Remember the Anglophobia phobia and all the talk of how BP was a British national icon, so Americans should stop saying such mean things? I do. It looks like that was pretty much a scam. Now everybody's fine with the national icon having an American CEO. An AP reporter comments, "While residents of Paris or Rome might be chagrined to see a foreigner running one of their country's corporate giants, politicians and the public here appear relaxed about it." She goes on to quote the editor of a British business magazine: "British investors care about one thing and one thing alone, and that is the share price."
And that, of course, is what the American bad-mouthing of BP really jeopardized. How crass. One doesn't like to stereotype, but obviously Dickens was right when he made Fagin a Briton.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
News From the Fringe
1. Fringe? Us? You may have seen the story of the Iowa Tea Party billboard featuring pictures of Hitler, Obama, and Lenin, with the titles, respectively, "National Socialism," "Democrat Socialism," and "Marxist Socialism." If not, it's worth a look just for the photo. (Update: The billboard has been papered over, but you can still see the photo.) A few quick remarks:
"If we're going to take our country back, we've got to remember where we came from — not only as adults, but we need to teach our children," said Tim Fairfield, one of the teachers, who wore a three-cornered hat at the opening class of Vacation Liberty School....organizers say the program has drawn interest from people looking to start new chapters in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Florida and other communities in Kentucky.
The curriculum includes "understanding the falsehoods of separation of church and state," but it's not all dry lectures. Students simulated the oppression of colonial-era England by being told they must suppress their laughter, sit apart from their friends and flawlessly recite "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Then after a difficult journey to America, they recreated the practices of John Winthrop and Cotton Mather by playing basketball, tossing beanbags, and riding a teeter-totter, while being showered with confetti.
After history, time for social studies. Students were given water pistols to shoot soap bubbles out of the air. They discovered that they could do it more quickly by refilling from individual buckets of water than from a collective one, thus demonstrating the superiority of the free enterprise system to secular communism. Good thing they weren't playing basketball in this part.
3. The Hall of Mirrors: Further Reflections. I was reading a few of the two thousand comments on a news story about the car bomb in Mexico, when I came across an utterly irrelevant comment. (This was not in itself surprising, as the same writer had posted several comments on the same story which were quotations from Thomas Jefferson about the evils of big government.) In this comment, he was inveighing (oyveighing? McVeighing?) against a recent statement by Sen. Chris Dodd, to the effect that a Republican attempt to require a 5% down payment on all mortgages was bad because it "would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it." "You can't make up stuff like this!" he crowed.
As it turns out, though, you can. Dodd never made the statement. It comes from a "satirical" posting on a conservative website, and it immediately spread across the Internet. When I talked recently about politics blogs being like two mirrors facing each other and creating the impression of a vast corridor, I was thinking of opinions, not of the endless propagation of Internet urban legends. (Though since the Sherrod affair, that aspect has become more obvious.)
Anyway, this time I decided to look into the sociology a bit, and try to reconstruct some chronological order on this "quotation."
May 15, 2010: azconserv1.wordpress.com; labeled By John Semmens: Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News
May 15: freerepublic.com; labeled A Semi-News/Semi-Satire From AzConservative
June 1: congress.org; letter to Rep. David Obey from a constituent
June 4: townhall.com; reader comment
June 6: libertymaven.com
June 6: blogs.forbes.com (breakout into mainstream media)
June 7: yallpolitics.com; reader comment
June 7: lucianne.com; reader comment
June7: libnot.com
June 7: kpbj.com
June 8: factcheck.org: Debunked
June 11: inthisdimension.com
June 15: starcourier.com (Kewanee, Illinois)
June 18: truthorfiction.com: Debunked
June 20: snopes.com: Debunked
June 25: lexelibertas.blogspot.com
July 7: preparedsociety.com (survivalists)
Sociologically, what is interesting is how much this looks like a classic Internet rumor-spreading, with much of it going on through individuals rather than formal (even by Internet standards) outlets. As for Mr. Semmens, whose other rib-ticklers include "Hispanic Caucus Wants Illegals to Be Covered by Obamacare," "Justice Department Rebuffs Inquiry on Kagan Pay," and "President Calls Sherrod Firing 'Racist,'" two points. First, you're no Jon Stewart. Second, there gets to be a fine line between satire and lying.
4. Ingratitude. The AP recently reported that the California Highway Patrol arrested a man involved in a shootout with them on a freeway, who told them that he had been planning attacks on the ACLU and a liberal-leaning foundation in San Francisco. The most disturbing thing about this story is that it's so funny: as you peel the layers off the onion, there's a punchline under each one.
- One surprise for me was the comment of a leader of the national Tea Party Patriots, who not only made the obvious political point that, "It's going to make people think that the tea party is full of a bunch of right-wing fringe people," but added, "When you compare Obama to Hitler, that to me does a disservice to the Jews who both survived and died in the Holocaust and to the Germans who lived under Nazi regime rule." I predict a brief career in the movement for Shelby Blakely.
- Less surprising is the comment of the Iowa coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, who said that the billboard was offensive and unproductive, but he can understand the North Iowa group's feeling that Obama is "Hitler-esque." What does that even mean? That he has a little mustache? That he plans to annex Manitoba? That he has caused literally millions of people to be loaded into boxcars and sent to death camps?
- Finally, in the Sad Irony department we have the caption for the billboard: "Radical Leaders Prey on the Fearful & Naive." I would suggest that as a motto for the movement: "The Tea Party Wants You-- Because Radical Leaders Prey on the Fearful and Naive."
"If we're going to take our country back, we've got to remember where we came from — not only as adults, but we need to teach our children," said Tim Fairfield, one of the teachers, who wore a three-cornered hat at the opening class of Vacation Liberty School....organizers say the program has drawn interest from people looking to start new chapters in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Florida and other communities in Kentucky.
The curriculum includes "understanding the falsehoods of separation of church and state," but it's not all dry lectures. Students simulated the oppression of colonial-era England by being told they must suppress their laughter, sit apart from their friends and flawlessly recite "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Then after a difficult journey to America, they recreated the practices of John Winthrop and Cotton Mather by playing basketball, tossing beanbags, and riding a teeter-totter, while being showered with confetti.
After history, time for social studies. Students were given water pistols to shoot soap bubbles out of the air. They discovered that they could do it more quickly by refilling from individual buckets of water than from a collective one, thus demonstrating the superiority of the free enterprise system to secular communism. Good thing they weren't playing basketball in this part.
3. The Hall of Mirrors: Further Reflections. I was reading a few of the two thousand comments on a news story about the car bomb in Mexico, when I came across an utterly irrelevant comment. (This was not in itself surprising, as the same writer had posted several comments on the same story which were quotations from Thomas Jefferson about the evils of big government.) In this comment, he was inveighing (oyveighing? McVeighing?) against a recent statement by Sen. Chris Dodd, to the effect that a Republican attempt to require a 5% down payment on all mortgages was bad because it "would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it." "You can't make up stuff like this!" he crowed.
As it turns out, though, you can. Dodd never made the statement. It comes from a "satirical" posting on a conservative website, and it immediately spread across the Internet. When I talked recently about politics blogs being like two mirrors facing each other and creating the impression of a vast corridor, I was thinking of opinions, not of the endless propagation of Internet urban legends. (Though since the Sherrod affair, that aspect has become more obvious.)
Anyway, this time I decided to look into the sociology a bit, and try to reconstruct some chronological order on this "quotation."
May 15, 2010: azconserv1.wordpress.com; labeled By John Semmens: Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News
May 15: freerepublic.com; labeled A Semi-News/Semi-Satire From AzConservative
June 1: congress.org; letter to Rep. David Obey from a constituent
June 4: townhall.com; reader comment
June 6: libertymaven.com
June 6: blogs.forbes.com (breakout into mainstream media)
June 7: yallpolitics.com; reader comment
June 7: lucianne.com; reader comment
June7: libnot.com
June 7: kpbj.com
June 8: factcheck.org: Debunked
June 11: inthisdimension.com
June 15: starcourier.com (Kewanee, Illinois)
June 18: truthorfiction.com: Debunked
June 20: snopes.com: Debunked
June 25: lexelibertas.blogspot.com
July 7: preparedsociety.com (survivalists)
Sociologically, what is interesting is how much this looks like a classic Internet rumor-spreading, with much of it going on through individuals rather than formal (even by Internet standards) outlets. As for Mr. Semmens, whose other rib-ticklers include "Hispanic Caucus Wants Illegals to Be Covered by Obamacare," "Justice Department Rebuffs Inquiry on Kagan Pay," and "President Calls Sherrod Firing 'Racist,'" two points. First, you're no Jon Stewart. Second, there gets to be a fine line between satire and lying.
4. Ingratitude. The AP recently reported that the California Highway Patrol arrested a man involved in a shootout with them on a freeway, who told them that he had been planning attacks on the ACLU and a liberal-leaning foundation in San Francisco. The most disturbing thing about this story is that it's so funny: as you peel the layers off the onion, there's a punchline under each one.
- You may recall that former Attorney General Ed Meese once referred to the ACLU as "the criminals' lobby." Apparently not all criminals agree; Mr. Williams had two previous convictions for bank robbery.
- According to the Oakland police, Williams wanted "to start a revolution." Here's a tip for revolutionaries that I read somewhere, possibly Mao's On Guerrilla Warfare: When you're out on parole and you're driving on the freeway carrying three guns and wearing a bulletproof vest, do not speed and weave in and out of traffic.
- His mother told the San Francisco Chronicle her son had been angry with "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." This makes sense. After all, who values liberty more than an ex-con? And who values capitalism more than a bank robber?
- Williams was arrested while driving his mother's Toyota Tundra. So he planned to take back our country while driving a Japanese car. Well, it was probably built in San Antonio. By legals.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Saving the Republic: A Primer
You've no doubt noticed that the views represented in Congress these days seem more extreme than in the past, with moderates disappearing. As a result, it has become harder and harder for parties to work together, and therefore harder and harder to get anything done. I don't think even libertarians could rationally consider this a good thing.
A large part of the problem can be attributed to party primaries, as I observed in my post "Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Room." When party nominees are chosen by primary, they represent the mainstream of opinions in their own parties, which may be far from the mainstream of opinion in the country as a whole. Even though candidates start scuttling toward center as soon as they're past the primary, they still have to act in Congress with one eye on the next primary, lest they find at re-election time that their disloyal moderation is still resented by the party faithful. (See under McCain, John.)
It is perhaps a sign of how desperate things have become that people have started seriously discussing alternatives to the party primary. It turns out getting rid of party primaries is fairly easy, as the Constitution gives states a lot of freedom to decide how to run their elections-- no amendment required. There are a couple of prominently proposed replacements.
The Jungle Primary. The simplest alternative is to hold non-partisan primaries, with the top two candidates going on to the general election. This alternative is sometimes referred to as the "jungle primary" (I have no idea why) or the "Louisiana primary." The idea is that now candidates will be able to appeal across the full spectrum of ideologies, rather than having to cater to a narrow slice of it. This alternative was recently urged in an Op-Ed in The New York Times by Phil Kiesling that does a good job of summarizing the "pro" side of the argument. More remarkably, California just passed a ballot measure establishing a non-partisan primary, referred to as "top two," for all elections other than presidential. This, of course, has generated lots of comment pro and con.
Some of the pundits warn of unanticipated consequences-- particularly, that the added expense of appealing to a broad electorate (without a party to pick up the tab) will further empower interest groups and the rich, and force out third parties. But the biggest unknown is: will it work? Will more moderates get elected?
At FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver has done a simulation of the two different electoral systems, and finds that moderate candidates do much better with the jungle primary. His post not only gives a good summary of the logic, but has very pretty bar graphs showing the difference in outcomes (Bactrian versus dromedary, or to be pedestrian, bimodal versus unimodal). I am not wholly convinced by this approach, however. Silver's simulation generates candidate ideologies randomly, but real candidates are likely to adjust their ideologies depending on which other candidates are running-- for example, running as an extremist when many moderates are running. In technical terms, it's less a statistical problem than a game-theoretic one.
Did someone say game theory? Eric Maskin, a Nobel laureate in economics, points out in a reply to Kiesling that a top-two system is essentially what made Jean-Marie Le Pen, an extremist's extremist, a candidate in the final election in France in 2002, pushing aside a candidate who would easily have beaten him in a head-to-head matchup. Similarly, the Louisiana ancestry of this voting system is not reassuring; this is the system that led to David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, getting more than 40% of the vote for the U.S. Senate. True, neither Le Pen nor Duke was elected, but when one of the two final candidates is a wacko, voters could not be said to have a real choice.
There's not much empirical research on the effects of non-partisan primaries. What there is suggests a real but modest moderating effect. We'll have more evidence soon in California.
Instant Runoff Voting. In Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) voters rank-order some or all of the candidates first, second, third, etc. Then the last-place candidate is eliminated and those voters are reassigned to their second choices. This process continues until someone has more than fifty percent of the votes. So there's no need for a runoff; in effect, the primary and the general election are the same.
Like the top-two (jungle) primary, IRV keeps a minority from being gatekeepers to a general election. Unlike the top-two primary, it keeps an extremist from profiting from a split vote among moderates. To my knowledge, no one has mentioned another benefit, which is that it would give much more information on what voters actually intended when they voted for a particular candidate, because we can see whom else those voters liked.
IRV has gotten support from some surprising places recently. Thomas Friedman endorsed it in an op-ed in The New York Times, and even more remarkably, it was used in the last Academy Awards, where it is credited with allowing "The Hurt Locker" to beat "Avatar." It's in use in Australia (in case anyone in America cares about that), and, under the name "alternative voting," it recently became an issue in coalition negotiations in Britain, where the centrist Liberal Democrats have gotten tired of being everyone's second choice. (The Conservatives agreed to hold a referendum on it next year, which should give it more visibility in the US.)
IRV does seem to me to have significant advantages over the jungle primary. It might be a little tricky to make it easy to use with optical scanning, but the main obstacle is probably getting people used to the idea. A good place for some of that "states as laboratories of democracy" stuff that lovers of federalism are always talking about.
What's Wrong With Partisanship? There is a counter-argument that, rather than being a problem, partisanship is a good thing, because it gives voters a clear choice and accountability; voters should know what they are getting when they vote for a party. The argument is stated by Matthew Yglesias here. Moreover, some argue, other countries, such as those in Europe, seem to get along fine without bipartisanship. (See, for example, comment 1 here, and my reply at comment 3.) Even in those parliaments where coalitions are the norm, nobody worries about reaching across the aisle to parties outside the coalition.
The problem with this argument is that we're not a parliamentary system. In our system, extreme partisanship does not produce accountability. It produces paralysis, which is pretty much the opposite of accountability. But we theoretically could, and perhaps should, tinker with the system to make partisanship much more workable. The obvious place to begin would be to eliminate or drastically curtail the filibuster. The Founders listed quite specific situations where supermajorities are required in the Senate, and never intended to make it a body where nothing can happen without three-fifths support. Other Senate rules are even more inimical to accountability, such as the one that allows a single Senator to keep a bill or appointment from coming to the floor.
The argument that paralysis has more to do with structural rules than with partisanship has even more force in California. The surest way to overcome dysfunction there would be to abolish the two-thirds supermajority requirement for tax increases-- itself, ironically, a product of the referendum process as part of Proposition 13. It's going to take an awful lot of moderation to overcome that rule.
But at the Federal level, there are Constitutional limits on how far we can go toward workable partisanship. As long as there's the possibility of a House and Senate, or a Congress and Presidency, controlled by different parties, the parties will have to work together to get anything done. So it looks like we may need to take seriously the idea of reforming the primary system.
A large part of the problem can be attributed to party primaries, as I observed in my post "Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Room." When party nominees are chosen by primary, they represent the mainstream of opinions in their own parties, which may be far from the mainstream of opinion in the country as a whole. Even though candidates start scuttling toward center as soon as they're past the primary, they still have to act in Congress with one eye on the next primary, lest they find at re-election time that their disloyal moderation is still resented by the party faithful. (See under McCain, John.)
It is perhaps a sign of how desperate things have become that people have started seriously discussing alternatives to the party primary. It turns out getting rid of party primaries is fairly easy, as the Constitution gives states a lot of freedom to decide how to run their elections-- no amendment required. There are a couple of prominently proposed replacements.
The Jungle Primary. The simplest alternative is to hold non-partisan primaries, with the top two candidates going on to the general election. This alternative is sometimes referred to as the "jungle primary" (I have no idea why) or the "Louisiana primary." The idea is that now candidates will be able to appeal across the full spectrum of ideologies, rather than having to cater to a narrow slice of it. This alternative was recently urged in an Op-Ed in The New York Times by Phil Kiesling that does a good job of summarizing the "pro" side of the argument. More remarkably, California just passed a ballot measure establishing a non-partisan primary, referred to as "top two," for all elections other than presidential. This, of course, has generated lots of comment pro and con.
Some of the pundits warn of unanticipated consequences-- particularly, that the added expense of appealing to a broad electorate (without a party to pick up the tab) will further empower interest groups and the rich, and force out third parties. But the biggest unknown is: will it work? Will more moderates get elected?
At FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver has done a simulation of the two different electoral systems, and finds that moderate candidates do much better with the jungle primary. His post not only gives a good summary of the logic, but has very pretty bar graphs showing the difference in outcomes (Bactrian versus dromedary, or to be pedestrian, bimodal versus unimodal). I am not wholly convinced by this approach, however. Silver's simulation generates candidate ideologies randomly, but real candidates are likely to adjust their ideologies depending on which other candidates are running-- for example, running as an extremist when many moderates are running. In technical terms, it's less a statistical problem than a game-theoretic one.
Did someone say game theory? Eric Maskin, a Nobel laureate in economics, points out in a reply to Kiesling that a top-two system is essentially what made Jean-Marie Le Pen, an extremist's extremist, a candidate in the final election in France in 2002, pushing aside a candidate who would easily have beaten him in a head-to-head matchup. Similarly, the Louisiana ancestry of this voting system is not reassuring; this is the system that led to David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, getting more than 40% of the vote for the U.S. Senate. True, neither Le Pen nor Duke was elected, but when one of the two final candidates is a wacko, voters could not be said to have a real choice.
There's not much empirical research on the effects of non-partisan primaries. What there is suggests a real but modest moderating effect. We'll have more evidence soon in California.
Instant Runoff Voting. In Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) voters rank-order some or all of the candidates first, second, third, etc. Then the last-place candidate is eliminated and those voters are reassigned to their second choices. This process continues until someone has more than fifty percent of the votes. So there's no need for a runoff; in effect, the primary and the general election are the same.
Like the top-two (jungle) primary, IRV keeps a minority from being gatekeepers to a general election. Unlike the top-two primary, it keeps an extremist from profiting from a split vote among moderates. To my knowledge, no one has mentioned another benefit, which is that it would give much more information on what voters actually intended when they voted for a particular candidate, because we can see whom else those voters liked.
IRV has gotten support from some surprising places recently. Thomas Friedman endorsed it in an op-ed in The New York Times, and even more remarkably, it was used in the last Academy Awards, where it is credited with allowing "The Hurt Locker" to beat "Avatar." It's in use in Australia (in case anyone in America cares about that), and, under the name "alternative voting," it recently became an issue in coalition negotiations in Britain, where the centrist Liberal Democrats have gotten tired of being everyone's second choice. (The Conservatives agreed to hold a referendum on it next year, which should give it more visibility in the US.)
IRV does seem to me to have significant advantages over the jungle primary. It might be a little tricky to make it easy to use with optical scanning, but the main obstacle is probably getting people used to the idea. A good place for some of that "states as laboratories of democracy" stuff that lovers of federalism are always talking about.
What's Wrong With Partisanship? There is a counter-argument that, rather than being a problem, partisanship is a good thing, because it gives voters a clear choice and accountability; voters should know what they are getting when they vote for a party. The argument is stated by Matthew Yglesias here. Moreover, some argue, other countries, such as those in Europe, seem to get along fine without bipartisanship. (See, for example, comment 1 here, and my reply at comment 3.) Even in those parliaments where coalitions are the norm, nobody worries about reaching across the aisle to parties outside the coalition.
The problem with this argument is that we're not a parliamentary system. In our system, extreme partisanship does not produce accountability. It produces paralysis, which is pretty much the opposite of accountability. But we theoretically could, and perhaps should, tinker with the system to make partisanship much more workable. The obvious place to begin would be to eliminate or drastically curtail the filibuster. The Founders listed quite specific situations where supermajorities are required in the Senate, and never intended to make it a body where nothing can happen without three-fifths support. Other Senate rules are even more inimical to accountability, such as the one that allows a single Senator to keep a bill or appointment from coming to the floor.
The argument that paralysis has more to do with structural rules than with partisanship has even more force in California. The surest way to overcome dysfunction there would be to abolish the two-thirds supermajority requirement for tax increases-- itself, ironically, a product of the referendum process as part of Proposition 13. It's going to take an awful lot of moderation to overcome that rule.
But at the Federal level, there are Constitutional limits on how far we can go toward workable partisanship. As long as there's the possibility of a House and Senate, or a Congress and Presidency, controlled by different parties, the parties will have to work together to get anything done. So it looks like we may need to take seriously the idea of reforming the primary system.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Why Most Politics Blogs Are A Waste of Time-- And Why It Matters
Dina Nisser asked me what I thought of Joe Biden's remarks in Brussels, and I, embarrassingly, had no idea what Biden had said in Brussels. So I typed "Biden Brussels" into Google, and got an astonishingly long list of right-wing websites in response.
It seems that in his opening remarks to the European Parliament, Biden had said this:
As you already know, ladies and gentlemen,[...] some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the “capital of the free world.” But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.
This strikes me harmless political flattery. In particular, note that the phrase "its own legitimate claim" clearly implies that Washington has a legitimate claim to the title, and that the inclusion of NATO suggests that wherever the capital is, American military power has a lot to do with it.
But this innocuous sentence provoked fury in the right-wing hemiblogosphere. It probably started with a syndicated column by one Jonah Goldberg that appeared in National Review Online, townhall.com, kansascity.com, and other places, and was then picked up on by Rush Limbaugh. (I've made no attempt to get the exact sequence of events straight; for all I know Limbaugh may have been the first.) Goldberg remarks, "He was telling the unaccountable Lilliputians of the EUrocracy that Gulliver sees them as equals now." (Mr. Goldberg, you do know what "parliament" means, right?)
And before you can say "Michele Bachmann" the story is popping up on gatewaypundit, thefoxnation.com, lonelyconservative.com, David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog, Freedom Eden, keyboardmilitia.com, hotair.com, liberalwhoppers.com, fireandreamitchell.com, newsbusters.org, washingtonexaminer.com, redstate.com, pajamasmedia.com, dailyradar.com, ihatethemedia.com, heritage.org (remember them?), standbyliberty.com, freerepublic.com, and so on and so on.
So why are most politics blogs a waste of time? Because they're saying the same thing as a hundred other blogs. It's like two mirrors facing each other in a barbershop (back when there were such things as barbershops)-- you get the impression of a vast corridor, but it's an illusion. And why does it matter? Take a look.
At the more popular of these sites, the story on Biden is followed by a string of comments from readers: "sounds like treason to me;" "you know when they scooped out his brain tumor, half his brain was removed instead;" "This is further evidence of the obsession progressives have with instituting a global government. There are NO elected representatives in world government. Their goal is a world-wide socialist dictatorship run by elites;" "This is a slap in the face of every American who ever served and especially the ones who gave their all and never returned. This is an insult to them of huge proportion an unforgivable insult. To have these two dolts tell us that the capital of the world is Brussels Belgium." And so on and so on.
OK, so there are a lot of angry wackos out there. What's your point, Howard?
Here's the point: a democratic society needs not just voting but discussion, argument. And this is getting harder and harder to find. We spend more and more time on the much pleasanter task of talking to people who agree with us. Indeed, as a recent Important Book has pointed out, people are increasingly choosing to live in neighborhoods with people who think like them. To cite one cited-to-death statistic, in the 1976 presidential election 27% of Americans lived in counties where one candidate won by 20% or more; in 2004, 48% did. And there is evidence that people who are only exposed to the opinion of people like them develop more extreme views; in effect, the extreme looks like a small deviation from the norm.
The internet has allowed the development of virtual communities of people who may live very far apart. But this makes it even easier to avoid those annoying people who don't agree with you. The role of comments on these websites seems to be mainly to allow people to luxuriate in how virtuous they and their fellow commenters are and how dumb the outsiders are. Few people actually bother to look at the original items that the blogger is discussing; the point is more to affirm membership in the group.
For all you liberals who are thinking, "Tsk, tsk; aren't those right-wingers terrible!"-- not so fast, buddy. I had no sooner come back from visiting the echo chamber on Biden than I stumbled into The NewYork Times's environment blog. The writer was lambasting the chairman of BP for his infamous "We care about the small people" remark, which struck me as an obvious mistake by a non-native speaker who doesn't grasp fine nuances in English. A lot of the commenters wasted no time in piling on. You can see my comment at #27. (In fairness to Times readers, a number of them came to Mr. Svanberg's defense, some with detailed discussion of similar expressions in Swedish.)
The political implications of all this are unsettling enough. Even scarier are the psychospiritual implications: Technology has enabled us to isolate ourselves more and more from anything outside our control, and to move ever closer to a solipsistic virtual reality where all we see is reflections of ourselves. I don't think this can be good. But enough on that.
What can be done about this? Here's a suggestion for personal action: several times a week, read a website by someone you strongly disagree with. Maybe you'll be convinced on that particular issue. If not, break up the stifling consensus by adding a comment. Make it polite and respectful no matter how annoyed you feel; yelling begets yelling, and that doesn't convince anybody. But don't feel bad if you don't convince anyone. Your goal is just to let in a little air.
It seems that in his opening remarks to the European Parliament, Biden had said this:
As you already know, ladies and gentlemen,[...] some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the “capital of the free world.” But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.
This strikes me harmless political flattery. In particular, note that the phrase "its own legitimate claim" clearly implies that Washington has a legitimate claim to the title, and that the inclusion of NATO suggests that wherever the capital is, American military power has a lot to do with it.
But this innocuous sentence provoked fury in the right-wing hemiblogosphere. It probably started with a syndicated column by one Jonah Goldberg that appeared in National Review Online, townhall.com, kansascity.com, and other places, and was then picked up on by Rush Limbaugh. (I've made no attempt to get the exact sequence of events straight; for all I know Limbaugh may have been the first.) Goldberg remarks, "He was telling the unaccountable Lilliputians of the EUrocracy that Gulliver sees them as equals now." (Mr. Goldberg, you do know what "parliament" means, right?)
And before you can say "Michele Bachmann" the story is popping up on gatewaypundit, thefoxnation.com, lonelyconservative.com, David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog, Freedom Eden, keyboardmilitia.com, hotair.com, liberalwhoppers.com, fireandreamitchell.com, newsbusters.org, washingtonexaminer.com, redstate.com, pajamasmedia.com, dailyradar.com, ihatethemedia.com, heritage.org (remember them?), standbyliberty.com, freerepublic.com, and so on and so on.
So why are most politics blogs a waste of time? Because they're saying the same thing as a hundred other blogs. It's like two mirrors facing each other in a barbershop (back when there were such things as barbershops)-- you get the impression of a vast corridor, but it's an illusion. And why does it matter? Take a look.
At the more popular of these sites, the story on Biden is followed by a string of comments from readers: "sounds like treason to me;" "you know when they scooped out his brain tumor, half his brain was removed instead;" "This is further evidence of the obsession progressives have with instituting a global government. There are NO elected representatives in world government. Their goal is a world-wide socialist dictatorship run by elites;" "This is a slap in the face of every American who ever served and especially the ones who gave their all and never returned. This is an insult to them of huge proportion an unforgivable insult. To have these two dolts tell us that the capital of the world is Brussels Belgium." And so on and so on.
OK, so there are a lot of angry wackos out there. What's your point, Howard?
Here's the point: a democratic society needs not just voting but discussion, argument. And this is getting harder and harder to find. We spend more and more time on the much pleasanter task of talking to people who agree with us. Indeed, as a recent Important Book has pointed out, people are increasingly choosing to live in neighborhoods with people who think like them. To cite one cited-to-death statistic, in the 1976 presidential election 27% of Americans lived in counties where one candidate won by 20% or more; in 2004, 48% did. And there is evidence that people who are only exposed to the opinion of people like them develop more extreme views; in effect, the extreme looks like a small deviation from the norm.
The internet has allowed the development of virtual communities of people who may live very far apart. But this makes it even easier to avoid those annoying people who don't agree with you. The role of comments on these websites seems to be mainly to allow people to luxuriate in how virtuous they and their fellow commenters are and how dumb the outsiders are. Few people actually bother to look at the original items that the blogger is discussing; the point is more to affirm membership in the group.
For all you liberals who are thinking, "Tsk, tsk; aren't those right-wingers terrible!"-- not so fast, buddy. I had no sooner come back from visiting the echo chamber on Biden than I stumbled into The NewYork Times's environment blog. The writer was lambasting the chairman of BP for his infamous "We care about the small people" remark, which struck me as an obvious mistake by a non-native speaker who doesn't grasp fine nuances in English. A lot of the commenters wasted no time in piling on. You can see my comment at #27. (In fairness to Times readers, a number of them came to Mr. Svanberg's defense, some with detailed discussion of similar expressions in Swedish.)
The political implications of all this are unsettling enough. Even scarier are the psychospiritual implications: Technology has enabled us to isolate ourselves more and more from anything outside our control, and to move ever closer to a solipsistic virtual reality where all we see is reflections of ourselves. I don't think this can be good. But enough on that.
What can be done about this? Here's a suggestion for personal action: several times a week, read a website by someone you strongly disagree with. Maybe you'll be convinced on that particular issue. If not, break up the stifling consensus by adding a comment. Make it polite and respectful no matter how annoyed you feel; yelling begets yelling, and that doesn't convince anybody. But don't feel bad if you don't convince anyone. Your goal is just to let in a little air.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Tempest in a Teapot
From this side of the pond, it's hard to avoid bewilderment at the British charges of Anglophobia over the reaction to the BP oil spill. For any Briton reading this, let me assure you that the level of anger here would be at least as great if ExxonMobil had done what BP did: create the worst environmental disaster in American history, have by far the worst safety record (by a factor of a hundred or so) of any major oil company, consistently understate the size of the problem, lag in organizing the cleanup, and so on and on. Anglophobia? In your dreams. Who do you think you are, the French?
BP, we are told, is a British icon, which only adds to our confusion. GM, Harley Davidson, Apple, Coca Cola, maybe Hilton, are American icons. Oil companies are not American icons. I can't help suspecting that there's some projection going on: you just know that if Exxon oil were washing up on the beaches of Scotland we'd be hearing about uncouth, money-crazed, market-worshiping American cowboys.
Intellectually, the most interesting part of this uproar has been the fury at the suggestion that BP cut its dividend. For many years, a big puzzle in academic finance theory has been why firms pay dividends at all. If companies simply held on to their cash, those retained earnings would be reflected in a higher stock price, which would be a capital gain for stockholders, with big tax advantages. Yet most companies pay dividends, and the market generally regards an increase in the dividend as good news about the company and a decrease as bad news.
I won't take you through all the ins and outs of this topic, but some of the leading theories don't help us to understand the vehemence of the reaction. One theory is that dividend increases are a way for management to signal optimism about the company's prospects. They can't just say they're optimistic, because talk is cheap and no one would believe them. By paying a larger dividend they can show that they expect to have more cash in the future. Yet surely no one now could take a cut in BP's dividend as a signal of anything, given the political pressure on management to do it.
Another theory is that paying dividends is a way to keep management from wasting money on unprofitable spending, which they would be more apt to do if they had a lot of cash lying around. But since it's already clear that BP will be spending a lot on cleanup, and that any dividend cut will be temporary, it's hard to believe that investors are worried that management will fritter away the cash not paid out in dividends.
Anyway, stay tuned. BP's board is supposed to make a decision soon about the next dividend, and we'll see what happens to the stock price. It beats looking at pictures of dead pelicans.
BP, we are told, is a British icon, which only adds to our confusion. GM, Harley Davidson, Apple, Coca Cola, maybe Hilton, are American icons. Oil companies are not American icons. I can't help suspecting that there's some projection going on: you just know that if Exxon oil were washing up on the beaches of Scotland we'd be hearing about uncouth, money-crazed, market-worshiping American cowboys.
Intellectually, the most interesting part of this uproar has been the fury at the suggestion that BP cut its dividend. For many years, a big puzzle in academic finance theory has been why firms pay dividends at all. If companies simply held on to their cash, those retained earnings would be reflected in a higher stock price, which would be a capital gain for stockholders, with big tax advantages. Yet most companies pay dividends, and the market generally regards an increase in the dividend as good news about the company and a decrease as bad news.
I won't take you through all the ins and outs of this topic, but some of the leading theories don't help us to understand the vehemence of the reaction. One theory is that dividend increases are a way for management to signal optimism about the company's prospects. They can't just say they're optimistic, because talk is cheap and no one would believe them. By paying a larger dividend they can show that they expect to have more cash in the future. Yet surely no one now could take a cut in BP's dividend as a signal of anything, given the political pressure on management to do it.
Another theory is that paying dividends is a way to keep management from wasting money on unprofitable spending, which they would be more apt to do if they had a lot of cash lying around. But since it's already clear that BP will be spending a lot on cleanup, and that any dividend cut will be temporary, it's hard to believe that investors are worried that management will fritter away the cash not paid out in dividends.
Anyway, stay tuned. BP's board is supposed to make a decision soon about the next dividend, and we'll see what happens to the stock price. It beats looking at pictures of dead pelicans.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Breaking News
A recent AP news story on the Blagojevich trial is followed by: "THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below."
What has been updated since their earlier story? Well, it turns out the two stories are identical, except that they changed "easle" into "easel." Hope they caught that before it showed up in print around the country.
In case you're wondering, the subject was not Blagojevich's artistic talents. His chief of staff testified that shortly after Blagojevich became governor, he and his inner circle sat around a conference table writing down money-making ideas on an easel. Oh, Rod...
What has been updated since their earlier story? Well, it turns out the two stories are identical, except that they changed "easle" into "easel." Hope they caught that before it showed up in print around the country.
In case you're wondering, the subject was not Blagojevich's artistic talents. His chief of staff testified that shortly after Blagojevich became governor, he and his inner circle sat around a conference table writing down money-making ideas on an easel. Oh, Rod...
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
More Ignorance About the Middle East
I've been meaning to do a post about Israel, but it's been hard to keep up with all the different information about the "Freedom Flotilla": were the Israelis dumb (a frequently expressed opinion in the Israeli media), unlucky, or what? I have some observations about why Israel does so badly in the world media, but I'll get to those in the near future.
Today, I want to say a few words about Helen Thomas, the dean (or, if you prefer, doyenne) of the Washington press corps, who has just resigned after saying that the Jews in Israel should get out and go back to Poland or Germany. As usual, I'll try to avoid the obvious outraged or snarky comments (should Helen Thomas go back to England?).
The first point is that Israelis have no place to go. Seventy percent of Israelis were born there. Almost all of those, presumably, have no native language other than Hebrew. They are as Israeli as Helen Thomas is American.
The second point is that fewer than half of all Israeli Jews come from families originating in Eastern Europe. More than fifty percent are from families originating in Arab countries. (There are other possibilities, of course, such as the 2% or so from Ethiopia.) There is a Palestinian narrative about how Israel is an alien European transplant that the West foisted on Arabs because of guilt about the Holocaust, for which Arabs were not responsible. But the fact is that most Israeli Jews are refugees or descendants of refugees from Arab countries.
Furthermore, for complex reasons, those are the Jews who make up the bulk of the right wing in Israel. A Palestinian state would be a lot easier if everyone who lived in Israel were from Poland or Germany.
My next question was going to be how the Palestinians managed to sell their narrative so successfully that someone who spent almost fifty years covering the White House would buy it. But I just heard (thanks, Natalie) that Thomas is of Lebanese descent (related to Danny and Marlo?), so she may not be typical. Still, I wonder how many reporters, including those who report on the Middle East, know that most Israeli Jews originate in Arab countries.
It appears, then, that saying, "Helen Thomas, go back to England," is quite analogous to what she said, especially since she was born in Kentucky. Not that I would ever say such a thing.
Today, I want to say a few words about Helen Thomas, the dean (or, if you prefer, doyenne) of the Washington press corps, who has just resigned after saying that the Jews in Israel should get out and go back to Poland or Germany. As usual, I'll try to avoid the obvious outraged or snarky comments (should Helen Thomas go back to England?).
The first point is that Israelis have no place to go. Seventy percent of Israelis were born there. Almost all of those, presumably, have no native language other than Hebrew. They are as Israeli as Helen Thomas is American.
The second point is that fewer than half of all Israeli Jews come from families originating in Eastern Europe. More than fifty percent are from families originating in Arab countries. (There are other possibilities, of course, such as the 2% or so from Ethiopia.) There is a Palestinian narrative about how Israel is an alien European transplant that the West foisted on Arabs because of guilt about the Holocaust, for which Arabs were not responsible. But the fact is that most Israeli Jews are refugees or descendants of refugees from Arab countries.
Furthermore, for complex reasons, those are the Jews who make up the bulk of the right wing in Israel. A Palestinian state would be a lot easier if everyone who lived in Israel were from Poland or Germany.
My next question was going to be how the Palestinians managed to sell their narrative so successfully that someone who spent almost fifty years covering the White House would buy it. But I just heard (thanks, Natalie) that Thomas is of Lebanese descent (related to Danny and Marlo?), so she may not be typical. Still, I wonder how many reporters, including those who report on the Middle East, know that most Israeli Jews originate in Arab countries.
It appears, then, that saying, "Helen Thomas, go back to England," is quite analogous to what she said, especially since she was born in Kentucky. Not that I would ever say such a thing.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Coming Soon in "Offshore!"
Forthcoming titles in the Offshore! mystery series:
Blowout
Tony Mudd investigates the death of an engineer in a rig explosion. It looks like an accident... but was it?
Top Kill
Mudd is called in when the body of an oil company president is found floating in a barrel of light sweet crude.
Junk Shot
When a roustabout is fished from the South China Sea with a bullet in his chest, Mudd finds himself tangling with a ruthless heroin-smuggling gang.
Blowout
Tony Mudd investigates the death of an engineer in a rig explosion. It looks like an accident... but was it?
Top Kill
Mudd is called in when the body of an oil company president is found floating in a barrel of light sweet crude.
Junk Shot
When a roustabout is fished from the South China Sea with a bullet in his chest, Mudd finds himself tangling with a ruthless heroin-smuggling gang.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Recommended Reading
1. I recently said that I had once thought Newt Gingrich had some integrity. I'm not sure why I thought that, but this recent interview with Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com suggest that if he is not a demagogue, he's a wacko.
Gingrich says that
...by any reasonable standard, Obama is committed to socialism... Not only have we taken over GM, Chrysler and AIG, but there’s a czar in the White House who believes he can establish the pay scale for 30 companies he’s never been in, for hundreds of people he’s never met. They just nationalized the student loan program...So there’s a lot of different practices that would lead us to believe this is socialist operation.
Now, does anyone in his or her right mind believe the administration intends to hold on to GM, Chrysler and AIG in perpetuity? But before we quickly vote "demagogue," consider: would a demagogue really say that even though we've lent banks hundreds of billions of dollars, those banks should retain complete freedom to pay their executives as much as they want? Only a very dumb demagogue would say that. This sounds more like someone who values theoretical purity over all else. So which is worse, a demagogue or a fanatic?
Of course, with statements like, "Two Democratic legislators in Connecticut introduced a bill that would have destroyed the Catholic Church," or "They just nationalized the student loan program," (actually, they returned it to what it was before Republicans started subsidizing the banks to do it) I start to think maybe I was too hasty in dismissing demagoguery as a possibility. But decide for yourself.
2. I sort of had Mark Lilla pegged as a standard neo-con, despite not having actually read anything by him. Turns out he writes regularly for the non-con New York Review of Books. Other people seem confused too, particularly right-wing bloggers who are enraged by an article he wrote entitled "The Tea Party Jacobins." For example, a blog called "Minnesota Conservatives" calls him "a respected intellectual," presumably meaning a conservative, while over at "The Other McCain," Robert Stacy McCain (remember him?) refers to him as "liberal Lilla," though not for any apparent reason except that Lilla doesn't like the Tea Party.
Anyway, the article strikes me as a pretty penetrating analysis, not only of the Tea Party, but of why American democracy doesn't seem to be functioning very well right now. Read it and weep.
Gingrich says that
...by any reasonable standard, Obama is committed to socialism... Not only have we taken over GM, Chrysler and AIG, but there’s a czar in the White House who believes he can establish the pay scale for 30 companies he’s never been in, for hundreds of people he’s never met. They just nationalized the student loan program...So there’s a lot of different practices that would lead us to believe this is socialist operation.
Now, does anyone in his or her right mind believe the administration intends to hold on to GM, Chrysler and AIG in perpetuity? But before we quickly vote "demagogue," consider: would a demagogue really say that even though we've lent banks hundreds of billions of dollars, those banks should retain complete freedom to pay their executives as much as they want? Only a very dumb demagogue would say that. This sounds more like someone who values theoretical purity over all else. So which is worse, a demagogue or a fanatic?
Of course, with statements like, "Two Democratic legislators in Connecticut introduced a bill that would have destroyed the Catholic Church," or "They just nationalized the student loan program," (actually, they returned it to what it was before Republicans started subsidizing the banks to do it) I start to think maybe I was too hasty in dismissing demagoguery as a possibility. But decide for yourself.
2. I sort of had Mark Lilla pegged as a standard neo-con, despite not having actually read anything by him. Turns out he writes regularly for the non-con New York Review of Books. Other people seem confused too, particularly right-wing bloggers who are enraged by an article he wrote entitled "The Tea Party Jacobins." For example, a blog called "Minnesota Conservatives" calls him "a respected intellectual," presumably meaning a conservative, while over at "The Other McCain," Robert Stacy McCain (remember him?) refers to him as "liberal Lilla," though not for any apparent reason except that Lilla doesn't like the Tea Party.
Anyway, the article strikes me as a pretty penetrating analysis, not only of the Tea Party, but of why American democracy doesn't seem to be functioning very well right now. Read it and weep.
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