12/30/14 Today's Inquiries

No comments today.


The Links:

And here is why, no matter who is in charge, we are so totally screwed as a nation:

She is a deeply religious Christian, with a tightly knit family that prays together even at fast-food restaurants and has suffered one health crisis after the next. Her mother was run over by a car and spent six months in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Then her father got cancer and died within months. And this year, Ms. Mayhew’s cherished grandmother died of complications from a stroke. Her grief, she said, has been hard to bear. ...

A nurse practitioner at Family Health Centers had prescribed anti-depressants after Ms. Mayhew had her last baby in 2013 — at the time, she had temporary Medicaid for her pregnancy — but she stopped taking them when the coverage ended. Now she is back on them, and feeling good.

“That’s been a big thing for me,” she said.

And yet.

“I don’t love Obamacare,” she said. “There are things in it that scare me and that I don’t agree with.”

For example, she said, she heard from news programs that the Affordable Care Act prohibited lifesaving care for elderly people with cancer....

For Mr. Elson, with advanced diabetes, chronic high blood pressure and an income too high for Medicaid but too low to pay all his bills, the Affordable Care Act came too late.

He had forgone insulin for most of the year when he arrived at his eye doctor’s office in September, huffing and puffing due to fluid in his lungs. He was off his blood pressure pills, too, and all of his medications except a drug he takes for neuropathic pain caused by diabetes. His swollen legs were covered in painful blisters where excess fluid had seeped out...

There, he was told something he had been dreading: his kidney function had dropped to less than 10 percent of the normal level, and he had to start dialysis to save his life. That would mean being hooked up to a machine four hours a day, three days a week, to clear the toxins and extra fluid from his body. 

So, it's important to remember here that the default position on the right is to simply let people die. They deserve to die because they cannot afford health care. But, here's the thing, that's also apparently the default position on the left.

10 things political scientists know that you don't. (.pdf)

Political scientists rarely talk about special interests. We used to use language like “interest-group pluralism” to describe the resulting political environment. The most important distinction in this world is not between special and general interests, but between organized interests (like unions, religious groups, and the NRA) and unorganized interests (like the unemployed or homeless). 

Oil Prices fall, rig counts drop, oil employment falls. This is only bad news for Texas and North Dakota.

Working overtime has pretty much disappeared. In 1975, 65% of salaried workers earned time and a half. Now it's 11%. Hey, gotta cut costs to keep those share prices elevated.

Liberal billionaires outspent conservative billionaires in the midterm elections.

Testing Ricardian Equivalence. If you're not familiar, Ricardian Equivalence holds that the public will see all government spending as future taxes to be paid and will adjust their consumption and saving habits accordingly because they expect to pay higher taxes in the future. This is often the basis for certain arguments about government spending crowding out private sector spending. There's not a lot of evidence that it actually happens.

School lockdowns and the illusion of order.

We will need writers who can remember freedom:


House Majority Whip continues the fine tradition of republican minority outreach by admitting that he spoke at a 2002 white supremacist conference.

Sometimes I forget how stupid the rest of the world is: Argentina's president adopts a jewish kid to prevent him from turning into a werewolf.

An interview with Jay, the key witness from the Serial podcast.

Being cold makes you thinner.

3/5 of farmland is used for raising beef but beef only accounts for about 5% of our protein intake.

Someone recut all of the Marvel films to put all the scenes in chronological order.

12/28/14 Today's Inquiries

Fever.


The Links:

Just before Christmas the Dow hit another record high. Take a look back at the 2009 editorial arguing that the end is nigh and it's all Obama's fault.

More thoughts on oil prices.

Britain will be paying off a variety of historical debts next year, including debts incurred during the 1720 South Seas bubble.

The road to serfdom is through America's growing rental costs.

Big Food: Michael Pollan thinks Wall St. has way to much influence over how we eat. His thesis is that big ag and big food are constantly pressured to achieve ~5% growth every year which forces them into constantly looking for cheaper and cheaper foods. He's only partially right. The other half is that big ag and big food constantly lobby the government for subsidies which buoy their bottom line.

Given my recent discussion with Alex, I thought I'd link the Post Apocalyptic diet.

Speaking of the apocalypse, here's an argument that apocalyptic thinking is an underrated aspect of evangelical political thought.

The 12 years of NSA Christmas. It's a big document dump in response to years of FOIA requests. I can't wait to hear what they find.

The Metric System is a hazard to public safety, America's greatest enemy.


Meet the most important anti-environmentalist in America. And the new chairman of our environment committee.

Ayn Rand reviews children's movies.

An excellent movie. The obviously unfit individuals are winnowed out through a series of entrepreneurial tests and, in the end, an enterprising young boy receives a factory. I believe more movies should be made about enterprising young boys who are given factories. —Three and a half stars. (Half a star off for the grandparents, who are sponging off the labor of Charlie and his mother. If Grandpa Joe can dance, Grandpa Joe can work.)

Verner Herzog inspirationals.

A quest to dig up the bodies of numerous children abused and killed while in the custody of the State of Florida.

Rethinking IQ tests.

1. Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

• A) Yes 
• B) No 
• C) Cannot be determined

Star Wars finally gets a black woman in a major role. Let's hope she's not another purple lightsaber urban market-grabbing Samuel L. Jackson.

What did we get stuck in our rectums last year? Congress surprisingly absent.

12/23/14 Today's Inquiries

Broadcasting live from Peachtree City, GA. Fox News blaring in the background 24-7. It must be Christmas!


The Links:

3rd quarter GDP growth revised up to 5.0%. Thanks Obama.

41 states had a decrease in unemployment last month. Georgia is no longer number 1, having been replaced by Mississippi.

The FED's dirty little secret.

Opting out of the US corporate income tax. I'd call the ability to opt out a feature, not a bug.

Do safer banks mean less economic growth? 

In fact, Cecchetti believes "We should seriously consider requiring further additions to bank capital, given that the social costs of post-crisis capital increases appear to have been small." Such an increase would make the banking system safer from collapse with little cost to the national economy.

Smart commentary on Russia. So Vladimir Putin is Kaiser Soze?

Instead of attempting to explain the failures of the reformers and intellectuals who tried to carry out radical change, we ought instead to focus on the remarkable story of one group of unrepentant, single-minded, revanchist KGB officers who were horrified by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the prospect of their own loss of influence. In league with Russian organized crime, starting at the end of the 1980s, they successfully plotted a return to power. Assisted by the unscrupulous international offshore banking industry, they stole money that belonged to the Russian state, took it abroad for safety, reinvested it in Russia, and then, piece by piece, took over the state themselves.

Smart commentary on oil prices.  I thought this was a good point to make:

It’s just a matter of how long it takes for the high-cost North American producers to cut back in response to current incentives. And when they do, the price has to go back up.

Remember the Saudis are playing at three objectives. 1. Low oil prices hurt Iran and Russia, which have poor relations with the Saudis. 2. Low oil prices hurt alternative oil industries, like US frackers. 3. Numbers 1&2 help Saudi Arabia maintain a dominant portion of the market for oil. They like having that influence and growing alternative and non-OPEC oil producers threatens them. Hence, their indication they will not cut production for the foreseeable future. Then we have to add in all the other market forces at work: US production was already driving prices down a bit because we're making so much more oil than just a few years ago. Several other nations in the mid-east and north Africa have restarted oil production after a decade of turmoil. China and Europe have weakening demand as their economies stagger a little.

Children are cleaning up an oil spill in Bangladesh. With their bare hands.

But right now, it is all about recovering and selling back the oil

What happens to society when robots replace workers?

Red Light cameras cause more injuries and accidents. Yeah, but somebody made a ton of money and that's the important point.

What do real life prosecutors and defense attorneys think about the Serial podcast?

our sampling demonstrates that how lawyers see a case depends on whether they play defense or offense. The prosecutors were more inclined than the defenders to pronounce Syed guilty.

Ferguson is facing a budget deficit so they're going to increase police ticketing to close the gap.

Blue Lives Matter.

White Southerners have a larger amount of African ancestry than you'd imagine.

Americans love torture. More here with added commentary from disillusioned naturalized citizens.

Basic rights for orangutans.

The 2015 Women in Science Calendar.

The most popular people on Pinterest.

A long read about Kentucky and in-state migration.

I recently completed original research, surveying Kentuckian consumption of two nostalgic goods: Ale8–One soda and Kentucky bourbon (can e-mail PDF for anyone interested; working copy currently). To my knowledge, my study was the first to systematically explore nostalgic trade in a domestic context. But before I get into the fun stuff (such as answering weirdly detailed questions about why people drink bourbon), I should give some background.

Stuff the TSA confiscated in 2014:

It’s the people that are carrying stuff like chainsaws that make me wonder.

Beer makes you more creative right up until you hit the legal limit for drunk driving.

Scrooge is an anti-capitalist hero who bravely resisted the commercialization of Christmas.

Kamchatka is an amazing place.

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12/18/14 Today's Inquiries

It's flu season.


The Links:

If you're wondering what life is like in Pikeville, here's a great example:

Yes, it's in a parking lot. Yes, the location is exactly as described .

Good news, lynching is a thing again.

Georgia leads the nation in school shootings.

Jeb's bubble.

Actually, this would have been silly even if Florida had a well-founded boom — governors don’t matter that much. But in any case, we now know something about the other “Bush boom” — as you can see from the attached chart, it was all about a monstrous housing bubble. Bush the other didn’t cause that bubble — but all his alleged success involved taking a ride on it.

Comments on the FOMC meeting yesterday. More easy liquidity for the banks. Wall St. loved it.

Elizabeth Warren was right about the links between government and Citigroup.

Related: Obama insulated banksters who donate to democrats.

Jeff Bezos defends his profitless corporation.

The 11 richest people have all received government subsidies. Obviously. Afterall, rent seeking is the quickest way to the top.

New Jersey corruption: State money paid to Christie's family. Son and Wife. I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

Wealth inequality and the marginal propensity to consume.

Inequality in the US is worse than in apartheid South Africa, slaveholding colonial US, and ancient Rome. Holy hyperbole.

The "sharing economy" must share the risks.

It also requires platforms such as Uber to take greater responsibility for the quasi-employees they keep at a distance in order to minimise their liabilities and costs. The alternative is a highly fragmented and insecure workforce that cannot support itself.

The poor appear to face higher inflation than the middle class. This makes me think of the link about cost of living yesterday. We tend to measure things like inflation and cost of living broadly but there are numerous smaller economies at work in any city.

Law school enrollment is at a 40 year low.

Wall St. is a black hole for our best and brightest.

1.2 Million Teachers aren't covered by Social Security. Scary.

The 2 minute OED.

Web 1.0 online religious cults were a thing. Vice looks them up to see how they're doing now.

Hyperrealistic cartoon eyeballs.

Goodbye Colbert Report. It was a lovely ride.


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12/17/14 Today's Inquiries

I'm starting to like these morning shifts.


The Links:

Jeb Bush is on the up and up. 4 more years! Also, he's done a great job of branding himself as a centrist which gives him general election bonuses but is he conservative enough to win primaries? More here.

So he's going to run with a Mitt Romney level of financing but a Jon Huntsman approach to the issues -- a belief that if he defies litmus tests, he'll be respected for that. (Ask Huntsman how well the latter worked out for him.) But meanwhile, he's likely to clear the field quite a bit -- if he's in, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney are almost certainly out, Chris Christie will struggle to get funded, and Scott Walker, John Kasich, Mike Pence, Rick Snyder, and other potential fresh faces will probably have second thoughts about running. Paul Ryan will probably decide he'd rather pursue power in the House. We really might be down to a top tier consisting of just Jeb, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, with Ben Carson punching above his weight until the big-money primaries start, in the Huckabee/Santorum role.

Thoughts on making America more like Disney World.

[He] concludes that what makes Disneyland different is….happy thoughts. If only we were more like W.D., he says, “we could make America into a happy place.”

No, what makes Disney invest in infrastructure is not happy thoughts. Johnston is in fact clear about this:

The Walt Disney Co. invests in infrastructure because it makes the company money.

The problem with America is that our public infrastructure has been turned over to a fickle political process that is not governed by a rational calculation of cost and benefit, market test and experimentation but by a pursuit of power, glory and advantage that only rarely coincides with the public interest.

The secret to the Uber economy is inequality. Yeah, if there were numerous well paying jobs, they wouldn't have any drivers.

Cost of living is probably more complex than we think.

Consider that, at a national level, economic experts soberly analyze changes in trend productivity growth of 0.5 percent per year. To measure productivity changes, you need to have accurate measures of real GDP. To measure real GDP, you need to have accurate measures of “the” rate of inflation.

But what if inflation is 5 percent higher in downtown LA than it is 30 miles away? Which is the accurate measure of inflation? Even a slight mistake in aggregating across different areas could completely change the picture for national productivity growth.

I find myself thinking that the multiplicity of economies within the U.S. really matters. For example, I could imagine that the minimum wage would have a much bigger effect on employment in the locations with those sub-$200,000 houses than in higher-cost areas, where employers probably have to pay above the minimum, anyway. I can imagine that downward stickiness of wages matters a lot if you have inflation differentials across areas of 5 percent or so.

Local commission is looking into Fergusson's court system which one participant described as "debtor's prison."

A TPM reader asks, do we really want to live in the world advocated for by defenders of these recent police actions?

But listen to the defenders of the police in these latest cases… do you really want to live in the world they are promoting? One where you must immediately acquiesce to any request/order give by anyone in a uniform, without question or complaint… under penalty of death if you don’t comply, or comply too slowly for them? Do you really mean to give people in uniform the power to kill, maim, imprison any person simply because they questioned why they were being confronted or resisted rough treatment? Is the uniformed officers word to be deemed absolute, without recourse… and his/her power to punish to be deemed limitless?

Antibiotic resistance will kill 300 million people by 2050.

Russia's currency is spinning out of control. Seems like old times.

In other words, reserves useful for defending the currency against speculative attacks are more like $200 billion than $400 billion. That has made the evolution of recent events much more akin to a classic Krugman first generation balance of payments crisis. It also has elements of third generation crises to the extent that balance sheet considerations complicate matters for Russian policymakers. 

What are the odds of a commodities led global financial crisis?

Nonprofits sure are making a lot of money. They just aren't spending it on helping people. You know, like the NFL.

Pearson says there's a renaissance coming in assessment. Let's hope so. The state of standardized testing at the primary and secondary level is abysmal.

Bringing blogging to the classroom. So, bringing classrooms to 2004? How about we bring Instagram to the classroom? Or books. Bring the classroom to 1436.

Chunks of online education.

Herein lies the lesson for online education. Hart and Case put an enormous effort into this. They are not ‘star professors.’ They are not experts in this area. They just explored the knowledge and acted as the translators. And there are similar efforts going on around the world.

This means something for online education. These chunks are the components. All of the efforts, the experts or professors are putting into courses with videos etc are mere place-holders until the true best-practice mode of expression is created. In the end, we will have to think of online education as a vetting and then curation of these components to give students an education. Suffice it to say, we are surely still in the Wild West of doing this.

How humanity will survive a mass extinction.

Rather priceless:

12/15/14 Today's Inquiries

Still somewhat without my main computer. But. We can rebuild him!


The Links:

We have a spending deal. Don't worry, Obama will sign the gift to bankers. How did they pull it off?

Are low oil prices an indicator of a global economic slowdown? Yes.

In other words, of the observed 45% decline in the price of oil, 19 percentage points– more than 2/5– might be reflecting new indications of weakness in the global economy.

The dark side of the oil shock:

If there is a really dark side to this oil shock, it is likely to stem not from the developed economies, but from its destabilising effects on Russia (as Paul Krugman has argued) and some other oil producers in the emerging world. That is what transpired, eventually, in the oil shock of 1997/98.

A collapse of the Russian economy, with its dangerous political consequences, is the most important reason to worry that the “idiotic optimists” will be wrong about the beneficial market impact of the 2014 oil shock.

Here is your must-read for today: How to Uphold White Supremacy by Focusing on diversity and Inclusion.

Since the civil rights movement, white people have exploited every opportunity to conceal their colonialist legacy and longstanding (ab)use of white supremacist power. They’ve proven time and again that they have no interest in rectifying that history, only in dealing with the fact that they could no longer deny the reality of those injustices. One effective tactic has been to separate white supremacy and colonialism from the way racism is understood and taught through schools, history textbooks, news media, and through any white-controlled institutions. These lessons, of anti-racism as-told-by-white-people, will be familiar to you: that racism is only explicit racial prejudice; that separatism is the essence of Jim Crow (and therefore inclusion is the antithesis to de juresegregation); and that the remedy for a racist society is a colorblind one.

I think this sounds a lot like that 9/12 project Glenn Beck tried to get started. Does conservatism really need rebranding following a successful election?

A Feminist Critique of Silicon Valley.

When the hostage crisis began in Sidney, thousands in the business district decided to head home for the day. Uber responded by increasing prices fourfold. Hurray surge pricing.

Who has accountability for civil asset forfeiture? Apparently it's not the local prosecutor's office.

The devalued American worker. Don't worry, we'll all get jobs at Uber driving each other around on our days off.

The Vanishing Male Worker. Women too.

The media wealth of whites is $142,000. For Blacks it's $11,000.

Do development workers underestimate the poor?

Arnold Kling makes several predictions about future technological change.

Teach For America trojan horse among the Ferguson protests.

Teach For America recruits young, mostly white grads from elite colleges to undergo a 5 week training program which supposedly enables them to replace experienced, mostly black teachers in inner city schools. Although TFA used to claim it sends its recruits to “underserved” schools where experienced teachers don't want to go, the facts are that underprepared TFA temps have replaced tens of thousands of experienced teachers in Newark, Chicago, St. Louis, and dozens of other cities around the country. Teach For America contends that inner-city public schools are NOT underfunded, that chronic poverty, joblessness, homelessness and short staffing are merely “excuses” used to protect the "bad teachers" which its mostly white temps are replacing. This is precisely the opposite of what knowledgeable young activists like the Dream Defenders Phillip Agnew will tell you.

The TED talk geniuses who gutted journalism.

Thoughts on unsecured personal lending being popularized by sites like Lending Tree and Lending Club.

Would you make an unsecured personal loan to an individual so they can pay off $14,000 in credit card debt? If so, at what interest rate (the credit card debt is at 17%). The person has a 15 year credit history, a FICO score of 699, an annual income of $73,000 and a DTI of 17% (excluding mortgage debt).

The Sony hack is so bad that the company's financials are a mess because the software they use to manage their money is FUBAR. They've also ceased filming.

The Pickup Artist Simulator. Surprisingly tongue-in-cheek.

This movie is getting too much publicity on the NPR/NYT circuit but it does look pretty good. I've never been a huge Pinchon fan though.


While Blackhat may never be as awesome as Hackers, it may still be a decently fun movie.

12/10/14 Today's Links

So, my beautiful gaming desktop finally bit the bullet. I'm getting nasty blue screens whenever I do any thing more intense than use the internet. I guess I'll be putting together a new PC a little earlier than intended and I'll be posting from work more often.


The Links:

The biggest news, clearly, is the Senate's torture report. Vox roundup here. Andrew Sullivan live-blogged it. I usually don't go for this kind of thing but his commentary here is pretty good. Greenwald's coverage is also excellent.

Does torture even work? No. But don't let that stop us. I mean, let's really be honest with ourselves here. The CIA knew torture didn't work at the outset but getting information was never really the point. It was about punishment, sadism, and revenge. Moreover, Americans freaking love torture. Also, paging Dr. Mengele.

Nearly a quarter of the world's countries helped run the CIA torture program.

Dan Drezner comments here.

to suggest that this Senate report will really tip the scales when it comes to the United States’ enemies rallying support, you have to believe that the following exchange is happening somewhere in the Middle East:ABDUL: Ahmed, why won’t you come with me to attack the infidels? You are not outraged that the United States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and caused so much suffering in two Muslim countries?AHMED: It’s not enough for me to take up arms.ABDUL: You are not outraged that in the past three years the great Zionist oppressor has waged air campaigns against two Arab countries — Syria and Libya — and accomplished little but to extend the suffering of our Muslim brothers and sisters?AHMED: It’s not enough for me to take up arms.ABDUL: You are not outraged that the great Western imperialist power has launched drone strikes with impunity in two other countries — Yemen and Pakistan — killing scores of innocent Muslim families in the process?AHMED: It’s not enough for me to take up arms.ABDUL: You are not outraged that the infidel superpower has defended Israel as that Zionist pig-state has done nothing but displace, bomb and humiliate our Palestinian brothers and sisters?AHMED: It’s not enough for me to take up arms.ABDUL: You are not outraged that two successive U.S. presidents, in two flowery speeches, have claimed that the United States wants to bring human rights and democracy to the Middle East, only to tolerate authoritarian crackdowns in Egypt and the Gulf states?AHMED: It’s not enough for me to take up arms.ABDUL: You are not outraged about all the stories of infidels torturing our Muslim brothers in Abu Ghraib, in Bagram, in Guantanamo Bay? The stories about infidel soldiers desecrating the Koran?AHMED: It’s not enough for me to take up arms.ABDUL: You are not outraged by the just-released Senate report about CIA torture?AHMED: Wait, did you say ‘Senate report’? Okay, I will take up arms now.

Is the Rust Belt about to come back to life?

Two factors drive this change. One is the steady revival of America as a productive manufacturing country, driven in large part by new technology, rising wages abroad (notably in China), and the development of low-cost, abundant domestic energy, much of it now produced in states such as Ohio and in the western reaches of Pennsylvania.

The second, and perhaps more surprising, is the wealth of human capital already existent in the region.

We might get a nice little upward revision in GDP for last quarter.

Uncivil Disobedience.

This Article asks how we might make sense of these more paradoxical protests, involving not explicit law-breaking but rather extreme law-following. We seek to identify, elucidate, and call attention to the phenomenon of "uncivil obedience."

So, I read this as an argument for giving the poor proles the table scraps instead of inviting them to dinner.

If firms cannot or will not offer rising wages, they should at least offer non-pecuniary benefits: more control over working conditions and the assurance of good rewards if the business thrives in future.

Moreover, inequality is bad for growth! Why, as a firm, whose interest is in the long term growth of your company, would you seek to degrade your employees' ability to function and grow the company? For example, people who work too much aren't actually more productive.

Minimum wage workers ripped off even more than we thought. More excellent Bill Moyers:



So, Google admitted that about 50% of internet advertising is never seen. Gald to see that so much money is shifting toward half-useless new media advertising and away from legacy media.

Rise of the Machines: bad for the economy?

The Periodic Table of Figures of Speech.

Like Harry Potter? Well now's your chance to go LARP in a real-life Hogwarts. In Poland, but it's kinda close.

Delightful: