DF's blog

"What Can We Do to Stop Massacres?"

DF — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 22:44:01 +0000

UPDATE: This April 2010 report by the US DOJ states, "Moreover, nearly half of all public schools have assigned police officers." Obviously, this statement does not make clear whether or how they are armed.

This is the question posed by the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in a piece written for the Atlantic magazine and published just prior to the massacre in Newtown, CT. He recaps some important points from the article here (link to the full magazine piece here). The very title of the full piece, "The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)," is probably at least 50% offensive to some of you, but the piece itself is well-researched and well worth the read.

Everyone has had their chance by now to mock the speech given by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre. Indeed, he said many mockable things, but is putting a cop in every school really a crazy response to mass shootings? The Atlantic's Michael O'Brien took a much needed look at what it might cost, both economically and socially. He reports some surprising findings, most notably that a majority of Americans favor this solution according to a recent poll by Gallup, that it would not be cost prohibitive in dollar terms, but that it may actually have a net effect of making students feel less safe.

That's all worth considering. That we could conceivably afford to do it means it's actionable. However, even if it were guaranteed that the measure would be make schools safer, it might impact learning. Is that a trade-off we should make?

I'm curious as to how some of you who dismiss this idea immediately feel about measures like putting marshals on airplanes. There are significant similarities between mass shootings and terrorist attacks. They're both events that are unlikely but devastating. They both tend to be perpetrated by people who intend not to live beyond the attack.

There are also some key differences. First, even though the efficacy of some of these measures is dubious, there is heavy security screening prior to boarding a plane. Second, though we did expand the Federal Air Marshal program as a response to the 9/11 attacks, we still don't put a marshal on every flight. Marshals fly undercover and exploit this to increase the deterrent effect without increasing cost.

It's unclear how effective this program has been. Both the Richard Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab took flights that departed from Europe. Both were subdued by unarmed passengers, not marshals. Both made it onto planes with bombs that were poorly constructed, which is why their intended victims lived. Additionally, the program has had its share of controversy, something that we should probably expect by now from organizations that operate primarily in the dark.

I think it's also worth distinguishing deterrent effects from tactical response in this discussion. Most flights don't have a marshal. This means we have them in place purely as a deterrent. Marshals that aren't present can't actually respond to a threat in progress. Attackers might not know whether there is a marshal present, but chances are there isn't.

As others have noted, O'Brien also mentions in his piece that cops did actually show up to the Columbine massacre while shooting was still progress. However, as pointed on this NYT piece submitted by Dag's erica20, Columbine reflected a turning point in how police respond to mass shootings. At that time, the protocol was to wait for back up and attempt to talk the perpetrators down under the assumption that they wanted something. Given this protocol, the officers on the scene kept their distance and engaged the shooters with pistols from beyond the effective range of their weapons.

Obviously mass shooters have no intent of negotiating anything with anyone. As such, the strategy deployed by first responders has evolved. Now, officers are trained to make neutralizing the shooter a top priority. They train to do this even without backup and even when there are victims in need of aid. In other words, get an armed responder to the shooter as fast as possible.

If we accept that this is our first-best response to mass shootings, then there is an obvious advantage to having such a responder present at all times. So, it seems to me that if we were to put a cop in every school, we should consider the potential both for the deterrent effects and the potential for an effective, immediate tactical response that minimizes casualties. I'm not sure what the deterrent effects would be. It might not be possible to know. One thing that we can be reasonably sure of is that the general deterrent effects of police fail in these cases.

If we really wanted to be able to mount an immediate tactical response in these situations, then it wouldn't necessarily be enough to simply station a cop at every school. We would need to station someone there who is specifically trained and sufficiently equipped to respond to these events at every school (and that's just to be concerned with only schools). Perhaps it would be best to station these responders in a secure, private, non-descript room on campus where they could monitor the school via closed-circuit cameras, potentially giving them the advantage in orchestrating evacuation, lockdown or other security protocols. This might also avoid any kind of negative psychological effects of having an armed presence on campus, though this isn't guaranteed.

As I noted in my last piece, it seems to me as if many people have reacted to this most recent shooting, at least somewhat understandably, by doubling down on however they already felt about the attendant issues, particularly the issue of gun violence. Unfortunately, I think that this helps insure that impactful solutions remain elusive. For instance, many people had fun taking shots at Megan McArdle for suggesting that we might train children to rush a shooter, but then some of these same people argue that we should ban high-capacity magazines precisely because it would give victims of these events more frequent opportunities to do just that - rush and overwhelm their attacker. To me, this position does not entirely compute. To be perfectly clear for those who are having a hard time with this sort of thing, this criticism is not an argument against restricting magazine capacity.

It's also a long way from tackling the larger problem of gun violence. Economist Noah Smith notes in this piece that the most impactful policy change we could make to reduce gun violence, outside of a total ban on and collection of all guns, is to end the failed War on Drugs. Of course, maybe we don't care about those deaths so much because most homicides are committed during the commission of a felony.

I'm not arguing that we should necessarily put a cop in every school or train children to overwhelm shooters. I'm trying to find an answer to the question posed by Jeffrey Goldberg. I don't yet have any children of my own, but I do have many in my family. Most of them are of the age of the children brutally murdered in Newtown. They are not in school right now. In a few days, I will get to visit with them. It is one of the great joys of my life. I will get to give them their presents. We'll play together. And I'll be very thankful that they're safe and happy.

When they return to school after their break, we likely still won't have an answer to the question of how to protect them from these events - or if we even can. I think that matters a great deal.

In the meantime, I wish you all an exceptionally safe and happy holiday.

Topics:

Politics

Social Justice

Black Rifle Blues

DF — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:25:16 +0000

Everyone is sick right now. There's only one thing it seems we can all agree on, which is that we can abide the massacre of children neither in conscience nor gut. It's an unfortunate truth that what transpired on Friday in Newtown was different in degree rather than in kind, but the degree seems to matter this time.

Even more unfortunate is that this heightened arousal doesn't really seem to be leading to many cogent answers to the question, "How do we prevent this from happening again?"

One thing that won't prevent massacres like this from happening again is re-instating the nationwide assault weapons ban. I know that many of you reading this will have a problem with this statement. For some of you, it's because you simply have a normative preference for banning most or all guns. If that's how you feel, I don't expect to change your mind. What I want to do is dispense with the notion that re-enacting such a law has anything to do with preventing school massacres. If you just want to ban guns, you still probably will, but I'm banking on at least some of you actually desiring to improve the life expectancy of children in active shooter situations.

First of all, let's address the thorny and oxymoronic notion of "assault weapons." Unfortunately, it's a somewhat arbitrary distinction in civilian life and law that amounts to making hay over styling rather than firepower. If you really care about regulating firepower, that last sentence should have piqued your interest.

On what basis do I make this claim? Because I live in California, where we have an assault weapons ban that was modeled on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Like the FAWB, California law bans certain rifles based on their styling and furniture rather than their firepower. In my state, AR and AK type rifles are banned explicitly by blacklist. However, this approach doesn't work very well because it's too difficult to keep up with changes in manufacture when the law requires that weapons are banned by specific make and model. All this really does is punish popular manufacturers and push money into the hands of competitors who haven't been banned.

However, even if it did effectively ban all AR and AK type rifles, it still wouldn't help to regulate firepower. This is an AR-15 rifle:

The AR-15 was based on the M-16 rifle. They're basically the same except for one key difference: the M-16 is capable of fully automatic fire, meaning that the gun will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held and the magazine is not empty. The AR-15 is semi-automatic, which means that only one round can be fired per trigger pull. Under current California law, this rifle is not legal to purchase or possess (unless you got grandfathered in, which will happen in the case of any future ban).

This is the Ruger Mini-14:

This weapon has never been banned in California. Like the AR-15, it is semi-automatic with detachable magazine. It is also chambered to fire the exact same round, the Remington .223 (or sometimes the NATO 5.56mm, which is identical for the purpose of this discussion). This one doesn't look like a modern military rifle, though history buffs will probably note the similarity it bears to the M1 carbine used in WWII.

California law says this rifle is okay because it's not an AR or AK type and because it doesn't have a pistol grip. That's it. The law bans the pistol grip. This rifle can fire the same round with the same magazine capacity. Fun fact: the Federal AWB wouldn't even have banned the pistol grip, since it allowed one "evil feature."

Everyone got that? Ruger's Mini-14 (or their Mini-30 if you prefer 7.62mm, which is what the AK-47 fires) is not considered an assault weapon because it doesn't look scary. Never mind that it packs the same punch. The ban is purely on weapon styling and furniture and has nothing to do with the actual function of the weapon - not the type of round it shoots, not the type of action it has, not the rate of fire... nothing.

Feinstein's ban is likely to have the same architecture as the last ban, which was found to have no significant impact on violent crime by the CDC and NRC. The bans in California have done nothing but shift purchasing to off-list manufacturers. AR-15's are available off the shelf with the Bullet Button. High capacity magazines are illegal to purchase or manufacture here, but not illegal to possess. Californians who want them simply travel to Nevada or buy re-furbishing kits that skirt the law. Anyone who gets caught with one can simply deploy the "found in the woods" defense. It's almost impossible to prove someone actually bought one and brought it over state lines.

If you think gun control is the answer, this should trouble you deeply. You should find no comfort in the notion of renewing the federal ban, regardless of whether or not you simply prefer that outcome. In fact, the mere discussion of renewing the ban will almost certainly increase gun sales, especially of AR-15 rifles, despite having little chance of passing the House. Meanwhile, AR-15 rifles have already been in short supply after Obama's re-election. Panic buying will certainly increase now.

Here are some more troubling facts. Despite numerous descriptions of the AR-15 as "high-powered," it's actually not. Here's a comparison of rifle cartridges:

Second from the right is the 5.56mm NATO round, which is almost identical to the .223 Remington that most civilian AR-15's are chambered for. The round on the far right is the .22LR or Long Rifle, which is the smallest common rifle round. The .223 is only slightly wider in diameter, and though it is significantly more massive and travels at a much higher velocity, thus increasing kinetic energy both linearly and exponentially, it is still one of the smallest common rifle rounds. It's much smaller than the common hunting rounds found second and third from the left.

So you don't need a "high-powered" rifle to kill lots of people. As we learned from incidents like the Virginia Tech and Tucson massacres, you don't even need a rifle. They're sufficient, but not necessary. At Virginia Tech, only pistols were used. At that, they weren't particularly "high-powered" either. Here's a similar comparison of pistol cartridges:

Only the two smallest cartridges pictured here, the 9mm and the .22, were used. This "high-powered" stuff obscures a truth that shooters know: shot placement, particularly the ability to successively place accurate follow-up shots, matters far more than "stopping power," particularly when you're shooting at targets than aren't shooting back. Lanza was apparently triple-tapping his victims to ensure that even those that played dead would not survive. If the shooter is following this protocol, it doesn't really matter if he doesn't have a magnum round or even a .45 ACP.

What about high-capacity magazines? Loughner used one in Tucson, and arguably to great effect. James Holmes attempted to use one in Aurora, though it's unclear how much it really helped. Like most after-market high-capacity magazines, it proved unreliable. He probably would have done more damage with a bag of standard magazines. After all, that's all that were used at Virginia Tech.

So you don't need a high-powered rifle or pistol to kill lots of people. You don't even really need high-capacity magazines. In fact, the worst school massacre in US history was carried out with explosives. It's worth remembering that Harris and Klebold brought almost 100 improvised bombs with them to Columbine. James Holmes certainly learned how to make explosives.

Hopefully some of this is starting to illustrate why simply renewing the AWB won't prevent any future massacres. The AWB was in place when Columbine happened. It wouldn't have stopped Virginia Tech. It might have marginally limited Jared Loughner's destructive capability if you think that a 33-round magazine really gives a shooter much more capability than a 17-round magazine, which is standard on a 9mm Glock. James Holmes had plenty of other weapons and explosives. The AWB would not have prevented anything that occurred at Virginia Tech, since the shooter used pistols and even restricted size magazines for his Glock. He just carried lots of extras.

And that's all it takes to kill lots of people. Well, that and a plan that involves knowing no one will shoot back until you've had your way.

I'm really kind of sad about this whole thing. Liberals and assorted lefties usually have the high-ground when it comes to basing their positions on the facts, but firearms issues typically betray their fear and attendant ignorance of guns. Most people who hate guns know frightfully little about how they actually work. If liberals want to write gun control laws that actually work - as in actually result in the net prevention of harm rather than confirming stereotypes about being ignorant and reactionary - they need to deign to become a little more informed about a pervasive reality, which is that the firearm is the standard force multiplier on planet Earth right now.

I'm in support of good gun control. I don't support the Californication of gun laws because they simply don't work. The Federal AWB didn't significantly reduce violent crime nationwide, which was already falling and continues to fall even in the era of widespread gun ownership and increasing concealed carry. Those are the facts. Renewing it now won't stop another school massacre. What it will do is increase panic buying of weapons and confirm paranoia about liberal gun-grabbers.

If you're truly interested in a harm reduction strategy, I hope you can recognize that this isn't it. Any new gun control regime that hopes to actually reduce violent crime needs to go much, much further than the AWB. In order to prevent another school massacre, that regime would need to significantly reduce the risk that young, mentally unstable men can get their hands on an "assault weapon," which should be understood in civilian terms as basically any weapon that can be used to carry out an attack of this nature. Hopefully, I've made it clear that means basically any firearm. This standard is much, much lower than murky notions of "assault weapons" have previously allowed.

But let's not pretend that simply renewing the AWB will mitigate future attacks. If you honestly care about protecting children from future attacks, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

Topics:

Politics

Don't Vote - It's Completely Irrational

DF — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:55:39 +0000

One of the interesting things about voting is that there isn't a good reason for it, especially from the perspective of modeling human behavior that's common in fields like economics. In order to illustrate why this is true, I've put today's Presidential election into a simple game theory framework:

I've modeled both an Obama voter and a Romney voter, but the models are the same. The idea here is that the best payoff occurs when a voter's candidate wins. However, there is also a cost to voting - time, lost wages, travel expenses, psychic cost - represented by c. We've assumed that cost is variable, but less than the payoff of getting one's candidate in office. The result is that the best payoff for each voter is to not vote, but still end up with their candidate winning.

Doesn't voting actually increase the likelihood that your candidate will win? Not really. The closest Presidential election was Kennedy over Nixon in 1960. Kennedy won by just over 100k votes nationally. Even then, that means the odds of an individual vote being the deciding vote is less than 0.00001%. It's usually even less. Given that your vote is incredibly unlikely to decide the outcome, you're always better off not voting because you avoid the costs associated with voting

You might quibble that this model doesn't account for the electoral college, but that makes things worst for most voters. There is absolutely no rational incentive to vote for President in states like California or Texas. Of course, the electoral college does amplify the effect of voting in swing states, but it doesn't really improve the odds - situations like Florida in 2000 notwithstanding.

So, why do so many people vote? There are some possible explanations. Satoshi Kanazawa offers the possibility that we are not in fact forward-looking utility maximizers, but backward-looking adaptive learners, meaning that we're really voting on the last election. Fighting the last war anyone? It also has to do with feeling like a loser or like a winner depending on whether you feel your behavior was rewarded in the past.

Whatever, the reason - and it sure isn't a rational belief that your actions will affect the outcome of the election, because they objectively will not - millions of people still turn out to vote. So, sound off here and let us know why you're jamming a stick in the eye of homo economicus today.

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Politics

What's the Big Idea This Election? Reality

DF — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:23:59 +0000

Many voices, from the hallowed blogs of Dag to the exalted table around which Mighty Joe Scarborough and his colleagues convene, have decried the lack of substance in this election (though I'm pretty sure I hear that complaint every time anyone is running for office - "This should be about the issues!"). Mika Brzezinski has called it the Seinfeld election - a race about nothing - though I'll leave up to the reader whether this reflects more accurately the election or her observational skills.

I beg to differ. Medicare and Medicaid are on the ballot this year. That ain't nothin'. Obama passed a plan, flawed as it is, that will probably save the long-term future of Medicare. Medicaid needs help, but not convert-it-to-block-grant help.

But that's just one example from the campaign. Here's something that happened recently outside the campaign: Senate Republicans shut down a study by the CRS that drew this conclusion:

Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. The share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. The evidence does not suggest necessarily a relationship between tax policy with regard to the top tax rates and the size of the economic pie, but there may be a relationship to how the economic pie is sliced.

For the majority of my life, America has been governed according to this particular piece of bullshit. It's the old Horse and Sparrow theory, regurgitated through the mouth of Ronald Reagan and codified as right-wing economic dogma for all time. There's no evidence for this crap in economics. The CRS couldn't find any either.

That's significant when you live in a country that has a two-party system. One party presided over the collapse of the economy, but they still want to prescribe the same policy mix. What that mix does not do is promote savings, growth or investment. What it does do is make rich people richer. (This really should surprise no one who gets the basic concept of marginal utility).

Let's make this perfectly clear: Republican policy preference does not promote growth, savings or investment. It does further enrich the wealthy.

You have a candidate who wants to continue inflicting pain on everyone else whilst shoveling more money into the hands of, well, himself and those around him. And he's running on this platform after the greatest financial disaster in 80 years, when economic inequality in America is the greatest it's been in the same amount of time. Somehow, simply by virtue of being one half of the system, this prospect is taken seriously.

That isn't nothing or insignificant. It's not man hands or puffy shirts. Mika, take some notes.

One of Dubya's minions famously quipped that they make their own reality. That was no lie. Approximately 25% of the country lives in this bubble. They're vocal and they vote. We can go around and around about whether they're created by the environment or create it, but there they are.

This CRS study is actual reality, so they canned it - just like Romney's entire campaign has been about supplanting reality.

Nate Silver has been catching heat all week for throwing cold water on GOP delusion by, more or less, averaging state polls. That's why all of the pundits are so pissed off at him. They traffic in a narrative that requires the race is just too close to call, which leaves them room to endlessly speculate about "intangibles," while finally resting on the conventional wisdom that it's all going to come down to turnout. Cash paycheck and repeat. Not bad work if you can get it, what with our now two-year-long campaign season.

Hurricanes have a way of being all too real, don't they? Chris Christie sure as hell jumped out of the bubble this week. Bloomberg endorsed Obama. Then, Business Week ran this. Yeah, that says, "It's the Global Warming, Stupid!" Strange how being in the path of a freak hurricane seems to have influenced the world views of some influential folks, is it not?

America is not really hurting for lack of the Next Big Thing. We're hurting from the self-inflicted wounds of the last three decades. Dumping "trickle down" into the dustbin of history is a huge development. Finally getting through to elites on climate change is a huge development. Even piercing the hot air balloon that is political punditry is a potentially huge development.

If America could simply arrive at an approach to governing that was based on reality, even if that government was fairly "centrist," it would be much, much better off in the coming decades. Finally marginalizing the willfully deluded and destructive is gold, Jerry.

Topics:

Politics

David Brooks Is The Worst Parent In America, Or At Least That's What I'm Going To Assume

DF — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:17:09 +0000

In yesterday's David Brooks column, he offered a tepid endorsement of Mitt "Thurston Howell" Romney for President. Brooks games out what the next two years will probably look like under Romney or Obama. There's really nothing insightful or interesting there, so here's his conclusion:

The bottom line is this: If Obama wins, we’ll probably get small-bore stasis; if Romney wins, we’re more likely to get bipartisan reform. Romney is more of a flexible flip-flopper than Obama. He has more influence over the most intransigent element in the Washington equation House Republicans. He’s more likely to get big stuff done.

So the lesson here is that if one party is acting like a bunch of intransigent jerks, you need to make sure they have a President who will cooperate with them. Let's put aside for a moment that Brooks sort of qualifies this by arguing that the actual policy mix we would end up with would be something close to his preferred center-rightism, which he says would be the case because Romney would have learned the lesson that moderatism wins and that the Tea Party wouldn't be willing to destroy a Republican President. Doesn't his argument boil down to weak-kneed Chamberlainesque appeasement?

Does David Brooks raise his children this way? I kind of doubt it, but if he does he is a terrible, terrible parent. What he is arguing is tantamount to feeding your kid ice cream for dinner because the screaming won't stop. The essential logic seems to have eluded him, even in the face of arriving at the conclusion that the man he described this way should be our next President:

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

Topics:

Politics

I'm Here Today To Save The Romney Campaign From Itself

DF — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 18:52:25 +0000

Against my better judgment and my general belief that the cake of this unrelenting election cycle has long been baked, I'm going to give Willard Mitt "I'd Shut Down FEMA" Romney a bit of advice, 100% gratis. Mitt Romney should spend the next week using his leadership, connections, management skills and even his own personal fortune to demonstrate exactly why he should be President by organizing a private relief effort for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Doing so would be so full of positives and so bereft of negatives that it's a no-brainer. It's an opportunity to get credit for not campaigning, but actually still campaigning, that doesn't look as stupid as what he did today. It would be an opportunity to prove that conservative ideology with respect for downsizing or eliminating agencies like FEMA is both feasible and beneficial. It would also be an opportunity to provide direct relief to those in need, which should appeal to him as a Christian and perhaps even as an Earthling. Finally, even as a political play, it would demonstrate both that he is who he says he is and that he can provide leadership that yields real results for Americans in need.

However, he probably won't do that. He'll probably keep doing things like merely re-labeling his already scheduled campaign events in battleground states and refusing to answer questions in the wake of a hurricane about whether he'd really shut down FEMA and leave relief up to the states and private sector. No wonder this thing is so close!

Topics:

Politics

Mourdock's Crime is Theism

DF — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:48:17 +0000

Republicans can't seem to keep from diving into the nexus between rape and abortion during this "jobs, jobs, jobs" election. Aside from the obvious - that this is probably a bad political play for a party that has a big gap with women voters nationally - it's been quite common during this cycle. The latest such comment from a running GOPer comes from Richard Mourdock, the Tea Partier who primaried Indiana's Dick Lugar. Mourdock recently made comments that have people comparing him with Missouri's Todd Akin.

Todd Akin probably made the biggest such splash so far this year. Of course, his comments about a woman's body shutting down pregnancy in the case of "legitimate rape" - a phrase which is troubling on its own, even out of context - were so biologically off base as to be laughable. And laugh we would have, were the gambit not so obvious: if a woman's body shuts down all pregnancy in the case of "legitimate rape," then no woman who gets pregnant has actually been raped, at least not "legitimately." In other words, her claims to the contrary must be bogus.

But even if Mourdock's comment angles at the same policy proposal as Akin's, it is not the same. Here is what he said:

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

First of all, we should note that he is not making the horrifying and willfully ignorant statement about biology that Akin did. He is not saying rape cannot lead to pregnancy. On the contrary, what he is saying is that it can and does. He also correctly regards rape as a horrible. His comments do not offend because because they are scientifically ignorant or because they fail to put the proper weight on the act of rape. Rather, these are the honest expressions of an earnest theist.

Mourdock is essentially grappling with the problem of evil. For those of you a few years out from philosophy 101, it goes a little something like this: if we allow that god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent as is claimed, how can evil exist in the world? It's a philosophical doozy not easily reconciled. Still, there have been myriad attempts. Some have argued that there is a divine plan beyond their comprehension. Some argue that evil is a test of faith.

Like many of his contemporaries, Mourdock appears to believe that life, such as it is, begins at the very moment of conception and that it is the spark of divinity regardless of where or how it flickers. This is the essential problem in the abortion debate. If someone truly believes that an immortal soul is brought into existence at the moment of conception, can we be that surprised when they object to terminating it, whatever the grounds? Regardless of someone having been raped, that would still be murder, would it not? Even in situations where the life of the mother is potentially threatened by continuing the pregnancy, you're looking down the barrel of having to choose one soul over the other. And a soul is a soul is a soul.

Core beliefs like this, especially when held by people who hold their faith - essentially committing to hold the belief regardless of whatever comes - as the highest human virtue, cannot and will not be reasoned with. In no way will you or should you be able to debate them away from their position, unless that debate should result in nothing short of a dissolution of that faith. In that sense, Mourdock is nothing but a common, earnest theist, no more a monster than millions of his fellow Americans.

Topics:

Politics

Embrace the War on Women for the Win

DF — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 17:31:59 +0000

About a year ago, I wrote about a model of US Presidential elections by UCLA's Lynn Vavreck. Vavreck's model, like almost every poli-sci model of this type with any predictive power, is mostly based on what's happening in the economy. But Vavreck claims her model is still more accurate by taking a careful accounting of the campaign messages.

Here's how I described Vavreck's model last year:

The basis of Vavreck's model is the application of economic conditions to the current "in"-party and "out"-party. Whichever party is currently being helped by economic conditions, usually the "in"-party in times good and the "out"-party in times bad, should run what Vavreck labels the "clarifying" campaign. This is precisely what you might expect: If the economic winds are at your party's back, then you campaign on the economy.

But there's another successful campaign style that Vavreck's study illuminates, which she labels the "insurgent" campaign. The insurgent campaign relies on identifying an unpopular position of your economically enabled opponent, but the key is that this must be a position that the candidate cannot easily walk away from, which allows the insurgent candidate to define a non-economic difference. According to Vavreck, insurgent campaigns have been successful even in the face of prevailing economic winds on several notable occasions.

A year later, predictions based solely on economics are not good for President Obama. Here's a graph of the "Bread and Peace" model by Douglas Hibbs, which uses income growth per capita, the most powerful economic indicator for this purpose, as well as incorporating a variable for military fatalities:

This model predicts a 45.5% share of the popular vote for the President. It's consistent with similar models that rely primarily on income growth per capita.

Vavreck suggests that the best position to be in is to be an incumbent with the economic winds at your back, in which case you run a "clarifying" campaign that links you to the good economy. Otherwise, your best hope of winning is to run an "insurgent" campaign, which is characterized by highlighting an unpopular and inescapable position of your opponent.

By selecting Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Mitt Romney has provided the perfect opportunity for Barack Obama to run an "insurgent" campaign against him. Todd Akin has teed it up perfectly. Paul Ryan has spent his career bragging about how he's more pro-life than anyone else. He's sponsored legislation to narrowly define rape in order to further his agenda. He's supported the Blunt amendment, which would have allowed any employed with moral objections to opt out of providing birth control.

In broader terms, this supposedly fringe position is actually the mainstream GOP position now. House Republicans threatened to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood last year. They can't run from that. Republicans have attempted, in the past year, to pass legislation mandating ultrasounds for women who are seeking an abortion. They can't run from that either. To improve matters even more for Obama, the draft of the official 2012 GOP party platform calls for a no-exceptions federal ban on abortion. Rachel Maddow did a great run-down of how this extremism has become mainstream in the Republican party over the last few decades, which you can view here.

This is what makes the collective GOP freakout about Akin so great and underscores what an opportunity this is for Obama. Akin only said what pretty much the entire GOP has been trying to legislate for years. There are no moderates in the GOP left to stand on this issue. Romney, who was once a moderate, has moved to the right to appease the base.

Now he's cemented his new-found extremism by selecting Paul Ryan. This is what is required of an insurgent issue. Paul Ryan can't disavow Paul Ryan. Romney can't say he picked him, but doesn't really agree with him on this stuff without alienating the base. That's the key here. The base of the GOP really supports this stance. Independent voters, not so much.

The wedge is now pointed toward the GOP. All Obama has to do is push it. Better still, he doesn't even need to move to the left. The beauty of the position that they're in is that they can't simultaneously maintain it and talk about it in public. All Obama needs to do is talk about it as the level-headed, down-the-plate kind of guy he is - a lot. Unfortunately, he appears to be doing the opposite presently.

Of course, behind the scenes he should be doing as much as he can to make the rest of the year look like this:

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Debate The Controversy!

DF — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 18:28:21 +0000

As we all know, there are two - and only two - sides to every story. It's an article of faith in contemporary American political life. He said one thing, she said another. We must, of course, exhibit both sides in order to get a fair and balanced view of any issue. After all, the truth will invariably be found somewhere in the middle.

That's why we need to wade carefully into controversial issues. Take evolution for example. Of course, you have a broad consensus in the scientific community that the theory of evolution is sound and well supported by the evidence, but we have to carefully weigh that against the opinions of people who have no scientific training outside of their ability to build some pretty awesome life-size dinosaur models. You know - debate the controversy!

The same thing goes for the issue of climate change. Sure, there's a broad consensus among scientists across the disciplines that climate change is occurring and is most likely being driven by man-made emissions, but we can't simply take their word for it. After all, there is, of course, dissent in the scientific community. Well, okay, there was. But there are still others that, while lacking in any scientific expertise whatsoever, argue climate change is really just a ruse for allowing government to take control of your life. Again, we would be unwise to simply believe one side or the other. We must seek the truth in the gray in between these views, where veracity most assuredly lies.

And so, I was incredibly pleased to hear Rep. Steve King, a Republican from the great state of Iowa, address one of the thorny issues with which we are now confronted thusly:

“Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way,” King told KMEG-TV Monday, “and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.”

Bravo, Rep. King (R-IA)! Indeed, I have never been personally approached by a woman with her rape and/or incest baby. As such, I have no way of knowing that a woman has ever gotten pregnant under such circumstances. Sure, a lot doctors claim that such a thing is possible, but some people with, let's say, different qualifications have said otherwise! Rep. King (R-IA) has absolutely no way of discerning the truth in such matters himself, say by requesting a summary of the relevant scientific literature.

Thankfully, Rep. King (R-IA) has shown us the way. As a brave and proud leader of America, Rep. King knows that there is only one thing to do in such circumstances: commence a discussion. If we're lucky, this discussion might become part of an important national dialog and might even by elevated to the status of a real issue. Regardless of the outcome, starting a discussion is the only way we can properly debate the controversy. After all, as in all other controversies, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle.

Who's with me?

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Humor & Satire

Social Justice

Religion

Wonk Like A Man

DF — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:49:25 +0000

Paul Ryan is wonky. You can tell this is so because he is frequently described this way by Very Important People. Like in this ABC news video. Or this Daily Beast column. Or in this NYT column. Wonkiness is supposedly one of Paul Ryan's great strengths. He is something like the GOP "budget guru" in the House of Representatives.

This is interesting because Paul Ryan has been asked questions about the budget since his weekend debut as Boy Wonder (here, I am picturing Adam West as Williard Mitt Romney). Ryan's wonkiness was, of course, front and center when answering a query from Brit Hume:

During a Fox News interview with Brit Hume, Paul Ryan insisted on talking about the “Romney plan” while Hume questioned him about the “Ryan Plan.”

Ryan repeated that he was now focused on the “Romney plan” to renew America.

When Hume questioned when the Romney budget would balance the federal budget, Ryan explained that it was unclear.

“I don’t know exactly when it balances, I don’t want to get wonky on you but we haven’t run the numbers on that specific plan,” he said. “The plans we offer in the house balance the budget.”

Ryan's response is disappointing in that my understanding of wonkiness is that it has something to do with being familiar with the details of a technical subject. Not having run the numbers at all doesn't sound very wonky.

Asked later in the week about cuts to Medicare in his budget, he replied thusly:

First of all, those are in the baseline, he put those cuts in. Second of all, we voted to repeal Obamacare repeatedly, including those cuts. I voted that way before the budget, I voted that way after the budget. So when you repeal all of Obamacare what you end up doing is that repeals that as well. In our budget we’ve restored a lot of that. It gets a little wonky but it was already in the baseline. We would never have done it in the first place. We voted to repeal the whole bill. I just don’t think the president’s going to be able to get out of the fact that he took $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare.

Yes, it would seem that it "gets a little wonky" indeed. There's another definition of wonky, which is more along the lines of shaky or unreliable. Untrustworthy.

Paul Krugman has been writing about just how untrustworthy Ryan's street cred is for years now. Here he is back in 2010. Here he is last year. And here he is this week on what's in Ryan's budget:

Ryan basically proposes three big things: slashing Medicaid, cutting taxes on corporations and high-income people, and replacing Medicare with a drastically less well funded voucher system. These concrete proposals would, taken together, actually increase the deficit for the first decade and beyond.

All the claims of major deficit reduction therefore rest on the magic asterisks. In that sense, this isn’t even a plan, it’s just a set of assertions.

Earlier this week, Genghis wrote a piece that wondered whether average Americans might actually like Ryan's radical vision upon being exposed to it. I have a different concern, which is that they will never actually understand it as such. The reason for this is the same as the reason Paul Ryan was ever considered for the GOP ticket: his celebrity status as a "budget guru" is based on a self-serving fiction that continues to be embraced by nearly everyone.

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