How Japan Slit Its Own Throat

On 38 North Jeff Baron interviews Eri Hotta, author of Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, looking for parallels to the North Korean situation. I found this description of how Japan ended up in a war it could not win fascinating:

In questions of war and peace, the common view is, a country goes to war because they think they’ll win the war. For Japan, that wasn’t the case at all. The chance of success seemed terribly small, especially to the people making the calculations, and ultimately, the decisions. But they did it anyway.

Fear was a big factor. The leaders were fundamentally people who were afraid of losing credibility, of not appearing tough enough before others in the room who were themselves arguing for a tough approach. The fear was that if they moved to put the brakes on preparations for war, it would open the way for harder line usurpers to come in and take over. That fear of usurpers pushed the leaders to champion the most aggressive policies.

Some of the answer, too, can be found in the nature of bureaucracies. For the military leaders, for the Army and the Navy, taking the tough line was the way to argue for a larger share of the budget and to defend the legitimacy of their institutions against outcomes that would have weakened them, their influence, their leadership roles in society.

It’s always hard to put the greater good ahead of your own good – or your own little tribe’s good. While Baron is wondering if North Korea is going down the same icy slope as did Japan, I wonder if it occurred to anyone to ask the same about the American leadership. After all, Trump has a big mouth and has insulted Kim on multiple occasions. Given his recent political reversals, one might expect that he can’t really afford to look soft with regard to North Korea. Then add in a military establishment that expects to be well-fed, but must occasionally demonstrate its utility, and it’s a dangerous situation.

We may end up in a war brought on by someone mainly concerned about his own prestige.

When Legality Stands In For Maturity

I’ve been reading this article on the DailyMail.com with some startlement. It discusses how Facebook is hijacking our lives, quoting various former FB employees. This one, with Justin Rosenstein, the developer of the ‘Like’ feature, caught my eye:

Mr Rosenstein says he has banned all apps on his phone, including Facebook, because he doesn’t trust himself not to get addicted to them.

What started as a Silicon Valley success story could end in a future where people are permanently distracted by devices from the world around them, he argues. …

Mr Rosenstein believes that the lure of social media and other apps can be as addictive as heroin and that they are having a noticeably detrimental effect on people’s ability to focus. …

He argues that the solution to the problem may be state regulation of apps, which he views on a par with tobacco advertising, to minimise any harm they may be found to cause.

Speaking to The Guardian, he said: ‘It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.

‘Everyone is distracted, all of the time.

‘One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before.

‘If we only care about profit maximisation, we will go rapidly into dystopia.’

My first reaction is that this isn’t a legal problem, it’s a maturity problem. If you find you can’t exercise good judgment while using something, then don’t use it. But should the government get involved just because something is affecting folks in a negative way that they should be able to handle themselves?

BUT. Remember Carrie Nation? Maybe not. She was an instrumental member of the movement that resulted in Prohibition, the era when the consumption of alcohol was banned in the United States. She was legendary for personally destroying the contents of bars and saloons with rocks and, later, a hatchet. But, in this context, it begs the question: why?

Because she saw drink as destructive to society, and men being unable to exercise good judgment in its consumption. (She was also a bit of a religious crazy, to be honest.)

I’m not interested in pushing an analogy here. What I’m getting at is that humanity has always had problems with self-control and discerning what is good for us – and what’s bad for us. I suppose if I were of the old-timey Christian tradition, I’d call them (or us) sinners, or maybe Epicureans in the false[1] belief that the word means dedicated to satisfying their baser urges.

Whether or not the banning of apps[2] – or Facebook – would work is probably something we’ll never find out, because I suspect it’ll be even more politically unpalatable than banning alcohol or tobacco. I  hope what happens is that a societal consensus will build that leans against those apps that manipulate our emotional systems for financial or political gain, and leans towards those that have positive social attributes. Such a consensus would require a governmental lead, I do suspect, but simple legislation would probably never make it through the process – and be ineffective or have unintended consequences.

And that suggests that morality isn’t a private or context-less endeavour, but one that is informed by the surrounding society, and evolves as society comes to conclusions about the issues of the day.



1Wikipedia notes Epicurus believed “…  that what he called “pleasure” was the greatest good, but that the way to attain such pleasure was to live modestly, to gain knowledge of the workings of the world, and to limit one’s desires.

2Really, folks, they’re just computer programs.

Salting The Ground, Ctd

For those readers worried about – or hating on – the Johnson Amendment, here’s some news concerning its presence in the tax bill the GOP is currently trying to ram through Congress, via CNN:

A controversial provision that would have permitted nonprofit groups to enter politics and could have led so-called “dark money” contributions to become tax deductible has been dropped from the GOP tax bill, according to a leading Senate Democrat.

Sen. Ron Wyden gave credit to his fellow Democrats for striking the Republican proposal to roll back the Johnson Amendment — which prevents tax-exempt charities from directly participating in politics — saying in a statement that they had stopped the measure “from being jammed into any final Republican tax deal.”

“I will continue to fight all attempts to eliminate this critical provision that keeps the sanctity of our religious institutions intact, prevents the flow of dark money in politics, and keeps taxpayer dollars from advancing special interest biddings,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement.

If this tax bill does go through, at least the Johnson Amendment will remain intact. The manufactured outrage among certain preachers that they can’t remain tax-free and open their yaps from the pulpits has always appalled me, so this is a small good thing in what appears to be a recession-inducing avalanche of bad things.

Iranian Politics, Ctd

I lost track of international doings lately, but I guess I’m not surprised that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem has aided Iran. AL Monitor’s Reza Marashi has the report:

After US President Donald Trump’s ill-advised decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, some headlines have noted that Iran’s hard-liners have been empowered as a result. While that may be true — and extremists in Tehran certainly claim as much — it also paints an incomplete picture. Trump’s Jerusalem fiasco has, in fact, also been a boon to President Hassan Rouhani and his administration. In other words, it has in several key ways empowered the Islamic Republic as a whole — and not any particular faction or group.

First, Iran’s political system will now have an easier time realigning its ideological and geopolitical proclivities. This will essentially solidify the executive branch as Iranian stakeholders unify against Trump’s extremist activities in the Middle East. Before the Jerusalem announcement, Tehran was more measured in playing the anti-Israel card relative to its bombast during the presidency of conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). This was because Iran’s geopolitical goal of escaping American and Israeli-led efforts to render it a pariah required tempering its ideological inclination to spout off anti-Israel tirades, which score brownie points among Arab public opinion.

So President Trump has succeeded in healing a rift in Iran, and not to forget that he also decertified Iran for the JCPOA – despite the protests of our allies, who now will probably not abide by any attempts on our part to re-apply sanctions to Iran. But sanctions was just what Trump was demanding – back then. From The Atlantic:

After months of speculation, here’s the Trump administration’s policy toward the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action: “We will stay in the JCPOA, but the president will decertify under INARA,” said Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state, referring to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. What this essentially means is that the JCPOA is safe for now, but Congress could amend existing U.S. legislation to make it easier to impose sanctions on Iran. If that doesn’t happen, Trump said, “the agreement will be terminated.”

Who knows what he wants now. Reza’s conclusion?

The ultimate irony of the Jerusalem debacle is once again that Iran has been given the upper hand without having lifted a finger. Indeed, with the peace process dead, most of the world is blaming Trump, Israel and Saudi Arabia for tearing the region apart. But Jerusalem is only the latest in a long line of missteps over the past year that Iran has capitalized on. This has left Rouhani in a position in which he can now work across the political spectrum to reconnect the Islamic Republic’s ideological goal of opposing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory with its geopolitical goal of avoiding international isolation — with increased international support for both objectives. Iran may not have drawn it up this way, but it will gladly accept the freebies being handed out by Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

It’ll take a generation to regain the “soft power” we used to have – and the influence that went with it. We really need to boost this kook out of office. Too bad his Vice-President isn’t showing signs of more mature political judgment. Don’t forget this blunder on his part.

Belated Movie Reviews

Yeah. I needed the money, too.

 The Return Of The Seven (1966) is the sequel to The Magnificent Seven (1960), but it has little to offer in comparison to its illustrious predecessor. Another group of bandits are kidnapping the men of some villages, and in the most interesting part of the story, they are laboring to build a church to honor the two sons of the rancher and leader of the bandits, dead & gone, tall and sleek as stallions, as he says.

But we learn later they were not what the bandit leader wanted, for he wanted rough, tough men in his own mold, and they were gentle men, like their mother; the church may be in their name, but in some twisted way, it’s for the bandit leader.

Not much else of thematic interest here. Lots of shooting, people falling off horses (I was actually musing on how terrified a stunt man must be when a horse is falling and he’s still astride it), a few chucking dynamite at the bad guys. Gotta say, no one seems to be able to shoot a gun straight.

Even the actors didn’t really seem to be into it all that much. But then, it was fairly boring.

Trump’s Friends And Net Neutrality, Ctd

Well, my conservative readers, they went and did it. Might be time to shiver in your shoes.

Net neutrality, the set of rules requiring internet service providers to treat all traffic as equal, is dead.

The five members of the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday 3-2 along party lines to scrap Obama-era net neutrality rules, returning to a “light touch” approach and ending what Chairman Ajit Pai has called the federal government’s “micromanaging” of the internet. …

“Prior to 2015, before these regulations were imposed, we had a free and open internet,” Pai told NBC News. “That is the future as well under a light touch, market-based approach. Consumers benefit, entrepreneurs benefit. Everybody in the internet economy is better off with a market based approach.” [NBC News]

The chairman appears to be quite naive. To my eye, this means every ISP is now a target of political activists, not only for influence, but for marching your favorite ideological nutcase – liberal and conservative – up the corporate ladder until they’re in a position to control their portion of the Internet.

Fortunately, I suspect this is easy enough to reverse if consumer-regressive consequences do, in fact, occur.

A Hint Of Things To Come?

Steve Benen on Maddowblog has some impertinent questions in the wake of the news that Senator Grassley has decided not to move the Federal judiciary nominations of Mateer and Talley forward, despite the fact that Talley had already cleared his committee and both have President Trump’s support:

2. If Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley now realizes that Talley doesn’t belong on the federal bench, why did Grassley advance him through committee? Does this suggest Grassley failed to scrutinize the nominee thoroughly before sending him to the floor for confirmation?

3. On a related note, why exactly did every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee vote in support of Talley’s nomination?

4. Would Talley have been confirmed anyway were it not for the related controversy surrounding his failures to disclose his ridiculous published works and his marriage to the White House Counsel Don McGahn’s chief of staff?

This started after the Alabama Senatorial race terminated in Democrat Doug Jones’ favor, defeating Roy Moore, who had President Trump’s full support. I’d suggest this is a sign that President Trump’s influence is diminishing within the GOP. Granted, it was clear from the earlier contests, such as those in Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas and Montana, that Trump did not have a magical wand that cleared the way for all of his favored candidates.

But losing in the most conservative state in the nation? That may have broken Trump within the GOP, whether he realizes it or not. It’s not really in Grassley’s favor that he waited until now to start applying judgment to the nominees, given the quality of those who’ve already been nominated and confirmed, but at least we may be seeing the beginning of the end now.

So now we see one of the most important committee chaircritters actually doing his job. That’s one.

Power, Prestige and Profit: The Wells Fargo Debacle, Ctd

Another month, another debacle at Wells Fargo. From CNN/Money:

The Navajo Nation has sued Wells Fargo, claiming the bank targeted tribal members with “predatory sales tactics.”

In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, the tribe alleged that Wells Fargo — the only national bank that services its territory — preyed on people by opening unauthorized bank accounts and debit cards, and by pressuring people, particularly the elderly, to enroll in services they did not need.

“Under intense pressure from superiors to grow sales figures, Wells Fargo employees lied to Navajo consumers, telling elderly Navajo citizens who did not speak English that in order to have their checks cashed, they needed to sign up for savings accounts they neither needed nor understood,” the Navajo Nation said in its complaint.

These are not honorable banking practices. If any of my readers use Wells Fargo, I think you should reconsider your choice.

My Brain’s Not That Large, Ctd

A reader responds concerning the legal system’s complexity:

Ilya Somin makes damn good points. You do, too. I’d argue that we do NOT need, nor do we even want — and in fact, it may be wholly counter productive to have — complex laws for our complex society. I’m using the real (or Nassim Taleb, if you will) definition of complexity here: things which are too complicated to enumerate and predict in any finite way. Instead, it’s better to have simple laws which are stated with an eye towards the desired outcomes, the preferences of society. They can be nuanced, they can even be occasionally complicated — but not complex. There’s a nuanced difference in the meanings of complicated and complex. I refer the reader to this article for one place which elucidates this:https://sloanreview.mit.edu/…/the-critical-difference…/ The crux being: Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes. The solutions to complicated problems don’t work as well with complex problems, however. Complex problems involve too many unknowns and too many interrelated factors to reduce to rules and processes.

Sounds interesting. But wouldn’t this possibly lead to more litigation as lawyers argue over the proper way to extrapolate from a recipe? This, of course, is the complicated case. It’s alluring, but I have to wonder…. too sick to think about the complex case.

Not All Institutes Are Crumbling

Benjamin Wittes, Mieke Eoyang, and Ben Freeman of Lawfare were curious about the efficacy of the recent attacks on the credibility of the FBI by the extremist Republicans, so they did a survey:

The other day, curious about the impact of such attacks on public opinion, we put a very simple poll in the field using Google Surveys. It asked one question, polled between December 5-7: “

The answer was striking:

The average confidence rating for the FBI in this poll measured in at 3.34. That  to any other institution we poll on, save the military, which had an average confidence score of 3.78.

I have no idea if Google Surveys are trustworthy, but I still will heave a sigh of relief on this report. If these attacks on the non-partisan institutions of our government were to cause them to crumble, we’d be facing chaos that results in blood and possible dissolution.

So this appears to be good news.

Cool Astro Pics

Just to take our minds off the picayune events that plague our consciences:

“This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

Some Remain Sane

In case you thought every member of the Republican Party is batshit-insane, this guy seems reasonable – term-limited Nevada governor Brian Sandoval. From an interview in The Nevada Independent:

Sandoval, a Catholic, said he had not evolved on abortion – he has always been pro-choice. “At the end of the day, I believe that decision is up to a woman” he said. “It’s her body, it’s her decision.” And on gay marriage, where he said he has changed his mind, he said, “My best friends are gay. They deserve to be happy, they deserve to have the partner of their choice….That’s where I am now.”

When I asked him why he opposed pot legalization when an argument could be made that gambling is even more addictive, Sandoval said he had never smoked marijuana but believed it to be a gateway drug. “I have had the benefit of serving as a judge, and when I did my sentencings, marijuana was almost always involved as a gateway.”

Reminds me of the better Republicans of 30 years ago.

Something To Chew On

From NewScientist (2 December 2017):

Evolution usually moves at a snail’s pace, but not always. North American birds called snail kites have evolved larger beaks in less than a decade, in order to eat invasive island apple snails that are much larger than the snails they used to eat (Nature Ecology & Evolutiondoi.org/cgrv).

They may not be a distinct species, but it’s a graphic illustration of adaptation.

Staring Down The Hole Of Irrelevance, Ctd

It’d be lovely to be a bug on the wall of the Republican post-mortem of the Moore loss in Alabama. No doubt they’ll identify the surface problem – an extremist candidate who appealed to the zealots who voted in the primary over his rivals. But will they understand that Moore, who defeated establishment candidate and appointee to the seat Luther Strange by more than 9 percentage points in the final GOP run-off, was nearly inevitable as the Republican candidate?

As long-time readers know, I put a lot of the blame on the team politics practiced by the Republicans, along with the RINO culture. These two recent additions to the Republican operating procedure has caused the character of the Republican party to run rapidly to the right, as demonstrated by FiveThirtyEight’s review from a few years ago – the trend has only gotten worse, as Moore disparaged various American Constitutional Amendments, as well claiming he’d never met any of his accusers, who promptly began displaying documentation disputing that claim. As moderate Republicans are run out of the Party or side-tracked via RINO-tactics, and team politics silences the critical voices within the Party that would function to deny extremists candidacies and, often, electoral victories, we see those who are most focused on power gaining access to Party support.

And – just as a personal observation – those with the most extreme ideologies seem to have the fewest restraints on their personal behavior. I’d speculate it has to do with the extraordinary self-confidence necessary to hold extremist positions in the face of widespread community disapproval. In turn, this leads to the belief that what they do is always right, and also, dismayingly, they come off as very confident, which can seem charismatic and even convincing to those whose positions are not well thought out. Intuitive folks can often be taken in by such people.

Anyways, I’m going to guess that it’ll be extraordinarily difficult to take a decision to dissipate the team politics pillar, because it has led to some amazing victories for the Republicans, including dominating government at the current time – and using electoral victories seems like an easy proxy for measuring success, doesn’t it? Yet, they have little to show for it – no signature, quality legislation, some leading members not just disagreeing with the President, but publicly denigrating him, and a clutch of young, conservative judges who are not impressing anyone with their quality.

Will the Republican leadership – which may be distinct from the donors who really may be running the show – have the insight to realize that things are just not going very well, and it’s a systemic problem, not a spot problem?

My money is against them.

Word Of The Day

Swidden:

a plot of land cleared for farming by burning away vegetation. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Reading Jefferson’s Landscape,” David Malakoff, American Archaeology (winter 2017-18, partially online):

That shift from tobacco to wheat had far-reaching effects on Monticello’s landscape and enslaved workers, archaeologists have found. One big change was increased deforestation and erosion: while tobacco could thrive in holes dug in small clearings in forests called swiddens, wheat required bigger expanses of flatter, cleared land that could be plowed.

The usage seems somewhat divergent from the definition.

Throwing A Hand Grenade Down The Bowling Lane

In the category of “processes of one sector intruding on another” (unwieldy, yes) is this report from The Volokh Conspiracy on one Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford, who is suing over a paper critical of his own work:

In late September, Jacobson filed a defamation suit in the District of Columbia against [Christopher] Clack and the NAS [National Academy of Sciences] for publishing a peer-reviewed critique of one of his co-authored papers in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Jacobson further claims that the NAS wronged him by failing to follow its own publication guidelines. (The complaint is here. An explanatory statement is here.) The underlying issue is the credibility of Jacobson’s claim that 100 percent of the United States’ electricity needs may be met by renewable energy sources.
According to Jacobson, the paper authored by Clack, and joined by another 20 co-authors, made false and misleading claims about Jacobson’s work in the process of dismissing his conclusions about the potential of renewable energy. Jacobson objects to Clack, et al., charging that some of Jacobson’s conclusions were based upon unfounded, undisclosed assumptions and “modeling error.” Jacobson further claims that both Clack and the NAS were aware of these alleged problems before the paper was published. Clack, et al., for their part, have responded in detail to Jacobson’s claims. Readers may judge for themselves who has the better of the argument.

Although NAS published Jacobson’s response in “PNAS” as well, Jacobson is not satisfied. He is demanding a retraction and is seeking compensatory damages of $10 million each from Clack and NAS.  Some of Clack’s co-authors, who include Ken Caldeira, David Victor and Jane Long, are identified in the complaint but were not named as defendants in the suit. (For what it’s worth, Jacobson’s co-authors do not appear to be parties to this suit either.)

Suing is what happens in the private sector. In science? Dude, you just return fire, and let the peers qualified to comment render a verdict in time-honored fashion. The damage you’re doing to the scientific sector by introducing potentially career-ruining forces that are not connected to the scientific merit of arguments is huge and idiotic, as it introduces foreign influences that do not have the sector’s goals at heart.

Just stop it. Now.

My Brain’s Not That Large

On The Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin remarks on the perhaps unintended consequence of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor’s remark on the mass of laws we have today:

During last week’s Supreme Court oral argument in Christie v. NCAA, an important federalism case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted a dangerous feature of our legal system. We have far more laws than the state and federal governments can effectively enforce:

[I]f every governor enforced every law on the book, the state would be more than bankrupt. It would have no way of surviving…

There are countless laws, and even laws that are in force, that are not enforced totally….

States make choices [about which laws to enforce] all the time.

Justice Sotomayor is absolutely right. At both the state and federal levels, we have so many laws that law enforcement officials can only target a small fraction of offenders; so many that the vast majority of adult Americans have violated state or federal law at one time or another. The executive therefore exercises enormous discretion about which lawbreakers to go after and which ones to leave alone.

This, in turn, has dire consequences for the rule of law in our society: It makes it very difficult for ordinary citizens to determine what laws apply to them and how to avoid violations, and ensures that whether a given lawbreaker gets prosecuted depends far more on the exercise of police, prosecutorial, and executive discretion than on any objective application of legal rules. Thus, the rule of law is in large part supplanted by the rule of whatever men and women control the levers of power at any given time. As Sotomayor notes, those people have vast discretion in deciding which of the “countless laws” on the books they want to enforce, and when.

So what’s to be done about this? If citizens have to keep track of all the laws applicable to themselves then they’ll simply lose their minds. But the complexity of modern society more or less demands a complex legal system. Without it, we run a couple of unacceptable risks:

1. Exploitation by those we currently call criminals, particularly of the white collar sect, and

2. The problems that come from unforeseen consequences for the typical citizen. There are good reasons for most laws we pass, and many have to do with the long-term consequences if many of us took certain actions. This can be pollution problems, this can be taking advantage of banking systems in which a single case of a particular incident happening is not a big thing, but when everyone does it, then the banking system loses the confidence of the populace, and before you know it you have chaos.

The only palliative I can think of is unpalatable – implement a system where, at least for more obscure crimes, you get a warning not to do that, and on repeat then you get hit by punishment. The apparatus to monitor that is, I suspect, intolerable.

Staring Down The Hole Of Irrelevance, Ctd

So at this late hour, the Alabama Senatorial race is close (as I write this, 49.9% to 48.4%), but the media, such as CNN, is reporting a victory for Democrat Doug Jones, although Moore is unwilling to concede. His privilege to wait for the last bitter votes.

So it’s a little disappointing it wasn’t a big victory for Jones, but it’s a big plus that he was in the race at all, nevermind actually winning the darn thing.

So what’s next, assuming Jones wins? He has to find a way to earn the respect of those Alabama independents who didn’t vote for him. Some of that will come from assessing the demographics of the vote. This is a chance for the Democrats to prove that they’re not the Devil incarnate, despite the ravings of the extremist GOP. So he’ll have to do what politicians always do – take care of their constituents without going overboard.

I wish him well.

And on to the Senate, which now moves to a 51 – 47 edge for the Republicans, with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. This flip of a seat is important because this seat doesn’t come up for election again until 2020. That means the Democrats have picked up a seat that normally wouldn’t even be available, and in fact a seat that wasn’t even contested back in 2014.

That makes it a bit easier for the Democrats to hope to take control of the Senate at the mid-terms. If they manage that, it’ll be another slap in the face of a Republican party which is doing no good service to the United States in its present condition, which is to say it’s held by extremists who are willing to burn down the most important buttresses of our governmental system if that’s what it takes to retain power, as they seek to discredit every objective source of information that doesn’t happen to have information favorable to the Republican party. They’d rather be top dog in a banana republic rather than out of power in the leading nation of the world.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

And I can’t help but wonder if there are Republican Senators who have considered changing parties. Murkowski of Alaska was actually not nominated by the Alaskan Republicans for her own seat the last time re-election came up; she won on a write-in vote. She might be a little bitter about that. How about she changes parties and suddenly we’re 50-48-2?

That would also help disassemble a Republican party that has an increasingly bad reputation in national polling, while demonstrating gross incompetence in just about all aspects of governing. About the only bright spot came today when Republican Senator Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told President Trump he should retract two of his nominations for the Federal judiciary. It’s a little late to show some spirit, Senator, but at least you did a little.

So disassemble the Republicans, I said? What should be their first step? Remove the “team politics” pillar, whether it’s a formal part or an informal tradition. Oddly enough, giving your membership the right to withhold their vote for some party hack will actually make your Party stronger, while pushing out the extremists.

The Cows Are Pleased

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger reports on a trend just starting to pop up:

An investor network managing $4 trillion in assets has warned investors that they should prepare for the inevitable — a climate-driven “sin” tax on meat.

Taxing items that are seen as unhealthy or damaging to the environment is a common way for governments to raise money. Over 180 jurisdictions tax tobacco, more than 60 tax carbon emissions, and 25 tax sugar. Now, it looks as though meat might be the next target for governments wanting to get serious about climate change.

A new policy White Paper from the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) Initiative suggests that meat is following the same path as tobacco, carbon, and sugar, and that the industry should expect to see a behavioral tax levied by many governments by 2050. The paper, titled “The Livestock Levy,” is a warning to investors, and considering that FAIRR is an investor network that manages more than $4 trillion in assets, it will likely be taken seriously.

My goodness – I can imagine the bulging eyeballs and incoherent shouts of rage from here. I can almost share in them – I’m a meat-eater myself. Mostly chicken, but the occasional chunk of red meat is a lovely accent on life. Fish, not so much. Pork, once in a while.

But I don’t think it’s possible to institute this tax in the United States until more folks have accepted that climate change is occurring, is anthropomorphic, and is generally deleterious to our collective health. I suspect this’ll require an entire city to be taken down by a hurricane, and even then it’s just a guess. Rationality and scientific curiosity seems to be ebbing these days.

Katherine may be optimistic.

Word Of The Day

Fewmets:

Fewmets are the feces of a hunted animal, by which the hunter identifies it.

Fewmets is a medieval English hunting term derived from the Old English, with the intimation that these droppings are the only hint of the animal’s presence; that the creature itself has yet to be seen. [Wikipedia]

Heard in conversation with my Arts Editor this evening.

Arachnophobia To The Nth Degree

In the academic journal The Science Of Nature (never heard of it before, so I’m wondering how much to trust the material), Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer give some remarkable estimates concerning spiders … en masse:

Based on estimates of the average spider biomass m−2 in various terrestrial biomes, extrapolation suggests that the total standing biomass of the global spider community equals 25.09 × 1012 g (= 25 million metric tons fresh weight; Table 1). Biomass estimates m−2 follow the order forests > grasslands/shrublands > croplands, deserts, and tundra, which also reflects the order of total spider biomass per biome type worldwide.

The calculation of the annual prey kill by the global spider community with method I resulted in an estimate of 721 × 1012 g year−1 (= roughly 700 million tons year−1; Table 2). To derive an estimate to which degree reduced feeding activity during rainy days would affect the global annual prey kill, we recalculated this estimate assuming that it rained during one third of the feeding season with no prey being captured on rainy days. This simple scenario still leads to a global annual prey kill of 460 million tons year−1. Estimates derived from method I therefore suggest that the annual prey kill of the global spider community may be in the range of 460–700 million tons year−1. Our assessment with method II produced an estimate of the global annual prey kill of 395–805 × 1012 g year−1 (= roughly 400–800 million tons year−1; Table 3). The estimates computed with the two methods are highly comparable in magnitude (Tables 2and 3). Together, the two different methods suggest that the global annual prey kill is presumably in the range of 400–800 million tons year−1.

To which I can only say AAUUUGH! And, BTW:

For comparison, the human world population does consume an estimated 400 million tons of meat and fish annually (Bruinsma 2003; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2014).

Some spiders do consume fish, if I remember my National Geographic reading from decades ago.

I wonder how much vegetable matter we consume.

But What About The Other Side?

A grab into the email-bag left me with some pins in my hands, the pins that were sticking out of the dolls of California state lawmakers. I listened closely, and realized they needed me to say something which I’ve not mentioned strongly before, and that’s the problem of assertions made without presenting the opposing side’s reasoning.

So here’s the mail, this time piece by piece as I try to address each issue:

This is what we get from elected officials. They all should be fired

Why wouldn’t you want to move to sunny California?

CA Legislative Year Closed on Friday….So what did they Accomplish ?
You Won’t Believe Some of the New CA LAWS!! Check out #13…the last one

Update today from Jeff Stone, Republican state senator on the further progressive destruction of California:

Fellow Californians:

Friday will be the end of this legislative year — Here are some of the highlights of this session:

1. SB-1: increases your gas taxes by approximately 20 Cents (Nov 1) and your vehicle license fees by an average of $100 (Jan 1st).

I found SB-1, and it does appear to have something to do with transit and taxes, but I don’t read legalese well enough to judge this author’s interpretation. Let’s stipulate it, and then guess what – I applaud it.

Why?

Something that’s been noodling around in my brain recently has been the idea that humanity is awful when it comes to questions of scale. As an engineer, I’ve run across a great deal of code that handled, say, 10 items just fine, but when faced with 100,000, its performance is unacceptable. This sensitivity to increases in the number of items is often unnecessary, but it comes about because the engineer fails to consider the possibility of increasing volume of data.

Similarly, I think humans in general remain unaware of how the volume of people can impact the environment in unforeseen, negative ways. So when I see a tax such as this, I discard the automatic Oh God It’s A Tax reaction, and I ask what this does. In this case, it increases the cost of ownership of cars. We already subsidize fossil fuels, which, since it’s through general taxation, nixes the emotional impact the true price of fossil fuels – which results in us driving cars more rather than using other forms of transit. Remember, cars are identified as one of the bigger sources of pollution and climate change gases, not to mention the more that are bought, the more roads must be built – to the discouragement of the environment.

This isn’t social engineering – this is an attempt to bring to the attention of drivers the true costs of being drivers.

2. Passed Cap N Tax which will increase gas 0.63 to 0.93 cents a gallon change and the taxes that go with it. So do the math projection….
(0.12 + 0.63 = 0.75/gallon + current $3.10/gallon = $3.85/gallon)

See #1 response.

3. Proposed increase on a new tax every residence will pay for tap water in the State!

Oh, this merits an exclamation point! But what’s the justification? Via The Mercury News of San Jose:

For the first time Californians would pay a tax on drinking water — 95 cents per month — under legislation aimed at fixing hundreds of public water systems with unsafe tap water.

Senate Bill 623, backed by a strange-bedfellows coalition of the agricultural lobby and environmental groups but opposed by water districts, would generate $2 billion over the next 15 years to clean up contaminated groundwater and improve faulty water systems and wells. The problem is most pervasive in rural areas with agricultural runoff.

“My message is short and direct: We are not Flint, Michigan,” co-author Sen. Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, said at a Wednesday rally outside the Capitol, where demonstrators held signs reading “Clean water is not a luxury” and “Water is a human right.”

California has become notorious in recent years for its floods, droughts and wildfires. In fact, it strikes me as ridiculous that an attempt is being made to lampoon a tax which, in reality, will bring home to the consumers at least some of the cost of living in a State that is experiencing drought, not to mention questions about aquifers (I’ve written about California water problems starting here). This sounds like a good start.

4. A $3.46B parks bond to pay for parks in “disadvantaged communities” meaning Los Angeles The debt service will be over $200 million a year. The good news is some money goes to help fix the Salton Sea which should have always been a State responsibility!

US News mentions this:

It would aim to improve access to parks and open spaces in disadvantaged communities, said Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, the bill’s author.

“This park bond, throughout the process, has focused on making sure that we prioritize the areas that prior park bond investments forgot,” the Coachella Democrat said. “What we’re trying to accomplish here is to continue to highlight the beautiful parks, outdoors recreational opportunities that CA has to offer.”

No mention of Los Angeles, but then I didn’t see the point. While $3 billion sounds like a lot to me, California is a big and rich state, so maybe that much over 30 years isn’t so awful – despite reported Republican objections. So what?

5. Law to release any lifer (murder, rape , child molestation, etc.) who is 60 years old and has already spent 25 years in prison! Charles Manson would have qualified today. What about victims?

US News is on the case again:

Weber’s bill would write into law a 2014 federal court order that requires California to consider releasing inmates age 60 or older who have served at least 25 years. Death row and other no-parole inmates were excluded by the judges, and her bill further excludes cop killers and third-strike career criminals.

The clarification is enlightening, now isn’t it? Lot of exclusions not mentioned in the original mail as well as discovering this is a response to conform to a court order. As US News mentions, this would save money with little or no danger to the public. Seems reasonable to me, although I don’t think of 60 year olds as helpless cripples … any more.

6. A new $10 charge on all residents living in a mobile home parks to address living condition enforcement in those parks? Why does the left embrace these regressive taxes on the poor?

TruthOrFiction.com addressed this one, so I’ll just borrow it:

This one refers to Senate Bill 46. The bill doesn’t create a new $10 charge for all residents living in mobile homes — it would extend an existing charge of $4 per mobile home lot . The fee, which supports Department of Housing and Community Development inspections of mobile home parks, is already in place but was scheduled to sunset in 2019.

Incidentally, the link happens to be to TruthOrFiction’s analysis of a similar letter. Since I’m mostly through my own analysis, I’ll continue.

I’ll also point out that this is another illustration of GOP hypocrisy. Generally, they like to preach about personal responsibility, and certainly this tax would fall into that category – better living conditions paid for by those who live there. But, hey, it’s a chance to take a shot at the opposition, so shitcan the personal honesty and fire away, eh?

Also, this assumes those living in mobile home parks are poor. It’s certainly the stereotype – but I have to wonder, knowing at least one software engineer who chose to live in a mobile home park, and thought it was superior to the traditional home.

I wonder if he still feels that way.

7. We picked an official dinosaur of the State of California. Really ? Yes!

I won’t even look this one up. I’ll just say – too damn cool! Which one is it!?

8. Blackmail Tesla to either unionize with the United Auto Workers Union or forfeit State incentives to buy their electric cars! Just another Union Grab!

Not precisely accurate. From The Sacramento Bee:

But the legislation, amended late Monday to be ready for votes before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Friday, also would inject the state into an increasingly acrimonious union organizing campaign at automaker Tesla’s Fremont plant. Beginning in July 2018, manufacturers that want to be eligible for state zero-emission vehicle rebates – a major driver of Tesla sales – would need to be certified by the state labor secretary “as fair and responsible in the treatment of their workers.”

The United Auto Workers union has set out to organize thousands of Tesla workers, some of whom allege that the company had illegally intimidated them. The National Labor Relations Board’s Oakland regional office filed a complaint against the company late last month. 

“We believe this language presents several constitutional, legal and enforceability concerns but, more importantly, is counterproductive to building a sustainable market for zero emission vehicles in California,” wrote Damon Shelby Porter, the association’s director of state government affairs.

Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation, disagreed. “We think it’s important for the Legislature to send a message that we can create jobs, reduce emissions and protect workers at the same time,” he said.

More complex than presented, isn’t it? Still, if Tesla is intimidating workers, it needs to be slapped down. A properly handled relationship with a non-corrupt union can be an asset, not a burden. I wonder if Tesla realizes that.

And I say that as a potential future Tesla owner.

9. Reduce from a felony to a misdemeanor the purposeful intent to transmit the AIDS virus to a unknowing partner.

From the Los Angeles Times:

SB 239, which now goes to the governor, was introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who said the current law discriminated against those who have human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the precursor to AIDS, because exposure to other communicable diseases is a misdemeanor.

So all they’re doing is bringing treatment of HIV in the legal framework into line with other diseases. Keep in mind that HIV has moved from a death sentence to a disease that can be treated as a chronic condition with little effect on health or lifetime. So why the outrage?

10. Give preferential treatment to prisoners convicted of serious crimes that are less than 25 years old because their brains are not mature enough to understand right from wrong. Whaaat? If the brains of our kids don’t mature until 25, why do we allow them to vote ?

I didn’t find a notice of an actual law being passed, but here’s a report on the proposed law from 89.3 KPCC:

At the other end of the age spectrum, lawmakers approved a bill expanding the state’s youthful parole program. State law already requires that inmates who were under 23 when they committed their crimes be considered for parole after serving at least 15 years. AB1308 raises the age to 25.

The age for such consideration was 18 when lawmakers passed the first youth offender parole law in 2012.

“That gap in the middle is shrinking, it seems, every year,” Hoffman said.

Paroling younger inmates is more concerning to law enforcement than freeing older criminals, he said, because they are more likely to be healthy enough to commit new crimes. Statistics show less than one-third of California inmates paroled when they were 60 or older were back behind bars within three years compared to more than 50 percent of those 18-24.

It’s an interesting question – why do we let 18 year olds vote? Science has been researching when the brain stops maturing, and it ain’t at 18, folks – it’s more in the late 20s for males, a little earlier for females. (Before some dude gets up and suggests that makes guys more mature, just sit down and try to think – I know it hurts, but try. What you’re trying to suggest just doesn’t follow.)

This may be the most accurate of the bunch in here, given the statistical reference. Hey, one worth being concerned over!

11. A bill to require our true sex be omitted from drivers licenses? Whaaat?

I found a mention of this on TruthOrFiction, but no link to a news source. So I went Internet hunting … and didn’t find any news sources talking about it. There were a lot of conservative web sites proclaiming this to be another symptom of the destruction of California … but I rather suspect nothing awful will come of it. It’s just the conservative web sites tapping on the fear & loathing wires in the brains of other conservatives.

Me? I’d just say suck it up and don’t worry about it. Why did they require your sex on your license way back when, anyways?

12. Free legal services for illegal immigrants…of course !!

So it appears this passed, according to the Los Angeles Times:

California state lawmakers approved $45 million in a state budget plan to expand legal services for immigrants, a response to the Trump administration’s call to increase deportations.

The funds, greater than what Gov. Jerry Brown earmarked in May and which will be an ongoing allocation through 2020, will go to a coalition of legal services agencies, immigrant rights groups and faith-based organizations called One California.

Given the vital importance of illegal immigrants in agriculture, this actually makes a lot of sense. Without them, fresh produce would be more expensive – or simply not available, as early reports on the East Coast indicate real live Americans won’t actually do this sort of work, leaving crops to rot in the fields without the immigrants to pick them. It’s rare to find a rich – or even mildly well-off illegal immigrant, and when these are the people floating the agricultural boat, it makes sense to provide them with help when they need it.

13. Establish safe “injection zones” run by government to oversee people injecting heroin! You have to be kidding me? Yep, it passed!

Nope, it didn’t! From the Los Angeles Times:

A controversial proposal to allow certain California counties and cities to establish sites where people could inject drugs without legal consequences stumbled in the state Senate on Tuesday night.

The measure, by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), would establish a first-in-the-nation program in which users of heroin and other intravenous drugs could inject in settings with clean needles and under the supervision of trained staff. The goal: to stave off overdoses in an era in which heroin use is on the rise.

San Francisco is already in discussions to develop an injection center, which is modeled after a site in Vancouver, Canada. State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco, said the proposal “gets to the core of who we are as a society in terms of how we respond to that public health crisis.”

“One thing that unites us on both sides of the aisle is we all want people to get off drugs and lead healthy, successful lives,” Wiener said on the Senate floor. “To my colleagues I would ask: How are we doing? How the heck are we doing? I think pretty darn poorly.”

It’s actually an interesting idea; the author of this mail does it a disservice in his frantic effort to sling mud at California. But it’s a discussion for another time …

May consider forwarding so All Californians can be Proud our Elected Officials

Not a bad idea, once you hear both sides of the story, now isn’t it? They’re working hard – harder than the author of this bit of slimy email.

And, in the unfortunate case my gentle reader actually received this mail, I hope that by now the reader, conservative or liberal, has learned to treat these sorts of claims with skepticism. This one has been a little different as most of the claims have some sort of veracity, if only partial, but they’ve been presented in such a way as to make them seem negative, when they’re really the products of generous and thoughtful Americans trying to solve hard problems.

And not futzing around.