Politics, Economics and other Stuff

'Betting on black swans' or 'People pay for hope'

Falkenstein has a nice rant about Nassim Taleb's investment advice and hedge fund strategies:

[A]s funds affiliated with Taleb are becoming popular I think it would be helpful to address those specific strategies. The basic premise is that financial economists, and investors, systematically neglect improbable events. The result is that out-of-the-money options, especially qualitative analogues like unconventional investment ideas picked up at cocktail parties, offer the best reward-to-risk ratio. Let's consider these.

You can invest in a Black Swan fund that buys out-of-the-money options such as Universa Investments run by his former partner Mark Spitznagel. Taleb, and Spitznagel, would argue their implementation is much more sophisticated than merely buying out-of-the-money options in that it also takes advantage of 'behavioral biases'. Now, as 'prospect theory' implies people ignore, or overweight, improbable events, such 'behavioral biases' allow a strategy a great deal of latitude. In practice simple ideas, such as the underpricing of out-of-the-money options is too simple to sell, so the vendor feels compelled to confabulate a pretentious but useless tweak.  ...

Empirica Kurtosis, his earlier hedge fund, also started out with a widely reported 60% return in 2000, but then folded quietly in 2004. I earlier said I would donate $10k USD to his favorite charity if he sends me audited financials showing the cumulative Sharpe ratio of Empirica Kurtosis LLP over its lifetime was greater than 0.5 (which is a poor hedge fund return, consistent with exit), and the offer still stands. Thus, over the long run, not a sequence of 2008s, this is a crappy strategy. ...

Another claim by Taleb is that 'wild' risks from cocktail party chatter is especially useful. At some level this is like saying things that can't be quantified are really important, which has the nice property of being tautologically untestable, but in practice we understand what this means: funky investments outside of stocks, bonds, bank deposits, etc. Llama farms, gold medallions, and no-money-down real estate, are all unconventional, and all scams. Sure, the people pitching them show someone who got rich doing this, the same way Amway lines up its multilevel marketing operation, it is an appealing idea—why not me? Airport Holiday Inn conference rooms are always full of conferences on how to become rich following their 3-point plan, which invariably involves trading through them, or buying their $100 instruction manual. They have a horrible average return, because 'fraudulent scam' is not rare in this space, rather de rigueur.  ...

[P]eople tend to pay for hope, and nothing offers hope better than the lottery-like returns available in potential Black Swans. Hope is a good thing, and motivates a lot of hard work and creativity. But it would be foolish to think that the more improbable, the more speculative, the more derided by economists, the better the risk-adjusted return merely because of this. This tendency to buy into lottery ticket leads to all sorts of really bad investments:

• Higher volatility stocks have lower return than low volatility stocks
• Higher beta stocks have lower returns than low beta stocks
• out-of-the-money options have lower returns--and higher betas--than in-the-money-options
• higher leveraged firms have lower returns than lower leveraged firms
• firms is greater financial distress have lower returns than firms with low financial distress
• Junk bond mutual fund returns are lower than investment grade mutual fund return over the past 22 years
• sports longshots such as 50-1 odds horses, have lower returns than favorites
• lotteries with the highest payouts have the lowest expected returns
• IPOs have lower-than-average stock returns

[This is in my book, and also summarized on an SSRN paper I wrote here.] Notice a pattern? The more volatile, more uncertain, the lower the return. People pay a premium (accept a lower return) for 'Black Swans', because in one fell swoop, they can get rich and prove they were RIGHT! Instant satisfaction.  ...

Basically one would be better off not chasing dreams via Black Swans, and stick to boring investments. ...Black Swan investing is a sucker's game, endemic in markets, a perennial loser, and highlights asset classes to avoid, not pursue.

Ecstasy still is a Schedule I Drug

The Guardian has a story that reminds me that ecstasy is a class A drug in the UK and a Schedule I drug in the US: Class A drug use on the rise among young people. Over half a million have taken cocaine and ecstasy in the last year but cannabis use has declined.

Which, as I understand the situation, continues to be a crazy classification of MDMA. 

Bad Drivers

Just a complaint about a bad driver I encountered on Tuesday.  I was getting on the Merrit Parkway at an on ramp with a stop sign just at the edge of the highway.  So I stopped.  I waited, maybe a bit long since it was raining and slippery and I wanted to make sure there was enough room to start off into 65-75 mph traffic with no ramp to accelerate on.  Then I start -- only to be passed on my right by a VW Golf that pulls ahead of me without stopping at the stop sign and which then, and this is the key point, proceeds to accelerate very leisurely and with no urgency at all, taking a long time to even get up to 30 mph. 

So yes, I don't like being used as a buffer against rushing traffic by clueless drivers.  Nothing bad happened, but the closest I've come to road rage in a while.  I was annoyed. 

'The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna'

via 3QD, 'The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna'. 

Krugman's LSE lectures

Krugman gave a three lecture series on 'The Return of Depression Economics' at the LSE.  The last installment was today, which I watched. Just a small quibble: Krugman claims that

Fiscal policy: only 5 NBER working papers mentioned fp [fiscal policy] in title or abstract between 1985 and 2000 (out of about 7000). (link)

I was surprised by this claim, since I read lots of NBER WPs from 1985 to 2000 and had the distinct impression that fiscal policy was a topic, especially for international policy coordination.  Is my memory fooling me? 

Sadly, the NBER site doesn't allow as far as I can tell searches by year.  If I just search for 'fiscal policy' in title or abstract I get 40 papers since 2000.  The search engine refuses to go further back in time and instead tells me to narrow my search.  Searching on google, I can find the following NBER WPs with 'fiscal policy' in the title or abstract for 1985-2000:

1. N. Gregory Mankiw, The Savers-Spenders Theory of Fiscal Policy, 2000
2. Torsten Persson, Guido Tabellini, The Politics of 1992: Fiscal Policy and European Integration, 1990
3. Sebastian Edwards, Guido Tabellini, Explaining Fiscal Policies and Inflation in Developing Countries, 1992 [may be a reprint of an earlier paper]
4. Alberto Alesina, Silvia Ardagna, Roberto Perotti, Fabio Schiantarelli, Fiscal Policy, Profits, and Investment, 1999 
5. Herschel I. Grossman, American Fiscal Policy in the 1990's, 1995

Which are, one can observe, five papers.  But there are still more papers:

1. Richard Clarida and Joe Prendergast, Fiscal Stance and the Real Exchange: Some Empirical Estimates, 1999 ['fiscal policy' is in the abstract]
2. Barry Eichengreen Jürgen Von Hagen, Fiscal Policy and Monetary Union: Is There a Tradeoff between Federalism and Budgetary Restrictions? 1996
3. Easterly and Rebelo, Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth, 1993
4. Giavazzi et. al., Searching for Non-Linear Effects of Fiscal Policy: Evidence from Industrial and Developing Countries, 2000
5. Giavazzi et. al., Non-Keynesian Effects of Fiscal Policy Changes: International Evidence and the Swedish Experience, 1996

So that is at least 10 NBER working papers, or if you don't count 'fiscal policies' above because of its plural form, 9 NBER working papers.  There may be more papers out there, but I'm not going to look for them now. 

Now, some of the papers above are not about 'countercyclical fiscal policy', the topic Krugman cares about.  But he ought to mention that and then explain why his chosen summary statistic excludes papers that are about countercyclical fiscal policy but do not mention 'fiscal policy' in the title or abstract.  These papers are easy to find, look at the papers of the usual suspects like Alesina, Perotti (An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output with Blanchard, 1999), Rogoff or Auerbach. 

So what's going on?  I suspect this may be an example of someone who is too busy to read the literature.  Which is a fine strategy for getting your own work out, but it does lead to blind spots when discussing where the profession is. 

Frank Gaffney

Wiki descrbes Frank Gaffney's career in the 1980s:

Gaffney began his public service career in the 1970s, working as an aide in the office of Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson, under Richard Perle. From August 1983 until November 1987, Gaffney held the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, again serving under Perle.^[1] In April 1987, Gaffney was nominated to the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy; he served as the acting Assistant Secretary for seven months,^[1] although his confirmation was ultimately blocked by the United States Senate.

In 1988 Gaffney established the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a self-described conservative national security and defense policy organization. The CSP is subsidized by donors supportive of conservative causes, including the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation.^[2]

In today's Washington Times, Gaffney writes (via. many blogs):

With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators:

• Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." Non-Muslims -- even pandering ones -- generally don't use that Islamic formulation.

• Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Islam (albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with the statement, "I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." Again, "revealed" is a depiction Muslims use to reflect their conviction that the Koran is the word of God, as dictated to Muhammad.

• Then the president made a statement no believing Christian -- certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Islam -- would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama said he looked forward to the day ". . . when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them) joined in prayer."

Now, the term "peace be upon them" is invoked by Muslims as a way of blessing deceased holy men. According to Islam, that is what all three were - dead prophets. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of God.

Which sort of suggests that Gaffney didn't undercount any Soviet warheads in the 1980s. 

Harvard eliminates the hot breakfast

The Crimson summarizes the cost cutting:

Noting that about a third of undergraduates eat breakfast and the University would save $900,000 as a result of the cut, the administration decided to keep only Annenberg open for hot breakfast during weekdays next year.

I thought this was a joke when I first heard about it earlier this week.  I'm with the student The Crimson quotes in the same story:

Brianne M. Farrar ’10, a resident of Lowell House, says she was “personally mad” about the reductions to hot breakfast because she usually looks “forward to eating eggs every morning.”

As far as I recall I ate a warm breakfast most days at Harvard and I'd would feel deprived if I couldn't do so.  Stomping down to Annenberg -- what Memorial Hall is now called -- just isn't quite what you want to do on a normal morning.  Who has the time? 

Update #1: as cost savings go, this is about $150 per student, or $1 per weekday in the term, or $3 per student who eats breakfast.  I'd hazard that most Harvard students who eat breakfast would be up for paying $3 per meal to eat a hot breakfast.  So this seems like a crazy cut.  Time to get paranoid about the administration...

Do any other first or second tier private colleges do this?  Hm, Yale seems to now follow this model, with one central hot breakfast and cold breakfast in most dorms.  But the Yale Campus is more compact.  Still, pretty shocking to me.  This has to lead to more microwaves in student rooms.   

Update #2: David comments:

I don't know, but I think there are bigger things to get upset about. Hot breakfast is nice, but it's not that big a deal, is it? I'm in too much of a hurry to eat much in the morning. Just something cold in the car with coffee most of the time. I think most people do that. The kids are happy with cereal or oatmeal. I always thought the hot breakfast thing was extravagant. Do you really need sausages and french toast on weekdays?

I don't know, is 'need' the right criteria here?  You don't need a warm dinner either, you could just do bread and cold cuts most days.  Meat isn't needed either.  So lots of adults commute and eat in the car --- why impose that associated food habits on college students?  I can see consolidating hot breakfast by eliminating it in half the dining halls, but I don't see going beyond that. 

Update #3: Doug comments:

Given the distance from, say, Leverett or Mather House to Mem Hall, this seems essentially to put hot breakfast off the menu, so to speak, for about 70 percent of the undergraduate population.

And while I don't typically cook a hot breakfast at home, this is a bit of a slippery slope argument. I also frequently eat a cold lunch -- just a sandwich or some bread and cheese -- but I would be reluctant to use that as an argument for eliminating hot meals at lunch in the dining halls. Don't forget that 20-year-olds have fairly different appetites and food needs from middle-aged geeks... And I agree that it's hard to understand why you wouldn't leave this as another option in the meal plans.

If the solvency of the university depends on cost-cutting measures like this, surely something is badly wrong??

Cheney Today

Why does Cheney get traction with stuff like this?

On his second day in office, President Obama announced that he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation and no plan. Now the President says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries. But so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists. So what happens then? Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept a number of the terrorists here, in the homeland, and it has even been suggested US taxpayer dollars will be used to support them. On this one, I find myself in complete agreement with many in the President’s own party. Unsure how to explain to their constituents why terrorists might soon be relocating into their states, these Democrats chose instead to strip funding for such a move out of the most recent war supplemental.

Which leaves me wondering what sort of non-US taxpayer funds the the detention facility at Guantanamo is using now. (via MSNBC)

Interreligious Dialog in Germany

The FAZ reports:

Karl Kardinal Lehmann, der frühere hessisch-nassauische Kirchenpräsident Peter Steinacker und Salomon Korn, Vizepräsident des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland, werden am 5. Juli den Hessischen Kulturpreis erhalten. Hinter dieser Nachricht verbirgt sich ein kleines deutsches Trauerspiel - oder ein Lehrstück über die gegenwärtige Lage der Idee einer „toleranten, weltoffenen und zukunftsgewandten Perspektive der deutschen Gesellschaft“, wie es das Kuratorium des Kulturpreises ausdrückt. Denn es fehlt ein Vertreter des Islam, den man ursprünglich ins Auge gefasst hatte.

Im Dezember des vergangenen Jahres las man die ersten Meldungen über den Preis, der am 22. März verliehen werden sollte. Darin stand noch der Name von Fuat Sezgin, einem hochverdienten Wissenschaftshistoriker, der an der Frankfurter Universität Quellen der arabischen Naturwissenschaft analysiert und herausgibt. Aber Sezgin zog sich, wie das Kuratorium des Kulturpreises nun bekanntgab, auf eigenen Wunsch zurück. Aber auch die zweite Wahl hatte sehr gute Gründe für sich: sie fiel auf den Schriftsteller und Publizisten Navid Kermani. Kermani ist ein Autor von hoher literarischer Sensibilität - und das Preiskuratorium hätte sich keinen besseren Träger für die Auszeichung suchen können.

Meditation über das Kreuz

In Rom hatte Kermani einen Artikel für die „Neue Zürcher Zeitung“ verfasst, der zum Stein des Anstoßes werden sollte. Es handelte sich um eine Meditation über das Kreuz, in der Betrachtung von Guido Renis Altarbild in der römischen Basilika San Lorenzo in Lucina. Für die Muslime, die Jesus als Propheten anerkennen, aber von einer Sohnschaft nichts wissen wollen und den qualvollen Tod für einen bloßen Schein erklären, stellt das Kreuz eine große Herausforderung dar. Und von dieser sprach Kermani in sehr deutlichen Worten in seinem Artikel: „Kreuzen gegenüber bin ich prinzipiell negativ eingestellt.“ Aber seine Ablehnung der „Kreuzestheologie“, die er in scharfe Worte fasste, war doch nur der Anfang einer Gedankenbewegung. Er las aus den Worten des sterbenden Christus - „warum hast du mich verlassen?“ - etwas wie eine Klage, vielleicht eine Anklage im Namen der Menschheit gegen die Gottheit. Und plötzlich fand er vor dem Altarbild „den Anblick so berückend, so voller Segen, dass ich am liebsten nicht mehr aufgestanden wäre. Erstmals dachte ich: Ich - nicht nur: man -, ich könnte an ein Kreuz glauben.“

Aber nun begann der interreligiöse Dialog, den man doch fördern wollte, zu stottern. Kardinal Lehmann und Peter Steinacker fanden in Kermanis Gedankengang nicht die kühnen Reflexionen eines Muslims, der vielleicht nahe daran war, an seinem eigenen Bekenntnis irre zu werden, sondern einen „so fundamentalen und unversöhnlichen Angriff auf das Kreuz als zentrales Symbol des christlichen Glaubens“, dass sie den Preis bei gleichzeitiger Vergabe an Kermani nicht annehmen wollten.

Nun hat man entschieden, den Preis den beiden Christen und Salomon Korn zu verleihen. Kermani erfuhr erst durch einen Anruf der F.A.Z., dass er inzwischen gestrichen war - was nicht für jene Kultur des „Respekts“ spricht, in deren Namen man zu handeln vorgibt. Am 5. Juli wird die Auszeichnung verliehen. Der vielbeschworene „Dialog“ hat sich diesmal selbst ad absurdum geführt, indem sich zeigt, wie wenig gerade seine lautstärksten Vertreter, zu denen Kardinal Lehmann und Peter Steinacker nun einmal gehören, in Wahrheit zu ihm bereit sind. Es gibt da ein paar gute Leute, die Freunde der allgemeinen Toleranz und des Friedens. Diese guten Leute scheinen zu glauben, dass ein Gespräch dann besonders fruchtbar ist, wenn von Anfang an alle einer Meinung sind.

Too bad they found a prominent Jewish German to substitute for a Muslim German. Oops, that not what happened: Fuat Sezgin refused to accept the prize with Salomon Korn in protest over what Korn had written about the Gaza war. 

Here is the offending NZZ article.   The offensive phrasing seems to be, not quoted by the FAZ, the bolding below:

Für mich formuliere ich die Ablehnung der Kreuzestheologie drastischer: Gotteslästerung und Idolatrie.  

written after explaining that

Gewiss stösst mir die Lust, die katholische Darstellungen seit der Renaissance an Jesu Leiden haben, auch deshalb so auf, weil ich es von der Schia kenne und nicht kenne. Ich kenne es, weil das Martyrium dort genauso exzessiv bis hin zum Pornografischen zelebriert wird, und ich kenne es nicht, weil genau dieser Aspekt der Schia in Grossvaters Glauben, der mehr als jeder andere Bezugspunkt meine eigene religiöse Erziehung bestimmt hat, wie ich bei der Lektüre seiner Memoiren feststelle, keine Rolle spielte, ja als Volks- und Aberglauben abgelehnt wurde, der die Menschen davon abbringe, die Welt zu verbessern, statt nur ihren Zustand zu beklagen.

Kreuzen gegenüber bin ich prinzipiell negativ eingestellt. Nicht, dass ich die Menschen, die zum Kreuz beten, weniger respektiere als andere betende Menschen. Es ist kein Vorwurf. Es ist eine Absage. Gerade weil ich ernst nehme, was es darstellt, lehne ich das Kreuz rundherum ab. Nebenbei finde ich die Hypostasierung des Schmerzes barbarisch, körperfeindlich, ein Undank gegenüber der Schöpfung, über die wir uns freuen, die wir geniessen sollen, auf dass wir den Schöpfer erkennen.  Ich kann im Herzen verstehen, warum Judentum und Islam die Kreuzigung ablehnen. Sie tun es ja höflich, viel zu höflich, wie mir manchmal erscheint, wenn ich Christen die Trinität erklären höre und die Wiederauferstehung und dass Jesus für unsere Sünden gestorben sei. Der Koran sagt, dass ein anderer gekreuzigt worden sei. Jesus sei entkommen.

Nope, we can't have a cardinal or Kirchenpräsident stand on the same stage with somebody who writes that. Or the FAZ is leaving out important context. 

The NZZ also reports, in particular about Cardinal Lehmann's stance:

[U]nter Verweis auf den NZZ-Artikel schrieb der Bischof (oder sein Sekretär) einen harschen Brief an die Staatskanzlei. Glauben wir einem, der den Brief gelesen hat, so stand dem Sinne nach darin: Die Äusserungen Kermanis über das Kreuz Christi seien von einer derart schockierenden religiösen Intoleranz, dass es dem Kardinal unmöglich sei, in Gemeinschaft mit Kermani aufzutreten und den gleichen Preis entgegenzunehmen. ....

Unsere Bitte um Klärung, wodurch genau sich Navid Kermani als Preisträger disqualifiziere, beschied das Bistum abschlägig: «Kardinal Lehmann wird zu Ihrer Anfrage keine Erklärung abgeben», teilte man uns schriftlich mit. Wir sollten uns an die Hessische Staatskanzlei als Zuständige wenden. Die brach ihr Schweigen gestern am späten Nachmittag und gab bekannt, dass sie Navid Kermani dem bischöflichen Einspruch opfert (freilich drückt man es diplomatischer aus). Den Brüskierten eher zu informieren als die Presse, hielt die Staatskanzlei nicht für nötig.

Update #1: Deutschlandradio interviews on of the peace prize jury members, Helmut Seemann:

Karkowsky: Und das wollen wir noch mal erklären. Sie hören Helmut Seemann, den Präsidenten der Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, er sitzt in der Jury des Hessischen Kulturpreises, hat die Preisträger mit ausgesucht. Herr Seemann, Navid Kermani wurde ja vor allen Dingen von Kardinal Lehmann abgelehnt, weil er sich in der "Neuen Zürcher Zeitung" kritisch über das christliche Symbol des Kreuzes geäußert hat. Ich zitiere: "Gerade weil ich ernst nehme, was es darstellt, lehne ich das Kreuz rundherum ab. Nebenbei finde ich die Hypostasierung des Schmerzes barbarisch, körperfeindlich, ein Undank gegenüber der Schöpfung." Weiter sagt dann Kermani sehr differenziert, ihn stört die Anbetung des Schmerzes auch im schiitischen Islam. Zitat: "Ich kenne es, weil das Martyrium dort genauso exzessiv bis hin zum Pornografischen zelebriert wird." Und am Ende des Textes versöhnt er sich sogar mit der berückenden Darstellung Jesu am Kreuz, wie in Guido Reni auf seinem Gemälde "Kreuzigung" zeigt, und sagt: "Erstmals dachte ich: Ich - nicht nur man - könnte an ein Kreuz glauben." Finden Sie diesen Text anstößig im Sinne Kardinal Lehmanns?

Seemann: Nein, ich habe eine vollkommen andere Haltung dazu, was deswegen - ich sage das sonst nie, aber in dem Zusammenhang muss ich es, fürchte ich, jetzt doch sagen -, ich selber katholisch bin und deswegen über die Äußerungen von Karl Kardinal Lehmann wirklich entsetzt bin, weil sie zum Ausdruck bringen, dass er einen Text nicht verstehen kann. Und das finde ich eine ganz schlimme Sache, wenn es um einen Kulturpreis geht, wiederum. Denn hier sehen wir einen Menschen, der sich über ein Ärgernis - und das Kreuz ist gerade auch nach christlichem Verständnis ein Ärgernis - ärgert und nun im Anblick der Kunst sich mit diesem Ärgernis in einer sehr differenzierten Form verständigt, vielleicht sogar aussöhnt, das bleibt ein bisschen offen. Das ist ein hochinteressanter Text auf der Grenze zwischen Religion und Kultur und ist deswegen exakt das, worum es eigentlich bei diesem Preis gehen müsste. Und das wird nun von einem anderen Preisträger, von dem ich geglaubt hätte, dass er hermeneutisch über die Grundausstattung eines kulturellen Menschen verfügt, wird dies zum Anlass genommen, sich gegen Kermani auszusprechen. Ich finde das wirklich ganz schlimm. Und ich kann mir auch eigentlich nicht vorstellen, dass es der einzige Grund ist, der Kardinal Lehmann leitet, denn dieser Text ist nach meiner Meinung nicht in irgendeiner Weise blasphemisch, sondern er bringt etwas zum Ausdruck, was zum Beispiel auch Goethe zum Ausdruck gebracht hat. Ich bin ziemlich sicher, Kardinal Lehmann würde einen Goethe-Preis nicht deswegen nicht annehmen, weil Goethe in bestimmten Zusammenhängen schon auch mal vom Scheißkreuz spricht. Das kann ärgerlich sein und das ist es auch in der Geschichte immer wieder gewesen, und schon Jesus Christus hat es im Evangelium als Ärgernis benannt. Das heißt, an welcher Stelle des Verstehens stehen wir denn hier?

Karkowsky: Wie verhält sich denn die Jury jetzt? Die könnte ja im Prinzip komplett zurücktreten, weil die Idee eines Toleranzpreises der Religionen mit diesen Preisträgern nicht möglich war. Stattdessen findet die Preisverleihung statt, und zwar nur mit zwei Christen und einem Juden. Ist das richtig so?

Seemann: Ja, also das ist jetzt eine politische Entscheidung, die Ministerpräsident Koch so vorgeschlagen hat.

Not clear to me what the Goethe reference here is. 

Update #2: There is still the question why both Steinacker and Lehmann are doing this, thought it isn't too puzzling the Koch supports their position.  Playing to the base would be the obvious political interpretation -- but it is still interesting the both of them seem to see mobilizing a shrinking base as their best option and are willing to pay for this stance in public opinion.   

Biblical Inerrancy Again

Not that I'm going to say very much about it here and now, but it is quite impressive how well more literal types of Christianity do given their source material.  For instance, what does do with one of the central passages at the end of Matthew, at 24:29-35, especially 24:34?  Jesus speaking to the disciples:

29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

30 And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory.

31 And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.

32 Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near;

33 so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door.

34 Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

For the most part it seems like fundamentalists just ignore 34 and focus on the immediately subsequent

36 But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

37 For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah.

38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,

39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.

40 Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.

41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left.

Okaaay, just focus on 36 which talks about nobody knowing 'day and hour' but not 34 which talks about 'this generation'.  Or you get the otherwise, as I understand, biblically inerrant literalist  and bestselling Tim LaHaye reasoning along the lines of 'well in this case we cannot take the bible quoting Jesus seriously since, well, that would be unfortunate for us':

Now, why does “this generation” in Matthew 24:34 (as well as Mark 13:30 and Luke 21:32), not refer to Christ’s contemporaries? Because the governing referent to “this generation” is “all these things.” Since Jesus is giving an extended prophetic discourse on future events, one must first determine the nature of “all these things” prophesied in verses 4 through 31 to know what generation Christ is referring to. Since “all these things” did not take place in the first century, then the generation whom Christ speaks of must still be future. It’s as simple as that. (Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, The End Times Controversy [Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2003], p. 92.)

It would be funny if it weren't so sad. 

And I'm just trying to quickly read some Bart Ehrman books, as suggested by Jody.  And I keep having these jaw dropping moments...don't let these guys anywhere near power or you'll soon learn that no legal norms mean what they seem to mean because they know what they actually mean (and even that changes quickly and opportunistically)...and then they complain a lot about activist liberal judges making up stuff about the law...

Update #1: And when things start becoming really difficult aroud 100 CE with 'this generation will not pass away until all these things take place' -- since the generation of the apostles is pretty much all dead -- you can just insert the backdated and pseudepigraphic Second Epistle of Peter with its 3:9

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 

Banning Paintball

The CDU's attempt to ban paintball seems more like a bad parody than anything else.  Reasoning: "Paintball simuliere das Töten sehr lebensnah, sei sittenwidrig und verletze die Menschenwürde."   And the SPD agrees: "Paintball ist sittenwidrig. Das wird es in Zukunft nicht mehr geben."  So we're back to the "Anstandsgefühl aller billig und gerecht Denkenden."  Oh well.  And here I was thinking that getting frustrated 17 year old guys off the computers in their bedrooms and into the forests to run around with a few other people on Saturday afternoons was a good thing...social roughhousing in the outdoors...sounds sittenwidrig. [Update: it seems Germany already bans paintball for minors.]

I also don't get the politics of this...I would have thought that paintball would be the sort of thing CDU members would approve of and participate in.  Maybe it is the Anglo-saxon origin?  Sadly, this seems to fit into the 'moral panic' compartment. 

Ironically, it seems that under the proposed weapon reform bill a) it will still be possible to store guns and ammunition at home and refuse spot inspections of compliance with secure storage rules, b) there are no restrictions in IPSC shooting.  (TAZ). 

From the US IPSC association website:

Practical shooting is a sport that evolved from experimentation with handguns used for self-defense. The researchers were an international group of private individuals, law enforcement officers, and military people generally operating independently of each other, challenging the then-accepted standards of technique, training practices, and equipment. The work was, for the most part, conducted for their own purposes without official sanction. Even so, what they learned changed the face of police and military training forever.

You may remember that in the original Dirty Harry movie, Clint Eastwood's character visits a training center and walks down the street of a mock city engaging hostile targets and while identifying and sparing innocents. A lot of us saw it too, and thought, "cool!" It looked like too much fun to be just the law enforcement work of qualifying with a handgun.

Good to learn that the 'Anstandsgefühl aller billig und gerecht Denkenden' allows the sport depicted below but requires the banning of paintball.  Because paintball is a thoughtcrime while practicing the skills needed to kill people efficiently (the targets in IPSC are 'simulated' people) with real guns is a sport. 

Shotgun - IPSC shooting, OPEN division

I have no problems with IPSC shooting either, not that I've thought about it much. 

Update #1: there are a few indications that paintball is or is seen as a 'spoiled rich kid' sport, but that seems a bad reason to ban it.  

Update #2: Wortwert suggests banning alcohol free beer as sittenwidrig:

Alkoholfreies Bier, weil simuliertes Komasaufen.

Update #3:  The association of victims of the Winnenden school shooting families spokesperson thinks banning paintball is 'a bit over the top.'  She believes the proposed gun law reforms are, on the other hand, too weak. 

Setting the Bar very very Low

The WSJ reports

The compromise version of “cash-for-clunkers” announced by the House offers prospective car buyers between $3,500 and $4,500 vouchers for trading in old cars to get new ones. But the bar is set really, really low.

For passenger cars, “clunkers” that get less than 18 miles per gallon can be traded in—for cars that get at least 22 miles a gallon. The corporate average fuel economy for new cars is 27.5 miles a gallon

If the new car is 4 mpg more efficient, the consumer will get $3,500. If the new car offers a 10 mile-per-gallon improvement, the payout rises to $4,500.

Things don’t get any more ambitious when it comes to light trucks. Says the House Energy and Commerce Committee plan: “New light trucks or SUVs with mileage of at least 18 mpg are eligible for vouchers.” A similar sliding-scale payout applies.

The problem with all this, as Duke’s Bill Chameides pointed out last month, is that making a new car produces, on average, about 6.7 tons of carbon dioxide. By his calculations, it would take at least five years to “pay off” the environmental impact of building the new car with a 22-mile-per-gallon purchase. That SUV might be even worse—the estimated payback time is almost 20 years.

18 mpg...wow. I was sort of proud that the US wasn't engaging in the German Abwrack-Prämie nonsense...oh well, it looks like we're going to get an even worse version of the scheme in the US now. 

A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician

Mark Kleiman has a nice rant:

The spectacular success that resulted from the application of mathematics to natural philosophy in the era of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz made the theologians look silly by showing that (1) sacred texts weren't very reliable guides to the physical world (2) it was possible to actually make genuine, palpable intellectual progress rather than trading arguments insults, and anathemas and (3) the heavens themselves yielded their secrets to mechanical, rather than spiritual, analysis.

Naturally, the theologians struck back. Unable to produce any actual knowledge in their own domain, their answer was to prove that scientific analysis was just as full of holes as their own beloved dogmas. Berkeley's The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician is the masterpiece of this genre: what Orwell, two centuries later, was to call the "silly-clever" style of argumentation.

Berkeley pointed out, correctly, that the conceptual basis of the differential calculus was unsound; it waited for Dedekind and his colleagues in the late 19th century to finally build a secure intellectual foundation under the tremendous edifice that had been erected in the meantime. Berkeley's scorn is eloquent and magisterial:

"And what are these Fluxions? The Velocities of evanescent Increments? And what are these same evanescent Increments? They are neither finite Quantities nor Quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the Ghosts of departed Quantities?"

And yet, at the end of the day, the natural philosophers continued to be able to predict and explain more and more phenomena with increasing precision, and the theologians continued to trade arguments, insults, and anathemas, just as before. The natural philosophers were able to work signs and wonders at least as impressive as those attributed by the sacred texts to the Deity and His prophets and saints, with the added virtue of being current and actual rather than historical and mythical. Even Raising the Dead is now, under the less euphonious label of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, a routine bit of techne that can be learned by anyone who cares to learn it, without even a bit of esotericism to give it flavor.

Of course the theologians respond that their discipline isn't about all that foolish wonder-working, but considers the Ineffable Big Questions. But that's simply not consistent with Scripture: back when people actually believed, they naturally claimed for their faith the power to heal, and to move mountains. That was before penicillin and bulldozers.

But while the scientists and engineers continue to make progress, the theologians and their fellow obscurantists continue to mock. True to their sacred principle of never making intellectual progress, they continue to say what Berkeley said: "Your science is just as mysterious as our religion. So there!"

Like a joke that was funny the first time, the reiterations of this point suffer from rapidly diminishing marginal returns. So I have no idea why Stanley Fish considers Terry Eagleton's latest essay along these lines, Reason, Faith, and Revolution worth commenting on, or why Eagleton thought it worth writing in the first place. The NYT on-line summary ably captures the essence of the argument: "believing in technology and progress might be more superstitious than believing in religion."

More on Kleiman's blog. 

And I need to get around to putting up a blog post in (semi-) defense of certain types of religion. 

Taking a look at The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician might also be interesting.  A quick google suggests that Berkeley did get off a good attack on the lack of rigorous foundations of calculus, something not remedied until much more recent history, for instance Judith V. Grabiner: “Berkeley’s criticisms of the rigor of the calculus were witty, unkind, and—with respect to the mathematical practices he was criticizing—essentially correct.”  Which suggests a less foundational and more pragmatic view both of physics and religion might give better answers.  

Update #1: Grabiner also writes in passing in another paper:

What then were the reasons for the deepened interest in rigor? One set of reasons
was philosophical. In 1734, the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley had attacked
the calculus on the ground that it was not rigorous. In The Analyst, or a Discourse
Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician, he said that mathematicians had no business
attacking the unreasonableness of religion, given the way they themselves reasoned.
He ridiculed fluxions— “velocities of evanescent increments’’—calling the evanescent
increments “ghosts of departed quantities’’ [11]. Even more to the point, he correctly
criticized a number of specific arguments from the writings of his mathematical
contemporaries.  ...
Since an adequate response to Berkeley’s objections would have involved recognizing
that an equation involving limits is a shorthand expression for a sequence of
inequalities—a subtle and difficult idea—no eighteenth-century analyst gave a fully
adequate answer to Berkeley. However, many tried. Maclaurin, d’Alembert, Lagrange,
Lazare Carnot, and possibly Euler, all knew about Berkeley’s work, and all wrote
something about foundations. So Berkeley did call attention to the question. However,
except for Maclaurin, no leading mathematician spent much time on the question
because of Berkeley’s work, and even Maclaurin’s influence lay in other fields.

Update #2: Jody comments about something I was a bit concerned with when I read Kleiman as well (and which ought to get into the semi-defense of religion -- or at least a demand for a realistic critique --  I'm promising):

I thought Fish was somewhat incomprehensible, but Eagleton's own point is apropos to something I'm pretty sure is wrong with Kleiman. To wit, I'm not sure I agree with Kleiman's assertation that "back when people actually believed, they naturally claimed for their faith the power to heal, and to move mountains. That was before penicillin and bulldozers." Medieval Europeans from Norway to Budapest knew that God didn't cure the plague at least 600 years before penicillin. They knew the Cathedrals didn't build themselves. This is in no way a defense of religious belief, per se, but it does go right to Eagleton, and his assertion that the "religious belief" stereotyped by the current atheists does a violent disservice to t he actual content and practice of most religious people for most of human history.

But what did "Medieval Europeans from Norway to Budapest" believe about God's power to heal?  What sources is Jody referring to here? 
Update #3: Jody follows up:

Well, in fairness, the plague provoked astonishing levels of anti-Semitic violence and a resurgence in the idea that God was punishing people for their sins, so I must concede that people responded to the Black Death in ways that ascribed a great deal of power to God.  But if you look at the actual texts produced by bishops and laypeople at the time, you'll see a variety of religious responses that is far less fundamentalist than Kleiman implies.  My citations are entirely out-of-date (I hate to be reminded how long ago I was at Oxford) but The Black Death By Rosemary Horrox has a typical undergraduate-level collection of primary-source excerpts.

For a 20th-century, pre-penicillin account of how the Black Death affected a newly Christianized Norway, you could do worse than Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy.  It's not history per se, but it reflects one strain of Catholic thought at the beginning of the last century, and how Roman Catholicism had been interpreting the Black Death for centuries.

In general, what I'm trying to criticize is the idea that all religion before the twentieth century was fundamentalist religion, and that people throughout Christian history in particular have always received the miracle stories of the Bible as predictive of how God will act in their own lives.  There's very little evidence to suggest that, either with regards to the Bible or to non-Biblical miracle stories.  (Many of the original collections of  Saints' lives were written and received as allegorical and instructional, not historical.)  Of course it's impossible to generalize about European Christian thought, either geographically or across classes, and there was undoubtedly plenty of magical thinking about God all over the place.  The cult of saints and relics was a major focus of popular piety during the middle ages.  But I would argue that, if you look at Chaucer's account of pilgrimage at least, the range of popular expectations about saints' relics and their healing powers was broader than Kleiman implies.  And that's before you talk about the difference between the theologians and the people.

Luther was probably the most saint-friendly of the reformers and I wouldn't be surprised if he'd written that keeping saints' reliquaries could remind people of how to lead Godly lives, but of course he thought that all saving power came only from God.  Most of the modern "healing shrines" of the Catholic church date from the middle of the nineteenth century and onward: they seem to me to be a fundamentalist reaction to modernity, not something that modernity overthrew.

There seems to be a strain of atheist philosophy popular right now that makes three claims about religious belief -- well, really, about Christianity: (1) Before scientific materialism, the Christian worldview in Europe was entirely fundamentalist and literalist; beginning with Galileo, this worldview began to crumble; (2) As the Christian worldview crumbled, a wishy-washy liberal/moderate Christianity arose and made new claims about the nature of God which had no precedent or power in the fundamentalist Christian past.  (3) Both of these forms of Christianity are bogus: the first because science has overthrown it, the second because it's a lame attempt to salvage Christian belief by abandoning the Real, Authentic Christianity that science destroyed.

As one of those lame, wishy-washy Christians, I've been vaguely amused for a while now that both the evangelicals and the atheists are convinced I'm wrong.  It's curious to me that both groups are sure that the only religion is a fundamentalist one.

FWIW, I don't think it's Eagleton who has the best book refuting (3) out at the moment -- although I think Eagleton's argument that there's always been an intellectually rigorous Christian theology, one not anchored in Creationist museums or a literal belief that God will re-grow legs and bulldoze the hills of Rome at a whim, is better than Fish's blog post by far.  Of course, I'm a Lutheran who was educated in Christian theology by Jesuits and the people they hired: I would believe that Augustine and Aquinas deserve my respect.

Still, I think (3) is best demolished by Bart Ehrman, in all his books, including the latest, "Jesus, Interrupted."  Ehrman shows that the Christian understanding of Biblical texts and of God's power was interpretive and theological right from the get-go, and that the earliest Christians understood their texts to be symbolic and non-literal in ways that evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity only began to reject at the end of the nineteenth century.  Fundamentalism isn't the thing science defeated; it's the response to science's challenge to religious belief.  Of course, Ehrman is an atheist now himself, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the criticisms lobbed by Kleiman.

It's not Kleiman's atheism I'm arguing against here--it's only his portrayal of what The Authentic Christian Church was and is that I reject. Let me emphasize that: I do not think that what I'm writing is in any way an argument against atheism.  It's only an argument against the idea that the only real Christianity for all of time has been a literalist, anti-scientific Christianity.

Update #4: David comments:

I agree with Jody that Kleiman is overstating the fundamentalism of pre-modern Christianity and I'm sure that people like Aquinas were not simple believers in magic and miracles but also had complex philosophical arguments to butress their religious beliefs.
But here's how I'd put Klieman's argument:
Christianity has 2 main selling points:
1- Magical stuff can happen. Miracles occur. The dead can be resurrected. The world will end in some kind of amazing way. Prayer works. Etc. etc.
2- We have a lot of important ethical insights too.
#1 and #2 have never been completely separated. Some theologians emphasize #1 more, some kind of minimize #1 and talk a lot about #2, but they never completely deny #1. Show me one major Christian theologian who totally denies the power of God to transcend the laws of science at certain times, maybe very rarely and only on very special occasions in the past, but not never. So it's wrong to portray Christianity (either modern or ancient) as totally wrapped up in #1 and against science, but it's also wrong to say that Christianity ever really takes point #1 off of their marketing materials and embraces scientific explainations for all natural phenomena. If it did so, it wouldn't be much of a religion anymore. It would be a collection of ethical principles, which is something else.
Put another way, it's fine to say that most Christians didn't believe in magical explanations for the Plague. It's something very different to say that Christians don't believe that faith healing ever occurs, that Christians don't believe that prayers are answered, that Divine intervention occurs, etc.. I'll grant Jody's point that many ancient Christians were highly intelligent and occasionally skeptical. But they still had a role for supernatural phenomena. They were just more selective in their use of the supernatural..
The point that Kleiman makes is that Christianity's point #1 is getting smaller and weaker all the time. As recently as a few hundred years ago, at least some of the assertions of magic seemed pretty robust. Without Neuroscience, the existence of the soul seems plausible, for example. But, as science moves forward and more and more unexplainable stuff gets explained, it seems harder and harder to believe that the laws of science can be or have ever been suspended where convenient and also that science can't explain what previously seemed mysterious and therefore possibly magical. Without some hocus-pocus Religion is pretty whimpy. You can take away the more vulgar hocus-pocus but if you're religious it seems that you can't get rid of all of it.
I'd add that all Religions have different versions of this magical part. Some more explicit and theatrical than others. The question that I'd ask any religious person is how do you know which magic to believe? Presumably, you think that the magic of the other religions is just silly tricks, just denying reality and "making stuff up" about the Tree Spirits, or Zeus, or the Fire God; but how do you know? What makes you so sure that your supernatural phenomena are real and that the other folks are just daft? How can you assert magic and then turn around and act like a skeptic?

Testimony of Dr. E. Calvin Beisner to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the United States House of Representatives Wednesday, March 25, 2009

via Deltoid, the Testimony of Dr. E. Calvin Beisner to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the United States House of Representatives Wednesday, March 25, 2009, which I ran across since I was googling for information on today's Climate Change hearings with Al Gore and Newt Gingrich:

I am convinced that policies meant to reduce alleged carbon dioxide-induced global warming will be destructive, devising mischief by decree. As Lord Monckton points out in his own testimony today, the best, most recent empirical scientific discoveries have shown that even the mid-range scenarios of the IPCC exaggerate the warming effect of increased CO2 by at least seven times; atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising at a fraction of the rate forecast by the IPCC; and Earth has been cooling for the last seven years at a rate of 3.5F per century.

These findings, opposite the expectations of the IPCC, are consistent with the Biblical world view. The naturalist, atheistic world view sees Earth and all its ecosystems as the result of chance processes and therefore inherently unstable and fragile, vulnerable to enormous harm from tiny causes. The Biblical world view sees Earth and its ecosystems as the effect of a wise God’s creation and providential preservation and therefore robust, resilient, and self-regulating–like the product of any good engineer who ensures that the systems he designs have positive and negative feedback mechanisms to balance each other and prevent small perturbations from setting off a catastrophic cascade of reactions. The IPCC’s work rests on the naturalist, atheistic world view. Every one of its computer climate models, without exception, assumes that positive feedback mechanisms vastly outnumber and outweigh negative feedbacks, which is the root of fears of a runaway greenhouse effect and a “tipping point” beyond which there is no return.

The IPCC exaggerates the rate of carbon buildup because it doesn’t recognize the capacity of Earth’s plants and oceans to absorb vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into the building blocks of life. But that is precisely what has been happening, with wild and cultivated plants growing larger and more numerous because of increased CO2, and raising crop yields (and so lowering food prices. And the IPCC exaggerates the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere largely because its computer models all assume that clouds are a positive feedback–that they respond to rising surface temperature by trapping still more heat. But University of Alabama climatologist Roy Spencer, using data from NASA satellites, has shown the opposite: warming clouds diminish as surface temperature rises, allowing more heat to radiate out to space. The system works like a thermostat, keeping surface temperature within a narrow range well suited to human and other life on Earth.

But empirical observation–the very soul of scientific method–has shown otherwise.  The Biblical world view prepares us for just such findings. When God finished His creation, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Do you think he would have judged a fragile system biased by unidirectional feedbacks toward destruction that way? No, He would not. Indeed, the global destruction of the Flood required His supernatural intervention (Genesis 6–8), after which He promised Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man . . .; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:21–22)–the repeated pairs of opposites being the poetic device called merism, implying that God had committed Himself to ensuring that all the cycles needed for human (and other) thriving would continue.

Deltoid comments: "In other words, if climate sensitivity to the doubling of CO2 is 3 degrees, there is no God."  Hm, I think god may just test Beisner's faith -- isn't that what god does?   

My wife comments that her study of the bible shows that god has a long history of smiting societies run by idiots.  God may hate Republicans, which puts us all at risk. 

Update #1: to the extent that Beisner believes in god guaranteed self-regulation of the earth, there are lots of ways this could occur that are quite destructive to normal conceptions of human welfare, such as the plague and economic collapse.  Not to forget war.  Why does this god guaranteed self-regulation have to occur via non-human biological processes (all the extra plant growth) and not the decline of human civilization as punishment for bad stewardship over the earth?  Punishing societies that have deviated from god's plan isn't unheard of in the bible.  Or are we simply relying on the second coming to bail us out if necessary?  

Update #2: What's the deal with Beisner's claim that 

The IPCC exaggerates the rate of carbon buildup because it doesn’t recognize the capacity of Earth’s plants and oceans to absorb vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into the building blocks of life.

The IPCC spends lots of time discussing terrestrial carbon sinks (for instance Chapter 7.3.2 of the 2008 Summary), including plant growth, a difficult to measure and model phenomena with lots of heterogeneity across many dimensions.  I could see how Beisner might claim that the IPCC underestimates these carbon sinks, but how can he claim that the IPCC "doesn’t recognize" them? 

What about the claim, often mentioned by Republicans, that

Earth has been cooling for the last seven years at a rate of 3.5F per century.

Even taking the 3.5F per 100 years (i.e. 0.25F over seven years) as true, this does not look to me like a statistically significant deviation from the IPCC's trend warming projections given the variability of global surface temperatures.  For instance, here is the National Climatic Data Center's data on mean world surface temperatures (land and ocean -- it would be worthwhile to look into how these are constructed and sampling errors over time and space, for instance do better sampled locations get more weight?) as a deviation from the 1901-2000 average temperature for each month.  The statistical significance is even less that it appears, since there is, it seems, some positive autocorrelation in temperature even more than a year out, after taking out the trend.  And 3.5F per century sure isn't statistically different than 0F over a seven year period. 

 
Not clear to me what the basis for the claim that

atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising at a fraction of the rate forecast by the IPCC.

I've seen this claim before, but never with much documentation or citation of specific IPCC projections, the main claim being that CO2 concentrations seem to be growing linearly and not exponentially in the last decade or so.  And even if true, the interpretation Beisner puts on it seems odd. 

Tax Policy

via TaxVox:

S.857 : A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a $1,000 refundable credit for individuals who are bona fide volunteer members of volunteer firefighting and emergency medical service organizations.
Sponsor: Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] (introduced 4/22/2009) 

TaxVox writes:

Some of these provisions might have merit as tax policy, but the really noteworthy feature is that there are a lot of them, almost all would cost tax revenues, and some would take the tax system into brand new areas.  (Should the IRS run a cash grant program for volunteer firefighters and emergency medical workers?  Who will certify the bona fides for eligible recipients?  And is it still “volunteer” if you’re getting $1,000 from the feds to do it?)

Most, if not all, of these proposals are going nowhere.  Senator Schumer will probably get an award from the Association of Volunteer Firefighters for his support and that will be the end of it.  But wouldn’t it be great if members of congress applied as much creativity to making the tax system simpler, fairer, and capable of financing the government as they spend on finding new ways to undermine the tax base?

And what is the federal policy interest in promoting, at the extensive margin, volunteer firefighter and emergency service organization membership numbers?  I could see, maybe, funding a retention program for volunteers who are somehow judged valuable, or a training program, or a recruitment program.  But is a cash payment to all volunteers a good idea?    Why is this a federal interest? 

What to Make of This?

Last week Matthew Yglesias, who I generally like, posted

I was saying that whatever one thought should be done with large financial institutions as a policy matter, surely we could agree that the executives at these institutions are primarily bad people. It turns out we couldn’t agree on that. But my argument is pretty simple. These are people primarily motivated in life by greed.

Then this week

as a society we’ve become accustomed to the idea that when empirical evidence seems to contradict basic economic theory—as when the United States experienced rapid economic growth under conditions of widespread unionization and a high minimum wage—that we ought to accept the theory as true. This, again, is usually a claim you hear being made by economists, but its social prestige ultimately is a kind of idea in epistemology or the philosophy of science. And all this, of course, is to say nothing of the specific influence of particular empirical claims in economics which hold that high levels of taxation and government spending are everywhere and always economically destructive.

US Representative doesn't understand the EU or its history

Since I'm in a ranting mode, here's a story on NPR just now:

President Obama lifted restrictions on travel and sending money to Cuba on Monday, but not everyone is happy with the move.

Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, Cuban-American brothers who represent Miami in Congress, issued a joint statement Monday calling it "a serious mistake." ....

"The people need freedom," [Lincoln] Diaz-Balart tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "And just like the European Union — at that time called the Common Market — told Spain during its 40 years of Franco, Portugal during its 50 years of Oliveira Salazar: 'You cannot be a part of Europe until you're democracies,' we say Cuba will not have access to the billions of dollars in the U.S. market until it's a democracy. And it's very important for that kind of international solidarity."

Ahm, I'm pretty sure the EEC allowed remittances and travel to Spain and Portugal before 1975.  Where did Lincoln Diaz-Balart pick up this analogy?  Using EEC policy towards Spain and Portugal as a model for how to deal with Cuba would suggest pretty rapid liberalization of remittances, immigration and travel. 

And though for some bizarre reason NPR doesn't mention it, the Diaz-Balart brothers are Republican. 

Ah, we here are, lots of movement before democratization in Spain in 1975:

Portugal entered trade talks with the EEC in 1970 and reached a trade treaty in 1972, again before democratization in 1974/75. And Portugal is a founding member of NATO, so it didn't exactly lack political integration with the West. 

On reflection, I assume Lincoln Diaz-Balart is just being fundamentally disingenuous here and having a little fun, due to some sort resentment at the EU or Spain for its Cuba policy, or the EEC's policy toward Franco's Spain. 

Finally, this may be an example of Truth vs. Plausibility: Arguing in Public. 

"Eine Gesellschaft ohne Gott ist die Hölle auf Erden"

Die Welt reports on bishop Walter Mixa's -- chief Catholic Priest of the Bundeswehr -- Easter sermon:

Der Augsburger Bischof Walter Mixa hat vor einem zunehmend aggressiven Atheismus in Deutschland gewarnt. "Wo Gott geleugnet oder bekämpft wird, da wird bald auch der Mensch und seine Würde geleugnet und missachtet. Eine Gesellschaft ohne Gott ist die Hölle auf Erden", sagte der Militärbischof in seiner Osterpredigt in der Augsburger Marienkathedrale.

Atheisten versuchten die Realität der Auferstehung von den Toten und der Erlösung vom Bösen in das Reich der Mythen und der Fantasie zu schieben. Wer aber dem Menschen den Glauben an Gott nehme, nehme ihm das Wichtigste im Leben, sagte Mixa. Wer den Glauben an den menschgewordenen, am Kreuz gestorbenen und von den Toten auferstandenen Christus leugne, wende sich letztlich gegen das Heil des Menschen.

"Die Unmenschlichkeit des praktizierten Atheismus haben im vergangenen Jahrhundert die gottlosen Regime des Nationalsozialismus und des Kommunismus mit ihren Straflagern, ihrer Geheimpolizei und ihren Massenmorden in grausamer Weise bewiesen", sagte der Augsburger Bischof. Immer seien in diesen Systemen die Christen und die Kirche besonders verfolgt worden.

Auch in der Gegenwart würden durch gottlose Verhaltensweisen in allen Teilen der Welt Menschen wirtschaftlich und moralisch ausgebeutet, wenn etwa Kinder zum Kriegsdienst oder Frauen zur Prostitution gezwungen würden, wenn gerechter Lohn verweigert werde oder Menschen an Hunger sterben müssten. Ohne christlichen Glauben gebe es dauerhaft keine wahre Menschlichkeit, sagte Mixa.

Also

„Ohne Gott ist alles erlaubt“, zitierte Mixa den russischen Dichter Dostojewski. Wo der christliche Glaube schwinde, komme deshalb nicht das „helle Licht irgendeiner fröhlichen Aufklärung“ zum Vorschein.

I'm never sure what to make of stuff like this.  At some level you'd expect the Catholic Church to claim that all atheists are inherently and essentially extremely evil, but still...it does raise the question about what one should do when an institution and its leaders, even or especially if it is because they are confused about how the world works, put you on their enemy list. 

Finally, to be picky (and I'd be happier if I had the full text of the sermon, not just press accounts), what's the deal with 

Immer seien in [den gottlosen Regimen des Nationalsozialismus und des Kommunismus] die Christen und die Kirche besonders verfolgt worden.

What special persecution of Christians as Christians and the Church is Mixa talking about?  I can see incidental persecution of Christians and a general suppression of the autonomy of large non-Party organizations, but 'special' persecution of the Church?  How about the special persecution of the Handwerksverbaende?  I'm sure parts of their leadership were taken down as well. Indeed, the Third Reich seems to have carved out a special zone of autonomy and cooperation with the two main Christan churches, more so than for any other non-Party organizations. 

And since Mixa cannot claim Hitler was a philosophical atheist -- a bad and fallen Catholic maybe, or a charismatic leader of a new form of religion, but that doesn't amount to philosophical atheism--,   Mixa calls Hitler a 'practicing atheist' despite the fact that the appeals in Nazi Germany to faithless rationalism were, well, limited.  Nor is there isn't any evidence I'm aware of that Hitler denied, as Mixa puts it, 

den Glauben an den menschgewordenen, am Kreuz gestorbenen und von den Toten auferstandenen Christus leugnete.  

though there are pretty strong indications that Hitler didn't like what the Catholic Church made of Jesus. Hitler doesn't deny Jesus' divinity, he was going to take it away from the Catholic Church.  But he did not get there by 1945. The vast majority of Nazis were Christians in the two main German Churches and never considered themselves atheists, philosophical or practical. 

Dealing with fascism wasn't the Catholic Churches most glorious hour -- which doesn't make the Church particularly bad compared to other organizations, but it seems odd to try to claim a special heroic victim role here. In 1933 fascism does appear to be seen by the Catholic Church as less of a threat than communism and less bad than the now apparently vanquished liberalism.   In 1933 the Catholic Zentrum party in the Reichstag voted 72 out of 74 for the Ermächtigungsgesetz, providing the biggest pro-Hitler voting block after the NSDAP and a sufficiently large voting block to have voted down the law, with Zentrum suspicion about the NSDAP and Hitler in part overcome by sympathy for their anti-communist actions and in part by promises of Church autonomy in the new regime, as well as a recognition of the new power realities in Germany.  Indeed, I'd not be totally surprised if even by the late 1930s many high level Catholic functionaries still thought of godless liberalism and communism, not fascism, as the main enemy of faith, though by 1937 Hitler seems to be setting off the Church's alarm bells quite strongly, especially as a result of Catholics leaving the Church in Germany, but this is not due to the abolition of democracy in 1933 but rather due to the radicalization of nationalism and the threat this posed the supranational Church in subsequent years. Some more evidence would be nice, but that's my sense of it.   And what was the Church's stance on Franco's Spain?  From all that I know the Church only started complaining about the lack of political parties or lack of electoral democracy after Vatican II. 

See the 1937 Pius XI.'s  Enzyklika Mit brennender Sorge for the Church's complaints at the time.  (Englich version)  The Church does seem quite alarmed by the movement to bring German Catholics into a 'positive German Christianity' beyond Rome. 

To finish, when did electoral democracy become something the Catholic Church deems obligatory or which the Church strongly suggests?   Or does it depend on circumstances -- which would be an understandable view? 

Shorter Mixa: vote for Hitler as a deeply problematic but necessary ally in the struggle against atheist communism in 1933 and then complain about how atheists caused the Nazi problem. I can see how the Catholic Church would support a vote for Hitler in 1933, but don't turn around and then blame me for it. 

Update #1: why not quote Hitler's speech on March 24, 1033, on the passage of the Ermächtigungsgesetz:

Gleichlaufend mit dieser politischen Entgiftung unseres öffentlichen Lebens wird die Reichsregierung eine durchgreifende moralische Sanierung des Volkskörpers vornehmen. Das gesamte Erziehungswesen, Theater, Film, Literatur, Presse, Rundfunk, sie werden alle Mittel zu diesem Zweck sein und demgemäß gewürdigt. Sie haben alle der Erhaltung der im Wesen unseres Volkstums lebenden Ewigkeitswerte zu dienen. Die Kunst wird stets Ausdruck und Spiegel der Sehnsucht und der Wirklichkeit einer Zeit sein. Die weltbürgerliche Beschaulichkeit ist im raschen Entschwinden begriffen. Der Heroismus erhebt sich leidenschaftlich als kommender Gestalter und Führer politischer Schicksale. Es ist Aufgabe der Kunst, Ausdruck dieses bestimmenden Zeitgeistes zu sein. Blut und Rasse werden wieder zur Quelle der künstlerischen Intuition werden. Es ist Aufgabe der Regierung, dafür zu sorgen, daß gerade in einer Zeit beschränkter politischer Macht der innere Lebenswert und der Lebenswille der Nation einen um so gewaltigeren kulturellen Ausdruck finden. Dieser Entschluss verpflichtet zur dankbaren Bewunderung unserer großen Vergangenheit. Auf allen Gebieten unseres geschichtlichen und kulturellen Lebens muss die Brücke von dieser Vergangenheit zur Zukunft geschlagen werden. Die Ehrfurcht vor den großen Männern muss der deutschen Jugend wieder als heiliges Vermächtnis eingeprägt werden. Indem die Regierung entschlossen ist, die politische und moralische Entgiftung unseres öffentlichen Lebens vorzunehmen, schafft und sichert sie die Voraussetzungen für eine wirklich tiefe Einkehr religiösen Lebens. 

Die Vorteile personal-politischer Art, die sich aus Kompromissen mit atheistischen Organisationen ergeben mögen, wiegen nicht annähernd die Folgen auf, die in der Zerstörung allgemeiner sittlicher Grundwerte sichtbar werden. 

Die nationale Regierung sieht in den beiden christlichen Konfessionen die wichtigsten Faktoren zur Erhaltung unseres Volkstums. Sie wird die zwischen ihnen und den Ländern abgeschlossenen Verträge respektieren. Ihre Rechte sollen nicht angetastet werden. Sie erwartet aber und hofft, dass die Arbeit an der nationalen und sittlichen Erneuerung unseres Volkes, die sich die Regierung zur Aufgabe gestellt hat, umgekehrt die gleiche Würdigung erfährt. Sie wird allen anderen Konfessionen in objektiver Gerechtigkeit gegenübertreten. Sie kann aber nicht dulden, dass die Zugehörigkeit zu einer bestimmten Konfession oder einer bestimmten Rasse eine Entbindung von allgemeinen gesetzlichen Verpflichtungen sein könnte oder gar ein Freibrief für straflose Begehung oder Tolerierung von Verbrechen. Die Sorge der Regierung gilt dem aufrichtigen Zusammenleben zwischen Kirche und Staat; der Kampf gegen eine materialistische Weltanschauung, für eine wirkliche Volksgemeinschaft dient ebenso den Interessen der deutschen Nation wie dem Wohl unseres christlichen Glaubens.

Hitler sounds more in concert with Mixa than with materialist atheists to me. 

Update #2: I googled to see reactions to Mixa's speech, and the response is pretty close to 100% negative.  There are potential supporters out there who just post the news report of the speech without comment, but I didn't see any support. 

I do see the comment that Mixa claiming that

Atheisten versuchten die Realität der Auferstehung von den Toten und der Erlösung vom Bösen in das Reich der Mythen und der Fantasie zu schieben.  Wer den Glauben an den menschgewordenen, am Kreuz gestorbenen und von den Toten auferstandenen Christus leugne, wende sich letztlich gegen das Heil des Menschen.

is somewhat anti-semetic and anti-Muslim as well, not just anti-atheist, since Judaism and Islam deny the resurrection of Christ (though not the coming resurrection with the Day of Judgment) as well. 

This whole episode reminds me of the view that institutions seeking the one and only way to human salvation or "das Heil des Menschen" are a dangerous and potentially totalitarian project, be they Nazi, Soviet or Christian. I'm up for institutions trying to solve human problems while leaving dubious 'this way is the only way' salvation projects to the private realm. 

To close, one of those aggressively atheist cartoons:

Why can't you eat horse meat in the US even under the Bush Administration?

Al Roth posts:

The first sentence of Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets asks "Why can't you eat horse meat" in California? The answer is that it's against the law. But while similar bills to outlaw the sale of horse meat for human consumption have passed by big majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives, they have never managed to pass into law. Nationally such bills are opposed (as they were in California) by many horse breeders, cattle ranchers, and veterinarians. Nevertheless, the department of Agriculture removed funds for inspection of slaughterhouses.

Now the NY Times reports: Surge in Abandoned Horses Renews Debate Over Slaughterhouses .

"Emaciated horses eating bark off trees. Abandoned horses tied to telephone poles. Horses subsisting on feces, walking among carcasses.
As the economy continues to falter, law enforcement officers in Kentucky and throughout the country are seeing major increases in the number of unwanted and neglected horses, some abandoned on public land, others left to starve by their owners.
The situation has renewed the debate over whether reopening slaughterhouses in the United States — the last ones closed in 2007 — would help address the problem. Some states, Missouri, Montana and North and South Dakota, for example, are looking at ways to bring slaughterhouses back. "

Reporting without context

The PLOS website is down right now, which means I discovered that

Vandals cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T and Sprint at two locations early today, knocking out landline and cellular phone service to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula, authorities said.

as reported by the SF Chronicle and other news organizations.  However, as far as I can tell from google news search, none of the 92 news posting on this event so far mention that AT&T is currently in tense labor negotiations with a strike looming (but not called).  I could see that nobody would like to speculate, but the news as reported leaves out context that is a part of the story. 

Over the River in France

Impressive protests in Strasbourg.  (updating Spring and Obama come to Germany)  Well, we'll see how well the joint German-French planning works. It will also be interesting to see how the criminal justice system deals with this.  So far the reports were that protest turn out was low and mostly unmotivated (which these photos may reflect), at least on the German side. Probably not the sort of images that will hurt Sarkozy or Merkel electorally. 

The Irritating Tom Friedman

Who reads Tom Friedman's NYT column anyway?

• March 17: "Obama's Real Test" -- "Will it work? We can only hope. But I know this for sure: unless the banks are healed, the economy can't lift off, and that bank healing is not going to happen without another big, broad taxpayer safety net."
• March 10: "This Is Not a Test. This Is Not a Test." -- "Friends, this is not a test. Economically, this is the big one. This is August 1914. This is the morning after Pearl Harbor. This is 9/12. Yet, in too many ways, we seem to be playing politics as usual."
• March 3: "Obama's Ball and Chain" -- "Our banking system is in so much trouble that everyone is searching for the silver-bullet solution -- and the person who can describe it. Alas, there is no silver bullet."
  

(link)

Outrage of the Day

The taz reports:

Sie hat einen Doktortitel, ist einfallsreich und kann unterhaltsame Geschichten aus ihrem Leben erzählen. Dr. phil. Nell Zink, 45, sucht dringend einen Ehemann. Einzige Bedingung: Er muss Deutscher sein, denn die US-amerikanische Übersetzerin mit Wohnort Tübingen muss sonst bald zurück in die USA. Das hat ihr die Ausländerbehörde der Stadt angedroht.

Schuld daran ist ihr Doktortitel, den hat die promovierte Medienwissenschaftlerin vor wenigen Monaten erhalten. Und eigentlich hatte sie sich darüber gefreut. Immerhin "cum laude". Doch dann kam das Ausländeramt.

Akademiker mit einem Doktortitel, so die Beamtenlogik, müssen in Tübingen mindestens dreitausend Euro im Monat verdienen, sonst gelten sie als nicht angemessen bezahlt. Und wer nicht angemessen bezahlt ist, erhält keine Verlängerung seiner Aufenthaltsberechtigung. Stempel, Punkt und fertig.

Nell Zink schlägt sich trotz ihrer Promotion mit Übersetzungen durch und lebt von rund eintausend Euro. Sie fährt Fahrrad und trinkt Leitungswasser, das machen viele in Tübingen so. Sogar der grüne Oberbürgermeister Boris Palmer.

An den musste Nell Zink sofort denken, als ihr der Sachbearbeiter in der Ausländerbehörde als einzig rettenden Ausweg zu einer Ehe mit einem deutschen Staatsbürger riet. Palmer ist unverheiratet, könnte noch ein wenig Englisch-Nachhilfe vertragen und will seiner Stadt ein menschenfreundliches Image verpassen. Perfekt.

"Sehr geehrter Herr Palmer", schrieb Nell Zink und schickte, um Missverständnissen vorzubeugen, gleich eine Kopie des Briefes an die Frauenbeauftragte der Stadt, "ich würde Sie gern bis Ende Juli 2009 heiraten." Dann entschuldigte sie sich dafür, dass ihr die Idee "Sex gegen Bleiberecht" nicht selbst gekommen war, und schränkt in dem Brief sofort ein: "Ich glaube echt nicht, dass die Behörde von uns sexuellen Kontakt verlangen würde - bloß die gemeinsame Wohnung. Ich bin schon 45 und habe nie so besonders gut ausgesehen, muss sogar z. Zt. eine Zahnspange tragen, also ist die Ehe aus freien Stücken für mich ungefähr so wahrscheinlich wie der dreitausend-Euro-Job." Der Brief endet mit den Worten: "Ja dann, ich freue mich auf Ihre Antwort!"

Aber Boris Palmer schwieg. Stattdessen kam das Fernsehen. Der SWR hatte Wind von der Sache bekommen, und nun hat Nell Zink ihren Heiratsantrag am Montag dieser Woche auch noch über den Sender verbreitet. Mit ihrem Problem ist sie nicht allein: Auch anderen promovierten Akademikern wird von der Tübinger Ausländerbehörde ihr Doktortitel als Ablehnungsgrund für die Verlängerung des Aufenthaltsrechts vorgehalten. Entweder mehr verdienen oder gehen. So kämpft ein promovierter Sportwissenschaftler aus Israel seit Jahren vergeblich um eine längere Befristung. Der Herr Doktor ist eben "nur" Trainer in einem Sportclub.

Dabei ist es in Tübingen nichts Ungewöhnliches, dass eine Fahrlehrerin den Titel "Dr. phil" in ihrem Firmenlogo trägt oder dass der Crèpe-Verkäufer am Marktplatz einmal über Hegel promovierte. Beide haben allerdings das Glück, einen deutschen Pass zu besitzen, denn auch sie sind nach Behördenlogik "nicht angemessen beschäftigt". Ausweisen kann sie jedoch niemand.

Mit der Ehe zwischen Nell Zink und dem Oberbürgermeister wird es wohl nichts. "Solange ich nicht heiraten muss, helfe ich gerne in Zweifelsfällen", sagte Palmer gestern der taz. Im konkreten Fall aber setze das Land und der Bund die Einkommensgrenzen fest, die auch er und sein zuständiger Bürgermeister "für fern der Lebenswirklichkeit" halten. Tübingen sei im Übrigen "eine großzügige Stadt", erst vor kurzem habe er sich für den Verbleib einer Klinikärztin erfolgreich eingesetzt, "und das war ein noch viel krasserer Fall", sagte Palmer. 

What is the administrative rule being enforced here, what is its legal foundation, where does it come from historically, how has enforcement worked in the past, how binding is the rule and what are its effects?  It would be nice to know more.  My guess is that this is a relatively new labor market policy to prevent unfair competition from non-EU (and for the moment new-EU) foreigners, i.e. it is equal application of a law designed to go after Polish construction workers applied to an American with a Ph.D. from a German university. 

Employee Free Choice Act Derangement

Steve Benen, a blogger I generally like, posts:

SECRET BALLOTS.... When criticizing the Employee Free Choice Act, conservatives tend to argue that the legislation would "eliminate secret ballots" for union elections. It doesn't; it's just another bogus talking point intended to scare people.

In fact, it came as a very pleasant surprise to see the Wall Street Journal editorial page, of all outlets, concede today that the bill "doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act." This comes as a welcome and rare example of honesty from the WSJ editors on the issue. It was, after all, the same editorial board that argued just nine days ago that EFCA would "eliminate secret ballots for union elections."

But in a fun little twist, Greg Sargent notes that the Republican National Committee -- which levies the bogus EFCA argument in its party platform -- itself "forbids the 'secret ballot' as a way for the committee to make many of its own decisions."

From the party rules:

"No votes (except elections to office when properly ordered pursuant to the provisions of Robert's Rules of Order) shall be taken by secret ballot in any open meeting of the Republican National Committee or of any committee thereof."

To be sure, this is fairly standard for committees like the RNC. But the point here is that even the RNC is implicitly acknowledging that the "secret ballot" is not the only fair or Democratic way to make decisions by vote. And yet the sanctity of the "secret ballot" is one of the RNC's central arguments against Employee Free Choice.

Good point.

I'm very uncomfortable with not having a secret ballot mandated for contested union certifications.  But what strikes me here is how deranged Benen's claims are.   First, if you look at Benen's gloating that

it came as a very pleasant surprise to see the Wall Street Journal editorial page, of all outlets, concede today that the bill "doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act." This comes as a welcome and rare example of honesty from the WSJ editors on the issue. It was, after all, the same editorial board that argued just nine days ago that EFCA would "eliminate secret ballots for union elections."

and then clicks through to the WSJ editorial one finds that the WSJ actually wrote

The bill doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter. The bill allows a union to automatically organize a worksite if more than 50% of workers simply sign an authorization card, so pressure for employees to sign in public view would be enormous.

The truth of the matter is that under EFCA the secret ballot is still available only if a) the union presents the employer with authorization cards signed by fewer than 50% of workers and b) the employer elects a secret ballot.  So the secret ballot would only be available if both the union and the employer elect to have one. 

Secondly, the RNC rules do provide -- if as I understand Robert's Rules, the RNC need a request from one member for a secret ballot -- for a secret ballot for elections, but disallow secret ballots for non-election votes, which seems like a reasonable line to draw if one is worried about the sort of vote where intimidation would be used for matters the RNC votes on.  So it seems pretty odd to accuse the RNC of hypocrisy on this point, since the RNC rules provide for a secret ballot in contested elections. 

This is not an untypical post on the EFCA by a liberal blogger I generally respect -- what is going on?  Why this amount of disengenousness? 

Update #1: what other countries have union certification via signing authorization cards and don't mandate secret ballots?  I've seen the claim that Canada does, but I'd not necessarily believe stuff I see on this issue in blogs, Benen being an example.  What is the German situation? 

Ah, Canada does have card check certification, but they require 65% of workers to sign cards or 50% is a secret ballot, which seems much more reasonable than a 50% card check rule. 

Zoning and Building Codes

Andrew Samwick writes:

Banana: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.  My reading rampage continues with Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dreamby Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. This excerpt from the introduction should whet your appetite:

The problem is that one cannot easily build Charleston anymore, because it is against the law.  Similarly, Boston's Beacon Hill, Nantucket, Santa Fe, Carmel -- all of these well-known places, many of which have become tourist destinations, exist in direct violation of current zoning ordinances.  Even the classic American main street, with its mixed-use buildings right up against the sidewalk, is now illegal in most municipalities.  Somewhere along the way, through a series of small and well-intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America.  At the same time, one of the largest segments of the economy, the homebuilding industry, developed a comprehensive system of land development practices based on sprawl, practices that have become so ingrained as to be second nature.  It is these practices, and the laws that encourage them, which must be overcome if good growth is to become a viable alternative.

It would be nice to know more:first, are the claims above actually true?  If yes, how did this situation arise?  Why did it arise?  What perpetuates it?  What would optimal zoning and building codes look like?  How could we get there, realistically speaking? 

The AIG Bonus Mess

The bill that passed the House today doesn't make any sense...a 90% federal tax on payments over $125K for singles and $250 for married couples?  For people who live in the urban Northeast, say NYC and suburbs?  And applying that to all large TARP recipients including Goldman Sachs and Citi?  Do they expect to have to high production managing directors left after this passes and looks like it will stand? 

I didn't see this coming...I thought it was going to be a bonus recapture scheme for people getting over one or two million.  Going after regular professional compensation levels makes no sense. 

Update #1: reading the bill, it does look like they could pay bonuses up front as salary, but it isn't clear how they'd need to rewrite the employment contract to do that.  But deferred payments are off the table, at least for this year, and as written for all future years.  

So yes, one could raise salaries to offset this, which will make it easier for people to jump ship, maybe good and maybe bad, given how these issues are handled now. 

Update #2: Doug comments

It is inconceivable to me that this bill would not be found unconstitutional as a form of ex post facto legislation or bill of attainder. It is not, of course, criminalizing a group of people in the classic sense of a bill of attainder, but it is clear that this provision of the constitution was intended somewhat more broadly to prevent exactly this kind of legislative over-reaching.

It is my understanding that as retroactive tax law this isn't a problem and that it also does not raise any bill of attainder issues under current standards for what constitutes a sufficiently small class of victims.  There could be more general substantive due process problems, but the Courts would have to make new law to find those and be less deferential than usual in these matters -- thought that might be a good thing and in line with what for instance the German courts have done.  Or so it seems.  See Larry Tribe in particular: Atlantic and WSJ:

Ex Post Facto: Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution also, generally speaking, prohibits Congress from passing laws that apply retroactively. Would a law that imposed a tax on past-gotten earnings violate the Ex Post Facto Clause?

Responded Tribe:

The Ex Post Facto Clause applies exclusively to criminal punishment and poses no difficulty here. And the fact that the measure contemplated would operate retroactively as well as prospectively doesn’t distinguish it from any number of tax and other financial measures that the Supreme Court has upheld over the claim that fundamental fairness precludes retroactively undoing contractual obligations.

Bill of Attainder: Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing Bills of Attainder, laws that punish a single person or specific group of people without affording them a trial. Would a law that targeted AIG executives violate the prohibition on Bills of Attainder?

Responded Tribe:

I do think Congress (and the Executive Branch) could avoid serious Bill of Attainder problems by passing a sufficiently broad law … rather than targeting a closed class of named executives even though the prohibition against Bills of Attainder, unlike that against Ex Post Facto laws, potentially reaches civil as well as criminal penalties.

Late Parking Ticket Fines

My wife racks up yet another unpaid parking ticket fine.   Agh.  Just pay parking tickets when you get them. 

Update #1: my wife says the fine becomes due 15 days after the ticket, which to her seems faster than in the past.  Another fine becomes due 30 days after the ticket, which comes up in a few days.