The Loan Racket
Ever wonder how lobbyists and bribeable congressmen managed to screw over college kids in the name of higher profits for private student loan vendors? Of course you wondered. Something to chew over as you watch me on television.
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April 15, 2007 - April 21, 2007 Archives
April 15, 2007
McCain's War
For all the discussion of the various Democratic plans to handle Iraq, it's worth saying that they all have the common element of aiming to de-escalate American involvement in that country. John McCain's plan, by contrast, is to pray really hard that the additional forces provided by the surge find a pony. "I have no Plan B. If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one. But I cannot give you a good alternative because if I had a good alternative, maybe we could consider it now." What's more:
He said that if the Bush administration’s plan had not produced visible signs of progress by the time a McCain presidency began, he might be forced — if only by the will of public opinion — to end American involvement in Iraq.
There are, in short, no circumstances whatsoever under which McCain would end the war on the grounds that John McCain thought ending the war was the right thing to do. He'll end the war, if at all, only in response to unremitting public hostility and his own political opportunism. This, too, is essentially the line David Brooks trotted out in his pro-McCain column -- that there's no quantity of resources that shouldn't be wasted in Iraq no matter how high that's too much to expend on any possible chance of success, no matter how long the odds or how tortured the definition of success.
Indiscriminate
Tyler Cowen on Maggie Mahar's Money-Driven Medicine concludes: "Single-payer systems will improve matters only if you think the government will make wise decisions about the supply chain. Otherwise we are choking off supply indiscriminately by lowering prices to providers." I try not to make overly grandiose claims about health care policy because I know full well that it's a complicated subject about which others know more than I. But how bad an idea, really, is indiscriminate supply-choking?
The evidence suggests that health care suppliers are much better at selling people health care services than they are at improving health outcomes. Choke off supply indiscriminately and you can save a lot of money without making people's health outcomes much worse. To generate a significant adverse health impact relative to the status quo, you'd have to be actively trying to produce a bad result. What's more, if you don't quite choke of supply indiscriminately, but instead isolate a relatively small number of services that are uncontroversiall cheap and effective (your proverbial vaccines, pre- and neo-natal care, cholesterol medications) things might actually get better, since poor people underconsume that stuff.
Meanwhile, the range of alternative things to spend money on that would do far more than health care to make people healthier is huge. Better inter-city trains and regional mass transit would mean less driving, which would be a huge life saver. It would also lead to somewhat more walking, which would be good for people. You could subsidize fresh produce, or gym memberships, or build more public pools and better parks to get people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Lead paint abatement. Virtually anything is a potentially more effective means of improving health outcomes than is health care. That's how I see it, at least. I basically stole this idea from Philip Longman who has a somewhat more draconian take on the issue than I do.
Classic Propaganda
It being the primary mission of this blog to cover the intersection of comic books and foreign policy, I can't avoid linking to this issue of All-Star Comics from the 1940s in which the Justice Society of America explains the truth about Germany to one confused young American. The full issue comes to me via the comment thread to thsi post from John Holbo. It's interesting that this is so much less plausible than the propaganda mounted on behalf of the Iraq War even though intervention into World War II seems eminently justifiable on grounds that don't involve this sort of craziness.
Houston, We Have a Kick-Ass Starting Lineup
82games.com's stats looking not at "five man units" instead of teams make for interesting reading. In particular, it seems like a good method of getting at the playoff odds of a team like Houston that's had injury problems but seems healthy these days. And, indeed, the exercise suggests that Alston / McGrady / Battier / Hayes / Yao is an incredibly effective lineup, one that simply hasn't played that many minutes over the course of the season because of injuries. I really, really wouldn't count Houston out as a strong chance for a second-round upset.
Who's Who in Iraq Advising?
Jason Horowitz writing for The New York Observer tells the tale of how the Democratic candidates' "Iraq point-people meet monthly at a Washington restaurant for a lunch presided over by former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke."
Spy Versus Spy
Back in the day, the US security establishment had a clever idea. Back during Iyad Allawi's administration we founded a CIA-funded "Iraqi" intelligence service under the authority of Muhammed Shahwani, a Sunni Arab ex-Baathist who, Allawi-style, had worked with the CIA in trying to foment anti-Saddam activities by members of the Iraqi security forces. After Allawi's departure, Shahwani's intelligence service marched on, in essence working for the American government rather than the Iraqi one. In response, it seems, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki founded a second intelligence service that would be loyal to him.
Spencer Ackerman remarks that the alternative intel service's rise "will further entrench Shahwani. Waili serves as the manifestation of the fears that led the U.S. to install Shahwani in the first place: the return to a mukhabarat-style security structure, this one loyal to the Shiites instead of Saddam."
"Porcupine Racetrack"
Last week a conversation somehow turned from Wet, Hot American Summer to The State and I found myself locating and downloading an audio copy of their "Porcupine Racetrack" which I've now been playing for everyone I know. It's every bit as hilarious as I remembered. But unfortunately, I can't seem to acquire any video of the sketch through either legal or illegal means. Any advice?
UPDATE: When last I checked on YouTube, all the copies had been taken down, but here's a new one:
Gonzalez
I don't really know what to say about Alberto Gonzalez's op-ed and testimony preview. He seems to sense that he can't just stand pat, so he's kinda sorta apologizing for . . . well . . . well . . . well it's not totally clear what he's apologizing for. To be sorry, you need to be admitting to having done something wrong. But he's certainly not owning up to the fact that there was a concerted campaign to get US Attorneys to gin up "voter fraud" cases, to prosecute Democrats on corruption charges, and to avoid prosecuting Republicans and that the purge was part of this campaign.
At this point, however, there's so much circumstantial evidence that there was such a campaign and so much evidence of a coverup by the White House and so much evidence of people lying to congress in their testimony it's very hard to see how Gonzalez can offer a"measured apology for his mistakes in the dismissal of eight United States attorneys." Which mistakes? Apologize for what? Either the line has to be that US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and therefore it's perfectly appropriate to fire them for refusing to serve naked partisan interests and there's nothing to apologize for, or else he needs to own up to what happened.
April 16, 2007
Crying on the Inside
To be sure, it was in a quasi-meaningless game, but I'd sure like to know what was up with Tim Duncan getting a second technical foul (and thus kicked out of the game) for what looked for all the world to be no greater crime than simply laughing while sitting on the bench. Consider that Duncan's reputation consists of equal parts boringess and good citizenship, it seems especially bizarre that he of all superstars would be treated in this manner. At this point in NBA history, the Spurs have become tedious, but they surely don't deserve to be losing the big rivalry games in this manner.
What The Voters Want
Greg Sargent highlights some neglected material from a new CBS poll (PDF) released over the weekend. In particular, by a margin of 49-44 voters say congress rather than the White House should "have the final say about troop levels in Iraq." What's more, 58 percent of voters say congress should fund the war only with a timeline for withdrawal. Yet, somehow, you won't see the press -- or many congressional Democrats -- acting like this is true.
Taxation: Perhaps Some Day With Some Representation
There's going to be a rally today at 2:30 PM at Freedom Plaza (13th and Pennsylvania) followed by a march to the Capitol in support of the bill to give DC a real representative in the US House just like those of us who live here are American citizens or something. Those of you who are enjoying congressional representation can help us out by clicking here and contacting your members of congress on our behalf.
The Irrelevance of Gonzalez
Marty Lederman makes the case that the focus on Alberto Gonzalez is misplaced. In his key actions, the AG "simply took Sampson's word for it, because he was confident that Sampson's unadorned list reflected Rove's and Miers's wishes." Thus, "insofar as Congress's objective is to determine whether anything unlawful or unconstitutional was involved in the U.S. Attorney dismissals" what's needed is the information from the White House that Fred Fielding has been declining to hand over. Information about what Rove, Bush, and Miers were up to -- not just stuff in the Justice Department.
Who's the Boss?
There's something telling about the way Carville & Begala keep antagonizing their would-be friends by appearing on CNN to defend Dom Imus. Normally when you hear liberal grousing about Carville's CNN spots lately it's about things like his habit of occassionally going on the network to disparage Barack Obama or John Edwards without him being presented properly as the Hillary Clinton partisan -- not a former member of her staff, but an inner circle of "kitchen cabinet" advisors -- that he is.
Clinton herself, however, has led admirably on this issue, doing the right thing substantively for the country. It's also been the right move politically for herself -- appealing with the base in general, but perhaps more important providing a reminder that putting women in positions of power really would make a difference. But Carville doesn't have her back. Doesn't even have her back to the extent that he was willing to, say, argue Imus' case privately but not speak publicly on the issue. No. Clinton's made taking a lead role on this issue a priority last week, and there's Carville with the knives.
Which tells us relatively little about Carville or Clinton or Imus as such. Rather, it reminds us of the fundamental truth that's all-too-infrequently spoken -- that for all the talk of "interest groups" influencing the Democratic Party absolutely nobody is more influential than the essentially permanent members of the consulting aristocracy. In an important sense, they don't really work for their clients, mere politicians who come and go. Their clients don't quite work for them, but they are subservient to them.
Human Rights Groups: Defending Human Rights
A reading writes in to note that in today's New York Times alone you can find researches with Human Rights Watch noted as important sources for articles on election fraud in Nigeria, and on Taliban War crimes in Afghanistan. Yesterday, we had HRW getting media play in an article on the violent suppression of a peaceful protest in Russia. And, of course, back on April 1 HRW was cited in a story about Guantanamo Bay.
In short, Human Rights Watch is, for better or for worse, fighting the good fight for human rights consistently and around the world. Nevertheless, the right has consistently tried to foster the impression that the human rights community's criticisms of US policies in Guantanamo and regarded detentions more generally are fostered by hostility to the United States. Such groups also stand accused of "ignoring" human rights violations in whatever country happens to be the right-wing's designated Enemy of the Month. In fact, however, both these strains of argumentation would only appear credible to people who didn't have any actual concern for human rights and therefore remained studiously ignorant of what actually goes on in the world and who does what to bring attention to it. People like, well, conservative hectorers whose interest in the subject extends precisely as far as it's useful to generate support for starting wars.
The Metapolitics of Resentment
I've never addressed the growing (and growing, and growing) pile of evidence that those Duke lacross guys were innocent of the rape charges brought against them. When the story first broke I didn't write about it, because it was a little tangential to my main interests and because it's not the sort of thing I was inclined to jump to conclusions about in quasi-print. My inclination in a case like that is to believe the woman, but an investigation was clearly underway. At any rate, events unfolded and I continued to not write about it. The system, it seems to me, pretty much worked. Accusations of the sort that were leveled should be taken seriously and investigated, and innocent people should go free when the evidence doesn't support charging them with crimes.
For months, however, every time I blog on anything even vaguely race-related, I'm struck by the sheer volume of people who want to respond "what about the Duke lacrosse case?" Well, I think, what about it? Then I read something like this from Victor Davis Hanson who really doesn't cover these issues either, and it hits me. There's this huge block of people out there, primarily reasonably prosperous middle-aged middle class white men, who in all genuineness seem to believe that what went down there is emblematic of broad-based social problem. They see the Imus controversy through the same lens -- the lens that makes them think the issue here is Al Sharpton or hip-hop. It's a mentality that believes -- deeply and sincerely -- that the middle-aged white dude just can't get a fair shake in this country. Not in this day and age. What with the Sharptons and the feminist bloggers and all. Next thing you know, there'll probably be dudes marrying dudes, and women and black folk running for president!
And, well, I just don't know what to say to a mentality like that. I certainly think that lots and lots of people in this country -- including, naturally, lots of middle-aged people and lots of white people and lots of male people -- do, in fact, have a hard time getting a fair shake in the contemporary United States. But the idea that middle-aged white men as a class are being persecuted, well, well, not so much.
Duke and the System
A friend notes, over IM, that "the reason the system worked in the Duke case was because these were upper-middle class white folk with good lawyers." Exactly. I should have said that in the initial post. This is precisely what makes the sense of beseigement, persecution, and systematic abuse that's surrounded this controversy so baffling. Obviously, what happened to those kids wasn't right and I feel bad for them over what they've been through. That said, on the whole prosperous white men are treated very well by the criminal justice system.
Poor defendants -- especially minority ones -- are railroaded regularly thanks to desperately inadequate legal representation. Nobody speaks up for these people. George W. Bush for years quite literally signed their death warrants. But I don't see any of the Duke-agitators pressing for increased funding of public defenders offices or any other reforms that would address the real systemic problems facing criminal defendants who don't deserve to have the finger pointed at them. The Duke case attracts attention precisely because it's so un-representative of how sexual assault and the criminal justice system play out in the United States. It's a man bites dog story. In the real world, though, we don't demand that attention be paid to the urgent problem of men biting dogs.
Does Rudy Giuliani Want to Win
Rudy Giuliani attempts a tried and true failed strategy for persuading Republicans to nominate a baby killer:
Giuliani made his sharpest case for moving beyond social issues this weekend in Iowa, telling The Des Moines Register, "Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we're for, not if we're a party that's known for what we're against."Asked about abortion, he said, "Our party has to get beyond issues like that."
Rich Lowry is displeased and rightly so -- there's no reason to think cultural conservatism is an electoral liability for the GOP, and there's certainly no reason to think that given the current political climate. Indeed, traditionalism is probably the one GOP plank that hasn't been discredited in some obvious way by George W. Bush's conduct in office. I think the anti-choice view is wrong, but nothing has happened that I would expect to change people's opinions about this stuff.
Change Is a Good Thing
Bob Kuttner has high hopes: "Three times in my political adulthood, we have seen the exhaustion of a conservative ideology and presidency." He also has concerns: "And twice, the electorate ousted Republicans only to get centrist Democrats, who ran more competent administrations but did little to redress the structure of financial inequality in America." So far, so good. This particular worry, however, seems way off-base to me:
No liberal can fail to be stirred by Barack Obama. Given the immense damage done by Bush and company, nobody would be better able to redeem the promise of America, both at home and globally. But though he is not yet the front-runner, Obama already has a touch of front-runner disease -- being distressingly vague about what he'd actually do. He is trying to be both a progressive and someone beyond conventional categories. Alas, there's no such thing.
Concern that Obama's been imprecise about his policy vision is fair game. I think, however, that liberals will be making a huge tactical and strategic error if we simply equate political figures who seek to portray themselves as "beyond conventional categories" as squishy moderates. Being perceieved as beyond conventional categories is, simply put, a useful quality in a politician. Similarly, I know a lot of liberals who are put off by Obama's complaints about "the smallness of our politics" -- viewing them as Broderish complaints about partisaship. The line, however, is perfectly consistent with Kuttnerish complaints about a certain kind of narrow technocracy standing in lieu of forcefully advocating change. And, indeed, it seems to me that if one is hoping to advocate forcefully for change it makes a lot more sense to portray said advocacy as an effort to move beyond the smallness of our politics than as a self-conscious effort to make politics more hard-edged.
What one needs to know as a political pundit is a bit more about the policy substance, not more red meatish rhetoric.
Making the Point
Excellent. Via Scott Lemieux, what Radley Balko said about the Duke lacross case.
Virginia Tech
Holy shit. I'm just now seeing the magnitude of this disaster. I'm absolutely speechless.
The Calculus Tax
This being Tax Day and all, I feel like I should repeat my occassional plea to make the tax system more complicated. In short, income tax brackets are a bad idea. The flat tax, of course, is a worse idea. What's needed is not a flat tax, but a curved tax, where rates are a smooth function of adjusted gross income. The total amount you owe could be calculated as the area beneath the curve -- an integral of the function. Back in the day, this was impractical because most people can't do calculus so the idea of a series of "brackets" was implemented as a mathematically tractable alternative. Thanks to computers, however, this is no longer a problem and calculating taxes owed according to a single function would be simple even if the function itself was very complicated.
Tommy Thompson
This has got to be one of the most egregious cases of digging yourself deeper that I've ever heard of. Tommy Thompson is speaking to a Jewish group and says:
"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money," Republican hopeful and former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson said Monday. "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition."
Okay, bad move. But one could imagine a recovery. But not like this:
After being made aware that his remarks were problematic, Thompson returned to the podium and told the several hundred activists assembled, "I just want to clarify something because I didn't in any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things."What I was referring to ladies and gentlemen is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. You have been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that and if anybody took what I said wrong, I apologize. I may have mischaracterized it. You are very successful. I applaud you for that.
But it actually gets worse:
During the speech, Thompson also called himself the governor of the first state to buy "Jewish bonds" -- presumably meaning Israel Bonds -- and said his friend who persuaded him to buy the bonds was also a big supporter of the "Jewish Defense League" -- probably meaning the Anti-Defamation League, not the militant group.
The JDL is something of a terrorist organization, for the record. See also Shmuel Rosner's thoughts.
UPDATE: For the record, I'm much more inclined to put Thompson into the "morons" file than the "hates Jews" one, unless there's some kind of longer record out there.
UPDATE II: Spencer Ackerman picks up the damn phone.
Sadrists Say Goodbye
Muqtada al-Sadr's ministers leave the Maliki government, saying they tried and failed to get Maliki to demand a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq. No doubt someone on the right will spin this as a positive development for the USA since it now affords us the chance of a Sadrist-free government in Baghdad and may give them a chance to restart a 2004-style two-front war in Baghdad. I'm not optimistic.
April 17, 2007
America Hearts Congress
Well, sort of. 44 percent approve and 54 percent disapprove. That sounds bad until you add context. The 108th Congress, serving in 2005-2006, had its highest approval number at 43 percent and its lowest disapproval number at 53 percent. So people like the Democratic congress better than they like the Republican one. 44/54 is also considerably better than the 35/62 approve/disapprove split Bush gets. Indeed, fully 49 percent of respondents say they strongly disapprove "of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president" -- Bush Derangement Syndrome has gone mainstream.
Nancy Pelosi, however, is much more popular than either Bush or Congress generically -- earning a 53/35 approve/disapprove split. Ever since she became the top House Democrat, the DC press corps has been insisting that Pelosi is an unpopular figure whose bad for the Democrats. This because she's the most robustly liberal person we've seen in high elected office in over ten years. The evidence, however, doesn't bare this theory out. In the spring of 1995, Newt Gingrich's approval numbers were in the thirties.
Chait Versus Fleischer
A journolistic battle of wits, except Fleischer doesn't seem to have any.
At Least You Get a Tote Bag
Something to consider when PBS launches its next fundraising drive:
Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of Defense under Reagan and a chief White House proponent of the Iraq War, will be online Tuesday, April 17 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom" -- the second installment of PBS's "America at a Crossroads" series -- which follows him as he travels the globe articulating, defending and debating the neoconservative case for an assertive American foreign policy.
Uh, huh. The liberal case for PBS privatization grows stronger. America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama is, unlike Perle's similarly named TV series, highly recommended.
Refugees Returning
One piece of evidence that the surge is working you may have heard is that Iraq's internally displaced persons are returning to their homes. Shockingly, like most "good news" from Iraq, this turns out not to withstand much scrutiny.
Good News for People Who Like Bad Health Care Policy
The AARP makes a definitive move to becoming a major private insurance provider. But, yes, it intends to also be a major Beltway lobbying force. In essence, from here going forward it will be harder than ever to reform health care policy in a sensible direction.
Finals Matchups
John Hollinger on television ratings:
I think Spurs- Bulls would pretty much be a nightmare scenario for the folks at the league office. The only saving grace for ABC would be the heavy cross-promotion for Desperate Housewives. To borrow a line from Bill Simmons, "HINRICH!!" "GINOBILI!!!" It's the NBA Finals on ABC!"
Indeed. I must say, however, that I would sort of enjoy that matchup. From a marketing perspective, I feel ike Houston-Miami probably offers the richest plotlines in terms of the Shaq-Yao generational struggle along with the epic story of Pat Riley versus the Van Gundy family. And, of course, ratings-wise an awful lot of people live in China. In aesthetic terms, Phoenix-Detroit has a certain appeal, since the Saunders and Webber-ized Pistons actually run a pretty neat, fluid offense. The incredible contrast in preferred pace would be interesting, too. Unfortunately for the league offense, I think San Antonio has the best shot to come out of the West and Chicago has the best shot to come out of the East. The odds of any particular Finals combo, however, don't strike me as especially high. Both conferences second-round matchups should will be pretty competitive.
The Honor of McCain
Fred Kaplan gets in many good licks against John McCain, but I take issue with this characterization at the end:
Two and a half years ago, John McCain swallowed his pride and hitched his ambitions to two stars—George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Both have since imploded. And so, as his campaign faces the purple dusk of twilight time, the man who might once have been an honorable president slips and slides on the stardust.
I think there's oftentimes a tendency to discount the possibility of sincere disagreement in politics. As in assuming that McCain's fantastically stupid views on national security policy represent some kind of grubby and dishonorable act of political expediency. For quite a number of years, however, dating back to the late 1990s at least, McCain has been a consistent apostle of the Bill Kristol school of foreign policy -- all problems should be solved through force, and all problems with the use of force should be solved through the application of more force. McCain showed political courage and broke with his party to support the use of force in Kosovo. When that war appeared not to be working, he started slamming Bill Clinton for using insufficient force. He argued before and after 9/11 for regime change in Baghdad. He ran in 2000 on a platform of "rogue state rollback." He backed the Iraq War and when it started going poorly fearlessly criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war, calling for the deployment of more troops and the use of more force. Eventually, Bush came around to McCain's point of view.
This is just his view. McCain, like Kristol, or Joe Lieberman and various other people is a kind of anti-pacifist. Somebody who supports war as the solution to anything, and believes that any war can be successfully prosecuted if only it's prosecuted more vigorously. The difference is that people don't take pacifists seriously when they start arguing about specific cases, whereas people who believe the country should be launching dozens of wars at all times are given PBS specials, Washington Post columns, spots as TV commentators, Time columns, etc., etc., etc.
The Odds on Chicago
In terms of my prediction that the Bulls will be in the NBA Finals, it's important to distinguish between two claims:
- The Bulls are likely to win the Eastern Conference Championship.
- The Bulls are more likely to win the Eastern Conference Championship than are any other team.
The Kids Love Him
Dana Goldstein has highlights from the Harvard Institute of Politics poll of 18-24 year-olds:
* Young Democrats are more independent of their elders than young Republicans are. Like their older counterparts, 18-24 year old Republicans prefer Rudy Giuliani as the next president. But while older Democrats support Hillary Clinton (42% to Obama’s 24% and Edwards’ 17%), young Democrats prefer Obama (35% to Clinton’s 29% and Edwards’ 9%).* Dovetailing nicely with Ronald Brownstein’s Obama-skeptic analysis of “beer track” and “wine track” Democratic candidates (the six-packers make more likely winners), Obama is more popular among the highly educated. Obama leads Clinton by only 3 points among 18-24 year olds not enrolled in a 4-year college, but by a whopping 17 points on campuses.
* And don’t discount gender. Obama leads Clinton by 20% among young Democratic men, but young Democratic women prefer Clinton by 6 points.
We already knew, of course, that Obama's appeal skewed young, male, and educated. It's interesting, however, that age beats education (leading Clinton by only 3 points is small, but it's sill leading) perhaps because there are fewer white people in the youth cohort, but gender trumps age. Indeed, that gender gap, though expected on some level, is pretty astoundingly large when you consider that women are more dovish than men.
Clinton Doomed!
Jerome Armstrong rounds up online preference polls, revealing the big three going 42/25/13 on dKos, and 43/34/8 on MYDD. In third place, of course, is Bill RIchardson. Barack Obama's in second. And that's John Edwards with the commanding lead. Hillary Clinton's a distant fourth, pulling in three and four percent respectively. She does better in a MoveOn poll -- 11 percent -- that actually places her in fifth behind Dennis Kucinich's surprisingly strong 17 percent. Jerome makes a valiant effort to spin this as demonstrating something other than the netroots being out of touch with general Democratic sentiment, but is good enough to concede that he doesn't "expect Clinton to get blown away with single-digits." And good for him.
Clinton's pathetic results, however, are no suprise to people who read blogs regularly. I'm intrigued by the fact that Edwards is so much stronger among the netroots than among Democrats at large. In theory, Edwards' electoral center of gravity should be among the white working class and perhaps among older voters. To me, it's reminiscent of the way the Kerry versus Edwards primaries. There, too, Edwards' support was concentrated among highly educated upscale voters, even though Edwards' supporters would normally cite his greater appeal to working class voters as the reason to back him.
April 18, 2007
Technical Difficulties
I don't think this site's gone that long without a post during the working week for a good long time now. My apologies, I was drunk experiencing technical problems whereby people (inlcuding myself) accessing the site through Comcast couldn't get the site to load. I'm now in a new location with a working connection, so I have no idea what the problem is or if it's solved. If you're having problems, you probably can't read this post, but if you have any relevant recent experiences please do share them.
Intrinsic Aptitude
Via Alex Tabbarok, my favorite kind of academic study -- the kind whose abstract suggests that the paper contains empirical proof of something I was already inclined to believe:
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.
Right. In short, there's not some cabal of woman-hating old male scientists going "heh, heh, heh let's keep the ladies out of our field so we can all party at strip clubs!" At the same time, there's obviously not an equal playing field. The setup of the profession, the biases of the bulk of the important people in it, systematic inequities in the distribution of household labor, wide-ranging social norms, etc., etc., etc. all intersect to significantly disadvantage women who want to have typical family lives and successful careers in the sciences. In short, I blame the patriarchy. At any rate, I would actually read the paper, but I'm super-busy. Maybe I'll read it tomorrow.
In Defense of Crass Politicization
It seems to me that there's no better way to earn plaudits in the blogopshere than to slam people who deploy something like the Virginia Tech massacre as a pretext for grinding some political ax. I've never, however, really understood what the problem with this is. Most people don't pay attention to most issues most of the time. Advocates for causes need to find opportunities when it's possible to grab attention and then go out and grab it. I'm not a gun controller myself, but a high-profile spree killing is the obvious situation in which to try to make the case for gun control measures.
The only thing I would note with something like the VT shootings is that as terrible as an incident like that is, it's simply not the case that spree killings are a significant problem in American life, statistically speaking. I believe the USA suffers from more spree killings than do other non-war-torn countries, but still very few people die that way. You could completely eliminate mass-murder in the United States and you wouldn't save very many lives. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't try to prevent this kind of thing. But it is to say that it doesn't make sense to engage in policy shifts with large costs (in terms of money or even just inconveniencing tons of people) in order to reduce the risk of something that's already very rare.
Contrast that with a newsworthy tragedy like John Corzine's car accident. Normally, car wrecks and the resultant injuries don't make national news. But they happen all the time. Slightly higher compliance with seat belt laws, better compliance with speed limits, slightly less driving, etc., etc., etc. would all massively reduce the number of deaths and major injuries in the United States.
How Come Nobody Thought of This!?!?!
A shocking scoop from David Ignatius. It turns out that northern Iraq is inhabited my members of an ethnic group known as "Kurds." Many of these so-called Kurds also live in the adjacent nation known as "Turkey." Turkey, in turn, is a longstanding strategic partner of the United States. But the Turkish government and these Kurds have a bad relationship! Yes! There's even a Kurdish terrorist and guerilla organization called the PKK that the Turks have been trying to suppress for years. And Iraqi Kurds, it turns out, have a lot of nationalistic sentiments and are pushing for as much autonomy as possible from Iraq. Turkey looks askance at this, fearing it will boost separatism among their own Kurds. And those fears aren't crazy! The Kurdish nationalists in Iraq, being Kurdish nationalists, turn out to be rather sympathetic to the PKK. And now Turkey's mad. And the USA is stuck in the middle.
Trouble, in short, is brewing. And yet, shockingly, all throughout the years of denial about Iraq, respectable mainstream opinion was weirdly loathe to note this gobsmackingly obvious flaw in the elite vision of Iraq. The Kurds are our friends, the Kurds are secular, Kurdistan is quiet and secure, Kurdistan is democratic, we have to invade Iraq for the Kurds, etc., etc., etc., etc. even though it was always perfectly clear that this problem was going to arise. Ignatius doesn't even mention that the Kurds are trying to take over Kirkuk and Mosul and that there will probably be a new fighting front in Iraq once we get closer to the scheduled Kirkuk referendum date.
From Propaganda to CW
Glenn Greenwald explains how it's done:
STEP 1: A new right-wing gossip (Ben Smith) at a new substance-free political rag (The Politico) seizes on some petty, manufactured incident to fuel personality caricatures of Democratic candidates.STEP 2: The old right-wing gossip (Drudge) uses his old substance-free political rag (The Drudge Report) to amplify the inane personality caricatures.
STEP 3: Right-wing hacks with pretenses of respectability -- like Mickey Kaus and others -- follow the script by "analyzing" the gossip and embracing it.
STEP 4: National media outlets -- such as AP and CNN -- whose world is ruled by Drudge, turn the gossip into "news stories."
STEP 5: Our Serious Beltway Political Analysts -- in this case, the very somber and smart Substantive Journalists at The New Republic -- mindlessly repeat all of it, thereby solidifying it as conventional wisdom, showing that "even Democrats and liberals are embarrassed by their candidates."
Quite true. One thing worth observing is that Step Five involves adopting this meta-posture. Instead of saying "I'm disparaging Polician A because I don't like blah blah blah" you just assert -- often over and over again -- that blah blah blah is a critical vulnerability. But, of course, these things wouldn't be vulnerabilities if the press didn't spend their time jumping up and down and pointing at them. Not that there's anything wrong with jumping up and down and pointing at real flaws, but this kind of doing-it-but-not-doing-it is sad.
Or Maybe It Was The Communism?
Estonia's Flat Tax Leads to Economic Boom, crows Cato's Daniel Mitchell, before quoting John Stossel who observes "The former Soviet republic used to be poor . . . Microsoft, Colgate, 3M, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson opened businesses in Estonia after the flat tax was adopted. Twelve years ago, foreign investment in Estonia made up only 5 percent of GDP, but today, it’s up to 20 percent." Do libertarians seriously expect me to believe that the fact that Estonia has reaped significant benefits from abandonning Communism demonstrates that the United States ought to abolish progressive income taxation? Isn't it possible that the moral of the story here has something to do with command economies rather than tax rates?
Stossel also gives us the flat tax's heartiest bit of mumbo-jumbo: "Estonians need an average 10 to 15 minutes to file their income taxes. Most do it without leaving their desk: 84 percent file online." And good for them! I wish America were the same way. But this has nothing to do with your flat tax. I just did my taxes a week ago. It was pretty complicated and annoying. But the complicated and annoying part is calculating your taxable income not applying the formula that relates income to taxes owed.
Nitpicking
I found myself listening to The Postal Service for the first time in a while the other day. Specifically, "Nothing Better" in which we learn that he will "block the door / like a goalie tending the net in the third quarter / of a tie game rivalry." Are there any sports in which goalies tend nets and are divided into quarters? The imagine that comes to mind is hockey, but that's three periods. Alternatively soccer, but that's two halves. Water polo?
Kurdistan
I'm constantly forgetting about Time's Middle East blog, but I really shouldn't. Here's Scott McLeod on the deteriorating situation in Kurdistan: "Anyone who bothered to notice understood that the Bush administration's plan to re-make Iraq was destined, for better or worse, to put the explosive question of Kurdish political independence or autonomy high on the region's agenda." Yep. MacLeod has more, including a missive from Jon Randal, author of a book on the Kurds.
Abortion Ban On
You've probably heard about the decision. Via Ann Friedman comes an apropos excerpt from Justice Ginsburg's dissent (PDF):
Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.” Because of women’'s fragile emotional state and because of the “bond of love the mother has for her child,” the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution— ideas that have long since been discredited.
This on late-term abortions was the predictable consequence of Bush's Supreme Court nominees getting confirmed since Justice Kennedy had already made it clear in Stenberg v. Carhart where he stood on this issue. What's less clear is to what extent Kennedy's Stenberg dissent prefigured a broader decision to step away from the Court's earlier reproductive freedom jurisprudence. I'll be looking forward to explanations from Jeffrey Rosen and Benjamin Wittes of why this turn of events is secretly good for reproductive rights.
UPDATE: Ann points out to me that this law bans all performances of the intact D&E procedure and has nothing to do with whether or not the abortion in question is late term.
Kids These Days
I went with Young Ezra Klein to the Wizards' unfortunate finale versus Orlando last night. All-too-typically for the rising generation of political bloggers, he's sadly unfamiliar with the NBA. Thus, at one point he queries about the constant jawboning with the officials -- wondering if this ever works, does an official ever say "hey, you're right, I'll change the call?" Obviously, it never happens. But how to explain it? Then it hits me. "You know," I ask him, "how they say conservative media critics are trying to 'work the refs?'" And then he gets it.
Which goes to show that I don't think we have enough basketball metaphors in our political discourse, which is so totally dominanted by football and bseball metaphors that people don't even recognize a hoops reference when it's sitting right there in front of them.
Water
When I read this post from Catherine, I couldn't believe Kriston couldn't believe that she drinks 7 liters of water a day. Ogged can't believe Catherine drinks that much. I won't bore people with the intimate details of my water consumption, but I'm pretty sure I drink more than seven liters.
It used to be that I drank a lot of caffeine and also smoked a ton of cigarettes, which left me feeling dehydrated frequently and drinking a lot of water. Quitting smoking would, I would have thought, lead me to cut back. Instead what happened was that my Diet Coke habit got somewhat more severe for a variety of reasons and I started exercizing regularly, both of which boosted water consumption. More to the point, however, I needed to pick up a new habit to replace the frequent smoking breaks that used to punctuate my working day. Endlessly refilling my water bottle and consuming the contents seems to have done the trick. I don't like to chew gum, and it seemed like a healthier alternative to snacking all the time.
Four Things
Scott Lemieux has a few items to keep in mind "As an antidote against the inevitable chorus of fake moderates arguing that today's abortion case is no big deal."
April 19, 2007
The Ickes Factor
Ben Smith has an interesting profile in Politico about Harold Ickes and his work for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps even more so than Clinton's record on Iraq, the fact that her team's liberal counterweight to Mark Penn is a guy who's been involved in a vicious years-long feud with Howard Dean explains Clinton's comically low levels of support in netroots polls. Unfortunately, I've never really been able to understand the ins-and-outs of the Catalist controversy, but most of the trustworthy people I know who have strong feelings about it don't come away favorably disposed to Ickes.
More Ari Fleischer
The former Bush flack is still dishonest and wrong about taxes (via Ezra Klein). The Wall Street Journal editorial page is, of course, an important prominent media outlet. And it's not just an ideological wasteland, but a near-total fact-free zone -- an appaling miasma of lies and distortions. In a decent universe, decent conservatives would shun it like the plague -- to have your work published alongside the dreck that regularly appears there would be humiliating -- and it would wither away and die. We do not, suffice it to say, live in such a universe.
Things To Ask
There are really only two questions the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to ask Alberto Gonzales today:That's Mark Kleiman for TAP. In all seriousness, I hope the Democrats don't screw this up. There's a tension at these hearings between a party's desire to accomplish something -- find the truth, advance a partisan/ideological agenda, whataver -- and individual Senators' proclivity for preening and wasting time (yes, Joe Biden, I'm looking at you).But that would make for an unduly short hearing, so here are a few more questions, just to fill in the time:
- Why are you such a lying turkey?
- When are you going to resign?
A Winning Ticket
The Wizards' season may be -- well, okay, definitely is -- de facto over, but the good people at Wizznutzz are still working away to produce this line of quality t-shirts, expressing a sentiment clearly aimed at my very own heart.
This attempt at ticket balancing does, however, raise the question of whether Gilbert Arenas' Black President MySpace page is authentic. When I first say it late last summer, my inclination was to believe. Now that Arenas has emerged as much more of a media star, I have to say that I don't find it credible that he's really that eccentric. But who knows? The world is a funner place if we think of it as authentic so perhaps I should choose to do so.