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Did Obamacare Wreck a Baseball Game?

by HwaCopewic Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

A few days ago, a Chicago Cubs game was called in the fifth inning after the grounds crew had so much trouble spreading a tarp that the field got soaked during a rain delay and play couldn’t be continued. The Corner reveals what really happened:

Insiders at the ball club report that the real culprit is Obamacare. Because the Affordable Care Act requires offering health benefits to employees who work more than 130 hours per month or 30 hours a week (“full time”), the Cubs organization reorganized much of its staff during the off-season. Sources that spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times claimed that, on Tuesday night, the crew was drastically “undermanned.”

Huh. What do you think of that, Dean Baker?

The problem with this story is that employer sanctions are not in effect for 2014. In other words, the Cubs will not be penalized for not providing their ground crew with insurance this year even if they work more than 30 hours per week. Apparently the Cubs management has not been paying attention to the ACA rules. This is yet another example of the skills gap that is preventing managers from operating their businesses effectively.

Quite so. My guess is that this is just another installment in the long-running effort of American corporations to use Obamacare as a scapegoat for everything under the sun. Usually this has to do with raising copays for their employees or something like that, but the ingenuity of American capitalism knows no bounds. Why not blame a rain delay on Obamacare too?

For a more likely cause of penny pinching on the grounds crew, the Wall Street Journal has you covered.

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Did Obamacare Wreck a Baseball Game?

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In Ferguson, Cops Hand Out Three Warrants Per Household Every Year

by Reyna8421h Posted on August 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Alex Tabarrok comments on the rather remarkable caseload of Ferguson’s municipal court:

You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.”

If you have money, for example, you can easily get a speeding ticket converted to a non-moving violation. But if you don’t have money it’s often the start of a downward spiral that is hard to pull out of….If you are arrested and jailed you will probably lose your job and perhaps also your apartment—all because of a speeding ticket.

We’ve all seen a number of stories like this recently, and it prompts a question: why are police departments allowed to fund themselves with ticket revenue in the first place? Or red light camera revenue. Or civil asset forfeiture revenue. Or any other kind of revenue that provides them with an incentive to be as hardass as possible. Am I missing something when I think that this makes no sense at all?

This is sort of a genuine question. I know these policies are common, but where did they come from? Are they deliberate, created by politicians who like the idea of giving their local cops an incentive to get tough? Were they mostly the idea of police departments themselves, who figured the revenue from fines would provide a net boost in their annual funding? Or did they just accrete over time, popping up whenever there was a budget crisis and then never going away?

Does anyone know?

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In Ferguson, Cops Hand Out Three Warrants Per Household Every Year

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Marijuana Legalization Seems to Be Working Out….So Far

by MiloTQBHoozqo Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here are a few typical headlines I’ve seen recently about Colorado’s legalization of marijuana:

Washington Post: Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows

Vox: Marijuana legalization didn’t stop Colorado’s decade-long decline in teen pot use

HuffPo: If Legalizing Marijuana Was Supposed To Cause More Crime, It’s Not Doing A Very Good Job

There’s a phrase missing from all of these: “so far.” I hope that pot legalization turns out great and every other state eventually follows the lead of Colorado and Washington. But honestly folks, it’s early days yet. Legalization almost certainly has long-term dynamics and feedback effects that we simply won’t know about for years. What happens during the first few months is all but meaningless. Even if the stories themselves are more nuanced, this ought to be reflected in the headlines too.

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Marijuana Legalization Seems to Be Working Out….So Far

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Notes Toward a Heuristic of Express Lane Ethics

by KarolinBradbury Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at Vox, Andrew Prokop summarizes a new poll about Americans’ ethical views. Here’s one result:

The US public is staunchly opposed to the apparently widespread problem of supermarket express lane abuse, with a clear majority saying they think multiple pieces of the same fruit should count as multiple items. Strangely, though, 20 percent of respondents apparently think there should be different rules for different shoppers.

OK, that is strange. Why should there be different rules for different shoppers? Is the idea here that we should bend the rules for the elderly or the infirm? Or for pregnant women? Or what?

As for fruit, it depends, doesn’t it? Surely a bunch of bananas still counts as one item? Or tomatoes on the vine? (Which I love because I adore the aroma of the vine.) How about two bunches of bananas? Does it make a difference if stuff is in a bag? Five apples in a plastic bag gets weighed as one item, whereas five apples rolling around in your basket have to be placed on the scale individually before the whole bunch of them gets weighed. Does that matter? Help me out here, hive mind.

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Notes Toward a Heuristic of Express Lane Ethics

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Friday Cat Blogging – 1 August 2014

by OVZBerndwnfro Posted on August 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Domino’s new favorite snoozing spot is the closet in our master bedroom. Naturally, knowing that everyone would want to be kept up to date on this development, I took a picture. Unfortunately, it turns out that cameras need a stream of photons to work properly, and the inside of a closet doesn’t have many. So all I got were a bunch of black blurs. Soon enough, though, Domino saw the camera and came out. So I followed her over to the water dish, and eventually took a picture there. Even with plenty of help from Mr. Photoshop, however, it wasn’t very good either. So I waited. Eventually, Domino went back into the closet and curled up, and this time I took some pictures with the flash.

Which picture to use? I hate flash pictures. I especially hate them when they basically lie—making a dark closet look brightly lit, for example. But the other picture was pretty lousy. Decisions, decisions. In the end, I opt for lousy but honest. Let’s call it “Still Life With Two Cats” just to make it seem a little more refined. Like Domino.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 1 August 2014

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Should Pundits Apologize More Often?

by FletcheDriscoll Posted on August 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Dan Drezner:

One norm I’d really like to see emerge is pundits admitting error and apologizing when they get things wrong, and Frum did that. But I’m curious what other norms, if any, should be strengthened among the pontificating class.

I’d dissent slightly from this. Should pundits do a better job of admitting when they get things wrong? Sure. Who can argue with that? But should they apologize? I’m not so sure. Being wrong isn’t a sin, after all, especially for someone in the business of offering up opinions. I’d be happy to see a bit more self-reflection about what caused the error, but there’s no need for an apology.

Now, Drezner wrote this in the context of David Frum’s allegation that a New York Times photo had been faked, which turned out to be untrue. This is obviously a case that calls for an apology since Frum accused someone of wrongdoing. But that’s a bit different from simply being wrong in an analytic or predictive way. That kind of error, as long as it’s honest, deserves some reflection, but not an apology.

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Should Pundits Apologize More Often?

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Yes, the CIA Spied on the Senate

by Jeff Peterson Posted on July 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Earlier this year, CIA Director John Brennan accused staffers from the Senate Intelligence Committee of removing classified material from the CIA office where they were researching a report on the agency’s use of torture during the Bush administration. This turned out to be very poor tradecraft on Brennan’s part, since it implicitly revealed the fact that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers even though it wasn’t supposed to. Brennan tried to mount a suitably aggressive counterattack to Senate outrage over this, but today it all came crashing down:

CIA employees improperly accessed computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a report on the agency’s now defunct detention and interrogation program, an internal CIA investigation has determined.

….The statement represented an admission to charges by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the computers her staff used to compile the soon-to-be released report on the agency’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons during the Bush administration.

CIA Director John Brennan briefed Feinstein and the committee’s vice chairman, Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, on the CIA inspector general’s findings and apologized to them during a meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Boyd said.

I find that my reaction remains one of schadenfreude. Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the Intelligence Committee seem to be mostly unconcerned with the omnipresent surveillance apparatus constructed by the US intelligence committee, so it’s hard to feel very sorry for them when they learn that this apparatus is also sometimes directed at Senate staffers. If this affair had persuaded a few senators that maybe our intelligence chiefs are less than totally honest about what they do, it might have done some good. But it doesn’t seem to have done that. With only a few exceptions, they’re outraged when the CIA spies on them, but that’s about it.

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Yes, the CIA Spied on the Senate

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An Awful Lot of People Think Obama Is Bored With Being President

by JanisDitter Posted on July 30, 2014

Mother Jones

You have to give the Fox News polling operation credit for mixing things up in an interesting way sometimes. At first glance, their latest poll is just a collection of all the usual leading questions about Obama busting up the Constitution, Obama being a loser compared to Vladimir Putin, Obama being incompetent, etc. etc. This is mostly yawn-worthy stuff intended as fodder for their anchors. All that’s missing is a question about whether Obama plays too much golf. But then there’s this:

Who else would think to ask a question like that? But it’s kind of fascinating, really. And what’s most fascinating is that it’s barely partisan at all. In virtually every group, something like 40 percent of the respondents think Obama is bored with the whole presidenting thing. That goes for Democrats as well as Republicans; for blacks as well as whites; for the rich as well as the poor; and for liberals as well as conservatives. It’s not quite a majority in any group—though it’s pretty close among Hispanics and senior citizens—but an awful lot of people sure are convinced that Obama has already checked out of the Oval Office. He might want to do something about that.

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An Awful Lot of People Think Obama Is Bored With Being President

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GDP Increases At a Smart 4.0% Rate in Second Quarter

by Sanora5810 Posted on July 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s something that counts as good news: GDP increased in the second quarter at an annual rate of 4.0 percent. At the same time, the first quarter numbers were revised to a slightly less horrible -2.1 percent growth rate. This means, roughly speaking, that the economy has grown about 1.9 percent over the first half of the year.

Now, this is obviously nothing to write home about. A growth rate of 1 percent per quarter is pretty anemic. Still, it’s better than expectations after the terrible Q1 numbers, and the rebound in Q2 suggests there really was some make-up growth. A fair amount of this growth came from inventory build-up, which is normally a reason for caution, but after two previous quarters of inventory decline it’s probably not the warning sign it might otherwise be.

All in all, this is decent news. It’s still not possible to say that the economy is roaring along or anything, but the Q1 number now looks like it really was an anomaly. Slowly and sluggishly, the economy is continuing to recover for the ~95 percent of us who haven’t been unemployed for months or who haven’t given up and exited the labor force entirely. For those people, economic growth is still slow enough to leave them behind. One good quarter is nice, but we still have a lot of work to do.

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GDP Increases At a Smart 4.0% Rate in Second Quarter

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A Question About Botched Executions

by CandiceKuefer Posted on July 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’m reluctant to ask a question that may strike some people as too cavalier for a subject that deserves only serious treatment. But after yesterday’s botched execution in Arizona—the latest of several—I continue to wonder: why is it so damn hard to execute people?

For starters, there are plenty of time-tested approaches: guillotines, firing squads, hanging, electrocution, gas chambers, etc. Did those really fall out of favor because people found them too grisly? Personally, I find the sterile, Mengele-like method of lethal injection considerably more disturbing than any of the others. And anyway, if you’re bound and determined to kill people, maybe you ought to face up to a little bit of grisly.

Beyond that, is it really so hard to find a lethal injection that works? Obviously I’m not a doctor, but I do know that there are plenty of meds that will very reliably knock you unconscious. And once you’ve done that, surely there are plenty of poisons to choose from? Or even asphyxiation: place a helium mask over the unconscious prisoner and he’ll be painlessly dead in about ten minutes or less.

Can anyone point me to a readable but fairly comprehensive history of executions over the past few decades? When and why did lethal injection become the method of choice? Why does there seem to be only one particular cocktail that works effectively? Lots of people have asked the same questions I’m asking, but nothing I’ve ever read really seems to explain it adequately.

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A Question About Botched Executions

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