Month: August 2010

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver parses this Gallup poll, which gives Republicans a 10 point advantage, "higher than any previous midterm Republican advantage in Gallup's history of tracking the generic ballot, which dates to 1942":

Gallup’s survey — and some other generic ballot polls — are still polling registered rather than likely voters, whereas its polls of likely voters are generally more reliable in midterm elections. At FiveThirtyEight, we’ve found that the gap between registered and likely voter polls this year is about 4 points in the Republicans’ favor — so a 10-point lead in a registered voter poll is the equivalent of about 14 points on a likely-voter basis. Thus, even if this particular Gallup survey was an outlier, it’s not unlikely that we’ll begin to see some 8-, 9-, 10-point leads for Republicans in this poll somewhat routinely once Gallup switches over to a likely voter model at some point after Labor Day — unless Democrats do something to get the momentum back.

Blumenthal's read is similar:

[Political scientist Joe] Bafumi and his colleagues estimated their 50-seat gain for the Republicans assuming a two-point advantage for Republicans on the generic ballot, which they project will widen to a six-point lead by November. If the Republican lead on the generic ballot is already that wide (or close), their projection for the Democrats would worsen.

by Chris Bodenner

Kevin Drum struggles with how to deal with the mixed messages sent by what Hitchens calls the "white fright" of Beck followers:

What is the right way to talk about this? I think Bob [Somerby] has a point: calling people stupid racists just isn't very bright. For the most part it probably isn't true, and even to the extent it is, it's bad electoral politics to harp on it. Calling an individual person racist for some particular action is fine if it's justified. Ditto for specific groups with overtly racist agendas. But entire movements? Probably not.

On the other hand, "You'd have to literally be blind not to notice that the Fox/Rush/Drudge axis has been pushing racial hot buttons with abandon all summer." Pivoting off Hitchens, Nick Gillespie observes:

For me, the strangest and most off-putting element of the day was the disjuncture between the anti-authority dimension of the rally – our leaders have disappointed us and must be called to account! – and the whole-hog deference to militarism – we need to thank our soldiers for following orders so honorably and self-sacrificingly. While there were plenty of wounded soldiers on the stage, there was absolutely zero discussion of why these guys were being sent overseas and whether we should expect the same pols who lie to us on domestic policy to be any better on foreign policy.

by Conor Friedersdorf

The Heritage Foundation has found a new Vice President for Domestic and Economic Policy Studies: David Addington.

Mr. Addington is a brilliant policy expert with over twenty years of senior experience at all levels and branches of governance. As a trusted advisor to two White Houses, the Defense Department and four congressional committees, Mr. Addington understands Washington and how policy ideas become law.  Most recently, Mr. Addington served in the Office of the Vice President, first as Dick Cheney’s counsel and later as his chief of staff.

What exactly did he do as Dick Cheney's chief of staff? Jane Mayer sums it up nicely in this New Yorker piece:

Most Americans, even those who follow politics closely, have probably never heard of Addington. But current and former Administration officials say that he has played a central role in shaping the Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terror. Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share—namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside. A former high-ranking Administration lawyer who worked extensively on national-security issues said that the Administration’s legal positions were, to a remarkable degree, “all Addington.” Another lawyer, Richard L. Shiffrin, who until 2003 was the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel for intelligence, said that Addington was “an unopposable force.”

In other words, The Heritage Foundation now employs a man who has done more than almost anyone else to advocate radical expansions in the power of the federal government, including torture and warrantless spying on American citizens. On its About Page, the organization claims to advocate for "limited government" and says it believes "the principles and ideas of the American Founding are worth conserving and renewing."

There are a lot of employees at Heritage who actually do believe in those principles.

Can any of them defend this personnel choice?

by Patrick Appel

Christian Lorentzen thinks Judd Apatow movies romanticize stupidity.  Serwer differs:

Apatow movies always cleverly acknowledge the extent to which American masculinity is a performance, and how our internalized obligation to perform it makes us do really stupid things.

by Chris Bodenner

The OED? Curt Hopkins starts the grieving process.

by Patrick Appel

Rebecca Ray, Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, answers my question via e-mail:

I'm writing to pass on a new report my colleagues and I wrote on the subject: "Who Cares? Assessing generosity and gender equality in parental leave policy designs in 21 countries," in the July edition of the Journal of European Social Policy.

We specifically examine how a generously-designed parental leave policy is not necessarily a gender-equal policy, and vice versa.  For example, Germany ranks second-highest in generosity to new mothers, but its position falls to 10th on the gender equality of its policies.

While a long maternity leave can be supportive of new mothers, it can also cement the traditional breadwinner / caretaker family roles instead of dual-earner / dual-carer roles.

The report is behind a paywall, although an earlier, free version of the paper can be accessed here.

A professor of human resources mounts a more general defense of maternity leave (not specific to Germany):

I thought I'd send you some of the research on this:

Parental leave is associated with increases in women's employment, but with reductions in their relative wages at extended durations (Ruhm, 1998, Quarterly Jnl of Eco.).

Rönsen and Sundström (1996) Journal of Population Economics (study in Scandinavia). One important finding is that the right to paid maternity leave with job security greatly speeds up the return to work.

Jane Waldfogel, Yoshio Higuchi and Masahiro Abe (1998) Journal of Population Economics (study in US, Japan and Britain). We find that family leave coverage increases the likelihood that a woman will return to her employer after childbirth in all three countries, with a particularly marked effect in Japan. This result suggests that the recent expansions in family leave coverage in the sample countries are likely to lead to increased employment of women after childbirth.

In other words, women are not "loathe" to return to the workforce after lengthy maternity leaves. They're MORE likely to. There's a sense of reciprocity for the opportunity–not to mention the fact that most people (men and women) prefer working to not working. Most women do not aspire nor want to be stay-at-home mothers for 10+ years. Maybe until the child goes to preschool, but that's mostly the end of it (on average, anyhow).

I think the preconceptions are wrong here. Not to mention the idea that employers wouldn't hire qualified women because they might potentially get pregnant is precisely the reason we have laws preventing such discrimination (and other countries, too). You can't "punish" someone based on what you think they might do. This isn't "Minority Report." Plus, wouldn't you rather have an employee who is excellent for an indeterminate amount of time (i.e., a woman who may take an extended maternity leave) than an employee who is less excellent for an indeterminate amount of time (i.e., a less qualified man who will definitely not get pregnant but may leave for any other myriad reasons).

The logic just isn't there. Anecdotal and research evidence both suggest that companies are trying to find ways to keep qualified women around after childbirth, not avoid them altogether.

A reader in Germany:

You ask about data on German maternity leave and the career chances of women. My empirical experience after having lived in Germany for 20 years (we came here for my wife's career) is that yes, of course it hurts them. You could look at how Germany is well behind the OECD average on women's salaries or percentage of women in management. But I just look at my circle of friends. Not one woman who has a degree and children is happy or satisfied with her career (or lack thereof).

How did my wife succeed in this climate, even getting promoted immediately after returning from one year's leave? Easy. She worked for an American company.

Another reader with German ties:

I don't have data to crunch on Germany and maternity leave, but I am married to a German woman, and many, many of her friends were essentially forced out of the workforce by the "generous" maternity leave policy. My mother-in-law was a chemist when she had a baby in 1973; when she went back to work, she could have had the "same" job, but had not kept pace with the lab technology and ended up working as a receptionist. Many of my wife's friends had children when they were not long after entry level (25-28 years old), and by the time they come back to the workforce after even 5 years and 2 kids, their peer males, now 30-33 have moved into higher management and there is no way to catch them. There was a times article on this not long back.

By Conor Friedersdorf

There are several recent posts on the subject that are worth your while. In The New York Times, Ross Douthat has a column and a blog post about the religious aspects of the Glenn Beck phenomenon. 

Russel D. Moore observes the same rally and doesn't like what he sees. I wonder how the tension between evangelicals and Mormons will play out.

Observing another event with Christian overtones, Tom Junod of Esquire worries that religion is being used by the powerful as a cynical tool.

by Patrick Appel

Conor opposes diamond engagement rings, calling them "the ultimate sucker's purchase." I've advocated this same position in the past, but here's a passage, from Paul Bloom's excellent How Pleasure Works, that made me think twice:

[Psychologist Geoffrey Miller's first insight about costly signaling is the idea] that displays of personal quality are only taken seriously if they involve some cost, some level of difficulty or sacrifice. If anyone can easily do the display, then it is worthless, because it is trivially easy to fake. Costly signaling shows up in the gifts we give to one another, particularly during courtship. Miller asks, rhetorically, "Why should a man give a woman a useless diamond, when he could buy her a nice big potato, which she could at least eat?" His answer is that the expense and uselessness of the gift is its very point. A diamond is understood as a sign of love in a way a potato isn't, because most people would only give on to someone they care about, and so the giving signal some combination of wealth and commitment. 

This argument is unlikely to convince those dead-set against diamond engagement rings, but given that some sort of costly signaling is unavoidable when proposing marriage, I'd be curious to hear about other actions or gifts that would as effectively signal commitment. Keep in mind this subsequent paragraph when making suggestions:

Financial value is not the only signal of commitment. The economist Tyler Cowen points out that the best gifts for someone you live with are those that you, yourself, wouldn't want. He points out that even if his wife would enjoy the complete DVD set of Battlestar Galactica, it would be a lousy gift, because he would also get pleasure from it, and so the giving doesn't signal any particular love for her.

Most expensive objects (cars, houses, flat-screen TVs) wouldn't work very well as engagement gifts because the giver would receive equal benefit. Diamonds are typically only desired by women, which, using Cowen's formula, makes them excellent engagement gifts for women.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A male reader writes:

I'm a professional dating coach (a la the movie "Hitch). I try not to associate with the "Pick Up Artist" moniker, but some refer to it as that as well.

This is what people don't get about the whole recent men's pick-up-chicks advice going on the last five years or so: it's basically self-help in disguise. Most of the time and effort is dedicated getting socially maladjusted and frustrated men some basic social skills, more in-touch with their emotions, and some semblance of confidence going, not to mention a much-needed hobby or two. The whole movement is often demonized as a bunch of sex-crazed predators lying their way into women's panties all over the country. First of all, let's give women a little more credit — pick up lines never work. And second of all, we're talking 30-year-old virgins and 40-year-olds who still live with mom here. They couldn't be predators even if they wanted to.

I've been doing it for three years and unfortunately, for the last year, I've started to avoid the whole, "what do you do for a living?" question with most people. It always creates a tedious 20-minute conversation/explanation/defense depending on who I'm talking to.

And seriously, what the hell is the big deal? There has been women's dating advice for decades — some of which is pretty toxic in its own right. There's been marriage counseling and relationship advice for decades as well. But a significant amount of the population, when confronted with the idea of a male dating coach or a men's community with the purpose to get better with women, they recoil in horror… calling it manipulative, misogynistic, exploitative, dishonest, etc., etc.

Why? Because men want to have sex? Because it encourages men to want to have sex with women? Since when was that immoral? I'll admit there are some bad apples in the industry, but what industry doesn't have a few bad apples? Still, the amount of judgment that's rendered is totally unnecessary.