The Dish

O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo! #Brazil Social Protests. Photo Joao Pedro Sa. pic.twitter.com/w1aspthiO8

— Patricia G. Ferreira (@Pat_Galvao) June 17, 2013

Dish readers supplied the initial context for the massive protests in Brasilia, Rio, and Sao Paulo. David Lavin zooms out:

Brazil’s public transportation is often slow, dangerous and crowded, and these fare increases come at a time when Brazil’s decade-long economic success has slowed dramatically. Inflation is on the rise and many basic services are woefully underfunded. For years, the economy grew, the middle class expanded and millions rose from poverty. After the country suffered through crushing hyperinflation in the 1980′s and 1990′s, inflation seemed to be finally under control.

But recently the economy has stalled, much-feared inflation is outside of targets, and rising prices on everything from food to transportation have made life more difficult for the average Brazilian. It is this contrast, between the massive investment in Olympic and World Cup infrastructure, and the lack of investment in the basics Brazilians depend on in their daily lives, that seems to be sparking the unrest.

Roberto Ferdman breaks down how badly the hikes are squeezing average Brazilians:

A fare price that sounds pretty minuscule in dollar terms actually takes up a huge chunk of Brazilian incomes for those at the bottom (and presumably, those who most need to use the bus). The $0.09 hike brought the price of a single bus fare in Sao Paolo up to $1.47. Assuming Brazil’s city dwellers ride the bus twice daily—to and from work during the week, and to and from anywhere during the weekend—that’s $82.46 a month. For Brazilians making the minimum wage of $312.33 a month, that’s a whopping 26% of their income.

A reader quotes another to underscore the severity of the World Cup concerns:

The reporters also are lamenting that this is happening during the Confederate’s Cup, as it’s going to embarrass the country on the international level. It was a HUGE deal for Brazil to land the World Cup and Olympics because it meant tons of money was going to be pumped into the country to build infrastructure.

This is like saying Oakeshott is a good philosopher. Factually true, but greatly understated. The World Cup is, arguably, the largest cultural event on the planet.

Read On

In Politico, Bobby Jindal attempts a rallying cry for Republicans:

At some point, the American public is going to revolt against the nanny state and the leftward march of this president. I don’t know when the tipping point will come, but I believe it will come soon.

Why?

Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don’t have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don’t matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too.

Barro sighs:

I’ll grant Jindal one thing: He certainly didn’t ration the red meat in that paragraph. This is a big reason the Republican party can’t change. So many of its members have a warped vision of what liberalism is. They think it’s something so mind-bendingly awful that they cannot fathom how voters could willingly choose it. It must be some mistake. And sooner or later, mistakes get fixed.

Ezra piles on:

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Vice is so edgy, guys on.tnr.com/11MwEna

—
Tim Murphy (@timothypmurphy) June 18, 2013

“Maximum trolling” is how Michele Filgate characterizes ”Last Words,” Vice‘s June fashion spread depicting models as famous female writers, such as Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, at the time of their suicides. Vice removed the photos from the website today, but not before igniting heated debate. Filgate fumes:

When should art infuriate, and when is something just so offensive that it’s not even art? Art can and at times should be provocative — there’s no doubt about that. Yet this isn’t art. This is an editorial decision to get more pageviews — and perhaps to appear cool and above outrage, while simultaneously stoking it — and it’s more pathetic than anything else. … If we glorify suicide, we’re contributing to the problem. We’re also making light of an incredibly painful subject—one that many people are way too familiar with.

At Jezebel, which republished the photos, Jenna Sauers emphasizes that “suicide is not a fashion statement”:

And while time doesn’t necessarily lessen the grief of suicide, it’s perhaps especially distressing that some of the people Vice depicts died very recently — [Iris] Chang in just 2004 — leaving still-living loved ones behind. These weren’t fictional characters; these were real women, who lived and struggled and died, and to treat their lowest moments as fodder for a silly fashion spread is shameful and sad.

Stacey Goguen provides links for those who would like to learn more about suicide or are personally affected by suicidality. Rebecca Wait elaborates on the danger of trivializing the subject:

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Lauren Sandler suggests that the success of female writers is linked to them having only one child:

It was only when I was working on a book investigating what it means to have, and to be, an only child that I realized how many of the writers I revere had only children themselves. Alongside Sontag: Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Margaret Atwood, Ellen Willis, and more. Someone once asked Alice Walker if women (well, female artists) should have children. She replied, “They should have children—assuming this is of interest to them—but only one.” Why? “Because with one you can move,” she said. “With more than one you’re a sitting duck.”

Author Jane Smiley pops up in the comments section to dispute Sandler’s premise:

The key is not having one child, it is living in a place where there is excellent daycare and a social world that allows fathers to have the time and the motivation to fully share in raising kids.

Zadie Smith adds that she could “really go on all day” with her rebuttal:

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On Monday the Supreme Court invalidated an Arizona law passed in 2004 that requires people registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship at the time of registration. But, as Lyle Denniston explains, Scalia’s majority opinion suggested a way around the ruling:

On the particular point at issue in this case — Arizona’s requirement of proof of citizenship before one may register to vote or actually vote — the Scalia opinion said that a state was free to ask the federal government for permission to add that requirement.  And, Scalia said, if that doesn’t work — either because the federal agency that would deal with such a request is either not functioning or says no — then a state would be free to go to court and make an argument that it has a constitutional right to insist on proof of citizenship as an absolute qualification for voting, in all elections.

Arizona officials have already begun (pdf) to pursue this suggestion. Emily Bazelon zooms out:

As Jonathan Alter points out in his new book, The Center Holds, voter ID and other impediments led to a backlash against Republicans in 2012, energizing minority voters to go to the polls in the key states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.

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Bob Ostertag explains why he no longer gives away music for free:

[E]veryone who is deeply into music has figured out how to download music for free, despite the best efforts of the record business to stop them, and has far, far more music downloaded to their laptops and iPods than they will ever have time to listen to in their entire lives. Gigabytes and gigabytes of meaningless data. These same students invariably report that they have actually listened to all the music they paid for. If a virtual tree falls in a virtual forest and no one opens the file, does it still make a sound?

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A reader writes:

Re: your post on bicycle helmets, it’s much worse than you think. See this article, which pretty conclusively proves that helmets don’t do a damn thing for many kinds of head injuries and the government isn’t doing a damn thing to enact better standards. People are being lulled into a sense of safety with helmets that they just don’t have.

Another differs:

I hate when people cite small studies that do not jibe with meta analyses. Here’s one on bike helmets from NIH. I work in public health, so I obviously have a stake in the game. But even further, my daughter fell off a skateboard two years ago and was med-flighted to Boston Children’s Hospital.  The hospital asked us to bring her helmet, which was completely shattered.  Needless to say, she is completely fine now but would not have been without the helmet, according to hospital physicians.

Wear a helmet; don’t wear a helmet.  I don’t care.  But don’t be so arrogant as to tell others not to by hiding behind one small study.

Another:

As someone whose life was saved by his bicycle helmet four years ago, I must object to your post.  The benefits of using a helmet are quite clear, and the study you link to doesn’t change that conclusion. It addresses a narrower question: the benefits of mandatory helmet laws.

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This excerpt of Lizza’s new piece (paywalled) on immigration reform is attracting a lot of attention:

“There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it,” a Rubio aide told me. “There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly.”

Allahpundit sighs:

Remind me again: Passing the Gang of Eight bill is, theoretically, supposed to increase our chances of winning, right? Is “some of you can’t cut it” a message that sounds like a winner in, say, Ohio or Pennsylvania or any of the other 48 states where middle-class voters are already nervous about competition for jobs turning even fiercer in a high-unemployment economy?

Chait calls the Rubio aide quote “not only a piece of shocking candor, but also the biggest single blunder the pro-reform coalition has committed so far”:

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Brad Plumer warns against complacency when interpreting the latest data on global temperature:

We’re still on pace to blow past that 2°C climate target. Intricate arguments about climate sensitivity often bypass a crucial point. Humanity is on pace to do a lot more than simply double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by the end of the century (compared with pre-industrial levels). Doubling means going up to 560 parts per million. We’re currently at about 400 ppm and rising fast.

Nate Cohn describes how the slowdown in global warming over the last 15 years is improving scientists’ ability to model climate change by forcing them to rethink how heat is stored in oceans, the effects of aerosols, and variations in the sun’s output:

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