December 2010
32 posts
4 tags
A brief media critique
Outgoing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was just interviewed on Good Morning America. This makes sense: he has just returned from a trip to North Korea, so there is a lot of potentially interesting stuff to talk to him about.
So what did the show actually interview him about? Whether or not he is granting a posthumous pardon to the Billy the Kid, the outlaw who was killed in 1881. In fact,...
4 tags
Census Games
So the census recently released its final number. According to the Bureau of the Census, as of 13:55 GMT on Tuesday, December 28, 2010, there are 310,539,831 people living in America. (See http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html for a population clock.)
Most people know that the US Constitution requires that a census be taken every ten years. This is done for several reasons, some explicit...
ilqusionment-deactivated2011040 asked: Where do you teach at?
4 tags
The Media Herd
One thing is for sure: we have almost nothing left of a serious, independently-sourced press system any more.
Seemingly gone are the days—which actually did once exist—when people called “journalists” went out and talked to other people called “sources” to learn about things called “events” that they then fact-checked and spelled properly and...
5 tags
The Analogy Problem
America has an analogy problem.
The problem is simple: we are awash in lousy analogies that both substitute for actual analysis and promote policies that are deeply flawed. Alas, what to do about this problem is not at all clear.
Analogistic reasoning is hardwired into the human brain. When faced with a new circumstance or problem, we all estimate what to do and how to do it based on prior...
5 tags
Random Thought #156
It may well have always been the case that the sharpest and most insightful political commentary comes from comedians: they can say in words and gestures what people like me take volumes to say. Evidence for this abounds in Jon Stewart’s skewerings of contemporary politics, and in Stephen Colbert’s “Stephen Colbert” take on the modern right.
Let me offer one candidate for...
Goodbye, DADT
And about time, too. Somehow, despite ourselves, Americans manage to expand civil rights and civil liberties time and again and again. Which is just cool. Good on us!
Random Thought #2265.32
So another federal judge appears on the verge of declaring the health care reform law unconstitutional on grounds that it is an abuse of federal power because the federal government does not have the power to force people to buy a commercial product—private insurance from a for-profit company. There is, however, an obvious fix: create national, publicly funded health care. Because no matter...
Random Thought #2265.31
I find myself befuddled: is it actually sacrilegious to do work the week before Christmas as Senate Republicans are claiming? Thus to pass the New START treaty, or the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell, would be an offense to God?
Oh, yeah: the Congress that will convene after the New Year will have a LOT more Republicans in it, including a Republican majority in the House.
Never mind.
phillipamerica asked: I honestly can't describe how much I enjoy logging on and reading your thought out and rational comments on the day's news.
You don't say things just to say them. You have purpose, you have reason and you take your time to spell out a well thought out argument or point.
I really wish that we lived in a society where your thought process was dominate, and not...
You don't say things just to say them. You have purpose, you have reason and you take your time to spell out a well thought out argument or point.
I really wish that we lived in a society where your thought process was dominate, and not...
6 tags
A brief thought about health care
Now that a federal judge (a Republican who owns part of a Republican lobbying firm) has ruled against part of the new health care law, a brief thought:
It turns out that lots of Americans like lots of parts of the health care law. They like that there are no life time caps of payouts. They like that the pre-existing conditions clause has been dropped. They like that children can stay on...
5 tags
Market "Freedom," DirectTV, and "Customer Service"
The gap between the thinking of business-oriented persons and non-business oriented persons can be readily exposed when one examines the answers they offer to the question, “what is the purpose of social and political life?”
While there are many possible answers to this question, two seem particularly important in explaining American politics today. Business-oriented persons often...
redlightpolitics asked: I am not an academic, but if you allow me to venture an opinion about academics in media (which is after all, an area I do know by virtue of what I do for a living), there is another factor: news have become tragically entangled with pop culture. It is practically a requirement, to be in "the news" (as a subject matter expert or an opinion consultant) to be a "recognized...
theworldisnotenough1 asked: Why do you think it is that economists have a bigger role in shaping national policy than political science or international relations scholars do?
ilyagerner asked: Why do you think there's such a big disconnect between Political Science and the practice of politics, journalistic coverage, and public policy? Seems like your profession can offer a lot of insightful analysis, but TV is usually stocked with campaign consultants talking about "soccer moms," "NASCAR dads," and other phenomena not backed by evidence. Occasionally I'll...
4 tags
Liberal v. Conservative Christianity
Some years ago, while I was flipping through TV channels looking for something to watch/kill time with, I stopped for a few minutes on C-SPAN. As it happens, C-SPAN runs a lot of thoughtful, serious programming—although none of it comes from its actual coverage of Congress, of course. In this case, I stopped because a former professor of mine, Jean Bethke Elshtain, who was on my dissertation...
8 tags
Wikileaks and the Revenge of the State
In 1992, as the Soviet Union collapsed, Francis Fukuyama published a now widely mocked book, The End of History and the Last Man. Based on a previously published essay, Fukuyama claimed that the end of Communist Russia presaged a world in which liberal democracy and free market capitalism would reign triumphant. The great ideological wars that had seemingly driven history forward were over. The...
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted,...”
– Winston Smith (George Orwell), 1984 (1948)
6 tags
The Real Death Panels
As Democrats sought to pass a broad reform of the American health care system last Spring, Sarah Palin scored substantial political points by insisting that the proposed reforms would lead the creation of “death panels”—government bureaucrats who would determine if you would live or die.
Well, it turns out that death panels already exist—and they have nothing to do with...
4 tags
Fixing the Deficit
As the Deficit Commission concludes—or doesn’t—its work, a little perspective. According to a recent analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CPBB), the bulk of today’s budget deficit comes from four sources: the Bush era tax cuts, the recession, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the stimulus package. (You can find a graphical depiction of the...
Random thought #188
To everyone who claims to care about the deficit:
The permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for all classes of taxpayers is estimated to increase the deficit $4 trillion over the next 10 years. The permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for everyone making less that $250,000 per year, but returning to the tax rates of the Clinton years for people making over $250,000 a year, is estimated to...
6 tags
When Spin Wins
One the memes of 2010 has been conservatives’ claims of government overreach. Government “takeovers” of health care, the auto industry, and even financial firms are asserted to have promoted incipient socialism in the United States, all while destroying private industry’s ability to create jobs and economic growth for the country and its citizens. Ronald Reagan’s...
“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a...”
– Mark Twain,- Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888