Back in the 1990s when I used to fly internationally a lot, US customs decided to change its procedures for searching people. (I can’t find information about this; it might have been a pilot program just at SFO.) What they had found was that they didn’t find any more contraband in the luggage of “suspicious” people than they did random people. So why bother? And more important: why risk the obvious problem of unfair stereotyping? People act strangely for a lot of reasons. Even though I’ve never tried to bring anything even slightly dodgy into or out of the country, I’m a nervous wreck going through customs. And this is despite the fact that I’ve never had any problem going through customs.

Last week, Jana Winter and Cora Currier at The Intercept reported, TSA’s Secret Behavior Checklist to Spot Terrorists. It describes the TSA’s controversial SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) program. This is the system of techniques that are supposed to turn an ordinary TSA agent into Dr Cal Lightman — the body language genius in Lie to Me. But just like the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used to extract false information from people in CIA and military custody, SPOT is not based on any science.

I am especially taken with two things on SPOT’s list of suspicious behavior. The first is, “Widely open staring eyes.” The second is, “Gazing down.” Given there are degrees to both of these, this sums up all possible eye related behavior. In other words: if the TSA agent decides that you are suspicious, you will get a point for one of these two. And this is how these things always work. We are all great at rationalizing our decisions. That does not mean that our decisions are based on rational thought. We are not nearly as rational as we think we are.

Of course, that is why these silly lists are created. The people designing this systems do not think they work for their stated purposes. They work as a way to justify what the agents are going to do regardless. You’ve lived a charmed life if you haven’t had this kind of reverse engineered oppression applied to you. The most common form this takes is a police officer pulling over a car. They can always justify it because there are so many ridiculous laws that we are all of us breaking the law all the time.

The Intercept article interviewed a former TSA agent about this:

This is all part of a larger issue that I talk about a lot: in the United States, we don’t care so much about solving problems; it is more important to appear as though we are solving problems. The list of 92 suspicious behaviors is a way to make what are just gut reactions on the part of agents appear to be scientific and objective. But what they actually are was summed up well by a different former TSA agent The Intercept interviewed, “The SPOT program is bullshit — complete bullshit.”

A year ago, it seemed that SEC examination chief Andrew Bowden was going to do his job. He had just finished a study of private equity firms and found that at more than half of them, the companies that were purchased were being inappropriately charged fees for things like services that they didn’t receive or similar shenanigans. This is the whole point of private equity: siphon off as much money as possible and then get rid of the company. In this case, the people who get screwed are the investors who put up the money to purchase the firm. If poor people did this kind of thing, they’d be thrown in jail. When rich people do it, they are deified.

So after the study was finished, Bowden gave a big fiery speech where he said:

Time for some prosecutions, right? But since then, the SEC has done what it normally does: nothing. As Matt Taibbi noted last week, “Last May, Bowden, a senior SEC official, described this problem as almost epidemic.” But now:

Ah yes! That’s the kind of person we want policing the private equity people: people who have simple minds and bow down before the greatness that are these masters of the universe who, after all, are just adding value to their clients. Bowden went on to joke about them giving his son a job, but I hardly think that was necessary to know exactly what Bowden (doubtless along with his peers) is all about. Needless to say, the Andrew Bowden of last year was far more in danger of losing his job than the Andrew Bowden of this year.

Two weeks ago, Michael Hiltzik discussed the issue in a broader context, Bankers Are Complaining — Again — About too Much Regulation. He perfectly described what is going on with Bowden and the thousands of bureaucrats like him:

He started with the story of corporate lawyer and pox on the world H Rodgin Cohen who claimed in a recent talk that there was no regulatory capture. He said “the regulatory environment today… the most tension-filled, confrontational, and skeptical of any time in my professional career.” But his professional career only really start in the 1970s and got going in the 1980s. These are the times when the government was turning its back on efforts to control the crooks that people like Cohen get rich representing. What does it really matter how today lines up with his career? Of course, there is little doubt that all he’s really saying is that at this point his privilege is so extreme that even the smallest push-back would seem “tension-filled, confrontational, and skeptical.”

Regardless of what Cohen thinks (or says, anyway), the example of Bowden kind of destroys it. But we have to wonder which Bowden is the one who goes to work each day: the fiery regulator or the private equity pawn? Hiltzik noted something interesting in this regard. Last year’s strong words were a major event and the speech at the conference earlier this month was not. So I’m guessing that Bowden is the obsequious one, not the Cohen skeptic of myth. Plus we have data: since Bowden’s big speech, there haven’t been big indictments. This country has a long way to go to fix its problems. And we haven’t even started.

Back on the first of February, Alan Beatts announced that he was closing up his store, Borderlands Books. The proximate cause was the recent minimum wage increase in San Francisco. He didn’t see how the business could survive. It’s not hard to understand. Unlike most businesses, book stores can’t raise prices — people will just go to Amazon. And the minimum wage isn’t even the major issue. Borderlands is located in the Mission district, which has been seeing rents go up steadily for the last two decades. It was a sad announcement, but it actually didn’t have much to do with the minimum wage. And indeed, Beatts is a supporter of the new minimum wage.

But when the announcement was made, the conservative world went crazy. The Washington Free Beacon incorrectly reported, San Francisco Bookstore Closing Due to Minimum Wage Increase. No mention was made of the specialized nature of the store — it is a science fiction bookstore — or the macroeconomic forces that are hurting the store. But why would the article mention these things? Conservatives know that the minimum wage always destroys jobs and is just terrible. A bookstore was closing and that was all the “proof” they needed. What to be done? Every conservatives knows that liberal policy always fails.

Apparently, there was something to be done. Even in Beatts’ announcement, he mentioned that they were looking at other alternatives. They were, for example, looking for some way to lower the cost of their rent, which went up 100% in 2000 alone. (That was the result of the dot-com bubble. But of course, after the bubble burst, landlords didn’t lower their rents.) But on 19 February, Beatts announced, An Opportunity for Borderlands to Stay Open. Customers had proposed a sponsorship program. So it came down to this, “Each sponsorship will cost $100 for the year and will need to be renewed every year. If we get 300 sponsors before March 31st, we will stay open for the remainder of 2015.”

How did it go? On 19 March, Beatts posted, Our Sponsors for 2015. The required 300 sponsors was met within 48 hours. As of the time of the post, Borderlands Books had 753 sponsors. It’s an impressive outpouring of support. But it isn’t too surprising. Groups like the science fiction community tend to be self-supporting. This kind of thing is much more likely to happen with a specialty store than with a general one.

It’s important to note that this alone doesn’t counter the conservatives’ criticism. But now that the bookstore is safe, I can say what was always clear: Borderlands Books did not have a viable business model. Even Beatts himself only made $28,000 last year — that’s $14 per hour, assuming he worked full time (and he probably worked more than that). The bookstore clearly was not taking in as much money as it was delivering to the community. For example, the bookstore does a lot of events and provides a place to hang out. The immediate support for the sponsorship program shows that the bookstore was worth more to the community than it had been charging. If the store hadn’t survived in this way, it could have found other ways to monetize its services. In other words: Borderlands Books was never going out of business because of the minimum wage increase.

Under normal circumstances, conservatives would not morn the loss of something like Borderlands Books. It would have just been another bookstore destroyed by more efficient larger bookstores. Creative destruction, am I right?! The fact is that with or without government, workers must earn a living wage. When Walmart employees must depend upon government programs, it is the owners of Walmart and not the workers who are getting welfare from the government. And that applies to the old Borderlands Books to a lesser extent. But now the company is in a better situation — providing fairer compensation for workers and owner.

In 2008, I stumbled into a hospital emergency very close to death. I don’t much remember the first month I was there and in total, I spent seven months before they finally let me go. Other than some minor but permanent damage to my heart, I appear to be more healthy than I have ever been. I’m also in debt to the tune of about a quarter million dollars — money I will never be able to pay back. For the previous year, my employer had been promising healthcare to the entire staff. It never came. In fact, I checked with an employee a year later and the firm was still not providing healthcare, but still promising to do so.

Today, thanks to Obamacare, I have insurance. I have a serious preexisting condition. It is doubtful that anyone would have sold me insurance in the old system. So things are far better for me now. Of course, I haven’t had cause to use my insurance. But having it provides me with an amazing amount of peace of mind. And I do plan to use it soon. I could use a check-up.

But the Republicans continue to try to destroy Obamacare. It doesn’t matter how many people like me are better off, they hate the law. I don’t think that there is a better example of villainy in politics. Just the same, I’m pretty sure these politicians actually believe that Obamacare is the spawn of Satan. The modern Republican Party comes out of that John Birch Society tradition that just knows that this is communism and that therefore it can’t work. Damn the facts; they have ideological certainty!

A good example of this comes via Matt Yglesias last week, A House GOP Leader Asked for Obamacare Horror Stories. Instead, She Got Love Letters. The GOP leader was Representative and late model Stepford wife Cathy McMorris Rodgers. On Facebook, she wrote, “This week marks the 5th anniversary of #Obamacare being signed into law. Whether it’s turned your tax filing into a nightmare, you’re facing skyrocketing premiums, or your employer has reduced your work hours, I want to hear about it.” Not even any faux objectivity. What happened next was entirely predictable. As Yglesias noted, “As many brands have discovered, opening yourself up to this kind of dialogue is basically an open invitation to get trolled.”

But mostly she didn’t get trolled. She just got a huge number of responses from people like me who like Obamacare. But there was also stuff like this from Matthew Root:

That’s one thing that is really interesting about Obamacare: it is good for business. One of the big problems that manufacturers have is that many of the companies they compete against don’t have to provide their employees with healthcare because their governments do it. Obamacare is about the most free market solution to the problem imaginable. But because it raised taxes on the rich, the Republicans just can’t abide it. That and the fact that a Democrat with cooties got it passed.

I think we should stop thinking of the Republican Party as being pro-business. It really isn’t. It is pro-rich. It is interested in making sure that the lives of the rich are as good as possible. And that’s fine. But people shouldn’t vote for the Republican Party because they think it will help business and the economy. All indications are that it just pushes money from the poor to the rich and this has the ultimate effect of weakening the economy. Certainly destroying Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare would devastate the economy — in addition to causing great direct harm to the non-rich. But if that is what the American people want to vote for, fine. Let’s just make sure that they understand that that is what they are voting for when they vote Republican.

In the mean time, millions more people have health insurance than they did before. I’m one of them. But if you want more evidence, Cathy McMorris Rodgers set up this great webpage where people tell their own stories…

Last week in The National Interest, Robert Farley wrote a fascinating article about how a war with Iran would go, Exposed: America Can’t Blow Up Iran’s Nukes. As I’m sure you will not be shocked to hear, those pushing for war with Iran have not thought this whole thing through. I think it is just a matter that a lot of people believe in the magic of total war, “If we can just fight Iran the way we fought Hitler, all will be well!” It’s just rubbish that shows as much ignorance about World War II as it does about the current situation with Iran.

Farley started the article with an overview of the situation in the Middle East. It isn’t good. Because of our brilliant idea to get rid of Saddam Hussein, we’ve created a power vacuum in the region. This was predictable. But what it means is that Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting for control. And it ain’t pretty. According to Farley, there has been a massive military buildup in the region, “Saudi Arabia purchases more arms in a year than Tehran’s entire defense budget.” It’s a totally messed up situation. A deal with Iran is probably the only way to cool what has turned into an arms race.

The most important takeaway from the article is that we can’t just drop a few bombs and knock out Iran’s nuclear program. If by “total war” the military hawks mean “perpetual war,” then they might be right. Farley noted, “If the United States launches a major strike on Iran, it can expect to launch another strike in a few years, and another strike a few years later.” But as time went on, Iran would become better at securing its operations from attack. And that would mean either we lose in our efforts or we continuously increase our attacks.

Another issue is that attacking Iran will only make it more sympathetic to the worldwide community. And Russia and China would help Iran from the start. That means, one way or another, the Iranian government would get the most sophisticated military equipment in existence. So basically, we aren’t capable of quickly knocking out Iran in a way that wouldn’t also start World War III. Any military action against Iran would require continuous attacks on Iran. And in the end we would fail to achieve our stated objectives.

Of course, I don’t think that the “Bomb, bomb bomb; bomb, bomb Iran” crowd wants war with Iran because it will make the US safer or the world a better place. These same people never talk about doing anything to North Korea. They just want another chance to have another bloody good war. And this is why we run into the same thing again and again: we start a war and it is reasonably popular. But then, as time goes on, the people tire of it and wonder why we got into the war in the first place. But the cheerleaders for the war are never held to account.

This isn’t about power. No one doubts that the United States has the most powerful military in the world. But I’m not sure that people quite understand how costly was everyone’s idea of a just war: World War II. Conservative estimates indicate that the war directly cost the lives of 60 million people. The vast majority of those (especially civilians) were on the Ally side. I don’t think the Allies had much of a choice about World War II. We definitely have a choice about Iran. As Farley noted, “The United States has the capability to inflict grievous damage on the Islamic Republic, but cannot solve the problem of Iran by bombing alone.” So the question is: what is our pain threshold? I’d have to say that it is really low. And it is best to think about this now rather than after the bombs start falling.

Last year I wrote, Why Republicans Will Nominate Rand Paul in 2016. My point was not primarily that Rand Paul would actually win the Republican nomination. It was that Rand Paul would sell his libertarian soul to get the nomination. Even by the time he was elected to the Senate, he had massaged his libertarianism to be acceptable to the Republican base. My favorite contrast in this regard is with his father who was for full drug legalization. Meanwhile, Rand Paul even holds his nose while offering the most tepid support of cannabis legalization.

My prediction at that time, “So by this time next year, he will have massaged every position so that it still sounds libertarian, while still being full of conservative red meat for the base.” And then, just a month later, I wrote, Rand Paul Continues to “Evolve” His Ideology. It was about how Paul wanted to go to war with ISIS. As I noted, “I don’t see this as anything different from America’s favorite comedy duo, McCain & Graham.” Indeed, there is no difference. I think that there is no more disingenuous politician than Rand Paul. The only thing he really believes is that he should be President of the United States.

Well, there is news on Rand Paul’s evolution toward becoming the Perfect Republican™. On Thursday, Paul Waldman wrote, How Rand Paul Is Losing His Distinctiveness. This time, it is about how Paul is pushing to increase funding for the military. Let’s think about this for a moment, because it is absurd. The United States spends 48% of what the entire world spends on military. So that’s 48% for the US and 52% for the other 195 countries. Basically: the US spends as much on the military as every other country combined. And yet we cowardly Americans just don’t feel safe enough. It’s pathetic.

I don’t think for a minute that Rand Paul thinks that the military is being hurt by its cutbacks. He’s just continuing to do what he’s always done. But you have to wonder, since he doesn’t believe in anything but his right to power, why did he spend all this time pretending to be a libertarian? Part of it is what I discussed about him last year: most conservatives like to think of themselves as libertarians. In theory they are all libertarians. It is only when actual policy comes up that they decide that it is better to be able to tell people what to do.

My guess would be that there is a more personal reason why Rand Paul has pretended to be libertarian — or at least libertarianish. He needed the resources that his father’s presidential campaigns have created. Now he’s a top tier Republican and isn’t so reliant on them. Of course, this does not mean that the Ron Paul supporters will abandon him. And this goes back to what I’ve long said about real libertarians, and is even more true of the libertarianish folk in the Republican Party: it’s all about low taxes. So they won’t abandon him. And the kids who support Paul because they want legalized cannabis are going away regardless because that has become the Democratic Party position — which they get without all the conservative baggage.

Waldman noted that the Republican Party is built on four ideas: “low taxes, small government, ‘traditional’ social values, and a large military.” But he thinks this creates a dilemma for Paul. But it really doesn’t. For one thing, neither Paul nor the Republican Party are actually for small government. But that gets to how one can claim to be for small government even as they think that having 48% of the world’s military spending is just not enough. Republicans believe in certain types of spending. According to them, if we just got rid of stuff the government shouldn’t be doing (eg, healthcare, retirement), there would be plenty of money for tax cuts and increased military spending.

There is just one step that Rand Paul must take to become a big player for the Republican presidential nomination. He can’t just be for more military spending. Walking the walk is really not what Republican politics is all about. He has to be able to talk the talk. He needs to start screaming about all the threats that the United States faces. He can’t say, “I would go to Congress and ask to go to war with ISIS.” He must say, “I love America so much I would disregard the Constitution and just go to war with ISIS. And Iran! And North Korea!” He can’t just be in favor of permanent war; he has to clearly enjoy it. And I don’t think he’s going to have any problem taking this final step.

I just read an amazing article by Seth Masket at Pacific Standard magazine, Making Voting Harder Is a Time-Honored American Tradition. When I first saw the headline, I wasn’t going to read it. I thought that I knew what it was about. I know the ways that conservatives — from the very start of the union — tried to limit the franchise of voting. But that isn’t what the article is really about.

The whole system of registering to vote was not a conservative effort. It was rather the result of progressive reforms. There was certainly a lot of racism and general elitism. But the main thing was that the progressive movement was largely focused on anti-corruption. The belief was that many of the party machines were manipulating the vote. So they tried to stop this by requiring voter registration. This probably did have the effect of stopping that kind of corruption — but only by introducing a whole new kind of corruption that we live with today. Check out this graph:

What we see here is that eligible voters voted in very high numbers until registration was required. And then it plummeted. So we got rid of explicit corruption in the form of well organized political operations. And we replaced it with implicit corruption in the form of an electorate that is heavily skewed in the direction of wealth. And as you can see, there is basically no change in voting behavior ever since — for the last one hundred years.

Masket noted what’s perhaps most important for us to take away from this graph:

I get annoyed every time I hear people — especially retired people — claim that the young and the poor shouldn’t vote given that they don’t care enough to make time for it. But the people who claim this don’t have to make time for it. They don’t have to pick the kids up after school. They don’t have to be on time for work. They don’t have to re-register to vote because they had to move. But instead of feeling their entitlement, these older and wealthier voters think that they are better than the people whose lives don’t make voting convenient.

It is in this context that the new Oregon voter registration law is so powerful. It takes an important impediment out of the way of people who want to vote. Throughout the last half of the 19th century, 80% of eligible voters showed up to vote in presidential elections. We could have that again. But of course, there are a whole lot of very powerful people who don’t want 80% of the people showing up to vote. Imagine how much better this country would be if we had 80% turnout. The Republican Party would have to change in major ways or be relegated to a regional party. Either would be an improvement. But more important: the Democratic Party would be far more populist. The laws passed in Washington would have something to do with what the people actually wanted. The country would be a lot closer to having a government of the people, by the people, for the people. As of now, it has perished from this nation.