Category Archives: Weasels

Congratulations, America. You are now the owners of a Republican Congress.

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Congratulations, America.  You are now the owners of a majority Republican Congress.   Let’s see how their brain trust (The National Review) is advising them for the next session:

Already a conventional wisdom about what Republicans should do next has congealed. Supposedly it is up to Republicans to “prove they can govern” even though they do not have the White House. Senator Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) told NPR listeners that Republicans could do this by moving on trade-promotion authority, the immigration bill the Senate passed in 2013, and corporate tax reform.

With all due respect to the senator and like-minded Republicans, this course of action makes no sense as a political strategy. Continue reading →

Doug Henwood, “Stop Hillary!”

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From Doug Henwood, “Stop Hillary!“, in the October 2014 issue of Harper’s:

What is the case for Hillary (whose quasi-official website identifies her, in bold blue letters, by her first name only, as do millions upon millions of voters)? It boils down to this: She has experience, she’s a woman, and it’s her turn. It’s hard to find any substantive political argument in her favor. She has, in the past, been associated with women’s issues, with children’s issues — but she also encouraged her husband to sign the 1996 bill that put an end to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), which had been in effect since 1935. Indeed, longtime Clinton adviser Dick Morris, who has now morphed into a right-wing pundit, credits Hillary for backing both of Bill’s most important moves to the center: the balanced budget and welfare reform.  And during her subsequent career as New York’s junior senator and as secretary of state, she has scarcely budged from the centrist sweet spot, and has become increasingly hawkish on foreign policy.

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My thoughts on Will Marshall’s essay, “How to Save the Democratic Party from Itself”

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Yesterday a fellow Democratic Town Committee member sent out a link to Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall‘s recent essay, “How to Save the Democratic Party from Itself.”    PPI is basically a mill for “New Democrat”/Democratic Leadership Council ideas, i.e., the type of policies that Bill Clinton pushed.   (If you read this blog on a regular basis you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’m not a fan of New Democrat/DLC types.   I’m not a big fan of neoliberalism.)  Anyhow, I read Marshall’s essay.  Suffice it to say I was not favorably impressed.   My comments on his essay follow below but I’ll summarize in the event you don’t have the inclination or the patience to read to the end.

What bothered me so much about Marshall’s essay was not the ideas presented but the lack thereof.   Take, for example, the debate amongst Democrats on the merits of free trade arguments.   (Recall the Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law over the objection of a significant number of Democrats.)  If you want people to support free trade agreements then argue the merits of free trade agreements.   Jeff Faux and Brad DeLong recently engaged in a sharp exchange on the merits of NAFTA. (Faux with the more traditional liberal position and DeLong with the neoliberal view.)  Read their arguments here:

I believe Faux’s argument carries the day but DeLong’s arguments can’t be dismissed.  Contrast the Faux-DeLong exchange with Marshall’s implicit support of free trade agreements in his essay.  There are no arguments in favor of free trade agreements in Marshall’s essay.  The extent of Marshall’s argument is “All the cool kids support free trade agreements so if Democrats want to get elected then they should too.”  That’s it.  There’s no substantive argument for why you should adopt Marshall’s preferred position.   It’s a recurring theme.   And it’s a variant of argument by authority – which happens to drive me nuts.  The bottom line is I’d rather argue with sane and honest conservatives and Republican sympathizers (e.g., Reihan Salam, James Pethokoukis, Josh Barro, Bruce Bartlett, or the occasional writer at Reason.) than with a weasely neoliberal like Marshall.   The former argue their positions on their merits.  They invite you to debate them.  I respect that.  In contrast, Marshall has no arguments.  He’s just trying to pick your pocket.  I do not respect him.

[UPDATE:  See also Luke Brinker’s comments in Salon, The progressives are coming!: Why the latest attempt to “save” Democrats from populism is so pathetic.]

Without further ado, here’s my paragraph-by-paragraph critique of Marshall’s essay:

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Holder Out, Bharara In

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Okay, “Bharara in.” is wishful thinking on my part but Mr. Holder is out as AG.  Will anyone miss him?  Hoisted from the Comments section of the NY Times’ piece on his departure, “Attorney General Eric Holder, Prominent Liberal Voice in Obama Administration, Is Resigning“… (The Times characterization of Holder as a prominent liberal is…  interesting.  It begs the question, what exactly qualifies one as a liberal these days anyway?  But I digress.)

Glassyeyed from Indiana:

Real liberals would put banksters in jail.

You don’t say.   Here’s Michael from Tampa: Continue reading →

Water

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Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights.

– Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Related links:

 

Dylan Scott, The Toughest Questions The GOP Should Have To Answer On Obamacare

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Brad DeLong sends us to Dylan Scott, The Toughest Questions The GOP Should Have To Answer On Obamacare.  Scott’s questions follow below.  Read his post for related comments:

Three Questions For Republicans Who Want To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

  1. How would any alternative policy account for the millions of previously uninsured people who have gotten health coverage under Obamacare?
  2. Do you think covering the uninsured should be the goal of federal policy? If so, how would your alternative policy achieve that and keep insurance costs stable without an individual mandate?
  3. You have criticized President Obama for canceled policies under Obamacare. If your alternative policy is intended to expand health coverage, how would it achieve that without causing the same kind of disruption in the market?

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A petition worth signing

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Courtesy of The Daily Kos:

Our Message to the Departments of the Treasury, Justice, and Interior:

Cliven Bundy is a deadbeat who formed a gang of armed thugs to get out of paying the government money he owed [as a result of] illegally using federal lands for private gain. You should collect every cent he owes the people of the United States.

Click here to get to the signature page.

Plagiarism or just sleazy behavior?

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Background reading.

On April 14 I discovered a journal article which, on initial assessment, appears to be a derivative of a section of a paper of mine from 2009.  The authors didn’t copy text verbatim from my paper.  If only it were so black and white.  The critical section of their Their paper reads like a re-write an expanded version of one section of my paper.  Something ain’t right.  I haven’t determined yet whether it’s appropriate to label their paper “plagiarism” or just “sleazy” but it begs the question, “Plagiarism by citation amnesia?”  Talk is cheap though.  Go to the primary sources and judge for yourself:

Both links above take you to the abstracts in the respective journals.  The articles themselves are behind paywalls.  If you don’t have free access to either journal then go to the bottom of this post for links to no-cost copies.

The essence of my complaint:  Section 4.1 in their paper describes the details of computing the Cramer-Rao lower bound on the uncertainty associated with the parameter of interest.   So does Section 2.F of my paper.  See also my Figure 6 in Section 4.A compared with, well, a bunch of their figures.  As noted above, their discussion isn’t taken verbatim from my paper.  What rubs me the wrong way is that they address the same relatively obscure topic using the same methods but different words – and do so without acknowledging my prior work.  Is it possible that the lack of citation was an honest oversight?   Doubtful.  I know the authors are aware of my paper because a) they list it in the Reference section of their paper and b) one of the authors has have previously made unsubstantiated criticisms of my paper in non-peer-reviewed conference proceedings.  I regarded b) as an annoyance.  Making unsubstantiated criticisms in an unreviewed publication that few people are likely to read is one thing; creating a derivative of my work without citing it is a different story.  I won’t tolerate the latter.  The big question is, “Is their paper a derivative work?”  Is it plagiarism?  Or am I overreacting?  I need to re-read their paper as well as mine and re-assess.  That stated, I’m also interested in the opinions of neutral parties.

PS:  What would our sponsor think?

The same government agency that funded my work also funded them.   Set aside for the moment the ethical issue of not acknowledging the role someone else’s prior work played in your creation, as a taxpaper, wouldn’t you be irritated by paying twice for the same work?

PPS:  Links to no-cost copies of both papers

If you don’t have access to Applied Optics and/or Optical Engineering then you can download a copy of my paper here and their paper here.  (Note:  The free version of my paper is not a reprint of the journal article.  It’s the final version of the manuscript from which the galleys were created.  The content is nearly identical but it’s not formatted in the journal style.)