Ezra Klein looked at Bush's platform and concludes On policy, Romney is far to Bush’s right. "But the Republican Party has moved far to the right since 2000, and Romney has moved with it. Bush wanted to pay down a surplus with spending cuts and expand Medicare. Romney wants to finance larger tax cuts by slashing domestic spending. It’s a more regressive policy that will be paid for in a more regressive way. In today’s GOP, even the most moderate presidential candidate is far to George W. Bush’s right."
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Honeybee Problem Nearing A ‘Critical Point’
Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’. "Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy."
"In addition to continued reports of CCD — a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind — bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit."
"The Purdue University study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found high levels of clothianidin in planter exhaust spewed during the spring sowing of treated maize seed. It also found neonics in the soil of unplanted fields nearby those planted with Bt corn, on dandelions growing near those fields, in dead bees found near hive entrances, and in pollen stored in the hives."
"The irony, of course, is that farmers use these chemicals to protect their crops from destructive insects, but in so doing, they harm other insects essential to their crops’ production — a catch-22 that Hackenberg said speaks to the fact that “we have become a nation driven by the chemical industry.” In addition to beekeeping, he owns two farms, and even when crop analysts recommend spraying pesticides on his crops to kill an aphid population, for example, he knows that “if I spray, I’m going to kill all the beneficial insects.” But most farmers, lacking Hackenberg’s awareness of bee populations, follow the advice of the crop adviser — who, these days, is likely to be paid by the chemical industry, rather than by a state university or another independent entity."
"Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself [I think in 2003] that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists’ clear warnings about the chemicals’ effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn’t bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study’s findings."
"Since this is an election year — a time when no one wants to make Big Ag (and its money) mad — beekeepers may have to suffer another season of losses before there’s any hope of action on the EPA’s part. But when one out of every three bites of food on Americans’ plates results directly from honey bee pollination, there’s no question that the fate of these insects will determine our own as eaters."
"In addition to continued reports of CCD — a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind — bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit."
"The Purdue University study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found high levels of clothianidin in planter exhaust spewed during the spring sowing of treated maize seed. It also found neonics in the soil of unplanted fields nearby those planted with Bt corn, on dandelions growing near those fields, in dead bees found near hive entrances, and in pollen stored in the hives."
"The irony, of course, is that farmers use these chemicals to protect their crops from destructive insects, but in so doing, they harm other insects essential to their crops’ production — a catch-22 that Hackenberg said speaks to the fact that “we have become a nation driven by the chemical industry.” In addition to beekeeping, he owns two farms, and even when crop analysts recommend spraying pesticides on his crops to kill an aphid population, for example, he knows that “if I spray, I’m going to kill all the beneficial insects.” But most farmers, lacking Hackenberg’s awareness of bee populations, follow the advice of the crop adviser — who, these days, is likely to be paid by the chemical industry, rather than by a state university or another independent entity."
"Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself [I think in 2003] that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists’ clear warnings about the chemicals’ effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn’t bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study’s findings."
"Since this is an election year — a time when no one wants to make Big Ag (and its money) mad — beekeepers may have to suffer another season of losses before there’s any hope of action on the EPA’s part. But when one out of every three bites of food on Americans’ plates results directly from honey bee pollination, there’s no question that the fate of these insects will determine our own as eaters."
How an Ink Cartridge Trashed in Seattle Ended Up in Mexico
How an Ink Cartridge Trashed in Seattle Ended Up in Mexico. "In August 2009, a team of researchers from the SENSEable City Lab in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning embarked on a major project to track the journey of 3,000 items of waste as they moved through Seattle’s disposal system. The goal of the project, called Trash Track, was to monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal and to help create awareness of the impact of trash on the environment."
25 clever ideas to make life easier
25 clever ideas to make life easier. Some of these are quite clever.
Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?
It boggles my mind that the New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote on Jan 12th, Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante? "I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about."
After quoting a received letter he wrote "This message was typical of mail from some readers who, fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true."
Now I know there are times where details are murky, but there have been so many times in this campaign where candidates have said things that are demonstratively false. It really shouldn't be difficult to print the quote and then cite a fact from a neutral source. E.g., Obama has raised taxes, no he hasn't, the tax rates have changed as follows...
Morons.
David Atkins has more, The New York Times wonders aloud if it should care about the truth. "That the question is being asked after all these years is, I suppose, a good sign. That it had to be asked demonstrates everything that has gone wrong with modern journalism."
Kevin Drum said Let's Provide the New York Times With a List of Our Top 10 Lies. "And yet, if you insist on real-time fact-checking being done in news stories, then you have to do exactly what John suggests. Every news organization needs some kind of "fact manual" that provides the agreed-on facts for every conceivable assertion. The copy desk then has to ensure that these stylized facts are included in any story in which a public figure says something different. Question: Do you really want this? Does anyone want this? A few weeks ago PolitiFact declared that "Republicans want to end Medicare" was their Lie of the Year. If the Times adopted this position, it means that every time a Democrat said this the Times would explain that it's not really true. Are we all up for that? Are we really as willing to allow the Times to be the supreme arbiter of truth as we think?" I'm game.
After quoting a received letter he wrote "This message was typical of mail from some readers who, fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true."
Now I know there are times where details are murky, but there have been so many times in this campaign where candidates have said things that are demonstratively false. It really shouldn't be difficult to print the quote and then cite a fact from a neutral source. E.g., Obama has raised taxes, no he hasn't, the tax rates have changed as follows...
Morons.
David Atkins has more, The New York Times wonders aloud if it should care about the truth. "That the question is being asked after all these years is, I suppose, a good sign. That it had to be asked demonstrates everything that has gone wrong with modern journalism."
Kevin Drum said Let's Provide the New York Times With a List of Our Top 10 Lies. "And yet, if you insist on real-time fact-checking being done in news stories, then you have to do exactly what John suggests. Every news organization needs some kind of "fact manual" that provides the agreed-on facts for every conceivable assertion. The copy desk then has to ensure that these stylized facts are included in any story in which a public figure says something different. Question: Do you really want this? Does anyone want this? A few weeks ago PolitiFact declared that "Republicans want to end Medicare" was their Lie of the Year. If the Times adopted this position, it means that every time a Democrat said this the Times would explain that it's not really true. Are we all up for that? Are we really as willing to allow the Times to be the supreme arbiter of truth as we think?" I'm game.
What we miss when we talk about tax cuts
Ezra Klein wrote a really good post, What we miss when we talk about tax cuts. "Every estimate you’ve heard of who is being helped and who is being hurt by the tax cuts proposed by the various Republican presidential campaign is telling you, at best, only half the story. And that’s because these estimates only look at one side of the ledger: who gets the tax cuts. But there’s another side to the ledger: Who pays for them, and how? That side is at least as important as who gets the tax cuts, but it’s almost always ignored."
"William Gale, the TPC’s other director, agrees. ‘One doesn’t know the full distribution of the net benefits or burdens of a tax cut until you know how it is financed.’ The problem is that there’s no way to model the pay-fors. No Republican campaign has explained how they will fund their tax cuts. So there’s no plan to speak of, and thus no plan to analyze."
"Take Romney. His tax cuts add $2-$3 trillion to the cost of the Bush tax cuts. So he needs to find somewhere in the neighborhood of $6-$7 trillion in spending cuts. You can’t get there without slicing deep into the bone of Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and dozens of other popular programs. It won’t come from spending programs that substantially benefit top earners. That’s because there really aren’t spending programs that substantially benefit top earners. You could means test Social Security and Medicare, but that’s only going to get you so far — and it’s going to be pretty unpopular. "
And here's something I missed: "When Bush proposed most of his tax cuts, the financing came from the surplus. That money could have also gone toward shoring up Social Security, or expanding programs to help low-income Americans, but using it for tax cuts didn’t require, at least in theory, taking benefits away from anybody. Extending the Bush tax cuts, in a time of deficits, does require sharp cuts in benefits."
"William Gale, the TPC’s other director, agrees. ‘One doesn’t know the full distribution of the net benefits or burdens of a tax cut until you know how it is financed.’ The problem is that there’s no way to model the pay-fors. No Republican campaign has explained how they will fund their tax cuts. So there’s no plan to speak of, and thus no plan to analyze."
"Take Romney. His tax cuts add $2-$3 trillion to the cost of the Bush tax cuts. So he needs to find somewhere in the neighborhood of $6-$7 trillion in spending cuts. You can’t get there without slicing deep into the bone of Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and dozens of other popular programs. It won’t come from spending programs that substantially benefit top earners. That’s because there really aren’t spending programs that substantially benefit top earners. You could means test Social Security and Medicare, but that’s only going to get you so far — and it’s going to be pretty unpopular. "
And here's something I missed: "When Bush proposed most of his tax cuts, the financing came from the surplus. That money could have also gone toward shoring up Social Security, or expanding programs to help low-income Americans, but using it for tax cuts didn’t require, at least in theory, taking benefits away from anybody. Extending the Bush tax cuts, in a time of deficits, does require sharp cuts in benefits."
Mitt Romney, Vulture Capitalism, and GS Technologies
Mitt Romney, Vulture Capitalism, and GS Technologies
"Did Bain Capital under Mitt Romney earn its money fairly, or did they play some of the predatory private equity games that Dean Baker outlined yesterday, loading up on debt, shifting assets around, and defaulting on pension benefits? Probably some of both. Reuters reports that in the case of Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill, there were a lot of the financial games going on."
"Some investments don't work out. That's the free market for you. But does it seem right that Bain and its millionaire investors made a pot of money even though GS went bust and its workers lost a big chunk of their pensions? Maybe it does to Mitt Romney, but I imagine the rest of the country may feel a bit differently about it."
"Did Bain Capital under Mitt Romney earn its money fairly, or did they play some of the predatory private equity games that Dean Baker outlined yesterday, loading up on debt, shifting assets around, and defaulting on pension benefits? Probably some of both. Reuters reports that in the case of Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill, there were a lot of the financial games going on."
"Some investments don't work out. That's the free market for you. But does it seem right that Bain and its millionaire investors made a pot of money even though GS went bust and its workers lost a big chunk of their pensions? Maybe it does to Mitt Romney, but I imagine the rest of the country may feel a bit differently about it."
The Dangerous Gym Membership
Sarah Kliff wrote about The dangerous gym membership. "It sounds like a great idea: Private insurance plans in the Medicare Advantage program offering gym memberships, a small investment that could curb health care costs among seniors. But what some see as innovation, others view as a stealth campaign to lure the healthiest seniors into the private plans while leaving Medicare with the worst risks."
It's never easy is it?
It's never easy is it?
Jon Huntsman, the Moderate Radical
I completely agree with Kevin Drum about Jon Huntsman, the Moderate Radical. "Ezra goes on to explain that on a policy level, Huntsman is actually one of the most conservative guys in the race. And he's right. It's endlessly annoying to hear pundits refer to him as a moderate kind of guy without, seemingly, knowing anything about his actual political views. And yet, it's not entirely baseless. Policy isn't the only thing that matters, after all, and I'd argue that Huntsman quite likely is moderate in two important ways."
The Truth About New Hampshire: It's the Government Spending, Stupid
Before the primary Michael Mandel wrote in The Atlantic The Truth About New Hampshire: It's the Government Spending, Stupid "New Hampshire, scene of the upcoming GOP presidential primary, seems like the perfect illustration of the Republican low-tax philosophy. With no state income tax and one of the lightest tax burdens in the U.S., New Hampshire enjoys an 8.3% poverty rate, the lowest in the country, and an unemployment rate of only 5.2% as of November, far below the national rate.
But here's a surprise: The 'Live Free or Die' State, having lost much of its manufacturing base, seems to be thriving mostly on a steady diet of government spending and public jobs. For one, government employment in New Hampshire is up 14% since 2000, compared to 6% for the country as a whole.
What's more, real personal income growth in New Hampshire over the past decade has been driven almost entirely by government spending."
But here's a surprise: The 'Live Free or Die' State, having lost much of its manufacturing base, seems to be thriving mostly on a steady diet of government spending and public jobs. For one, government employment in New Hampshire is up 14% since 2000, compared to 6% for the country as a whole.
What's more, real personal income growth in New Hampshire over the past decade has been driven almost entirely by government spending."
What a one-cent soda tax buys
The Washington Post wrote What a one-cent soda tax buys. "Previous research has indicated that a one-cent tax on every ounce of sugary drinks — a 12-cent tax on a can of Coke, say — decreases consumption by somewhere between 10 and 25 percent. This team, led by Columbia University’s Claire Wang, estimates a 15 percent reduction in consumption and focuses on the impact on adults age 25 to 64. And she finds a pretty significant public health impact:
Such a tax would have also raised an estimated $13 billion in revenue if enacted in 2010 and, over five years, generate $79 billion."
We estimate that such a tax could reduce new cases of type 2 diabetes by 2.6 percent and the prevalence of obesity by 1.5 percent. Although small, these percentage reductions would, over the course of ten years, result in 95,000 fewer instances of coronary heart disease, 8,000 fewer strokes, 26,000 fewer premature deaths (Exhibit 1), and more than $17 billion in savings from medical expenditures averted across the US population.
Such a tax would have also raised an estimated $13 billion in revenue if enacted in 2010 and, over five years, generate $79 billion."
Mass refinancing: The ‘biggest thing’ Obama can do without Congress
Mass refinancing: The ‘biggest thing’ Obama can do without Congress:
Hubbard is an advocate for using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to set off a nationwide wave of mortgage refinancing. In a paper co-authored with Columbia economist Christopher Mayer, Hubbard estimates that more than 75 percent of the homeowners with 30-year mortgages backed by Fannie or Freddie are paying interest rates higher than 5 percent. But for the past two years, interest rates have been closer to 4 percent. That means tens of millions of Americans are paying more than they need to every single month.
Some of these homeowners have good reason to resist refinancing. They plan to move soon, or they lied on their initial mortgage application, or they can’t afford the up-front costs. Some have been scared off of new financial products by the events of the past few years. But many simply don’t follow the month-to-month gyrations of interest rates. Others are deterred by conditions set down by Fannie and Freddie — although those have been substantially eased over the past few months, albeit with little fanfare.
Those homeowners represent one of the president’s few remaining opportunities to help a substantial number of Americans. That’s because a major push on refinancing is one of the few policies the Obama administration could accomplish without the help of Congress.
(Via Ezra Klein)
Tinker Tailor, Moneyball: Between the lines
I wish it went further but Tinker Tailor, Moneyball: Between the lines (Part 1) made some interesting points looking at the scripts of these two films.
Goldman, Citigroup CDOs Were Tip of Iceberg
Bloomberg wrote a couple of weeks ago, Goldman, Citigroup CDOs Were Tip of Iceberg "The complex mortgage instruments at the center of the 2008 financial crisis went so spectacularly wrong that many observers have said they were designed to fail. A new paper by Oliver Faltin-Traeger of the investment firm Blackrock and Christopher Mayer of Columbia Business School lends a lot of credence to that assertion."
"Using a unique database published by the investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management, Faltin-Traeger and Mayer identified the underlying bonds in some 528 ABS CDOs issued between 2005 and 2007, and compared their performance to similar bonds that weren't included in CDOs. They found that the bonds in the CDOs performed a lot worse. Even if one holds observable characteristics such as initial ratings and yields constant, the bonds in the CDOs suffered ratings downgrades that were 50 percent to 90 percent more severe. As of June 2010, for example, bonds with initial triple-A ratings had been downgraded by an average 11.84 notches, compared to 5.99 for those not in CDOs. The bonds in the CDOs were also more likely to have been rated by all three major credit-rating firms. The research provides strong support for the idea that banks -- with the help of pliant ratings agencies -- put together the CDOs and sold them to investors in a premeditated effort to get rid of some of their most toxic assets, or to provide vehicles for clients who wanted to bet against the worst possible assets. As the authors put it: "It would have been very hard to randomly choose securities with such poor ex-post performance.""
"Using a unique database published by the investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management, Faltin-Traeger and Mayer identified the underlying bonds in some 528 ABS CDOs issued between 2005 and 2007, and compared their performance to similar bonds that weren't included in CDOs. They found that the bonds in the CDOs performed a lot worse. Even if one holds observable characteristics such as initial ratings and yields constant, the bonds in the CDOs suffered ratings downgrades that were 50 percent to 90 percent more severe. As of June 2010, for example, bonds with initial triple-A ratings had been downgraded by an average 11.84 notches, compared to 5.99 for those not in CDOs. The bonds in the CDOs were also more likely to have been rated by all three major credit-rating firms. The research provides strong support for the idea that banks -- with the help of pliant ratings agencies -- put together the CDOs and sold them to investors in a premeditated effort to get rid of some of their most toxic assets, or to provide vehicles for clients who wanted to bet against the worst possible assets. As the authors put it: "It would have been very hard to randomly choose securities with such poor ex-post performance.""
Competition Hasn’t Worked in Health Care
Back in December, Ezra Klein had a really good post, Competition hasn’t worked in health care.
"Republicans and Democrats have the same problem with the Congressional Budget Office: it refuses to score competition between health-care plans as a surefire way to lower the cost of health care.
This annoyed Democrats during the health-care reform debate, as it meant the Affordable Care Act didn’t get any credit for the competition it would foster on its exchanges. It’s annoying Republicans now, as it means their Medicare-reform plans need to impose blunt spending caps if the CBO to certify them as deficit reducing.
But the CBO is in the right here: No matter how much sense competition makes in theory, no matter how obvious it is that it will drive down the price of health care, the fact is that it keeps failing when we put it into practice."
Kevin Drum added, Healthcare and the Free Market. "This actually seems unlikely to me. Companies like Aetna and Blue Cross are plenty big enough to negotiate favorable prices from healthcare providers. And they do. I suspect the dynamic driving higher costs in the private sector actually lies mostly with private employers, who compete with each other to keep their workers satisfied. This means that they help drive costs up, not down, and healthcare insurers respond to this. What's more, employers can always make up for higher premiums with smaller wage increases, which gives them less incentive to pay a lot of attention to healthcare costs in the first place. As long as their total compensation costs stay within reason, they don't much care whether it's going out in wages or in benefits. (In fact, since healthcare benefits aren't subject to income tax, they actually have a small incentive1 to increase benefits at the expense of wages.)
So I guess I wouldn't give Medicare quite such huge props for controlling costs. There's probably less there than meets the eye. Still, even if the numbers aren't as impressive as Tyson suggests, there's not much question that private healthcare providers have never done better at controlling costs than Medicare, and have almost certainly done at least a little worse. This doesn't bode well for the notion that unleashing the forces of free market competition will do much good for Medicare."
"Republicans and Democrats have the same problem with the Congressional Budget Office: it refuses to score competition between health-care plans as a surefire way to lower the cost of health care.
This annoyed Democrats during the health-care reform debate, as it meant the Affordable Care Act didn’t get any credit for the competition it would foster on its exchanges. It’s annoying Republicans now, as it means their Medicare-reform plans need to impose blunt spending caps if the CBO to certify them as deficit reducing.
But the CBO is in the right here: No matter how much sense competition makes in theory, no matter how obvious it is that it will drive down the price of health care, the fact is that it keeps failing when we put it into practice."
Kevin Drum added, Healthcare and the Free Market. "This actually seems unlikely to me. Companies like Aetna and Blue Cross are plenty big enough to negotiate favorable prices from healthcare providers. And they do. I suspect the dynamic driving higher costs in the private sector actually lies mostly with private employers, who compete with each other to keep their workers satisfied. This means that they help drive costs up, not down, and healthcare insurers respond to this. What's more, employers can always make up for higher premiums with smaller wage increases, which gives them less incentive to pay a lot of attention to healthcare costs in the first place. As long as their total compensation costs stay within reason, they don't much care whether it's going out in wages or in benefits. (In fact, since healthcare benefits aren't subject to income tax, they actually have a small incentive1 to increase benefits at the expense of wages.)
So I guess I wouldn't give Medicare quite such huge props for controlling costs. There's probably less there than meets the eye. Still, even if the numbers aren't as impressive as Tyson suggests, there's not much question that private healthcare providers have never done better at controlling costs than Medicare, and have almost certainly done at least a little worse. This doesn't bode well for the notion that unleashing the forces of free market competition will do much good for Medicare."
Where the Trees Are
Chart Porn posted Where the Trees Are. In going through the backlog of articles to read I would have skipped this one if not for this quote: "I guess I knew the midwest was sparse – but I didn’t think it was THAT sparse."
The Top 1 Percent: What Jobs Do They Have?
The New York Times had an infographic The Top 1 Percent: What Jobs Do They Have? Some seemed odd at first, like Elementary and Secondary School Teacher, but if you mouse over it, you'll see that 59,362 people with this job live in a household in the top 1%.
What Percent Are You?
The New York Times had a feature, What Percent Are You? "Enter your household income and see how you rank in 344 zones across the country."
In Honor of MLK
Nancy Duarte wrote In Honor of MLK "To honor one of one of the greatest communicators of all time, we’d like to re-post a popular blog from last year: The analysis of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech from the March on Washington."
What is Wrong with Minnesota and Texas?
The Republican primaries are down to basically four candidates. In the polling various people like Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrinch have peaked and declined. Two in particular, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, peaked and declined and I'd say the cause was mostly the result of poor debate performance and other comments I'd characterize as incoherent.
So, basically the primary process worked. Potential candidates took a shot and the American people found them lacking. And even though it seems like this process has been going on forever, it's only been a few months and their peak and decline were much quicker than that. I think, for Bachmann and Perry we looked and quickly found them not qualified for president. They didn't decline because of scandals or other things, they lost because they didn't make sense. Perry couldn't even remember the names of all the cabinet departments he want to close, let alone what they do.
On this basis, I'd go further and say they showed they weren't qualified for political leadership, and yet, Bachmann has been a Congresswoman for 3 terms and Perry has won three terms as Governor of Texas (and served for a bit more, taking over after Bush left that office). Their platforms weren't that different from what they want to do in their current offices (well closer for Bachmann in Washington than Perry in Texas). So the American people interviewed them for only a few months and found them to be unqualified. Why can't Minnesota and Texas see the same after hiring them both three times?
So, basically the primary process worked. Potential candidates took a shot and the American people found them lacking. And even though it seems like this process has been going on forever, it's only been a few months and their peak and decline were much quicker than that. I think, for Bachmann and Perry we looked and quickly found them not qualified for president. They didn't decline because of scandals or other things, they lost because they didn't make sense. Perry couldn't even remember the names of all the cabinet departments he want to close, let alone what they do.
On this basis, I'd go further and say they showed they weren't qualified for political leadership, and yet, Bachmann has been a Congresswoman for 3 terms and Perry has won three terms as Governor of Texas (and served for a bit more, taking over after Bush left that office). Their platforms weren't that different from what they want to do in their current offices (well closer for Bachmann in Washington than Perry in Texas). So the American people interviewed them for only a few months and found them to be unqualified. Why can't Minnesota and Texas see the same after hiring them both three times?
An Abundance of Exoplanets Changes our Universe
Scientific American wrote An Abundance of Exoplanets Changes our Universe "About 17% of stars (give or take several percent) harbor Jupiter mass planets, cool Neptunes exist around about 52% of stars and Super-Earths (5 to 10 times the mass of Earth) exist around roughly 62% of stars. Even with sizable errors in these estimates (as much as 20-30%) the numbers are astonishing – there are at least 1.6 planets orbiting from 0.5 to 10 AU for every star in the galaxy. Combine this with the Doppler survey numbers (25% of stars with ‘Earth-sized’ planets within 0.25 AU), the Kepler numbers (17% of stars with ‘Neptunes’ orbiting within 0.5AU), and the microlensing estimates of 2 rogue giant planets per star in the galaxy and you have, well you have an awful lot of planets."
Sun Shoots a Fastball at Earth
The Washington Post writes Sun shoots a fastball at Earth, but minimal impact expected on satellites, power grid. "A huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth’s magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes."
It's a glancing blow that won't do much damage, but there is potential for aurora activity to be seen in places that normally don't get any. If it's clear and dark out and you're in northern US latitudes you might get a view. I also learned this:
"Besides sparking pretty auroras, heightened solar activity has a more tangible benefit: It cleans up space junk. As the sun acts up, the Earth’s atmosphere expands, increasing friction on dead satellites, rocket parts and other trash in low Earth orbit, pulling them down."
It's a glancing blow that won't do much damage, but there is potential for aurora activity to be seen in places that normally don't get any. If it's clear and dark out and you're in northern US latitudes you might get a view. I also learned this:
"Besides sparking pretty auroras, heightened solar activity has a more tangible benefit: It cleans up space junk. As the sun acts up, the Earth’s atmosphere expands, increasing friction on dead satellites, rocket parts and other trash in low Earth orbit, pulling them down."
Friday, January 20, 2012
How Copyright Industries Con Congress
I'm not normally a fan of CATO but Julian Sanchez used to work for ars and recently took apart the figures that SOPA supporters cite. How Copyright Industries Con Congress.
"The $200–250 billion number had originated in a 1991 sidebar in Forbes, but it was not a measurement of the cost of “piracy” to the U.S. economy. It was an unsourced estimate of the total size of the global market in counterfeit goods. Beyond the obvious fact that these numbers are decades old, counterfeiting of physical goods imported in bulk and sold by domestic retail distributors is, rather obviously, a totally different phenomenon with different policy implications from the problem of illicit individual consumer downloads of movies, music, and software. The 750,000 jobs number had originated in a 1986 speech (yes, 1986) by the secretary of commerce estimating that counterfeiting could cost the United States “anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000″ jobs. Nobody in the Commerce Department was able to identify where those figures had come from. These are the numbers that were driving U.S. copyright policy as recently as 2008—and I’m still seeing them repeated in “fact sheets” circulated by SOPA boosters"
Later on...
"Again, we don’t have the full LEK study, but one of Siwek’s early papers does conveniently reproduce some of LEK’s PowerPoint slides, which attempt to break the data down a bit. Of the total $6.1 billion in annual losses LEK estimated to MPAA studios, the amount attributable to online piracy by users in the United States was $446 million—which, by coincidence, is roughly the amount grossed globally by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel."
And it gets reduced further. Pretty fun.
"The $200–250 billion number had originated in a 1991 sidebar in Forbes, but it was not a measurement of the cost of “piracy” to the U.S. economy. It was an unsourced estimate of the total size of the global market in counterfeit goods. Beyond the obvious fact that these numbers are decades old, counterfeiting of physical goods imported in bulk and sold by domestic retail distributors is, rather obviously, a totally different phenomenon with different policy implications from the problem of illicit individual consumer downloads of movies, music, and software. The 750,000 jobs number had originated in a 1986 speech (yes, 1986) by the secretary of commerce estimating that counterfeiting could cost the United States “anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000″ jobs. Nobody in the Commerce Department was able to identify where those figures had come from. These are the numbers that were driving U.S. copyright policy as recently as 2008—and I’m still seeing them repeated in “fact sheets” circulated by SOPA boosters"
Later on...
"Again, we don’t have the full LEK study, but one of Siwek’s early papers does conveniently reproduce some of LEK’s PowerPoint slides, which attempt to break the data down a bit. Of the total $6.1 billion in annual losses LEK estimated to MPAA studios, the amount attributable to online piracy by users in the United States was $446 million—which, by coincidence, is roughly the amount grossed globally by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel."
And it gets reduced further. Pretty fun.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics
Andrew Sullivan has a good (long) piece, How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics. A lot of it is quotable and it's worth a whole reading, but here's a bit:
"They miss, it seems to me, two vital things. The first is the simple scale of what has been accomplished on issues liberals say they care about. A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician.
What liberals have never understood about Obama is that he practices a show-don’t-tell, long-game form of domestic politics. What matters to him is what he can get done, not what he can immediately take credit for. And so I railed against him for the better part of two years for dragging his feet on gay issues. But what he was doing was getting his Republican defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to move before he did. The man who made the case for repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was, in the end, Adm. Mike Mullen. This took time—as did his painstaking change in the rule barring HIV-positive immigrants and tourists—but the slow and deliberate and unprovocative manner in which it was accomplished made the changes more durable. Not for the first time, I realized that to understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does."
I criticize Obama for compromising too much. I think his accomplishments are genuine, I just think his tactics meant some of the things could have been better. I would have liked a public option and I think, if he explained it better (which is what he was supposed to have been really good at) it might have made it. I think that of the stimulus too, that more of it could have been stimulative rather than just tax cuts. I also fault him on civil liberties with not closing Gitmo, indefinite detention, and warrantless searches, etc. I think those are fair critiques and not "deluded".
Update: Lawrence Lessig has commented: "Any liberal (or sane moderate for that matter) would be crazy to say that we’re not better off today than we would have been had Obama not been elected. Of course we are. But that fact doesn’t negate the (still ignored by Sullivan et al.) criticism of the President: That he baited us with the reform rhetoric, and then switched to the administration promised by H. Clinton. "
Update: Kevin Drum has a very good follow up, Barack Obama Is Not That Hard to Understand. "But these are the exceptions, not the rule. For the most part, Obama's actions can be explained without resort to mysterious and ulterior motives. He's done what he's done sometimes out of native temperament, sometimes out of straightforward political calculation, sometimes out of plain misjudgment, and sometimes because he genuinely has more centrist views than his critics want to believe. More than with most presidents, I think that with Obama, what you see is what you get. He's just not that hard a guy to explain." And he posts a reader's comments.
Update: Ezra Klein takes a more speculative approach to it, Has Obama done a good job? Well, compared to what?
"They miss, it seems to me, two vital things. The first is the simple scale of what has been accomplished on issues liberals say they care about. A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician.
What liberals have never understood about Obama is that he practices a show-don’t-tell, long-game form of domestic politics. What matters to him is what he can get done, not what he can immediately take credit for. And so I railed against him for the better part of two years for dragging his feet on gay issues. But what he was doing was getting his Republican defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to move before he did. The man who made the case for repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was, in the end, Adm. Mike Mullen. This took time—as did his painstaking change in the rule barring HIV-positive immigrants and tourists—but the slow and deliberate and unprovocative manner in which it was accomplished made the changes more durable. Not for the first time, I realized that to understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does."
I criticize Obama for compromising too much. I think his accomplishments are genuine, I just think his tactics meant some of the things could have been better. I would have liked a public option and I think, if he explained it better (which is what he was supposed to have been really good at) it might have made it. I think that of the stimulus too, that more of it could have been stimulative rather than just tax cuts. I also fault him on civil liberties with not closing Gitmo, indefinite detention, and warrantless searches, etc. I think those are fair critiques and not "deluded".
Update: Lawrence Lessig has commented: "Any liberal (or sane moderate for that matter) would be crazy to say that we’re not better off today than we would have been had Obama not been elected. Of course we are. But that fact doesn’t negate the (still ignored by Sullivan et al.) criticism of the President: That he baited us with the reform rhetoric, and then switched to the administration promised by H. Clinton. "
Update: Kevin Drum has a very good follow up, Barack Obama Is Not That Hard to Understand. "But these are the exceptions, not the rule. For the most part, Obama's actions can be explained without resort to mysterious and ulterior motives. He's done what he's done sometimes out of native temperament, sometimes out of straightforward political calculation, sometimes out of plain misjudgment, and sometimes because he genuinely has more centrist views than his critics want to believe. More than with most presidents, I think that with Obama, what you see is what you get. He's just not that hard a guy to explain." And he posts a reader's comments.
Update: Ezra Klein takes a more speculative approach to it, Has Obama done a good job? Well, compared to what?
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