Detailed Abstractions

More bad news for Obama & the Democrats for 2010 elections.  Via The Atlantic here:

Chris Cillizza’s Morning Fix reports new data from Gallup showing that independents now favor a generic Republican candidate for Congress over a generic Democrat by 12 points….

& as is continually the case with this congress, more bad news for freedom.  Via The Hill here:

The 30-second campaign ad could become a thing of the past for third-party groups if the Democrats’ campaign finance legislation becomes law.

Media strategists argue the new disclosure requirements would eat into the majority of their ad time….

& while we’re talking about lack of freedom…. what might Kagan do about this “disclose” act?  Via Reason.com here:

As solicitor general of the United States, Elena Kagan argued in front of the Supreme Court that the federal government had the constitutional authority to ban certain political pamphlets. She also strongly implied that some political books, if they were partisan enough, could also be censored…..

Does is matter that she’s against free political speech?  Unlikely…. via Yahoo News here:

…Kagan’s performance in the Judiciary Committee drew praise from Democrats and compliments even from some critics, putting her on a path to confirmation by the full Senate sometime in July.

“She will be confirmed. I believe she will be confirmed,” said Republican Orrin Hatch, a member of the Judiciary Committee, predicting there would be at least some Republican support…..

& least we forgot, there’s still an oil spill…. which is being screwed up by the same government that is promising to “fix” healthcare….  Via The Heritage Foundation here, all kinds of people are offering help, but we’re still considering it:

In total, there have been 27 countries and 5 international organizations offering boom, dispersants, skimmers, vessels, bird rehabilitation equipment as well expertise. Along with the other important action items for the administration to undertake, accepting international assistance must be a more urgent priority. The Department of State has a chart that lists the equipment and expertise sitting on the sidelines with most of the status orders “under consideration.” Owners of the equipment have been rapid in their response to government queries but the equipment remains idle. It simply needs to be better….

Not to mention the economic killing impact the asinine moratorium is having:

Meanwhile, the Gulf continues to suffer. It’s not just government incompetence when it comes to the environmental cleanup; the administration’s policy decisions are making the economic harm much worse – especially the offshore drilling moratorium. Although the ban was only meant to affect those rigs operating in water 500 feet or deeper, it has led to a de facto ban on shallow water drilling….

Butler said that only one of his four drill rigs are operating; all four were drilling before the spill. Spartan has six contracts that would put his entire fleet back to work, but he can’t get going until the permits come through, he added. The week before last, Butler said he had to lay off 72 employees. Come Tuesday he’ll have to let another 140 go. “That’s 140 families, is how I look at it,” Butler said….

Not only incompetence in the clean-up, idiocy in quickly implemented, but poorly thought out regulations (DA post here), The Atlantic takes all this and poses an interesting moral question here:

In this video from Climate Desk partner Need to Know, Atlantic correspondent and oil expert Lisa Margonelli talks to Jon Meacham about halting drilling in the Gulf. She explains her view that Americans don’t have a right to drive cars and use gasoline unless we’re willing to drill for it in our own backyard….

For good news – research conducted on parents and children in reference to video games demonstrates that most parents actually don’t need government help.  Via The Technology Liberation Front (here):

• 93% of the time parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented
• 64% of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives
• 86% of the time children receive their parents’ permission before purchasing or renting a game
• 48% of parents play computer and video games with their children at least weekly
• 97% of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their children play
• 76% of parents believe that the parental controls available in all new video game consoles are useful

It might be scary to those in government who are continuing to try to push more laws concerning how parents raise their children as it discounts the need for those laws, but for us normal folk – it gives us what we see everyday:

Once again, these findings illustrate that parents are parenting!

Via The Big Picture – Is WordPress As Big As Guttenberg?Almost.:

WordPress, the blogging software that powers The Big Picture along with 11 million other blogs and has 256 million unique visitors to its hosted sites, may not be as revolutionary as movable type but it is a crucial element in what has made it possible for blogging to grow from a hobby into a major threat to the mainstream media….

Via Reason.com – In England it’s so bad, cops rob you! (here):

Police in Exeter, England, say some residents make life too easy for burglars, and to prove it, they’ve burgled around 50 homes themselves. The police look for places with unlocked doors or open windows, and then they slip inside and put valuables into a bag for the owners to find.

Via Cato – Cisneros, the Clinton Administration’s head of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) explains how the government had little to do with the housing crisis – Cato responds (here):

In a recent speech to real estate interests, former Clinton HUD secretary Henry Cisnerospreposterously claimed that the recent housing meltdown “occurred not out of a governmental push, but out of a hijacking of the homeownership process by some unscrupulous interests.”

The only criticisms Cisneros could muster for the government’s housing policies over the past 20 years were that regulations weren’t tough enough and it should have focused more onrental subsidies.

Imagine that… government officials acting as if they  weren’t effecting anything even though their entire intention was to affect the housing market.  Their entire reason for being is to affect the housing market.

Seems oddly similar to recent reports from the White House on the oil spill.  Listen carefully and you’ll hear this:  ”We have been in charge since the incident occurred, but everything that is happening is someone else’s fault.”

Speaking of which, Obama’s approval rating down (here via Gallup).  In late January of this year, 66% approved, only 19% disapproved.  The latest figures show 49% approval, 44% disapprove.  That was quick…

Lastly, but certainly not least – great pictures of the birth of a star (here via Yale):

New Haven, Conn. — Astronomers have glimpsed what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. Not yet fully developed into a true star, the object is in the earliest stages of star formation and has just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust, according to a new study that appears in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Being reported @ Politico, there’s once again some new polling data out that is both semi-understandable and interminably frustrating (here):

…The Quinnipiac polls, conducted in three states across the past month, all find likely voters to have complex and contradictory views on these repeal lawsuits as well as health care reform itself.

By a slight majority, likely voters tend to oppose the health care reform law. But they also tend to oppose the repeal lawsuits as a “bad idea” that would, for a sizeable portion of voters, make them “less likely” to support a given candidate….

Which seems roughly equivalent to wanting to win the football game, but not really wanting to deal with scoring points…. or as Politico reports:

…In short, voters simultaneously don’t want to [sic] health care reform but don’t want to challenge it either…

There is a scientific explanation for this called cognitive dissonance (DA posts here).  There’s also some logical evidence that helps explain why we as humans seek to reduce anything seen as contentious by the rest of society.

It’s frustrating because time and time again it seems the majority does understand that government is not some Utopian solution.  For instance, they seem to understand that the current tax code is 60K pages of government sponsored corruption where the normal citizen or even the IRS agent has little idea exactly what all 60K pages means together, but special interests, nonprofits, businesses, and others all work to make the code a little better for themselves. (Freedomworks – Top Ten Reasons to Scrape the Code here).

Yet polls showing voter disgust, such as the dismally low congressional approval ratings, only show feelings.  The reality is even with rates of congressional approval as low as 16%, the rate for the election of incumbents is well over 90%.

There’s a Japanese Proverb that begins with “Vision without action is daydream.”  Well, here we are, proving, that some truths are universal.  Proving that believing in something strongly or knowing something real well is meaningless if never acted upon.

Use a simple analogy to prove this true – what good is the best doctor in the world without patients or students?  What good would have come out of Newton’s genius, or Salk’s genius, if their abilities were followed up by only inaction?

The only good thing that can really be said about genius without action, is that it doesn’t directly harm anyone.  You can make a moral argument that Salk had some level of obligation to help since he could, but inactive genius shouldn’t be the main concern as the real problems will come from people acting without understanding.

& there’s where the second 1/2 of the proverb comes “Action without vision is nightmare. ”

Too bad we’re seemingly in a society today where both are true depending only upon the group in question.

With high levels of bipartisan anger, not only affecting elections, but affecting polls on the flagship legislation… er, I mean, the monstrous health care bill which no understands as well (here via WaPo):

…A CNN poll last week found that only 25 percent of Americans want Congress to pass a health-care bill similar to the one it has been working on for the past year, while 73 percent say Congress should either start from scratch or not pass health-care legislation at all (other polls show support for the bill in the low 40s). …

The White House is once again, on a media blitz to prove the administrations’ efficacy and job one is selling the idea the simulus worked.  While they have seemed keen enough to not discuss actual housing or job numbers, but instead spend time on nebulous items such as “saved jobs“, they are nonetheless telling us with great frequency what the stimulus did for us.

Vice President Joe Biden (here via ABC News):

Vice President Joe Biden said today that it is “taking a while” for the nation’s economy to “get out of this ditch” but credited the Obama Administration’s stimulus legislation, enacted one year ago, for laying a foundation for long-term economic growth. …

As well as President Obama himself (here via USA Today):

President Obama credits the one-year-old economic stimulus legislation with staving off a second depression …

The President even sent high level officials all over the country to prove the stimulus worked.  In one case, they used construction for residential housing to spotlight the great work the stimulus package has done for Cincinnati (here via Cincinnati.com).

With unemployment numbers continuing to rise (UE Rate for January 2010 10.6%)

& defaults on existing mortgages doing the same (here via Reuters):

…More than 8 percent of homeowners were behind 30 days or more on their mortgage loans, up 4.4 percent from December 2009 and 21 percent from last January…

& just like the last media blitz the White House went on to prove the stimulus was working (here via DA), they have spent approximately 34% of the money they claimed to need originally (here via ProPublica).  Combining the money spent and tax cuts approved listed on Recovery.gov they find:

…the government has now moved at least $272 billion into the economy, or 34 percent of the total amount approved by Congress last February….

So there you have it.  Successful stimulus program is now defined as a jobless, homeless, shaky recovery, for which the majority of the money requested has yet to have been spent.

I know it’s odd, but the title of this post has little to do with the actual discussion.  Instead it reflects my thought process as I try to craft together some sentences which might express the degree of my amazement about society’s disconnect between their beliefs and reality.  Hopefully too, I’ll be able to accurately express how important this issue is.

What am I referring to you ask?  A new Zogby poll, which confirms again that humans, in this case Americans, seem unable or unwilling to face reality.  Using scientific polling methodology, the poll finds, within a +/- 2.1 percentage points, that  (whole thing here) :

Nearly three-in-four Americans (72%) believe most of the country is not politically engaged and does not follow the news from Washington closely….

&

…Despite the belief that most Americans do not pay attention to the news, 85% of Americans say they personally follow the news closely….

Now basic math proves, without any hesitation, that 85% of the population simply can not be above average.   In fairness, it is possible to say that I follow the news closely, but like others, am not engaged in the political process.

However, without grouping the questions, it would seem that this is an unlikely response due to the amount of thought process that one needs to take into account versus the amount of thought process most of give to pollsters.  Meaning, that in order for me to say, most people aren’t engaged enough and intend myself to be counted among those, but also say yes to following the news closely, requires a high degree of thought.

For instance, in one possibility, I might be saying I follow the news, but am not politically engaged enough because I don’t really like politics.   Getting to this decision however would require me to have thought of the two separate questions as more of a group.

It’s far more likely to say that these people believe that everyone else isn’t paying enough attention and everyone else is uninformed…. which is honestly, just stupefying…

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all that surprising that so many voters are wrong.  We’ve talked about it on here in reference to the public polling data which showed both a majority of Americans against more government intrusion into health care, but for a public option (here).  And this has been a topic of conversation for political scientists for ever, with Cato publishing a great  paper in 2007 which discusses in detail the The Myth of the Rational Voter (which in greater detail is presented in this book) which shows that the public holds economic views not shared by most economists.

For instance, most people believe in economic myths such as sending jobs overseas hurts us or that the change in gasoline prices was due mainly to oil companies and not the market itself.

We also know of constant polls showing Americans unable to identify national issues correctly.   In October of this year, Pew updated their polling of American’s knowledge (here):

…The Pew Research Center’s latest News IQ Quiz finds a mixed picture of public awareness on key issues, with majorities aware of some key facts on health care and the economy. But other questions stump large segments of the public, including the current size of the U.S. military commitment in Afghanistan, the approximate level of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the name of a key environmental proposal being debated in Congress….

With other polls of course saying the same about all kinds of issues, such as science and affirmative action.

So taking the known opinions of people with relation to their beliefs on how well they are informed and how well the public as a whole is informed – in conjunction with polling data which routinely reflects poor public knowledge – it seems we have a case of not only ignorance, but a very large blind spot.

The reason is the ability for a person to know what they don’t know, takes a higher level of knowledge and critical thinking skills, than for a person to understand only what they know.

For instance, many people these days would consider themselves computer savvy and within some degree this is true.  With the constant use of email, social networking sites, IM, presentation and documentation software and a litany of other things most people know about computers, people reasonably might consider themselves computer savvy.

However, without some additional training or self-education or schooling, it would be tough for most people to understand just the very basics of security design, even if they are well versed in virus & firewall software.

& This isn’t a negative.  Specialization of knowledge is extremely useful.  This allows people who operate a computer for mostly email the ability to be safe on the internet without needing to  understand the underlying fundamentals of security policies.  Due to specialization, we have ample experts from which to choose who will readily setup all of this for you.  Allowing you to know very little about the underlying facts, but potentially resulting in greater knowledge about firewall or administration programs.

Therefore, for the person to know that while they are well versed in many computer applications, the specificity of their knowledge base is still very limited, requires a degree of critical thinking.  Not only that, but we could go further.  If the polls are to be believed, people need to have better critical thinking abilities than the majority of the population currently has.

Honestly it really is a travesty that the most dynamic and innovative society of today to have an educational system which is failing to teach our students basic thinking skills.  I think this data among the other reams of data about public schools, shows a system in extreme need of an update if we are to succeed in really preparing people for understanding the world.  I’m not an educational expert by any means, but as a starting point I think I’d like to debate the merits of starting in elementary school teaching logic, philosophy, critical thinking, and other areas of inquiry designed specifically to help children learn to think… but I digress.

Regardless of potential solutions for education reform, we can all use this an example to help us question ourselves.  Just remember, when you’re reading that next poll which makes you wonder, “How do people believe this stuff?” – you might want to ask yourself if it’s really “the others” who are off base.