Tag Archives: U.S. politics

cynicism

Poor Hillary. I voted against her last time, and I probably will vote against her again even though I think she would probably make an adequate President. The reason is that she is choosing the path of cynicism. When Bernie Sanders talked about how all other advanced countries provide health care, education, and child care for their citizens, citing Denmark as an example, Hilary said we aren’t Denmark, we are the USA. In other words, we can’t do it because we are the USA.

One night I tuned in to the Democrats’ presidential debate to see if they had any plans to restore the America I used to know. To my amazement, I heard the name of my peaceful mountain hideaway: Norway. Bernie Sanders was denouncing America’s crooked version of “casino capitalism” that floats the already rich ever higher and flushes the working class. He said that we ought to “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

He believes, he added, in “a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.” That certainly sounds like Norway. For ages they’ve worked at producing things for the use of everyone — not the profit of a few — so I was all ears, waiting for Sanders to spell it out for Americans.

But Hillary Clinton quickly countered, “We are not Denmark.” Smiling, she said, “I love Denmark,” and then delivered a patriotic punch line: “We are the United States of America.” Well, there’s no denying that. She praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes and Norwegians do that, too, and with much higher rates of success.

That’s not logic – if every other country can do it, we are the exception, we are dysfunctional, and it is cynical to say we can’t do it when obviously it is possible. When Bernie hit her for praising Henry Kissinger, I think we was spot on. Henry Kissinger was a “realist”, a cynic, and he has the blood of millions on his hands. I would listen to arguments about how well-functioning markets could boost retirement savings, restore rational prices to our broken health care and education systems, boost growth and innovation, from Democrats or even from Republicans, but I am not hearing those policies from anyone. Instead, I am hearing intolerance and science denial from the Republicans, which I won’t entertain for a second, and “USA, no we can’t” from Hillary. I like what I’m hearing from Bernie on campaign finance, financial regulation and climate change. So go ahead and sign me up.

swing the election

Here’s an interesting interactive tool on FiveThirtyEight.com where you can play around with U.S. voter turnout and preferences among various demographic groups.

I ran a few scenarios:

  • The default scenario is that each demographic group (educated white, uneducated white, black, hispanic/latino, and Asian) votes for the same party in the same proportions as 2012, and turns out at the same rate, but the absolute size of each group is adjusted for changes between 2012 and 2016.
    • electoral votes 332-206 in favor of DEMOCRATS
  • Let’s go back to the default, and all the Asian people stay home.
    • 332-206 in favor of DEMOCRATS (just not enough people, and maybe already concentrated in democratic states)
  • Back to the default, and all the hispanic/latino people stay home.
    • 283-255 in favor of DEMOCRATS (perhaps hispanics/latinos are also concentrated in already democratic states?)
  • Back to the default, and black turnout falls from 66% to 29%
    • 286-252 in favor of REPUBLICANS (perhaps this flips some key midwest swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.)
  • Back to the default, and uneducated whites swing strongly to the right, from 62% last time to 69% Republican (maybe a terrorist attack? a major incident with China or Russia? I don’t want to say false flag, this is not one of those conspiracy websites…)
    • 282-256 in favor of REPUBLICANS (probably those swing states again)
  • Stay with the previous scenario, but educated whites swing ever so slightly to the left, from 56% Republican last time to 54% Republican (what would cause this? I don’t know, some crazy right-wing candidate spouting racist nonsense maybe, I’m not naming names…)
    • 275-263 in favor of DEMOCRATS

So the bottom line is that the minority groups tend to vote Democrat.The uneducated whites tend to vote Republican. The educated whites are the swing voters who end up being the deciding factor. So it is hard to see how a Republican candidate who appeals strongly to uneducated whites but alienates educated whites could ever stand much of a chance.

on the issues

Ontheissues.org is a little bit junky but it has a lot of information on where the candidates stand, well, on the issues. It then graphs them on an interesting spectrum based on where they stand on government intervention in the social and economic spheres.

Social Questions:  Liberals and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while conservatives and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictive answers.

Economic Questions:  Conservatives and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while liberals and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictive answers.

January 2016 in Review

I’m going to try picking the three most frightening posts, three most hopeful posts, and three most interesting posts (that are not particularly frightening or hopeful) from January.

3 most frightening posts

  • Paul Ehrlich is still worried about population. 82% of scientists agree.
  • Thomas Picketty (paraphrased by J. Bradford Delong) says inequality and slow growth are the norm for a capitalist society. Joseph Stiglitz has some politically difficult solutions: “Far-reaching redistribution of income would help, as would deep reform of our financial system – not just to prevent it from imposing harm on the rest of us, but also to get banks and other financial institutions to do what they are supposed to do: match long-term savings to long-term investment needs.”
  • Meanwhile, government for and by big business means the “Deep State” is really in control of the U.S. In our big cities, the enormous and enormously dysfunctional police-court-prison system holds sway over the poor.

3 most hopeful posts

3 most interesting posts

  • There are some arguments in favor of genetically modified food – they have increased yields of some grains, and there is promise they could increase fish yields. 88% of scientists responding to a Pew survey said they think genetically modified food is safe, but only 37% of the U.S. public thinks so. In other biotech news, Obama’s State of the Union announced a new initiative to try to cure cancer. In other food news, red meat is out.
  • Not only is cash becoming obsolete, any physical form of payment at all may become obsolete.
  • The World Economic Forum focused on technology: “The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”

 

Nate Silver’s Iowa Caucus Predictions

Political season is data science season! Here is some more on Nate Silver’s forecasting methods. If you are reading this in real time (Sunday January 31), by tomorrow night we will find out what actually happens. I will reproduce some graphics here – these are all from the FiveThirtyEight site, so please thank me for the free advertising and don’t send me to copyright jail.

For Clinton vs. Sanders, here is Nate’s average of polls as of today. He gives more recent polls greater weighting, and also adjusts somehow for bias shown in the same polls in the past.

Average of polls: Clinton 48.0% vs. Sanders 42.7%

Now, this is within the 4-6% “margin of error” reported by most polls. (I find this easier to find on the RealClearPolitics site, although curiously it lists margins of error for Democratic polls but not Republican ones. RealClearPolitics does a straight-up poll average without all the corrections that today is Clinton 47.3% vs. Sanders 44%. So all the corrections don’t make an enormous difference.) I can’t easily and quickly find information on whether the “margin of error” is a standard error or a confidence interval or what, but generally when the polls are within the margin of error the media tends to report it as a “statistical tie” or dead heat. And that is exactly what they are saying in this case.

Nate Silver does a set of simulations – it sounds very complicated, but in essence I assume he takes his adjusted poll average for each candidate, some measure of spread like standard error, then runs a whole bunch of simulations. Which leads to results like this:

Clinton-Sanders Simulation

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/iowa-democratic/

Based on this, Nate Silver gives Clinton an 80% chance of winning Iowa and Sanders only a 20% chance.

So what’s interesting is that you have the average of polls (48-43 or 47-44 depending on source), which everyone says is a statistical tie. You have Silver’s predicted result (50-43) based on a large number of simulations, and then you have the resulting odds considering both the predicted result and the spread in the predictions (80-20). In other words, the computer is generating random numbers and 80% of simulations end up favoring Clinton. Of course in real life the dice get rolled only once, but these odds seem pretty good for Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Trump-Cruz contest is similarly close in the polls (30-25 in favor of Trump), but the predicted result (26-25 in favor of Trump) and odds (48-41 in favor of Trump) are much closer. From a quick glance, this appears to be because the spreads are much wider. I don’t know why that would be the case – presence of more viable candidates on the Republican side? Or maybe there is just more variability in the polls and nobody actually knows why.

Republican Iowa Caucus simulation

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/iowa-republican/

 

 

more things you don’t want to be true

Actually I’m not sure if I want this to be true or not, but

John Kasich has reasonable views on immigration.

Why wouldn’t I want this to be true? I’m not sure. I suppose because I don’t want to like any conservative governor after the awful one we just survived in Pennsylvania. In four short years he destroyed public education across the state, especially poorer urban areas, allowed gas companies to gut the environment, and did nothing to fix our state’s pension woes or entrenched poverty (either of which gas royalties could have at least made a dent in when energy prices were so high, but it’s a little late now.) Trading natural capital for financial capital, and restoring fiscal responsibility, are things a true conservative would do. About all he gave us was an entertaining pornography scandal. But I digress – if Kasich has a reasonable view on one issue, you have to admit it’s at least possible he might have reasonable views on other issues too. And I’m about ready to settle for reasonable with this crop of candidates.

what to eat?

New U.S. government nutrition guidelines are out. And predictably, they are being criticized by nutritionists.

This year, for example, there were notable differences between the Advisory Committee’s recommendations and the final guidelines. According to scientific evidence, individuals should reduce their consumption of red and processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, to prevent chronic diseases. The scientific evidence for those two recommendations is “so clear, so strong,” says Willett — yet neither recommendation was included in the final guidelines…

The final guidelines also don’t include the Advisory Committee’s emphasis on sustainability of the food supply, including the need to reduce portions of beef, cited as “the single food with the greatest projected impact on the environment.”

“This is virtual proof that the USDA is not allowed to say anything negative about red meat,” says Willett. “The basic censorship of the report from the Advisory Committee is deeply troublesome.”

The report from the advisory committee is not exactly censored. It’s here, readily accessible for people who know how to find stuff on the internet.

SOTU

I’ll pull out a few quotes from Obama’s State of the Union that are relevant to the theme of this blog.

First, automation and globalization:

Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and they face tougher competition. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.

What automation and globalization have in common is that if you are a relatively low-skilled worker in a relatively high-income country like the U.S., there is a risk your job could be replaced either by a computer (automation) or a low-skilled worker in a low-income country (globalization). Where they differ is that automation is starting to squeeze those low-skilled workers in the low-income countries too, and gradually it will also start to squeeze the higher-skilled workers in the higher-income countries. Obama’s solutions to all this – education and training, unemployment and wage insurance, healthcare and childcare benefits to make employment more flexible, lowering barriers to entrepreneurship, are the obvious ones, but we’ve been tinkering with these things for a long time with only slow progress, and the trends are only going to accelerate.

Second, biotechnology and genetics:

Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot,America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade. (Applause.) So tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done…let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.

This seems to be a nod to biomedical research and biotech more generally, which I am convinced is the next big technology revolution akin to the information revolution we have been going through over the past few decades.

Next, climate change and fossil fuels:

Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from old, dirtier energy sources. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. We do them no favor when we don’t show them where the trends are going. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. And that way, we put money back into those communities, and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.

Actually, I am not sure what he is talking about here. I would support a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with the proceeds invested in education, training, research and/or infrastructure. But I’m only speculating. If there was some initiative announced along these lines I missed it.

Finally, corruption in U.S. politics:

We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families or hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections. (Applause.) And if our existing approach to campaign finance reform can’t pass muster in the courts, we need to work together to find a real solution — because it’s a problem… Those with money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier to war, or allow another economic disaster, or roll back the equal rights and voting rights that generations of Americans have fought, even died, to secure.

This is pretty vague. I would support a constitutional amendment to clarify that a person is a human being and a human being is a person. Human beings should have the right to free political speech, but corporations and other special interest legal entities should not. The law can be written to preserve the important rights corporations do have that create a fair and predictable playing field for businesses to compete – equal protection under the law, access to the courts, protection from arbitrary seizure of property, and so forth. But the richest and most powerful shouldn’t be able to buy politicians and write the rules of the game unfairly in their favor.

On the possibility of those right-wing self-interested corporate entities joining forces with right-wing grass roots impulses, resulting in something truly ugly:

But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.  And then, as frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background.

I wouldn’t have believed that was likely a year ago, but here we are approaching the official beginning of an election season that is turning out to be very surprising, with Obama riding off into the sunset.

“striking findings” from Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center has an interesting blog post showing some “striking findings” from their 2015 work, along with links to various surveys and analyses they did. Even if you didn’t tell me what the topics are, I would be interested in the graphics. Nice, clean time series plots, bar charts, “bump charts” – lots of bump charts, and even a pie. Their maps look good, except I don’t like the animated ones that move before you have time to look at them. They need a pause button.

You can see the striking findings on the site, but here are my top five:

  1. “For the first time since the 1940s, more immigrants from Mexico are leaving the U.S. than coming into the country.” Better move those guards to the other side of the wall! (Actually, there was a South Park episode about this as I recall…)
  2. 53% of white Americans say “Our country needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites.” Which is not all that striking, except that it changed from 39% in March 2014 to 53% in July 2015. Unless there was some major flaw in the survey (and Pew is pretty good at surveys) that’s a big change in a short time.
  3. “People in countries with significant Muslim populations express overwhelmingly negative views of ISIS”. For example, 84% of people in the Palestinian territories disapprove.
  4. 88% of scientists think it is safe to eat genetically modified foods, versus 37% of U.S. adults. 82% of scientists think growing population will be a major problem, versus 59% of U.S. adults.
  5. 45% of the U.S. public thinks climate change is a very serious problem. But only 18% of people in China do!

Look at the pictures, they’re much better than my words.