Thursday, May 24, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The Obama Vetting Obsession
I had been working on a post about the vetting obsession that seems to be going on these days with President Obama but then I read this. Paul Waldman seems to have stolen my thunder. Oh well. It's everything I wanted to say and more.
So on the right, the desperate search for the appropriate "vetting" material continues. For instance, the late Andrew Breitbart's constellation of web properties continues in its founder's spirit, breathlessly promoting one "revelation" about Obama's pre-political life after another. Obama was friendly with a Harvard Law School professor with strong views on race! In 1991, Obama's literary agency mistakenly said in a promotional brochure that he was born in Kenya! There is so much to be learned that breitbart.com has created a whole series entitled "The Vetting."
Sadly, this is all true. I don't get it.The president has been pretty forthcoming about his past both in his books and interviews. There have been thousands of stories about folks like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and the president's college years and birth certificate. Why?
The mistake that so many conservatives make is in believing that in some (or all) of these details of his life lies the key to Obama's undoing. If only we can find the radical mentor, the girlfriend holding on to a decades-old secret, or the revealing document, then Obama will be unmasked, his true horrifying self revealed at last for all to see. Then the scales will fall from the voters' eyes and they'll boot him from the office he never deserved to occupy in the first place.
This is so incredibly odd. The latest polls show the race is pretty tight in the swing states and the election is 5 months off. People are unhappy about unemployment and uncertain about the economy. Certainly, they can win on that, right? Are they that insecure about Mitt Romney?
In my view, they don't want to beat him that way. They have to personally destroy him because that is what the right has become today. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton (now, of course, they love him in typical juvenile emotional fashion and will likely be the same way with President Obama someday) and many other Democrats. Funny, the same thing is done to me in comments on a regular basis:)
I guess they don't know any other way.
So on the right, the desperate search for the appropriate "vetting" material continues. For instance, the late Andrew Breitbart's constellation of web properties continues in its founder's spirit, breathlessly promoting one "revelation" about Obama's pre-political life after another. Obama was friendly with a Harvard Law School professor with strong views on race! In 1991, Obama's literary agency mistakenly said in a promotional brochure that he was born in Kenya! There is so much to be learned that breitbart.com has created a whole series entitled "The Vetting."
Sadly, this is all true. I don't get it.The president has been pretty forthcoming about his past both in his books and interviews. There have been thousands of stories about folks like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and the president's college years and birth certificate. Why?
The mistake that so many conservatives make is in believing that in some (or all) of these details of his life lies the key to Obama's undoing. If only we can find the radical mentor, the girlfriend holding on to a decades-old secret, or the revealing document, then Obama will be unmasked, his true horrifying self revealed at last for all to see. Then the scales will fall from the voters' eyes and they'll boot him from the office he never deserved to occupy in the first place.
This is so incredibly odd. The latest polls show the race is pretty tight in the swing states and the election is 5 months off. People are unhappy about unemployment and uncertain about the economy. Certainly, they can win on that, right? Are they that insecure about Mitt Romney?
In my view, they don't want to beat him that way. They have to personally destroy him because that is what the right has become today. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton (now, of course, they love him in typical juvenile emotional fashion and will likely be the same way with President Obama someday) and many other Democrats. Funny, the same thing is done to me in comments on a regular basis:)
I guess they don't know any other way.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Keystone XL Pipeline Will Make Gas Prices Go Up
For some time now I've been contending that the Keystone XL pipeline would cause the price of gas to go up because the fuel refined from it would be shipped off to China at world market prices instead of being "stuck" in the American Midwest where it winds up being sold as gasoline, often at lower prices than those paid on all three coasts.
Now we have confirmation. According to an analysis from the NRDC:
Now we have confirmation. According to an analysis from the NRDC:
The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Midwestern refineries produce more gasoline per barrel than refineries in any other region in the United States. That gasoline is then sold to U.S. consumers. In contrast, refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas produce as much diesel as possible, much of which is exported internationally. By taking oil from midwestern gasoline refineries to Gulf Coast diesel refineries, Keystone XL will decrease the amount of gasoline available to American consumers.
Meanwhile the Keystone XL pipeline will increase the price that gasoline producing refineries in the Midwest pay for crude oil. TransCanada, the company sponsoring the pipeline, pitched the pipeline to Canadian regulators as a way of increasing the price of crude in the United States (emphasis mine).
Right now, Midwestern refineries are buying crude oil at a discount—a deep discount. This allows them to produce products more cheaply than they would otherwise be able to. Building Keystone XL would change that. If TransCanada’s analysis is accurate, under current market conditions, Keystone XL would add $20 to $40 to the cost of a barrel of Canadian crude—increasing the cost of oil in the United States by tens of billions of dollars
I was unaware of the propensity for diesel refining of the Gulf Coast, but that only increases the likelihood that Canadian oil will be sold to China. Most interesting is TransCanada's selling point to Canadian regulators was that it would increase gas prices for Americans.
The lesson: don't believe anything the oil industry says about oil prices. Their goal is to maximize profits, which means they want to maximize prices.
The Definition of the Election
I've never understood the Republican obsession with thinking that a successful CEO would make a good president. The two jobs are completely different. Yesterday, the president eloquently illustrated this in Chicago.
If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity, but that's not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.
This is what the election is going to be about.
If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity, but that's not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.
This is what the election is going to be about.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Planet of the Valley Girls?
Last week Facebook went public. Its IPO netted the company $38 a share, making it worth more than $100 billion (and earning $176 million for the banks that handled the underwriting). That's more than companies that sell real products to real people, like McDonald's, VISA, Volkswagen and Disney. Even after Disney made hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide with a single smash hit movie a couple of weeks ago.
But at this writing Facebook's stock is worth $33 a share. Many people expected its share price to jump tremendously in value, like LinkedIn's did. That hasn't happened yet, and the banks who issued the IPO may be betting against people who bought the stock. Facebook has yet to come up with a way to make the kind of money off its users that such a high value could justify. It doesn't yet push ads to mobile devices, and more than half of Facebook users access the social network through their phones. Yet doing that could alienate users and discourage them from using the service.
Facebook likes to brag that it's got almost a billion users. That number is deceptive. You can make any number of Facebook accounts, so that number could be almost anything. This is an important point because advertisers pay for their ads to be seen by real people.
Companies generate buzz on Facebook with "likes." They often have promotions to get people to like them, giving them something in an on-line game or entering them in an iPad drawing.
There are also companies that for a fee will generate likes for companies that want to increase their apparent Facebook popularity. The question is, how real are those likes? Are they simply thousands of phony Facebook accounts, or thousands of real Facebook users who are liking someone because they're paid to? It seems that if you're paying for likes, they're all fake, no matter how they're generated. Facebook is trying to root out fake likes, but it's a non-trivial problem.
So what's the point of Facebook for companies? Does it have any real value, or is it just another MySpace or AOL?
Then there's the question of what people actually use Facebook for. Every time I look at my feed I see that several friends checked in through FourSquare. I see pictures of pets and kids and what people ate for dinner. I get harangued by friends to try out some on-line game. I see articles that other people read. I see political rants. I see cryptic numbers from a neighbor that might be geo-tagging or bible study or a terrorist plot.
This is what thirteen-year-old girls do: obsess about what all their friends are doing and wearing and saying. Now full-grown adults are fretting about how many friends they have. Just recently a friend wondered why a mutual friend had defriended him. Is Facebook devolving the entire planet into, like, Valley Girls? Don't we have more important, or at least interesting, things to do?
Facebook is extending their grasp beyond their site into every nook and cranny of the Internet. Your Facebook login can be used on thousands of websites, allowing Facebook to track your every move. And this grasp is extending into the real world, because millions of people are using their mobile phones to tell Facebook where they are at every waking moment.
My Facebook feed also tells me what videos one friend watched, that another friended someone I've never heard of and another liked some company. And yesterday I saw an ad for Zoosk that said one of my acquaintances was looking for single women. I wonder if he has a girlfriend who saw the same ad?
It's these things that may ultimately be Facebook's downfall. Facebook plans to make its money by pimping out your personal data. Do you really want to be Mark Zuckerberg's whore?
But at this writing Facebook's stock is worth $33 a share. Many people expected its share price to jump tremendously in value, like LinkedIn's did. That hasn't happened yet, and the banks who issued the IPO may be betting against people who bought the stock. Facebook has yet to come up with a way to make the kind of money off its users that such a high value could justify. It doesn't yet push ads to mobile devices, and more than half of Facebook users access the social network through their phones. Yet doing that could alienate users and discourage them from using the service.
Facebook likes to brag that it's got almost a billion users. That number is deceptive. You can make any number of Facebook accounts, so that number could be almost anything. This is an important point because advertisers pay for their ads to be seen by real people.
Companies generate buzz on Facebook with "likes." They often have promotions to get people to like them, giving them something in an on-line game or entering them in an iPad drawing.
There are also companies that for a fee will generate likes for companies that want to increase their apparent Facebook popularity. The question is, how real are those likes? Are they simply thousands of phony Facebook accounts, or thousands of real Facebook users who are liking someone because they're paid to? It seems that if you're paying for likes, they're all fake, no matter how they're generated. Facebook is trying to root out fake likes, but it's a non-trivial problem.
So what's the point of Facebook for companies? Does it have any real value, or is it just another MySpace or AOL?
Then there's the question of what people actually use Facebook for. Every time I look at my feed I see that several friends checked in through FourSquare. I see pictures of pets and kids and what people ate for dinner. I get harangued by friends to try out some on-line game. I see articles that other people read. I see political rants. I see cryptic numbers from a neighbor that might be geo-tagging or bible study or a terrorist plot.
This is what thirteen-year-old girls do: obsess about what all their friends are doing and wearing and saying. Now full-grown adults are fretting about how many friends they have. Just recently a friend wondered why a mutual friend had defriended him. Is Facebook devolving the entire planet into, like, Valley Girls? Don't we have more important, or at least interesting, things to do?
Facebook is extending their grasp beyond their site into every nook and cranny of the Internet. Your Facebook login can be used on thousands of websites, allowing Facebook to track your every move. And this grasp is extending into the real world, because millions of people are using their mobile phones to tell Facebook where they are at every waking moment.
My Facebook feed also tells me what videos one friend watched, that another friended someone I've never heard of and another liked some company. And yesterday I saw an ad for Zoosk that said one of my acquaintances was looking for single women. I wonder if he has a girlfriend who saw the same ad?
It's these things that may ultimately be Facebook's downfall. Facebook plans to make its money by pimping out your personal data. Do you really want to be Mark Zuckerberg's whore?
Well, I Guess It Had To Happen
Kevin Baker has gone Birther.
(sigh)
I suppose it was inevitable. Here is a list from Snopes that shows that many of these claims are completely false. I expect retractions, Kevin.
(sigh)
I suppose it was inevitable. Here is a list from Snopes that shows that many of these claims are completely false. I expect retractions, Kevin.
Too Political?
My oh my, what an interesting turn of events.
The sticking point appears to be Hanauer assertion that "rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs," but rather it's the middle class consumers who fuel business growth and subsequent job creation by spending their hard earned money on stuff.
How exactly is the illustration of a simple fact considered political?
(sniff sniff)
Smells to me like the Cult of Both Sides is up to its usual tricks again.
The sticking point appears to be Hanauer assertion that "rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs," but rather it's the middle class consumers who fuel business growth and subsequent job creation by spending their hard earned money on stuff.
How exactly is the illustration of a simple fact considered political?
(sniff sniff)
Smells to me like the Cult of Both Sides is up to its usual tricks again.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
A Trifecta of Tactics
In the past few months, the tactics the right uses on a regular basis have been laid plain for all to see. First we had the 14 points, nearly all of which I saw on The Smallest Minority during my time there. Then we had the purest definition of The Rove, as explained by Richard Clarke. That one we can see nearly every day, squirting forth from the right wing media industrial complex and all the way into my comments section.
But there has always been something missing...a tactic that I've experienced many times. It's kind of like "Projection/Flipping" but not quite. Sort of like The Rove but not nearly there. Some recent comments have lead me to an epiphany. Here's how it works for you first time users.
Step 1: Whether knowingly or unknowlingly, use ad hominem attacks, genetic fallacies, straw man arguments, hand waving, and any other sort of nonsense that pops into your head.
Step 2: While the liberal is reflecting (silly liberals), accuse HE or SHE of using any or all of those tactics.
Step 3: As the silly liberal sputters out a comment which will likely be along the lines of "But wait, that's what you are doing" laugh, point at them and reply, "BWAAHAHAHA! That's your response? 'No, YOU are!' Hahahahahaha! What a child!"
Congratulations! You have just completed The ARWB Three Step (that's arrogant right wing blog or blogger, depending upon on your situation).
Add this to the 14 points and The Rove and you have pure magic, my friends.
Pure Magic
But there has always been something missing...a tactic that I've experienced many times. It's kind of like "Projection/Flipping" but not quite. Sort of like The Rove but not nearly there. Some recent comments have lead me to an epiphany. Here's how it works for you first time users.
Step 1: Whether knowingly or unknowlingly, use ad hominem attacks, genetic fallacies, straw man arguments, hand waving, and any other sort of nonsense that pops into your head.
Step 2: While the liberal is reflecting (silly liberals), accuse HE or SHE of using any or all of those tactics.
Step 3: As the silly liberal sputters out a comment which will likely be along the lines of "But wait, that's what you are doing" laugh, point at them and reply, "BWAAHAHAHA! That's your response? 'No, YOU are!' Hahahahahaha! What a child!"
Congratulations! You have just completed The ARWB Three Step (that's arrogant right wing blog or blogger, depending upon on your situation).
Add this to the 14 points and The Rove and you have pure magic, my friends.
Pure Magic
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Actual Handwaving
A few months ago, one of my regular commenters that migrated over from Kevin's site brought out that ol' chestnut about small business. Haplo9 (a small business owner) informed me that not only do I not know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business but that people like me and other Democrats/liberals/etc are actively seeking to destroy small business and, indeed, the free market.
Let's look past all the facts and evidence to the contrary that I have been putting up of late and focus on some small business owners themselves. First, I worked for a small business before I became a teacher. We were a small, four person multimedia company that handled medium sized businesses first forays into online commerce back in the mid to late 1990s. I had left an ad firm where I worked to help out two friends of mine who were the owners of the business.
Not once did I hear any discussion about the government inhibiting them from making money. The onus was on all of us to grow the business and we certainly never played the victim card and blamed the government. Our concern was getting more clients and in order to do that, we wanted to see state and federal policies that supported consumer spending which would lead to more revenue for our clients and, in turn, more money to spend with us. It wasn't taxes or fear of possible future regulation that altered our decisions. It was customers coming through the door.
This is also true for our very own John Waxey, an owner of a manufacturing concern in Wisconsin that makes a product that helps with shipping and commerce. His company does about 20 million a year in business. I had the occasion to chat with him recently when I visited his cottage.
"How's the company doing?" I asked.
"Never better," he replied. "In fact, we are moving in to a new facility to accommodate all our new business."
"So, Barack Obama and the Democrats aren't destroying your company?"
"No," he chuckled. "We do well when our clients have more customers. Then they come and spend money with us."
John's family has owned this business for his entire life, thirty three years of which he has been my best friend. So, to say that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business (or any size business for that matter) is wrong. That being said, no one should take our lives and anecdotes as gospel. Perhaps we are outliers? Biased?
No, not so much...because of this little thing called How The Free Market Actually Fucking Works. Yesterday, I was perusing the MPR site for some post-mortem on the recently ended state government session and I came across this. House Republican Majority Leader Matt Dean was a guest on the program and they took a call from a small business owner named Andy.
Here is the audio below. Start it at the 13 minute mark.
Giving tax breaks to small business owners leading to more hiring is NOT how the free market works? Representative Dean (a REPUBLICAN...GASP!!) doesn't know how the free market works? That it's actually more consumer spending leads to more hiring? Oh, Andy. Don't you dare question one of the central creeds of their rigid dogma! Only THEY are Sacred Keepers of the Free Market. Don't you know you're just going to get glassy-eyed nonsense for an answer?
And that's just what happened. Rep. Dean (sounding as if he was both under hypnosis and attempting to hypnotize Andy) gave a response which (ahem) can best be described as hand waving. Shocking, I know, that someone from the right is actually doing the very thing that I am wrongfully and continually accused of doing. And doing it to someone who actually owns a small business! Well, he owns a hair salon so he's probably gay anyway so he doesn't really know what he's talking about, right?
What all of this perfectly illustrates is how the right really doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to this stuff. If small businesses are given tax breaks without new customers coming through the door, why would they hire anyone? They're just going to sit around just as Andy described.
But no. Oh no. It's taxes. It's supply side. Never aggregate demand. They are only interested in making sure that their ideology is pure and, in behaving in this manner, they completely ignore the core of what drives growth in this country.
Watch as consumer spending magically disappears in my hat!
Let's look past all the facts and evidence to the contrary that I have been putting up of late and focus on some small business owners themselves. First, I worked for a small business before I became a teacher. We were a small, four person multimedia company that handled medium sized businesses first forays into online commerce back in the mid to late 1990s. I had left an ad firm where I worked to help out two friends of mine who were the owners of the business.
Not once did I hear any discussion about the government inhibiting them from making money. The onus was on all of us to grow the business and we certainly never played the victim card and blamed the government. Our concern was getting more clients and in order to do that, we wanted to see state and federal policies that supported consumer spending which would lead to more revenue for our clients and, in turn, more money to spend with us. It wasn't taxes or fear of possible future regulation that altered our decisions. It was customers coming through the door.
This is also true for our very own John Waxey, an owner of a manufacturing concern in Wisconsin that makes a product that helps with shipping and commerce. His company does about 20 million a year in business. I had the occasion to chat with him recently when I visited his cottage.
"How's the company doing?" I asked.
"Never better," he replied. "In fact, we are moving in to a new facility to accommodate all our new business."
"So, Barack Obama and the Democrats aren't destroying your company?"
"No," he chuckled. "We do well when our clients have more customers. Then they come and spend money with us."
John's family has owned this business for his entire life, thirty three years of which he has been my best friend. So, to say that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business (or any size business for that matter) is wrong. That being said, no one should take our lives and anecdotes as gospel. Perhaps we are outliers? Biased?
No, not so much...because of this little thing called How The Free Market Actually Fucking Works. Yesterday, I was perusing the MPR site for some post-mortem on the recently ended state government session and I came across this. House Republican Majority Leader Matt Dean was a guest on the program and they took a call from a small business owner named Andy.
Here is the audio below. Start it at the 13 minute mark.
Giving tax breaks to small business owners leading to more hiring is NOT how the free market works? Representative Dean (a REPUBLICAN...GASP!!) doesn't know how the free market works? That it's actually more consumer spending leads to more hiring? Oh, Andy. Don't you dare question one of the central creeds of their rigid dogma! Only THEY are Sacred Keepers of the Free Market. Don't you know you're just going to get glassy-eyed nonsense for an answer?
And that's just what happened. Rep. Dean (sounding as if he was both under hypnosis and attempting to hypnotize Andy) gave a response which (ahem) can best be described as hand waving. Shocking, I know, that someone from the right is actually doing the very thing that I am wrongfully and continually accused of doing. And doing it to someone who actually owns a small business! Well, he owns a hair salon so he's probably gay anyway so he doesn't really know what he's talking about, right?
What all of this perfectly illustrates is how the right really doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to this stuff. If small businesses are given tax breaks without new customers coming through the door, why would they hire anyone? They're just going to sit around just as Andy described.
But no. Oh no. It's taxes. It's supply side. Never aggregate demand. They are only interested in making sure that their ideology is pure and, in behaving in this manner, they completely ignore the core of what drives growth in this country.
Watch as consumer spending magically disappears in my hat!
Friday, May 18, 2012
Abuse of the Franking Privilege
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:
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?
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?
Thursday, May 17, 2012
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!!
And that's a Fun Math Fact!!
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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?
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 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?
- They don't want to waste the time.
- They figure it's a gimmick or someone is just trying to collect demographic data in order to sell them something.
- They don't think their opinion is anyone's business.
- They really don't have an opinion or don't vote or buy a product so they would just be wasting everyone's time.
- They don't want to burn cellphone minutes (polling now tries to balance cellphone and land-line respondents).
- They are tired of being constantly interrupted.
- 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.
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