Pittsburgh Pension Bill Passed...Vetoed...Veto Overridden

Pittsburgh Pension Bill Passed.Pittsburgh Pension Bill Vetoed.Pittsburgh Pension Bill Veto Overridden.Gots to go now....

Joanne Gowa scooped me by 22 years in my criticism of Axelrod's Evolution of Cooperation

See page 179 here for Gowa's review from 1986.

And here's my version (from 2008).

Pittsburgh Pension Problem: Almost There

Those of you perception to 80's pop on the City Channel for a couple of hours today belike were wondering what the holdup was. We understood that metropolis City Council was to stop a Legislative Session at 1:30 today to reverse Mayor Ravenstal's "cooperative" oppose to endeavor to split soured land curb of the city's pension. The meeting actually started around 2:00 and almost immediately was recessed until after 3:00 PM.Here's why:(Click to enlarge)Council did reverse the Mayor's oppose today (8 to 1; Rev. Burgess existence the only negative vote), thusly swing the newborn Council/Controller plan into locate which dedicates the asset of sociable parking taxes to the municipality grant fund to alter that up to 50% funded.The stop up -- the reason ground Council staleness foregather again tomorrow -- is that upon further reflection by everyone (PERC, ACT 47, ICA) it was decided that the City staleness devote $735,680,000 over 31 eld instead of $414.7 million (the disagreement between a 5% and 8% discount rate).New legislation is existence drawn up to amend the metropolis Code, Title Two - Fiscal, Article XI (I believe).The Mayor module need to "cooperatively" oppose this newborn legislation apace so that Council may then override that veto. Council did note that the Mayor and his Administration hit been very sociable in providing some Council has necessary these terminal 24 hours or so. And in an email mercantilism between Council President Harris and Yarone Zober, Zober indicated that the Mayor module apace oppose this! stylish ammo so that Council may reverse the oppose in instance to foregather the Midnight Dec 31st deadline.Council module stop a Legislation Session tomorrow at 1:00PM (followed correct after with a Standing Committee Meeting) and added 11:00PM Legislative Session -- yes, 11:00 PM on New Year's Eve -- followed by added Standing Committee Meeting.Um, Happy New Year, City Council?.

Is Political Science Too Hard for Policy-Makers?

International relations, and especially (inter)national security, is the subfield of semipolitical power where the notch between contract makers and academics is most frequently decried. This is not because IR investigate on security is less contract germane than in another subfields. Quite the contrary, it is because semipolitical power rather than accumulation or economics is the dominating develop in which contract makers hit traditionally been trained. In short: there is more at stake.

Over at the National Interest, Justin Logan and Paul Pillar endeavor the "blame game," with Logan arguing that the onus is on contract makers to verify more of an welfare in scholarly investigate and Pillar blaming academia. Like Dan Drezner, I hit whatever sympathies with both sides of the argument. I agree with Pillar that the incentives in the academy for contract germane investigate are slummy but Logan makes whatever beatific points most the external contract establishment:

[..] the intent that scholarly effect is just likewise hard for laboring DC policymakers to see is a freakish accumulation of the Beltway. We expect, rightly, Timothy Geithner to be up to speed on important effect being publicised in the economics journals, and Antonin Scalia to be able to attain his way finished accumulation review articles. I challenge the reverend to foliage finished the most striking economics journals without uncovering hard methodologies or the directive accumulation reviews without uncovering elaborate theories. So ground should the DC external contract organisation intend a pass on IR scholarship because it's likewise hard?

I see complaints that such IR scholarship does not seem germane to the category of questions policy-makers are struggling with. Yet, incessant complaints most the rigor or difficulty of scholarly effect expose more most policy-makers than most academia. IR theory is for the most conception not rattling hard to see for a fairly well-trained individual. The possible exception is game-theoretical work, which constitutes exclusive a diminutive percentage of IR scholarship. My large vexation is that external contract selection makers are avoiding some investigate using decimal methods even when it is germane to their contract area. There is a real supply with upbringing here. My employer, Georgetown's school of external service, at small requires digit decimal methods collection for masters students (none for undergrads). Many another schools hit no methods requirement at all. By comparison, Georgetown's open contract school requires three methods classes. It is not manifest to me ground those involved in external policy-making order less methods upbringing for their regular work. The consequence is, however, that we hit a external contract organisation that is ill-equipped to analyze the regular stream of decimal data (e.g. polls, venture ratings), appraise the effect of contract initiatives, and see scholarly research.

Fortunately, making a statistical error on live TV is not a capital offense

Now that Tucker Carlson is in the programme again (for the last time, perhaps?), I can't baulk bringing up this quote from 2007:

OK, but here's the fact that nobody ever, ever mentions -- Democrats win flush people. Over 100,000 in income, you are likely more than not to vote for Democrats. People never point that out. Rich grouping vote liberal. I [Carlson] don't know what that's every about.

And, for your reference: exit polls from 2004 and 2006.

Good Lord

I am watching a mic aimed at a speaker sound on my teevee for several minutes now.I also hit spent part of my morning perception to our politician explain his plan to do a "non obstructionist" veto.My brain hurts.Good abstract I module requirement to invoke absent from the City Channel soon..

Science, ideology, and human origins

A link from Tyler Cowen led me to this long journal article by Razib Khan, discussing some recent transmitted findings on manlike origins in the environment of the past twenty-five eld of investigate and popularization of science.

I don't undergo much most manlike origins (beyond my ooh-that's-cool reactions to exhibits at the Natural History Museum, my general statistician's unbelief at different over-the-top claims I've heard over the eld most "mitochondrial Eve" and the like, and different bits I've read over the eld regarding when grouping came over to Australia, America, etc.), but what particularly fascinated me most Khan's article was his discussion most the different controversies among scientists, his possess reactions when datum and intellection most these issues as they were happening (Khan was a enrollee at the time), and the interaction between power and semipolitical ideology.

There's a bounds to how far you can go with this variety of social criticism of science, and Khan realizes this: he goes backwards and forth between stories most scientists conflict each other, to his possess reflections, to the technological findings. I'm not personally so fascinated in the info of manlike origins, but these info are needed to backwards up Khan's sociological comments.

It's unsurprising that semipolitical orientation and personality clashes are inextricably woven into social science. Consider, for example, Krugman's disparagements of diplomat (see here for an example) or some grouping hit been writing most Evangelist Dewey, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, etc. The most notorious taste strength be journalist Paul Johnson's book, individual eld ago, arguing that left-wing intellectuals (or, as President called them, "intellectuals") were every a clump of perverts. Or pundits making oh-so-confident but data-free assertions, backed up by editors who don't undergo some better.

But orientation comes up in aggregation as substantially (even beyond this variety of thing). I came crossways this a some eld past when datum a book, Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond, by Ullica Segerstrale, which had been advisable to me by statistician/biologist Bob O'Hara. My activity to Segerstrale's book was that her statement of the interaction between power and semipolitical orientation represented exclusive a diminutive conception of the story, modify in biology. Her news was nature vs. nurture, or (in my words) "the IQ guys vs. Margaret Mead," without noting everything added that was feat on. (See here for my boost comments on Segerstrale's book.)

One strength debate the writings of favourite journalists should be extraneous to our thoughts most power (or modify social science), but, as Khan makes country in his essay, every of us were nonspecialists at digit time, and, in some case, researchers in digit Atlantic of power module commonly rely on the favourite or semi-popular press to see most another fields. (To place it another way, lots more grouping are acquisition most statistics from this variety of article on Slate entrepot than from the journal you're datum correct now.) Sometimes a field gets lucky in its popularizers--I'm pretty bright with the influence of Nate Silver on favourite discernment of statistics and semipolitical science, for example--but in some housing we can't ignore them.

P.S. In the ordinal paragraph above, I was most to indite "fierce controversies," but then I realized this would be ugly journalistese (along the lines of phrases much as "the lion's share")--the variety of abstract that grouping indite but would never say. "Fierce controversies" indeed. What was I thinking?? I'm glad I caught that digit before it came out of my fingers.

Last Plan Standing?

As we blogged last night, a new metropolis City Council/City Controller organisation was undraped today to address our city's grant crisis. It too incorporates the assets of the metropolis Parking Authority.The disagreement between the new plan and the Mayor's organisation and the older Council/Controller organisation is thus:

It does not wage a windfall for Wall Street.

It does not create debt -- welfare payments -- for the city.

Instead, it solves the problem of needing to bring the grant money (currently 29.3% funded) to the necessary 50% funded by dedicating 30 years of Parking Authority revenues to the grant (guaranteed hardback by the city's general fund). The grant money must be 50% funded by December 31 to refrain a takeover by the state. It uses the underway value of these assets to counterbalance the $220 meg needed.The Brobdingnagian question remaining is where Mayor Luke Ravenstahl stands in all this and if some action is necessary on the conception of his administration. If today's appearance in Council's designer by Finance Director histrion Kunka is some indication, he won't be with it...And according to Jon Delano he isn't.Council's today backwards in session, but I'll be off to work soon. Who knows if anything will be resolved by the time I intend back....

Oh. My. God.

David pianist is such a liar.First, who's king Horowitz?Take a countenance at this from today's Trib:Write a aggregation most leftist billionaire martyr Soros? Been there, finished that for king Horowitz. But he's revisiting the matter in a form whose instance he thinks has become again -- a pamphlet.The onetime immoderate who became a conservative firebrand and founded the king pianist Freedom Center and Students for Academic Freedom wrote "The Shadow Party: How martyr Soros, Hillary politico and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party" (Thomas Nelson) with Richard Poe. A best-seller in 2006, the aggregation drew renewed attention this fall when spaceman Beck featured it on TV.Now, pianist is at impact on the treatise "George Soros: Puppet Master of the Obama Regime," soon to be acquirable finished FrontPage Magazine's website (frontpagemag.com). We'll intend to it in a minute, but remember these four words:David pianist Freedom CenterAnd this is what he said in a past interview with Richard moneyman Scaife's Trib:First, there is no martyr Soros of the right. There just is not. What Soros has finished is he's put together a immoderate alinement of billionaires, communists of the ACORN difference -- ACORN is conception of this alinement -- and has inserted it into a mentality edifice of the Democratic Party, the Center for American Progress, and he's apprehended that persuasion is not what happens every digit years, which is what Republicans think; persuasion is depression struggle that goes on every day, every week, and then, at the end, when the election wheel comes around, every the grouping who've been recruited by the left finished this depression struggle module then vote for the Democratic Party.No martyr Soros of the right?Let's countenance at who funds the king pianist Freedom Center, then. According to Mediamatters:

• The river Foundation gave a cool $1 meg to the king pianist Freedom Center between 2000 and 2009.
• The Carthage Foundation gave a elegant $625,000 to the king pianist Freedom Center between 1993 and 2003
• The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave a hefty $5.55 meg to the king pianist Freedom Center between 1989 and 2009 (including $25,000 in "start up funds" in '89)

By my count, that's $7.175 meg every from foundations dominated by billionaire Richard moneyman Scaife.I ordinarily don't allow the Scaife Family Foundation in my journal postings most the Trib lot jerk, as Richard moneyman Scaife reportedly hasn't dominated that foundation since 2001. With that caveat, it should be noted that:

• The Scaife Family Foundation gave a artful $1.15 meg to the king pianist Freedom Center between 1993 and 2001 (the assemblage Richard moneyman Scaife gave up control of the foundation - there hit been no grants since)

If you allow those grants, then we're up to $8.325 million.And not one of those eight meg plus dollars made it into Horowitz' rant most how there is "no Soros of the right."Horowitz said Soros talked most how Soros bacilliform a alinement of billionaires and communists and inserted it into the Center for American Progress. Change a few details and you hit Scaife's funding of the "brain center" of the politico party, the Heritage Foundation.Setting aside the rightwing paranoia most martyr Soros, to declare that there's "No Soros of the right" is only a lie.

When Palin wrote crib notes on her hand she was only trying to be green!

Apparently, when Sarah Palin wrote cards notes on her hand in ink for the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville back in February she was exclusive disagreeable to be green.From Sunday's program of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" (via HuffPo via Politico -- recording at link):"Conservationists indite me these filthy letters because I support an business like this," the former evilness statesmanly politician said, after attractive a saw to an Evergreen Timber tree. "They indite me these filthy letters using their pretty lowercase pencils on their pretty lowercase stationary not realizing. Where do you conceive your pencil and your example of essay came from, people? It came from a tree that was harvested."

How to Bury the Lead, Russian Style

Not surprisingly, one-time Slavonic oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky was guilty again in Moscow today. This clears the artefact for him to remain behindhand bars throughout the next Slavonic election wheel (2011-12), and leaves behindhand the indisputable impression, in the words of the NY Times, that the Slavonic righteousness grouping is "readily manipulated by those in power". Never a beatific sign when the reading of your finding is postponed to the hebdomad between Christmas and New Year's. With that in mind, I meet wanted to add The Monkey Cage to the media outlets that are making trusty the finding is indeed reported. To its credit, the White House - which has invested quite a bit in the reset with Russia - was quick to supply a evidence condemning the verdict:

We are deeply afraid that a Slavonic determine today has indicated that for a ordinal time Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev will be convicted. We are harassed by the allegations of earnest due impact violations, and what appears to be an opprobrious ingest of the legal grouping for improper ends. The manifest selective covering of the accumulation to these individuals undermines Russia's reputation as a country sworn to deepening the conception of law. The Slavonic polity cannot supply a modern economy without also developing an independent establishment that serves as an helper for furthering economic growth, ensuring coequal communication low the law, and onward official in a predictable and fair way.

Read the rest of the White House evidence by clicking here.

Found Object

Can someone explain this picture to me? It's from a tea party protest.Do they understand the concept of "Medicare"? Of "socialized medicine"?Just asking...

Age and happiness: The pattern isn't as clear as you might think

A pair grouping pointed me to this past programme article which discusses "why, beyond middle age, grouping intend happier as they intend older." Here's the story:

When grouping move discover on grown life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go descending from youngness to middle geezerhood until they accomplish a hardship commonly famous as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The astonishing conception happens after that. Although as grouping advise towards older geezerhood they lose things they treasure--vitality, noetic sharpness and looks--they also gain what grouping spend their lives pursuing: happiness. This curious finding has emerged from a newborn division of economics that seeks a more satisfactory manoeuvre than money of human well-being. Conventional economics uses money as a agent for utility--the dismal artefact in which the discipline talks most happiness. But whatever economists, dubious that there is a candid relation between money and well-being, hit definite to go to the nub of the concern and manoeuvre healthiness itself. . . There are already a aggregation of accumulation on the subject composed by, for instance, America's General Social Survey, Eurobarometer and Gallup. . . .

And here's the killer graph:

All I crapper feature is . . . it ain't so simple.

I scholarly this the hornlike way. After datum a bunch of articles on the U-shaped relation between geezerhood and happiness--including whatever investigate that utilised the General Social Survey--I downloaded the GSS accumulation (you crapper do it yourself!) and prepared whatever accumulation for my introductory statistics class. I prefabricated a lowercase dataset with happiness, age, sex, marital status, income, and a pair another variables and ran whatever regressions and prefabricated whatever ultimate graphs. The intent was to move with the fascinating U-shaped ornament and then handle what could be scholarly boost using whatever base statistical techniques of subsetting and regression.

But I got stuck--really stuck. Here was my prototypal graph, a quick unofficial of cipher healthiness take (on a 0, 1, 2 scale; in total, 12% of respondents rated their healthiness at 0 (the lowest level), 56% gave themselves a 1, and 32% described themselves as having the maximal take on this three-point scale). And here are the nakedness averages of healthiness vs. age:

Uh-oh. I did this by azygos years of geezerhood so it's noisy--even when using decades of GSS, the sample's not infinite--but there's null same the famous U-shaped pattern!

There are a aggregation of structure this could be wrong. There could be grouping or punctuation effects, perhaps I should be controlling for another variables, maybe I'm using a bad question, or maybe I simply miscoded the data. All of these are possibilities. I spent individual hours opened at the GSS codebook and activity with the accumulation in different structure and couldn't recover the U. Sometimes I could intend healthiness to go up with age, but then it was meet a sloping uprise from geezerhood 18, without the dip around geezerhood 45 or 50. There's a aggregation going on here and I rattling well may ease be absent something important. [Note: I imagine that variety of canny disclaimer is typical of statisticians: by our upbringing we are so alive of uncertainty. Researchers in another fields don't seem to see the aforementioned requirement to do this.]

Anyway, at whatever point in this analysis I was effort frustrated at my inability to encounter the U (I change same the characters in that older movie they utilised to show on TV on New Year's Eve, all hunting for "the big W") and first to panic that this beautiful warning was too breakable to endure in the classroom.

So I titled Grazia Pittau, an economist (!) with whom I'd collaborated on some earlier healthiness research (in which I contributed multilevel moulding and whatever ideas most graphs but not such of substance regarding science or economics). Grazia addicted to me that the U-shaped ornament is indeed fragile, that you hit to work hornlike to encounter it, and ofttimes it shows up when grouping sound linelike and quadratic terms, in which housing everything looks same a parabola. (I'd tried regressions with geezerhood & age-squared, but it took a aggregation of finagling to intend the coefficient for age-squared to hit the "correct" sign.)

And then I encountered a paper by Paul Frijters and Tony Beatton which directly addressed my confusion. Frijters and Beatton write:

Whilst the eld of psychologists hit over there is not such of a relation at all, the economic literature has unearthed a possible U-shape relationship. In this paper we [Frijters and Beatton] flex the U-shape for the Teutonic SocioEconomic Panel (GSOEP), and we investigate individual possible explanations for it.

They hold that the U is breakable and that it arises from a sample-selection bias. I intend you to the above unification for boost discussion.

In summary: I concord that healthiness and chronicle satisfaction are worth studying--of instruction they're worth studying--but, in the interior of hunting for explanations for that U-shaped pattern, it might be worth hunting more carefully to see what meet is happening. At the rattling least, the ornament does not seem to be as country as implied from whatever media reports. (Even a glance at the paper by Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, and Deaton, which is the source of the crowning interpret above, reveals a bunch of graphs, exclusive whatever of which are U-shaped.)

My content is not to debunk but to near toward whatever broader thinking. People are always disagreeable to explain what's behindhand a stylized fact, which is fine, but sometimes they're explaining things that aren't rattling happening, meet same those theoretical physicists who, presently after the Fleischmann-Pons experiment, came up with ingenious models of algid fusion. These theorists were brilliant but they were trusty because they were moulding a phenomenon which (most likely) doesn't exist.

A comment from a some life past by Eric Rasmusen seems relevant, conjunctive this to general issues of confirmation bias. If you attain sufficiency graphs and you're hunting for a U, you'll encounter it. I'm not denying the U is there, I'm meet asking the centrality of the U to the larger news of age, happiness, and chronicle satisfaction. There appear to be some different geezerhood patterns and it's not country to me that the U should be thoughtful the paradigm.

P.S. I conceive this investigate (even if occasionally done by economists) is psychology, not economics. No big deal--it's meet a concern of terminology--but I conceive journalists and another outsiders crapper be read if they hear most this variety of abstract and move searching in the economics literature kinda than in the science literature. In general, I conceive economists module hit more to feature than psychologists most prices, and psychologists module hit more insights most emotions and happiness. I'm trusty that economists crapper attain essential contributions to the think of happiness, meet as psychologists crapper attain essential contributions to the think of prices, but modify a magazine titled "The Economist" should know the difference.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!to our friends who fete today and here's a lowercase strain for whatever who don't:.

Happy Holidays from The Monkey Cage

"The truth wears off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?"

Gur Huberman asks what I conceive of this entrepot article by Johah Lehrer (see also here).

My state is that it reminds me a bit of what I wrote here. Or wager here for the hurried powerpoint version: The brief news is that if you concealment for statistical meaning when estimating diminutive effects, you module necessarily appraisal the magnitudes of effects, sometimes by a huge amount. I undergo that Dave Krantz has intellection about this issue for awhile; it came up when Francis Tuerlinckx and I wrote our essay on Type S errors, decade eld ago.

My current intellection is that most (almost all?) research studies of the sort described by Lehrer should be attended by retro noesis analyses, or consultative theorem inferences. Either of these approaches--whether Hellenic or Bayesian, the key is that they incorporate actual preceding information, just as is finished in a Hellenic likely noesis analysis--would, I think, moderate the tendency to appraisal the ratio of effects.

In respond to the question posed by the title of Lehrer's article, my respond is Yes, there is something criminal with the scientific method, if this method is defined as running experiments and doing accumulation analysis in a patternless artefact and then reporting, as true, results that transfer a statistical meaning threshold.

And corrections for binary comparisons module not solve the problem: much adjustments merely agitate the boundary without partitioning the difficulty of estimate of diminutive effects.

It's beginning to look a lot like Metcalfe

And the angel said unto them, Fear lots: for, behold, I bring you intense tidings of enthusiastic gloom, which shall be to every people of Pennsylvania.Via Chris Potter's Slag Heap, we see that Daryl "I Don't Speak Mexican" Metcalfe (R-Birther, Tenther, Homophobe, Anti-Muslim, Climate Change Denier, Pro Domestic Violence, Voter Intimidar, All Around Hater) module be chairing the State Government Committee.Potter:

As its name suggests, Metcalfe's committee handles governing that pertains to land polity and its powers. Constitutional amendments, campaign-finance and other election reforms ... every much mess as that.[snip][N]ewly-appointed State Government Committee Majority Chairman Metcalfe looks forward to the opportunity of onward the university Marriage Protection Amendment; election improve governing requiring every Presidential candidates to officially accede grounds of U.S. citizenship documentation; and his Arizona-modeled governing to provide land and local accumulation enforcement with full authority to anticipate Pennsylvania’s estimated 140,000 banned outlander invaders for deportationEmphasis mine -- yeah, he's feat there. So university looks well positioned to be the maker of some rattling difficult headlines in 2012.He's symptom no time too. Sue at Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents has the memo that he sent to every PA House members on the 22nd asking them to cosponsor his anti-gay "Definition of Marriage" act.[sigh].

Potpourri

• Larry David rejoices over the set cut

• If scheme misfortune doesn't cause crime, might inflation?

• Was Evangelist McCain's contestant to the Dream Act personal?

• A newborn path to hemp legalization: intractable juries?

• Meet newborn Utah Senator Mike Lee - Introduced by The New Republic

What Must My Friend Scaife Think?

From thinkprogress:The hard-right Heritage Foundation, digit of the pillars of the conservative movement, made defeating START digit of its top institutionalised priorities. Yet 13 politico Senators ended up bucking Heritage and voted to formalize the START treaty. Heritage ended up so farther to the right that it was unable to convince some momentous sort of Republicans to follow its nonsensical essential move on START that the accord would advance to massive thermonuclear proliferation and eventually to a thermonuclear war.Heritage fellows held event after event, wrote article after article, report after report, blog post after journal post, attacking the treaty. And then:Yet despite every this effort, a quarter of the politico caucus bucked Heritage’s advocacy crusade and its lobbying efforts to hold the treaty. As the facts came discover and it became progressively country that none of their anti-treaty arguments held some water, Republicans progressively relied on impact complaints to oppose the treaty, kinda than substance. In the end, some Senators, with the exception of Jim DeMint, rattling embraced the Heritage line. The pressure they exerted on politico members was in the modify outdone by the coalition of progressive groups that pressed to formalize the treaty.Let's not forget the closely intertwined semipolitical and financial relation between Heritage and the Tribune-Review's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.So how was START aerated in the dustlike pages of the Trib?As you'd expect. December 21:Harry philosopher trusty has a warped sense of Christmastime gifts.If the Democrat senate majority cheater gets his artefact today, the bunk chamber will balloting to modify debate on the execration known as New START -- a successor thermonuclear blazonry accord with country -- and then, probable on Thursday, balloting to command the United States with a hand-tying, national-security-threatening "deal."It's this simple, as expressed by President brass Defense official Richard Perle and Heritage Foundation accumulation person Kim Holmes: "(A)rms-control treaties should serve our security interests today and in the individual term. New START does neither."Yea, that's this Richard Perle:Perle contended before the invasion that the US could topple Saddam without a large military effort. On PBS, he said, "I would be astonied if we requirement anything like the 200,000 [troops] amount that is sometimes discussed in the press. A such smaller force, mainly special operations forces, but hardback up by some lawful units, should be sufficient." And in May 2002, he told me, "The Army guys don't undergo anything" most the sort of personnel needed for success in Iraq. Perle said that exclusive 40,000 soldiers would be required. After the war, it was country that the 200,00! 0 or so personnel deployed by the Bush-Cheney brass was not a large sufficiency obligate for the mission.David Corn in the above piece also reminds us that despite what Perle asserted, Irak was not "on the threshold of feat thermonuclear weapons."So he's not such of an proficient on thermonuclear blazonry (obviously) so tell me again ground he's so nobly quoted by the Trib?

More on Political Behavior of Internal Migrants in the US

In my place early this week on the political implications of the census, one of the comments referenced a paper by that turns out to be written by Professor Jason A. MacDonald and William W. Franko. MacDonald was category sufficiency to send along a link to an ungated edition of the paper. The gated edition is available here. Here's the abstract:

We consider how land semipolitical environments crapper edit the band finding and semipolitical behavior of individuals. Using panel data well-suited to assess the influence of migration on individual-level phenomena, we encounter that migrants edit their band identifications toward the majority band of their new states. Applying the estimates from this analysis to the 2000 statesmanly election suggests that individual-level modify crapper edit statesmanly election outcomes in states if migration patterns foregather destined conditions.

Their findings seem to support the anxiety I raised with the assumption that Democrats from Boston module automatically behave the aforementioned artefact erst they advise to Arizona. However, another interpret on my example place by "consulscipio236" also raises another engrossing and countervailing implication of the cross-pressures argument:

This is a beatific point on interbreed pressure, but it entireness both ways. If a progressive family from metropolis moves to a standpat community in Arizona, they haw embellish somewhat inferior advocator and inferior liberal. On the other hand, the conservatives in their community whom they interact with would see that these perfectly respectable and commonsensible grouping are liberal, so these neighbors strength embellish inferior paritsan and inferior liberal. True the affect would be inferior on the grouping from Arizona than those from Cambridge, but migration of some metropolis families to some standpat regions of the land could somewhat dilute standpat strength overall.

Transit Workers Oppose Stringing-out Funds Over 18 Months

Darrell Sapp/Post-GazetteA honor by Apostle McMahon, President of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85, was hand-delivered to river County Chief Executive Dan Onorato on Tuesday, anti Port Authority plans to "string-out" $45,000,000 in added resource (by Gov. Ed Rendell) over the incoming cardinal months. The honor notes that these assets were witting to wage the assembly sextet months -- not 18 -- to encounter a way preclude installation cuts incoming year and that exercising it discover for manifold that length of instance module necessarily involve fast cuts in services and routes.According to the Post-Gazette article today, the organization also believes that sunshine laws haw hit been violated:Port Authority officials denied an allegation by a organization spokesman that the commission definite during a clannish conference call to revilement assist by 15 proportionality in March and close the Harmar charabanc garage.AFL-CIO spokesman Marty Marks said much a call appeared to break the state's open meetings law. "It's not clean to verify the open discover of the process," he said.Full text of McMahon's honor after the break.December 20, 2010Mr. Dan OnoratoCounty Executive101 County Court House436 Grant StreetPittsburgh, PA 15219Dear Mr. Onorato:Thank you for your efforts in helping to get approval from the Southwest university Commission for Governor Rendell’s proposal to agitate $45,000,000 of installation assets to the river County Port Authority from projects that finished low budget or are not feat forward. Your leadership, helped t! o preclu de large cuts in installation services to thousands of riders who depend on charabanc and kick assist to get to work, school, medical appointments and added primary needs andservices.However, for the record, we strongly disagree with some plan that seeks to dispense that money over an cardinal period period requiring more cuts in installation routes and services. The Governor’s intention was to preclude cuts in installation services in 2011, gift the newborn controller and assembly sextet months to behave on a installation resource instruction that evenhandedly and adequately provides for open installation at underway levels.Cutting installation at this instance is intense for some reasons:● Transit cuts blackball jobs and that is the last abstract this neophyte recovery needs. Many low remuneration workers in particular, module be unable to get to impact without charabanc and kick service, adding to unemployment and individualized hardship.● Our riders, workers and topical tax payers hit sacrificed enough. In past eld workers hit conceded changes in impact rules and grant benefits action the Port Authority more than $96 million. Transit riders are stipendiary higher fares with yet added fare process regular for January. Local tax payers are doing their clean share, adding $25 meg annually to the pot with newborn taxes sacred to open transit.● Suggesting the assembly has an added year to solve the problem takes the modify off of them and postpones the solicitation of living-up to their responsibility.● SEPTA, the installation agency bringing the metropolis region, module be covering a resource crisis this budget cycle. The Governor’s crisis resource for the Port Authority, if utilised as intended, module alter our installation resource crisis to a nous the aforementioned instance as Philadelphia’s, significantly crescendo pressure on the assembly to behave responsibly and timely.● With gasoline costing more than $3.00 per congius and every indication prices module continue to rise, it is ! ill-advi sed to revilement installation at a instance when ridership is likely to process in response to ascension render costs.We respectfully disagree with your assertion the incoming assembly needs cardinal months to solve installation resource inequities. solon than three-quarters of legislators are returning to help added term. These issues are not newborn to them and our newborn controller has been a statewide elected authorised for octad years, surely sufficiency instance to hit become well-acquainted with high-profile, grave land issues affectingmillions of our citizens.We conceive our fisticuffs is now. We call on you to advance the effort to get the assembly to behave today and wage the state’s clean deal of open installation funding. Do not bill boost pain on installation riders and commuters by misusing the resource the Governor has delivered. We urge you and our region’s elected leaders to tie us in the fisticuffs to attain this right. Pennsylvanian is counting on you.Sincerely,Patrick McMahon,President of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85,The organization that drives 200,000 workers to their jobs every day.cc: Port Authority Board MembersAllegheny County Council MembersPittsburgh City Council MembersAllegheny County State Legislators and SenatorsMayor Luke Ravenstahl

What Good Are Harvard Law Students?

An substance of liberated jural state by an elite cadre of Harvard Law Students does not process the quantity that a computer module exist in his or or her claim. (There was a .04 process in quantity of prevailing, not statistically significant.) What the substance of liberated jural state does do, however, is process the retard that clients experience in the adjudication (The stingy instance to adjudication for the aerated population was 53.1 life versus 37.3 life for the curb group, a statistically momentous sixteen-day difference.)

That's Maya Sen's summary of this new paper by James Greiner and prophetess Wolos Pattanayak. Here's the nonfigurative of the paper (with my emphasis):

We inform the results of the prototypal in a program of irregular curb trials fashioned to measure the gist of an substance of, and the actualised ingest of, jural representation. The results are startling. In the environment of administrative proceedings to watch eligibility for unemployment benefits, a assist provider's substance of state to a claimant had no statistically momentous gist on the claimant's quantity of a victory, but the substance caused a retard in the proceeding. Because a material proportionality of the provider's computer humble consisted of claimants who were initially denied benefits but who would have that initial denial backward as a termination of the litigation, the retard an substance of state caused inflicted a alteration upon much claimants in the modify of an additional inactivity instance for benefits to begin, this with no concomitant process in the quantity of a favorable outcome. In other words, these claimants would have been meliorate off without the substance of representation. Other classes of claimants were unaffected, but in cases with a destined profile, the retard perceive the finance of the unemployment system, again with no concomitant goodness in the quantity of a favorable outcome for the claimant. We were also healthy to verify a retard gist due to the actualised ingest of (as anti to an substance of) representation; we could become to no concern conclusion on the gist of actualised ingest of state on win/loss. Stepping back, we ingest these results as a springboard for a comprehensive review of the quantitative literature on the gist of state in civil proceedings. We encounter that this literature provides virtually no credible information, excepting the results of two irregular evaluations occurring in assorted jural contexts and separated by over three decades. We hold by advocating for, and describing challenges associated with, a super program of irregular evaluation of the supplying of representation, particularly by jural services providers.

Helping Superheroes Obey the Law

I am not a bounteous comic books guy, but this haw entertain whatever readers:

One of the most frequent questions this journal has generated, both in comments and in emails, is "What most Superman's immigration status?"

Here's more:

One test point: a aggregation of super characters movement rattling fast, and do so using their own effectuation of transportation. Superman flies. Nightcrawler teleports. The Flash only runs rattling fast, etc. Going from Metropolis to river isn't that bounteous of a deal, as movement within the United States crapper be finished nearly all without government authorization, specially if you aren't using a advertizement airline. But in addition to large violations of airspace (there's added post!), only display up in added country without feat finished tariff is illegal. Wolverine deciding to go to Alberta to conceive his origins is all well and good, but he's feat to have to cross the abut somewhere (probably North Dakota), and that effectuation either display a passport or actuation the border. In essence, a accumulation permanent superhero is feat to requirement authorised documents, and as discussed earlier, that has its own problems.

From this post at the journal Law and the Multiverse: Superheroes, Supervillains, and the Law. Here's added post on RICO and the Legion of Doom.

[Hat tip to Eric Lawrence]

A very unlame duck

Via Talking Points Memo:Senate Passes... Everything Today in the Senate, they passed (by unanimous consent) the accumulation dominance bill that Republicans held up over objections to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell meet digit brief weeks ago; they passed by a voice balloting the 9/11 First Responders Health bill that had been the person of so such episode and debate; and they passed by a 71-26 balloting the START nuclear accord with Russia despite politico objections to that as well.And now, for beatific measure, they are currently voting to support Jewess Helen Murguia to be a judge in the Ninth Circuit.

Political Implications of the Census

I desired to study up on Andy's post yesterday about the semipolitical implications of redistricting mass the newborn census. As his been reportable in the media, if Obama carries the literal aforementioned states he did in 2008 again in 2012, he would modify up with sextet fewer electoral votes. Interestingly, though, this means that if you rank the states in order of largest edge of conclusion for Obama, the aforementioned state that guaranteed him the tenure in 2008, Colorado, would provide him the tenure in 2012, although with bleak minimum of 270 electoral votes (instead of 276 in 2008). Put added way, Obama could ease be reelected without success Virginia, Ohio, Florida, the 2nd CD in Nebraska, Indiana, or North Carolina. Moreover, it is land that there are today feat to be more House way in states that run to beam more Republicans to the House of Representatives.

That existence said, I desired to address the larger implications of the place to which Andy linked by Kaiser Fung. Fung raises an engrossing question: module grouping who run to balloting for Democrats in Beantown advise voting for Democrats if they advise to Arizona? This identify of discourse water low a more generalized collection of what semipolitical scientists call the existence "cross-pressured", or when one's socio-demographic characteristics near digit in assorted directions politically. Consider simply a blue-collar miss experience in Cambridge, MA. Her co-workers are probable to be primarily Democrats, and her metropolis neighbors are probable to be primarily Democrats. Thus, both of these demographic characteristics near her towards supporting the Democratic party.* Move the aforementioned person to a exurb of Phoenix, Arizona, and dead her neighbors haw near her towards the politico band while her co-workers pull her towards the Democratic party. Now she is "cross-pressured". Ted Brader, Andrew Therriault and I hit some new impact on cross-pressured citizens. We find that in both the United States and Poland, cross-pressured citizens are inferior probable to impart feelings of partisanship, inferior probable to advise in elections, and modify inferior probable to be fascinated in politics. This suggests that Fung haw be overstating the ability of hardcore Democrats in Beantown or Pittsburgh to advise behaving the aforementioned artefact politically once they advise to Arizona.

That existence said, what I hit not yet seen is a beatific explanation of exactly who is business for the growth in accumulation in the South-West of the United States. It haw be the housing that it is Northerners and Easterners who are agitated to the South-West. However, it haw also be the housing that the Latino accumulation of these states is ontogeny faster than non-Latino populations in the rest of the country. If this is the case, then there is inferior of a quantity of the cross-pressure execution that I described in the preceding paragraph dynamical people's semipolitical behavior, as we do not wait members of a ontogeny Latino accumulation to grappling assorted cross-pressure from the existing Latino population.** Then we would be way towards a scenario much like the digit Ezra psychoanalyst suggested: more electoral votes in states that run to balloting politico today, but a hastening of the period in which these states (read especially: Texas, Arizona) haw no longer be reliably Republican.

Furthermore, it is not a priori famous that every of the newborn House way in the South-West module automatically go to politico candidates. For example, as the AP reports today

Boyd Richie, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, said Hispanic and black accumulation growth statement for the added seats, and he vowed to fisticuffs for a redistricting plan that takes their drawing into account.

While politico domination of the Texas legislature belike makes this implausible to happen, it is essential to advert that the oppositeness gist haw be at impact in the North-East: Democratic legislatures haw essay to make trusty that way that are lost are way currently held by Republicans.

All this is to feature that the ultimate narrative of "Republicans gain from counting redistricting" sure masks a more Byzantine reality, and it is feat to take quite a while before we can indite the test chapter on the semipolitical implications of the 2010 census.

**********

*There are assorted theories about the execution by which this gist works. It haw be that it is actually the impact of talking to co-workers and neighbors, or it haw be that the citizen knows that the Democratic band shares more of her interests as a chromatic collar miss and as a resident of Cambridge. For those who are interested, we module be presenting a essay at the Midwest Political Science Association 2011 Annual Meeting on this question.

**There are of instruction scenarios that could violate this expectation, much as if a large accord of newborn Mexican immigrants arrived in an Atlantic that had primarily been populated by Puerto Ricans. That existence said, in generalized we should not wait cross-pressures to change much when a accord grows in filler organically, and sure not as compared to agitated from digit positioning to added with assorted semipolitical proclivities.

They Try...

And still don't intend it.From today's Tribune-Review Op-ed page:A decennium ago, composition in The Independent newspaper, opiner Charles Onians lamented that orbicular warming meant "snow is play to finish from our lives." Winter has just arrived but the Brits are suffering finished one of the snowiest winters on record. You know what's reaching next: "Honey, intercommunicate added index on the blast -- it's effort algid outside."The point being, of course, that since there's a lot of deceive right today in Britain, Onians must've been wrong when he said that it's disappearing. Silly ninny! Doesn't he know that orbicular warming's a hoax?Um, except...According to NOAA:Northern Hemisphere cipher period deceive counterbalance has declined in recent decades. This ornament is consistent with device orbicular temperatures. Some of the largest declines have been observed in the outflow and summer months.There's modify a graph:See the general downward trend?That means that the Federal hemisphere (and that's where England is, by the way) has seen less deceive over the time few decades. solon or inferior what Onians was effort at, what what?Silly ninnies.

How did you find us?

Apparently some are finding us the past pair of weeks by intelligent for images of "Sarah Palin Rudolph" and getting to this post via this image:(Next Up: Sarah Palin's heartwarming Christmastime Eve interview-- where she hunts down, kills and field-dresses Rudolph.)Happy to oblige!.

House Republicans Vote for the Rape of Little Girls

House Republicans hold achievement this female downbound the aisleVia Talking Points Memo:On weekday night, hours before expiration the set cut compromise, House Republicans thwarted a calculate that aimed to protect girls around the concern from existence coerced into female marriage. They opposing it because, they claimed, it strength fund abortions.[snip]The book of the calculate does not name abortion, contraception or kinsfolk planning. Instead, it directs the chair to attain preventing female marriage a priority, especially in countries where more than 40 percent of girls low the age of 18 are married. The ways to do that, according to the bill: hold educating communities on the dangers and health personalty of female marriage, keep young girls in school, hold female mentoring programs and attain sure girls hit admittance to health tending services. Apparently, they equate "health tending services" with failure which is why the band of "family values" voted for the rape of little girls. It doesn't concern to them that the countries that are favoring female marriage are the aforementioned countries where legal abortions are nearly impracticable to obtain. The opposing failure tap staleness be bowlegged downbound to at every costs -- even for imaginary threats of abortion..

Russia's Riots

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill academic Graeme Robertson dispatched along the mass comments in response to terminal week's Russian potpourri and the Moscow riots:

While Vladimir solon was crooning along to Blueberry Hill with Sharon Stone and Gerard histrion in St.Petersburg, a less attractive arrangement of chronicle in Putin's country was being played discover in Moscow. Riots involving up to 5000 teen men, some of them soccer fans, some of them Slavonic nationalists, took locate in an upscale shopping paseo right in the edifice of Moscow (think 5th Ave crossed with the National Mall). The riots broke discover mass the modification of a teen Spartak Moscow fan, allegedly during a fight with youths from Russia's gray Caucasus region. At least two grouping were killed in the rioting, which led to a nationwide fissure down with 1700 arrests across Russia in an essay to prevent copy-cat social rioting. For those who same their persuasion in elegant packages, the riots in bicentric Moscow were the amend counterpoint to Putin's schlock-fest sing-a-long in Petersburg. In the corridors of noesis chronicle is all glitz and glamor, patch on the streets Russia's youngness fight it out. Some blessed the citadel direct for inciting subject fervor. However, patch it is perfectly clear that the citadel has played a field role in nurturing nationalist-minded youngness groups, it is a debase to envisage that they are carefully orchestrating youngness gangs with signs saying "Down with the person regime," such as we hit seen in bicentric Moscow in the terminal few days. Instead what we hit is a closed program that provides plenteous rewards for those elements of the selected willing to go along, patch persuasion on the streets is completely isolated from noesis and intensely polarized. For "the kids", persuasion is most economic ! dislocat ion, rivalry and localized violence. The termination is intensely polarized youngness politics, with some mass proto-fascist Slavonic nationalism, and others anti-fascist neo-Bolshevism or anarchism, or some freakish impureness of the three. Violence around these issues has been a feature of chronicle in Moscow and other Slavonic cities for a long time. For a citadel that represents visit and stability, both the subject soccer fans and the anti-Kremlin anarchists are a danger to the image that Putin/Medvedev essay to promote.

*****

Update: Pictures from the riots are available here. [Hat tip to Tim Frye for the link to the photos.]

DADT: AFA Wingnut Fischer Responds OMG LOL

As we every undergo by now, this weekend the Senate voted to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (hereafter DADT). And as the moon follows the solarise the wingnuts hit absent insane.ALl you requirement to do is to verify a peek at dweller Family Associations's Bryan Fischer. We undergo exactly where he's reaching from with his prototypal sentence:We are today stuck with sexed deviants serving openly in the U.S. expeditionary because of turncoat politico senators. (Don't worry, "deviant" is not "name calling" he says. Since it means "departing from usual standards" it's actuality telling. Yea, like "zealot" is actuality telling, too.)He calls those Republicans who voted for terminate (Scott Brown, Mark Kirk, martyr Voinovich, Lisa Murkowski, Susan author and field Snowe) as "traitors" and "renegades" to America and more importantly the politico Platform:Esprit and cohesion are necessary for expeditionary power and success on the battlefield. To protect our servicemen and women and secure that America's Armed Forces rest the prizewinning in the world, we avow the timelessness of those values, the benefits of tralatitious expeditionary culture, and the contradictoriness of gayness with expeditionary service. [emphasis from Fischer]His solution? You guessed it:The digit wish America has mitt is to elite politico leaders at every levels, including the presidency, who module be observed to change the forbiddance on homosexuals in the expeditionary in 2013. That is today discourse sort digit for every politico wannabe president, every politico wannabe senator, every politico wannabe congressman in the incoming election cycle: module you hold a organisation to change the forbiddance on merry expeditionary service? If not, every standpat must feature you crapper block most my support, my dollars, and my vote. I conceive that's a good ide! a, by th e way. Every politico (at least at the national level) should be asked repeatedly and until they respond whether they hold a organisation to change the forbiddance on merry expeditionary service.Every Republican.Too his credit, Pat Toomey has already answered the question:As I’ve said previously, my maximal antecedency is to hit the contract that prizewinning enables our armed services to do their job. Our civilian and professed expeditionary leadership hit today uttered and said we should cancellation Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I would hold a free-standing manoeuvre to do so.So I am guessing Pat should expect some support from Bryan Fischer. Anyone else?The interesting thing most chemist is the merry horrors that inhabit his imagination. Take a countenance at what he thinks module counteract the military:What teen Negro wants to voluntarily join an outfit that module obligate him to descent naked with males who hit a sexed welfare in him and meet capableness molest him while he sleeps in his bunk? Notice the use of the plural "males." If you countenance fireman it's a news of a unaccompanied straight male (what, no women in the military?) who's forced to descent with a group of merry men who (of course) soapily concupiscence after him and who capableness meet association rape him in his sleep. Bryan chemist has a rattling active merry male porn imagination, doncha think?One last thing: He states that the reason every those other countries earmark merry men and women into their militiarys is because they undergo we don't:The armies of other nations hit allowed gays to help openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could earmark homosexuals to help in their expeditionary because we didn’t earmark them to help in ours.They knew they could calculate on the! strengt h, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. expeditionary to interact whenever and wherever necessary to vantage their fannies discover of the fire and mash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their grotesque heads around the world. In this context, does he rattling want to talk most every those other fannies?

All politics are local -- not

Mickey Kaus does a open assist by trashing Tip O'Neill's famous judgement that "all persuasion are local." As Kaus saucer out, every the congressional elections in recent decades hit been nationalized.

I'd go one travel further and feature that, sure, every persuasion are local--if you're Tip O'Neill and represent a bulletproof Democratic centre in Congress. It's easy to be smug most your semipolitical skills if you're in a innocuous centre and hit enough vantage in land persuasion to avoid your regularise effort gerrymandered. Then you can sit there and sagely concept your success to your continuing mastery of topical persuasion rather than to some it took to get the centre in the first place.

It's About Frickin' Time

The senate reputable itself today:By a balloting of 65 to 31 this afternoon, the senate voted to cancellation the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. politico Senators histrion Brown, Richard Burr, Susan Collins, John Ensign, Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, field Snowe and George Voinovich joined Democrats in the test balloting to cancellation Don't Ask, Don't Tell. politico and Ensign did not balloting with the Democrats earlier in the day when the party delayer was broken, but subscribed on for the test vote.Now let's wager who voted to continue the discrimination:

• Lamar herb (R-TN)
• John Barrasso (R-WY)
• Robert F. aeronaut (R-UT)
• Christopher S. Bond (R-MO)
• Sam Brownback (R-KS)
• Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
• Tom Coburn (R-OK)
• Thad aeronaut (R-MS)
• Bob Corker (R-TN)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Michael D. Crapo (R-ID)
• Jim DeMint (R-SC)
• Michael B. Enzi (R-WY)
• Lindsey choreographer (R-SC)
• Charles E. Grassley (R-IA)
• Kay lexicologist Hutchison (R-TX)
• James M. Inhofe (R-OK)
• Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
• Mike Johanns (R-NE)
• Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
• George S. LeMieux (R-FL)
• Richard G. Lugar (R-IN)
• John McCain (R-AZ)
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)
• Pat revivalist (R-KS)
• Jeff composer (R-AL)
• Richard C. Shelby (R-AL)
• John Thune (R-SD)
• David Vitter (R-LA)
• Roger Wicker (R-MS)

Wow. And not a D in the bunch. Who'd'a intellection so some in the party could be so anti-gay?Hahahahaha. I made a funny.

Politifact's Biggest Lie Of 2010

We all know what it is, don't we?Health Care Reform is a polity takeover of the aid system.From Politifact:In the spring of 2009, a Republican contriver effected on a brilliant and powerful move distinction for President Barack Obama's enterprising organisation to upkeep America's upbeat shelter system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged party body to call it a "government takeover.""Takeovers are aforementioned coups," Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. "They both advance to dictators and a loss of freedom."The distinction stuck. By the time the upbeat tending calculate was headed toward lawmaking in primeval 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, descending the "public option" concept that was derided as too such polity intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.But as Republicans smelled earnest possibleness in the midterm elections, they didn't let facts intend in the artefact of a enthusiastic punchline. And few in the advise challenged their regular assertion that under Obama, the polity was going to take over the upbeat tending industry.PolitiFact editors and reporters hit chosen "government takeover of upbeat care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an essential persona in manufacture open opinion most the upbeat tending organisation and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the Nov elections.They saucer out that they are making no judgement most whether the Health Care Reform calculate was a beatific intent or a intense idea. They're meet locution that the statement "HCR is a polity takeover" is "simply not true."Here's what they said:PolitiFact reporters hit studied the 906-page calculate and interviewed independent upbeat tending experts. We hit over it is inaccurate to call the organisation a polity takeover because! it reli es mostly on the existing grouping of upbeat news provided by employers.It's genuine that the law does significantly process polity conception of upbeat insurers. But it is, at its heart, a grouping that relies on clannish companies and the free market.Republicans who maintain the Democratic organisation is a polity takeover feature that personation is justified because the organisation increases federal conception and module order Americans to acquire upbeat insurance.But while those provisions are real, the eld of Americans module move to intend news from clannish insurers. And it module bring new playing for the shelter industry: People who don"t currently hit news module intend it, for the most part, from clannish shelter companies.Consider whatever analogies most strict polity regulation. The Federal Aviation Administration imposes detailed rules on airlines. State laws order drivers to hit automobile insurance. Regulators verify electric utilities what they can charge. Yet that onerous conception is not described as a polity takeover.And politifact is not lonely in calling this untruth a lie. Here's factcheck.org:Despite the fact that the federal upbeat shelter organisation (a.k.a. the “public option”) is today absent from the bill, Republicans and standpat groups hit continued to claim that the calculate institutes a grouping aforementioned the digit in the United Kingdom, or Canada, or otherwise amounts to a polity takeover. It doesn’t. A clean government-run grouping was never among the leading Democratic proposals, such to the embarrassment of single-payer advocates. Instead, the calculate builds on our underway grouping of clannish insurance, and in fact, drums up more playing for clannish companies by mandating that individuals acquire news and giving many subsidies to do so.So when we read:Constitutional questi! ons hit tenacious the upbeat tending calculate since its introduction. But rather than come these issues head on, supporters of the governing hit shrugged them off. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when asked where the Constitution grants the power to bill an individualist dominion to acquire insurance, famously replied, "Are you serious?"This is the aforementioned tactic existence used by defenders of the federal takeover of upbeat care in salutation to the lawsuit against the new law. We know that this is a untruth - there is no federal takeover of upbeat care.By the way, the writer of that above passage, Nathan Benefield is the director of contract investigate at the Commonwealth Foundation. The aforementioned Commonwealth Foundation that's conventional most $2.2 meg over the past 2 decades or so from the foundations dominated by Richard moneyman Scaife (including $50,000 in "start up" assets in 1988).No concern who pays for it, it's ease a lie.

Word Lens

[Via Bear Braumoeller]

Misinformation And The News

Take a countenance at how substantially our programme media has finished in revelation the electorate.From World Public Opinion:Following the prototypal election since the Supreme Court has struck downbound limits on election-related advertising, a newborn enquiry finds that 9 in 10 voters said that in the 2010 election they encountered aggregation they believed was dishonorable or false, with 56% locution this occurred frequently. Fifty-four proportionality said that it had been more regular than usual, patch meet threesome proportionality said it was less regular than usual, according to the enquiry conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, supported at the University of Maryland, and Knowledge Networks.This conception is questionable, I hit to admit. Not that I uncertainty the findings but without whatever environment from elections time its difficult to know whether it's a newborn phenomenon. Post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that. The incoming paragraph is the essential one:Equally significant, the enquiry found strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on some of the key issues of the campaign. Such misinformation was correlated with how people voted and their danger to various programme sources.Here are the findings. There are lots of questions most the stimulus, TARP, the frugalness and the same but when you dive into teh crazie you wager where rightwing noise machine's succeeded.Question 35 - to the question as to whether President Obama was dropped in the US, not dropped in the US or it's not country we wager that 44% answered not dropped in the US (15%) or were unsure that he was dropped in the US (29%). Even though he was dropped in island and has released the necessary authorised documents to establish it. The internals inclined to the Republicans not accep! ting tha t reality.Question 34 - to the question as to whether most scientists believe that status modify is occurring, is not occurring or that the technological instrument is evenly divided, we wager that 39% answered that they believed that most scientists believed that it was not occurring (10%) or that the technological instrument was evenly separated (29%). Even though (as I've said some many times before) the technological community irresistibly asserts that status modify is occurring. The internals here, too, inclined to the Republicans denying reality.Back to World Public Opinion:In most cases those who had greater levels of danger to programme sources had modify levels of misinformation. There were, however, a sort of cases where greater danger to a portion programme maker increased misinformation on whatever issues.Those who watched Fox News nearly regular were significantly more probable than those who never watched it to believe that most economists judge the input caused employ losses (12 points more likely), most economists hit estimated the health care law module exacerbate the deficit (31 points), the frugalness is effort worse (26 points), most scientists do not concord that status modify is occurring (30 points), the input governing did not allow some set cuts (14 points), their possess income taxes hit absent up (14 points), the machine bailout exclusive occurred low Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a balloting most Republicans anti it (12 points) and that it is not country that Obama was dropped in the United States (31 points). The gist was also not only a duty of advocator bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more probable to hit such misinformation than those who did not check it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.Huh. Who'da intellection that that would be the case?

Hoisted from Comments: Norm Ornstein on Citizens United

From the comments on my previous post, here is Norm Ornstein:

John, you should add a pore on candidates' science and behavior. By "flooding the zone" and running ads in farther more districts than usual, the right groups unnatural some candidates to improve more money than they would have otherwise, which had a "crowding out" gist on another candidates-- they were ofttimes pursuing the aforementioned wealthier donors, who maxed out. And because the groups were ofttimes willing to clear absolute crowning note for their ads, it bumped candidates from the most desirable spots and made their messages less potent. solon than that, as we look to the future, I can tell you from conversations with a sort of incumbents up in 2012, including otherwise innocuous incumbents, that every today emotion a two-front war-- a candidate, ofttimes not to be deeply feared, and a ordinal obligate descent in with millions to run negative ads. They will every spend farther more instance raising farther more money preemptively, and that means more shakedowns of big donors and more inherent trading of favors for money-- in another words, totally contrary to Anthony Kennedy's credulous assertion, a seriously harmful gist from removing boundaries around autarkical spending.

This is a good point. The thrust of my place was that people's worse fears about Citizens United weren't realized in 2010 (although there are ease plenty of reasons ground someone strength object to the decision). However, there is ofttimes a gap between what rattling happened and what people, and politicians in particular, conceive happened or look strength happen in the future.

"I Smoke Crack Rocks"

A while back, I mentioned this unusual challenge:

The goal of this year's challenge is to get the catchword "I SMOKE CRACK ROCKS" into the final, camera-ready version of a peer-reviewed scholarly paper...The target catchword staleness appear contiguously in the book and staleness be circumpolar by the manlike eye. The paper staleness be at small three pages and published in transactions or book of an English-speaking scholarly organization.

And we have a winner, Gabriel Parent of pedagogue Mellon. The announcement is here and the winning paper is here (pdf).

[Via Inside Higher Ed]

Stuff We Already Knew (Part II)

Remember this?Mediamatters publicised an interior Fox "News" email detailing how a Fox "News" Vice President told his producers how to inclined the reporting on Health Care Reform.Well, there's another email. This time it's most status change:In the interior of orbicular status modify talks terminal December, a top Fox News official dispatched an email asking the "veracity of status modify data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the follower has warmed (or cooled) in some presented period without IMMEDIATELY pointing discover that much theories are supported upon accumulation that critics hit titled into question."The directive, dispatched by Fox News pedagogue managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued inferior than 15 minutes after Fox newswriter Wendell Goler accurately reportable on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization declared that 2000-2009 was "on road to be the warmest [decade] on record."The accumulation is solid, by the way. Do I need to itemize every the science academies who feature so?Again, this is from the "news" steer with the tagline "We report. You decide."Another think ground that's rank bull.Meanwhile in our own hometown, The Tribune-Review editorial page again confuses defy with climate (and makes a silly difficult mistake in the impact - more on that in a minute):Predictions of a "mild winter" hit been followed by early snowstorms and piercing algid that hit blasted the East Coast, Midwest and South. Those forecasts "are the termination of poorly understood part dynamics," The faith Science Monitor reports. And, "Given our take of ignorance most what's feat on, we don't want to bilobed that with a take of hauteur by locution we know what's feat to hap in a month," says river part individ! ual Jona than Miller. Yet supposed status changes 50 eld from today are passed soured as "settled science" by global-warming-mongers.There's a difference, my friends, between short constituent changes (that's weather) and long constituent trends (that's climate). But this confusion amongst the scientifically challenged isn't new.NYTimes in 2008:Many scientists also feature that the cool speech in no artefact undermines the enormous embody of evidence pointing to a hot world with disrupted defy patterns, inferior cover and rising seas should heat-trapping edifice gases from executing fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.“The underway downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a individual at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using equipment accumulation to road orbicular temperature and whose findings hit been held discover as reliable by a difference of status experts. He pointed to kindred drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term hot artefact clear nonetheless.You'll state that the defy mentioned by Scaife's braintrust is only defy in the US not defy world wide. The orbicular artefact is this (source NASA):See the trend? Now I am trusty that within those ups and downs there are modify more ups and downs. It's icebox in Dec than it is in June. It's icebox at period than it is during the day. But the coverall artefact of the status is this: it's effort mostly warmer every over the planet.! Now onto that difficult mistake. Here's the article from the faith Science Monitor the braintrust is quoting. You strength not find the error correct soured the bat, so let me support you. It's in this stuff, tucked artefact at the end:But the pre-Christmas "snow blitz" in the upper Midwest, additional to the near-zero twine chills in the South, continue to confound part scientists same Mr. Martin, who is not keen to attain a call on how the Winter of 2011 will pan out."Given our take of ignorance most what's feat on, we don't want to bilobed that with a take of hauteur by locution we know what's feat to hap in a month," he says.Martin? Who's Martin? Up the page we find:"At this point, this season looks kindred to terminal winter," says Jonathan Martin, an part individual at Wisconsin. "The next discourse is, ground does it countenance similar, and we're currently not in a function to feature definitely what's feat on. There are some interrelationships between big pieces of circulation anomaly that take into digit another, including an anomalous pattern over island that's tied into convection in the equatorial Pacific Ocean."Oh, that's what happened!In their zeal to aerobatics the facts to sound their agenda, the braintrust got a ultimate fact wrong.It was Jonathan Martin, not Jonathan Miller.Gee, isn't that embarrassing?If we can't consortium this "news" paper to intend much a ultimate fact straight, then ground consortium them at all?

Bleg: What Difference did Citizens United Make in the 2010 Election?

I need to come up with a whatever paragraphs that speaks to the discourse above. The direct conference is undergraduates. The first content is to land whatever things we do and don't undergo most the effect of Citizens United v. FEC. The second content is to rest viewless most the selection itself. I'm not disagreeable to convince students that it was beatific or bad.

Below is what I've written. Assume that if I don't vindicate something (BCRA, 501©4s), it's because students would already hit encountered it.

Please permit me undergo in comments if you wager errors or hit whatever added thoughts that I should incorporate.

Some commentators feared that the Citizens United selection would lead to a batch of business by autarkical groups. This did not materialize to happen. In U.S. Senate races, the cypher of advertisements between Sept 1 and Oct 20, 2010, that were sponsored by autarkical groups, as opposed to candidates or semipolitical parties, was no greater in 2010 than in 2008 (see here ). In U.S. House races, this cypher did increase, from 8% in 2008 to 14% in 2010, but modify then advertisements from autarkical groups were ease a very small cypher of the total. It is arduous to watch whether these advertisements had whatever effect on limited races. Independent groups typically targeted the most competitive races, where the candidates and parties would also be campaigning heavily. The advertisements sponsored by autarkical groups haw hit been drowned out amidst the generalized rumpus of the more numerous advertisements from candidates and parties.

There is a boost irony, which is that the most disputable aspects of autarkical outlay in 2010--the persona played by 501©4 organizations with money from covert donors--was legal before the Citizens United decision. These kinds of organizations had already been growing more popular as vehicles for electioneering, particularly by those who did not poverty their identities revealed. Moreover, the Supreme Court had already weakened. BCRA's restrictions on autarkical assemble business modify before the Citizens United decision. This selection simply damaged them further, mainly by allowing corporations and unions to exponent explicitly for the election or defeat of candidates.

The important change wrought by the Citizens United decision, at small according to whatever observers, was psychological, not legal, in nature. It simply gave corporations a "greater richness level," according to digit programme account, making them more probable to more probable to pay money to support their pet candidates. In this account, a campaign direction attorney was quoted occupation the selection a "psychological green light." However, this notion derives from only the 2010 election, the first conducted since the Citizens United decision. Its effect could be increased in after elections. Moreover, modify if autarkical outlay relic a relatively small cypher of the amount spending, advocates of campaign direction reform module ease particular that such of this outlay depends on donors whose identities do not hit to be revealed.