A Tale of Two Protests in a Racist Country

Dakota Access Pipeline ProtestIs there anything that shows the bias and prejudice in our current criminal justice system than, on the same day, seeing the acquittal of an all-white group of men who illegally took over a federal facility and actively encouraged the potential use of violence while peaceful protesters who are defending sacred Indian land that is theirs by treaty get shot and arrested in order to allow big business to build a pipeline through their land?

The Bundy group was treated with kid-gloves and were eventually arrested peaceably. It was a remarkable show of restraint by law enforcement that worked out in the end. But, because it did end so peaceably, it perhaps made it easier to acquit them. Those peacefully protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline have been met with a declaration of a state of emergency by the governor that mobilized the National Guard, allowed the use of outside police forces, and the deployment of militarized police vehicles. This is a stark contrast to the treatment of the Bundy group that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters.

—m2c4
Two Faces Of American Justice — Bundy Acquittal And Dakota Pipeline Protests

Greg Mankiw: Lost in Theory, Counting Money

Nathan Robinson on Greg MankiwEconomist Gregory Mankiw is very pleased to have been gouged by a scalper, he informs us in a recent New York Times column. Mankiw recently went to see the Broadway musical Hamilton, and paid the going rate for a ticket: $2,500. Yet he was far from dismayed at having paid this extraordinary sum. In fact, he describes those who object to price-gouging as “pernicious.”

That’s because Mankiw adopts the standard economist’s view on exorbitant prices for goods: where the layman sees gouging, the economist sees the sublime operation of the law of supply and demand. As Mankiw says, “terms like ‘scalping’ and ‘price gouging’ are pejoratives used to demonize those who resell tickets at whatever high prices the market will bear.” …

He gives a parallel example. In 2009, Jay Leno decided that what unemployed auto workers needed the most was free tickets to a Jay Leno concert. So he gave them a bunch of tickets, which many of them promptly tried to sell on eBay for $800 each. Leno was horrified. But Mankiw thinks Leno should have been pleased…

The free market reveals what each individual values, and how much they value it. If I keep my Jay Leno ticket, rather than selling it, it is because I value the experience of seeing Jay Leno more than $800. If my coworker sells his ticket, it is because he prefers the money. Everyone gets what they want the most, as the market efficiently satisfies our preferences.

Yet when economists tell this fable, they neglect a single crucial fact: some people are wealthier than other people. The reason Mankiw loves price hikes is that they don’t affect him, because he has so much money that he doesn’t really care what price he pays for a Hamilton ticket. Wealth confers the ability to jump to the front of the line, bypassing those who may want to see the show far more but who have less money to spend on theater tickets…

The situation surely differed depending on the unemployed workers’ personal finances… In each instance, the outcome does not reflect how much the workers want their tickets, but how financially desperate they are. Thus what Mankiw sees as a measure of preference is in fact largely a measure of hardship. Economic outcomes aren’t a product of what people value, but how much money they have to throw around.

—Nathan Robinson
Do Economists Actually Know What Money Is?

The Yale Record Doesn’t Endorse Clinton

Yale Record Doesn't Endorse ClintonIn its 144-year history, The Yale Record has never endorsed a Democratic candidate for president. In fact, we have never endorsed any candidate for president. This is, in part, due to our strong commitment to being a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization, which mandates that we are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

This year’s presidential election is highly unusual, but ultimately no different: The Yale Record believes both candidates to be equally un-endorsable, due to our faithful compliance with the tax code.

In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country — a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.

The Yale Record has no opinion whatsoever on Dr Jill Stein.

—The Editorial Board of The Yale Record
The Yale Record Does Not Endorse Hillary Clinton

Amanda Glaze on Evolution and the Nature of Science

Amanda GlazeResearch shows that people in the South are 84 percent less likely than their counterparts in other parts of the country to learn about evolution, or to learn about it in a way that is accurate. Similarly, studies such as my quant study in preservice teachers and Laura Rissler’s study of undergrads in Alabama show that religiosity is a strong negative factor that impacts acceptance of evolution.

When looking at other studies in the United States, mostly done in places in the Northeast (Indiana, New York), the levels of acceptance are quite low overall. However, the South boasts a population that is more closely aligned with the literal interpretation of Genesis (including creationism and Young Earth Creationism) that many cite as their reason for rejecting evolution. It also tends to show a higher impact of religious beliefs as a predictor of acceptance or rejection of evolution compared to other locations…

What bothers me is the lack of understanding about what science actually does.

Science doesn’t consider God as a possible answer to any question whatsoever because God is a metaphysical construct and thus not part of the physical world. And science by definition cannot consider anything metaphysical or supernatural as an explanation.

Science is not out there trying to disprove the existence of God — we can’t even consider that.

I really don’t care what people believe as long as they understand the science.

—Amanda Glaze
Teaching Evolution in the South: an Educator on the “War for Science Literacy”

Obama’s Grand Unified Theory of Trump

President Barack ObamaI understand Joe Heck now wishes he never said those things about Donald Trump. But they’re on tape. They’re on the record. And now that Trump’s poll numbers are cratering, suddenly he says, well, no, I’m not supporting him.

Too late. You don’t get credit for that. I’m being serious here. Hold on a second. I want to make a point here. I know a lot of Republicans. I’ve got Republican friends, I’ve got members of my family who are Republicans, and they don’t think the way Donald Trump does. I understand that. So I’m not generalizing about all Republicans. But here’s the thing: for years, Republican politicians and the far-right media outlets have pumped up all kinds of crazy stuff about me, about Hillary, about Harry. They said I wasn’t born here. They said climate change is a hoax. They said that I was going to take everybody’s guns away. They said that, when we were doing military exercises that we’ve been doing — forever — suddenly this was a plot to impose martial law. This is what they’ve been saying for years now. So people have been hearing it, and they start thinking, well, maybe this is true.

And so if the world that they’ve been seeing is that I’m powerful enough to cause hurricanes on my own, and to steal everybody’s guns in the middle of the night, and impose martial law, even though I can’t talk without a prompter — then is it any wonder that they end up nominating somebody like Donald Trump?

And the fact is, is that there are a lot of politicians who knew better. There are a lot of senators who knew better. But they went along with these stories because they figured, you know what, this will help rile up the base, it will give us an excuse to obstruct what we’re trying to do, we won’t be able to appoint judges, we’ll gum up the works, we’ll create gridlock, it will give us a political advantage.

So they just stood by and said nothing. And their base began to actually believe this crazy stuff. So Donald Trump did not start this. Donald Trump didn’t start it. He just did what he always did, which is slap his name on it, take credit for it, and promote it. That’s what he does.

—President Barack Obama
Remarks by the President at Rally for HFA and Senate Candidate Catherine Cortez Masto

H/T: Brian Beutler

Silicon Valley Incompetence Is Easy to Find

Peter Thiel - Silicon Valley Incompetence[Peter] Thiel did touch on the private sector, touting his native Silicon Valley as an example of a properly functioning community:

“Where I work in Silicon Valley, it’s hard to see where America has gone wrong…

“We don’t accept… incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government.”

Of course, even the briefest survey of Silicon Valley reveals a culture that is rife with incompetence, where the basic rules you’d follow running a lemonade stand — taking in more than you spend, for example, or adhering to basic quality standards — are discarded in favor of explosive growth and runaway valuations…

Thiel neglected to mention that Silicon Valley is also in the midst of a serious slowdown, where the bubble inflated by venture capital firms like his own Founders Fund — not Wall Street — shows sign of popping, or at least deflating.

—Sam Biddle
Peter Thiel: I Miss the Days of Strong, Daring Federal Spending

David Horowitz: Free Speech Defender — And Denier

David Horowitz Racist AdOne of Fox News Channel’s favorite recent stories involved a newspaper ad that claimed African-Americans benefited from slavery, and owed America for the favor. The ad’s author, conservative activist David Horowitz, claimed to be a victim of censorship and “political correctness” because a number of college newspapers refused to publish his ad, which argued against the idea of slavery reparations. Fox saw this as a major issue: Horowitz and his ad were mentioned at least 21 times on the network between March 6 and April 3 [in 2001].

On Fox News Sunday, the network’s Sunday-morning equivalent of Meet the Press, interviews with Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Senator Joseph Lieberman were incongruously followed by a segment featuring a largely unknown reparations activist and David Horowitz, in a Crossfire-style debate about Horowitz’s rejected ad.

On Special Report with Brit Hume, the Horowitz ad became the subject of at least nine “Grapevine” items in less than a month. The ad was also the subject of Hume’s lead question to conservative columnist John Leo when he appeared for a one-on-one interview…

On Hannity & Colmes, the issue was: “Has David Horowitz’s freedom of speech become a victim of political correctness?” On The O’Reilly Factor, it was Horowitz and host Bill O’Reilly interrogating a reparations activist from Mobile, Alabama. (“That’s my tax money!” O’Reilly exclaimed.) The Edge with Paula Zahn brought Horowitz on three times within a month to discuss the same subject.

But there was one twist to the Horowitz story that Fox couldn’t be bothered to report. When Horowitz’s ad was offered to The Daily Princetonian in April, the paper ran it — along with an editorial describing its ideas as racist and promising to donate the ad’s proceeds to the local chapter of the Urban League. Horowitz, the free-speech crusader, refused to pay his bill unless the paper’s editors publicly apologized for their hurtful words: “Its slanders contribute to the atmosphere of intolerance and hate towards conservatives,” a statement from his office read.

Suddenly Fox lost interest in the Horowitz case. After a month of running twice-weekly updates about college papers that were refusing the ad, Special Report with Brit Hume ignored the Princeton episode. None of the network’s major shows transcribed in the Nexis database reported Horowitz’s tiff with the paper. No editor from The Princetonian was invited on The O’Reilly Factor to debate whether or not Horowitz was being a hypocrite. When their favorite free-speech martyr suddenly looked like a censor, it was a story Fox just didn’t want to pursue.

—Seth Ackerman
The Most Biased Name in News

Chris Wallace and the Austerity Tax

Dean Baker on 2016 July Jobs ReportAt the debate last night, moderator Chris Wallace challenged both candidates on the question of cutting Social Security and Medicare. The implication is that the country is threatened by the prospect of out of control government deficits. The question was misguided on several grounds…

The country’s problem since the crash in 2008 has been deficits that are too small, not too large. The main factor holding back the economy has been a lack of demand, not a lack of supply. Deficits create more demand, either directly through government spending or indirectly through increased consumption. If we had larger deficits in recent years we would have seen more GDP, more jobs, and, due to a tighter labor market, higher wages.

The problem of too small deficits is not just a short-term issue. A smaller economy means less investment in new plant and equipment and research. This reduces the economy’s capacity in the future. In the same vein, high rates of unemployment cause people to permanently drop out of the labor force, reducing our future labor supply if these people become unemployable…

The Congressional Budget Office now puts potential GDP at about 10 percent lower for 2016 than its projection from 2008, before the recession. Much of this drop is due to the decision to run smaller deficits and prevent the economy from reaching its potential level of output. We can think of this loss of potential output as an “austerity tax.” It currently is at close to $2 trillion a year or more than $6,000 for every person in the country.

It is unfortunate that Wallace chose to devote valuable debate time to a non-problem while ignoring the huge problem of needless unemployment and lost output due to government deficits that are too small.

—Dean Baker
Chris Wallace, Supply, Demand, and the Government Budget Deficit

Charlie Pierce on Not Respecting the Election

Charlie PierceThe “takeaway,” as we say in the pundit game, was what Donald Trump said, or didn’t say, about “respecting” the results of the election. Good lord, people were fighting for space on the fainting couch all day on Thursday, too, and likely will be for the foreseeable future. Can we stop with the civics class pieties, please? Yes, what Donald Trump said on Wednesday night about keeping us all “in suspense” as to whether he’ll “accept” the results of the presidential election was a great soundbite and an easy way to emphasize further the fact that the Republican Party has nominated a petulant child for president. But enough with the shocked faces from the pundits who drape themselves in imaginary togas and weep on cue for this assault on the fragile American democracy. This is nothing new…

It has been an article of faith for the entire Republican Party for a quarter-century now that any elected Democratic president is prima facie illegitimate. Trump is just putting a layer of narcissistic varnish on the bucket containing all the historical deplorables. Further, the history of the country is replete with efforts, some of them violent, by politicians to avoid “respecting” the results of elections… We had a civil war because 13 states didn’t “respect the election” of Abraham Lincoln. And that fact is not mitigated in the least by the nice words spoken by Stephen A Douglas in the aftermath, when he declined to respond to losing by joining the Army of Northern Virginia. That’s a fairy tale.

Donald Trump is just being a little cruder about things than many of our television historians would like. Democracy is not a bedtime story, but the monsters within it are very, very real.

—Charlie Pierce
Why Are You Surprised Trump Won’t Respect the Results of the Election?

What Did Not Happen at Last Night’s Debate

Clinton - Trump - Did Not HappenAt the third 2016 presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday night, a few things did not happen.

Hillary Clinton did not fall into a coma.

She did not swear or use a racial epithet, and she did not commit a violent crime.

Her command of policy detail and the way our system of government works did not fail her, and she did not thus reveal herself to be a robot (in which case she’d run the risk of short circuiting on the job) or a victim of sporadic dementia.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, didn’t transform into the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. He didn’t cop to a late-in-life diagnosis of attention deficit disorder that had impaired his ability to retain and process information over the course of his entire adult life, but which has now been medically remedied. His presentation yielded no heretofore uncovered evidence that Clinton murdered anyone or has a drug problem.

Only a debate development of comical magnitude could have reversed the public’s impressions of these candidates. No such development transpired, and no such development was ever likely to transpire.

This race is over. It has been for some time.

—Brian Beutler
The 2016 Race Is Over

Fowler on Feasible

Frontispiece of Fowler's Modern English UsageWith those who feel that the use of an ordinary word for an ordinary notion does not do justice to their vocabulary or sufficiently exhibit their cultivation, feasible is now a prime favorite. Its proper sense is “capable of being done, accomplished, or carried out.” That is, it means the same as “possible” in one of the latter’s sense, and its true function is to be used instead of “possible” where that might be ambiguous. A thunderstorm is possible (but not “feasible”). Irrigation is possible (or, indifferently, “feasible”). A counter-revolution is possible: that is, (a) one may for all we know happen, or (b) we can if we choose bring one about; but, if (b) is the meaning, “feasible” is better than “possible” because it cannot properly bear sense (a) and therefore obviates ambiguity.

The wrong use of “feasible” is that in which… it is allowed to have also the other sense of “possible,” and that of “probable.” This is described by the OED as “hardly a justifable sense etymologically, and… recognized by no dictionary.” It is however becoming very common…

—H W Fowler
Modern English Usage

Trump’s True Patriot Quotes

True PatriotIf she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it. We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take… I would do whatever I can for my country. —Dan Bowman, a true patriot who would do anything for his country except support its system of government.

Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure. I’ll look for… well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American. I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous. —Steve Webb, a true patriot who don’t need no stinking English.

We’re heading toward North Korea, without a doubt. —Grant Reed, a true patriot who knows more about the Dunning–Kruger Effect than anyone.

If people are offended by the sexual stuff, what do they think is going to happen when Muslims come here, implement Sharia law, and start raping our women? —Joe Cecil, a true patriot who is absolutely not a racist because he didn’t say “white women.”

We’re going to have a lot of election fraud. They are having illegals vote. In some states, you don’t need voter registration to vote… We can’t have that lying bitch in the White House. —Jeannine Bell Smith, a true patriot who knows you can trust Alex Jones.

All I know is our country is not going to be a country anymore. I’ve heard people talk about a revolution. I’ve heard people talk about separation of states. I don’t even like to think about it. But I don’t think this movement is going away. We don’t have a voice anymore, and Donald Trump is giving us a voice. —Judy Wright, a true patriot who sees that whites are totally marginalized in this country (which is not going to be a country anymore).