More Defensive Krugman

I really don't get it.  It's fine that he supports HRC, but how is it that he can be so blind as to treat Sanders supporters the same way so many of his [right-wing] critics treat him?  Ignore substantial differences (which may be either pro-Sanders or just anti-Hillary) and construct magical straw-unicorns.

Not Understanding Krugman's Defensiveness Here

Paul Krugman clearly supports Clintion in the primary, and for sensible reasons.  But his attacks on Sanders supporters are, frankly, bonkers.  While I'm sure there are people who support Sanders for the reasons he mentions, generalizing from them is like the people who generalize from a small number of Clinton supporters who only support her because she is a woman.  It's, for lack of a better word, stupid.

I find the attacks on both of the Democratic candidates (remaining) to be pretty small minded, petty and, yes, stupid.  While it isn't surprising from many people I would think Krugman would be more thoughtful about it, but he really seems very reactionary and defensive.

I read the Vox article he quotes from and my takeaway was that this election has messed with the historical based prediction models and you can't effectively extrapolate what will happen.  If a more conventional Republican were to win, then maybe you can go back to those.  But that is looking less likely as time passes, and if the GOP nominee is Trump or Cruz or even Rubio then you are likely looking at a general that will not shape up as the historical models would predict.

Also, that Nixon - McGovern as a basis for comparison is just weird.  Yes, McGovern was a radical liberal, but Nixon was to left of much of his party's base and in many ways more liberal than most "conventional" Democrats today, including Obama and Clinton.  He was a Keynesian for God's sakes!  If you really wanted to try and parallel that election then Cruz is the McGovern equivalent and Hillary would be Nixon (she is to the right of most of her party base, Cruz is a radical conservative).  Trump is who the hell knows what, and Sanders is, in reality, only a bit more liberal than Clinton.  Mostly he is just not apologetic about his liberalism, and that matters to lots of Democrats who are tired of politicians who they vote for not representing them.  Not defending their views.

In terms of what can be accomplished, neither Clinton nor Sanders will be able to do much as president thanks to the US House (gerrymandering has pretty much guaranteed a GOP majority until 2022).  It may be that Clinton will be better at getting things done in spite of that.  It could also be that Sanders would be able to shift the Overton window such that better results become possible [in the future].

Who the fuck knows?

Crappy Statistics

Vox in talking about the liberal/moderate/conservative line and how it helps Clinton presents this chart:

This is an example of incomplete data that doesn't actually help inform.  If more conservative people call Romney liberal, Obama very liberal, and themselves very conservative, but more liberal people call Romney conservative, Obama moderate and themselves between moderate and liberal you can end up with that plot even if far more people are Obama supporters than Romney.

The perception of self vs. others is important and it is likely different between liberal and conservative individuals.  This plot is only useful if more liberal individuals and more conservative individuals have the exact same relative perception.  Nothing about that chart would imply they do.  

Obama is, on a historical scale, pretty much the same as Regan, which, at the most liberal, would put him right down the middle.  Romney, as governor would have been similar, though Romney the presidental candidate ran as closer to very conservative than moderate.  

Anyone using that chart to draw general conclusions is either lazy or bad at statistics.  Those numbers don't mean what they look like they mean.

GOP: The Party of Hucksters

Been reading about the fractures opening up between different groups in the GOP.  It's kinda hard to tell, but it seems like lots of folks are very surprised by all this (yes, mostly beltway pundits who are, historically, wrong about everything, but also the GOP party "establishment" and even some Dems). Seems to me like a pretty obvious result of the game the GOP has been playing, and I think a lot of it goes back to them becoming the anti-science party.

It's a logic issue.  Science is structured, logical, tested, verified.  You have an idea about something (hypothesis) then you run tests against that to see if it works, if it does you progress, if it does not then you rethink your hypothesis.  By rejecting science (yes, particularly evolution and now climate change) you reject that thought process, and any supporters you retain will also have rejected that thought process.  This can work short term just like a magician (wave one hand over here toward issue people in the room care about, while really you just want to do something unrelated over there), but over time you will find that there are better magicians.

Once those better "magicians" realize that you don't have to be substantive to get ahead in the GOP, they will naturally gravitate toward that party.  Eventually you have a party where large numbers of the people [running for office] don't have any particular notion of what being in the GOP means beyond "whatever I want it to mean for me at this moment" and characters like Trump and Cruz make perfect sense in this telling.

So the GOP is not united in any given policy dictate, and so even the numbered list given in the article is largely wrong.  You can find lots of exceptions to any of those points and you can find people in any of the other "camps" that drift into many of the points listed.  Trying to break the GOP down into ideologically coherent groups is a fool's errand.  There are a couple, but mostly that party has become the anti-whatever party.  Go to the GOP with whatever it is you don't like about [government, America, liberals, other religions, other races, other nations, gays, city folk...] and you can find a candidate who will parrot that emotion back to you in such a way that you will think it is their own.

The closest most commentary comes to getting at something that unifies the GOP is "whiteness", and yes, if you are a white supremacist you probably vote Republican (if you vote), but even that oversimplifies things, because whiteness isn't necessary, it's largely incidental.  In a nation where white men used to have all the power, the result of increasing equality absolutely means that white men are the "losers" of the game, so the people most likely to be drawn to an illogical anti-whatever party are much more likely to be white, and to be men.  What truly unites and defines the GOP is the anti-logic aspect.  Most clearly seen with the rejection of science that began in earnest in the 90's this is what has pushed the GOP to be the party of hucksters.

One Way: Bankruptcy

I'm not sure how the corporate law works in Germany for a VW bankruptcy and restructuring, but there's no reason to think that the world's nearly-largest automaker will cease to exist.

Policy and Presidential Candidates

Vox has a symposium up on whether policy proposals matter for presidential candidates.  Lots of back and forth but not a whole lot of answering the question.  I think Ezra's comments toward the end were the best part I read:

Ezra Klein So to offer one overarching thought here: For all kinds of reasons, I think a giant percentage of campaign coverage is useless at best, counterproductive at worst. There's demand for much more coverage than there is actually important news during the campaign, the coverage squeezes out important non-campaign stories, and the coverage often turns out to have been a really poor guide to what officials do once elected.

I think policy coverage is relatively better than most forms of campaign coverage, but the whole enterprise has some real problems that I don't think anyone actually knows how to solve.

While it was hinted at elsewhere I think that policy proposals are seen as a window into what the candidate values.  I think this is one of the reasons that Bernie Sanders resonates so well in the primary.  His policy proposals are much more in line with Democratic values and Democratic voters.  Hillary Clinton's proposals, in being "pragmatic" don't line up as well with the values of the Democratic primary voters (or, really, the general election voters).  They reflect a lack of solid values.  Dealmaking is not a value.  It is a good thing to be capable of for a president, but for a primary voter you really want to know that those deals are being made with your values in mind and with every attempt to get as much as possible in that direction.

I don't mind "pragmatic" policy proposals, but the candidates should, along with those, make it clear to voters what their ideals are, and unrealistic fantasy proposals do that.  I remember reading (and writing) quite a few complaints about Obama compromising with himself before sending bills to the floor then having to move a compromised position further to the right to get it passed.  I don't know whether it would have changed the legislation that did get passed, but it would have been nice if he had staked out a solid Democratic bill/position to start with so that the country knew where that position was, and so that the Republicans would have a harder time pushing the Overton window even further right (remember: the ACA was and is the right wing answer to universal coverage but now most people consider it a liberal bill).

Hillary Clinton's policy proposals are a continuance of this part of the Obama presidency that many [liberal] Democrats did not like.  Add that to her Iraq war vote (which is still an issue to lots of people...including me) and you get a candidate that many Democratic primary voters are not going to like.  Bernie may not be as effective, but lots of primary voters trust that he will fight for them more than they do Hillary.

Clinton vs. Sanders

I like Bernie Sanders, but I'm not so sure that he would be able to get much done as president.  I'm not a huge Clinton fan (Hillary or Bill) but I suspect she would be able to be more effective in meeting her goals as president.  That is probably the best reason to pick Hillary over Bernie (and this Vox article kind of gets there).  

My main problem with Hillary is not her pragmatism or even her "liberal creds" on domestic and social issues: it is that she is far too hawkish on the military/interventionist front.  Her single vote for the Iraq debacle is a black mark that is virtually impossible to erase, and all the talk about how knowledgeable she is on...well, everything...makes that vote even worse.  She should have known the correct way to vote (Bernie did) and she voted the wrong way, most people seem to presume for political purposes.  If it was not a pure political maneuver, then it is very strong evidence that she would, as commander in chief, be more likely to err on the side of bombing, invading and killing than on the side of peace and diplomacy.  

I'm not sure how I can vote for a candidate who is supposedly so well versed in detail and understanding of the issues and process, yet who made such a glaringly wrong choice.  

My Thoughts Show up on Digby's Blog

In this case Digby is quoting someone else but she didn't link to it and I'm too lazy to find it so you get the link to her article.

I didn't listen to the SOTU but the morning after one of the quotes played was the "I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide..." and my first thought was "Bullshit!".  Obama has to know better, and it is very frustrating that he would have said that, but neither of those presidents "bridged the divide".  Their opponents hated them.  One's mere election led to succession and civil war and the other was despised but his opposition was helpless to do much since the country had placed them so firmly in the minority.

I think it is one of Obama's greatest failings that he seems (maybe still) to think that Republicans and Democrats can come together and do great things.  Politicians and people associate with R or D because they prefer one set of ideas to another.  Compromise is fine, but you can't get consensus between the parties on major things because the parties exist because of differences of opinions in those big things.

When you get control of everything you don't compromise, you do what you think is best.  If it turns out badly, your side gets tossed and the other gets a chance.  If you get control of everything then try and get a bunch of compromises through, you are dooming your own party and any hopes of getting the things your party's supporters want.  Obama has never seemed to understand that.

(Note: no, this doesn't mean I think he could have necessarily gotten much more accomplished, but he wasted years of efforts in a futile attempt, and he did dishearten lots of the Dem base that got him elected in the first place.)

Maybe...But Not Necessarily

I suppose this should get filed under problems with statistics.  This Vox article is talking about maps showing student loan balances and delinquencies (which is sourced from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth), and while it may seem that their conclusion is logical, it may not be factual.

They are stating that since the high delinquencies map is practically the inverse of the high loan balances that people with lots of student loans are doing ok while those who are having problems don't have high balances, and that seems to follow but maybe not.

The problem is the way averages work.  If one area has lots of college grads with student loans and most of them are doing well, then it would follow that you get low delinquency rates, but also that the loan balances would be higher (high density college grads would imply greater need for higher education to live/work in the area, which would mean more and more expensive education).  On the other hand places with lots of college dropouts and with people not generally doing well, are likely to have lower debt and higher delinquencies.  BUT without knowing the delinquency rates and the distribution of the loan balances you can't say anything about the relationship.

What you want to see is a plot of delinquency rates at various loan balance ranges, and maybe one showing loan balances vs. income level.  This doesn't mean the drawn conclusion is wrong, but just that it shouldn't have been drawn in the first place.

Yes, Republicans Are Bad For Science

I know a lot of scientists who think politics is beneath them, or that politicians are all the same or some such.  It's just not true.  Demorcrats, when they have been in charge do not engage in witch hunts against scientists.  Republicans do.  Democrats do not try and hobble research institutions and federal funding agencies.  Republicans do.  These things are not the same and any scientist who either "forgets" to vote or who votes for any Republican is doing harm to science.  Full stop.

Capitalism Values

I feel like I'm the only person whose mind boggles that Apple is the highest valued company in the world (and by a huge margin). Apple is a gadget company.  They make toys.  They do innovate, but not really all that much when compared with the research done by companies in medical (incl. pharma) and energy markets.  At some level they don't even make their products, they just design them; a Chinese factory makes them, and Apple gets all the profit.

Their high valuation comes not because they make great products that enhance human welfare--everything they make is made by other companies, sometimes (often?) better, and almost always cheaper--but because their product market is massive (pretty much everyone on the globe), and they are able to sell those products with much higher profit margins than any of their competitors.  Buying an Apple product is like buying any luxury good: you spend a lot more money for something that isn't measurably better but that has the proper logo on it.  It's arguably worse since many luxury goods are measurably better than the non-luxury alternatives, whether that is nicer materials or better construction, or simply, somehow more (think houses or boats).

This isn't saying Apple is bad (it isn't) or people are stupid (we are but this isn't really a great example), but rather that capitalism values making money, and Apple is better at that than anyone else.

Most other large companies require huge capital investments to get going--oil companies need rigs, labs, land access, mineral rights..., pharma companies need lots of expensive laboratory equipment, as well as plants for scaling up.  Apple doesn't.

In most competitive markets the profit margins of products get driven down--Amazon's margins are sometimes negative.  Apple doesn't reduce its margins to gain advantage.

This should serve as a major indictment of capitalism (similar to the unhealthy profits and values of banks and other financial institutions).  I'm not sure why it doesn't, but I'm suspicious that the people most vocal about the "evils of capitalism" also happen to like and use Apple, and so can't see that the company that makes their computer is very representative of the problem.

It seems that if capitalism best served human welfare, then the largest companies would be the most welfare enhancing.  But the most welfare enhancing aspects of [most] societies are actually government run: health care, infrastructure (water, power, transportation), and social welfare programs (anti-poverty, unemployment, retirement) all contribute massively to increasing human welfare, but they are government operated precisely because they are not profitable enterprises which means capitalism wants nothing to do with them.

In reality it is neither capitalism nor socialism but some melding of the two that best serve society, but still, Apple's valuation is mind boggling.

10/28/2015 Update: Looks like Vox is following my blog.  Of course they come off more like fans than seeing this as an strange byproduct of the values of capitalism.

Really?!?

I'm not very surprised to hear that more men than women have major parts in movies, but I am surprised that it is as dramatic as it is.  

...In the 120 films the MDSC analyzed, only 30.9 percent of speaking and named characters were women......The United States is far from a leader: Of the 11 most profitable film-producing territories, the United States ranks near the bottom in allocating speaking roles to women.The MDSC, which studies the portrayal of women and minority groups in film, also found that women were more than twice as likely as men “to be shown in sexually revealing attire.”

Unlike the plight of minorities in film--which does make some sense from a pure marketing standpoint--that women would be so dramatically underrepresented is very odd. 50% of the population is female, and so 50% of your potential ticket buyers are female, and so it seems that more female characters and leads would mean more potential revenue.

That women are more sexualized in film: also not surprising.

Weird Guy

So Harvard Law School professor (and TED talk dude) Larry Lessig is running for president.  Ok, but, how is it possible that a Harvard law prof is so stupid about politics?

Lessig believes his plan will actually “elevate” [the debate] above the partisan divide by taking on an issue he said Americans agree on: campaign finance reform. Lessig said his proposed platform “would fix this democracy and make it possible for government to actually do something without fear of what the funders want them to do.”

That sounds like something a stupid person would think sounds smart.  First off: Americans agree on a lot of things that don't get past the partisan divide.  In fact, the majority opinion of the American people on almost every issue is supported by the Democratic party.  Tax the rich more: yep.  Regulate Wall Street and banksters: yep.  Everyone should have health care access: yep.  Social security should be kept the same or made more generous even if it means increasing taxes: yep.  People that actually work for a living should have a wage that supports, you know, living: yep.  Children should have access to good schools and should not be allowed to go hungry: yep.  Companies should not be allowed to pollute (air, streams) endangering the health of entire communities: yep.

It is the vary narrow support of [mostly] incredibly wealthy ass holes that is the Republican party line.  He thinks, somehow, that this will be above the fray of politics?  The only thing that allows Republicans to win anywhere in this country is the money in politics (well, that combined with racism and sexism).  They lose on the issues--nearly all of them.

Moreover, a partisan divide is not a bad thing inherently.  It is problematic in our political system because the minority party has enough power to stop anything from happening.  Abolishing the Senate and eliminating gerrymandering in the House would do far more to improve our political fortunes, and is every bit as likely to occur as Lessig's personal delusion.

Other Advantages

While Atrios does (as usual) have a good point here, one of the reasons that [super]trains are compared to air travel rather than auto is because they are more comparable experiences.  You buy a ticket, get a seat, are on your own to get to and from the stations, can't bring too much stuff and can't decide to take random breaks for whatever.

If I could take my dog on a train with me (as you can lots of places in Europe...at least the city light rail) and if there was a good enough network that after I get off the intercity rail there were plenty of other trains/transit options to get around at the destination (as there is in Europe and in some US cities) then I could look at a train as an alternative to driving.  Right now, it isn't, and it won't be.

Paragraph o' the Day

So far my favorite response to Scalia's "weighty" descent from this Wonkette article:

And poor Antonin Scalia was so angry about the majority decision that he proclaimed in his dissent, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’” We would comment on this, but banana dust intriguingly parses our kleptomaniac vertebrae. Moist colander prevails! Justice Scalia needs to ask himself: Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like? Truly, we say, armadillo.

There's Always Been Anger

I agree with Atrios that the kids are alright, but I don't think the anger he mentions here is new.  I think that it is just more easily dispersed via the internet.  The vitriol you read in most comments sections today was always there, but pre-internet it was someone reading the paper and yelling at the wind (and maybe his wife and kids...and yes, it was probably a "he" then just as now).

The internet is a remarkable force in our lives, and primarily (overwhelmingly?) for good, but it is a tool, and one that can be and is used for ill at times.

Conservative Catholics in the US

Interesting history lesson on conservatism and Catholicism in the US in the 60's and 70's and its parallels to today.

Catholic--indeed most Christian--conservatives have always struck me as odd.  Excepting sexual liberalism, it is very clear that liberal policies fit in far better with New Testament teachings than do conservative policies.  In fact most conservative Christians point to the Old Testament to find justifications for their political beliefs, ignoring the many times that the New Testament directly or implicitly contradicts those points.

Rich, athiest conservative (e.g. Ayn Rand) makes logical sense.  General asshole/jerk (e.g. racists, Sheldon Adelson) conservative makes emotional sense.  There is a narrow weaving of non-asshole, non-rich that may make some sort of sense, though a strong sense of individualist (aka selfishness) or kook (e.g. Ron Paul) is still required to fit in that gap.  Christian conservative just doesn't.  At all.

Unlike asshole Bill Maher I think that religion can be a positive force in society.  Most religions preach tolerance, love of neighbor, helpfulness, caring for others, disdain for violence, selflessness... That doesn't mean that there are not [always] going to be people who twist some aspect of some religion to violence and selfishness.  There is also a lot of us and them isolationism in religious communities (Mormons donate a lot...to the LDS church, they give to other charities at much lower rates than the general public).

I've got lots more thoughts on the subject but this is it for now...

"If You Don't Want to Pay for Other People's Health Insurance...

...You Can't Live in a First World Nation."

Title says it all, but the text explains it to assholes (i.e. Republicans who think Obamacare Medicaid and Medicare should all die).  Unfortunately, the evidence shows that said assholes won't have their mind changed by the facts presented which run counter to their beliefs.

Scientific Repetition

Reading through this Vox article I nodded quite a bit.  A few quick notes...

In graduate school I did some research that...didn't discredit so much as countered previously published work by another group (note: I seriously doubt it was fraud).  Nothing came of it.  In a perfect science world, it would have been written up.  Not a major publication, but a short note, with the relevant data and the [correct] explanation.  Except: most researcher's wouldn't really care, lots that would may have figured it out anyway (actually, probably not, but I like to think the best of other scientists) and publication of a short note like that, which really only exists to say "those guys were wrong" seems...petty and spiteful.  That I didn't know the other researchers at all is irrelevant, petty and spiteful are not good reasons to publish.

Still, it would have been best for that particular field of science had that work been published.  Better information which may have helped other researchers doing similar work and referencing the older, [partly] incorrect work.  But had we tried, I've no idea where it would have been accepted.  It's another side of the coin from a "failed experiments" journal.  Science that should have worked but didn't, things that did work, but for which the explanation was wrong or incomplete.

There's a lot of science out there and so there are a lot of these "failures".

One point that I would like to make has to do with the statement in the article that

Most studies aren't replicated — and researchers are discouraged from doing so

which may be true for some longer/larger experiments.  Those that require a full grad student career (or more) to complete, or that are so expensive, that repeating them practically requires a grant application that details "why we should do this again".  In many of those cases, lots of researchers are involved early on and do a lot of checking of each other's work.  Also, in many cases, the raw data is available for subsequent researchers to look into.  But for a lot of smaller experiments--which actually make up the bulk of science research--the studies often are replicated, in the same lab by subsequent students, or by other labs with similar interests/directions.

In those cases, problems do get found out and understood and passed around, but very rarely does that occur via publication that directly counters previous work.  More likely a post-doc comes into a lab knowing about the old paper, and a senior level grad student informs her "actually, that wasn't right and this is what really is happening" and the post-doc is now informed and does research with her new understanding...that has not been published.  Sometimes you can comb through a trail of publications and note that a change took place without any acknowledgement to it taking place, and sometimes you have to either go through the lab or know people connected to it to find out.  So researchers connected to a research network may know a particular thing doesn't work, or didn't mean what it was initially thought, but researchers outside that network may not.

I Voted

Local elections and midterms are often a bit odd.  Effectively today's primary here was the "real" election for most (all?) of the positions.  My area is very heavily Democratic, to the point that Republicans here often put their names on the Democratic primary ballots.  I'm not sure if this is an attempt to confuse or a serious way for them to have their ideas/positions heard and vetted.  I also don't know if it makes much difference since Democrats are always outside the polling location handing out lists of actual Democrats in the primary.