Monday, October 14, 2024
"It's The Economy Stupid"...Or Is It?
Democracies, Republics and Elections, Oh My
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Let the States Decide?
There has always been a tension in the United States between the ideal of local control and the reality that we are all citizens of one nation. Rural people often complain about the hypothetical big city voters who is "telling them what to do". Residents in small states point out how "they're not California". I'll agree that some things should be left up to local citizens. Some things.
I'll concede that there's often regulations that come out of the federal, or even state, government that do not adequately take into account the facts on the ground. Environmental regulations, safety regulations, you name it. Regulators and elected officials default to a one-size-fits-all approach to law-making. They seldom think through the consequences or downstream effects of their decisions. An example in my own experience as a state government employee involves remote work. In 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic, most state employees were allowed to work from home. When the danger was largely past, our agency head decided to extend the ability of many employees to work from home, leaving the ultimate decision to his managers who knew the situation best. Then we got a new governor whose personal experience informed him that in-person work was more effective an efficient that remote work. Remote work ended, despite evidence that most employees were more productive working from home at least part of the time. One-size-fits-all. In this example the governor should have allowed the work arrangement to be molded to the needs and productivity of the work groups and the individuals involved rather than having one rule across the board. Many government regulations are like this - a standard that doesn't fit that multitude of situations across the country.
This should absolutely not apply to rights.
The right of a woman to control her own body should not depend on what side of a state border she lives on. Rights that are enshrined in the Constitution do not change when you move from one state to another, why do we think that other rights do? Let's not forget that for fifty years a woman's right to control her own body was considered a Constitutional right! Not only should rights not depend on where you live, they shouldn't subject to being taken away when a partisan, religiously motivated majority takes control of the Supreme Court.
And what is meant by "let the states decide"?
Usually it means "let the legislature decide". There's multiple problems with this. Most obvious is the issue of gerrymandering. There are a number of states where statewide elections are often won by Democrats, but the legislature is composed of a majority of Republicans, sometimes with a veto-proof majority. So you have situations where the majority of voters choose Democrats (who usually support abortion rights) but Republicans (who usually support abortions restrictions or bans) are elected. In addition to this, most people are not one-issue voters. Republicans who are elected for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with abortion will, once elected, push for abortion restrictions even though the majority of the electorate, including some of their own supporters, favor abortion access. My own state of Nebraska is a good example. Polling consistently shows that 50% or more of Nebraskans favor access to abortion, but since Nebraskans have elected a majority of legislators who support abortion restrictions, that's what gets passed in the legislature. Many of those 50% however live in districts where they are the minority.
In any state so far that put abortion rights on the ballot, the measure has passed, even in "red" states where the legislature and executive had attempted to impose restrictions. There are several states with referenda on the ballot next month, including Nebraska (although in Nebraska there are two - one for and one against - pay attention to what you're voting for!). In Nebraska there have been attempts to remove the issue from the ballot, and hopefully the pro-Choice measure will prevail, but fundamental rights should never be subject to a vote.
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Inflation
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Confession: I Have Voted for Republicans
Republican platforms used to emphasize fiscal responsibility, limited government, a strong military (with strong international alliances), and free trade. While taken to extremes, all of these positions could be harmful. Government is not a business where profit is the prime motivator. Government cannot be so limited that we're run by oligarchs. Regulations are necessary to protect those who are not part of the 1%. Free trade cannot be an excuse to abuse workers or eviscerate unions. But they are also, in theory, good policies when balanced by social programs, investment in infrastructure, reasonable regulation and worker's rights. Republicans of the past, while tending to be conservative, were also willing to work with Democrats and come to compromises, balanced approaches to governance. Republicans and Democrats at the state and local level were often indistinguishable from each other. A mayor or a governor was focused more on strictly local concerns and not their fealty to a president or other national figure.
I still think some conservative principles make for good government. Fiscal concerns need to balance our desire to solve society's problems - you can't just throw money at everything thinking money will solve everything. I believe a strong military is essential, although I also believe we should be more circumspect about when we get involved in other countries' problems. In general I support free trade without a lot of barriers like tariffs, which often accomplish nothing other than raising prices for consumers - protectionist policies should be reserved for circumstances where foreign businesses are truly attacking ours.
But there's really not a choice any longer. Any possible pros of Republican governance are swamped by the cons of not only their cultish devotion to Losin' Don, but the party's transformation into a vehicle for mindlessly attacking anything progressive or liberal. The flip side of that is that any liberal Democratic positions that I am uncomfortable with are immaterial compared to the horrors of incipient fascism that the Republicans represent.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Opinions vs. Facts
There are some things that are objectively true no matter whether you agree with them or not, and there are things that are subjective, a matter of opinion. That ubiquity of social media has convinced many of us that all information is of equal value and truth is determined by what our opinion about the information is.
Like it or not, what constitutes a fact in some realms is determined by experts. There are many areas in which I am incompetent to render an opinion - medicine, and it's subcategories of epidemiology and virology among them. I am happy to defer to my primary care physician for most medical situations, and to the CDC and other boards of experts in matters of pandemics. Can the experts, in medical science or any other field, be wrong? Of course. Science, in every category, advances and learns as time goes on, unfortunately, sometimes from its mistakes. But the response to the possibility that an expert might be wrong is not to reflexively and mindlessly disregard anything an expert tells you simply because they are an expert. Just because the answer might seem counter-intuitive to a non-expert, or involve discomfort or inconvenience doesn't mean that it's wrong. Surfing the internet looking for some crackpot to validate your ill-informed opinion is unlikely to yield any real answers either.
The thing about deferring to professionals, whether they are scientists with advanced degrees and a track record of results, or seasoned reporters working for established news agencies, or economists who understand the interplay of the myriad variables that make up our economy, is that we know who they are. We can check their reputations without necessarily understanding fully their field of expertise. Professionals will check their sources, make sure that their results can be duplicated, verify their math and underlying assumptions, before making an unequivocal statement. The non-professionals, be they bloggers, or podcasters, or some Bubba with a Twitter/X account can say anything. If they have a large enough following then the unsourced rumor that they just started is going to sprint around the globe multiple times before the truth can get its shoes laced up. I put politicians firmly in the camp of non-professional, by the way.
The "stealing and eating cats and dogs" in Springfield Ohio rumor is a textbook example. One person posted about it on Facebook, only to later recant and take her post down. There was one police call (months ago) about a missing cat (which soon after turned up). The Facebook post was shared, it was picked up on X, people who themselves did not having a missing pet showed up at a City Council meeting to complain about immigrants stealing and eating pets. A candidate for the presidency repeated the rumor during the debate and was quickly fact-checked and corrected, which caused all the believers in this rumor to double down. Photos were shared, not of immigrants in Springfield stealing and eating pets, but of a mentally ill American woman in another Ohio city killing a cat and possibly eating it; a photo, also in another city, of man carrying a goose, which as it later turned out, he was picking up off the road after it had been run down. No actual evidence that immigrants are stealing and killing pets has surfaced, yet the believers are not dissuaded one bit. On social media platforms you'll often hear the phrase "the mainstream media isn't reporting this" - usually the reason is that it isn't happening. Long established reputable news organizations aren't know for publishing unverified rumors and the CDC isn't going to recommend that you inject disinfectant.
Does this mean that everything that you see on social media is wrong? Of course not. But finding the truth in a given situation takes more than scrolling through Musk's online junkyard and searching for something that "makes sense" to you and fits with your preconceived view of the world. In my observation most of what I see posted on X is nothing but opinion. Occasionally there's a well researched and thought-through analysis (some that make me reconsider my opinion on the matter) but usually it's just someone screaming into the ether.
A tactic that I see fairly often is a tweet with a photo or video clip attached where the tweet describes the attached image at odds with the image itself. A recent example showed First Lady Jill Biden at a cabinet meeting. One tweet claimed that she was "sitting in" for President Biden others claimed she was running the cabinet meeting and pointed out that she was sitting at the head of the table. This of course spurred a lot of outrage for MAGA world, where they all assumed that Dr. Biden was pulling an Edith Wilson. But a glance at the photo would reveal that President Biden was there and was sitting in the seat where presidents traditionally sat (center of the long side of the table, on the right in this photo, in front of the flags) and Dr. Biden was a guest addressing the cabinet.
Mainstream media has its own biases, the experts sometimes get it wrong, but looking to X for truth is idiotic.
Friday, September 13, 2024
The Trump-Harris Debate
The debate between former President Trump and President Biden, was short on substance as usual. Biden presented his ideas and policies and mostly answered the questions, but he did so in such a halting manner, appearing confused and befuddled, and once even trailed off into unintelligible mumbles. All Trump had to do was stand up straight and speak in a confident tone and he appeared to be the stronger candidate. It brought focus to a situation which many Democrats had long feared: that Biden was not mentally and physically able to effectively campaign. (Whether he can still effectively lead for the remainder of his term is an open question). So the Democrats closed ranks and united behind Vice President Harris.
From the time it was clear that she would be the replacement nominee to the day of the debate Harris was written off as a weak candidate. That she had no accomplishments, that she was a "DEI Hire", that she was unintelligent, that she was incoherent when she spoke and had no plans. All of that was put to rest on Tuesday night.
I'm going to concede that she could have more clearly answered some of the questions. But I'll give any politician a pass if answering a question about a mistake is a no-win scenario. In a perfect world I'd like to see our elected office holders come clean when they erred, but what happens in reality is that the mea culpa becomes an out-of-context clip or meme that is used to attack them. For example, former Speaker of the House Pelosi has recently said that she takes responsibility for the events of January 6th, not because she actually did anything wrong, or incited the rioters, but because she was taking a "the buck stops here" position due to her position as Speaker. Right wing trolls have used this brief quote to claim that Pelosi was the instigator of the attempted overturning of an election. Harris addressed some of the questions aimed at her weaknesses and did as well as anyone - what she didn't do was attack the moderators for asking, calling them "nasty" and losing her temper. About the only time she got even a little bit rattled was when she talked about her change of position on fracking.
MAGA world is accusing her of lying throughout, but most of what they are calling lies, might be misleading or out of context.
- The Trump National Sales Tax: Trump isn't proposing a national sales tax per se, but Harris is saying that his huge tariffs increases as effectively a tax increase since they will be levied on sales
- Trump supports Project 2025: Trump has specifically disavowed the plan, but many of his own proposals are mirrored in Project 2025, and in general they are not that different
- Trump calls for a bloodbath if he loses: Trump used the term "bloodbath" to describe the state of the auto industry if he lost in November
- Trump will sign a national abortion ban: Trump says he won't, his VP pick, Vance, says he will. Trump has been all over the map on abortion, but he did very specifically nominate 3 avowedly anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court