Monthly Archives: July 2020

When then-candidate Trump spoke of emptying the swamp, we hadn’t yet caught on to his habit of projection. Heather Cox Richardson has a lovely summary of an exotic addition to the Trumpian Swamp:

It was [Attorney General William] Barr’s father, Donald Barr, the headmaster of the prestigious Dalton School in New York City, who launched Epstein, hiring the 20-year-old math whiz and college dropout Epstein to teach high school calculus and physics. It was a student’s father who gave him a start in the more lucrative profession of options trading.

She doesn’t give a source, though. But it sure seems to be a coterie of corruption in the White House these days, doesn’t it?

Later: And especially ironic, given Barr’s speech to a Notre Dame audience where he accuses militant secularists of destroying society.

From The Lincoln Project:

Wow. The rapid change in scenes really knocks the senses reeling, doesn’t it? And the Russian narration is quite menacing.

… insert appropriate tune above …

A friend posted this to Facebook:

STOP HATE FOR PROFIT

Advertisers are taking a break from advertising on Facebook, I’m going to do my part by being on Facebook less. A lot less. That’s fewer ads that Facebook can put in front of me and charge companies for.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1. Spend less time on Facebook and Instagram
2. DON’T click on any ads you see on Facebook or Instagram
3. Don’t purchase from companies that still advertise on Facebook or Instagram

https://www.stophateforprofit.org/

Just as I was considering this piece by WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin concerning how the behavior of the companies behind the various social media patterns should, and is beginning, to change:

Tech companies might finally see the handwriting on the wall. Reddit, one of the least-moderated platforms, has already had a change of heart. Banning a group with nearly 800,000 subscribers that became a haven for “racism, violent threats and targeted harassment,” Reddit’s chief executive, Steve Huffman, is now committed to eliminating hate speech. Other tech companies should follow his lead. Before the government or advertisers impose rules upon them that would undermine their business model or affect their content, it would behoove them to end the hostility toward outside criticism. Unless they adopt a collaborative approach that results in more self-regulation, they risk losing their biggest advertisers, becoming social pariahs and seeing the government begin to regulate micro-targeting and use of personal data. In other words, if they don’t clean up their act, they might see their business model collapse.

Given Rubin’s rational^[1] conservative credentials, it’s a little surprising that she doesn’t place greater emphasis on the power of the consumer in this situation. If half the users of Facebook simply refused to click on ads – a practice that I personally denigrate and refuse to do – the change in habit would be swiftly reflected in marketing analytics, followed by the dropping of advertising rates by Facebook, or the abandonment of the platform by the advertisers.

Connecting this with Facebook’s refusal to fact-check all forms of political advertising should bring to the fore their anti-social qualities, and that they should be corrected at once. If we’re to be faced with company CEOs who worship the dollar like Zuckerberg and many of these others do, as testimony to the design of these platforms seems to indicate, then it’s necessary to hit them right in those pocketbooks.

But this may be a defining characteristic of non-specific social media companies: a vulnerability to both consumer and advertiser pressure. They must have consumers to attract advertisers and thus revenue; they must keep advertisers convinced that they are an honorable platform, especially as at least some corporate citizens are beginning to shift from the model of Let’s make money! to being actually good citizens.

They may perceive that if they make this or that change in response to complaints, they may lose some group such as, for instance, white supremacists. The trick is to realize that these small groups will not critically damage their profitability by their absence, and indeed may advance it – and improve society by reinforcing societal disapproval.

¹ It’s sad that the corruption of the word conservative has become so universal that I feel it necessary to prefix conservative with a modifier to indicate my judgment of someone who, in a more sane world, would simply qualify as a conservative —  temperamentally skeptical of change, but open to being convinced on persuasive argument. I have several of those sorts of friends.

Longitudinal:

What Is Longitudinal Data?

Longitudinal data, sometimes called panel data, is a data that is collected through a series of repeated observations of the same subjects over some extended time frame – and is useful for measuring change. Longitudinal data effectively follows the same sample over time, which differs fundamentally from cross-sectional data because it follows the same subjects over some time, while cross-sectional data samples different subjects (whether individuals, firms, countries, or regions) at each point in time. Meanwhile, a cross-sectional data set will always draw a new random sample.

Longitudinal data is used widely in the social sciences, including among economists, political scientists, and sociologists. [Investopedia]

Noted in “Tech companies are finally being shamed into action,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

A new study is out that looks at how tax burdens are distributed racially, and comes to a discouraging conclusion:

In the United States, the residential property tax is an ad valorem tax. The amount levied should be proportional to the value of the home. Authorizing legislation regularly makes explicit that the relevant concept of value is the market price of the property in a fair transaction. Property tax bills, however, are generated by applying the locally determined rate of taxation to an assessed value, which is a local official’s projection of market price. Any wedge between market values and assessed values, therefore, generates some deviation from the intended rate of taxation. Equitable property tax administration requires the ratio of assessed value to market value to be the same for all residents within any particular taxing jurisdiction. This paper documents the existence of a widespread and large racial assessment gap: relative to market value, assessed values are significantly higher for minority residents. This assessment gap places a disproportionate fiscal burden on minority residents: within the same tax jurisdiction, black and Hispanic residents bear a 10–13% higher property tax burden than white residents. …

We show the assessment gap cannot be explained by racial or ethnic differences in realized market prices, nor is it simply a byproduct of racial wealth differences and the previously documented propensity for assessment ratios to be regressive (Baar 1981, Black 1977, Engle 1975, McMillen and Weber 2008, Paglin and Fogarty 1972). As a result of the assessment gap, minority residents are therefore paying a significantly larger effective property tax rate for the same bundle of public services. For the median minority homeowner, the differential burden is an extra $300–390 annually. This finding is strongly robust across most states in the U.S. We produce county-level estimates to characterize the distribution of this assessment gap. The average black homeowner in a county at the 90th percentile of the assessment gap distribution has a 27% higher assessment ratio, and would pay an extra $790 annually in property tax.

Researchers Avenancio-León and Howard go on to explain that this is a problem with assessors – not that they’re racist, but that the assumptions they work off of only applies to predominantly white communities, or so how I read this; the assessed values for housing in black communities appears to be consistently higher than they should be, and so taxes based on such assessments – which I think is virtually universal – come in too high.

Kevin Drum characterizes the situation:

This is a good example of structural racism. The mechanisms at work here are not necessarily due to personal racism since, as the authors note, “most assessors likely neither know, nor observe, homeowner race.” Rather, it’s been built into the property tax system for decades and has become nearly invisible. But invisible doesn’t mean nonexistent. Even if it’s not easy to see, it’s still there.

And, because something like this requires careful data collection and analysis, any fool barroom blowhard will simply deny its existence. That’s the result of having a disdain for scholarship and science, and a touch of arrogance.

But the racism, whether low-level, and thus in doubt for those who aren’t paying attention, or the overt, such as this young lady so vividly enumerates, serves to beat down the black community when it comes to redress:

The second mechanism is more speculative, but the authors suggest that it has to do with appeals: Black families are less likely to appeal their assessments, and less likely to win an appeal if they do. [Drum]

So if you’re not a minority and you’ve been whining that your taxes are too high, consider A) the minority community taxes, just across town, are probably even higher for comparable services, and B) the GOP just lowered the corporate tax rates substantially a couple of years ago in their hunt for the fabled Laffer Curve effect.

I’m was on 4 hours sleep yesterday, when I wrote this, and this is all feeling pernicious.

Jennifer Rubin gives a brief rundown on all the prices Americans both for and against Trump have paid:

The sycophants who continue to rationalize [Trump’s] conduct got practically nothing from the Faustian bargain. His Supreme Court justices did not overturn abortion precedent, undo protections for the “dreamers” or deny LGBTQ Americans freedom from discrimination. The tax cuts for the rich never delivered on promises of sustained prosperity (and surely did not pay for themselves). The price they (and we) paid was intolerable. We have suffered from a pandemic that has killed more than 124,000 Americans, an economy akin to the Great Depression, a Russian patsy masquerading as a friend of the troops, a self-dealer who corruptly promoted his own holdings as president and a racist entirely out of step with a country yearning for racial justice.

We dare not repeat the error of 2016. We know — because we know Trump — a second term would be equally if not more calamitous than the first. Character this twisted is destiny. Unfitness this severe is irreparable. [WaPo]

Rubin misses perhaps the most damaging aspect of the Trump Presidency, one term or two – the damage it does to the very concept of democracy.

Democracy has been taking it on the nose, as America is, or has been, its leading example – my apologies to the Brits. Along with Trump and all the corruption he’s inevitably entailed, there’s also the inefficiency exhibited in the face of a pandemic, the dirty politics of Senator McConnell (R-KY) and many other Republicans, and, perhaps worst of all, the systemic racism which was born with this country, that even existed during the American gestation, and has stubbornly persisted until this very day.

The combination of these problems, exacerbated by time, should force us each to wonder if democracy will be irreversibly damaged, endangering all the things we value in democracy: our freedoms, our prosperity – or at least those of us who are permitted either.

For my part, my advice to the reader is to consider that, although a 2^nd Amendment absolutist may disagree^[1], it’s not the government, but our government, and that identification is the first step up the edifice we may have to conquer in order to save democracy. Once we recognize it’s our government and not some external force over which we have little to no control, the logical next step is to begin to study how to make it work for our benefit.

Again, not for my benefit or your benefit, but for our benefit. When it comes to government, there’s little of benefit in the study of the private sector when preparing for the public sector. Their goals are incomparable, they are apples and oranges, and therefore the methods of one, designed and optimized for one set of goals, do not transfer to the other. Government is concerned with the common weal, as the old phrase goes, and solutions must focus on the same, whether it’s the common defense, or the public health.

I recall, back in my days of reading libertarianism, the comment that, in Europe, the first rate people went into government, while the second raters and worse went into business; in America, the reverse held true. While I didn’t know what to make of it then, I think it’s become blindingly clear that, at least in the case of the Republican Party, all the quality people are, or have already, leaked away or declared themselves as NeverTrumpers. Those that are left are, for the most part, second raters and much, much worse, either adherents to ideologies of folly, gross incompetents, or both.

We need to change that. We need first raters in all parties. We do not improve because one party or the other has blindingly great ideas, but because one or the other has good ones, that then are hammered at by perceptive, honest, and fair critics from the other parties, thus improving those that can be improved, and destroying those that do not hold up to intellectual challenge. Let’s not pretend that personalities such as Limbaugh, Gingrich, McConnell, Hawley, or any of the other Party hacks of the GOP are worthy of any such adjectives. We need better people to step in.

But, most importantly, we must once again dedicate ourselves to our political system, realize that it was founded on the principle of humility, the humility to realize that We don’t know, but let’s give it a good-hearted try, rather than the unprovable God’s behind us, my pastor says so, we can’t be wrong!

I don’t care how many times you say you “believe, and that’s enough.” This isn’t heaven, this is just earth with just humans, so we need to use the tools we’ve developed to try to govern. Get rid of your arrogance. It’s hurting us. Not you, not me, but us.

The time for repentance, redemption, and rebuilding – the GOP and America, principally – is almost upon us.

¹ As in, I need my guns to defend myself against the government! It’s a common justification, along with concerns about self-defense against crime.

Generally, our clematis does very well, but this year they seem to be a little off. Still, the blooms are fairly nice.

My Arts Editor spots a most unfortunate and accidental mix of article content and commercial ad on her phone:

Yeow!

Borrowing an amusing concept from Andrew Sullivan’s old blog, the Earl Landgrebe Award Nominees are for those politicians who best imitate Representative Earl Landgrebe (R-IN), who, in reference to the impending impeachment of President Nixon (R-CA), became notorious for uttering the phrase, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” Such an utterly un-American sentiment surely deserves an award named after it.

My first nominee:

“As our economy is restored, it is imperative that President Trump is not undermined in his mission to return our economy to greatness. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx continue to contradict many of President Trump’s stated goals and actions for returning to normalcy as we know more about the COVID-19 outbreak. This is causing panic that compromises our economic recovery. We can protect our most vulnerable from the COVID-19 outbreak while still protecting lives and livelihoods of the rest of the population. It’s time for the COVID-19 task force to be disbanded so that President Trump’s message is not mitigated or distorted.”
– Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

Incidentally or not, Rep Biggs’ district is one of the most distressed in Arizona.

Cloture:

the closing or limitation of debate in a legislative body especially by calling for a vote [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Ignoring irony, McConnell warns Dems may ‘vandalize’ the Senate,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

I presume “cloture invoked” means the vote passed.

Former Federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg notes on Lawfare that, following testimony from career Justice Department prosecutor John Elias, AG Bill Barr may be giving vent to a personal dislike in an inappropriate manner:

Elias told the Judiciary Committee that proposed mergers in the cannabis industry “[did] not meet established criteria for antitrust investigations.” The targeted companies had low market shares in a fragmented industry. Yet his group was ordered to open investigations into these disfavored companies. Elias added that “[w]hile these were nominally antitrust investigations, and used antitrust investigative authorities, they were not bona fide antitrust investigations.”

If Elias is correct, that is deeply troubling. I am not defending that industry; the nature of it is irrelevant here. I imagine Elias would be equally troubled—I would be—if antitrust resources were used improperly to target hospitals, airlines or energy producers. So, even if these unfounded investigations were ultimately dropped, as Elias explained, what is the harm? Why should we care? For several reasons.

For smaller businesses, the costs of managing a DoJ anti-trust can be overwhelming, as Rosenberg points out. And this is what makes this an underhanded approach to the marijuana business, which is a little puzzling when marijuana remains a Schedule I drug, with no official use.

I’m forced to speculate that Barr, or his backers, believe the political costs of attacking the marijuana industry directly, using the FBI to knock down the doors and arrest everyone, is simply too great; the fact that several states have legalized for medical use, and in a couple of cases even recreational use, makes it very plausible. Such a move on Barr’s part might result in such an uproar from libertarians that they might bolt the right-wing alliance; the libertarians in Colorado are an important part of the alliance to legalize marijuana. Trump, already in trouble, doesn’t need more pressure on those who are doubtful of voting for him already.

But, in an instance of Big Daddyism knows better, it appears Barr is doing what he can to cripple the industry. It’s disappointing to see an intellectual failure of this magnitude in the top law enforcement officer in the country. I’m not saying the people are always right. Long time readers know that I occasionally make noises about leaders having to actually lead, and that means sometimes taking public positions that are not actually popular.

But I emphasize public positions. It’s fine, even great, for the AG to participate in the debate on the anti-pot side. But to decide to attack the industry through a back door in the arrogant belief that his wisdom – in a party that isn’t known for its knowledge base – supersedes that of the people who gave him his job is reprehensible.

Bill Barr risks historical opprobrium.

Last week Kentucky held its primaries plus a special election for a seat in the state’s Senate. For those who like to prognosticate from data, even flimsy data such as small local special elections, this data from the home of Senator Mitch “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY) might prove interesting, as the Democrat wins over the  Republican. More importantly, this had been a Republican seat:

Steve Benen helpfully notes President Trump carried this district by 12 points in 2016.

That said, using small local elections as goat guts, as it were, is a chancy business. Perhaps Ferko was personally disliked by the District 26 voters, perhaps a scandal erupted: putting too much emphasis on a result like this can result in disappointment.

But Senator McConnell must find the loss of a local seat that may have been considered safe surprising. His own opponent in his reelection run was confirmed in the primary to be Amy McGrath, who bested her closest opponent, State Senator Charles Booker, by less than 3 points, and Democratic propaganda making its way to my mailbox suggests McConnell is currently behind in their polls. Whether Booker’s loss to McGrath hurts McGrath with Booker supporters remains to be seen.

I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the outcome of the local contest, but it may be indicative of an imminent earthquake in Kentucky.

We stumbled across these blooming cacti during a walk and were utterly charmed.

Former Republican Max Boot’s prose brings the title of this post into vivid clarity:

Despite having read about archaeology for close to forty years – or maybe more if I count National Geographic to which my parents subscribed – I’ve never really formed a picture in my head of Mayan society. Those murals and vases present scenes which are really alien to modern eyes: Monarchical rulers, cities hidden in jungles, slaves, victims having their hearts ripped out (or so the rumors went), the exotic ball game, deeply held arrogance, deliberately misshapen heads. Add to that a complete lack of systematic study, and I suppose it was inevitable.

But this picture from a Mayan vase just made me laugh. It’s contained in “From Head to Toe in the Ancient Maya World,” by Lydia Pyne, Archaeology (July/August 2020), and these folks are so … human.

What do you see? I, vastly improbably, see a Yorick reference; an unamused older lady, keeping things rolling along; a dude who just got goosed by his rump painter and isn’t sure he liked it; and a couple more folks, bored by the routine, no doubt fantasizing about something Mayan.

Oh, sure, go yell at me. Tell me you’re not giggling at this picture. I know the caption, not reproduced here, claims it’s a King and Queen preparing for a ceremonial dance. I think it’s graffiti, perhaps at the King’s expense.

If you have any interest in Mayans, you should click the link. The artifact pictured with the Capes and Cloaks section is really quite extraordinary.

And, hey, they could use your subscription money, too. I’ve subscribed probably since my mid-twenties.

Endorheic basin:

An endorheic basin is a closed drainage that retains water and does not allow for overflow to other external bodies such as the rivers and or oceans. The endorheic basin may form either permanent or seasonal lakes or swamps that equilibrate only through evaporation. The basin is also commonly referred to as internal drainage system or a closed basin. However, under normal circumstances, the water that accumulates in the drainage basin flows out through rivers or streams or by underground diffusion through permeable rocks and finally ends up in the ocean. This scenario is not common in the endorheic Basin since water that flows into the basin cannot flow out and may only leave the drainage through evaporation or seep into the ground. [WorldAtlas]

Noted in XKCD:

It appears the Republican Party is laying rubber in its flight to the extreme right wing as a Republican incumbent in Colorado is upended in the primary – by another QAnon believer:

Colorado Republican Rep. Scott Tipton lost his primary Tuesday to Lauren Boebert, a gun rights activist who has also been associated with the far-right conspiracy theory known as QAnon. …

When I say Go!, you throw the dog at them and run like hell. I’ve packed him full of explosives and I never liked him anyways.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) is an interesting little bit of fluff that quickly fades away. It’s an animated film in the style of Gollum from Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings series, with the characters’ movements based on motion capture technology, and so it lends a certain, almost creepy verisimilitude to the action.

And this is an action film. Set in the 1930s, Tintin is a young French journalist who, in the midst of decorating his office, decides a model of a sailing ship might be just the thing. He procures just such a model in a flea market in a nearby street of Paris, barely ahead of another determined buyer, and refuses a superior offer. That night, his home is invaded by a man shot in the back, his model ship disappears, and soon enough Tintin is taken prisoner himself, finding himself on a tramp steamer heading … somewhere.

But taking prisoner is not the same as keeping prisoner, for Tintin and his little dog, Snowy, are resourceful protagonists – and the ship’s captain is a drunkard, a chore for the crew to manage, yet required by Tintin’s captor. Soon enough, Tintin and Snowy escape and make their way to the shores of Africa, all the while wondering what their little model ship has to do with their captivity.

And on it goes. There’s no doubt that Tintin is an entertainingly resourceful young man, escaping and frustrating the antagonists, and the movie is a colorful, exciting fantasy, but the problem lies with the story. Let’s compare this to the acknowledged masterpiece of the genre: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). In both films, the antagonists have few, if any, redeeming characteristics. The difference, though, is in the situations in which Professor Jones finds himself.

No. Fans of the film will know I just misstated Jones’ characteristic contretemps. Indiana Jones doesn’t have situations happen to him, he seeks them out. And while Tintin’s more reactive role is mitigated by his aggressive, intelligent responses, the situations themselves differ in one key aspect:

Morality. Or ethics, if you prefer.

Remember how we meet Indiana Jones? He’s taking an ancient artifact from a temple. Is this research or theft? It turns out that Professor Jones has quite the checkered past and, more importantly, present: a former and resentful lover, Marion, many years his junior, who he now meets in diminished circumstances, but full of her own brand of cleverness; his desperate search for Marion after her kidnapping, ending in her death by the explosion of the car Jones shoots; his search for the Ark, undertaken through subterfuge; the question of whether he should use the bazooka on the Ark; & etc. All of these situations, along with being fun and exciting, have a serious moral dimension to them, a dimension that includes consequences. That mad, frantic dash, sans artifact, through the jungle, pursued by a tribe spitting poison darts at him?

That’s consequences.

Tintin’s adventures may be equally exciting, but there’s no moral cloudiness concerning his actions; he makes the Right Choice, easily, every time. And that takes the tension and memorability plumb out of this movie, because those questions of morality, of predicting which decision a character will make, and how the consequences will affect their future, is the reason most audience members watch and talk about a movie.

It’s too bad that Tintin never faces tough moral situations, even making bad decisions, because many of the other elements of a really good film are present: colorful characters, good effects, conflict. The only other lack is that I don’t particularly care for is a goal that is purely wealth, even if it’s not Tintin’s goal, as he’s just along for the ride. Jones drew the audience in by presenting the dream of an archaeologist: the finding of an ancient artifact, of even the ancient artifact. The relentless search for wealth is often an end in itself, both in stories and in real life; Jones’ search, and the psychological implications, was far more interesting. Now, if the storytellers had emphasized Tintin’s journalistic profession more, they could have made that quite engaging, but, sadly, that was nothing more than a tag they hung off his shirt: I’m a journalist, see the tag?! So far as I could tell, he did precious little journalism, and certainly didn’t put himself out to do so.

And so this is another movie that reaches its potential, that potential sadly defined by a script with superficial attraction, but, in the end, fairly hollow.