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January 2nd, 2012

Congratulations to Ronnie Corbett, CBE

by Keith Humphreys
Category: Britain, Humor

I am so glad that Ronnie Corbett has made the Honours List. Some stuffy sorts feel that honours should be reserved for those British actors who perform “serious works”, e.g., Osborne plays and Shakespearean dramas. But a country that has given so much to the world of comedy (and whose citizen could stand to laugh much more than they do) should celebrate its masters of the craft. Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett were brilliant comedians and their names still quite rightly bring a smile to many a British face.

I have already posted at RBC my favorite Two Ronnies sketch, a brilliant parody of Mastermind involving a most unusual contestant. Many of my British friends consider “Four Candles” even funnier.

Posted: Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 12:13 pm
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January 2nd, 2012

In the tank for Willard

by Mark Kleiman
Category: Mitt Romney, Wayward press

Hopes that Mitt Romney’s backbone shortage and post-modern way with the facts might lead to his getting less-than-hagiographic media coverage took a big hit with Roger Simon’s latest Politico column, which is more or less a recitation of Romney-campaign talking points about the struggle for the Republican nomination. Most of the political analysis seems right to me: Gingrich and Perry could have been real threats to Romney, while the other clowns, including Santorum, never were and never could be.

But my jaw dropped when I read this sentence:

Santorum was the only “un-surged” non-Romney guy left (except for Jon Huntsman, who is not competing in Iowa and is probably in the wrong party).

How’s that again? Jon Huntsman is in the wrong party insofar as he’s a reasonably sane and decent human being rather than a hater like Santorum, a snake-oil salesman like Paul, or a human pretzel like Romney. He’s an old-fashioned conservative Bob Taft Republican, a breed just as extinct as the liberal Rockefeller Republican. The modern GOP has no place for him.

But Simon seems to be implying that Huntsman ought to be a Democrat. That’s an insane thing to say. It’s true that someone with Huntsman’s beliefs and values might wind up voting for Obama over Romney because Romney, and the party he heads, have become so dangerous and so despicable. But Huntsman, a natural-born plutocrat, is a friend of the plutocracy. He’s taken the Norquist no-taxes pledge. He likes the Ryan budget. In political terms, he’s an extremist, even though his personality seems closer to Obama’s than to those of his GOP rivals. But Obama’s temperate personality doesn’t make him a Republican, and Huntsman’s temperance doesn’t make him a Democrat, or even a RINO.

I agree with George Will (not an everyday occurrence) in thinking Huntsman the most conservative of the current GOP candidates, and perhaps the the most electable. I’m grateful that the Republican primary electorate sees what Simon sees rather than what Will and I see.

Posted: Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 11:48 am
4 Comments »

January 2nd, 2012

A Great Year to be the GOP Vice-Presidential Candidate

by Keith Humphreys
Category: Elections 2010 and 2012

The Economist describes the current GOP field (save Huntsman) as a “rum list” of candidates. Typical of a left-wing rag to be so partisan, but who could argue? This situation will however make the VP spot on the Republican ticket much more attractive to rising GOP stars and the race for the veep candidacy that much more interesting.

The Republican presidential candidates (again, other than Huntsman) benefit from comparisons only to the second-tier and third-tier politicians against whom they are currently running for the nomination. Since Huntsman is not going to win, that means whoever gets the Republican VP slot will instantly become the un-Dan Quayle, i.e., the VP candidate who looks more substantive, mature and impressive than the fellow with whom he shares the ticket. If you are Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rob Portman, John Thune, Mitch Daniels or any of the other A-listers who took a pass this year, the VP slot provides an opportunity to raise your national profile while inevitably making many people in the party mutter “How I wish we could flip the order on this thing”.

In the role of VP candidate who outshines the presidential candidate, losing is almost as good as winning. People don’t typically blame the VP candidate for an election loss, so presuming even modestly competent performance, the GOP veep candidate who loses in 2012 is in excellent position to run for the top slot in 2016. And if you win, you win. You have to be vice-president for 4 or 8 years, but public service always involves sacrifice, and you are still well positioned for a future presidential run.

Posted: Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 11:14 am
7 Comments »

January 2nd, 2012

Wall Streeters don’t balance New York’s budget. Taxes on Wall Streeters do.

by Andrew Sabl
Category: Gotham City, Income distribution, Occupy Wall Street, Taxation

Clyde Haberman’s “What to Expect in New York in 2012″ contains what I realize is a throwaway line. But I can’t let it go because the sentiment it reflects is both pervasive and pernicious.

The local economy may feel the effects of layoffs in financial services this past year. Even hard-core haters of the 1 percent might come to appreciate the importance of Wall Street types to the public purse, not that many of them would ever say so publicly.

This line has rankled me for more than a decade—ever since Andrew Sullivan in 2000 (in an article that I unfortunately can’t find; the web was young then) derided Al Gore’s promise to raise taxes on the wealthy by snarking about “the top one percent, without whom there would be no surplus.”

Correction. Without taxes on the top one percent there would have been no (Clinton-era) surplus. This isn’t opinion. It’s history. The top one percent didn’t go away after George W. Bush lost won the 2000 election. In fact they did very well, due largely to capital gains. What went away was even the modest, Clinton-era level of taxation on the top one percent—and with it, the surplus.

If Wall Streeters want to, they can try to argue that what they do creates huge benefits for the economy as a whole. The narrower argument that they benefit Gotham specifically, by hoovering up profit that would accrue to the rest of the country and spending it in New York, would be somewhat more persuasive (though this argument, which might be called the “efficient-parasite hypothesis,” is for some reason rarely asserted in the first person). But if we’re talking about a contribution to the city, state, or national budget, it’s not their economic activity or anyone else’s that brings about that. It’s the taxes on that activity.

This point matters politically and matters a lot. “Class warfare” hysteria aside, very few who criticize the top one percent want them to stop existing (nor is there a shred of evidence that any mainstream progressive proposal would threaten their existence). We want them to face somewhat tighter regulations and substantially higher taxes. If you want Wall Street to contribute to “the public purse,” you belong on the side of Elizabeth Warren, not Donald Trump.

 

 

Posted: Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 10:32 am
13 Comments »

January 1st, 2012

If A Scientific Finding Was Retracted, They Know it Must Be True

by Keith Humphreys
Category: Drug Policy, Health and Medicine, MSM (mainstream media), Psychology

Christopher Wanjeck lists the five biggest retractions of science in 2011. Some were honest errors, others were likely fraud. Here are the inaccurate findings that were later retracted:

(a) Closing medical marijuana dispensaries increases crime
(b) Butterflies once accidentally mated with worms, thereby creating caterpillars
(c) Appendicitis should be treated with antibiotics rather than surgery
(d) Litter breeds crime and discrimination
(e) Chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by a virus

The educative impact of these retractions will unfortunately be limited by two factors. First, although the mainstream media generally covers retractions, influential bloggers often do not. I would not single out any particular blogger for criticism when this is such a prevalent problem, but if you search on many websites that lavished attention on the initial appearance of the since-retracted findings you will often not find a retraction published later (I hope those bloggers just learning of these retractions are addressing them now on their sites if appropriate. There is no shame in having been taken in by the initial reports — lots of people were — but to not acknowledge that inaccurate content has gone out under your name seems a breach of bloggeristic ethics).

The other force limiting the influence of these retractions is that false finding (a) and to some extent (c) and (e) have become politicized. I searched on a few sites outside the MSM for retractions of the marijuana dispensaries finding and the first two I found illustrate the problem (I was sufficiently discouraged at that point to stop searching, but please, someone — anyone — post a list of advocacy groups/commentators who forthrightly acknowledged that the initial finding was retracted due to a serious scientific error…I am always ready to have my faith in human nature restored).

Tim Cavanaugh of Reason Magazine covered the retraction mainly by attacking the people who were right to be skeptical of the initial marijuana dispensaries report while he was touting its results. Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access claimed that ASA already had already done studies showing that the finding was correct (presumably misplaced until this moment) and went on to speculate that the retraction of the study was politically motivated. Similar reactions were the norm in many quarters after 2010′s biggest scientific retraction: The fraudulent linking of MMR vaccines to autism by Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

In those circles where putative findings are embraced not for truth value but for emotional impact and political utility, a retraction is the ultimate confirmation that a study’s results are true. After all “they” (there is always a “they”) couldn’t deal with the truth, so they had it suppressed. The surgeons’ guild had the guy who promoted antibiotics discredited, the pharmaceutical industry smeared the people who proved that CFS is caused by a virus, and the vicious drug warriors threatened the marijuana researchers into withdrawing their dispensaries and crime study results.

In psychologist Leon Festinger’s famous Doomsday Cult participant observation study, the research team wondered what would happen to the cult members’ faith when the world did not in fact end on the predicted day. After initial moments of shock, the cult members concluded it was their faith itself that had spared the Earth from destruction, which only intensified their commitment to the cult.

And so, alas, it goes.

Posted: Sunday, January 1st, 2012 at 3:39 pm
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26 Comments »

January 1st, 2012

Political Blogs as Comfort Food, with Some Notes on RBC

by Keith Humphreys
Category: Blogging

A slow day off of work combined with a fast new lap top (Xmas gift) and no hangover (I followed Mark’s suggestion) makes this a good day to blog. I have learned a great deal about this medium over the past year, and though I remain ambivalent about whether I should keep blogging, there is no denying that I learn a great deal from the blogosphere, including RBC.

One of the things I have observed is that many political/public policy blogs are comfort food for a pool of regular readers. If you create a site called “immigrantsaredestroyingourcountry.com” or “legalizecocainenow.com” or “Allrepublicansareevilmonsters.com” you will over time accrue a readership, potentially a large one. Your role as a blogger is to repeat, in a thousand different ways, the message captured in your blog title. Your amen corner will then comment enthusiastically, over and over, in post after post that you are oh so right about what you think.

If such a blog strays from its message, the tell will be readers commenting “Hey, this blog is supposed to be advocating X and this post of yours seems to indicate that Y may be true”. And then, the ultimate insult from a comfort food seeker “This is the kind of post I would expect to see on blog Y”. The accusation isn’t that the blogger is wrong, but that the blogger is a traitor to the cause.

Whether providing political comfort food is right or wrong, it’s human nature to seek it out at least some of the time and that’s not going to change. But I thought it was worth saying that it is a feature and not a bug of RBC that if you read us for long you will encounter viewpoints and analyses with which you disagree (perhaps quite strongly).

When Mark Kleiman asked me to start blogging here, he knew there were things we didn’t agree about. And he didn’t say “You must support position Y, political party A, candidate Q” or anything else of that sort. He just asked me, as he asked a diverse range of people over the years, if I wanted to blog here and I said yes. Quincy Adams (ahem), Jonathan Zasloff, Robert Frank, Kelly Kleiman, Matthew Kahn, Steve Teles, James Wimberley, Lesley Rosenthal, Michael O’Hare, Bob Jesse, Andy Sabl and Harold Pollack have different knowledge bases and different points of view, which I consider all to the good.

I can tell from our comments that most RBC readers understand that there is no loyalty oath required to be a blogger here, nor an understanding that the posters must agree with each other. There is a shared commitment to evidence over opinion, as well as to civil debate, but that’s different than being monolithic on substance.

Very occasionally I get a comment along the lines of “This blog is supposed to advocate Y and you aren’t doing your part”. This makes it worth repeating that this isn’t a comfort food blog; that’s not our comparative advantage. Does this cost us readers? I am sure it does, but that doesn’t bother me and I assume it doesn’t trouble Mark either. The readers we keep are smart and intellectually curious, and those are the kind of people I want to spend my time around.

Do I wish that more people were interested in data, dialogue and potentially having their opinions proved wrong than are interested in comfort food? Broadly speaking, yes. But I hope this blog comforts those who have a taste for something other than comfort food.

Posted: Sunday, January 1st, 2012 at 10:22 am
15 Comments »

January 1st, 2012

Srsly?

by Mark Kleiman
Category: Uncategorized

Santorum? You mean the guy who wants a Constitutional amendment to un-marry currently married gay people? I guess this is a measure of how much rank-and-file Republicans really don’t want Mitt Romney. Still, I think we may be approaching Peak Crazy. At least, I hope so.

Posted: Sunday, January 1st, 2012 at 7:03 am
9 Comments »

December 31st, 2011

Harry Reasoner’s blessing

by Mark Kleiman
Category: Uncategorized

Some unknown cause made me think, this New Year’s Eve, about my favorite television newsman, the aptly-named Harry Reasoner. To my early-adolescent mind, he seemed to embody all of the civilized virtues: calm, good nature, and clear vision. On New Year’s Eve, it was his custom to sign off with an old Scottish prayer:

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

And with that, let me offer the very warmest of New Year’s greetings to the entire Reality-Based Community. Yes, if you read the papers, you might think that the Mayans, or at least their nuttier modern interpreters, were on to something about the world ending in 2012. But hope is still a virtue – especially when it balances “pessimism of the intellect” with “optimism of the will” – and despair the one uncorrectable vice.

Cheer up! Things could be worse. They probably will be, unless we work hard to prevent it.

Posted: Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 9:30 pm
1 Comment »

December 31st, 2011

The Virtue of Accessible Art Criticism

by Keith Humphreys
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy

Edward Hopper’s paintings have a special emotional resonance for me. They capture moods and people and scenes that remind of the time in my life when I lived in a declining industrial city in the Midwest. I worked on a night shift, and with my body clock flipped from almost everyone else’s, I was awake and about when the city was empty, dark, lonely and yet also peaceful. I saw the other world of the city, the one populated by the night people who come out when the the day people are asleep. Hopper always brings me back to that experience in a powerful way.

BERJAYA
I was therefore glad to receive as a Christmas gift this year a book about his art, which included many excellent paintings which were unfamiliar to me. But the text of the book reminded me how much I detest most art criticism. Apparently, Hopper was exploring the tension between being and becoming in a world in which the primordial angst in humanity’s soul struggles against the bleak weltanschaung of modernity, perennially in tension with a Rousseausque subversion of the tropes of quotidian existence. Or something like that.

Perhaps I am too “low church”, but when I read art critics, I usually think three things:

1) I have doctoral level education, and I can barely understand what you are saying
2) I suspect that you are writing more about yourself than the artist in question
3) You are making it harder rather than easier for people to get something out of the experience of art

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 7:59 pm
27 Comments »

December 31st, 2011

Concerning the morning after

by Mark Kleiman
Category: Uncategorized

As a public service on what AA members call “Amateur Night,” I would like to present the perfect remedy for a hangover, one never known to fail. It’s an old family secret, but I consider all of my colleagues here – fellow posters, commenters, and silent readers alike – as part of my greater family.

So, here it is, the one and only surefire hangover cure:

Don’t get drunk in the first place.

And it comes with a bonus: it greatly improves your chances of staying on pitch through the chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Posted: Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 3:51 pm
16 Comments »

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