

Yes, I update my documents with the Swiss embassy at least twice a year. I completely understand.

This was a total airhead moment on Bachmann's part. One in a very long series of total airhead moments. For it she has received an endless series of derisive attacks. But many of those attacks came from the right, with some conservatives demanding her immediate resignation.

This isn't the first time I've confronted the issue of dual citizenship, so my incredulity at the depth of Bachmann's foolishness is genuine. Almost 20 years ago a former boss of mine found out that he could claim Irish citizenship because his grandfather was born in Ireland. He was considering going to Europe for work, and an Irish passport would allow him to work anywhere in the EU without work visas. I was shocked that a friend would abandon his own country this way. I would never consider such a thing.

It still escapes me how the United States allows people with dual citizenship and obviously divided loyalties to vote or contribute to political campaigns, like Sheldon Adelson's wife's Israeli-American daughters who contributed millions to Gingrich's campaign. People who apply for dual citizenship are essentially foreign agents, and in Bachmann/Palin-speak are not "real Americans."

However, I emphatically consider people who go through the process of naturalization and take the oath of citizenship to be completely American—that's really the whole point of this country: people who choose to come here and become citizens want to be American. They often have a better understanding of what America really is than people who were born here and smugly take everything for granted, ignorantly insisting everything about the United States has to be better than every other country.

Bachmann's stance on immigration has been rather strident, so you would think that she would be particularly sensitive to this issue. My guess is that she did this because one of her kids thought it would be cool to get Swiss citizenship. In a moment of doting parental idiocy she forgot how the Republican gotcha game works and foolishly thought she could do something nice for her kids.

This whole episode exposes the truth behind the Republican notion of American nationalism and exceptionalism: it's all just a charade and a tactic. No one really believes any of it. Questions of immigration and patriotism and flag pins and the president's birth certificate are just hammers to use on enemies for political advantage.

What's truly incredible is that for a time there were people who thought Bachmann was fit to be president. I just hope that the voters of  Minnesota's sixth district—where Bachmann no longer lives after redistricting—have had their fill of her antics and decide that she's not fit to serve in Congress.

'Tis A Wonder

It is absolutely uncanny the ability the right has to take a simple fact in reality and completely turn it around so it's all the government's fault.

Take Kevin Baker's recent post about 401Ks. 

The naivete here is so monumental that someone seriously needs to commission a study on how one falls for a colossal amount of bullshit. He's actually doing the Rove on himself! Let me see if I can cut through it.

Kevin, the government doesn't want to take your retirement money. In fact, the reverse is true. The private financial institutions of this country want to take PUBLIC money (that's the money you have been paying into Social Security, Medicare etc) and play casino with it. These same private financial institutions want you to believe..well...what you erroneously believe in your (ahem) paranoia.

Let's review the six steps, shall we?

1. Go directly after the other side’s strengths.

2. Do not accept the truth or the obvious.

3. Instead, make claims that cloud the issue.

4. Some will believe you.

5. Others will be confused.

6. Your opponent’s strong point will be neutralized.