The percentage of the population in 917 metropolitian and micropolitan area who have $1,000,000 or more of financial assets is substantial, ranging from 2.11% in small town Kentucky to 11.62% in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in each case, small towns at either extreme of the range.
For the nation as a whole 5.2% of households at at least $1,000,000 in financial assets, and 1% have a bit more than $5,000,000 or more each. In Maryland, the state with the most millionaires on a percentage basis, 7.7% of households have financial assets in that amount (about the same a Boulder, Colorado).
Washington D.C. is the large metropolitan area with the highest percentage of millionaires: 8.81%.
In greater San Francisco, the rate is 7.28%.
Analysis
It is worth a moment to consider what these statistics mean in practice:
* A financial millionaire is now upper middle class (the percentage of millionaires and the percentage of people with earned graduate degrees is similar), but no more.
* Married couples in the bottom 99% are not subject to the estate tax if non-financial assets make up less than half of their net worth.
* For the upper middle class, particularly in governmental centers and homes to big businesses, a very large percentage of the total financial assets are in retirement plans. But, financial assets in retirement plans are inflated by design, because typically 20%-40% of those assets will be paid in income tax when withdrawn, a tax that the step up in basis at death that President Obama proposed to eliminate in his State of the Union address yesterday, does not eliminate.
* Wage and salary earners with upper middle class jobs are better at saving financial assets that are hard for them to touch than others, and they reap the rewards of this when they retire.
* Wage and salary earners are also helped in accumulating financial assets because they can't make risky investments not available to them in their retirement plans (in addition to investing and being evaluated based upon before tax funds and having little access to retirement funds during their working lives for consumption purposes).
* The flip side of the limited investment freedom of people with retirement savings, is that retirement assets provide much less economic power prior to retirement, than other financial assets. They can't be used for consumption, can't be used to invest in a closely held business, and can't be used for a major current charitable initiative.
* The new rule of thumb in the financial planning industry is to assume that financial assets can support a 4% of asset value income stream (the old rule of thumb was 5%). Thus $1,000,000 of assets is a fairly modest $40,000 a year. Even rent free and supplemented by Social Security cheks, this supports only a fairly middle class lifestyle for a retiree's household.
* The $5,000,000 of financial assets of a one percenter household is about $200,000 a year, comfortable to be sure, but hardly opulent, again, even rent free.
* A traditional monthly defined benefit pension typically sounds much more modest than it would if converted to the financial asset portfolio amount necessary to generate that income stream. A meaningful defined benefit pension translates into substantial financial affluence.
* At the time that the word millionaire came into wide usage, $1,000,000 nominal dollars was worth about $10,000,000 to $25,000,000 in today's dollars adjusted for inflation, at a threshold where today, estate taxes are likely to be due at death without substantial estate planning work and enough to generate a genuinely affluent lifestyle income stream. This is also roughly the threshold where, in my professional experience, it becomes are for a typical person with a comfortable but not decadent lifestyle to spend money on consumption faster than they earn money on investments; lots of consumption items for people in this wealth bracket, like vacation real estate and art, tends to appreciate in value or maintain its value, rather than losing value over time.
* The average social security benefit for retirees ($1,300 a month) is roughly equivalent to about $325,000 of retirement savings. The maximum Social Security retirement benefit at normal retirement age (66 years old) is $2,642, which is equivalent to about $700,000 of financial assets for someone who would have had to have been an upper middle class wage earner (or spouse of a wage earner) for almost their entire life. While there is no minimum Social Security retirement benefit, in practice, almost anyone who has worked for most of their lives has an income stream in retirement from Social Security equal to something in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, even when they have a below average monthly benefit. Almost no American senior citizens are really destitute, and few are in poverty, as a result, something that the U.S. does not replicate for its children.
* A large share of millionaires are retirees or people late in their careers getting ready to retire. A 66 year old with $1,000,000 in financial assets is merely middle class, because modest retirement consumption needs will absorb almost all of it before death. A 20 years old with $1,000,000, in contrast, is quite affluent, because that person can still work and has lots of time to earn investment returns before needing to rely on investment income to live from day to day, and is also likely to have much greater access to those funds for consumption purposes (since they are almost surely not retirement funds) than a new retiree with the same financial asset value.
* For most households, their main non-financial asset is real estate, typically starting with a primary residence that may or may not include a farm. In small town America and even decent sized cities in the South and the American heartland, a paid off upper middle class residence may have a fair market value of as little as $100,000. In expensive big city and resort housing markets, a comparable upper middle class residence may cost two or three million dollars.
* The percentage of millionaires in term of financial assets seems to be only mildly related to housing costs, and then, with places with more expensive housing costs having somewhat higher percentages of millionaires (perhaps in part to the financial assets of people who cash out equity in their homes late in life). Higher compensation in places with higher housing costs more than compensates for the higher housing costs, on average. Also, primary residence mortgages, like retirement savings, force people to save in a way that they can't easily access for consumption purposes.
* Fitting the distribution to a Gaussian Normal Distribution curve from roughly 3 standard deviation tails suggests that the distribution of percentages is about 5.2 +/- 0.9%, with a symmetric rather than the expected asymmetric distribution (one would expect a higher upside than downside). This is surprisingly even geographically, and very few data points differ by more than a factor of +60% or -60% from the mean. The regional disparity in wealth is driven more by real estate values (which doesn't impact asset use value), than by financial wealth at this level. There are very few extreme outliers. The data points are skewed somewhat towards lower as opposed to higher values with a longer low end tail than the high end tail.
* People in areas with high value real estate have much more of their total wealth in real estate. It is unclear how much large real estate holdings by farmers modify the regional variation in financial wealth.
* The amount that a judgment creditor can collection from someone is on average from their financial assets is frequently much lower than their financial assets due to creditor protected retirement accounts and similarly protected assets either in special kinds of accounts or in trusts inherited from someone else that are not subject to creditors. Homestead exemptions also limit the available real estate equity, although real estate equity is frequently the most collectible asset of an affluent individual. The number of people capable of paying a $1,000,000 judgment from non-exempt assets is much smaller than the number of millionaires. As a result, in lawsuits against individuals, very large money judgments are often a merely academic exercise. This is not true, however, of big business that can often afford to pay such large sums.
21 January 2015
20 January 2015
Paranormal Insurance
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Comics.
Selling people insurance with no intent to pay claims is fraudulent. But, what if, instead, you formed an insurance company that paid claims in every case where the insurance company couldn't prove that it was a hoax (essentially the premise of a contemporary fantasy Downside Ghosts series by Stacia Kane).
One could set rates simply from actuarial experience and if one was interested in locating potential paranormal events, what better way to do so than to use the device of people making claims on the paranormal insurance coverage. Even if the business operated at a loss, the anthropological or metaphysical research payoff (depending upon what the research investigating claims revealed) might very well be a small cost to subsidize in order to secure the research tool.
19 January 2015
African American Political Identity In America
The Limits Of Political And Behavior Science Theory
As a general rule, one associates values that are traditional, rather than rational/secular, and that are survival, rather than self-expression, oriented with personal and economic insecurity. On the other hand, values are determined at a quite high level extending to a significant extent to the supra-national level, rather than at the level of the individual. Between culture differences in values dwarf within culture differences in values.
The study of regional cultural differences also tends to indicate that cultural features of a founding population in a region can persist for centuries, even in the fact of substantial immigration.
Historically, African Americans are the population within the United States that has been, both more personally insecure, as evidenced by violent crime victimization rates, incarceration rates and victimization in the criminal justice system, and more economically insecure, as measured by unemployment rates, educational attainment and dropout rates, incomes and household wealth.
Also, until the "Great Migration" from around 1910 to 1970 in the United States, when African Americans migrated in large numbers to industrial cities in the North for manufacturing jobs, African Americans were overwhelmingly residents of the American South (i.e. the former Confederate States).
These deep cultural roots in the American South are evidenced, for example, by the dialect of American English known as African American Vernacular English and in the religious practices of the major African American religious denominations, many of which show the hallmarks of the Second Great Awakening (ca. 1790-1840) that gave Evangelical Christianity in the American South its current character, which is unique in the Christian world (except in places evangelized from the American South).
The culture of the American South, in terms of its values, are in broad stroke more "survival" as opposed to "self-expression" oriented, and more "traditional" as opposed to "secular rational", than those of America's dominant "Yankee" culture of the North and the Pacific states. There are good historical reasons for this, but for the moment, I merely note that this is true and has been for a very long time that probably predates the Revolutionary War by which our nation attained its independence in 1776.
Thus, political theory and the behavioral sciences affords us good reasons to expect that African Americans would have more conservative political values than any other demographic in the United States.
Why Do African Americans Overwhelmingly Have Such A Liberal Political Identity?
Obviously, this didn't happen. It is no secret that formally affiliated Republicans who are African American Republicans are very rare (especially in the South), while African Americans tend to actually vote for Democrats at rates of around 90%, more loyally than almost any other ethnic group or demographic in America.
Why Might We Expect African Americans To Be More Conservative?
At one level, this is highly unexpected. Republicans have become through a process known as realignment that has almost completely run its course at the federal level, almost a Southern regional party.
The Republican party often espouses a vision of the United States as Christian nation and has deep misgivings about the First Amendment's establishment clause jurisprudence, while one of the other most reliable constituencies of the Democratic party are people who have no religious affiliation (often called the "None" and not necessarily atheistic, despite disavowing traditional religious denominations). The Republican party identifies itself as the party of "traditional family values" while the Democratic party identifies itself as inclusive. Likewise, on all manner of issues that implicate the survival values v. self-expression values divide, the Republican party consistently falls on the survival values side relative to the Democratic party.
Naively, we would expect African American political values to more strongly mirror those of the tradition/survival values oriented Republican party, and not the secular/rational/self-expression values oriented Democratic party. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Similarly, why does the Democratic party, which sees itself as the party of the poor, have the values of a party of the secure middle class and the affluent, and the Republican party, which is widely seen as a party of the rich, have poverty and working class driven values?
Had Malcolm X Prevailed Would African Americans Have Been More Conservative?
One could have imagined another course. African Americans could have embraced the vision of Malcolm X and adopted the deeply conservative traditionalist/survival oriented ideology and religion of Islam, rather than making the commitment to self-expression values and tactics that Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we commemorate on today's holiday, instead.
Neither Malcolm X, nor Martin Luther King, Jr. had a secular vision. Malcolm X was an advocate for African American Islam. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a minister in an African American Christian denomination.
Both men lived at a time when the break down of the traditional African American nuclear family structure was just beginning to become apparent, decades before working class white Americans followed in the footsteps of their African American peers, and both we advocates for strong traditional families.
The moral content of African American religious denominations and the values of African Americans, generally, have until very recently, been as fervently anti-gay, as those of their Southern white evangelical Christian peers.
African American enlistment in the military, especially, the Army, rivals that of Southern whites, and is much higher than that of Northern whites, although African Americans are more often denied the opportunity to enlist due to issues with insufficient academic ability or criminal records.
Then again, it is important to recall, that overall, Protestant Christianity is the most self-expression, rationalist oriented religious tradition in the world, while Islam is the most survival value, traditionalist oriented religious tradition in the world.
While Southern Protestantism (both white and black) is a much more conservative religious movement than European Protestantism, for the most part, it still draws upon and is influenced by liberal views (viewed in a global values context) that are deeply embedded in Christianity's DNA. By embracing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s black protestant religious views, a natural step for a community of African Americans that overwhelmingly shared his religious views at the dawn of the civil rights movement, African Americans were drawn by the influence and by the influence of the Northern Protestant Christians who became their fast allies in the white community in the civil rights movement.
Southern Protestants look very conservative when juxtaposed against a historically continental and Scandinavian European style Protestantism, and against the deep secularism that has emerged from that tradition. But, they remain in the same ethical territory as many white Roman Catholics, and in a territory that places more weight on self-expression (vis-a-vis survival values) than Orthodox Christians, Hindus, Muslim, Latin American Catholics, and African traditional religion practitioners.
White Evangelical Christianity may afford women a subordinate role and have deep seated racism issues, but in the 21st century, they aren't ready to revert women to chattel status or reinstate slavery, as ISIS would like to in the Middle East and Boko Haram would like to in the African Sahel.
Historical Reasons For African American Alienation From Republicans
African American alienation from the modern Republican political party can be traced, fairly clearly, to the outright racism and hostility present in the Republican party which became the new home of segregationist Southerners (the former "Dixiecrats") who wanted to keep first de jure and then de facto and private sector discrimination against African Americans in place. Republicans have, at every step, opposed the integration of public institutions, viable employment discrimination laws, and viable remedies for victims of abuse in the criminal justice system (particularly those like the sentencing disparities between powder and crack cocaine that disproportionately impact African Americans for no principled reason). Republicans have opposed African American judicial and cabinet nominees (with the notable exception of African American conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thomas). Republicans have favored regressive taxation schemes and weak social welfare safety nets in ways that have done disproportionate economic harm to African Americans. Republicans have opposed history instruction in schools that highlights African American contributions. Republicans opposed making Martin Luther King, Jr. day a holiday.
The Democratic party, in contrast, has had the back of African Americans on issues with strong racial overtones for the last half century or more, has consistently advanced African American economic interests, and has embraced African American advancement in partisan political party offices, as candidates for elective office, and as political appointees in executive branch and judicial branch offices.
How Has Membership In The Democratic Party Coalition Has Changed African Americans?
This coalition, in turn, has mobilized elites in the African American community to back a Democratic party political agenda, and to advocate for and cause the realization of African American community values in the United States, such as efforts to find common cause with Hispanic immigrants, rather than seeing them as threats, and seeing environmental protection as something that personally advances their health rather than as a threat to their jobs, that would not have been natural responses in a vacuum outside the Democratic Party coalition. Similarly, the larger Democratic Party coalition has influenced African Americans in responding to criminal violence in their communities with calls for gun control, rather than easier access to gun ownership (e.g. through restoration of the civil rights of those with criminal convictions).
Put another way, African Americans have largely repudiated the culture of the American South from which their own ethnic subculture has arisen as a parent culture whose standards are relevant to them, and realigned their own subculture with that of the rest of the United States. Following that switch of cultural allegiances, their own conditions of personal safety and economic security have been relegated to second order within community differences in values that also shift the entire community's values modestly in their direction, rather than reinforcing the similar although less intense values of working class white Southerners in a similar conservative direction.
Has Public Policy Changed African American Values?
It is also possible to argue that public policy itself has changed African American political values.
For example, on the issue of health care, there has been a sustained period of time from the adoption of the Medicaid program, until the implementation of Obamacare, where those in poverty had more secure access to medical care, than working class individuals with no health insurance, a substantial share of all working class people.
Affirmative action has made it easier for an African Americans who are ready to go to college to obtain a higher education than an academically comparable working class white person for a sustained period of time
There have been time periods in many places where African Americans have more heavily utilized the social welfare safety net available than comparable poor whites, in part due to better community knowledge of how the programs work, and in part due to a lower degree of distrust of those programs.
These policies and others like them make it possible to conclude that public policy has done more to alleviate insecurity for blacks than for whites for a sustained period of time, muting somewhat differences in absolute physical and economic well being, although this argument does not seem to be the more compelling explanation.
The Parallel Case of Unions
Clear partisan divides on union-management issues, with Republicans being fervently anti-union, and Democrats seeing unions as a core base of support, has likewise influenced the American union movement to devise a political agenda consistent with the larger Democratic party coalition, for example, on the issue of immigration, and has muted activism within the political sphere on issues that put its constituencies at odds with each other, like addressing racism within union organizations with litigation.
Of course, while unions institutionally, are strongly aligned with the Democratic party and against the Republican party, rank and file union members who vote have increasingly been a swing constituency between the political parties. Support from white working class union members, even when it has not risen to the level of majority support, has been important to many recent Republican electoral victories in the Midwest.
Then again, given the declining role of unions in the economy, with private sector unionization levels now below those of the earliest strong legal protections for unions in the late Progressive era, in part for legal reasons and in part for economic ones, the union vote, in general, has become less numerically important and more concentrated in public sector unions that are very different creatures than their private sector counterparts.
As a general rule, one associates values that are traditional, rather than rational/secular, and that are survival, rather than self-expression, oriented with personal and economic insecurity. On the other hand, values are determined at a quite high level extending to a significant extent to the supra-national level, rather than at the level of the individual. Between culture differences in values dwarf within culture differences in values.
The study of regional cultural differences also tends to indicate that cultural features of a founding population in a region can persist for centuries, even in the fact of substantial immigration.
Historically, African Americans are the population within the United States that has been, both more personally insecure, as evidenced by violent crime victimization rates, incarceration rates and victimization in the criminal justice system, and more economically insecure, as measured by unemployment rates, educational attainment and dropout rates, incomes and household wealth.
Also, until the "Great Migration" from around 1910 to 1970 in the United States, when African Americans migrated in large numbers to industrial cities in the North for manufacturing jobs, African Americans were overwhelmingly residents of the American South (i.e. the former Confederate States).
These deep cultural roots in the American South are evidenced, for example, by the dialect of American English known as African American Vernacular English and in the religious practices of the major African American religious denominations, many of which show the hallmarks of the Second Great Awakening (ca. 1790-1840) that gave Evangelical Christianity in the American South its current character, which is unique in the Christian world (except in places evangelized from the American South).
The culture of the American South, in terms of its values, are in broad stroke more "survival" as opposed to "self-expression" oriented, and more "traditional" as opposed to "secular rational", than those of America's dominant "Yankee" culture of the North and the Pacific states. There are good historical reasons for this, but for the moment, I merely note that this is true and has been for a very long time that probably predates the Revolutionary War by which our nation attained its independence in 1776.
Thus, political theory and the behavioral sciences affords us good reasons to expect that African Americans would have more conservative political values than any other demographic in the United States.
Why Do African Americans Overwhelmingly Have Such A Liberal Political Identity?
Obviously, this didn't happen. It is no secret that formally affiliated Republicans who are African American Republicans are very rare (especially in the South), while African Americans tend to actually vote for Democrats at rates of around 90%, more loyally than almost any other ethnic group or demographic in America.
Why Might We Expect African Americans To Be More Conservative?
At one level, this is highly unexpected. Republicans have become through a process known as realignment that has almost completely run its course at the federal level, almost a Southern regional party.
The Republican party often espouses a vision of the United States as Christian nation and has deep misgivings about the First Amendment's establishment clause jurisprudence, while one of the other most reliable constituencies of the Democratic party are people who have no religious affiliation (often called the "None" and not necessarily atheistic, despite disavowing traditional religious denominations). The Republican party identifies itself as the party of "traditional family values" while the Democratic party identifies itself as inclusive. Likewise, on all manner of issues that implicate the survival values v. self-expression values divide, the Republican party consistently falls on the survival values side relative to the Democratic party.
Naively, we would expect African American political values to more strongly mirror those of the tradition/survival values oriented Republican party, and not the secular/rational/self-expression values oriented Democratic party. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Similarly, why does the Democratic party, which sees itself as the party of the poor, have the values of a party of the secure middle class and the affluent, and the Republican party, which is widely seen as a party of the rich, have poverty and working class driven values?
Had Malcolm X Prevailed Would African Americans Have Been More Conservative?
One could have imagined another course. African Americans could have embraced the vision of Malcolm X and adopted the deeply conservative traditionalist/survival oriented ideology and religion of Islam, rather than making the commitment to self-expression values and tactics that Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we commemorate on today's holiday, instead.
Neither Malcolm X, nor Martin Luther King, Jr. had a secular vision. Malcolm X was an advocate for African American Islam. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a minister in an African American Christian denomination.
Both men lived at a time when the break down of the traditional African American nuclear family structure was just beginning to become apparent, decades before working class white Americans followed in the footsteps of their African American peers, and both we advocates for strong traditional families.
The moral content of African American religious denominations and the values of African Americans, generally, have until very recently, been as fervently anti-gay, as those of their Southern white evangelical Christian peers.
African American enlistment in the military, especially, the Army, rivals that of Southern whites, and is much higher than that of Northern whites, although African Americans are more often denied the opportunity to enlist due to issues with insufficient academic ability or criminal records.
Then again, it is important to recall, that overall, Protestant Christianity is the most self-expression, rationalist oriented religious tradition in the world, while Islam is the most survival value, traditionalist oriented religious tradition in the world.
While Southern Protestantism (both white and black) is a much more conservative religious movement than European Protestantism, for the most part, it still draws upon and is influenced by liberal views (viewed in a global values context) that are deeply embedded in Christianity's DNA. By embracing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s black protestant religious views, a natural step for a community of African Americans that overwhelmingly shared his religious views at the dawn of the civil rights movement, African Americans were drawn by the influence and by the influence of the Northern Protestant Christians who became their fast allies in the white community in the civil rights movement.
Southern Protestants look very conservative when juxtaposed against a historically continental and Scandinavian European style Protestantism, and against the deep secularism that has emerged from that tradition. But, they remain in the same ethical territory as many white Roman Catholics, and in a territory that places more weight on self-expression (vis-a-vis survival values) than Orthodox Christians, Hindus, Muslim, Latin American Catholics, and African traditional religion practitioners.
White Evangelical Christianity may afford women a subordinate role and have deep seated racism issues, but in the 21st century, they aren't ready to revert women to chattel status or reinstate slavery, as ISIS would like to in the Middle East and Boko Haram would like to in the African Sahel.
Historical Reasons For African American Alienation From Republicans
African American alienation from the modern Republican political party can be traced, fairly clearly, to the outright racism and hostility present in the Republican party which became the new home of segregationist Southerners (the former "Dixiecrats") who wanted to keep first de jure and then de facto and private sector discrimination against African Americans in place. Republicans have, at every step, opposed the integration of public institutions, viable employment discrimination laws, and viable remedies for victims of abuse in the criminal justice system (particularly those like the sentencing disparities between powder and crack cocaine that disproportionately impact African Americans for no principled reason). Republicans have opposed African American judicial and cabinet nominees (with the notable exception of African American conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thomas). Republicans have favored regressive taxation schemes and weak social welfare safety nets in ways that have done disproportionate economic harm to African Americans. Republicans have opposed history instruction in schools that highlights African American contributions. Republicans opposed making Martin Luther King, Jr. day a holiday.
The Democratic party, in contrast, has had the back of African Americans on issues with strong racial overtones for the last half century or more, has consistently advanced African American economic interests, and has embraced African American advancement in partisan political party offices, as candidates for elective office, and as political appointees in executive branch and judicial branch offices.
How Has Membership In The Democratic Party Coalition Has Changed African Americans?
This coalition, in turn, has mobilized elites in the African American community to back a Democratic party political agenda, and to advocate for and cause the realization of African American community values in the United States, such as efforts to find common cause with Hispanic immigrants, rather than seeing them as threats, and seeing environmental protection as something that personally advances their health rather than as a threat to their jobs, that would not have been natural responses in a vacuum outside the Democratic Party coalition. Similarly, the larger Democratic Party coalition has influenced African Americans in responding to criminal violence in their communities with calls for gun control, rather than easier access to gun ownership (e.g. through restoration of the civil rights of those with criminal convictions).
Put another way, African Americans have largely repudiated the culture of the American South from which their own ethnic subculture has arisen as a parent culture whose standards are relevant to them, and realigned their own subculture with that of the rest of the United States. Following that switch of cultural allegiances, their own conditions of personal safety and economic security have been relegated to second order within community differences in values that also shift the entire community's values modestly in their direction, rather than reinforcing the similar although less intense values of working class white Southerners in a similar conservative direction.
Has Public Policy Changed African American Values?
It is also possible to argue that public policy itself has changed African American political values.
For example, on the issue of health care, there has been a sustained period of time from the adoption of the Medicaid program, until the implementation of Obamacare, where those in poverty had more secure access to medical care, than working class individuals with no health insurance, a substantial share of all working class people.
Affirmative action has made it easier for an African Americans who are ready to go to college to obtain a higher education than an academically comparable working class white person for a sustained period of time
There have been time periods in many places where African Americans have more heavily utilized the social welfare safety net available than comparable poor whites, in part due to better community knowledge of how the programs work, and in part due to a lower degree of distrust of those programs.
These policies and others like them make it possible to conclude that public policy has done more to alleviate insecurity for blacks than for whites for a sustained period of time, muting somewhat differences in absolute physical and economic well being, although this argument does not seem to be the more compelling explanation.
The Parallel Case of Unions
Clear partisan divides on union-management issues, with Republicans being fervently anti-union, and Democrats seeing unions as a core base of support, has likewise influenced the American union movement to devise a political agenda consistent with the larger Democratic party coalition, for example, on the issue of immigration, and has muted activism within the political sphere on issues that put its constituencies at odds with each other, like addressing racism within union organizations with litigation.
Of course, while unions institutionally, are strongly aligned with the Democratic party and against the Republican party, rank and file union members who vote have increasingly been a swing constituency between the political parties. Support from white working class union members, even when it has not risen to the level of majority support, has been important to many recent Republican electoral victories in the Midwest.
Then again, given the declining role of unions in the economy, with private sector unionization levels now below those of the earliest strong legal protections for unions in the late Progressive era, in part for legal reasons and in part for economic ones, the union vote, in general, has become less numerically important and more concentrated in public sector unions that are very different creatures than their private sector counterparts.
The Adult Male To Female Ratio Impacts Behavior
Razib Khan has a nice post discussing how a macro-environmental factor, the adult male to female sex ratio in a population, can greatly impact how men and women behave. This society wide difference in environmental context which varies consistently across cultures is a good example of how context, rather than genetics, can have broad impacts that differ from group to group.
Uninformed by this environmental factor, one could easily and wrongly infer that ancestry informative genetic differences were the cause of these behavioral differences.
Uninformed by this environmental factor, one could easily and wrongly infer that ancestry informative genetic differences were the cause of these behavioral differences.
Coming Events
This summer, a little before my youngest child turns 14 years old, this blog will be ten years old. This blog is almost a third child or long lived pet. I am pondering what, if anything, I should do to celebrate the occasion.
Superbowl 2015
On a couple of occasions previously, the Superbowl was between my own Denver Broncos, and my brother's team, the New England Patriots. This year, the Superbowl will between his team, the New England Patriots and my sister-in-law's team, the Seattle Seahawks.
This poses the difficult question of who to root for. Is the enemy of my friend my enemy, in which case I should root for the Seahawks? Or, is blood thicker than marriage, in which case, I should support the Patriots?
This poses the difficult question of who to root for. Is the enemy of my friend my enemy, in which case I should root for the Seahawks? Or, is blood thicker than marriage, in which case, I should support the Patriots?
18 January 2015
In Your Eyes and Dreamless
I'm glad that I'm not the only person whose noticed the extreme parallelism between the excellent webcomic "Dreamless" that finished its run four years ago, and last year's Josh Whedon movie, "In Your Eyes". Admittedly, the two are almost surely not close enough to qualify as a copyright violation, and yet, it seems almost painfully obvious that the Whedon movie was inspired by the comic.
16 January 2015
Does Nationalism Promote Peace?
Nationalism is often blamed for wars and strife. But, a 2011 study argued that accurate alignment of political and geographic boundaries with ethnic, religious and national identities was a powerful predictor of the absence of those things.
The idea is starkly at odds with the American ideological commitment to multiculturalism, diversity and the "melting pot", yet is institutionally embedded in our political DNA as a federal state. In contrast, the idea is much more mainstream in Japan and in many European nations that are built on nationalist foundations. And, it is widely acknowledged in political science circles that one of the important factors that caused newly independent European colonial states to fail was their lack of congruity with a national identity.
For example, Nigeria experienced a civil war based on east-west ethnic differences shortly after its formation, and is now experiencing a genocidal ethnic and religious conflict between Muslims in the North and Animists and Christians in the South near their geocultural boundaries in the Northern Nigerian states.
A more skeptical view of that premise is found in the high concept Young Adult novel/political fable "Feuds" (2014) by Avery Hastings, told in part from the perspective of the daughter of a politician who favors the segregation of biologically and educationally enhanced "Priors" and non-enhanced "Imps" (for imperfects) in the 22nd century city of Columbus.
The idea is starkly at odds with the American ideological commitment to multiculturalism, diversity and the "melting pot", yet is institutionally embedded in our political DNA as a federal state. In contrast, the idea is much more mainstream in Japan and in many European nations that are built on nationalist foundations. And, it is widely acknowledged in political science circles that one of the important factors that caused newly independent European colonial states to fail was their lack of congruity with a national identity.
For example, Nigeria experienced a civil war based on east-west ethnic differences shortly after its formation, and is now experiencing a genocidal ethnic and religious conflict between Muslims in the North and Animists and Christians in the South near their geocultural boundaries in the Northern Nigerian states.
A more skeptical view of that premise is found in the high concept Young Adult novel/political fable "Feuds" (2014) by Avery Hastings, told in part from the perspective of the daughter of a politician who favors the segregation of biologically and educationally enhanced "Priors" and non-enhanced "Imps" (for imperfects) in the 22nd century city of Columbus.
15 January 2015
Wanted: Comprehensive, Non-Redundant News Coverage
A Wall Street Journal story last updated on January 9, 2015 offers a comprehensive and complete story of what happened over a three day period in the Charlie Hebdo attack and parallel shooting of a French traffic cop and hostage incident at a Kosher deli that left 17 victims, three dead perpetrators, and almost a dozen other people injured, in addition to disrupting the lives of millions of the French people. The story continued beyond that as well, in the form of the reactions to the incidents like a massive unity march, the "Je suis Charlie" and "Je suis Ahmed" slogans, the policy initiatives that are being formulated to respond to the attacks, and an attack on a possibly related terrorist cell in Belgium.
The Wall Street Journal story has details, like the fact that text messages from a print shop employee hiding while two of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen holed up there in a police siege were critical to the police success in killing the gunmen before they could kill anyone else, that didn't make it into the headlines.
The problem is that while there are good stories like this that are written eventually, if you are searching for news as it happens on the Internet, you face two problems.
First, there are hundreds of reports and it is hard to distinguish those with the same source and same information, from those that add new information to the coverage. It is easy to find the basic core of information about a big story like the Charlie Hebdo attack, but is hard to find the stories that go beyond the core of the early news wire reports. It is even harder to find the much later corrections to facts that were inaccurately reported in early coverage. Even if there is a correction from one source (which is hard enough to find when looking at the original in many cases), many other media outlets rebroadcasting the original story will not note the later correction in what is by the time it comes along cold news.
Second, it is not always easy to be confident that you have located all updates to developing stories that transpire in multiple related incidents over a period of days, weeks, months or even years. This is particularly an issue in the case of local news stories with diffuse coverage, that only a handful of media outlets may cover in half a dozen stories over many months, like the developments in a just barely newsworthy local murder case, or land use fight.
Even in the case of a big story like the Charlie Hebdo attack, while it is easy to learn, for example, how many people were initially reported to be injured in the attacks, it is much harder to learn, a week later, how successfully (or not) those who were injured have been at recovering from the injuries, or how they felt about the incidents, even though that kind of reporting is relatively easy to do with just a little elbow grease, and often is done by smaller circulation media outlets or much later buried in the lifestyle section far from the front page.
An ideal service would rapidly assimilate all information relevant to the story (not just from media outlets, but also from sources like social media and blog posts and public and commercial record source data), over the entire time period of the story's development even long after the fact follow up reporting, while also purging redundant information and eliminating the time and effort necessary to compile it all. The service would also track when you last looked at the story so it could highlight everything that has happened since you last read about the story.
One could imagine an artificially intelligent computer program with Google class processing capacity that could do that automatically, in real time, with every single developing story worthy of any media outlet that is available on the Internet.
Systems that do that are common place in flashy spy movies set in the present or near future, but in reality, don't exist. The function can be and sometimes is carried out, but it is done much more slowly and laboriously by smart (and expensive) people.
The Wall Street Journal story has details, like the fact that text messages from a print shop employee hiding while two of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen holed up there in a police siege were critical to the police success in killing the gunmen before they could kill anyone else, that didn't make it into the headlines.
The problem is that while there are good stories like this that are written eventually, if you are searching for news as it happens on the Internet, you face two problems.
First, there are hundreds of reports and it is hard to distinguish those with the same source and same information, from those that add new information to the coverage. It is easy to find the basic core of information about a big story like the Charlie Hebdo attack, but is hard to find the stories that go beyond the core of the early news wire reports. It is even harder to find the much later corrections to facts that were inaccurately reported in early coverage. Even if there is a correction from one source (which is hard enough to find when looking at the original in many cases), many other media outlets rebroadcasting the original story will not note the later correction in what is by the time it comes along cold news.
Second, it is not always easy to be confident that you have located all updates to developing stories that transpire in multiple related incidents over a period of days, weeks, months or even years. This is particularly an issue in the case of local news stories with diffuse coverage, that only a handful of media outlets may cover in half a dozen stories over many months, like the developments in a just barely newsworthy local murder case, or land use fight.
Even in the case of a big story like the Charlie Hebdo attack, while it is easy to learn, for example, how many people were initially reported to be injured in the attacks, it is much harder to learn, a week later, how successfully (or not) those who were injured have been at recovering from the injuries, or how they felt about the incidents, even though that kind of reporting is relatively easy to do with just a little elbow grease, and often is done by smaller circulation media outlets or much later buried in the lifestyle section far from the front page.
An ideal service would rapidly assimilate all information relevant to the story (not just from media outlets, but also from sources like social media and blog posts and public and commercial record source data), over the entire time period of the story's development even long after the fact follow up reporting, while also purging redundant information and eliminating the time and effort necessary to compile it all. The service would also track when you last looked at the story so it could highlight everything that has happened since you last read about the story.
One could imagine an artificially intelligent computer program with Google class processing capacity that could do that automatically, in real time, with every single developing story worthy of any media outlet that is available on the Internet.
Systems that do that are common place in flashy spy movies set in the present or near future, but in reality, don't exist. The function can be and sometimes is carried out, but it is done much more slowly and laboriously by smart (and expensive) people.
13 January 2015
Church Hates Lesbians Even After They Die
The New Hope church in Lakewood, Colorado, led by pastor Ray Chavez who founded the church in 1981 to minister to those afflicted by drugs, alcohol, gangs and violence, has refused to hold a funeral service for a woman who died at age thirty-three who is survived by her wife and children, because she was a lesbian. Instead, it posted security guards to keep protesters out. As a result, a secular funeral home ended up hosting the funeral instead.
The New Hope church, of course, has every constitutional right to do just that under the First Amendment's freedom of religion and freedom of association clauses.
But, when they act as they do, these Christians don't look very Christian. The Gospels are full of instances of Jesus snubbing Jewish religious officials of his day for similar behavior. But, scriptures are rarely a good source to understand how people who practice a religion really live their faith.
The New Hope church, of course, has every constitutional right to do just that under the First Amendment's freedom of religion and freedom of association clauses.
But, when they act as they do, these Christians don't look very Christian. The Gospels are full of instances of Jesus snubbing Jewish religious officials of his day for similar behavior. But, scriptures are rarely a good source to understand how people who practice a religion really live their faith.
08 January 2015
U.S. and Allies Blow Up Lots Of ISIS Stuff
According to U.S. military officials, there have been an average of 11 air strikes per day since August 8, 2014 when President Obama authorized the beginning of the air strike campaign for a total of 1,600 strikes on 3,200 targets in Iraq and Syria. Much of the military equipment was captured from Iraqi forces in an ISIS surge that began in June. The targets hit have included:
* 184 Humvees
* 58 Tanks
* 700 Other Vehicles
* 28 MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles) and armored personnel carriers.
* 79 Artillery and Mortar positions.
* 673 Infantry Fighting positions
* 14 river crossing small ferry boats
* 900 ISIS buildings and barracks
* 92 checkpoints
* 23 munition caches
* 52 bunkers
* 259 small oil refineries and storage facilities run by ISIS.
There is no word on whether we have blow up any partridges in pear trees, lords a leaping, or golden rings.
Via Defense Tech. There is more analysis of the impact of, and character of the air strike campaign here.
At least some of our fighter pilots are getting some real world combat experience dropping smart bombs, and the technologies involved are getting a trial in the sandbox before being pressed into use in some more symmetric conflict.
Some of the small numbers of U.S. troops in the region were shot at by ISIS forces for the first time of the campaign last week, although apparently did not suffer casualties. Most of the heavy lifting when it comes to ground combat has been carried out by Kurdish militias who have proven themselves to be more capable than the Iraqi or Syrian Army in this conflict.
ISIS may be reasonably well armed and equipped for an insurgent force, but hardly has the military resources of the full fledged nation-state that it claims that it is now, and has an Army of perhaps 20,000 or so men fighting for it (with large margins of error on that estimate).
Certainly, the airstrikes have made some dent in the military resources of ISIS and made the war costly for them, while requiring only minimal U.S. and allied commitment in blood and money. ISIS has been left with a military limited to troops with small arms using civilian vehicles like pickup trucks and no major military bases in good repair. ISIS can use its limited military resources ruthlessly to retain control of its territory and even advance along parts of its borders to key strategic targets. But, it has been denied almost all military vehicles, almost all weapons more potent than an assault rifle or rocket propelled grenade launcher, and any decent base or training facility. As the months drag on, these are not going to be ideal conditions under which it will need to continue to maintain its fighting force. And, of course, ISIS also needs to replace its many killed and wounded soldiers with new ones, as well. Each month that passes of more airstrikes further degrades the military capabilities of ISIS and its core oil extraction driven economic base.
On the other hand, it isn't at all clear that the air strikes have had a decisive impact anywhere but a few border towns that have historically had non-Sunni Arab populations. ISIS seems to control almost all of the historically Sunni Arab territory of Iraq, to have made slight inroads into Kurdish and non-Shi'ite minority areas of Iraq, and to have taken most of Eastern Syria.
The Iraqi military, the Kurdish militia, Syrian rebels, the embattled Syrian government that rules the rump territory remaining in its control in Syria, and the U.S. and its allies, all appear to have been powerless to dislodge ISIS from historically Sunni areas in Iraq and from Eastern Syria. Indeed, it seems as if they are struggling, in their combined efforts, simply to hold the line against further ISIS advances.
I've heard nothing about any serious Sunni led efforts to rise up against, or dislodge the ISIS regime whom Sunni Muslims in its territory seem to have accepted, happily or out of fear, as the de facto government whose brutal regime it is futile and dangerous to resist. And, it was not as if there was any great love lost for the Shi'ite controlled civilian government of Iraq that had ruled them from Baghdad, or Syria's former Baathist regime, in any case.
So, we have a stalemate. Nobody can defeat ISIS, but ISIS must now struggle to maintain control over its territory with its meager military resources and a reign of terror. So, ISIS can probably continue to be contained indefinitely.
Indeed, as long as ISIS can be contained, it isn't clear that we have any end game other than to leave ISIS to weak to expand or think about anything but clinging to its perilous grip on power in the territory it controls. We aren't eager for the area to be controlled by Syria's Baathist regime. But, the Syrian rebels don't have the wherewithal to fight the Baathists on one front and ISIS (including many of their comrades in arms from the still ongoing Syrian civil war) on the other. The Baathist regime is likewise too busy holding into the territory it still controls in the face of an ongoing civil war to retake the hard target of ISIS controlled territory.
Neither the U.S., nor its allies, nor the rump Iraqi government, nor the Kurdish militias are inclined to try to not only oust ISIS from its core territory, but to impose marital law until the territory can be handed over in good order to the rump Iraqi government that is now a Shi'ite nationalist assembly that is closely allied with Iran, or the Baathist regime in Syria.
The pre-ISIS civilian local and regional and central government officials who used to run this territory are gone, and have no realistic capacity to restore their legitimacy to rule this territory again on behalf of the national governments that used to control these territorial areas, even if the ISIS fighters and governmental officials could be ousted tomorrow. Local civil society, likewise, it seems, has been vaporized in the face of the all encompassing effort by ISIS to establish a new Caliphate run in accordance with strict and conservative interpretations of Islamic law. Anyone who stepped forward to try to led a successor regime in the region would be at grave risk of violence by agents of an exiled and temporarily routed ISIS regime, much like successors to the Taliban in Afghanistan became targets there.
So, while we can do a lot of damage, and economic pain, and can contain ISIS, and we can destroy almost all of their heavy weapons, we have no real game plan to secure meaningful regime change in its core territory and then to rule that territory. It would take a well disciplined and equipped Army of many tens of thousand of ground troops, if not hundreds of thousands, who spoke the local language, and vast amounts of nation building funds, at a time when low oil prices and wartime economic disruption are leaving Iraq and Syria strapped for cash, to have a serious chance of success in that endeavor. Nobody involved is willing or able to commit those kinds of resources to that task at this time.
In the meantime, each month that passes further cements the stalemated status quo, which is miserable for all involved and is further segregating the country on ethnic and religious lines in the few pockets o the country where this hadn't happened already, destroying prospects for a renewed multi-ethnic state of the kind that Iraq had under Saddam Hussein.
Every month that passes only cements the legitimacy of ISIS as a genuine nation-state further, and makes it harder to restore a legitimate civilian replacement government of Syria or Iraq respectively. The national military forces couldn't prevent ISIS from terrorizing average people and seizing control back in June, and any ordinary citizen would be taking a huge gamble to assume that national military forces could do it now, with a more entrenched foe and fewer resources of their own as a result of this massive civil war and succession movement that is now about six months old.
Yet, it is hard to ignore a regime that makes a point of beheading your nation's citizens on television, trying to carry out genocidal campaigns directed an ancient minority religious communities in their core territory, endorses terrorist attacks in the homelands of their opponents, and reestablishes legal sex slavery for girls and women captured from non-Sunni religious sects or others who have displeased the regime. It is even harder when this is happening in one of the world's most abundant swath of oil fields and refineries that are key to the national wealth of Iraq and Syria respectively and disrupting the global economy in the process.
While it is hard to say that we were wrong to intervene and prevent multiple instances of genocide aimed at minority religious populations in Iraq as a result, it is also hard to know what the next objective of our involvement in this conflict (and the Syrian civil war in which we are supporting rebel forces that nonetheless seem to be losing ground in Baathist regime held territory) should be.
So, until we decide otherwise, our mission seems to be to continue to degrade the military technology and infrastructure of the fighting forces of ISIS and its regime generally, and to contain the regime do that it doesn't expand beyond its current borders, until some other actor in the region takes more decisive action, or the situation on the ground shifts for some reason. For example, a successful Iraqi "surge" or a decision by the Turkish government to intervene decisively in this conflict rather than staying on the obscure sidelines as much as possible while tolerating military conduct just over the border by Kurdish militants who have been the Turkish military's bitter adversary in counterinsurgency operations spanning decades that were merely at a lull and not actually concluded when the rise of ISIS changed everything.
These U.S. and allied military tasks, of course, could last for many years to come until the stalemate breaks somehow.
Even if we somehow "win" the war, the people of this region may be far too alienated from the regimes that they have been forced by ISIS to fight against for all those years while scraping by in a country that is an economic shambles, to embrace their new rulers willingly.
A best case scenario for post-ISIS Iraq and Syria, however many years hence ISIS can be ousted, probably looks something like post-Irish independence Northern Ireland without the Protestants around to support the ruling United Kingdom government.
A worse case scenario looks something more like Somolia or Yemen.
Faced with that prospect, a more reasonable end game may be to oust the theocratic ISIS Caliphate regime in lieu of a regime run by Sunni tribal leaders and warlords in the image of post-Taliban Afghanistan and post-civil war Eritrea, while forcing Iraq and Syria respectively to cede these huge swaths of their own territory to a new Sunni Muslim state in the same territory that ISIS holds now and some treaty assurances from a post-ISIS regime in a nation-state that ISIS forcibly carved out of former Iraq and Syria.
That would be a bitter pill, but it is hard to imagine any better outcome to this conflict for the U.S. and its allies. This would be a loss for almost everyone involved on all sides. Given the reality of the situation there right now, would viable alternative would be a better outcome?
Particularly tricky would be the dominoes that such a step might trigger. If the ISIS territory were granted de jure independence, the Kurds would likely insist upon their independence from Iraq as well. Iran would likely warm to rump Shi'ite Iraq and might even annex it or join it in some sort of federation. Indeed, given Iran's more successful history of electoral democracy than Iraq, flaws as it is, an annexed Iraq might be more democratic and have a more functional civilian government than it does in the status quo.
Freed of potential threats from Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. military action, emboldened Iran might turn to less urgent priorities like harassing or attacking Israel, something that it has long expressed the desire to do.
Rump Syria, meanwhile, would leave the Syrian Baath regime a less overwhelming task to consolidate what remained than it would have faced to retake control of its Eastern territory. But, still facing a U.S. funded insurgency in an ongoing civil war, it might have little choice to pursue the less ambitious agenda, and prioritize a brutal crackdown on Syrian rebels in an effort to retain control.
* 184 Humvees
* 58 Tanks
* 700 Other Vehicles
* 28 MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles) and armored personnel carriers.
* 79 Artillery and Mortar positions.
* 673 Infantry Fighting positions
* 14 river crossing small ferry boats
* 900 ISIS buildings and barracks
* 92 checkpoints
* 23 munition caches
* 52 bunkers
* 259 small oil refineries and storage facilities run by ISIS.
There is no word on whether we have blow up any partridges in pear trees, lords a leaping, or golden rings.
Via Defense Tech. There is more analysis of the impact of, and character of the air strike campaign here.
At least some of our fighter pilots are getting some real world combat experience dropping smart bombs, and the technologies involved are getting a trial in the sandbox before being pressed into use in some more symmetric conflict.
Some of the small numbers of U.S. troops in the region were shot at by ISIS forces for the first time of the campaign last week, although apparently did not suffer casualties. Most of the heavy lifting when it comes to ground combat has been carried out by Kurdish militias who have proven themselves to be more capable than the Iraqi or Syrian Army in this conflict.
ISIS may be reasonably well armed and equipped for an insurgent force, but hardly has the military resources of the full fledged nation-state that it claims that it is now, and has an Army of perhaps 20,000 or so men fighting for it (with large margins of error on that estimate).
Certainly, the airstrikes have made some dent in the military resources of ISIS and made the war costly for them, while requiring only minimal U.S. and allied commitment in blood and money. ISIS has been left with a military limited to troops with small arms using civilian vehicles like pickup trucks and no major military bases in good repair. ISIS can use its limited military resources ruthlessly to retain control of its territory and even advance along parts of its borders to key strategic targets. But, it has been denied almost all military vehicles, almost all weapons more potent than an assault rifle or rocket propelled grenade launcher, and any decent base or training facility. As the months drag on, these are not going to be ideal conditions under which it will need to continue to maintain its fighting force. And, of course, ISIS also needs to replace its many killed and wounded soldiers with new ones, as well. Each month that passes of more airstrikes further degrades the military capabilities of ISIS and its core oil extraction driven economic base.
On the other hand, it isn't at all clear that the air strikes have had a decisive impact anywhere but a few border towns that have historically had non-Sunni Arab populations. ISIS seems to control almost all of the historically Sunni Arab territory of Iraq, to have made slight inroads into Kurdish and non-Shi'ite minority areas of Iraq, and to have taken most of Eastern Syria.
The Iraqi military, the Kurdish militia, Syrian rebels, the embattled Syrian government that rules the rump territory remaining in its control in Syria, and the U.S. and its allies, all appear to have been powerless to dislodge ISIS from historically Sunni areas in Iraq and from Eastern Syria. Indeed, it seems as if they are struggling, in their combined efforts, simply to hold the line against further ISIS advances.
I've heard nothing about any serious Sunni led efforts to rise up against, or dislodge the ISIS regime whom Sunni Muslims in its territory seem to have accepted, happily or out of fear, as the de facto government whose brutal regime it is futile and dangerous to resist. And, it was not as if there was any great love lost for the Shi'ite controlled civilian government of Iraq that had ruled them from Baghdad, or Syria's former Baathist regime, in any case.
So, we have a stalemate. Nobody can defeat ISIS, but ISIS must now struggle to maintain control over its territory with its meager military resources and a reign of terror. So, ISIS can probably continue to be contained indefinitely.
Indeed, as long as ISIS can be contained, it isn't clear that we have any end game other than to leave ISIS to weak to expand or think about anything but clinging to its perilous grip on power in the territory it controls. We aren't eager for the area to be controlled by Syria's Baathist regime. But, the Syrian rebels don't have the wherewithal to fight the Baathists on one front and ISIS (including many of their comrades in arms from the still ongoing Syrian civil war) on the other. The Baathist regime is likewise too busy holding into the territory it still controls in the face of an ongoing civil war to retake the hard target of ISIS controlled territory.
Neither the U.S., nor its allies, nor the rump Iraqi government, nor the Kurdish militias are inclined to try to not only oust ISIS from its core territory, but to impose marital law until the territory can be handed over in good order to the rump Iraqi government that is now a Shi'ite nationalist assembly that is closely allied with Iran, or the Baathist regime in Syria.
The pre-ISIS civilian local and regional and central government officials who used to run this territory are gone, and have no realistic capacity to restore their legitimacy to rule this territory again on behalf of the national governments that used to control these territorial areas, even if the ISIS fighters and governmental officials could be ousted tomorrow. Local civil society, likewise, it seems, has been vaporized in the face of the all encompassing effort by ISIS to establish a new Caliphate run in accordance with strict and conservative interpretations of Islamic law. Anyone who stepped forward to try to led a successor regime in the region would be at grave risk of violence by agents of an exiled and temporarily routed ISIS regime, much like successors to the Taliban in Afghanistan became targets there.
So, while we can do a lot of damage, and economic pain, and can contain ISIS, and we can destroy almost all of their heavy weapons, we have no real game plan to secure meaningful regime change in its core territory and then to rule that territory. It would take a well disciplined and equipped Army of many tens of thousand of ground troops, if not hundreds of thousands, who spoke the local language, and vast amounts of nation building funds, at a time when low oil prices and wartime economic disruption are leaving Iraq and Syria strapped for cash, to have a serious chance of success in that endeavor. Nobody involved is willing or able to commit those kinds of resources to that task at this time.
In the meantime, each month that passes further cements the stalemated status quo, which is miserable for all involved and is further segregating the country on ethnic and religious lines in the few pockets o the country where this hadn't happened already, destroying prospects for a renewed multi-ethnic state of the kind that Iraq had under Saddam Hussein.
Every month that passes only cements the legitimacy of ISIS as a genuine nation-state further, and makes it harder to restore a legitimate civilian replacement government of Syria or Iraq respectively. The national military forces couldn't prevent ISIS from terrorizing average people and seizing control back in June, and any ordinary citizen would be taking a huge gamble to assume that national military forces could do it now, with a more entrenched foe and fewer resources of their own as a result of this massive civil war and succession movement that is now about six months old.
Yet, it is hard to ignore a regime that makes a point of beheading your nation's citizens on television, trying to carry out genocidal campaigns directed an ancient minority religious communities in their core territory, endorses terrorist attacks in the homelands of their opponents, and reestablishes legal sex slavery for girls and women captured from non-Sunni religious sects or others who have displeased the regime. It is even harder when this is happening in one of the world's most abundant swath of oil fields and refineries that are key to the national wealth of Iraq and Syria respectively and disrupting the global economy in the process.
While it is hard to say that we were wrong to intervene and prevent multiple instances of genocide aimed at minority religious populations in Iraq as a result, it is also hard to know what the next objective of our involvement in this conflict (and the Syrian civil war in which we are supporting rebel forces that nonetheless seem to be losing ground in Baathist regime held territory) should be.
So, until we decide otherwise, our mission seems to be to continue to degrade the military technology and infrastructure of the fighting forces of ISIS and its regime generally, and to contain the regime do that it doesn't expand beyond its current borders, until some other actor in the region takes more decisive action, or the situation on the ground shifts for some reason. For example, a successful Iraqi "surge" or a decision by the Turkish government to intervene decisively in this conflict rather than staying on the obscure sidelines as much as possible while tolerating military conduct just over the border by Kurdish militants who have been the Turkish military's bitter adversary in counterinsurgency operations spanning decades that were merely at a lull and not actually concluded when the rise of ISIS changed everything.
These U.S. and allied military tasks, of course, could last for many years to come until the stalemate breaks somehow.
Even if we somehow "win" the war, the people of this region may be far too alienated from the regimes that they have been forced by ISIS to fight against for all those years while scraping by in a country that is an economic shambles, to embrace their new rulers willingly.
A best case scenario for post-ISIS Iraq and Syria, however many years hence ISIS can be ousted, probably looks something like post-Irish independence Northern Ireland without the Protestants around to support the ruling United Kingdom government.
A worse case scenario looks something more like Somolia or Yemen.
Faced with that prospect, a more reasonable end game may be to oust the theocratic ISIS Caliphate regime in lieu of a regime run by Sunni tribal leaders and warlords in the image of post-Taliban Afghanistan and post-civil war Eritrea, while forcing Iraq and Syria respectively to cede these huge swaths of their own territory to a new Sunni Muslim state in the same territory that ISIS holds now and some treaty assurances from a post-ISIS regime in a nation-state that ISIS forcibly carved out of former Iraq and Syria.
That would be a bitter pill, but it is hard to imagine any better outcome to this conflict for the U.S. and its allies. This would be a loss for almost everyone involved on all sides. Given the reality of the situation there right now, would viable alternative would be a better outcome?
Particularly tricky would be the dominoes that such a step might trigger. If the ISIS territory were granted de jure independence, the Kurds would likely insist upon their independence from Iraq as well. Iran would likely warm to rump Shi'ite Iraq and might even annex it or join it in some sort of federation. Indeed, given Iran's more successful history of electoral democracy than Iraq, flaws as it is, an annexed Iraq might be more democratic and have a more functional civilian government than it does in the status quo.
Freed of potential threats from Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. military action, emboldened Iran might turn to less urgent priorities like harassing or attacking Israel, something that it has long expressed the desire to do.
Rump Syria, meanwhile, would leave the Syrian Baath regime a less overwhelming task to consolidate what remained than it would have faced to retake control of its Eastern territory. But, still facing a U.S. funded insurgency in an ongoing civil war, it might have little choice to pursue the less ambitious agenda, and prioritize a brutal crackdown on Syrian rebels in an effort to retain control.
07 January 2015
Values Are Not Universal
Derived from the World Values Survey (and international version of the General Social Survey) via a very thoughtful post at Gene Expression in response to a terrorist attack in Paris (see also recent posts of his here and here).
Pay particular attention to the top right corner of the chart. Half of my ancestors were Swedish speaking, and I guess, somehow or other, the sentiment must have rubbed off on me as well.
Also, while values are not universal at any given time, that doesn't necessarily mean that human beings deep down, are fundamentally different. Values change when you put people in different contexts. Values can change. Ideally, from leaders within the society that is changing. Values do not exist divorced from the society in which one lives.
And, to complete that thought:
Some past posts on the motives of terrorists are found here, and here, and here, and here, and here.
01 January 2015
Complexity Economics
A subfield that deserves more attention is complexity economics. It deserves props for studying economic phenomena that are worthy of study but marginalized by more mainstream theory driven work.
In other economics news, Lithuania has joined the euro zone.
In other economics news, Lithuania has joined the euro zone.
30 December 2014
Schizophrenia Illustrated With Sound
Start with John Cage's 4'33", a piece of music featuring rests for the entire duration of the piece. Add Autotune. The result, sporadic, faint noise triggered random sounds that almost seem like music when autotune tries to make sense of it.
This is the prevailing view of the mechanism of the hallucinations of schizophrenia, in which the pruning of neural connections during adolescence to a too thin level forced the brain to extrapolate from a too weak signal with insufficient noise processing and amplifies random noise into seemingly coherent messages using means that normally are used to simply fine tune noisy input.
This is the prevailing view of the mechanism of the hallucinations of schizophrenia, in which the pruning of neural connections during adolescence to a too thin level forced the brain to extrapolate from a too weak signal with insufficient noise processing and amplifies random noise into seemingly coherent messages using means that normally are used to simply fine tune noisy input.
29 December 2014
27 December 2014
Westminster NIMBY Fears About New ER Proved To Be Baseless
Fears that a new free standing ER would bring noise, crime, declining property values and traffic to a tony neighborhood in the suburban Denver town of Westminster have proven to be totally baseless. But, there is every reason to believe that the economic activity and saved lives that the facility brings to the neighborhood are real.
Kudos to the city for ignoring the Chicken Littles in Westminster who wanted to stop the project.
Kudos to the city for ignoring the Chicken Littles in Westminster who wanted to stop the project.
23 December 2014
Smart People Still Godless
An article at Salon.com recaps the main points in support of the argument that smart people tend to be non-religious and that the least religious countries are the nicest ones to live in.
Happy Festivus!
Festivus lives.
Our grievances are many. Our Festivus pole is bare. Our feats of strength, pathetic as they may seem, are on display. Our meal is ordinary.
Our grievances are many. Our Festivus pole is bare. Our feats of strength, pathetic as they may seem, are on display. Our meal is ordinary.
Nuclear Power v. Coal
One train car full of uranium hold energy equivalent to 3,166,667 train cars of coal (i.e. 100 train cars per day for almost 87 years).
Ilya Somin On Crimes Against and By Police
Often I disagree with Ilya Somin, a libertarian law professor and public intellectual. But, on the issue of how to think about crimes against and by police, raised by high profile excessive force cases in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City that have spawned protests nationwide, and by the retaliatory assassination of two police in New York City by a man who then committed suicide a few days ago, he is spot on.
Law enforcement is a much less dangerous job than most people perceive it to be, and the existing system does an excellent job of holding people who try to harm law enforcement officers accountable.
The existing system, in contrast, does a poor job of holding bad cops accountable for their actions, which is unjust, which poisons the relationships between the police and the public, and which creates horrible incentives that basically encourage future police misconduct.
What Response Is Appropriate?
It is also notable that this problem is not simply a case of bad apples making a good system look bad. Small town suburban Missouri and big cities like New York City, Cleveland, and Los Angeles have almost identical problems, for almost identical reasons. The source of the problem is something common to almost every law enforcement agency in the country (at least to the extent that they deal with economically unequal racially or ethnically mixed populations), and needs to be addressed at the level of governmental institutions and legal frameworks for civil and criminal liability for police misconduct.
Reforming Civil Liability
I have long felt, and won't reiterate in this post at great length, that one key part of the reform process should be an overhaul of civil liability for law enforcement officers and their employers.
The key elements of these reforms should include:
(1) Vicarious liability, not limited by the qualified immunity available to individuals, for the employers of law enforcement officers sued for civil rights violations.
(2) Provide qualified immunity for employers of law enforcement officers from employment law remedies for discipline of civil servants based upon a good faith belief that an employee had used excessive force or otherwise violated someone's civil rights.
These two reforms would give employers of law enforcement officers a much greater incentive to hold their employees accountable, something that they are well positioned to do than the courts.
(3) Establish a compensatory "takings" remedy that provides compensatory damages to anyone seriously harmed by the criminal justice system in a manner not incident to an ultimate conviction.
For example, a takings remedy might apply, without regard to government fault, if someone was charged with a crime and not convicted for their defense costs, loss of liberty while awaiting trial, bond charges, and other economic losses arising from the charges. Similarly, anyone incarcerated pursuant to the conviction that was overturned would be entitled to compensation for their loss of liberty without regarding to the wrongfulness of the process that caused that conviction. And, a takings jurisprudence would provide a compensatory remedy to anyone harmed by the use of force that would not have been justified in hindsight if everyone involved benefited from fully accurate information (e.g. cases where a law enforcement officer shoots and kills someone because the law enforcement officer sincerely believed he had a gun when he didn't actually have a gun). Damages for loss of liberty from incarceration would be standardized in some way (e.g. $X per day).
This would provide justice in a manner much easier to prove to innocent people harmed by the criminal justice system.
Reforming Criminal Liability
Another useful step may be to create a new crime of excessive use of force causing serious bodily injury or death by a law enforcement officer, that is prosecuted in a manner that procedurally addresses the inherent conflicts of interest in the status quo approach, and that also recognizes that the level of culpability of overzealous or panicked law enforcement officers in these situations if often closer to that of criminally negligent homicide than it is to intentional murder. In these cases, the standard might be closer to "use of force that a reasonable person under the circumstances would objectively believe to be inappropriate", rather than the usual standard for proof of homicide or assault. A yet lesser criminal offense, perhaps a misdemeanor, might be established for failure to discipline law enforcement officers under your command for using excessive force as this is really just one more category of corruption.
Procedural reforms might vest enforcement of the crime against local law enforcement officers in a state attorney general's office or the United States Justice Department Civil Rights division, without resort to a grand jury in jurisdictions where that is permissible. Prosecutors charged with enforcing the crime might also be vested with the authority to insist on lesser civil sanctions such as termination of employment, termination of law enforcement officer employment eligibility, civil fines, suspension without pay pending investigations, and placing local law enforcement agencies that are pervasively troubled in a federal or state receivership.
A criminal remedy for excessive use of force by bad cops that is more consistently applied and moderate in terms of sentence available, would be a better option than a criminal sanction that is theoretically available but almost never imposed.
Law enforcement is a much less dangerous job than most people perceive it to be, and the existing system does an excellent job of holding people who try to harm law enforcement officers accountable.
The existing system, in contrast, does a poor job of holding bad cops accountable for their actions, which is unjust, which poisons the relationships between the police and the public, and which creates horrible incentives that basically encourage future police misconduct.
What Response Is Appropriate?
It is also notable that this problem is not simply a case of bad apples making a good system look bad. Small town suburban Missouri and big cities like New York City, Cleveland, and Los Angeles have almost identical problems, for almost identical reasons. The source of the problem is something common to almost every law enforcement agency in the country (at least to the extent that they deal with economically unequal racially or ethnically mixed populations), and needs to be addressed at the level of governmental institutions and legal frameworks for civil and criminal liability for police misconduct.
Reforming Civil Liability
I have long felt, and won't reiterate in this post at great length, that one key part of the reform process should be an overhaul of civil liability for law enforcement officers and their employers.
The key elements of these reforms should include:
(1) Vicarious liability, not limited by the qualified immunity available to individuals, for the employers of law enforcement officers sued for civil rights violations.
(2) Provide qualified immunity for employers of law enforcement officers from employment law remedies for discipline of civil servants based upon a good faith belief that an employee had used excessive force or otherwise violated someone's civil rights.
These two reforms would give employers of law enforcement officers a much greater incentive to hold their employees accountable, something that they are well positioned to do than the courts.
(3) Establish a compensatory "takings" remedy that provides compensatory damages to anyone seriously harmed by the criminal justice system in a manner not incident to an ultimate conviction.
For example, a takings remedy might apply, without regard to government fault, if someone was charged with a crime and not convicted for their defense costs, loss of liberty while awaiting trial, bond charges, and other economic losses arising from the charges. Similarly, anyone incarcerated pursuant to the conviction that was overturned would be entitled to compensation for their loss of liberty without regarding to the wrongfulness of the process that caused that conviction. And, a takings jurisprudence would provide a compensatory remedy to anyone harmed by the use of force that would not have been justified in hindsight if everyone involved benefited from fully accurate information (e.g. cases where a law enforcement officer shoots and kills someone because the law enforcement officer sincerely believed he had a gun when he didn't actually have a gun). Damages for loss of liberty from incarceration would be standardized in some way (e.g. $X per day).
This would provide justice in a manner much easier to prove to innocent people harmed by the criminal justice system.
Reforming Criminal Liability
Another useful step may be to create a new crime of excessive use of force causing serious bodily injury or death by a law enforcement officer, that is prosecuted in a manner that procedurally addresses the inherent conflicts of interest in the status quo approach, and that also recognizes that the level of culpability of overzealous or panicked law enforcement officers in these situations if often closer to that of criminally negligent homicide than it is to intentional murder. In these cases, the standard might be closer to "use of force that a reasonable person under the circumstances would objectively believe to be inappropriate", rather than the usual standard for proof of homicide or assault. A yet lesser criminal offense, perhaps a misdemeanor, might be established for failure to discipline law enforcement officers under your command for using excessive force as this is really just one more category of corruption.
Procedural reforms might vest enforcement of the crime against local law enforcement officers in a state attorney general's office or the United States Justice Department Civil Rights division, without resort to a grand jury in jurisdictions where that is permissible. Prosecutors charged with enforcing the crime might also be vested with the authority to insist on lesser civil sanctions such as termination of employment, termination of law enforcement officer employment eligibility, civil fines, suspension without pay pending investigations, and placing local law enforcement agencies that are pervasively troubled in a federal or state receivership.
A criminal remedy for excessive use of force by bad cops that is more consistently applied and moderate in terms of sentence available, would be a better option than a criminal sanction that is theoretically available but almost never imposed.
22 December 2014
Supreme Court Rule 17 and Nebraska and Oklahoma v. Colorado
The U.S. Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction over lawsuits between states, and on the surface, Nebraska and Oklahoma v. Colorado, which seeks an injunction related to Colorado's state legalized marijuana industry, would seem to qualify. But, before a Complaint can be filed, a state must ask the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to file it pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 17.
Since the current lawsuit is a far cry from the usual boundary or water rights disputes between states brought in the U.S. Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, all bets are off concerning how this plays out procedurally.
It seems unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court would refuse to take up a seemingly non-discretionary duty to take up all cases in its original jurisdiction.
But, is there any reason that permission could be denied?
In this context, the Court could treat Supreme Court Rule 17 as the functional equivalent of federal rule of civil procedure 12(b) which provides the grounds for dismissal of lawsuits prior to the filing of a formal answer to a complaint.
I think that there are several, all of which are variations on the theme of lack of subject matter jurisdiction, perhaps for lack of standing, or the closely related concept of justiciability.
1. The damages that Nebraska and Oklahoma claim to have suffered are predominantly expenses incurred not by the states themselves, but by local government law enforcement officials (and citizens) in those states. The U.S. Supreme Court could argue, therefore, that the real parties in interest are not the states, whose claims are within the U.S. Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, but the local governments of (and citizens of) those states, who are not states for purposes of 11th Amendment immunity and must sue another state in its own courts, rather than in the federal courts. Moreover, the State of Colorado would be allowed to invoke its 11th Amendment immunity for lawsuits for torts in its own courts.
2. Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court could hold that a state does not have standing to bring claims arising out of discretionary legislative decisions made by a sister state as quasi-nuisance claims, establishing a broad, new standing rule that affects almost no other past cases and would quash similar cases in the future.
3. Alternately, and more broadly, perhaps states do not have rights to be free from tortious harm except as property owners, parties to contracts, and as expressly created by federal law. This may implicate none of these interests.
4. This standing argument would be a close cousin to the more established "political question" doctrine that holds that some issues are reserved to the political branches and may not be resolved by the federal courts. Thus, this issue might not be justiciable controversy.
5. In a similar vein, the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court consists of cases "in law and equity." But, this dispute might be deemed to be outside the scope of either the law courts, or the equity courts, at common law, and hence to be outside the subject-matter jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court. England didn't have constitutional federalism at the time that British law was received in the 18th century, and certainly didn't allow one sovereign governmental entity to sue another in the fashion proposed in either the Courts of Law or the Chancery Courts. The closest equivalent jurisdiction may have been exercised by standing committees of the House of Lords, or the monarch, acting individually or through her Governor's General.
6. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court might refuse to consider the complaint because it failed to join necessary interested parties, such as the United States government, since the supremacy of its laws and its exercise of prosecutorial discretion are at issue, or other states bordering Colorado.
Any of these procedural bars might be preferable to the Court to adjudicating this dispute on the merits for the U.S. Supreme Court as an institution, and would also resolve this urgent question much more quickly.
Since the current lawsuit is a far cry from the usual boundary or water rights disputes between states brought in the U.S. Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, all bets are off concerning how this plays out procedurally.
It seems unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court would refuse to take up a seemingly non-discretionary duty to take up all cases in its original jurisdiction.
But, is there any reason that permission could be denied?
In this context, the Court could treat Supreme Court Rule 17 as the functional equivalent of federal rule of civil procedure 12(b) which provides the grounds for dismissal of lawsuits prior to the filing of a formal answer to a complaint.
I think that there are several, all of which are variations on the theme of lack of subject matter jurisdiction, perhaps for lack of standing, or the closely related concept of justiciability.
1. The damages that Nebraska and Oklahoma claim to have suffered are predominantly expenses incurred not by the states themselves, but by local government law enforcement officials (and citizens) in those states. The U.S. Supreme Court could argue, therefore, that the real parties in interest are not the states, whose claims are within the U.S. Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, but the local governments of (and citizens of) those states, who are not states for purposes of 11th Amendment immunity and must sue another state in its own courts, rather than in the federal courts. Moreover, the State of Colorado would be allowed to invoke its 11th Amendment immunity for lawsuits for torts in its own courts.
2. Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court could hold that a state does not have standing to bring claims arising out of discretionary legislative decisions made by a sister state as quasi-nuisance claims, establishing a broad, new standing rule that affects almost no other past cases and would quash similar cases in the future.
3. Alternately, and more broadly, perhaps states do not have rights to be free from tortious harm except as property owners, parties to contracts, and as expressly created by federal law. This may implicate none of these interests.
4. This standing argument would be a close cousin to the more established "political question" doctrine that holds that some issues are reserved to the political branches and may not be resolved by the federal courts. Thus, this issue might not be justiciable controversy.
5. In a similar vein, the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court consists of cases "in law and equity." But, this dispute might be deemed to be outside the scope of either the law courts, or the equity courts, at common law, and hence to be outside the subject-matter jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court. England didn't have constitutional federalism at the time that British law was received in the 18th century, and certainly didn't allow one sovereign governmental entity to sue another in the fashion proposed in either the Courts of Law or the Chancery Courts. The closest equivalent jurisdiction may have been exercised by standing committees of the House of Lords, or the monarch, acting individually or through her Governor's General.
6. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court might refuse to consider the complaint because it failed to join necessary interested parties, such as the United States government, since the supremacy of its laws and its exercise of prosecutorial discretion are at issue, or other states bordering Colorado.
Any of these procedural bars might be preferable to the Court to adjudicating this dispute on the merits for the U.S. Supreme Court as an institution, and would also resolve this urgent question much more quickly.
21 December 2014
Will International Economic Mayhem Hurt The American Economy?
I've predicted a Great Depression class economic downturn in China, as early as 2015, or as late as 2024. China's seen a bit of an upturn in its economy as its taken some measures to address the mounting international consensus, but it remains a strong possibility.
Weak oil prices and a Crimea related embargo (but honestly, more the former than the later) have sent the Russian economy into the danger zone with interest rates skyrocketing to 17%, the value of the Ruble collapsing by more than half despite massive interest rate intervention, and sanctions slightly notching up.
The Greek economy apparently remains fragile after its meltdown earlier this year.
Surely, there is a domino or two that I've left unturned.
The U.S. economy seems to be on the mend after six years of good stewardship from President Obama, but how long can that last? Military re-engagement in Iraq, major foreign economies in trouble, none of that can be good. Will we fall into a double dip recession just after coming out of the last one? Or, will the U.S. economy pick up the slack as foreign competitors are no longer able to perform?
Weak oil prices and a Crimea related embargo (but honestly, more the former than the later) have sent the Russian economy into the danger zone with interest rates skyrocketing to 17%, the value of the Ruble collapsing by more than half despite massive interest rate intervention, and sanctions slightly notching up.
The Greek economy apparently remains fragile after its meltdown earlier this year.
Surely, there is a domino or two that I've left unturned.
The U.S. economy seems to be on the mend after six years of good stewardship from President Obama, but how long can that last? Military re-engagement in Iraq, major foreign economies in trouble, none of that can be good. Will we fall into a double dip recession just after coming out of the last one? Or, will the U.S. economy pick up the slack as foreign competitors are no longer able to perform?
19 December 2014
Nebraska and Oklahoma v. Colorado
The states of Nebraska and Oklahoma have brought a lawsuit against Colorado in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has original jurisdiction in lawsuits between states, alleging that Colorado has a duty to criminalize recreational marijuana because it is illegal under federal law. They allege that they are damaged because they have increased law enforcement burdens when trying to enforce their own marijuana laws that arises from legal sales of recreational marijuana to their citizens (who are allowed to buy a quarter ounce at a time).
The notion that Nebraska and Oklahoma have any right to tell Colorado what kind of laws it can pass (something that even the federal government does not claim), is odd indeed. Their real beef is with the fact that the federal government is not enforcing its own laws, not that Colorado has chosen not to criminalize recreational marijuana. But, it is perfectly well settled that the President has essentially absolute power to exercise prosecutorial discretion.
Similarly, nobody is compelling Nebraska or Oklahoma to exercise their prosecutorial discretion to aggressively pursue violations of marijuana laws. They may, but if they do, that is their choice, not Colorado's choice.
The U.S. Supreme Court would be well advised to dismiss this lawsuit in short order with a stern admonition to Nebraska and Oklahoma to quit the political grandstanding and to stop wasting the Court's time with their frivolous whining. The lawsuit is quite frankly embarrassing to the conservative movement and to the Republican party whose officials are pressing the lawsuit. It is worth noting, however, that Colorado's Republican attorney general is fighting the lawsuit.
The notion that Nebraska and Oklahoma have any right to tell Colorado what kind of laws it can pass (something that even the federal government does not claim), is odd indeed. Their real beef is with the fact that the federal government is not enforcing its own laws, not that Colorado has chosen not to criminalize recreational marijuana. But, it is perfectly well settled that the President has essentially absolute power to exercise prosecutorial discretion.
Similarly, nobody is compelling Nebraska or Oklahoma to exercise their prosecutorial discretion to aggressively pursue violations of marijuana laws. They may, but if they do, that is their choice, not Colorado's choice.
The U.S. Supreme Court would be well advised to dismiss this lawsuit in short order with a stern admonition to Nebraska and Oklahoma to quit the political grandstanding and to stop wasting the Court's time with their frivolous whining. The lawsuit is quite frankly embarrassing to the conservative movement and to the Republican party whose officials are pressing the lawsuit. It is worth noting, however, that Colorado's Republican attorney general is fighting the lawsuit.
17 December 2014
Non-Religious People Hold Moral High Ground On Torture
Religious people often claim that they are more moral than non-religious people. Faced with a concrete question:
"Do you feel the torture of suspected terrorists can be justified?"
here is the percentage of people who said that it could be often or sometimes justified by religious affiliation in a recent opinion poll:
White evangelical Protestant: 69%
White Catholic: 68%
White non-evangelical Protestant: 63%
Non-whites (not broken down by religion): 51%
Non-religious: 40%
No statistically significant data was available for whites adherents to non-Christian religions such as Jews and Muslims.
In my view, it is the non-religious people who hold the moral high ground here.
"Do you feel the torture of suspected terrorists can be justified?"
here is the percentage of people who said that it could be often or sometimes justified by religious affiliation in a recent opinion poll:
White evangelical Protestant: 69%
White Catholic: 68%
White non-evangelical Protestant: 63%
Non-whites (not broken down by religion): 51%
Non-religious: 40%
No statistically significant data was available for whites adherents to non-Christian religions such as Jews and Muslims.
In my view, it is the non-religious people who hold the moral high ground here.
16 December 2014
Juan Cole on the Pakistani Taliban's School Massacre
Juan Cole provides useful background and context in understanding an incident yesterday in which six or seven Pakistani Taliban militants killed about 145 people mostly older school children and injured more than a hundred more, while burning several teachers alive at a school run by the Army in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
In a nutshell, he explains that the Pakistani Taliban are mostly part of a single linguistic and ethic group in the tribal areas of uneducated people allied with the "seminary student" movement in Afghanistan. They were allied with the Pakistani Intelligence Services for years, but after U.S. encouraged pressure from the top, the Pakistani military has declared war on them in the past few months and killed about 2,000.
Cole describes the school massacre as a futile effort to exact revenge for their losses, that look to them like a betrayal, during this campaign which is taking a great toll on their movement.
In a nutshell, he explains that the Pakistani Taliban are mostly part of a single linguistic and ethic group in the tribal areas of uneducated people allied with the "seminary student" movement in Afghanistan. They were allied with the Pakistani Intelligence Services for years, but after U.S. encouraged pressure from the top, the Pakistani military has declared war on them in the past few months and killed about 2,000.
Cole describes the school massacre as a futile effort to exact revenge for their losses, that look to them like a betrayal, during this campaign which is taking a great toll on their movement.
15 December 2014
The Iron Law of Oligarchy At Work
There were 272 automobile companies in 1909. Through consolidation and failure, three emerged on top, two of which went bankrupt. Spotting a promising trend and a winning investment are two different things.From here.
I would observe, however, that this is a list of American automobile companies. There are many "foreign" automobile companies out there selling cars in the U.S. market and maintaining the oligopoly to which markets seem to naturally trend. The Iron Law of Oligarchy is hard at work, however, with more than fifteen different companies selling cars to U.S. customers.
One of the "Big Three" is now a subsidiary of Italian automaker Fiat, rather than an American automobile company. General Motors went bankrupt and has since reorganized. Ford didn't. On the other hand, Tesla has come into its own as a new American automobile company. Also, Harley Davidson is an American company selling motorcycles in the U.S., and General Dynamics manufacturers and sells wheeled military vehicles in the U.S.
Many of them (Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Kia, Subaru and Fiat-Chrysler) have manufacturing operations in the North America and significant numbers of U.S. debt and/or equity investors.
A few more foreign automobile companies sell cars in the U.S. but do not have plants in the U.S. (e.g. Porsche and Rolls-Royce).
14 December 2014
An Early New Year's Resolution
This year, the only Black Friday deal we swooped up with a pair of Denver Recreation Center passes. One for my wife, a long time regular, and one for me, who has never been a big exerciser and cut back further when a back injury a couple of years ago limited my options.
The theory is that I will swim on a regular basis in the New Year, to get some exercise, since the long walks that used to be my mainstay are a no go for now.
Today was a first trial run, so I can "hit the water swimming" when the New Year comes around. Heading to swim with the snow falling down around me wasn't exactly auspicious. And, I did learn that I'd need a lock for a gym locker and a comb, in addition to those things I remembered to bring. But, with any luck, I will still be at it once than January New Year's resolution rush subsides.
The theory is that I will swim on a regular basis in the New Year, to get some exercise, since the long walks that used to be my mainstay are a no go for now.
Today was a first trial run, so I can "hit the water swimming" when the New Year comes around. Heading to swim with the snow falling down around me wasn't exactly auspicious. And, I did learn that I'd need a lock for a gym locker and a comb, in addition to those things I remembered to bring. But, with any luck, I will still be at it once than January New Year's resolution rush subsides.
11 December 2014
Is Inflation A Function Of Standard Of Living?
Tyler Cowen argues convincingly that despite inflation, the consumption utility of $100,000 of nominal dollars per year today is greater than it was 50 years ago (in 1964), but that the standard of living conveyed by $20,000 nominal dollars per year then was much greater than $20,000 nominal dollars per year now.
Thus, the upper middle class has seen deflation, while the middle class has seen inflation.
The main reason for the deflation at higher incomes is that there are many valuable goods and services available today that were not available at any price then.
Thus, the upper middle class has seen deflation, while the middle class has seen inflation.
The main reason for the deflation at higher incomes is that there are many valuable goods and services available today that were not available at any price then.
10 December 2014
Two Harsh Unanimous SCOTUS Rulings
The U.S. Supreme Court made two rulings yesterday that were "harsh" in the sense of producing a substantively unfair result on the merits, despite being supported by a solid legal basis in each case that convinced a majority of the court.
* The opinion of Justice Thomas in a wage and hours case, Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, involved leased employees at an Amazon.com warehouse who were not paid for time spent while waiting for a exit security check that was a condition of their employment, despite the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act that the agreed hourly rate plus any overtime required by the act by paid to workers for time worked. The Fair Labor Standards Act was amended by the anti-labor Portal-to-Portal Act in the 1940s that defined hours worked narrowly and was interpreted by the Labor Department in regulations issued within a few years of the passage of the new law in an analogous situation to exclude this time from the employer's duty to compensate.
The result is harsh, because the law is allowing an employer not to pay employees for time that they are required to be at work for the convenience of the employer, but the statute, rather than the interpretation of it, is the real problem, therefore a unanimous court rules against the workers.
* The opinion of Justice Sotomayor in Warger v. Shauers involved a federal civil jury trial of a car accident case in which a juror lied in the jury selection process and this lead to a bad result for the person injured in a car accident. The only evidence presented of the lie, however, was a hearsay statement about what she said during jury deliberations, rather than independent evidence that she had lied. A federal rule of civil procedure prohibits this kind of evidence from being considered by a court in the interest of protecting jurors from post-trial investigations by disappointed parties after jury trials, and she found that no exception applied. So, even though there was clear evidence that the juror lied and harmed the person injured in the automobile accident as a result, the injured individual was not allowed a remedy based upon this evidence.
* The opinion of Justice Thomas in a wage and hours case, Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, involved leased employees at an Amazon.com warehouse who were not paid for time spent while waiting for a exit security check that was a condition of their employment, despite the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act that the agreed hourly rate plus any overtime required by the act by paid to workers for time worked. The Fair Labor Standards Act was amended by the anti-labor Portal-to-Portal Act in the 1940s that defined hours worked narrowly and was interpreted by the Labor Department in regulations issued within a few years of the passage of the new law in an analogous situation to exclude this time from the employer's duty to compensate.
The result is harsh, because the law is allowing an employer not to pay employees for time that they are required to be at work for the convenience of the employer, but the statute, rather than the interpretation of it, is the real problem, therefore a unanimous court rules against the workers.
* The opinion of Justice Sotomayor in Warger v. Shauers involved a federal civil jury trial of a car accident case in which a juror lied in the jury selection process and this lead to a bad result for the person injured in a car accident. The only evidence presented of the lie, however, was a hearsay statement about what she said during jury deliberations, rather than independent evidence that she had lied. A federal rule of civil procedure prohibits this kind of evidence from being considered by a court in the interest of protecting jurors from post-trial investigations by disappointed parties after jury trials, and she found that no exception applied. So, even though there was clear evidence that the juror lied and harmed the person injured in the automobile accident as a result, the injured individual was not allowed a remedy based upon this evidence.
09 December 2014
Men Treat Women Wearing Heels Better
When it comes to securing the interest and help of strange men, a woman has few tools in her arsenal that have been empirically proven to be more effective than high heels. Also three and a half inch heels are more effective than two inch heels.
The downside: High heels are unhealthy, increasing the wearer's risk of ankle injury, back pain and calf tendon injuries.
The downside: High heels are unhealthy, increasing the wearer's risk of ankle injury, back pain and calf tendon injuries.
Can Syria or Iraq Ever Be Put Back Together Again?
ISIS has had de facto control of most of what our maps say are Western Syria and Northern Iraq for about six months now.
The military efforts of the respective recognized governments of those states to regain control of their territory have been impotent. The military forces of the Kurdish regional government's milita have held back its advance, but he main Iraqi military has been nearly useless as have the civil war torn Syrian government's efforts to reclaim their territory.
Even if ISIS can be defeated, it is far from obvious that Syria or Iraq can effectively assert legitimate and accepted authority in these areas or the area controlled by the Kurdish regional government. Recent reports of indiscriminate killing of civilians and ISIS forces alike by Shi'ite militias entering ISIS controlled Sunni majority areas support a skeptical view.
There are examples of countries losing de facto control of their territory and regaining it after long periods of dispossession, like Columbia. But, they are rare.
Similarly, the Crimean annexation by Russia appears to be a fait accompli.
The military efforts of the respective recognized governments of those states to regain control of their territory have been impotent. The military forces of the Kurdish regional government's milita have held back its advance, but he main Iraqi military has been nearly useless as have the civil war torn Syrian government's efforts to reclaim their territory.
Even if ISIS can be defeated, it is far from obvious that Syria or Iraq can effectively assert legitimate and accepted authority in these areas or the area controlled by the Kurdish regional government. Recent reports of indiscriminate killing of civilians and ISIS forces alike by Shi'ite militias entering ISIS controlled Sunni majority areas support a skeptical view.
There are examples of countries losing de facto control of their territory and regaining it after long periods of dispossession, like Columbia. But, they are rare.
Similarly, the Crimean annexation by Russia appears to be a fait accompli.
The CIA Tortured People and It Didn't Produce Useful Information
A slightly longer summary of the U.S. Senate report on the subject is found here and at the New York Times. Lawfare also covers the report with links to the original documents.
The Law Still Fails To Hold Law Enforcement Officers Responsible For Misconduct
Popehat has a nice link heavy rant explaining what is wrong with our system's failure to hold bad cops accountable, framed by the broken windows theory of law enforcement.
08 December 2014
02 December 2014
Leadville In Decline
The Denver Post reports the imminent decline of the only hospital in Lake County that is home to the town of Leadville, which is 135 years old, because local voters refused to support a property tax increase needed to keep St. Vincent hospital's doors open. The hospital also provide's the county's only nursing home and ambulance service, in addition to its emergency room.
This would appear to leave the town's urgent care facility as the highest level of medical care available in the county. This facility amounts to Dr. Lisa Zwerdlinger and her two physicians assistants. The good doctor is no doubt competent and hard working, but will be hard pressed to replace a full fledged hospital emergency room in a hospital complex previous staffed by 107 employees.
Lake County has 7,300 residents of whom 2,600 live in Leadville, the only municipality in the county (and the highest elevation city in the United States at 10,152 feet). The closest hospital is now in Frisco, 33 miles away along slippery snowy roads in the winter. About 60% of the county's residents are on Medicaid.
The closing of the hospital will cost the county about 107 jobs and will cost the local economy $8 million. Sales tax revenues are predicted to decline by $130,000 costing the city of Leadville a job in its fire department and a job in its street department. The City also turned away a $1,000,000 state grant and a loan from the Department of Agriculture that would have allowed the hospital to stay open when it voted down the property tax increase.
Needless to say, the voter's decision not to fund their county hospital doesn't seem very wise. But, perhaps they are merely recognizing the inevitable. The Post reports that this is not the only decline that Leadville is experiencing.
Leadville has lost about 40% of its restaurants in four years (seven out of seventeen or eighteen), and one of its two grocery stories, Alco, is going out of business, leaving only one Safeway outside the city limits.
"The landmark Tabor Opera House, built in 1889, the same year as the hospital, closed as a private enterprise in August.", although a non-profit coalition is trying to the raise the $5 million needed to restore it. In the late 1800s when it was built, it was the second biggest city in the state (in 1880 the census reported 14,820 residents in its 1.1 square miles) and was supported by silver mining.
Most of its seven museums have closed, or dramatically reduced their hours. Sales tax revenues are down too:
The town took its main hit in 1893, when Congress stopped buying silver to prop up the currency, and has been struggling direly since the Climax molybdenum mine closed in the early 1980s, and a series of marathons and ultra-marathons in the summer have become a mainstay of a local economy, already oriented towards tourism. The reopening of the mine in 2008 with it starting production in 2010 was too little, too late to save the Leadville economy.
It is unclear from the Denver Post reporting why the last few years have seen such a decline. A delayed impact from the financial crisis and housing bust that hit Colorado's mountain towns hard, could be a factor. But, it is hard to point to any one thing that has happened since 2010 that had a major negative impact on the town.
The closing of the hospital, the opera house, and area businesses, and municipal layoffs will surely cause tax collections to fall further, the population of Leadville and Lake County to fall, declining property values, and more declines, although it is close enough to major resorts to continue to be a bedroom community for ski resort workers and a secondary tourism destination.
This would appear to leave the town's urgent care facility as the highest level of medical care available in the county. This facility amounts to Dr. Lisa Zwerdlinger and her two physicians assistants. The good doctor is no doubt competent and hard working, but will be hard pressed to replace a full fledged hospital emergency room in a hospital complex previous staffed by 107 employees.
Lake County has 7,300 residents of whom 2,600 live in Leadville, the only municipality in the county (and the highest elevation city in the United States at 10,152 feet). The closest hospital is now in Frisco, 33 miles away along slippery snowy roads in the winter. About 60% of the county's residents are on Medicaid.
The closing of the hospital will cost the county about 107 jobs and will cost the local economy $8 million. Sales tax revenues are predicted to decline by $130,000 costing the city of Leadville a job in its fire department and a job in its street department. The City also turned away a $1,000,000 state grant and a loan from the Department of Agriculture that would have allowed the hospital to stay open when it voted down the property tax increase.
A study published in the medical journal Health Affairs in August found that when emergency rooms close, the chances of death for those steered elsewhere rises by 5 percent. In cases of heart attack, stroke and sepsis, deaths rise by 15 percent. None of the hospitals studied, however, has Leadville's wintertime challenges of nearly 14 feet of snow annually on steep, twisting roads.The Post notes that the decision would have increased the hospital's property tax from 5.48 mills where it has sat since 1988 to 16.44 mills, an increase on each $100,000 of value in a home from $43.62 a year to $87.26 a year, and for a business from $158.94 per $100,000 in property value to $476.84 in property value.
Needless to say, the voter's decision not to fund their county hospital doesn't seem very wise. But, perhaps they are merely recognizing the inevitable. The Post reports that this is not the only decline that Leadville is experiencing.
Leadville has lost about 40% of its restaurants in four years (seven out of seventeen or eighteen), and one of its two grocery stories, Alco, is going out of business, leaving only one Safeway outside the city limits.
"The landmark Tabor Opera House, built in 1889, the same year as the hospital, closed as a private enterprise in August.", although a non-profit coalition is trying to the raise the $5 million needed to restore it. In the late 1800s when it was built, it was the second biggest city in the state (in 1880 the census reported 14,820 residents in its 1.1 square miles) and was supported by silver mining.
Most of its seven museums have closed, or dramatically reduced their hours. Sales tax revenues are down too:
Leadville collected about $648,000 in sales taxes in the last fiscal year, compared with just over $754,000 the year before. Sales-tax collections fell from $352,196 in the first quarter of 2013 to $312,662 for the same period in 2014. Neighboring Buena Vista, with almost the same population, had more than twice the sales-tax revenue: $1.55 million last year, up from $1.48 million the year before, according to tax records.These setbacks will no doubt make it even harder to attract new residents.
The town took its main hit in 1893, when Congress stopped buying silver to prop up the currency, and has been struggling direly since the Climax molybdenum mine closed in the early 1980s, and a series of marathons and ultra-marathons in the summer have become a mainstay of a local economy, already oriented towards tourism. The reopening of the mine in 2008 with it starting production in 2010 was too little, too late to save the Leadville economy.
It is unclear from the Denver Post reporting why the last few years have seen such a decline. A delayed impact from the financial crisis and housing bust that hit Colorado's mountain towns hard, could be a factor. But, it is hard to point to any one thing that has happened since 2010 that had a major negative impact on the town.
The closing of the hospital, the opera house, and area businesses, and municipal layoffs will surely cause tax collections to fall further, the population of Leadville and Lake County to fall, declining property values, and more declines, although it is close enough to major resorts to continue to be a bedroom community for ski resort workers and a secondary tourism destination.
01 December 2014
Ten Mysteries of the Universe
1. Why did Microsoft make Windows 8 such an abomination? Why didn't they change course once they discovered that their product was a flop?
2. Why do people vote for Republicans?
3. Why do people believe in Creationism?
4. Why is reality TV popular?
5. Why don't they cancel decades old moribund soap operas?
6. Why don't movie theaters compete with each other on popcorn prices?
7. Why don't more places in the United States than Nevada legalize prostitution?
8. Why does Colorado ban selling cars, but nothing else, on Sunday?
9. Why do people pay extra for faster cars when there is no where that they can actually utilize this feature?
10. Why do people find baseball exciting?
Cop Killings At Record Lows In 2013
The Huffington Post has the story. Just 27 cops were killed in the line of duty by felonious acts, the lowest in FBI reporting history. Roughly twice as many were killed in traffic accidents in the line of duty.
The National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund methodology (which includes several more killings than the FBI data) is slightly more comprehensive than the FBI data which relies strictly on reports from other law enforcement agencies.
The story does not explain the trend, which includes a roughly one-third decline from 2011 to 2012, and a roughly 50% decline from 2012 to 2013, but wide use of bullet proof vests and improved trauma care, in addition to a reduced number of incidents overall, are important factors.
A 2013 tally by the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund showed 100 officers died in the line of duty last year, the fewest since 1944. Traffic-related fatalities were the leading cause of officer deaths in 2013. The report found that "firearms-related fatalities reached a 126-year low ... with 31 officers shot and killed, the lowest since 1887 when 27 officers were shot and killed.Needless to say, the population of the United States and the number of police officers in the United States were far lower in 1887 than in 2013. Indeed, in 1887, the idea of a professional police force was only a few decades old anywhere in the world. On a per police officer basis, 2013 was the safest year to be a police officer ever.
The National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund methodology (which includes several more killings than the FBI data) is slightly more comprehensive than the FBI data which relies strictly on reports from other law enforcement agencies.
The story does not explain the trend, which includes a roughly one-third decline from 2011 to 2012, and a roughly 50% decline from 2012 to 2013, but wide use of bullet proof vests and improved trauma care, in addition to a reduced number of incidents overall, are important factors.
Americans Rarely Riot
Eric Loomis suggests that the impression of blacks rioting understates the extent to which whites also riot. I'd argue, instead, the Americans, in general, riot and otherwise engage in street politics far less often than comparable industrial economies do over all sorts of matters.
30 November 2014
24 November 2014
Mile High Times Have Changed
You know that you have won the cultural battle, if not the entire war on drugs, when a blog promoted by the Denver Post, the leading daily newspaper in Colorado, is offering a video recipe at its website, on how to make marijuana infused pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.
Some of the families enjoying their Thanksgiving dinners will be same sex couples married this fall, for the first time it has been legally possible to do so, under Colorado law. Numerous leading politicians in recent Colorado history, including one of our seven sitting Congressmen, are openly gay.
Neither gay rights nor marijuana legalization turned out to be important issues in the 2014 election in the end, and Coloradans once again overwhelmingly defeated an anti-abortion ballot issue, just as it had several times in past elections, despite the fact that they voted a U.S. Senate candidate who had strongly supported similar measures in the past.
Yet, despite these liberal social issues stances that would have been unthinkable when I graduated from high school, it is also worth noting that Colorado, overall, is not a particularly liberal state in terms of partisan politics. Instead, Colorado is the quintessential purple state right now.
Colorado was the swing state in the 2012 Presidential election that put President Obama in office by a narrow margin.
This year, Colorado simultaneously elected Republicans to statewide office as U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Colorado Attorney General, and gave Republicans narrow control of the state senate and state congressional delegation, while re-electing a popular Democratic governor and giving Democrats narrow control of the state house. Six statewide partisan election measurements went to the GOP, while two went to the Democrats.
All were reasonably close. Fewer than 900 votes in one Adams County State Senate District decided control of the State Senate in an election where roughly 2,000,000 votes were cast statewide. With the higher turnout of a Presidential election year, some of those eight statewide partisan tests might have gone the other way.
Some of the families enjoying their Thanksgiving dinners will be same sex couples married this fall, for the first time it has been legally possible to do so, under Colorado law. Numerous leading politicians in recent Colorado history, including one of our seven sitting Congressmen, are openly gay.
Neither gay rights nor marijuana legalization turned out to be important issues in the 2014 election in the end, and Coloradans once again overwhelmingly defeated an anti-abortion ballot issue, just as it had several times in past elections, despite the fact that they voted a U.S. Senate candidate who had strongly supported similar measures in the past.
Yet, despite these liberal social issues stances that would have been unthinkable when I graduated from high school, it is also worth noting that Colorado, overall, is not a particularly liberal state in terms of partisan politics. Instead, Colorado is the quintessential purple state right now.
Colorado was the swing state in the 2012 Presidential election that put President Obama in office by a narrow margin.
This year, Colorado simultaneously elected Republicans to statewide office as U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Colorado Attorney General, and gave Republicans narrow control of the state senate and state congressional delegation, while re-electing a popular Democratic governor and giving Democrats narrow control of the state house. Six statewide partisan election measurements went to the GOP, while two went to the Democrats.
All were reasonably close. Fewer than 900 votes in one Adams County State Senate District decided control of the State Senate in an election where roughly 2,000,000 votes were cast statewide. With the higher turnout of a Presidential election year, some of those eight statewide partisan tests might have gone the other way.
22 November 2014
Behind The Scenes Epic Battles For The Future Of Music
About a month ago, Pandora dropped its lyrics service within its music streaming service without publicly acknowledging the change anywhere except a backhanded update to a seven year old post on one of its blogs.
There has also been a fierce and largely unreported fight as Pandora has struck a deal with an outfit called MERLIN that licenses music from many independent music labels at a rate about half as rich as what major labels are paid under a Copyright Royalty Tribunal ruling.
While most forms of intellectual property licenses are governed purely by contractual agreements, the "little rights" in music (i.e. the right to play and cover music in formats like radio as opposed to the "big rights" to have music used in movies and TV shows) can be used unilaterally by radio stations and certain other radio station like entities like Pandora that stream music, if exchange for a royalty determined not be negotiation, but by the Copyright Royalty Tribunal, in what amounts to a legally authorized efficient breach of contract not allowed in other parts of copyright law. (Efficient breach is when you intentionally breach a contract and pay damages because that is cheaper than performing the contract.)
The MERLIN deal is controversial because it involves "payola", i.e. playing a song more often for a monetary inducement, something that was banned in the radio world decades ago because it was considered a form of corruption in the music marketplace.
But, the MERLIN deal is also an effort to renegotiate the Copyright Royalty Tribunal rates for non-independent label music which is much more expensive, on the grounds that the MERLIN deal is a bona fide arms length deal between a willing seller and willing buyer that is a reference point for setting royalties when they are determined by the tribunal rather than negotiated.
There are other elements of the epic behind the scene battles. Aereo, a company that tried to create free streaming of broadcast television was batted down in a U.S. Supreme Court fight, leading to its bankruptcy this week, but while Aereo lost the battle, it may have won the war, with the FCC formulating new rules to allow essentially the same services under an FCC regulatory framework with a Copyright Royalty Tribunal model.
The tribunal and related legislation drive the economics of all sorts of streaming media, satellite TV, cable TV, broadcast TV and essentially the entire electronic media world.
Maddeningly, however, in a world well companies like Pandora will only grudgingly and backhandedly acknowledge a sea change in their policies and won't publicly explain exactly why they did it, it is very hard to know what is going on in this demi-monde of media economics and law.
This is not the first time things like this have happened. For example, a flourishing online world of fans who translated Japanese and Korean manga into English on a volunteer basis, largely in the absence of a commercially available alternative since the works were not being translated by the copyright owners, vanished, almost overnight a few years ago, without so much as a newspaper story in a mainstream American newspaper in a coordinated legal effort by manga publisher's lawyers.
Outside the area of media, the most similar case involves the reformulation of dishwashing soap for environmental reasons in an unannounced change that impacted hundreds of millions of people in their daily lives without their knowledge.
Efforts to make movies available online have been rather more resilient, and have been hurt more by legal alternatives like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime, than by legal action, despite relentless efforts to shut down these operations.
There has also been a fierce and largely unreported fight as Pandora has struck a deal with an outfit called MERLIN that licenses music from many independent music labels at a rate about half as rich as what major labels are paid under a Copyright Royalty Tribunal ruling.
While most forms of intellectual property licenses are governed purely by contractual agreements, the "little rights" in music (i.e. the right to play and cover music in formats like radio as opposed to the "big rights" to have music used in movies and TV shows) can be used unilaterally by radio stations and certain other radio station like entities like Pandora that stream music, if exchange for a royalty determined not be negotiation, but by the Copyright Royalty Tribunal, in what amounts to a legally authorized efficient breach of contract not allowed in other parts of copyright law. (Efficient breach is when you intentionally breach a contract and pay damages because that is cheaper than performing the contract.)
The MERLIN deal is controversial because it involves "payola", i.e. playing a song more often for a monetary inducement, something that was banned in the radio world decades ago because it was considered a form of corruption in the music marketplace.
But, the MERLIN deal is also an effort to renegotiate the Copyright Royalty Tribunal rates for non-independent label music which is much more expensive, on the grounds that the MERLIN deal is a bona fide arms length deal between a willing seller and willing buyer that is a reference point for setting royalties when they are determined by the tribunal rather than negotiated.
There are other elements of the epic behind the scene battles. Aereo, a company that tried to create free streaming of broadcast television was batted down in a U.S. Supreme Court fight, leading to its bankruptcy this week, but while Aereo lost the battle, it may have won the war, with the FCC formulating new rules to allow essentially the same services under an FCC regulatory framework with a Copyright Royalty Tribunal model.
The tribunal and related legislation drive the economics of all sorts of streaming media, satellite TV, cable TV, broadcast TV and essentially the entire electronic media world.
Maddeningly, however, in a world well companies like Pandora will only grudgingly and backhandedly acknowledge a sea change in their policies and won't publicly explain exactly why they did it, it is very hard to know what is going on in this demi-monde of media economics and law.
This is not the first time things like this have happened. For example, a flourishing online world of fans who translated Japanese and Korean manga into English on a volunteer basis, largely in the absence of a commercially available alternative since the works were not being translated by the copyright owners, vanished, almost overnight a few years ago, without so much as a newspaper story in a mainstream American newspaper in a coordinated legal effort by manga publisher's lawyers.
Outside the area of media, the most similar case involves the reformulation of dishwashing soap for environmental reasons in an unannounced change that impacted hundreds of millions of people in their daily lives without their knowledge.
Efforts to make movies available online have been rather more resilient, and have been hurt more by legal alternatives like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime, than by legal action, despite relentless efforts to shut down these operations.
Engineering New Faiths
Suppose that you take it as an axiom that substantial portions of both the Christian religion and the Islamic religion are profoundly negative forces in the world that greatly detract from the well being of humanity.
Suppose that you further acknowledge that a tendency to be religious is a natural personality trait. Some people may have it to a greater degree, and some to a lesser degree, but this tendency is inherently a part of human nature for a great many people, in some people to a great degree.
Thus, it may be impossible to have a human world that is truly secular.
Contrawise, it may also be impossible to have a human world that is full of truly devote people. The Hebrew Bible is to a great extent a chronicle of Pyrrhic efforts to accomplish this that failed over and over and over again despite the best efforts of its rulers, priests and prophets.
Of course, even if a tendency to be religious is part of human nature, the way that this tendency manifests and plays out is almost purely cultural. No one is born Christian or Muslim or Buddhist. Someone with a natural tendency to be religious will manifest that in the shape of whatever religious beliefs they are exposed to in their lives. And, even during someone's life, a person's religious worldview through which that person expresses their tendency to be religious can change.
It is not self-evident what must be part of a belief system for it to feed into and satisfy the tendency of some people to be religious. Must it be metaphysical? Must it be unknowable? Must it involve a metaphysical realm that acts with moral purpose in our world? Must it involve an afterlife? Must it provide a way to deal with grief and injustice in the world? Must it merely provide a moral code? Are rituals and life scripts the key elements of what naturally religious people need?
At any rate, if the human world cannot be truly secular because Nature abhors a religious vacuum, then the alternative to the harm caused by the religions that we do have, would be to devise one or more new religions that are less harmful and find a way to get people to convert en mass to them.
This is not unprecedented. Mass religious conversions of whole populations that virtually wipe out the religions that came before them a living faiths have been documented many times within the span of the historically attested past. It hasn't happened particularly frequently, but it has definitely happened.
Conventional wisdom is that this has been driven by sincere true believers in an organic fashion. But, if one really understands the process, and there is not actually any metaphysical world out there, so that no religion can actually be true, shouldn't it be possible to intentionally create a religion for this very purpose? Issac Asmiov's Foundation series poses just such a scenario.
If one could do it, and the status quo is as bad as is assumed axiomatically for the purposes of this post, isn't this not just possible, but morally obligatory to do so?
Suppose that you further acknowledge that a tendency to be religious is a natural personality trait. Some people may have it to a greater degree, and some to a lesser degree, but this tendency is inherently a part of human nature for a great many people, in some people to a great degree.
Thus, it may be impossible to have a human world that is truly secular.
Contrawise, it may also be impossible to have a human world that is full of truly devote people. The Hebrew Bible is to a great extent a chronicle of Pyrrhic efforts to accomplish this that failed over and over and over again despite the best efforts of its rulers, priests and prophets.
Of course, even if a tendency to be religious is part of human nature, the way that this tendency manifests and plays out is almost purely cultural. No one is born Christian or Muslim or Buddhist. Someone with a natural tendency to be religious will manifest that in the shape of whatever religious beliefs they are exposed to in their lives. And, even during someone's life, a person's religious worldview through which that person expresses their tendency to be religious can change.
It is not self-evident what must be part of a belief system for it to feed into and satisfy the tendency of some people to be religious. Must it be metaphysical? Must it be unknowable? Must it involve a metaphysical realm that acts with moral purpose in our world? Must it involve an afterlife? Must it provide a way to deal with grief and injustice in the world? Must it merely provide a moral code? Are rituals and life scripts the key elements of what naturally religious people need?
At any rate, if the human world cannot be truly secular because Nature abhors a religious vacuum, then the alternative to the harm caused by the religions that we do have, would be to devise one or more new religions that are less harmful and find a way to get people to convert en mass to them.
This is not unprecedented. Mass religious conversions of whole populations that virtually wipe out the religions that came before them a living faiths have been documented many times within the span of the historically attested past. It hasn't happened particularly frequently, but it has definitely happened.
Conventional wisdom is that this has been driven by sincere true believers in an organic fashion. But, if one really understands the process, and there is not actually any metaphysical world out there, so that no religion can actually be true, shouldn't it be possible to intentionally create a religion for this very purpose? Issac Asmiov's Foundation series poses just such a scenario.
If one could do it, and the status quo is as bad as is assumed axiomatically for the purposes of this post, isn't this not just possible, but morally obligatory to do so?
21 November 2014
Federal Judicial Nominations From 1789-1861
A new law review article comprehensively reviews the historical record of federal judicial nominations under the existing constitution of the United States which took effect in 1789 prior to President Lincoln taking office.
The process is essentially unchanged from modern practice, with the exception that in the early Republic judge's not infrequently declined to accept their appointments once the Senate approved their nominations.
The process is essentially unchanged from modern practice, with the exception that in the early Republic judge's not infrequently declined to accept their appointments once the Senate approved their nominations.
Song of the Day
I heard the striking song "Shatter Me" by Lindsey Stirling (violin) & Lzzy Hale (vocals) (of the band "Halestorm") on the radio yesterday. I hadn't heard the song announced, but had heard Stirling on Pandora before and recognized her unmistakable violin style.
I'd figured it was a Disney movie song, but turned out to be wrong about that. I've since learned that Hale is a 2014 "America's Got Talent" reality TV show contestant and that Stirling was a previous contestant on the show. The song is apparently the title track of Sterling's new album.
An RWBY anime video (RWBY is a web based distribution anime series) featuring the song is here.
In other news, feminism apparent leads to witchcraft and the destruction of capitalism.
I'd figured it was a Disney movie song, but turned out to be wrong about that. I've since learned that Hale is a 2014 "America's Got Talent" reality TV show contestant and that Stirling was a previous contestant on the show. The song is apparently the title track of Sterling's new album.
An RWBY anime video (RWBY is a web based distribution anime series) featuring the song is here.
In other news, feminism apparent leads to witchcraft and the destruction of capitalism.
19 November 2014
George Washington High School's IB Program Excels At Sending Low Income Students To Top Colleges
The Denver Public Schools is largely dismantling in the first two year (critically undermining its last two years) of its IB program, because of concerns about disparities between low income students who make up a larger share of George Washington High Schools non-IB program and more affluent ones who make up a majority of George Washington High School's IB program.
It is ironic, in light of this news, that this very program is actually more effective in sending low income students to top colleges in absolute terms than any other program in the state, and, it sends a very high percentage of low income student to top colleges relative to the percentage of affluent students who do so.
While the fact that the IB program at GW has successful graduates certainly owes a great deal to the fact that it selects only the most academically able students; academically talented low income students at other high school programs are much less likely to go on to top colleges at the vast majority of other programs in the state and in the Denver Public Schools, than similarly talented low income students in the GW IB program.
For example, low income students in GW's IB program are more likely to enroll at top colleges (44%) than more affluent students at Boulder High School (32%), the Denver School of Science and Technology (25%), or Denver's East High School (18%). (More affluent students at GW's IB program are the most likely to attend top colleges (65%) than any of the other programs evaluated.)
This high level of success may have as much to do with the fact that the students in this program (which my daughter attends) are a tight knit group that reinforce each other's common educational goals and aspirations, as it does with the content of the coursework.
The Denver Public School district would be well advised to abandon its misguided efforts to overhaul this very successful program and to instead focusing on improving the programs in the district that are broken.
It is ironic, in light of this news, that this very program is actually more effective in sending low income students to top colleges in absolute terms than any other program in the state, and, it sends a very high percentage of low income student to top colleges relative to the percentage of affluent students who do so.
While the fact that the IB program at GW has successful graduates certainly owes a great deal to the fact that it selects only the most academically able students; academically talented low income students at other high school programs are much less likely to go on to top colleges at the vast majority of other programs in the state and in the Denver Public Schools, than similarly talented low income students in the GW IB program.
For example, low income students in GW's IB program are more likely to enroll at top colleges (44%) than more affluent students at Boulder High School (32%), the Denver School of Science and Technology (25%), or Denver's East High School (18%). (More affluent students at GW's IB program are the most likely to attend top colleges (65%) than any of the other programs evaluated.)
This high level of success may have as much to do with the fact that the students in this program (which my daughter attends) are a tight knit group that reinforce each other's common educational goals and aspirations, as it does with the content of the coursework.
The Denver Public School district would be well advised to abandon its misguided efforts to overhaul this very successful program and to instead focusing on improving the programs in the district that are broken.
13 November 2014
Transit And Population Density
One of the keys to making public transit work is population density. It is widely used and popular in densely populated places, and is little uses in places with low population densities.
This is largely a function of technology and economics. Transit systems generally have costs that are only moderately sensitive to ridership, so higher density spreads cost per trip over more people and makes the price of transit lower.
Two good blog posts on the subject are here and here.
The first looks at U.S. transit use by metropolitan area with interactive charts.
The second make international comparison and also introduces the concept of weighted density, which considers the disproportionate impact of densely populated areas within a metropolitan area, and employment density, which considers the impact of employment centers like downtowns and office parks in areas where residential populations are more dispersed.
This is largely a function of technology and economics. Transit systems generally have costs that are only moderately sensitive to ridership, so higher density spreads cost per trip over more people and makes the price of transit lower.
Two good blog posts on the subject are here and here.
The first looks at U.S. transit use by metropolitan area with interactive charts.
The second make international comparison and also introduces the concept of weighted density, which considers the disproportionate impact of densely populated areas within a metropolitan area, and employment density, which considers the impact of employment centers like downtowns and office parks in areas where residential populations are more dispersed.
12 November 2014
How Many Record Breaking Climate Days Are Normal In Denver?
Denver's climate records extend from 1872 to the present. This is a 142 year span.
Suppose that the probability of different weather outcomes doesn't change at all from year to year in Denver. Then, the chance that the record for any given day of the year was set in a particular year is 1/142. This means that the expected average number of record days per year in Denver is just a bit over 2.57 per year. The standard deviation (of this binomal distribution) is 1.60 per year.
Thus, in about 68% of years, 1-4 records are set for a given measurement, and 0-6 records are set in 30 out of 31 years (6 records is a 2.14 sigma event). A year with 8 or more new records would be a 3.4 sigma event that would happen only once every 1,667 years.
This simple analysis does not so easily apply to multiple measurements since the high and low, and precipitation in a given day, are not independent of each other.
Suppose that the probability of different weather outcomes doesn't change at all from year to year in Denver. Then, the chance that the record for any given day of the year was set in a particular year is 1/142. This means that the expected average number of record days per year in Denver is just a bit over 2.57 per year. The standard deviation (of this binomal distribution) is 1.60 per year.
Thus, in about 68% of years, 1-4 records are set for a given measurement, and 0-6 records are set in 30 out of 31 years (6 records is a 2.14 sigma event). A year with 8 or more new records would be a 3.4 sigma event that would happen only once every 1,667 years.
This simple analysis does not so easily apply to multiple measurements since the high and low, and precipitation in a given day, are not independent of each other.
The Race Of African Immigrants To The U.S.
In 2009, 74.4 percent of the African-born population reported their race as Black, either alone or in combination with another race. African immigrants identified as Black at a much higher rate than the native born (14.0 percent) and the foreign born overall (8.6 percent), and accounted for 33.3 percent of all foreign-born Blacks and 2.7 percent the total Black population in the United States.
Racial self-identification varied widely by African country of origin. For example, nearly all immigrants from Ghana (99.7 percent), Somalia (99.3 percent), Cameroon (98.8 percent), Nigeria (98.7 percent), and Ethiopia (98.2 percent) reported their race as Black, either alone or in combination with another race, compared to 4.6 percent of Algerians, 5.6 percent of Egyptians, 8.1 percent of Moroccans, 13.8 percent of South Africans, 56.7 percent of Tanzanians, and 65.7 percent of Cape Verdeans.From a quote contained in a comment at this this blog post
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