Author Archives: Veta68O

Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

by Veta68O Posted on April 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent writes today that the Democratic strategy of going after the Koch brothers isn’t about the Kochs per se, but “a gamble on what swing voters think has happened to the economy, and on the reasons struggling Americans think they aren’t getting ahead”:

Dems are making an argument about what has happened to the economy, and which party actually has a plan to do something about it. Today’s NBC/WSJ poll finds support for the general idea that the economy is not distributing gains fairly and is rigged against ordinary Americans….The Democratic case is that the all-Obamacare-all-the-time message is merely meant to mask the GOP’s lack of any actual affirmative economic agenda, and even reveals the GOP’s priorities remain to roll back any efforts by Dems to ameliorate economic insecurity.

….I don’t know if the Dem strategy will work.

I think Sargent’s skepticism is warranted. The problem is that the NBC/WSJ poll he mentions doesn’t find an awful lot of evidence for seething anger. Here are the basic results:

Those are not really huge margins. The first question in particular is one they’ve been asking for two decades, and 55-39 is a very typical result, especially during times of economic weakness.

Given this, and given the extreme difficulty of a party in power taking advantage of economic discontent, will the Democratic strategy of bludgeoning Republicans over their plutocratic leanings work? I doubt it. Specific agenda items like a higher minimum wage, health care success stories, and universal pre-K seem more likely to work. At the margins, a bit of Koch bashing and a few high-profile Wall Street indictments might help a bit too, but only as an added fillip.

Oh, and a nice, short, decisive war against some minor global bad guy would also do wonders. In October, maybe.

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Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

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Yet Another Grim Poll for Republicans

by Veta68O Posted on October 14, 2013

Mother Jones

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Another poll, another disaster for the GOP. According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, the approval rating of the Republican Party has cratered ever since the budget showdown started. The gap between approval and disapproval has dropped by 16 points for the Republican Party in just two weeks. The change for Democrats has been only 6 points, and for President Obama there’s barely been any change at all:

For the first time this week numerically fewer than half of Republicans — 49 percent — approve of the way their party’s representatives in Congress are handling the budget talks.

Obama, by contrast, gets 71 percent approval in his own party. Further, while 58 percent of political independents disapprove of Obama’s work on the issue, that soars to 76 percent disapproval for the GOP’s approach. In terms of ideology, 59 percent of conservatives disapprove of how the Republicans in Congress are handling the issue, despite their generally closer alignment with GOP policies. Obama’s disapproval among liberals is far lower — 32 percent. And moderates roughly divide on Obama’s approach (49 percent disapprove), while broadly criticizing the Republicans, with 80 percent disapproval.

It’s just dismal news for Republicans across the board. The full poll is here.

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Yet Another Grim Poll for Republicans

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Microsoft’s New Tablet Sounds Great. So Why the Hate?

by Veta68O Posted on September 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Will Oremus is outraged that Microsoft’s new, faster Surface tablets can actually be used for work-related activities:

The Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 are jam-packed with productivity features guaranteed to make you feel guilty for using the devices for anything other than work….faster processor, faster bus, better battery life, more cores on the GPU….full Microsoft Office suite, including Outlook….tweaking the kickstand to make it easier to type away at that Excel spreadsheet while holding the tablet on your lap.

….There’s just one problem with Microsoft pitching its new tablets at people who prefer to use their tablets for work rather than play: Those people barely exist. As the Statista chart below illustrates, a Gartner survey found that tablet owners use their devices overwhelmingly for entertainment, followed by social media, e-mail, and other types of communication. Just 15 percent of tablet screen time is devoted to work. That makes sense when you consider that nearly everyone who owns a tablet also owns a different device that is far-better suited to doing work, whether desktop, laptop, or both. The tablet is where they go to get away from that work.

Let me get this straight. The fact that Microsoft’s new tablets are faster, have better battery life, and come with Office apps pre-installed is somehow a bad thing? Wouldn’t this be a good thing if any other tablet maker in the world did it? WTF?

As for tablets not being used for work, I don’t doubt that. And you know why? Because most current tablets are useless for anything other than entertainment. Take something as simple as writing a post for my blog. I can’t do it all on an iPad. Period. And I had to try five different browsers before I could find one that worked on my Android tab. And that’s just for a blog post.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t seen the new Surface Pro tablet—the only one that’s interesting—and it’s possible that it sucks. Maybe it’s underpowered, or overpriced, or weighs too much, or just plain doesn’t work very well. I don’t know. But you know what? I’d love to have a tablet that allowed me to work without hassle and provided me all the entertainment options I currently have. The fact that I have access to a real browser and Office apps doesn’t stop me from playing Angry Birds or reading a book on my Kindle app, after all. It just means that I can now leave home with a simple, lightweight tablet and know that I can do whatever I need to do. If that’s work, then I’ll work. If it’s not, then I’ll play.

So why the hate?

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Microsoft’s New Tablet Sounds Great. So Why the Hate?

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Republican calls for climate action — and has to remain anonymous to keep job

by Veta68O Posted on July 11, 2013

Republican calls for climate action — and has to remain anonymous to keep job

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

A Republican staffer at the U.S. House has written a fervent call for conservative action on climate change, winning second place in a young conservative writing contest sponsored by the Energy and Enterprise Initiative. But he won’t be collecting his prize in person. He’s afraid to reveal his name or face.

The piece was published yesterday on the Real Clear Science website under the pseudonym of Eric Bradenson. The author explains that he is “writing under a pen name to protect his boss and himself.” Here’s how his piece kicks off:

Someone in the GOP needs to say it: conservation is conservative; climate change is real; and conservatives need to lead on solutions because we have better answers than the other side.

… conservatives have long fought to protect the natural rights and property rights of individuals, living and unborn, from infringement by environmental degradation and pollution.

So why are so many Republicans in Congress taking a weed eater to what would naturally grow from the rich soil of conservatism?

“Bradenson” goes on to propose one climate solution: “a phase-out of subsidies for all sources of energy coupled with a revenue-neutral carbon tax swap.”

He’s probably wise to keep his identity hidden. Bob Inglis, a former Republican U.S. rep for South Carolina, called for a carbon tax and promptly got booted out of office. Now he runs the aforementioned Energy and Enterprise Initiative.

“Bradenson” notes that it’s “conservatives outside of Congress — the ones ‘with nothing to lose’ like Bob Inglis, George Shultz, Art Laffer and Kevin Hassett — [who] are paving the way for Republicans to take the small government, pro-growth conservative stand on climate change.”

We’ve also been hearing anecdotes about young conservatives who want the Republican Party to get real and address climate change. A long article in National Journal two months ago spotlighted some of them, and an article in ClimateWire this week does the same.

But if calling for a carbon tax — or even just calling for discussion of the possibility that 97 percent of climate scientists are on to something — is enough to get you ousted from the GOP establishment, you know the party has a long way to go.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Republican calls for climate action — and has to remain anonymous to keep job

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Are Lousy Jobs Responsible for Economic Recovery?

by Veta68O Posted on June 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Brad Plumer calls this “the most depressing jobs chart in a long time”:

Basically, what these charts show is that in countries where the labor market has improved since 2007, average job quality has declined. “The nations that have made the most inroads in reducing their unemployment, such as Germany or Israel, have often done so by adding lots of lower-quality jobs, including part-time gigs and jobs with lower benefits.”

I have some doubts about this. The right-hand chart, which is for developing economies, I’d just toss out completely. The correlation is tiny, and a quick eyeball suggests an enormous variance. This is basically just random data.

The chart on the left, which is for advanced economies, looks better, but the position of Spain gave me pause. According to this data, job quality in Spain has gone up enormously since 2007. Up? What definition of job quality are they using? Here it is:

In advanced economies (a) the change in the percentage of temporary employees, (b) the change in social benefits expenditure as share of total public expenditure and (c) the growth in the average hourly wages between 2007 and 2011 were used.

Hmmm. Hourly wages in Spain may have been flat since 2007, but I don’t think they’ve actually gone up. So that means Spain’s job quality index has skyrocketed because (a) lots of temp employees have been let go, which means there’s now a higher percentage of permanent employees, and (b) social benefits have gone up because the unemployment rate is in the stratosphere.

I dunno. Does that smell like “increased job quality” to you? Me neither. Don’t get me wrong: It makes perfect sense that a reduction in job quality might help keep unemployment in check. I’m just not sure this chart demonstrates it. Spain is such an outlier that I’ll bet it drives a fair amount of this correlation, and I’m not sure I trust a job quality index that gives Spain such a high score.

I might be missing something here. I’m sure someone will let me know if I am. For now, though, I’m a little skeptical of this.

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Are Lousy Jobs Responsible for Economic Recovery?

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Mitt Romney’s Advice to College Grads: Start Having Babies as Soon as Possible

by Veta68O Posted on May 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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“Get married, have a quiver full of kids if you can.” That’s the commencement advice Mitt Romney delivered this past weekend to 110 new graduates of Southern Virginia University, a largely Mormon school near Lynchburg, Virginia, where many students volunteered with Romney’s failed presidential campaign.

Family-values talk at a Latter Day Saints school is hardly surprising, but perhaps some of Romney’s scriptural citations were. In a speech peppered with admonitions that graduates should marry and start families young, he dropped in a Biblical reference, Psalm 127, more often associated with another religious tradition: the Quiverfull movement.

In that Christian community, the verse Romney chose—”Children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them”—has become almost synonymous with an absolutist rejection of all forms of contraception or family planning, and an embrace of what believers describe as “biblical patriarchy.” Quiverfull adherents have as many children as God will allow, describe their offspring as “arrows” in a divine army, and follow rigid gender roles in the home, where men are the spiritual leaders and women the submissive helpmeets.

Though the Mormon Church is not officially anti-contraception, Romney’s use of biblical language most often associated with anti-birth control fundamentalists is consistent. For years, conservative LDS leaders have partnered with right-wing evangelicals and Catholics on precisely this sort of “pro-family” issue. In one right-wing coalition, the World Congress of Families, a Mormon think-tank leader coauthored a statement of “pro-family” principles, “The Natural Family: A Manifesto,” that echoes Romney’s language.

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Mitt Romney’s Advice to College Grads: Start Having Babies as Soon as Possible

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Life Was Riskier a Century Ago Than It Is Today

by Veta68O Posted on April 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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Karl Smith argues that the increasing stability of modern life might be making us more bubble prone:

Let’s imagine a simple model where we have two sources of risk. There is background you cannot avoid. And, there is personal risk that you create by through your own choices.

Policy makers have since Thomas Hobbes been attempting to drive down background risk. They have largely been successful. As a result our lives are getting more and more stable.

As that happens, however, folks are going to tend to take on more personal risk. There is a tradeoff between risk and reward tradeoff. As you face less background risk for which you not rewarded it makes sense to go for more personal risk for which you are rewarded.

….Said another way, attempts to prevent bubbles from forming will only make folks more complacent about bubbles. Eventually, a bubble will slip through the cracks. However, folks will deny it’s a bubble, because don’t you know, bubbles are a thing of the past. Even as it grows to massive proportions the smartest minds will argue that it only looks like a bubble. If it were a real bubble, surely the Fed would have popped it by know.

Hmmm. That flew by a little fast. Are we really so sure that as society becomes less risky in general, individuals respond by taking more personal risks? It’s certainly possible, but what’s the evidence?

Let’s think about this by looking at a different example. Liberals like to argue that strong social welfare policies encourage risk taking. One reason not to quit your job and start up a cupcake chain, for example, is that you’ll lose your big-company health insurance, thus multiplying the financial risk you’re already taking by setting out on your own. Under this theory, universal healthcare makes entrepreneurship more likely since it removes one source of catastrophic risk from your decision.

Needless to say, I like this theory. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find any evidence that it’s true. And conservatives have an entirely different view: they believe that social welfare policies breed weakness and dependence. The more that you come to depend on government to take care of you, the less likely you are to feel motivated to do anything risky.

My own suspicion is that neither of these is quite true, but what is true is that as societies become richer, people are less motivated to take personal risks. You simply have too much to lose. I’d also argue that as societies become more educated, they tend to take fewer stupid risks.

But this is a two-edged sword. People in richer societies also have better safety nets when they fail, both personal (family, friends, etc.) and government-based (bankruptcy laws, safety net programs). And while we highly educated types might take fewer obviously stupid risks, perhaps we make up for this by taking more highly sophisticated risks that only seem less stupid on the surface.

So which is it? I don’t know, and I don’t think we can figure it out by arguing from first principles. Overall, though, my intuition tells me that my personal vulnerability to other people’s risky behavior is less today than it was a hundred years ago.

In any case, I’d like to see some evidence on this score. Do rich countries tend to breed more risk taking than poor countries? Has risk taking increased over the past few centuries? How do you even measure risk taking, anyway? A Wall Street trader risking a billion dollars is obviously taking a bigger absolute risk than an Indian peasant who takes out a $100 loan to buy a bicycle, but on a personal level they might actually be about the same. So what’s the right way to calculate this?

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Life Was Riskier a Century Ago Than It Is Today

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12 Fascinating Facts About Tulips

by Veta68O Posted on April 10, 2013

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12 Fascinating Facts About Tulips

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