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Midget Nerd? Seriously?

by LavonneGrimley Posted on November 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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I guess you don’t need me to tell you about Bush 41’s opinion of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Poor Jon Meacham spent years writing a biography of Bush, and all anyone cares about is a few quotes calling people “iron-asses,” an epithet Bush applied to Rumsfeld and, apparently, the entire Cheney family. Especially Lynne.

But did Bush really call Michael Dukakis “midget nerd”? What is this, junior high school?

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Midget Nerd? Seriously?

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Obamacare Co-Op Closures: A Headache, Not a Catastrophe

by Amy3756yyoaopho Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Six years ago the Obama administration backed away from offering a public option in Obamacare. In its place, we got nonprofit co-ops. Paul Krugman was not impressed:

Let’s be clear: the supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham. That’s not just my opinion; it’s what the market says: stocks of health insurance companies soared on news that the Gang of Six senators trying to negotiate a bipartisan approach to health reform were dropping the public plan. Clearly, investors believe that co-ops would offer little real competition to private insurers.

Well, both Krugman and the market were right: co-ops never signed up all that many patients, and now they’re failing. By next year there could well be none left.

This has led to a round of breathless news reports. The failures have “handed Republicans a new weapon in their campaign against the health law.” Patients are “scrambling” to find new coverage. The closures have left behind a trail of “human wreckage.”

Fair enough, I suppose. Co-ops probably were never a good idea, and their bankruptcies really are causing a lot of grief for the people who had signed up with them. Still, in the midst of all this, it’s worth pointing out what we’re talking about:

Roughly 500,000 co-op customers will have to switch insurance plans.
That’s out of 30 million people who already switch insurance plans each year.1
And because of Obamacare, co-op customers can shop for a new plan pretty easily.

It’s not unfair to make political hay out of this, especially if you thought co-ops were a bad idea to begin with. But the bottom line is that instead of 30 million people switching plans, about 30.5 million will switch plans next year—and they’ll be able to do it more easily than they could in the past. It’s a headache, but hardly a catastrophe.

1Mostly against their will. About 68 percent are forced to switch because they changed jobs or their employer decided to change carriers. Another 16 percent switched because their plan was too expensive. Less than 10 percent switched because their new plan offered better service.

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Obamacare Co-Op Closures: A Headache, Not a Catastrophe

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Sarcasm Turns Out to Be Great Creativity Tool. You’re Welcome.

by CollettStreet Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new paper suggests that sarcasm is underrated:

Studies 1 and 2 found that both sarcasm expressers and recipients reported more conflict but also demonstrated enhanced creativity following a simulated sarcastic conversation or after recalling a sarcastic exchange.

Um, yeah. I remember that part. It’s why my boss once told me I had to give her a dollar every time I said something sarcastic. It was the best she could do since HR told her shock collars violated OSHA regulations. Anyway, onward:

Study 3 demonstrated that sarcasm’s effect on creativity for both parties was mediated by abstract thinking and generalizes across different forms of sarcasm. Finally, Study 4 found when participants expressed sarcasm toward or received sarcasm from a trusted other, creativity increased but conflict did not. We discuss sarcasm as a double-edged sword: despite its role in instigating conflict, it can also be a catalyst for creativity.

I would tell you more, but the abstract is all I have access to. Besides, I have a funny feeling that if I read the actual paper I’d find myself underwhelmed by the methodology. If you’re looking for a justification for your witty repartee—and aren’t we all?—maybe it’s best just to let things stand where they are.

Link:  

Sarcasm Turns Out to Be Great Creativity Tool. You’re Welcome.

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Trump’s Insults Are Weak, Lack Energy

by FredericStonge Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Me, yesterday, on how Donald Trump is likely to attack rising star Marco Rubio: “The obvious route for Trump is to mock Rubio’s inability to balance his own checkbook, but I’m hoping for something more original.”

Trump, today: “He is a disaster with credit cards. All you have to do is look.” And: “He certainly lives above his means — there is no question about that.”

That’s really disappointing. Trump also went after Rubio on immigration and for not showing up to vote in the Senate. Bo-o-o-o-ring.

There’s just no creativity here anymore. Remember when he called Jeb Bush “low energy”? That was great. Or that he couldn’t imagine anyone voting for Carly Fiorina’s ugly mug? Good times. It makes me wonder if Trump is really giving his all for America these days. Even the cover of his new book looks phoned in. I mean, is that supposed to be Blue Steel or Le Tigre? I can’t tell.

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Trump’s Insults Are Weak, Lack Energy

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Russia, Iran Might Be Slightly Out of Sync on Syria

by BeauBlakeley Posted on November 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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The latest on Syria:

A source close to the Russian delegation at the meeting told Asharq Al-Awsat there had been some disagreements between the Russian and Iranian delegations in Vienna regarding the fate of Assad.

“Russia is dealing with the question of the fate of the presidency in Syria from the point of view of the legitimacy of the regime. In that sense it is not insisting on particular people; it is more concerned that any transition in governance must follow international protocols and laws,” the source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said.

“Iran, on the other hand, is very insistent on Assad himself . . . because it fears losing its influence in Syria if his regime is removed.”

Is this true? Does it matter? I don’t know. I do know that I probably don’t want the United States getting into the middle of this.

Also: if I were Assad, this might make me a wee bit nervous about my partner-in-arms, Vladimir Putin. I figure Putin is helping out Syria to (a) test his military in live combat, (b) give the United States a poke in the eye, and (c) keep things quiet along his southern border. None of those things really require Assad at the helm. If someone better comes along, that might be the end of a beautiful friendship.

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Russia, Iran Might Be Slightly Out of Sync on Syria

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New Study Suggests That ADA Works Pretty Well In Job Market

by QuinnHilderbran Posted on November 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you’re a hiring manage and you’ve been getting a lot of resumes lately, this might not have anything to do with an improving economy. It might instead be due to the blizzard of academic research that’s conducted by sending out thousands of resumes with tiny differences in order to figure out how hiring managers respond to race/college/political party/hobbies/etc. The latest experiment is to see how hiring managers respond to disabilities, and the results are more interesting than you might think. Here are the basic results:

No surprise here. If you indicate that you have any kind of disability, there’s less interest in hiring you, and these results are consistent across all sizes of companies—though they’re more pronounced in small companies—and across both private-sector and public-sector employers. But now take a look at this:

When it comes to getting an actual callback, small companies are far less likely to respond if you have a disability. But larger companies show little discrimination at all. In fact, many of them are more likely to call you back if you have a disability. The most dramatic difference is among government hiring managers: if you don’t have a disability, no callback. If you do have a disability, the rate of callbacks is the highest in the study. The authors provide the most obvious explanation:

Given that small employers are not subject to the ADA, this result suggests that small employers are engaging in discrimination while the ADA is constraining discriminatory behavior of medium and large employers. The story is complicated, however, by the lack of clear changes in employer responses at the ADA employment threshold…and by consideration of state DDL’s….This latter result may be due to a lack of knowledge of state laws among small employers, while the federal ADA is much better known. Large employers are more likely to have formal HR departments that will be aware of both the ADA and state requirements, and may be more likely to have prior experience in hiring people with disabilities so they are more comfortable in considering applicants with disabilities.

So the picture is complicated, but the most likely interpretation is that ADA has been fairly successful in the job market. If you pass a law that forbids discrimination, and then enforce it, you get results. It’s yet another example of big government working pretty well.

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New Study Suggests That ADA Works Pretty Well In Job Market

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Republican Candidates Agree on List of Debate Demands

by RusselProby Posted on November 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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After last week’s CNBC fiasco, Republican candidates for president are meeting tonight to discuss their conditions for participating in future debates. A source with one of the campaigns has been texting me from inside the meeting with a list of their demands:

  1. There will be no “gotcha” questions about math.
  2. All graphics that appear beside candidates must be approved by the campaign.
  3. There will be a ten-minute break halfway through the debate.
  4. Each candidate will be allowed to phone a friend for one question.
  5. All 14 candidates will be allowed on the main stage. At the end of each 15-minute period, candidates will vote one participant out of the debate. In the final round, the seven remaining candidates will get to ask the moderators questions.
  6. No non-English speaking networks will be allowed to participate.
  7. Each podium will include the candidate’s website address in a minimum of 3-inch type.
  8. Male moderators must wear red ties.
  9. Each campaign will be allowed to veto a maximum of two moderators each.
  10. Fox News will be exempt from all these rules.
  11. Candidates can “steal” a question from another candidate once per debate.
  12. Frank Luntz “dial” responses will be run across the screen in real time.

Three of these are real and have been seriously discussed. Can you guess which ones? Answer here.

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Republican Candidates Agree on List of Debate Demands

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Marijuana for Millionaires

by JorjaHartigan Posted on November 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday a friend emailed to ask if I had any thoughts about Ohio’s Issue 3, which would fully legalize marijuana cultivation and sale in the state. Ohio? I barely pay attention to California, let alone Ohio.

But Issue 3 turns out to be surprisingly fascinating—or venal and repellent, depending on your tolerance for sleaze. Apparently one of the authors of the initiative came across a Rand report on marijuana written by a bevy of drug-policy worthies, and it offered up a dozen possible options for legalization. One of them is called “structured oligopoly”:

It is natural to ask whether there is some way to get for-profit businesses to behave in the public interest. The answer is “Perhaps.”

….States might prefer [] to offer only a limited number of licenses, creating artificial scarcity that makes the licenses valuable—valuable enough that firms will have a strong incentive to cooperate with regulators rather than risk revocation….Limiting the number of licensees also makes monitoring their behavior easier. A rogue company could more easily break the rules if it were one of 1,000 licensees than if it were one of just ten.

….So a structured-oligopoly strategy might involve licensing a limited number of firms, monitoring them closely, and not being shy about rescinding a firm’s license if it behaves in ways contrary to the public interest.

This might not be your cup of tea, but let’s stipulate that it has some potential. How would you distribute these licenses? The straightforward approach is to auction them off for set periods. Unfortunately, this has a big drawback: it maximizes the payment for licenses, and thus minimizes the profit of the oligopolists. This is obviously vexing.

So how about this instead? Pick out ten rich friends. Each is required to put up $2 million to help pass a ballot initiative. In return, you promise to write the names of the investors directly into the initiative, giving them a perpetual and exclusive right to grow marijuana in the state of Ohio.1 In addition, you write a special, unalterable flat tax rate into the law, as well as a minuscule annual licensing fee. Now that’s an oligopoly you can believe in! Keith Humphreys, who brought this to my attention, has a few comments:

It has taken the alcohol industry decades of lobbying to roll back many of the restrictive, public health-oriented regulations established after the end of Prohibition. Booze industry executives must look with envy upon the emerging marijuana industry, which can use the ballot initiative process to achieve complete regulatory capture from day one.

….No one should be surprised that in a country with an entrepreneurial culture, a commitment to free markets, and a political system highly attuned to corporate donations, legalized marijuana would develop a significant corporate presence. Indeed, many drug policy analysts, including me, expected this to happen eventually. But the rate at which the change is happening is truly startling, and will become even more so if the Ohio initiative passes.

If the marijuana industry ends up being a clone of the tobacco industry, will legalization supporters experience buyers’ remorse? It depends who you ask.

Well, you could ask me. I don’t care what they’re legalizing. This stinks. It’s crony capitalism without even a veneer of decency, and if it applied to anything else nobody would have the gall to ever let it see the light of day. If this is the price of pot legalization, count me out.

1Technically, no names are actually in the initiative. Instead, it limits marijuana cultivation to ten specific parcels of land that are owned by the ten investors. Also, individuals are allowed to cultivate small amounts for their own recreational use if they get a license.

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Marijuana for Millionaires

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Carly Fiorina Has Found a New Dedication to the Truth. Let’s Help Her Out.

by DemetriusWhitela Posted on November 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Good news! Carly Fiorina has turned over a new leaf and now admits that she was mistaken to say that 92 percent of the jobs lost under President Obama belonged to women:

“The fact-checkers are correct,” she said….Fiorina then criticized the “liberal media” for picking apart the statistic rather than her broader argument, which was that liberal polices are bad for women economically.

“It is factually true that the number of women living in extreme poverty is at the highest rate in recorded history,” she said. “It is factually true that 16.1 percent of women live below the poverty line, the highest level in 20 years. It is factually true that 3 million women have fallen into poverty.”

This is good news for fans of factually correct statistics. And Fiorina got all of her facts right! Still, since liberal media shill Martha Raddatz1 decided not to investigate any of these facts further, I’ll go ahead and make a few wee points myself:

Fiorina only looked at the women’s poverty rate for the past 20 years. Why? Because the highest levels ever were in 1982, under Ronald Reagan, and 1992, under George H.W. Bush.
It’s true that the absolute number of women in poverty is at its highest level ever. Needless to say, this is only because the population is bigger than it was under Reagan and Bush.
The current rate of women in poverty is indeed 16.1 percent according to the Census Bureau. Does this mean that liberal policies are bad for women? Well, that number went up 3 percent during George W. Bush’s term and has (so far) gone down 0.2 percent during Barack Obama’s term. I report, you decide.2

Since Fiorina is now dedicated to getting her facts straight, I figured she’d appreciate this clarification. You’re welcome, Carly.

1You may recall her as the moderator of the vice-presidential debate in 2012, during which she pummeled Paul Ryan over and over about his fantasy budget math.

2But in case you’re having trouble deciding, the basic answer here is that poverty goes up during recessions and goes down during economic expansions. The only exceptions to this rule are under George H.W. Bush, who saw an increase starting in 1989, and George W. Bush, who oversaw in increase starting in 2006.

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Carly Fiorina Has Found a New Dedication to the Truth. Let’s Help Her Out.

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Want a Safer City? Keep Daylight Savings Time Year Round!

by EleanoreTenney4 Posted on October 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Tonight we bid sadly adieu to daylight savings time. That means this is also the time of year for a spate of stories about whether daylight savings time makes sense. Sure, you get more daylight, which cuts down on lighting bills, but it’s colder in the morning, which increases heating bills. But wait! There’s more time for golf, and that helps the economy. Etc. Economists have conducted ever more sophisticated natural experiments about this, and the ultimate answer is….meh. Maybe it’s a tiny economic benefit, maybe it’s a tiny economic loss. Who knows?

But now we have a new study. The authors ditch the whole economic benefit argument and instead justify DST based on lower crime rates:

They found that “when DST begins in the spring, robbery rates for the entire day fall an average of 7 percent, with a much larger 27 percent drop during the evening hour that gained some extra sunlight.” The mechanism that might cause this drop is fairly simple: “Most street crime occurs in the evening around common commuting hours of 5 to 8 PM,” the authors write, “and more ambient light during typical high-crime hours makes it easier for victims and passers-by to see potential threats and later identify wrongdoers.”

Moreover, according to the paper, the drop in crime during evening hours wasn’t accompanied by a rise in crime during the morning hours. Criminals aren’t morning people, as it turns out. In addition to the decrease in robbery rates, the researchers found “suggestive evidence” of a decrease in the incidence of rape during the evening hours, as well.

The authors do provide an estimate of the economic benefit of this reduction in crime, and they peg it at several billion dollars per year. They’re economists, after all, so I guess they feel obligated.

But forget that. The DST haters will just come up with some reason why making kids wait for the school bus in the dark costs several billion dollars. Nobody will ever win this game. Instead, just focus on the crime. Everybody wants less crime, and the anti-DST forces are never going to come up with an answer to this. What kind of crime could possible go up because of daylight savings time? White collar theft?

So we win! Assuming “we” are all the righteous lovers of year-round DST. More daylight savings time, less crime. It’s a winner.

Continued:  

Want a Safer City? Keep Daylight Savings Time Year Round!

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