Month: July 2010

Nate Silver contemplates the differences between live operator and automated polls:

The original Bradley Effect, named for former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, occurs when respondents in surveys are asked about socially desirable behaviors, such as being free from racial prejudice. Although the racial version of Bradley effect itself is probably a thing of the past, social desirability bias may manifest itself in other ways. Automated polls have sometimes shown relatively lower levels support for gay marriage initiatives, for instance, in states like Maine and California. Homophobia is fairly common, but has become socially undesirable; the purveyors of the automated polls have sometimes claimed that their respondents are free to be more honest when there's not another human being on the line. If the theory holds, automated polls might also provide a setting for voters to be more honest about their feelings on marijuana use, another behavior that is probably more widespread (and privately tolerated) than it is socially acceptable. If so, that would be good news for Prop 19.

A reader writes:

You forgot to mention that the guy holding the noose sign at the NOM rally, Larry Adams, admitted on tape to being tempted by gay sex.  As disgusting as that sign is, the interview left me feeling more pity than anger.  He actually expresses compassion by stating his main concern: he doesn't want them going to hell and that he wished they could feel God's love (even through he fails to realize they might already).  He honestly believes homosexuality is a choice because he feels he made that choice and just wishes others would do the same so they don't go to hell. 

Makes you wonder what kind of a man he would or could become without the Christianist influence during his time of confusion.

Tyler Cowen didn't like the cap-and-trade bill, but he still supports a carbon tax. His logic should be familiar to anyone who follows energy debates:

Even if we cut government spending a lot, some taxes will have to go up.  This seems like the least bad tax to raise or create, since it has some chance of producing a better outcome.  It's hard to say that about most of the other potential tax boosts.

Noah Shachtman compares a Wikileaked battle log with his reporting.

A paper by Alan S. Blinder and Mark Zandi is pinging around the economics blogs. From the NYT:

In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year. In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation…

The full paper is here (pdf). Avent gives a tentative response. Stephen Spruiell thinks it is "still pretty early in the game to be evaluating what effects the bailouts, the Fed interventions, and the stimulus actually had'. Delong's reading:

The hard part of it, of course, is figuring out what would have happened to the flow-of-funds through financial markets in the absence of TARP, of quantitative easing, and of other extraordinary financial policy interventions. That they were, collectively, about twice as big as the ARRA smells right to me, but the only pieces of information I have to support that are even shakier than back-of-the-envelope calculations.

Barry Rubin joins the chorus from the neocon right claiming that "Turkey is on the enemy side." It was once a given on the right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential in defusing Islamism and winning the war on terror. But once Turkey took on Israel, that ended, because the war many neocons are waging is for Israel, right or wrong, not the West at large. Neo-fascist Andy McCarthy calls Cameron a "disgrace". Stark raving bonkers Melanie Phillips has a herd of cows:

It is astounding to hear a Conservative Prime Minister mouth such infantile leftism. If it weren’t for Obama’s example, it would be unbelievable that any serious politician could spout such drivel.

He really struck a chord, didn't he? Keep it up, prime minister. Advance the interests of Britain, and resist the war of civilizations the far right wants to gin up. We will only defeat Islamism if we keep an open hand stretched to Islam. Isolating and demonizing Turkey's evolution as a regional Muslim power – prepared to be Israel's ally if Israel stops the persecution and colonization of the Palestinans – is about as dumb a geo-strategic move as one could imagine.

IOZ's pithy argument:

Institutions, like organisms, seek survival for themselves and their descendants. One of the conceits at the heart of most theories of government, which has perhaps reached its apogee in this age of technocratic, managerial liberalism, is the idea that institutions are fundamentally instrumental. To an anarchist, this is a flatly silly proposition. (An analogue might be a Christian trying to get an atheist to concede that life has a “purpose.”) Institutions aren’t simple tools. Organizations aren’t implements. And when a sufficient number of institutions coexist, they function like an ecosystem. They neither work nor do not work. They survive, reproduce, replace, predate, evolve, alter, consume, and grow. They are no more responsive to the individuals contained within than a person is to a single cell.

E.D. Kain fleshes this thought out:

All institutions whether private or public seek their own self-preservation. The problem with government institutions is that they persist because of politics rather than any rational decision-making process. The big public unions exist and grow in strength because they are so important electorally. The big federal departments exist because politicians must always do something to survive the next election cycle (read: spend more!).

But since government is also necessary, the task is to determine what institutions need to be done away with, how to sunset them so they do not strangle the whole, rather than to rail at all of them. My thoughts on this inevitably stray to special interest groups as well. At what point do, say, HRC and AIPAC and the NAACP end up simply perpetuating themselves and their own leaders (invariably factions of the large, amorphous groups they claim to represent) rather than remaining focused on the task in front of them?

Buzzfeed presents: "The 15 Gayest Pictures Of The Pope."