Up until a couple days ago, I didn’t know who Freddie de Boer was/is. Apparently, he’s a semi-retired provocative and well known leftist blogger. What brought him to my attention is a puzzling headline from the Atlantic, Does The Blogosphere Permit Left Wing Ideas?

Puzzling in that I’m not sure what the argument would be, when the blogosphere is the definition of an open forum.  So I read further to find out that Freddie began the argument:

There are many myths within the political blogosphere, but none is so deeply troubling or so highly treasured by mainstream political bloggers than this: that the political blogosphere contains within it the whole range of respectable political opinion, and that once an issue has been thoroughly debated therein, it has had a full and fair hearing.

Um… okay.  I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone assert this “myth” before, don’t know anyone who believes it, and certainly don’t know anyone advocating it strongly.

I have heard several arguments along the lines of, the increase in the blogosphere has increased the number of views overall, but nothing like “media reports, blogosphere decide”.  In fact, many of those arguing that the blogosphere has increased the number of voices don’t agree that this has been a good thing, nor that it’s in any way equal in presentation of all ideas.   Just that it can help and has increased the total number of ideas available.

But I digress… the more puzzling part is this:

The truth is that almost anything resembling an actual left wing has been systematically written out of the conversation within the political blogosphere, both intentionally and not, while those writing within it congratulate themselves for having answered all left-wing criticism.

Puzzling because the one thing the blogosphere is above all else: a free market.  Yes, it’s not completely free as costs do exist, but costs for bloggers have been decreasing dramatically over time and are close to being zero from a casual level. (more…)

As an update to Wednesday’s post, the idiocy continues, in this case, with Paul Krugman (here via Daily Caller):

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign….

 Now it’s obviously impossible to know whether Mr. Krugman was honestly surprised about the horrendous events of this past weekend or not, but it seems hard to believe that anyone who heard about the incident thought, “yep – saw that coming.”

But in the grand scheme, it really doesn’t matter whether he was truly surprised as that’s not his main point.  Before he gets there though, he has to set up the framework (article cont’d):

…And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again….

That’s some prescient vision he has there.  Without any proof, without any examples, without anything at all, he can “see” what was inevitable.  Not sure why he didn’t stop it or call for the possibility as loudly as possible.  It seems like the only moral actions when you “know” violent acts committed against innocent parties is inevitable. 

Additionally, this uncanny ability of his makes one wonder if the people from Miss Cleo’s office has contacted him yet to see if he’s looking for a career change?   Or maybe the CIA would like to test his capabilities?

But I digress, extra-sensory perceptions aside, Mr. Krugman continues framing the argument using a government report (article cont’d):

The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: In April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence….

Which would be interesting to note, if only it were true.  There was and is a DHS report detailing the potential for increased radicalization and recruitment due to a very unique climate, but the report itself begins with this easily comprehendible statement:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that doemstic righwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.

The report continues as it details what it sees as specific climate variables for which rightwing extremist groups might exploit, but noted, in the 2nd paragraph the threats which concern Mr. Krugman so much, are “largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts“.

But Mr. Krugman sees, so a potential for increased recruitment and radicalization based upon societal factors and an increase in the potential for real harm are now the same.  I doubt that’s true for most objectively viewing the same data, but I don’t think most people think like Mr. Krugman.

Nonetheless, our vaunted author continues.  With an increase in threats (real) and vandalism (possibly real, no studies, no proof offered), Mr. Krugman’s vision sees the obvious results (article cont’d):

One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has….

Who was that guy again? 

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled.  But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate….

So even though Mr. Krugman believes the shooter is likely insane, the national climate is somehow involved.  Not only involved, but (article cont’d):

…something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

His proof?  Increased levels of violence?  Increased crime rates?  Nope.  (more…)

Over @ Freedom In Our Time blog, you can read a perfect example of finding facts in order to confirm an already preheld belief (whole thing here).  In this case, that preheld belief is none other than one shared by a large number of libertarians, that cops are bad.

In the article, he starts with some interesting stories about individual cops committing illegal acts against those they’ve sworn to protect.  Like most freedom loving people, I too abhor these stories and hope that the punishment fits the crime.

I will even go a step further and state clearly; I think the institution which is law enforcement has some serious issues with which should concern all Americans.  Not the least of which is the seeming ability for bad cops to keep or get new jobs, even after they’ve shown a propensity to abuse their discretionary power (not for now, but one can make the argument that with so many laws on the books, a law enforcement officer’s discretion increases – forest tree thing again).

Having said that my concerns about an institution, can’t be seen as an indictment on individual police officers.

Not so much with this author… starting with a story about bad cops, he finally, after many, many words later, reaches the real point:

What this means, of course, is that our system of “public safety” is built on a population of armed functionaries invested with the power of discretionary killing, many of whom are so emotionally unstable that they pose a potentially lethal threat even to themselves.

The proof offered?  Poorly understood stats:

Contrary to what we’re told to believe, law enforcement is not a particularly dangerous occupation, at least when measured in terms of acts of violence directed at police officers. However, police are frequently a lethal danger to themselves: According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, each year “twice as many cops … commit suicide as are killed in the line of duty.” Significantly, another Kenosha police officer killed himself just weeks prior to Strausbaugh’s suicide….

& an advocacy organization’s statements:

Former Maryland police officer Robert Douglas, executive director of the National P.O.L.I.C.E. Suicide Foundation, describes suicide as “the number one killer of law enforcement today.

Oh… and many, many, many words on some very bad cops who deserve very serious punishments.  Did I forget to mention that?

But easily enough, we can put that all aside and say by what we know in public, thanks to a somewhat informative press, and our interactions with the law enforcement community, that it’s highly likely that many of our law enforcement officers are not emotionally unstable.  If they were, we’d have fears larger than the price of the speeding ticket every single time we encountered an officer in uniform…. but we don’t.

So where’s the disconnect?

Well, firmly in the author’s mind, as this truly is a case where the author seeks to find specific anecdotes, combine those, evil as they may be, with insignificant statistics, and round us all up to the inevitable conclusion: police are in fact the boogeyman!

Police Officers in Reality

Other's Version of Reality

Armed with an understanding of reality is enough to refute this, but let’s take a closer look at the actual stats with respect to suicide and the statement “twice as many die of suicide as are killed in the line of duty”.

Let’s start with the word twice, and ask the analytical questions.  Twice of what?  Cause twice of zero, is well… zero.  So what is the killed in duty rate?  Police officer suicide rate?  & do these rates actually differ (more…)

Short video of Author Brad Thor discussing Wikileaks most recent release of US classified documents where he asks, “Why are we so reluctant to kill people who need killing?”

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Reason review here), now has his own movie, “Cool It”:

The movie’s specific goal (here):

Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.

& Considering the only other major films such as “Inconvenient Truth” are nothing more than fear inducing propaganda, Mr. Lomborg’s rational style and willingness to deal with the reality should make for a good film.

DA Posts on Bjorn Lomborg & The Copenhagen Consensus here & here

Writing in the NY Times, an MIT Professor for the Sloan School of Management, Simon Johnson explains how bad budget deficits will be if we allow the Bush tax cuts to continue.  Basically he tells us, if we fail, it will only be due to the fact that taxes aren’t high enough and we’re not spending enough money on the right things. (here):

According to the Congressional Budget Office, extending all the Bush tax cuts would add $2.3 trillion to the total 2018 debt. The single biggest step our government could take this year to address the structural deficit would be to let the tax cuts expire. Such a credible commitment to long-term fiscal sustainability should reduce interest rates today, helping to stimulate the economy….

According to Mr. Johnson, even though critics say letting the tax cuts expire would retard growth, that money could be used more effectively (he continues):

…If the goal is to boost growth and employment immediately, it would be better to let the tax cuts expire and dedicate some of the increased revenue to real stimulus programs…

You mean, stimulus programs like “Cash for Clunkers” (NBER working paper here)?

…Our empirical strategy exploits variation across U.S. cities in ex-ante exposure to the program as measured by the number of “clunkers” in the city as of the summer of 2008. We find that the program induced the purchase of an additional 360,000 cars in July and August of 2009. However, almost all of the additional purchases under the program were pulled forward from the very near future; the effect of the program on auto purchases is almost completely reversed by as early as March 2010 – only seven months after the program ended….

Or how about the stimulus plan we were told would keep unemployment rates to 8% (DA Post here), while they currently hover around 10% (here):

…in August, and the unemployment rate was about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Or…maybe the government takeover/purchase of GM (post here):

…in reality, the US Treasury through pressure by the Obama administration spent $50 billion dollars to own 61% of the shares.  With roughly 500 million shares available, this means the US government current owns 305 million shares.  At the current stock price today of .375 dollars, their 50 billion dollar investment is worth roughly 115 million dollars….

Or maybe controlling healthcare costs by passing a bill no one understands…. which has already started failing as insurers have already started raising rates more than goverment predictions (post here):

…The economics and logic of these required rate increases are undeniable.  If someone, in this case the government through force of law, tells a private business that they must increase their spending, under force of law, some, if not all, of those new expenditures will be passed on to consumers…

So to sum up Mr. Johnson, even though evidence, extremely recent evidence, demonstrates what economic thinkers have told us for centuries:  government can not create jobs – the problem doesn’t lie with government spending, but instead in allowing people to keep their own money.

I don’t know when we start understanding what Albert Einstein expressed so eloquently so many years ago, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” but let’s hope it’s soon.

For more, excellent Cato article The Stimulus: The Government Job Creation Myth

Come on…. we can’t find any good justices to nominate to SCOTUS?  This is what… the third (including the previous administration) uninspired justice nominated in just 5 years.

For such a prestigious and life long appointment, we should expect much better (via Cato here):

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, seemed to shock many people when she dodged questions about the Declaration of Independence during her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee…

DA posts here & here

Via Freakanomics here, which will hopefully put to rest the idea that nurses go on strike to “help” patients, from the NBER paper:

…Controlling for hospital-specific heterogeneity, patient demographics and disease severity, the results show that nurses’ strikes increase in-hospital mortality by 19.4% and 30-day readmission by 6.5% for patients admitted during a strike, with little change in patient demographics, disease severity or treatment intensity….

Robert Reich via Salon.com here demonstrates once again how much politics effects his economic analysis.  According to him, this whole economic mess, including a potential backslide can be blamed solely on deregulation:

…starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets…

Which he believes is causing greater wage disparities:

…We’re back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground….

Because with deregulation, of course, companies can become EVIL:

…Companies were allowed to slash jobs and wages, cut benefits and shift risks to employees (from you-can-count-on-it pensions to do-it-yourself 401(k)s, from good health coverage to soaring premiums and deductibles)….

I submit what Mr. Reich fears is freedom – freedom of business owners to hire and fire as they wish, freedom of employees to change jobs easily (401K allows this, pension does not), just freedom.

Secondarily, you can see in his writing that the only thing the government has ever done wrong, is by not getting involved enough.  He doesn’t mention government meddling, deficit spending, enormous new health care expenses, entirely new federal agencies which more money will be needed, idiotic regulations like a moratorium on all oil drilling due to one company’s failure….

Nope, for Mr. Reich, it’s all because the government hasn’t taken enough control over the little people.

Via Cato here, more news on the Obama Administration’s transparency:

The Social Security’s trustees’ annual report is, by law, supposed to be published by April 1. This year, however, the trustees have postponed its release indefinitely. The program’s financial condition continues to remain hidden from public view — and by many accounts will continue to be so until the end of the fiscal year….

Wonder if Reich views this as an issue?

For those that have been asleep for the past few days, quick recap:  an old, slightly senile reporter, who should not have had a job for about 20 years went on a radio show and said some really stupid and factually incorrect stuff (here):

[White House Correspondent Helen] Thomas caused an uproar with her recent remarks that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else.”…

Within a few short days, the controversy pulled faux outrage from every corner of society, including the White House itself.  Ms. Thomas went from being incorrectly seen as a sweet old lady, to now being seen as she really is.  She was in the process of losing her press credentials, was suspended from her job, and then decided to do what she should’ve done decades ago…. retire:

Helen Thomas , a veteran columnist for Hearst Newspapers, announced her resignation today shortly after the White House condemned her remarks about Jews as “offensive” and “reprehensible.”…

So basically what we have here – is a bunch of people who are upset over a crazy woman saying crazy things.  The reason they have to be feign anger is because they’ve been defending her childish behavior for years and telling us what a great person she was for standing up to power.

Now some may ask – isn’t some of the anger deserved?  & the answer to that is yes.  Telling any race of people to go back “home” to the countries which tried to wipe them out in a world wide Holocaust deserves societal scorn. But the truth is, we don’t typically heap societal scorn on 89 year olds.

We’ve rightfully come to understand that they not only grew up in very different times, but some are a little off.  Please note, this isn’t to say all 89 year olds will wax philosophically about hating the Jews, just that when your family elders who are 89 spout something idiotic or racist at the Thanksgiving dinner table, they are simply ignored.

I might have to talk to my daughter about what was said and how stupid and racist it was, but we generally don’t attack old people with a penchant for senility.   We ignore, deflect, and move forward all while secretly wishing it hadn’t ever happened.

So…. I’m not angry at Helen Thomas.  I firmly believe what she said was racist, idiotic, and juvenile, but she’s nothing more than a senile reporter.  It’s odd I know, but I don’t get upset when crazy people say crazy things.

Something else to note – this love affair the White House and major media had with Helen Thomas, is what got her into this problem in the first place.  There is absolutely no reason anyone should care what Ms. Thomas has to say beyond her reporting the facts she obtains from the White House press briefings.

I say this, because she is a reporter… well, she is a crazy woman with journalistic credentials, but nonetheless – her job for her entire life has been to tell the public news she’s heard from government officials.  She has never ran anything, never worked in a government capacity on anything she reports on, never even proposed she was/is an international policy expert… and she seemingly didn’t want that.  She wanted to be a journalist, not any of these other things.

However, since she “stood up to power” (IE: asked juvenile questions to those in power) and stood up to the right people (mainly Bush), she has been promoted from journalist to all seeing without so much as fake reason for why we should care what she has to say about anything outside of her official duties.

I know, it’s odd of me again, but I like my international policy information to come from people with knowledge of internal policy & while all these people might be smarter than I am… my mechanic, my doctor, my lawyer, and yes, even Helen Thomas… they simply don’t fit that bill.

What’s more frustrating that the faux outrage though is some attempts to wrangle this whole mess into some sort of free speech thing from the most unlikely of places (here via Reason):

…True, I find some comfort in knowing that this unprofessional crackpot never will haunt a president, common sense, or the public again. But I wince at the rapidity of her demise. And I feel a nagging anxiety about a journalist’s losing her job over nothing more than a controversial statement….

To be fair, the author goes on to admit this is a private decision being made by a private company which is not bound by the first amendment, but he writes as if firing a senile staff member after they’ve been shown to be a bigger liability than all their assets combined is about free speech.  To be correct however, it’s not.

To gauge the effectiveness of this argument, we can run it to its logical conclusion.  Not always, but this is a sometimes helpful trick to see whether an argument is valid or just whining. So let’s ask this question – IF we agreed completely that Helen Thomas should not be fired, what does this mean?

Doesn’t that also mean we are saying that if the publication she works for is losing money due to her exercising her first amendment rights, they still have no recourse?  They should just keep losing money?  & If it doesn’t mean any of this, then what’s the point of bringing it up?

While reading, I’m unsure where David Harsanyi is going with this other that to try to equate a private business releasing an employee with hate speech paranoia.  Though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to imply that Ms. Thomas can’t be fired, his argument is leading in that direction.

No, he likely doesn’t believe that she can’t be fired.  The more likely cause of his machinations is that of simple self preservation.

Because no matter how much Mr. Harsanyi wants to make this about free speech or hate speech idiocy and no matter how many other public figures want to make this about racism, the truth is there for all to see. An old lady, who likely should’ve retired long ago, said some crazy things that forced her retirement.