Why aren’t the Republicans who were upset that Healthcare.gov didn’t work not thrilled that millions have gotten coverage?
Category Archives: Weasels
One significant way in which science differs from politics is that you can’t simply make shit up and expect to be taken seriously. Chuck Krauthammer does not understand this not-so-subtle point.
LAST UPDATED: 3/1/2014, 9:30 PM
Last week the Washington Post published a column by Charles Krauthammer expressing skepticism of global warming. In and of itself, the column is unremarkable. Global warming skeptics get their views published all the time. What’s interesting about this particular columnn is that 110,000 people ‘petitioned’ the Post (i.e., they tweeted under the hashtag #Don’tPublishLies) not to publish it. Some regard this as attempted censorship. I say the old dictum applies, “People are entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own facts.” That’s the problem with the column. It contains a lot of BS. Requesting that a BS-filled column not be published isn’t censorship. It’s demanding responsible journalism. It would be easy enough to let the column go just because there are thousands of others like it but, since 110,000 people took a few seconds to register their disgust, let’s treat it as an exemplar and give it a beat down. Jeffrey Kluger critiques the column in question here. (And Lindsay Abrams does so here, Debunking Charles Krauthammer’s climate lies: A drinking game.) I address three aspects of Krauthammer’s BS below:
- Statements re deterministic predictions of climate models: His lead paragraph, which sets the tone for the column, centers on a rhetorical question which, in terms of framing a debate, is somewhere between a straw man and a non-sequitor. I address the nature of model predictions including uncertainties in inputs which lead to uncertainties in outputs and uncertainties in forecasts even if we knew exactly what the inputs were going to be.
- Namechecking a famous physicist/mathematician to legitimize his skepticism of climate models: The man he namechecks, Freeman Dyson, has a long and well-documented history of making ridiculous and demonstrably false claims re climate science. I address some of that history. Namechecking Dyson undermines Krauthammer’s credibility rather than enhancing it.
- Citing specific data as indicative of a flaw in models used to make global temperature forecasts: Krauthammer neglects to mention that the data in question has been analyzed in detail. The analyses 1) provide a quantitative explanation for the observations and 2) do not suggest that the observations in question are indicative of any fundamental flaws in the climate models used make global temperature forecasts.
Section 1. Statements re deterministic predictions of climate models
Greg Mankiw on the deserving rich
Harvard Prof. Greg Mankiw in the NY Tmes, Yes, the Wealthy Can Be Deserving. Perhaps there is a case but, if there is, Mankiw ain’t making it in his op-ed. Talk about a target rich environment. People more eloquent than I will gut him. I’ll update with links as the rejoinders to his piece roll in.
UPDATE #1: Here we go:
… the point should be clear. If the 1 percent are able to extract vast sums from the economy it is because we have structured the economy for this purpose. It could easily be structured differently, but the 1 percent and its defenders aren’t interested in changing things. And the 1 percent and its defenders have a great deal of influence on the direction of economic policy.
- Over at Economist’s View commenter ilsm reminds us of Galbraith’s observation:
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
- Paul Krugman, Iron Men of Wall Street:
Mankiw invokes the strong role of financial fortunes in U.S. inequality to argue that the incomes are deserved…Has Greg been living in a cave since 2006? We’re now in the seventh year of a slump brought on by Wall Street excess; the wizardly job of “allocating the economy’s investment resources” consisted, we now know, largely of funneling money into a real estate bubble, using fancy financial engineering to create the illusion of sound, safe investment. We also know that there is a real question whether hedge funds, in particular, actually destroy value for their investors.
One more thing: Mankiw argues that our tax system is fair because the top 0.1 percent pays a higher share of income in federal taxes than the middle class. This neglects the partial offset of this progressivity by regressive state and local taxes. But surely the main point is that to the extent that taxes on the 0.1 percent are high (they aren’t really, in historical context) that’s largely because Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election… It’s kind of funny to claim that our system is fair thanks to policies that you and your friends tried desperately to kill…
- Commenter Jim Hansen responding to Krugman’s post:
[Quoting Mankiw:] “…a nation would allocate many of its most talented and thus highly compensated individuals to the task.”
“Most talented” at what? The 0.1 percenters rise to the top because they are the most talented at making money. Then the conservatives proclaim that the 0.1 percenters deserve to make huge sums of money because they are talented.
Beware of assumptions, especially if the assumption is based on a circular argument where cause and effect, the why and the what, are reversible or are essentially the same thing.
Walmart vs Costco
From Alec Torres, Costco: The Argula of Chain Stores:
President Obama has been talking up the members-only shopping chain Costco in his crusade to raise the federal minimum wage, but the favored big-box store for well-heeled shoppers is probably far from the right model for most American businesses…
Costco not only pays wages above those of its obvious competitors — the average Costco employee earns $22.89 an hour, compared to $12.67 an hour at Walmart — but also offers health care to its workers, boasts a meager 5 percent turnover rate among employees, and has seen sales increase by 39 percent and stock prices double since 2009, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
But what is good for Costco may not be good for everyone else…
The article itself is pretty ridiculous but it does have entertainment value. More interesting though is one of the reader comments it inspired:
Thought for the Day: 14 February 2014
Paul Krugman, The 2,000 Year Apartment:
Bloomberg reports on the soaring prices of trophy apartments in Manhattan. The biggest sale so far was former Citigroup head Sandy Weill’s apartment, which he sold for $88 milion to the daughter of a Russian oligarch. But $100 million listings are out there.
For a bit of perspective: the median full-time worker in the United States makes about $40,000 a year. So it would take the typical worker 2,000 years to earn enough to buy the Weill apartment.
Still, people like Weill are exemplars of the free market at work. They work in an industry that delivers clear value to the economy, and has never relied on government bailouts. Oh, wait.
Thought for the Day: 25 January 2014
[Then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)] proposal was essentially the last, unaired episode of Beavis and Butthead, with the three pages of script just containing a single scene in which Butthead walks into the U.S. Senate and says, “Can you, uh, like, give us 700 billion dollars? Uh-huh-huh.”
– from Matt Taibbi, Bailout Architect Runs for California Governor; World Laughs
In the interest of better government
Former DARPA Director Regina Dugan:
Project on Government Oversight on conflict of interest issues at DARPA. Noteworthy quote:
Although he DoD IG did not “identify any contracts that DARPA personnel should not have awarded,” it found that “DARPA may not be able to justify that personnel adequately substantiated proposal selections” and that “contracting personnel increased DARPA’s contracting risks when issuing cost-reimbursement contracts.”
That statement misses the mark. The issue is not whether the awardees were qualified to do the work. I have no doubt they were. The issue is whether some awardees had an unfair advantage in the process by virtue of their prior relationship with the Program Manager or other personnel in the office. Here are the DoD Inspector General’s reports cited by POGO: one, two. Judge for yourself.
Tom Tomorrow, Middle-Man Besieged
The Corner
So I’ve been reading The Corner lately. It’s not up to the level of The Onion but it has its moments. What?… Wait… No… No!?!… You can’t be serious! It’s for real?! Oh my god. Don’t tell me RedState is real to. I don’t know if I could handle two revelations like that in one night.
Seriously though, I have been reading The Corner. It’s bad. They offer no ideas let alone any substantive arguments as to why theirs are the ones you should subscribe to. If Buckley were alive I find it hard to imagine that he’d be happy with the state of affairs there.
How unappealing a candidate was Ken Cuccinelli?
So unappealing that even Terry McAuliffe could beat him in the VA governor’s race.
UPDATE 11/6: Also on the subject of “What were my fellow Democrats thinking?“*, 31% of self-described liberals voted to re-elect NJ Governor Chris Christie. Go figure. Charlie Pierce notes:
If you want to know why actual liberalism continues to be a dead parrot in our politics, and why the only real political dynamic in the country revolves around a choice over whether we will drift slowly to the right or stampede headlong in that direction, look to that number.
There is no reason on god’s earth why a self-identified liberal would vote for Chris Christie. He’s a tool of the ascendant oligarchy, awful on women’s rights, terrible on infrastructure, very high on union-busting, and a short-tempered, thin-skinned bully into the bargain. If you’re a New Jersey Democratic legislator who needs a little somethin’-somethin’, I can see why you would support him. But 31 percent of liberals? Please.
Christie’s opponent was Barbara Buono. Her concession speech:
* Really, Virginia? McAuliffe was your best option to run against Cuccinelli? That’s sad.