This blog focuses on a variety of subjects including skepticism, science, philosophy, economics, and politics. Although I tend to ague from a liberal (and naturalist) perspective, I understand that reality itself does not have a political preference. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
Bobby Jindal attempts to make the case for a federal balanced budget amendment:
"A federal balanced budget amendment. States have balanced budget laws, small businesses have to balance their budgets, and families have to do the same. This is an idea that is supported by virtually every American who does not live in the 202 area code. It’s common sense. It is also laughed at in Washington. When you mention the BBA as a solution, they roll their eyes and write you off as a non-serious person. But the American public is dead serious about it, and they should be."
A federal balanced budget amendment is one of the most popular horrible ideas in political discourse today.
You simply cannot compare personal budgets, business budgets, or even state budgets
to national budgets in this way. People and businesses can balance their budgets because
in doing so they don't also jeopardize their incomes (unlike the government,
as can be seen very clearly from the austerity crisis/fiscal cliff). State
governments can balance their budgets because they can always count on the
federal government to both make up the shortfall. Calling a balanced budget "common
sense" shows just how ridiculous the idea of "common sense" can be when applied to counter intuitive fields like this. Americans who are
calling for a balanced budget do not truly understand what they are doing.
This is evidenced by the fact that so many Americans are so completely ignorant of what is actually in the federal budget. This leaves conservative pundit David Frum to ponder a hypothetical question:
"It would be wonderful to hear Gov. Jindal identify the specific cuts he
would have made during the nadir of the recession, when revenues as a share
of GDP were around 15%, the lowest since the Second World War. At that
point, cutting PBS and foreign aid won't get you to 15%. At 15%, you have
to slash entitlements (can't do that!) and the Department of Defense (good
luck getting southern senators on board with that!)."
Frum also notes that conservatives can still be conservative without going
to such absurd lengths:
"Yes, Washington is too bloated. Yes, Washington is trying to do too many
things it should leave to private citizens and state governments. Yes,
Washington should be aiming to leave the federal government's share of GDP
near the historical norm of 18-20 percent. And yes, I too am concerned by
Ezra Klein's warning that 18 percent won't be able to pay for our existing
and future obligations. We have to address these problems, and as
conservatives, we must work to restrain the federal government from
consuming an ever larger share of the gross domestic product.
But you don't win elections by promising to cut benefits, retard growth, and
paralyze government when it is needed most -- during the depths of
recessions. That's a terrible electoral strategy, but it's also horrible
leadership from a party elite. Gov. Jindal can unload all the populist
rhetoric he'd like, but he's as elite as anyone in Washington, DC, and that
role comes with obligations."
No doubt the left has quite a few bad ideas as well. But that does not
excuse the right from avoiding the most important responsibilities expected of an
elected politician:
"Endorsing a balanced budget amendment, laughing off the uncertainty of
messing with the debt ceiling, and deriding efforts to keep our nation
functioning is an abdication of those responsibilities. I hope we see better
in the future from Gov. Jindal."
Recently I wrote an article debunking a few fallacies that underlie criticisms of Obama's "You didn't build that" remark. These criticisms had very little to do with taking his quote out of context, as the Romney campaign has frequently done. This article focused more on those who kept the quote in context, yet still got the point wrong:
"Essentially, Krauthammer is committing a fallacy by failing to distinguish between necessary and sufficient causes. Obama is saying that the government plays a necessary role in the success of entrepreneurs (and in Krauthammer's analogy, so does the post office). As Krauthammer eluded to earlier,
civil society also plays a necessary role. Yet, this is not a sufficient
role."
However, I was also very careful not to argue for any particular proposals:
"My purpose in this article is to get the facts straight over what Obama said and what liberals generally mean when talking about this subject. I do not aim to criticize or endorse any solution to the reality observed here. I may do that in a later post."
This is essentially that "later post."
As David Frum notes, President Obama appeared to only use the point to argue for the restoration of the 1990's Clinton tax rates for high income earners (although that is not the best way to describe it). Does that mean he is intending to punish high income people for their success, just because luck played a role in that success? Not necessarily.
I, along with other liberals, do not see a pure equality of opportunity arising out of a libertarian free-market (where the government plays an absolute minimal role in regulation, mostly insuring mutual non-violence). Every person was raised by a different family with different incomes and communities. Even under our socialized education system, inequalities abound among schools, both public and private. Humans are not omniscient, meaning there are unforeseen factors beyond everyone's control that can ruin even the most well thought-out plans, as well as lives. Not everyone has access to health insurance. And health is nearly always necessary for success. Free-market-driven opportunity, like any resource, is scarce. And this opportunity does not always discriminate based on individual initiative or intelligence.
As a result of this fact, we liberals tend to see governments as a mechanism for ensuring equality of opportunity. Governments can fund education, as well as provide healthcare and school lunches. Governments can provide a safety net so a string of bad luck can be overcome. Governments are capable of doing this. And we tend to believe they should.
However none of this is cheap. Safety nets in particular have helped contribute to large budget deficits over the last few years. And there is little doubt the United States faces a long term budget crisis down the road. Although the US can provide stimulus funds over the short term to help accelerate the recovery, there is little doubt a plan for addressing long term deficits is needed. This plan needs to either cut spending, increase revenues, or both. Within these plans lies a choice. What can the government target? As I just noted, government programs meant to provide an equality of opportunity are expensive. And spending that benefits lower income individuals will probably have that effect. This means that, if we want to help fix our long term budget issues, maintain a strong defense, preserve American initiatives (ex: research and development), and avoid the kind of lower and middle class tax increases that may exacerbate the problem, tax increases on the highest tax earners (whether in the form of higher rates or decreased expenditures) need serious consideration. Conservatives may argue that these higher taxes will have the effect of decreasing opportunity since the higher income-earners affected by these tax increases are "wealth creators." Yet the recent inverse relationship between corporate profits and employment gives us a good reason to doubt this. Essentially, we liberals are not buying it, especially with tax rates (as well as tax progressiveness) so low by historical standards. However, even if we were not justified in being skeptical of these claims, we would still not want to just punish successful people.
Whether we liberals are justified or not, we see the increase in revenue from high income earners as necessary to help sustain and strengthen the government programs providing opportunity to people who may not have had that opportunity otherwise. There is no need to posit some desire to punish successful people to help explain Obama's call for higher tax rates for the rich. Externals factors, whether you want to call them "luck," are necessary to help determine success. Raising tax rates on high income earners protects the government programs that help provide this luck.
For the Romney campaign, having "the entrepreneurial spirit" means having wealthy parents:
"Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business" - Romney
Steve Benen summarizes this gaffe:
"If you're a young person who can't afford rising college tuition rates and/or don't have the resources to launch a business venture, the GOP's would-be president has some advice for you: choose wealthy parents."
Success is so much easier when you have wealthy parents eh...I know this sounds like a stupid question, but does Romney not realize many people out there do not have wealthy parents? This is no trivial gaffe. This shows a serious disconnect between Romney and the rest of the population who don't have the kind of parents willing and/or able to give them unlimited opportunities.
And then there’s David Barton, who has long been the David Irving
of the American Christian revisionism movement (those who argue that
this has always been a Christian nation, founded by conservative
Christians writing a Constitution based on the Bible, and praying thanks
to Jesus and whatnot). Barton’s bestselling book The Jefferson Lies was voted “the least credible history book in print” by the History News Network and exposed as bullshit on NPR, and our own Chris Rodda has been instrumental in fact-checking and exposing his distortion and misrepresentation of the facts (and even the fabricating of quotes).
Now even prominent fellows of the fundamentalist Discovery Institute have declared his book
full of “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes,
and highly misleading claims.” Yes, you heard that right, even they are now spitting him out of their mouth. Many other conservative Christians have been piling on and confirming Barton a fraud, and have pretty much washed their hands of him. But the final blow was that his own publisher
just declared his book essentially fraudulent and has pulled
publication. That’s Thomas Nelson, a major Christian publisher. Barton
is still defending himself and has a few lackeys punting for him, but
his ship has well sunk by this point. (You can read up on all this
breaking news as reported by our own Ed Brayton, Al Stefanelli, and Mano Singham.)
He then follows up with a point on the 2012 election I've been making for a while:
"This single factor, who picks the next Supreme Court Justice,
is literally the single most important decision every voter will be
making this November, whether they are aware of it or not. We had all
better vote with that on our conscience." (emphasis mine)
Indeed this point may have been made most eloquently by Eddie Tabash at FreeOK2012. Sadly I do not have a copy of the video. Please comment if you find one.
"The problem is that skeptics are treated as a
character type which just has a proclivity to doubt even in the teeth of
overwhelming evidence. Rather than being judiciously thinking
people who believe when they see evidence, and who are skeptical merely
of frauds and of the unproven, they are people who remain stubborn
disbelievers despite clear and unavoidable evidence or despite knowing
about similar kinds of realities within their world, etc."
Election Day impersonation, an impetus for voter ID laws, a rarity, data show
Voter impersonation fraud is
virtually nonexistent. Cases of voter fraud almost never include voter
impersonation fraud (instead they are often voter registration
fraud, which almost never results in actual voting), meaning voter ID
laws do
nothing to solve the problem. And the few cases where voter
impersonation fraud has existed, voter ID laws would still not be
effective (absentee voting, etc...). So why again are Republicans trying to hard to enact Voter ID laws?
Democratic Members Of Ohio Election Board Removed For Supporting Voter Rights
If you compare polls of "all," verses "registered voters" and "likely voters," there is a clear trend.
The former tends to side with democrats significantly more than the
latter. As a result, any attempt to make voting tougher (whether through
voter ID laws, suppression of weekend voting, etc...) is going to favor
republicans. This is no secret. The GOP is fully aware of this and is
also fully aware that Ohio may be the most important swing state in the
election.
Former climate skeptic Richard Muller continues to evolve his stance on climate change:
"CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I
identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw
doubt on the very existence of
global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort
involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real
and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My
total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and
objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project,
which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the
average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half
degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one
and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming."
...
"We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics:
biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data
alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent
of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent),
from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor
ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is
completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions." (emphasis mine)
Remember this study was partly funded by the libertarian Koch Brothers.
The GOP's Sobering Electoral Math
Although the popular vote is neck-in-neck (Obama +4.0 as of 8-13-12), there doesn't seem to be nearly as much attention drawn to the fact that Obama has a major electoral lead (237-191, with enough swing states to win easily as of 8-13-12).
"Americans have less vacation time than workers in any other advanced economy.
This
is absurd. A mandatory three weeks off would be good for everyone --
including employers. Studies show workers who take time off are more
productive after
their batteries are recharged. They have higher morale, and are less
likely to mentally check out on the job."
"The attack has already received a fair amount of ridicule because the Janesville, Wis., plant actually closed during the last year of George W. Bush's presidency. What hasn't really been emphasized is whether Ryan clearly knew this and made the charge nonetheless."
What I built — with government help
Good article, although it focuses on government programs that are a bit more constant rather than non-individualism based variables. The difference is explained here.
California law barring parents from 'curing' gay children moves through legislature
Although the former bill had its issues, the newer bill is very justified. These SOCE treatments are harmful. Although we shouldn't necessarily ban these treatments for consenting adults, it makes sense to ban them for minors legally unable
to consent. SOCE is essentially psychological child abuse. While SOCE supporters point to anecdotes and pseudoscience to support their side, SOCE critics point to legitimate research that shows SOCE is neither effective, nor safe.
"A paper by Nicholas Chad Long of St. Edward’s University examined the performance of Senate candidates running for re-election between 1974 and 2008 who were involved in various types of controversy.
Mr. Long identified 21 cases in which the controversy surrounded a public statement the candidate had made. He found that, on average, these candidates received about 5 percent less of the vote than they otherwise would have on Election Day, controlling for other factors. Since most Senate races are two-way contests, losing five percentage points also implies that the opponent gains five percentage points, meaning that the net swing is equal to 10 points."
...
"Some Republican activists on social media platforms, perhaps going through a similar calculation, are calling on Mr. Akin to withdraw from the race. An effort to replace a candidate on the ballot would create controversy of its own, potentially including legal challenges. But if the swing against Mr. Akin in the polls is 10 percentage points or more, it might be an avenue Republicans would need to consider if they want to maximize their chances of taking over the seat." (emphasis mine)
"To be clear, between shortening wait times and abolis
hing the public insurance monopoly, the first is vastly preferable. Insurance markets are tricky things, especially for something like health care where, if you will, the consumer is also the product. Left to themselves, insurance providers would be tempted to refuse coverage to people they think are likely to need it. For their part, consumers might choose not to pay for insurance as long as they were well, only doing so when they get sick."
"In this charitable country, no doubt funds will be found for Caleb Medley and his family. But what if Caleb hadn't been shot in a spectacular crime? What if he'd just been injured in an ordinary accident or succumbed to an ordinary disease
? The most likely answer is that his hospital would absorb a lot of the cost and find ways to load that cost onto other paying customers - socialized medicine, American-style."
Would an income tax hike hurt hiring?
One
thing not mentioned: A lot of these tax increases only happen on the
portion of their income above $250,000. For a business making $250,001,
only $1 would be affected the the rate increase. So I'm curious where
the concentration of those businesses lie, close to the $250,000 mark or
high enough for the tax increases to be significant.
David Frum: The Deficit Won't Go Down Till The Private Sector Goes Up
Many
economists have been saying large government deficits have come about
as a result of the recession, NOT runaway government growth. The
evidence to back this up is quite strong. Deficits for 2009 were
originally projected to be ~$200 bi
llion... until the recesion hit and deficits were then projeted to be
~$1.2 trillion. The Obama administration raised that to ~$1.4 trillion.
This also further undermines the popular conservative belief that we
need to jump into immediate austerity to fix out budget problem.
"Republicans are between the rock of defense cuts
that they view as unpalatable and the tax pledge hard place. There is no
doubt that Democrats would agree to a tax increase to offset the
defense sequester, but would oppose any other altern
ative except, perhaps, putting off the entire sequester, including
domestic spending cuts, for a year. It’s doubtful that the GOP’s Tea
Party wing would support that."
"According to CTJ, virtually all of these tax
increases would apply to families making less than $50,000—people for
whom a few hundred dollars can make a huge difference. Unfortunately for
them, the media is focused instead on how Obama's tax increases on
incomes above $250,000 will make life intolerable for rich people."
"Business investment has actually gone up a lot; maybe you think it should have gone up even more, but it’s not the heart of the problem. On the other hand, we’ve had a lot of cutbacks in government — mainly at the state and local level, but federal aid could have avoided that. (emphasis mine)
This isn’t a picture of an economy hobbled by Big Government; it’s a picture of an economy hobbled by premature austerity."
"The current balance of probabilities is that two
years from now, the North Atlantic’s principal labor-market failures
will not be demand-side market failures that could be easily remedied by
more aggressive policies to boost economic activity and employment.
Rather, they will be structural market failures of participation that
are not amenable to any straightforward and easily implemented cure."
"The Wall Street Journal — yes, the WSJ —
explains: Government Cutbacks Separate This Expansion From Others. Over
at Angry Bear, Spencer shows that private GDP — GDP not including
government spending — has risen almost exactly as fast under
Obama as during the “Bush Boom”; of course, if government
spending hadn’t been falling despite a weak economy, there would have
been more jobs, and private spending would have risen faster." (emphasis mine)
"So actually Poland’s success suggests that (a) big government isn’t so bad (b) sometimes its good to debase your currency.
Doesn’t anyone tell Romney to do his homework?"
"The question one might ask is, did TPC – which is
actually painstakingly and painfully nonpartisan – make questionable
assumptions to get its results, so that some other set of assumptions
might portray Romneynomics in a more favorable lig
ht? And the answer is no: TPC actually bent over backwards to literally
give Romney every possible benefit of the doubt.
...
So they’re actually giving Romney every possible benefit of the doubt – and still his plan is a redistribution from the middle class to the rich. In practice it would surely be much worse." (emphasis mine)
"Romney’s continued failure to provide enough
specifics about his plans certainly lets the Obama campaign openly
speculate about the impact. The president, by contrast, is required to
present a real budget with actual figures — but as we ha
ve shown, he can still play budget tricks to make the numbers add up. So
even more detail from Romney might not make the budget dispute any
clearer."
"There are signs we’ve hit bottom. Nothing to
worry about here. Why risk the possibility of a small outlay merely to
provide relief to hundreds of thousands of des
perate people? This is such a perfect statement of the way the American
elite has approached the economic crisis. They concede that it is a
problem. But there are other problems, you know."
"“Bottom line,” said Eric Toder co-director of the
Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, “if you look at income taxes only,
Obama’s statement is not true for most Americans. If you add in payroll taxes, however, it is probably true for lots of
people.” (emphasis mine)
No
matter how you slice it, Toder said, Romney’s tax rate is very low for
someone with his level of income. The average income tax rate for the
top 0.1 percent (which is where Romney falls) is 23.6 percent."
Nine takeaways on Romney’s tax plan
Romney's
tax plan will hopefully become his biggest handicap in this election.
This is the bottom line. Surveys show the American population generally
thinks Romney is more able to handle the debt and deficit than Obama.
Understanding the f
laws with Romney's plans for growth and fiscal reforms should help
Americans doubt Romney's competency on these core issues. It will help
ensure Romney either fixes the problems with his plan (doubtful, since
the problems are fundamental), or loses this election for the right
reasons. AEI Economics: Better Late Than Never
AEI is a bit late to the game, but they are early compared to many Republicans:
"In his podcast Pethokoukis asks the most
important question conservatives will have when they hear about this
policy for the fist time: Isn't this just promoti
ng inflation? In response, Sumner clearly explains why short term
inflation is not the same as the Carter-era inflation that many
conservatives fear might repeat itself." (emphasis mine)
""Mitt Romney won the Republican primary only by tearing down each of his opponents with ruthlessly negative campaig
ning," said campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. "His campaign has questioned whether the president understands what it is to be American, attacked his patriotism, and is currently running an ad that a former president [Clinton] and authors of the welfare-to-work legislation have called a flat-out lie. When the Romney campaign finally reaches the high ground, we look forward to greeting them there."" (emphasis mine)
One interesting thing here is that these negative ads seem to be benefiting Obama much more than Romney:
"Political scientist John Geer of Vanderbilt University, who has been testing voter reaction to ads, has found that some of Obama's ads attacking Romney have moved voters. But Romney's attacks, so far, have not.
"People know what they think of Obama. Their judgments can't easily be moved," he said." (emphasis mine)
In addition, some of these political ads may be relying on fact checker debunkings:
"Indeed, with the ad about the cancer death, the Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA Action, appeared to have gone the fact-checkers one better — exploiting attention to the ad's veracity to get free air time for a spot that has not appeared anywhere as a paid commercial. The ad has been replayed extensively on television news segments that have debated it and has been viewed more than half a million times on YouTube. The largest number of views have come from five states — California and four election battlegrounds, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, according to Priorities.
The Democratic super PAC has raised considerably less money than its Republican counterpart, making the free publicity particularly valuable.
Asked whether the prospect of controversy leading to free publicity was part of the calculation, Paul Begala, senior advisor to Priorities, did not hesitate.
"Absolutely," he said. "We're provocateurs."" (emphasis mine)
"Multiple members of Congress have warned that
slashing defense spending by $600 billion would devastate the military,
with Sen. Lindsey Graham this month predicting the cuts would deal "a
death blow to our ability to defend ourselves."
There's just one problem: The number they cite is wrong.
The
law triggering the cuts does not slash the military budget by $600
billion. That figure — which has also been widely cited in the media — overstates the amount of military cuts by more than $100 billion." (emphasis mine)
Paul Ryan’s imaginary expertise1
Professor
Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon explains how Paul Ryan doesn't
uderstand basic monetary or fiscal policy. His budget makes unre
alistic assumptions which are backed by few details. Is this what we
should expect from the "intellectual leader of the Republican Party."
America's Gun Violence Map
Keep in mind this is correlation, which does not necessarily mean causation. But causation is at least plausible.
"Firearm deaths are significantly lower in
states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes
are small, we
find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states
that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and
mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48)."
"We do know something for certain, however, and that is that this will happen again…and again and again. The reason is the law of large numbers that I will outline below that are disturbing enough that it really is now time to rethink our gun-control laws to include the prohibition of semi-automatic assault rifles like those Holmes’ allegedly used to murder 12 and wound another 58 in a matter of seconds. Had he not had such weapons—possessing, say, only a pistol purchased for self-defense—the tragedy would surely have been lessened. Thus, even though I am a life-long libertarian who champions freedom in all spheres of life and has previously opposed gun-control measures in principle (I do not personally enjoy hunting or recreational gun shooting), I now believe that the freedom of a few people to own WMMs (Weapons of Mass Murder) conflicts with the freedom of the rest of us to enter the public sphere without the chance of our ultimate freedom of life itself being cut short." (emphasis mine)
He then presents a few figures about psychopathy, violence, murder and comes up with this figure:
"this results in a rate of 3.14 Aurora-size mass murders per year in America, which is actually lower than the rate of around a dozen per year that we have been averaging the past half century, depending on what constitutes a mass murder (school-shootings alone that amount to more than one killed in one event happen on average once a year in the U.S.)." (emphasis mine)
Now what can be done? Nobody can really predict these things without some kind of police state:
"damage control is the only option we have, if we want to do something about this tragic social problem. And by damage control I mean gun control. Specifically, I mean outlawing all automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles for anyone who is not in law enforcement or the military. When the Second Amendment was written stating that citizens have a right to “keep and bear arms,” rifles took over a minute to load one bullet at a time. The most crazed 18th century American could not possibly commit mass murder because no WMMs existed at the time." (emphasis mine)
Should this be considered a loss of freedom? Michael Shermer makes a compelling case that it is actually quite the opposite:
"The principle of freedom states that all people are free to think, believe, and act as they choose, so long as they do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. But the freedom for me to swing my arm ends at your nose. The freedom for you to own any gun you like is in conflict with my freedom to interact freely with my fellow citizens in public spaces when so many madmen mingle among us. We should ban assault weapons of all kinds. We already disallow private citizens to own nuclear weapons, missiles, grenade launchers, and the like. WMMs that can be secreted into a movie theater should be categorized among those we can no longer tolerate. This is no loss of freedom. It is, in fact, an increase in freedom—the freedom to move about our living spaces without fear of being gunned down in cold blood. " (emphasis mine)
David Frum: Fear drives opposition to gun control
While
opposition to gun control has been increasing, ownership of guns has
been decreasing. In addition, while violent crime has been on a decline
over the past few decades, Americans feel more at risk.
"Proponents of gun control are baffled that
horrific massacres such as the one in Aurora, Colorado, do not lead to
stricter gun control."
"The more
terrifyingly criminal the world looks, the more ineffective law
enforcement seems, the more Americans demand the right to deadly weapons
with which to defend themselves."
yet
"The police can protect you, and will, and do. And
a gun in the house is not a guarantee of personal security -- it is
instead a standing invitation to family tragedy. The cold dead hands
from which they pry the gun are very unlikely to be the hands of a
heroic minuteman defending home and hearth against intruders. They are
much more likely to be the hands of a troubled adolescent or a clumsy
child."
"To be clear: I'm not disputing that guns sometimes save lives. They must. I'm certainly not disputing that the Constitution secures the right of individual gun ownership. It does. I'm questioning the claim that widespread gun ownership mak
es America a safer place. The research supporting that claim is pretty weak -- and is contradicted above all by the plain fact that most other advanced countries have many fewer guns and also many fewer crimes and criminals."
"The right-wing theory of the case in the Fast & Furious
scandal is that the Obama administration hoped to generate demand for
gun control in the United States by allowing the export of deadly guns
to Mexico.
Yet demand for gun control doe
s not respond even to mass murders inside the United States.
If you were a secret gun-snatcher, would you ever imagine that gun crime inside Mexico would produce a better result?
AP FACT CHECK: Treaty unlikely to curb US gun rights
The NRA, as well as other pro-gun groups are on a continual unjustified scare campaign. There is no hope if the leader of the most popular mainstream gun rights organization is a conspiracy obsessed nut job.
"So Romney is correct to say that any bombs found at Holmes’ apartment were illegal. But all of the weapons alleged to have been used by Holmes at the movie theater that night — including a controversial semi-automatic rifle once banned by federal law — were obtained legally." (emphasis mine)
"The City of New York commissioned an investigation of Internet gun sales. The report said on 10 websites, it found over 25,000 weapons for sale.The report said that over 60 percent of sellers allowed a purchase to move forward even when th
e alleged buyer said he didn’t believe he would pass a background check."
There has been a big buzz around Obama's words at a July 17, 2012 speech in front of a Roanoke, Virginia Fire Station.
Of particular interest to Obama’s critics was a specific section of the
speech (~33:30):
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me --
because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if
you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get
there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be
because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.
It
must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you
something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There
was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this
unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.
Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you
didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get
invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all
the companies could make money off the Internet.”(emphasis mine)
As predicted, the Romney campaign took the highlighted section out of
context for a campaign commercial:
"President Obama recently said: ‘If you've got a business, you didn't build
that. Somebody else made that happen.’
"Clearly, this President doesn't understand how our economy works.”
Obviously the Romney campaign took this line out of context. Watching the
video, it is fairly clear Obama was talking about
“roads and bridges” when he said “you didn’t build that.” Obama confirmed
this in a video response to Romney:
However, the goal of this post is not to once again debunk this criticism.
This post is meant to respond to the criticism of those who have actually
taken the quote in context, yet still got the message wrong. Charles
Krauthammer makes one of these mistakes in his column
"And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama. It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired you. It “created the Internet.” It represents the embodiment of “we’re in this together” social solidarity that, in Obama’s view, is the essential origin of individual and national achievement.
To say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and freedom."
Someone could make this argument. Obama didn’t exactly mention the elements
of society that exist outside government. So this is a fair criticism, but
later he makes a few pretty glaring mistakes:
"Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a
controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s
variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the
individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not
the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.”
Now the first thing that should be easily refuted is the idea that schools
are the constant, or that the only variables are “the energy, enterprise,
risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual.” It is no secret that
schools are far from equal. We all get different teachers. We all get
different classmates. We all get different levels of funding. We all get
different school philosophies. As Krauthammer
pointed out earlier, other elements of social society are variables as well.
Most important of these is that not everyone has the same kind of family. In
fact, the income level of your family largely determines your own income level, meaning that this may be more than just another variable, it may be one of the most heavily weighted variables in the equation.
If Krauthammer's point is that, if we were to make all those factors constant, including factors such as family and culture (Romney's Favorite), we would still have different outcomes, then yes he has a point. There are people who are smarter and more hard working than others and they would rise above everyone else. But Obama didn't ignore this point. Politifact puts it very well:
"Romney cherry-picked a quote that made it sound like Obama was dismissive of businesses when in fact he was making a point that success comes from the combination of "individual initiative" and the fact that "we do things together."" (emphasis mine)
If the "we do things together" part is constant among all people, then the "individual initiative" part becomes the only factor. The problem is that the "we do things together" part is not constant. And that fact underlies Obama's point. A bit more on this later.
Most of the rest of Krauthammer’s article deals with how liberals and
conservatives differ in regards to policy recommendations. However, this has
little to do with this article. My purpose in this article is to get the
facts straight over what Obama said and what liberals generally mean when
talking about this subject. I do not aim to criticize or endorse any
solution to the reality observed here. I may do that in a later post. Then
again, I may not. Anyway, where Krauthammer most got the message wrong is in
the following:
“Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of
entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads,
bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.
Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of
Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der
Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did
Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.”
In order to understand Krauthammer’s fallacy here, we need to understand the
strongest and most honest interpretation of Obama’s speech, as well as the
message coming from the left about this subject. This argument is that the
“the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the
individual” is not alone responsible for success. There are other necessary
factors, specifically collective society. These can include mundane factors
such as roads, to significant factors such as education and family income.
There is no such thing as a fully “self-made man.” Everyone owes their
success to individual initiative AND outside opportunity. This argument has
been famously articulated and defended in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book,
Outliers. Gladwell goes even further to suggest there are many
seemingly insignificant factors that contribute to success in certain
fields. However, the central point is clear, although the “the energy,
enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual” is
certainly necessary for success, it is not sufficient. There are many causes
to success. You can argue over just how significant each cause is, but these
causes exist nonetheless.
Essentially, Krauthammer is committing a fallacy by failing to distinguish between necessary and sufficient causes. Obama is saying that the government plays a necessary role in the success of entrepreneurs (and in Krauthammer's analogy, so does the post office). As Krauthammer eluded to earlier,
civil society also plays a necessary role. Yet, this is not a sufficient
role. As Obama points out, there are
plenty of smart, hard-working Americans who are not always successful. I
doubt Krauthammer would be so naive as to pretend this is not true.
“Obama combines two ideas: the familiar and broadly acceptable idea in Elzabeth Warren's speech—and a second, much more destabilizing idea.
Obama's second idea is that success is to a great extent random, a matter of luck. You think you succeeded because you were smart or hard-working? Listen—a lot of smart and hard-working people don't succeed.
...
President Obama's stray sentences however point to a bolder conclusion. If
it's not brains or work that account for success, what is it? The answer
must be … luck. Not maybe entirely luck, but luck to a great degree. By
definition, however, luck is amoral. Nobody can deserve luck, otherwise he
wouldn't be lucky. To the extent success is due to luck, success is
undeserved—and to the exten[t] that success is undeserved, the successful have
no very strong claim to the proceeds of their success. Whereas Warren
suggests that the wealthy should be taxed to repay tangible benefits they
have personally received, Obama is indicating a possibility that the wealthy
should be taxed … because their wealth is to a great extent an accident of
fate.” (emphasis mine)
Frum's logic sounds similar to the creationist claim that the theory of evolution relies purely on chance. Although chance does play a necessary role in the theory of evolution , non-random mechanisms like natural selection also play a necessary role as well, since chance alone cannot create the complex life we see today. Similarly, although luck and opportunity do play a necessary role in success, non-random mechanisms like individual initiativealso play a necessary role as well, since chance alone cannot result in individual success1. As a result, it would be trivial to think that just because luck is necessary for success that we should also ignore what else is necessary for success. After all, the successful person did put in the "energy, enterprise,
risk-taking, hard work and genius" to form the business.
As Frum points out, all Obama uses this argument for is to push for a return to the Clinton tax rates. But it is not entirely clear what policy proposals necessarily follow from the fact that success is due to both luck and individual initiative. The main purpose in pointing this out is to help influence political thought. The poor aren't necessarily lazy, incompetent, and/or stupid and the rich aren't necessarily smartest and/or hardest working among us. But the rich are likely smarter and/or harder working than the majority of us. So does that mean they deserve everything they have? Nothing they have? Most of what they have? Or is it even for anyone else to decide but themselves? The answer does not necessarily follow.
And I am not sure why this is so controversial. After all, nobody complains when a quarterback or an Olympic gold medalist thanks everyone who helped them get where they are today. To accept an academy award and not pay tribute to others is considered rude. How is business any different?
So for those of us who have put forward the "energy, enterprise,
risk-taking, hard work and genius" to get where we are in life, how should we think of our success? New York Times columnist David Brooks has an answer. And it may be my favorite so far.
"Great companies, charities and nations were built by groups of individuals who each vastly overestimated their own autonomy. As an ambitious executive, it’s important that you believe that you will deserve credit for everything you achieve. As a human being, it’s important for you to know that’s nonsense."
1 Although one can argue that, since individual nature is is a product of biology and experiences, which are almost entirely not under an individual's control, individual initiative must be based on chance as well. But that is a separate argument from the one being made here.
"If Romney was trying to prove that businesses only succeed on the backs of Galtian ubermensches with no external help, he's mostly proved the opposite point. But fortunately for the Romney campaign, this particular attack benefits from a widespread American cultural delusion that success has nothing to do with structural advantages and everything to do with individual excellence, or that you can't be proud of your accomplishments if you acknowledge the collaborative efforts of others on your behalf."(emphasis mine)
"A year later, S&P’s historic move looks like a non-event. Long-term interest rates are sharply lower, the Dow industrials reversed course and is now up more than 1,600 points. The dollar has rallied, and gold prices are down from where they were when S&P lowered the boom."
"The nuclear-powered Curiosity, the size of a small car, is packed with scientific tools, cameras and a weather station. It sports a robotic arm with a power drill, a laser that can zap distant rocks, a chemistry lab to sniff for the chemical building blocks of life and a detector to measure dangerous radiation on the surface."
"Q: Are Obama’s early records “sealed”?
A: No. Many records that presidential candidates don’t ordinarily release do remain confidential, but they are not “sealed” by a court. The 16 claims in a widely distributed graphic are mostly false
or distorted."
...
"In some cases, the records this screed claims are “sealed” are actually public, and open for anyone to see. Other supposedly “sealed” records are normally private documents that Obama hasn’t released — and that other presidential candidates haven’t released either.
So as with earlier versions, this is little more than an attempt to raise suspicions by asking for records that aren’t ordinarily made public, without any evidence that those records contain anything derogatory. "
"To forestall policy on climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board routinely downplays scientific consensus, overstates the cost of taking action, and claims that politics, not science, motivate those concerned about the climat
e. But an analysis of more than 100 editorials from 1976 to present shows that the Wall Street Journal used these same rhetorical tactics in previous decades on acid rain and ozone depletion and they did not stand the test of time."
"Pollak is correct that the Emergency Committee ad does not directly say that Obama’s travel record was unusual for a president, but it certainly suggests that. While there may have been good political reasons for Obama to make a trip to Je
rusalem, the basic frame of the ad is misleading, especially the claim that he’s traveled all through the Middle East at the expense of a visit to Israel.
The Romney ad also misleadingly suggests Obama’s failure to visit Israel is unusual since it asks, “Who shares your values?”
Obama may have failed the Woody Allen test, but his travel record to Israel is par for the course for American presidents."
Obama's wartime presidency
PolitiFact.com consultes analysts from Brookings, Heritage, CFR, and their own records on Obama's handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
"But what many Republicans expect to be their strongest card in Pennsylvania is one that they are often reluctant to tout: a new voter identification law that requires a specific form of ID in order to cast a ballot."
No, Republican's aren
't keeping the real intent of voter ID laws a secret
"At a June GOP rally, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai sparked outrage among voting-rights proponents when he trumpeted the new law as an accomplishment that would pay political dividends to the Republican nominee."
"Many of these schools, Kopplin notes, rely on Pensecola-based A Beka Book curriculum or Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach their pupils Bible-based "facts," such as the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of
pseudoscience that researcher Rachel Tabachnick and writer Thomas Vinciguerra have thankfully pored over so the rest of world doesn't have to." (emphasis mine)
"Romney, while serving as Massachusetts governor, had once petitioned the White House to loosen employment rules for those on welfare
....
The Obama administration recently announced plans to issue waivers to states that wanted "to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies and procedures" to improve employment among needy families. It said it was acting after receiving requests from some of the nation's governors, including Republicans in Utah and Nevada. But senior GOP lawmakers attacked the move as an attempt to undermine the welfare-to-work requirements in effect for more than a decade." (emphasis mine)
"Hobson: Well of course, the Republicans only had that debt ceiling fight, they said, because they were worried about the nation's huge debt and deficits.
Lofgren: Superficially that's true, but from what I saw in the House and Senate budget committees, it's a kind of phony claim, because they always subordinate deficit reduction to giving tax breaks to their wealthy contributors. So I think the deficit hawk claim is fraudulent -- it's simply bait to get concerned Americans to vote for them."
"The president asserted that because of the law, small business and individual premiums “will go down.” But the reality is much more complicated than that.
The law’s provisions, especially the requirement for essential benefits, will almost certainly increase premiums, though tax subsidies will help mitigate the impact for a little over half of the people in the exchanges. But a lot of other people — such as a young male who currently has a plan that does not include all of the required benefits — are likely going to have sticker shock when they see what happens to their premiums starting in 2014.
As we said, you don’t get something for nothing. And the president should be more careful about suggesting that is the case, especially when discussing a complex law with still-uncertain ramifications."
"The men who helped awaken the conscience of a
nation expressed disappointment at the idea that Owens' experience of
segregation could lead to a career of anti-gay rights advocacy and a
role with an organization that is trying to use the me
mory of the civil rights struggle itself to sow division between
African-Americans and gay rights supporters. "William Owens is operating
outside of the transparency and the openness of Martin Luther King Jr.
or Rosa Parks," Lawson says. "If he was in Nashville during part of the
time I was there, he was not paying attention to my teachings. My
teachings were not about practicing social or cultural discrimination
against anybody.""
"They want a science-based, pragmatic approach based on the reality that we live in a society saturated with guns and need better ways of preventing harm from them."
Well I am finally done with classes for a while so I think it is time to start posting again. My plan is to start posting on a weekly basis, although this is not written in stone. I have a few posts started I've been working on and hopefully I should have them out in the next few weeks. Among these are:
David Frum suggests that working class individuals shouldn't be so quick to embrace Obama's new Immigration Policy. Does he have a point?
I am going to look at the healthcare systems of the top countries in the conservative Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. How do they compare to ObamaCare? Is socialized medicine really a threat to individual freedom, as well as the free market in general?
I am going to write a defense of what has been colorfully called "Slacktivism." Is it generally a good thing? Does it breed laziness? Or is criticism of slacktivism just pretentious?
I am going to find out just how consistent Politifact.com is about using net job figures, verses other figures, when deciding ratings.
I may also list some things to remember about fact checking sites (or media altogether) when trying to detect bias.
In addition to these posts, I will include a list of a few articles I think may be worth reading from the previous week. These will usually be unrelated to the post itself. It is mostly my attempt to resurrect a simplified version of my old "Weekly Roundup" articles.
"Gun talk has been almost anathema at the White House. Obama signed a bill in 2009 that allows people to carry loaded guns into most national parks; in 2011, he largely avoided a discussion -- to the anger of many activists -- about strengthening gun laws following the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Obama received a failing grade from the nation’s preeminent gun control group, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence."
So why again is the NRA campaigning so fiercely against Obama? It can't be because he is a liberal now could it...?
"If unpleasant truths would get candidates elected, they would state them frankly. But they seldom do that, because so few of us in the public want to hear unpleasant truths. Stating such things is considered a gaffe.
Furthermore, humans naturally filter out evidence that weighs against what they want to believe. It’s called “confirmation bias,” and we all have it. So candidates tell us what we want to hear."
This is exactly why we need non-partisan fact checking operations.
Another thing I noticed that is worth pointing out:
"the federal government accounted for 43.6 percent of all U.S. health care spending in 2009, before the law [ObamaCare] was signed, and government actuaries predict that in 2015, when the law [ObamaCare] is fully effective, that will rise to 47.4 percent. What’s more, much or most of that 3.8 percentage point increase would have happened anyway as the postwar baby boom generation reaches age 65 and goes on Medicare. So the law is no “takeover.” Rather, it’s a modest, incremental change in the existing system."(emphasis mine)
Conservative Professor Jonathan Adler makes the case for action to combat climate change in accordance with conservative principles. This is the kind of conversation we should be getting from the right.
“This is of particular concern because these effects will be most severe in those nations that are both least able to adapt and least responsible for contributing to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
It is a well established principle in the Anglo-American legal tradition that one does not have the right to use one’s own property in a manner that causes harm to one’s neighbor. . .
My argument is that the same general principles that lead libertarians and conservatives to call for greater protection of property rights should lead them to call for greater attention to the most likely effects of climate change.
I believe the United States should adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax, much like that suggested by NASA’s James Hansen. . . [and] that is fully rebated to taxpayers on a per capita basis. This would, in effect, shift the incidence of federal taxes away from income and labor and onto energy consumption and offset some of the potential regressivity of a carbon tax. For conservatives who have long supported shifting from an income tax to a sales or consumption tax, and oppose increasing the federal tax burden, this should be a no brainer."
The carbon tax solution has actually been embraced by more conservatives than you may realize, including Romney adviser Gregory Mankiw.
Paul Krugman: Still A Phantom Menace"
Although this recession continues to surprise Economists of all stripes, none have been more off-target than Austrians.
"The Democratic message is shaping up as: "The Republicans/the Fed/the Europeans wrecked the recovery, and we weren't smart enough or tough enough to stop them. Vote us."
The Republican message: "Obama could not fix the mess we made. Vote us.""
"So, more than four years ago I predicted a very slow recovery. Why? Because recessions like those of 1990-91, 2001, and 2007-2009 have very different origins from recessions like 1974-75 or the double-dip recession of 1979-82." (emphasis mine)
"Yet in almost every way, today's economic problems are exactly the opposite of those of 30 years ago. Then we had inflation, today we are struggling against deflation. Then we had weak corporate profits, today corporations are more profitable than ever. Then we had slow productivity growth, today it is high. Then the to-individual income-tax rate was 70%. Today it is 36%. Then energy regulations produced energy shortages. Today the removal of banking regulations has produced an abundance of debt." (emphasis mine)
"...to many historians and political scientists - and to actual socialists as well - the persistent claim that Obama is a socialist lacks credence."
And what has been the right's latest silver bullet?
"When President Barack Obama's re-election campaign unveiled its new slogan, some conservative critics were quick to pounce.
"Forward," they asserted, is a word long associated with Europe's radical left."
So I'm assuming the same can be said of Republican Governor Scott Walker:
"...the tax increases would pale in comparison to those imposed to help finance World War II. Before the 1940s, the individual income tax applied to only a small percentage of the population. By the end of war, the income tax was levied on most working people, with a top tax rate of 94 percent on income above $200,000." (emphasis mine)
And my favorite part:
"House Republicans have passed a budget for next year - which Romney has embraced - that would raise just $7 billion less in taxes than Obama's budget in 2013. That's the equivalent of a rounding error, when you're talking about revenues of $2.7 trillion." (emphasis mine)
An ad from the Romney campaign strains facts to make its point that federal grants and loans to green-energy companies were improperly steered to Obama’s political backers, and that federal money was wasted on failing companies that are now laying off employees.
It claims the “inspector general said contracts were steered to ‘friends and family.’ ” But that’s not exactly what the inspector general said. And in the year since he said he was investigating such alleged “schemes,” no public charges have been made, at least not yet.
The ad highlights the struggles — company losses, nose-diving stock and layoffs — at several companies that received substantial Department of Energy loans and grants. The ad fails to note, however, that most of the layoffs at those companies were overseas, or that the projects backed by DOE are largely moving along as planned. An independent review of the DOE program says its failure rate has been better than anticipated.
The ad uses an inflated figure from a partisan source to quantify loans and grants that went to Obama donors.
(emphasis mine)
Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; in reality, a majority of government workers are employed providing either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers and firefighters). (emphasis mine)
"...cutbacks in federal government spending — precisely what Republicans such as Romney have demanded — led to the closure of the Nemschoff facility in Iowa, not the health care law.
"As for that Chamber of Commerce survey, we suggest that Obama skip reading that. This is yet another one of those online surveys from which you can draw virtually no broader conclusions.
"As the American Association for Public Opinion Research warns: “Surveys based on self-selected volunteers do not have that sort of known relationship to the target population and are subject to unknown, non-measurable biases. Even if opt-in surveys are based on probability samples drawn from very large pools of volunteers, their results still suffer from unknown biases stemming from the fact that the pool has no knowable relationships with the full target population.”" (emphasis mine)
"In pursuit of a reality check, take a look at this quote: "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10% of his salary, and that's crazy. It's time we stopped it."
That might sound straight out of President Barack Obama "Buffett Tax" playbook -- which conservatives routinely attack as "class warfare" -- but in fact it is the sainted Reagan speaking in 1985."
