Free Association

Podcast Review: Sam Harris, Forbidden Knowledge

Having never gotten through a couple of attempts to read Charles Murray's book, The Bell Curve, I - like many I suspect - formed my opinion about him as a likely racist from popular press. You will recall the terrible treatment he got at Middlebury College recently, when trying to discuss his new book.

Listening to him discuss The Bell Curve, and his new book, Torn Apart with Sam Harris - I was struck at how unfairly it seems he has been treated, a feeling that Harris expresses as well on the podcast. The basic theory of both of Murray's books on society and IQ, are about the stratifications between people that tears us apart - and were meant as a warning not to let this happen essentially. That is a far cry from how Murray is depicted in most people's minds I bet. His original thesis in the Bell Curve over 20 years ago was prescient, as the stratification problems he was pointing to have gotten much worse and income inequality is only one issue of many.

They go on to talk about the election of Trump, and something Murray (a conservative, "never-Trumper") discovered in talking to Trump voters was sentiments like this; while they do not particularly like Trump either, they despise the cultural elites (all of us are in that group I think) who think of most Americans as ill-informed, and stupid - and Trump was "their murder weapon". This rings entirely true to me.

Finally, they talk about another book of Murray's on the coming age of automation, and the potential impacts on income of humans and what we might do about it when it comes.

Fascinating 2+ hour discussion which you can get at SamHarris.org or wherever you download podcasts.

Dan

Apr 24, 2017 7:31:53 AM

Do you care who gets appointed to the Supreme Court?

Neil Gorsuch - Getty Images

So a simple question: "Do you think our government, and your elected officials - you know, the ones you voted for - care what we, their constituents, think and further that they pass laws that we support?"

In a word, no. Not even close.

I read and follow politics at an almost obsessive level. Here is my perspective on this topic.

We are not represented in our government, well, unless you happen to be in the top 1% of earners in the country.

Money drives our elected officials. Watch the video link at the end of this post, if you don't believe me. Given the inordinate power that money has on distorting our "representative Democracy", we have laws to keep money from distorting public policy right?

Well, we did.

But the Supreme Court ruled on this topic in 2010 in a case called "Citizens United" (a funny name since the citizens in question are not the 99% of us). Anyway, that case was being argued by the group, Citizens United, that these laws limiting money in politics were unconstitutional. That's right, the Supreme Court decided in their ruling essentially that money is a form of free speech and therefore can be given in any amount and secretly in most cases. This ruling overturned 100 years of laws written by your lawmakers in order to try to keep politicians from being influenced by monied interests, and make the representatives we elect, listen to our opinions.

The ongoing hearing in the Senate that's going on right now (today March 23 and the last couple of days) is for Neil Gorsuch, a nominee to fill the empty Antonin Scalia Supreme Court seat. Scalia died a year ago. So, why didn't Obama replace the empty seat? He did, but Republicans, who control the Senate thanks to people (like some of you) who voted for some Republicans, would not allow Obama's moderate replacement for Scalia, to even have a hearing like the one going on today - no hearing, no vote. That Obama nominated replacement was named Merrick Garland, and he waited 10 months for a hearing which never came.

Wait, you say, can they do that? Well yes, although no Senate in our 240 year history to that point, had ever done such a thing. Wait you say, so that means the Republican-controlled Senate stole that vote and gave it to Trump? Yup. So who is this Neil Gorsuch guy?

Well, no surprise I guess, he's a Conservative Republican because he was nominated by Trump - although no one knows what Trump is, as he's hard to pin down on his ideology (mostly it's whatever gets people to cheer at rallies). So what does that mean for the future if Gorsuch gets appointed to the empty seat? You probably know that many Supreme Court decisions in the last decade have been decided 5-4. Five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices vote one way, and the four Democratic-appointed justices vote the other way. Citizens United was a 5-4 decision.

If you're unhappy about that... If you think the Senate should not steal seats... If you think 5-4 decisions are not in the best interest of the views and desires of the country as a whole - you need to call your Senators today (1844-241-1141) and tell them not to vote for Gorsuch, or to vote "no" and replace that nominee with the rightful nominee, Merrick Garland. I hate to tell you it is mostly a lost cause, as Gorsuch is almost certainly going to get approved by the Republican Senate and 5-4 rulings in favor of the rich, and against the wishes that most Americans would prefer, will continue.

Think about all that next time you go to the polls.

Here's that video

But it's bigger even than Citizens United. A way to solve this problem, is in a bipartisan way. Here's how.

So get after it - by going here and joining!

Mar 23, 2017 9:14:44 AM

Parsing the meaning and logic of the Comey and Rogers hearing today

Watching the hearings on CNN today, I am struck that one of two things is true:

A substantial problem exists with relation to Trump and Russia and is being investigated
There is no provable problem with relation to Trump and Russia and is still being investigated

We will not know, of course, which is true today, as neither Comey nor Rogers are going to say. It will eventually come out, so we will wait.

With regard to leaks, they are always criminal when the information leaked is classified, so that means one of three things is also true:

The leaker was correct that the president is compromised by Russia and this fact needed to come out to stop the US from being led by a compromised President
The leaker was incorrect that the president is compromised by Russia and leaked it as an act of patriotism, but was wrong on the facts.
The leaker was incorrect that the president is compromised by Russia and leaked it anyway as a base act of partisanship

If it is the first, then it is hard to blame the leaker, even though technically it was a felony - yet if that person is caught, I doubt they will go to prison.

If it is the second, then it is also hard to blame the leaker, even though technically it was a felony - yet if that person is caught, I expect they will go to prison.

If it was the third, then the Democrats have sunk to the same level as the Republicans in dirty tricks.

My reaction to this last point is one I've had openly before. I am disgusted with the endless dirty tricks of the GOP, where statesmanship and compromise seem to be dirty words - examples abound, but here are a few...

Comey leaking Clinton email then saying it was nothing right before the election.
McConnell refusing to support any Obama initiative for 8 long years, no matter if that initiative was supported by the GOP or not - poisoning our politics in ways that are hard to quantify but very real.
McConnell's refusal to even allow a hearing for a sitting President's (Obama) SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland, against all traditions and the spirit of the constitution he has sworn to uphold.
Using the Debt Ceiling, and the full faith and credit of the US government as a hostage in negotiations, repeatedly.
Filibustering all Senate confirmable candidates under Obama, leaving the judiciary as lacking in judges as it has ever been, then have the gall to blame the Democrats when the Senate voted to remove the filibuster for all judge confirmations except SCOTUS.

Others see the GOP dirty tricks as smart tactics while in opposition. If you feel fine about what the GOP did in the above list, then you should be fine with leaking information to the media as a partisan means to undermine the Trump agenda. You can't have it both ways.

In my view, if this is just partisan politics, it is time for the GOP to recognize that the list of dispicable actions that I list above (and more that I did not list), are foolish, undermine our government, and are going to be repaid in spades once they are no longer in the opposition, as may be happening now.

One can argue that the Democrats should take the high road, but then the GOP is allowed to fight with a gun and the Democrats are not. These actions, if partisan in nature, are required to allow leaders of both parties to see the pointlessness of such activities and seek the high road together. Nothing else will work.

Mar 20, 2017 10:59:50 AM

Trumpcare is unlikely to pass, is that good for Democrats?

Dave Weigel: 'CBO also says that AHCA will "substantially raise premiums for older people" - or as they are known in Washington, "people who vote".'

Yep, the GOP railed against Obamacare, which was a Conservative idea of course, not because they hated it so much, but because they:

Hated Obama, and thought they could sink him by opposing the bill, and every other thing Obama and Democrats wanted. That did not go so well for them did it? And...
Because the GOP has been out of power so often, and for such long stretches, that they don't really have the mentality to craft legislation that (necessarily) addresses the complex balancing act of slowing the growth of healthcare costs by insuring more people. People forget that the uninsured were a huge line item and fastest growing line item in the Federal Budget. Obamacare was a nuanced (and unfortunately complex) scheme to lower those costs over time ("bend the cost curve" as it was called) which the bill has unequivocally done.
The ideology of the right and far right (aren't they almost all far right since the Tea Party?) is just not a complex and nuanced set of ideas. It is love of small government, guns, Jesus, the 1950's mythos, and large corporations, and hatred of minorities, equal rights, fair elections, and any sort of regulation, almost without question as to whether it is necessary to compel corporations to do the right thing for all citizens and not just the interests of the corporation. You know, like pollute streams, or warm the planet, or a myriad of other "bad things" in the name of chasing the almighty dollar. Are there no common sense regulations? One wonders.

So the GOP was hateful and perhaps even racist in their white-hot (pun intended) disgust for Obama. And they were built and intellectually prepared only to oppose. This helps explan with the GOP are so good at opposition compared to Democrats. Thus the GOP is clearly unprepared to govern - they have no fresh ideas or new approaches - only tax cuts and deregulation in spasmodic orgasms of destruction - aimed at anything (ANY.THING) that Democrats hold dear - obsessive opposition, see? Seven years of anger and hatred and railing against Obama and Obamacare, and the best they can do is the AHCA? I really doubt it will pass the House with GOP representatives hating it so, much less the Senate, but if you want the GOP back as the opposition party, you almost have to hope they do pass it.

Mar 14, 2017 9:40:52 AM

The dangers anti-intellectualism is presenting

So you want to know why it “feels” that the American government has a lot of problem right now. Well, maybe it has something to do with this daily demonstration of subliminal stupidity. And there’s nothing you can do about it. We can’t even have a reasoned discussion on anything, because there’s no such thing as “fact” or “logic”. There are political statement, and feelings. How do you solve any problem with it?

Mar 13, 2017 11:53:05 AM

Repealing Obamacare isn't about healthcare

If you have been thinking the debate about the ongoing healthcare situation in the US was about, you know, healthcare, you are mistaken. At least on the Republican side of that argument. If you're a Democrat, the whole point of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, was to solve the problem of the uninsured driving up the cost of everything by using emergency care in hospitals as their normal doctor. The uninsured had nowhere else to turn, so they turned to hospitals for care, and those hospitals provided care for free.

We can argue about asking hospitals to send the uninsured back onto the street sick or injured - which hospitals cannot do by law - but you will also lose that argument. You know, that having roving sick and maimed people roaming the streets is not the society you want to live in, so that's a losing argument. By the way, if you revere Ronald Reagan as a US President, it was Reagan who passed the law that requires hospitals to provide care, regardless of whether the person asking for care is insured.

So what do hospitals do about that cost of providing this free care? The only thing they can do, raise the cost of care for people with insurance. Not only does this pass on the cost to the insured and the companies that provide it, it makes that insurance cost ever more unaffordable for the poorest among us. Talk about a death spiral - the pre-Obamacare world of healthcare was on a death march of cost. You can argue all you want with the flaws of Obamacare, and yes it needs work to make it more effective, but one thing it did was stop this death march. All these people - 11.3 million of them at last count - who are participating in Obamacare, are no longer forcing hospitals to provide free care. That, in turn, has dramatically lowered the cost of healthcare for everyone.

Before Obamacare, healthcare costs in the United States had risen by record amounts each year and Obamacare reversed that trend. This endless surge in healthcare cost does not happen in countries with universal healthcare for all their citizens. How do we know this? Because the US is the only western civilized country who does not have universal healthcare. Think there might be a connection between skyrocketing costs and our Republican friend's insistence on for-profit healthcare? You'd be right.

So given that hospitals are required (rightly) to follow the Hippocratic oath, and treat the sick and injured, even if they don't have insurance, then how do we make sure that those people are not bankrupting the system? There are two competing ideas. The Democrats in the 1990's wanted to create "Medicare for all" as a new entitlement - funded by tax increases on the very wealthy. The Republicans proposed an idea which had it's birth in the Heritage Foundation - a Conservative Think Tank - which preserved the for-profit parts they liked, and supplemented it with a government individual mandate (you have to have insurace or pay a penalty) and many other things. Huge parts of that Heritage Foundation idea were passed by a Republican Governor in Massachsetts, now generally called RomneyCare. It was, and is successful in that state. The Democrats used many of those same ideas as RomneyCare to create the ACA (which is also called Obamacare).

Now, Republicans want to repeal that idea - but they are loathe to really replace it. Why? The entire ideology of the GOP since the 1980's has been that taxes on the very wealthy cannot be passed. As I've argued before, if you are not wealthy, it is hard to argue why you might vote Republican, as it is as clear as ever that, at least for GOP leadership like Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in Washington, the repeal of Obamacare was always the point. "And Replace", was just added to make the most vulnerable among us feel ok voting Republican.

As I said in my book, "If you vote Republican, you will at some point realize that you've been lied to, manipulated to line the pockets of the already wealthy". Repealing Obamacare was really only about repealing the tax increase that funded Obamacare. Want proof, Paul Ryan admits it on - of all places - Fox News.

Wake up middle-class people! The GOP does not care about what you care about.

Mar 13, 2017 7:50:04 AM

George Will lambasts the GOP on MSNBC - cats and dogs sleeping together!

I never thought I'd see this, but Lawrence O'Donnell lays out that the GOP plan to replace Obamacare is indeed socialism, and George Will is interviewed to basically agree - which is reasonable since both Obamacare and the GOP replacement are both socialistic programs. Amazing. Upside down world.

Mar 9, 2017 5:35:47 PM

Trump's triumphant speech in the Joint Session of Congress, was full of lies

I think Trump simply cannot stop himself from lying. 70 years of doing it and getting away with it (mostly) seems a trick this old dog can't or won't learn.

Mar 9, 2017 1:53:22 PM

Is Russia stealthily running the Trump administration?

Trump and many on his staff and on his campaign who are no longer on his staff, are in serious trouble. This story continues to get more and more frightening, and the circumstantial evidence is all moving in one direction, Russia and Trump collaborated during the campaign. Are the Russians holding dirt on Trump over his head? If so, is Russia stealthily running our government

Mar 9, 2017 11:31:32 AM

What brought Trump to the Presidency

A friend of mine asked a group of like-minded folks a set of questions. I paraphrase, but the questions were:

I've always assumed people who built huge wealth were smarter than the average business person, but with Trump that seems not to be the case. He does a lot of counterproductive and self-harming things.
How does someone as undisciplined, apparently emotionally crippled, and someone with such low regard for the intelligence of the people he leads, rise not only to financial success but to the presidency?
If someone like Trump could do so well, what keeps the rest of us from succeeding similarly.

Here are my thoughts:

One of the interesting postulates of the Thomas Piketty book Capital in the 21st Century, is that US-Style Capitalist politics has created an entire class of families who - mostly because of relatively low taxation (as a percentage of income) and massive loopholes in certain industries (finance and real estate primarily, but energy as well) is to blame. Trump inherited somewhere between $40M and $200M from his father's personal estate, and Trump took over a very wealthy and well-connected Real Estate business in the NY area, that his father created and was reportedly worth about $100M when Fred Trump died - no one knows exactly how much Trump inherited for sure, because he refuses to release tax returns.

Also, his father groomed him for the rough and tumble NY real estate business, including allegedly getting him a "killer of a lawyer" who allegedly taught Trump to hit back harder than he was attacked (sounds like the Trump we know as President) and to use the legal system and his inherited wealth to outlast his opponents who usually have less capital. The lawyer was Roy Cohn, the guy who defended Joseph McCarthy during the dark days of the McCarthy era in US politics, using innuendo and clever questioning that made almost everyone look guilty of something. The linked NYT article above on Cohn and Trump is fascinating to read. It's almost like the story of Vito Corleone (Fred Trump) and Michael Corleone (Donald Trump) with the Robert Duvall Consigliere being Roy Cohn, if you're a Godfather fan.

Of course, Trump's reputation for not paying subcontractors is notorious - and apparently US Law "makes it easy for Trump to stiff contractors". So there's that HUGE advantage - most people don't get things for free, especially labor worth $100's of thousands of dollars and more each year in a Real Estate business.

All the above, leads me to conclude a few things in response:

Our peers of successful, but not uber wealthy people, would all do a lot better financially if we were given $40M and even better if the figure is closer to $200M when starting out our careers - so there's that.
If the courts made it easy for us to simply refuse to pay in our industry, and we were crooked and amoral enough to use it, that would make a huge difference.
If tax law favored the industry we just happened to inherit from a rich father, that combined with the legal advantages above, would be overwhelming. Think about how much in taxes and services you've paid in your life. It has to be at least $1M dollars and for some of us, could be millions of dollars. Trump potentially has paid $0 in taxes for "nearly 20 years". No taxes, and stiffing contractors = lots of personal financial wealth
Americans revere the very rich, for reasons I find dizzying, and no matter whether they deserve it, as our middle-class neighbors associate great wealth with the American dream, no matter how hard that dream is for many to believe.
We have been living our lives, at least since 1980, in a country dominated by right-leaning politics, whose only real goal is an unabashed protection of the donor class. Pay-to-play is a serious problem, and oddly was a big deal in Hillary's loss - as if Trump is not a part of the donor class. None of us (I presume) are really wealthy enough to be in the donor class - sure, a hundred thousand at most in contributions over a lifetime is not nothing, but it's not donor class level support, which ranges into the millions per year, even a billion dollars per year.
The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling has made it even worse for ordinary Americans to have a voice in our politics, and the donor class now drowns out all others. Bernie's decision to refuse large donors and take contributions from ordinary Americans only was a remarkable thing. And shows there is hope for a reversal of the trends favoring the donor class might be possible.

Add all that together, and that seems like a pretty strong argument for why a brutish bully and seeming mental midget - who constantly berates those who disagree with him, who apparently cheats people he has hired, who uses the tax code and the legal system to his advantage (no matter the ethics), and who inherited millions of dollars, could succeed so spectacularly.

As for solutions - these are my thoughts:

Raising taxes on the donor class so that our rates are truly progressive again. To what level is a good debate to have.
Reversing Citizens United and re-capping contribution levels for political donations, or public funding only for elections are a good place to start.
Rewriting the tax code. I'd be in favor of an overall reduction in tax rates, so long as donor class deductions (e.g. carried interest) were eliminated, but not middle-class breaks like writing off mortgage interest.
The overall rule, is that building and maintaining a strong middle-class, creates the conditions for free markets to best thrive. The super rich don't need to be richer through tax policy, but the conditions we have in our politics and money in politics in particular, have created the conditions where politicians of both parties, but much more GOP politicians endlessly argue for tax cuts for the rich. On top of this, we are experiencing the worst middle-class conditions in my life (this video is mind-blowing, and I've embedded it below) in terms of wealth accumulation, things are getting worse, and I strongly believe, are the reason we have the conditions that explain why we have "President Trump" at all.