14.Nov.2015

Into the vast deep

Tidying up old email, I found one message I'd send in April of last year, with what must've been a good teaser with an obvious context, but that now time-mistified. Subject was "well illustrated depth," and a Washingtion Post "apps" URL which turns out to work just fine a year and a half later. I'd marked it "blog fodder," so here we are.

Sourced from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, Hydro International magazine, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, BBC.co.uk, and Plosone.org, it's a datagraphic by Richard Johnson and Ben Chartoff, titled The depth of the problem. After the Australian vessel Ocean Shield detected deep=sea signals consistent with those from an airplane's black box, Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the lead official of the multination search for Malaysian airliner MH370 said "I believe we’re searching in the right area," and hoped that they might find the plane "within a matter of days." The plane has been missing since March 8, 2014, now more than 600 days ago. (The BBC has a page with what we know about MH370, last updated 3.Sept.2015, after wing debris was found on the island of Réunion, more than 2,300 miles from the main search site.

Anyway, the brilliant datagraphic illustrates, to scale, the dimensions of a Boeing 777-200, the Ocean Shield and its 22' draft, some respresented buildings (inverted, since we're headed to depth), the maximum known depth at which giant squids swim, the towing depth of the pinger locator (4,600'), and down, and down, and down, past "the maximum known depth of the deepest diving mammal, the Cuvier’s beaked whale" (9,816', where the water pressure approaches 300 atmospheres), and down, and down, past the Titanic, finally to "just shy of three miles," and just past "the maximum dive depth of Alvin, the first deep-sea submersible capable of carrying passengers." (Alvin, you can find out at NOAA's Ocean Explorer page, has been going deep for more than 5 decades now, and has an upgrade (or should we call it a "downgrade"?) planned to increase its maximum operating depth to more than 21,000 ft.

That's one of those emails taken care of. 4,057 to go.

13.Nov.2015

The Entertainer

No, not a jolly Scott Joplin rag, it's in a campaign vein. The headline (Donald Trump asks Iowans: "How stupid" are they to believe Ben Carson?) made me think of a word match game. So, how

greedy	credulous	ignorant	idealisitic	sleep-deprived
self-loathing	random	ebullient	hopeful	pathological
charitable	tuned-out	turned-on	selfish	medicated

would Iowans (or New Hampshirians, whatever) have to be in order to believe

Ben Carson	Bernie Sanders	Bobby Jindal
Carly Fiorina	Chris Christie	Donald Trump
George Pataki	Hillary Clinton	Jeb! Bush
John Kasich	Lindsey Graham	Marco Rubio
Martin O'Malley	Mike Huckabee	Rand Paul
Rick Santorum	Ted Cruz

hmm? I'm not a student of Freud, but it seems like The Donald is all that, a super ego, and super id, an open channel to the expressions we all learn to supress to get along with our fellow grade school classmates. No single utterance encapsulates the man better than this lead-in for his stream of insults for Carson:

"Aaand, I don't want to say what I said, but I'll tell you anyway."

But maybe there's more to the story? Reading Jenna Johnson's report for the Washington Post makes it sound like he's off his meds, or just getting tired of how ridiculous it is for him to run for President, and now he's just having fun seeing how much he can get away with before we start heating up the tar and gathering feathers. He "appeared to unravel on stage" in Fort Dodge.

"The usually punctual executive was nearly 40 minutes late. His voice was hoarse, his hair mussed, his tone defensive. He promised to take questions from the audience but instead launched into a 95-minute-long rant that at times sounded like the monologue of a man grappling with why he is running for president — and if it's really worth it or not. Even for a candidate full of surprises, the speech was surprising. ...

"At first, the audience was quick to laugh at Trump's sharp insults and applaud his calls to better care for veterans, replace the Affordable Care Act and construct a wall along the Mexican border. But as the speech dragged on, the applause came less often and grew softer. As Trump attacked Carson using deeply personal language, the audience grew quiet, a few shaking their heads. A man sitting in the back of the auditorium loudly gasped."

Update: Part of Michael Gerson's response on tonight's Newshour:

"I think that people have a democratic duty to watch what took place in those 95 minutes, as much of it as you can stomach. You know, Trump was vile and vulgar and vicious and morally deformed.

"This was an unbelievable performance. And, you know, I think conservatives just have to have a tough time defending this. If this isn’t the line, there is no line. This was really the worst type of politics. And, you know, we will see what the effect is. He has jumped the shark so many times and avoided the consequences, but this really struck me as something different."

12.Nov.2015

#Obvious

The New York Times tweeted a teaser and nice pyramidal pic for the story that there may be an undiscovered tomb at the Great Pyramid of Giza and I thought... well, of course I did, and so did everyone else. We'll give the win to @Outside_85 (aka "Eternal"), even with the biff on pharaoh, which is not easy to spell:

@nytimes Tomb of the guy who suggest to the pharoe that his monument could be used as a grain deposit.

— Eternal (@Outside_85) November 12, 2015

11.Nov.2015

Funny thing happened on the way to the Green Room

Not quite sure I'd call the normal collection of inaccurate blather "outrageous lies" as the Raw Story did, but judge for yourself. First on their list, and the only one for which they provided the video bite, there was Carly Fiorina trying to get a little dig in on Mr. Negotiator, saying she'd met Putin too, "although not in a green room for a show, but, in a private meeting," which funnily enough actually was in a green room. But for a conference, not a show.

Even better than talking to Putin, apparently, is not talking to him, which she recently promised not to do.

ICYMI, the fateful meeting between Fiorina and Putin was back when she was still a rising star as HP CEO, at the 2001 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, where Fiorina was a warm-up act before Putin's address. Thanks to Bustle for keeping track and providing more links, including to an archived copy of Fiorina's speech on hp.com. Her take on history at that point sounds a bit sycophantic in retrospect, celebrating how "President Putin was elected president in the first democratic transition in Russia in 1,000 years."

Talk about giving new meaning to the word "invent," indeed!

She had lots of nice things to say about China, too, in her long and detailed text, rich with historical details, urging us all to work together to a brighter future, pivoting off the fresh mourning and hope for international solidarity just 5 weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

With the benefit of 14 years' hindsight, I'm not seeing anything in her speech that was a measureable forecast, actionable proposal, or durable initiative since come to even partial fruition. It's as true now as it was then, and agreeable to both Communists and Capitalists that: "everyone has something to give, everyone has something they can stand to gain and everyone does better as part of the whole."

Putin's presence was chronicled by his people, even if they didn't save a translation of his prepared text. His Q&A; with the participants of the APEC Business meeting are available. What went on in the green room chat with Fiorina? Neither kremlin.ru or hp.com are offering highlights, but perhaps the Justice Department probe that led to Hewlett-Packard Russia agreeing to plead guilty to bribery violations could be parsed for details. I guess there wasn't time on Fox Business last night to get into all that. Not to put too fine a point on it:

"Hewlett-Packard subsidiaries, co-conspirators or intermediaries created a slush fund for bribe payments, set up an intricate web of shell companies and bank accounts to launder money, employed two sets of books to track bribe recipients, and used anonymous email accounts and prepaid mobile telephones to arrange covert meetings to hand over bags of cash."

The wheels of justice ground slowly, and Fiorina had long departed HP with her own bags of cash by the time that 2014 DOJ presser came out, but the SEC documentation of unlawful payments to Russia, allegations 9-24 of the 52 reported last year, "between approximately 2000 and 2007," were solidly on Fiorina's watch. She and Vladimir would definitely have had some things to talk about in October, 2001.

You might imagine that a candidates' forum on Fox Business was the perfect venue to clear the air about some of that, but nothing could be further from the truth. Frank Rich deconstructed the boring—rigged event, and many of the things it did not do, include lift Jeb!'s sinking ship, or hold anyone's feet to any sort of fire.

"Dealing with questions about national security and financial regulation, Carson spoke in generalities and non sequiturs that suggest he has no intention of learning the most rudimentary information he needs to execute the job he seeks. ...

"It was embarrassing to watch the editor of The Wall Street Journal, who served as one of the moderators, sit idly by as Carson espoused a faith-based tax policy that wouldn’t pass muster with a debate club at one of America’s better high schools."

After Cruz gave his can't-count-to-five kill list, "He was also given a pass by the moderators, who didn’t call him on it. (Somewhere Rick Perry is sobbing.)" And no love for raisins in cookies from Rich: "John Kasich, whose knowledge of policy is deep but whose alternately angry and boorish effusions almost make Carly Fiorina seem personable by comparison."

Viscous lies

Word is, Ben Carson's doing a bang-up job fundraising off the media "attacking" him, a powerful testament to (a) the longing people have to believe in a candidate, and (b) cognitive dissonance. Thanks to my signing up as a member of Mitt Romney's online community on 7/14/2012, Carson America is able to tell me that the media is in full attack mode!

"Funny, because this was the same media that time and again declared it off-limits to dig into then-candidate Barack Obama's background. The media's double standard is incredible, but even worse is their viciousness and blatant disregard for the truth."

What version of Bizarro world do you have to inhabit to imagine "this same media" did not go nuts digging into Obama's background? And then talk about blatant disregard for the truth in the next breath?

The same one where "the media" are singular, monolitic, viscious, personally biased against Ben Carson and so on. (But certainly not including those outlets that provide him airtime to propound whatever it is he's propounding.)

There are lies flying at us every which way, flowing into a murky pool that impedes forward progress of any sort. Carson's confabulation from back when his biography was just a heart-warming tale don't amount to much of import for the presidential race. But then neither do his qualifications, or policy ideas.

Messaging sidebar

Even if we had watched the debate, any of the advertising that Fox sold to go along with would have had to have been something special to not be zipped over by the fast forward. Apparently there was something making Senator Elizabeth Warren out to be a Communist Dictator, which I'll give you is a funny concept.

Mother Jones (who better?!) captured her tweetstorm response showing how you deal with the 140 character payload limit. No, not cheating with bitmapped text, you keep firing for effect.

Thousands of dollars on a TV ad is nothing compared to the money the big banks save if their GOP buddies go after the @CFPB. #GOPDebate

— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) November 11, 2015

Bread winning

The interview (web-extended) of Dan Price, founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, by Trevor Noah on The Daily Show last night was more compelling viewing in our household than the debate. Imagine a CEO scraping by on a barely 7-figure annual income realizing that the $200 that's rounding error to him could be the difference between one of his employees making or missing a rent payment. Which is, yeah, kind of a distraction while you're trying to get something done at work.

The minimum wage is 24% below what it was in 1968 (adjusted for inflation) and corporate profits are setting records. This is not rocket science. While $70,000—or roughly $35 an hour—may or may not be the right level to share the wealth, it seems like a great experiment for Price to run with his money and his business. He said "if you're making $40 or $50,000 a year, an extra $20,000 is life-changing.

Spinning the dial on the BLS' inflation calculator, I see that my starting salary as a newly-degreed engineer 3+ decades back was a good bit below 70,000 2015 dollars. Did I work harder trying to work my "up"? Hard to say. By contrast, I understand last night's debate began with the three leading Republican candidates telling us how much they oppose increasing the minimum wage.

Donald Trump: “There is nothing that we do now to win. We don’t win anymore. … Taxes too high. Wages too high. I hate to say it, but we have to leave [the minimum wage] the way it is.”

Robert Reich reponds:

"Too high? Germany is more competitive now than the United States, with a higher tax rate than in the United States, a higher median wage, and even its lowest-wage workers better paid. How can Germany do it? Because its average worker is better educated than the typical American worker (Germany invests like mad in education, including world-class technical education), its infrastructure is more up-to-date, and its workers have more of a direct say in their companies.

Ben Carson offered common nonsense about the minimum wage and unemployment. Reich responded:

"A higher minimum wage puts more money in the pockets of people who will spend it, thereby creating more jobs. The last time the U.S. raised the minimum wage, more jobs were created than were lost. After I led the successful fight to raise the minimum wage in 1996, a record-shattering 22 million net new jobs were added to the U.S. economy."

And Rubio offered the argument that if labor costs more, people will be replaced by machines. Reich:

"Machines have already supplanted most good-paying manufacturing jobs -- pushing millions of Americans into the personal service sector (retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, childcare, eldercare, physical therapy, etc) where human attention and touch are are so critical that machines can’t replace human beings. But most of these jobs pay very little. Which is why the minimum wage must be raised."

Reality distortion field

With confidence that the best and brightest moments would be available from various lamestream media outlets, I did not tune into the Fox Business last night to see the dwindling Republican fields shrink before my very eyes. Turns out, it was worthwhile to avoid spoilers last night (other than Cruz' Commerce two-fer) to have fresh eyes for Ana Marie Cox's rollicking grading for The Daily Beast: Surreal GOP Debate Gets Surrealist Grades.

Graded for style, substance, and overall, the candidates face some blunt assessments, with one hopeful bit. (Kasich's overall was "raisins in cookies," which I happen to like.) Not sure how the Jebster! can keep prompting "not dead yet" assessments if he can inspire this sort of thing:

Jeb Bush

Style: F+

He so obviously didn’t want to be there, I suspect he somehow wasn’t. Could barely even protest getting interrupted. I’m giving him a F+ rather an F because pity.

Substance: F

At one point, started an anecdote, then stopped it, then tried to start it again and wound up saying, “Uh, anyway.” This is the epitaph of the Bush campaign.

Overall: Off-brand diet cola.

And this one sentence pronounced on Fiorina's substance:

"Said that 'the secret sauce of America is entrepreneurship,' which it may be, but rampant inequality is the gray-pink meat by-product poor people are forced to eat."

10.Nov.2015

Free electricity

It seems that Texas has a lot of wind, and more wind power generation than any other state. 10% of their generation is a big deal, even if it's only one-tenth, and a lot of it comes in the night, so... TXU Energy is offering free juice, from 9pm to 6am. My first thought is "free power for an electric car." My second or third thought was "pumped storage." Or a flywheel or batteries. If power is free for 9 hours a day, a little bit of infrastructure could allow you to store what you need for the other 15, right?

More of a thought experiment than a business proposition, because home utility bills aren't generally very high stakes. Says in the story that "consumers estimated that the plans were saving them as much as $40 or $50 a month during the peak summer season," without saying how much they were spending. I guess electricity costs more in Texas than it does here, because that kind of savings would drive our monthly bill into negative territory for at least 10 or 11 months of the year.

Other than gaming the system, what would we do differently if electricity were free instead of 8 or 9 cents a kWh? I suppose more air conditioning on hot summer nights, but we only have a few of those in a season. So far.

Texas is a state experiment more like to be interesting than useful. "Texas runs its own electricity grid that barely connects to the rest of the country, so the abundance of nightly wind power generated here must be consumed [there]." But if we were in Texas...

TXU Energy's rate info wanted to know where I lived (or was moving to), so I looked up some real estate listings and gave it something for sale in Fort Worth, and was offered no fewer than 12 plans at my possibly new address. Never thought of a "term" for an electricity deal, but they have them: month to month, 12 months, 16 months, 24 months. Price per kWh ranged from 7.9¢ to 12.9¢, with the plan they "featured" for me having that highest rate. There are customer reviews for most of the plans, hundreds of them. Some offer "Texas-sized savings and cash back." Some have trademarked Free Nights®. One has Free Mornings & Evenings. if it's all too confusing, there's a "Simple Rate" that "stays put. Even when your usage doesn't." I can go green with 100% wind energy, and I can get automatic savings when natural gas prices fall. (If they fall.) I can get a lower deposit, or avoid a deposit. It's quite the rodeo.

Expanding the details on one plan, the TXU Energy Green Select 12^SM, I see that the price per kWh shown in the overview is one of those "as low as" deals. If I were to use 500 kWh in a month, the average price would be 14.2¢; 1,000 kWh, 12.7¢ and a whopping 2,000 kWh, down to the 9.7¢ shown in the big print. I might choose this plan to "help the environment and [my] budget" by getting an automatic $15 bill credit each month I use over 1,200 kWh. That is, if we were to use 3 or 4 times more electricity than we do now, we could "help the environment."

One recent review for the "TXU Energy Free Nights® 24" plan panned it, "shocked to see my bills go up significantly." She was "seriously considering" paying the $295 early cancellation fee to change plans. Some night owls liked it though. "Robb" said "Buyer Beware" on his 1-star review and noted "who's magnicient idea and command decision was it to make even nicknames at least 4 letters long.... that is really hilarious..." [sic]. Others said Great promotion!!! and The price is good. and this plan is awesome!!! Reviews still being collected on the TXU Energy Saver's Edge 12^SM which offers a $30 bill credit when you top 1,200 kWh, and tiered rates of 12.9/11.4/7.9¢ per kWh. (Why pay more?)

I don't remember the details, but I do remember that Texas was kind of smug when California had its energy regulation cock-up crisis (which I wrote about from the inside) back at the height of the dot.com bubble (coincidentally). I do see that the California Independent System Operator status page is not only still available, it's beautifully updated with real-time graphics showing current demand (25.184 GW), forecast, and so on. Renewables are kicking in 8 GW as the sun comes back online mid morning, the wind blows, geothermal heat drives turbines and a little bit of biomass and small hydro ticks along.

California has more government control over rates, via its Public Utilities Commission, and its residents do not help the environment and their budget by using more electricity. Tiered rates go up steeply compared to measured "baseline" usage in your area. 12 or 13¢ per kWh up to the baseline, 14 or 15¢ at 130% of it, and then boom, double the rate or more as you go up to and beyond twice the baseline.

9.Nov.2015

No, and no

It's hard to know how many of the extreme conservatives actually listen to or take guidance from Richard Viguerie, and how much he's a banty rooster celebrating the sunrise. His question of the day elicits my headline answer: Can These Three Texans Save America and the GOP?

Ted Cruz is one of the three, of course. And... Rep. Louie Gohmert, oh my. The third is the Texas Governor whose probably not on your radar yet, Greg Abbott. Among Cruz' recent accomplishments being highlighted: sending a letter (strongly worded, one would imagine) to "Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting that the Department of Justice preserve all Internal Revenue Service documents and information for investigation under the next administration. Sen. Cruz’s letter comes after the DOJ recently closed its investigation into improper targeting of conservative groups by the IRS."

In other words, of course we don't believe you, and we'll want to continue the windmill tilt under the next President. Maybe President Cruz, even!

You may remember Gohmert for no legislative accomplishment whatsoever, beyond introducing a variety of bills with no chance of becoming law. Also, he really didn't like John Boehner as Speaker of the House, and he didn't go for Paul Ryan or the "backroom deals" leading to his election, either.

"But Gohmert’s real contribution to the future of America isn’t introducing bills; it is shining the light of day on government abuse and establishment Republican perfidy."

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

7.Nov.2015

We can picture combative, and getting conned

In addition to the update of yesterday's piece (next one down), here's a more direct report of Ben Carson's press conference yesterday evening, with a little video excerpt of him saying he did too remember the West Point deal as "an offer."

Given how many times he's reiterated it at this point, he probably does remember it that way, never mind all the facts in evidence that make it not possibly true. At best, he misunderstood what others told him, or maybe they really did tell him things that weren't possibly true. Either way, he and his team could have—should have—had this conversation by now, and decided how to move forward and leave the past behind. "Scholarships" don't get offered to West Point, and given that, no one could have actually made such an offer to him. He might just say, "that's how I understood it at the time, and as we all know now, it wasn't exactly the way it was." Instead he says it was such a long time ago, and that's "a silly argument," as he's liking to say. Mistakes were made, let's move on. If he keeps insisting that mistakes weren't made, we all have to wonder, what the hell?

In any case, the event sounds quite entertaining, and reveals a new dimension of this often puzzling man.

"The performance, at a news conference in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., was mesmerizing at times, in part because of the serious personal questions that have been raised: whether he embellished or even made up crucial episodes in his life story, like the attempted stabbing of a childhood friend and his claim that West Point had offered him a 'full scholarship.'

"He lurched forward and backward, at one point recoiling from the microphone for effect. But he remained unflustered throughout.

"On stage at presidential debates, Mr. Carson borders on soporific. On Friday night, he was animated and combative."

Jonathan Chait took a look at a relevant, larger question for NYMag, is Ben Carson running for president? That is, is he really running for that office, or did he accidentally take the Wall Street Journal's joke headline after the National Prayer Breakfast in Feb., 2013 as an invitation? (Chait's piece is datelined Tuesday; he didn't have the benefit of the latest installment.)

"Conservative politics are so closely intermingled with a lucrative entertainment complex that it is frequently impossible to distinguish between a political project (that is, something designed to result in policy change) and a money-making venture. Declaring yourself a presidential candidate gives you access to millions of dollars' worth of free media attention that can build a valuable brand. So the mere fact that Carson calls himself a presidential candidate does not prove he is actually running for president rather than taking advantage of the opportunity to build his brand."

You can freely substitute "Trump" for "Carson" in that report, which is not to say the current Republican front-runners are interchangeable.

"[T]he notion that Carson could be president is preposterous. The problem is not only that he has never run for elected office. He has never managed a large organization; he has not worked in and around public policy, and he lacks a competent grasp of issues. His stance on health care, the closest thing to an issue with which his professional experience has brought him into contact, is gibberish. He mostly thrills audiences by scoffing at evolution and insisting Muslims be barred from the presidency, stances he cannot even defend coherently."

Pause here to consider that you can "thrill" audiences by scoffing at evolution in 2015. And then proceed to read the rest of Chait's speculation that this is about money, pure and simple. On the question of Carson's ten year involvement with Mannatech, and denying "any kind of relationship" even as he admitted giving paid speeches, a link to video of the performance in the CNBC-hosted debate, and the conclusion:

"If you have the facts in mind — Carson maintained an extensive relationship with the company — when you watch this answer, his unflinching dishonesty has a chilling quality. He is a perfect con artist."

6.Nov.2015

It's always been a hammer

NYMag led off the day's campaign news, with a great, perplexing, accurate headline: Ben Carson Defends Himself Against Allegations That He Never Attempted to Murder a Child. I just had to take the jump, to answer the question, "whaa?" Whatever else is going on, I think we can agree that this Ben Carson is one of the most bizarre personalities to stumble into the national spotlight in quite some time. So many of the Republican hopefuls have qualified for the general category, but I can't think of any with the potpourri of a biography that Carson brings. What @realDonaldTrump tweeted: "The Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse-trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend!" (Or as another wag on Facebook put it, "oh we're at the 'I DID TOO STAB A PERSON!' portion of the GOP primary race?")

Not long after, news on Politico that Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship. As told in his book, when Carson was 17 years old, in 1969, he was introduced to Gen. William Westmoreland, fresh off the command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and they had dinner together, after which there was supposedly a "full scholarship" to the military academy, which (a) such things don't exist, and (b) he never applied at West Point.

There are plenty of things sketchy in my mind from when I was 17, and 1969 (a bit longer ago), but if I had been "the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit," the particulars of me meeting a four-star General back then would be pretty firmly etched in memory, I'm certain. But here's Carson's campaign manager clarifying that Carson

"was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer."

The account published in Carson's book is fabricated, and/or poorly fact-checked. There was a banquet back in the day (if not the day Carson said), and 1,500 people "had dinner with" the General, and the Mayor of Detroit, and the Governor of Michigan. Maybe Carson was there.

"Cecil Murphey, who ghostwrote “Gifted Hands,” told POLITICO that his memory of Carson’s exchange with Westmoreland was hazy."

What Carson asked the people of America, talking to Fox News' Megyn Kelly (video link in the NYMag piece): "Do you think I'm a pathological liar like CNN does, or do you think I'm an honest person?"

The best we can say right now is, it's an open question. I certainly think Ben Carson is an odd person, with a strange belief system, who has provided scant evidence in favor of (and more than a little against) the idea that he could possibly be qualified to be President of the United States of America.

For Kelly's part, she came up with a nice softball follow-up for Carson, didn't he think this could be the beginning of "the media" (which doesn't include Fox News then) trying to end his campaign?

"Yeah, it's a smear campaign," he batted back, "but I'm not going to play that game with them." This is all just "garbage" and "silly," distracting from all the important issues we should be talking about. Carson and we can at least agree with him that "my candidacy is different."

I'm sorry, but SHUT UP about the "recklessness" of the media. Answer the questions, tell the truth, and tell us—if you can—why we should seriously consider your candidacy.

UPDATE: Carson's campaign was indignant about the candidate never having admitted to fabrication, and an Editor's note has been inserted at the top of their story. I'll let them explain:

"POLITICO stands by its reporting on this story, which has been updated to reflect Ben Carson’s on the record response. The original story and headline said that Carson’s campaign had admitted he 'fabricated' a 'full scholarship' from West Point, but now Carson denies that his campaign’s statement constituted such an admission, and the story and headline were changed to reflect that. POLITICO’s reporting established that Carson said he received a 'full scholarship' from West Point, in writing and in public appearances over the years — but in fact he did not and there is actually no such thing as a 'full scholarship' to the taxpayer-funded academy. And today in response to POLITICO he acknowledged for the first time that was not the case. Carson never explicitly wrote that he had applied for admission to West Point, although that was the clear implication of his claim to have received an offer of a 'full scholarship,' a point that POLITICO’s initial report should have made clear."

Ben Carson supporters see this as more evidence (which they hardly needed) of how horrible journalists are. To really hammer home the point (sorry), Mollie Hemingway tries her hand at a hit piece under a false headline about what "Politico admits," before getting around to admitting herself that the Politico author did no such thing:

"Now, as for Kyle Cheney’s concession that he fabricated his piece on Carson. He didn’t. That’s how I’m interpreting his decision to stealthily edit his piece to remove much of the error."

Funny, that leading Editor's note doesn't seem any more "stealthy" than Carson's complaints about being unfairly criticized seem genuine.

4.Nov.2015

The ugly side of Idaho visits Boise

Jeanette and I weren't at the Capitol last Sunday for the counter-protest of the anti-refugee "III% of Idaho's" gathering, but many of our friends were. Thanks to David Neiwert and the Southern Poverty Law Center for documenting both sides of the street, including the verbatim video of a good portion of it.

Having been on the Capitol's steps, and across the street on various occasions, I would take exception the verb in the lede that the III%-ers were "crowded" there. The steps have ample room for 3 or 4 times more people than they had shouting and waving flags. I'd say they looked more "huddled" than crowded, when they weren't spread out in take-over formation.

It's safe to say the group on the steps did not really need the bullhorn-powered exhortations of Chris McIntire to confirm their biases, and the claim and shout-backs of "We're not racists" were as unconvincing as the notion that they had "all colors, races, creeds, and religions" represented in their small group.

Equally unpersuasive are the claims of compassion for all the other people who need help, and who were here first: "our homeless, our veterans, our students" who have a first claim on "the dwindling resources we already have for the state of Idaho." Let's take care of everyone else first, and then we'll think about inviting refugees in, right about ... never.

Update: One friend who was there said there were definitely more counter-protesters than III%-ers. And that some woman he did not know was going around telling people "ok, you've been counted, you don't need to stay," and "we don't want to listen to them." Maybe it was someone who doesn't understand counter-protest, and maybe it was chutzpah from someone working to thin the counter-protest. Plot thickens.

Local election news

Boise's three-term Mayor Dave Bieter cruised to a fourth, leaving his disgruntled challenger and her explicitly Republican/TEA Party pitch looking mighty blighted with less than 30% of the vote. Your basic 2.6 to 1 margin, with a small fraction given up to a BSU student padding his résumé. The $10 million, two-year conservation levy to invest in open space and water quality passed by almost 3 to 1.

Turnout was predictably execrable for an odd-year election, but way better than the last two: 27.1% vs. 20.7 and 19.2% countywide and "topped 30%" per Betsy Russell's report on her Spokesman-Review blog linked above, in Boise. Full Ada County results show 33,421 ballots cast, out of 111,071 voters registered in Boise.

I can't understand missing an opportunity to vote, personally; and I'm ok with my vote having 4x the weight it would if everyone turned out.

The Judy Peavey-Derr for Boise Facebook page seems to have been sanitized of the most risible of its campaign messaging. The cover photo is an attractive image of her against a background of fall colors at least, and who could say no to protecting families, business and FREEDOM? The one about clinging to her guns and religion is no longer in evidence, but I'm confident my graphic satirist saved originals for reference.

Stop burdensome regulations for childcare providers, what? Reagan had it right, Obama had it wrong? No more taxes, no more Bieter? The voters said no more, Judy.

The voters also answered the question Chuck Malloy posted on Sunday, is an upset brewing in Boise? Not in the least, and where in the world did you get that idea? He quotes Ms. Peavey-Derr without mentioning how false her bravado seemed at the time, "conservatively" estimating her chances as "nine" on a scale of 1 to 10. It seems Mike Tracy, "longtime press secretary to Sen. Larry Craig" was instrumental in driving the fictional narrative. From "nothing is working," Tracy said things suddenly popped to "My phone is ringing off the hook and people I haven’t seen before are coming by to see me." Russ Fulcher was even campaigning for Peavey-Derr, apparently in the same invisible dog whistle frequencies where refugees and their strange "dialects" are "blighting" her part of town.

Peavey-Derr and Tracy and who knows who else were banking on low turnout, "supporters thinking that the election is in the bag, and staying away from the polls." Gee, maybe they talked too good a game, and their supporters stayed away from the polls? Either way, there weren't nearly enough of them, and thanks for that.

A lot more coal being burned

Turns out, China's burning more coal than the government was saying, 17% more according to Chris Buckley's report in the New York Times. That kicker alone would be "greater than the whole German economy emits annually from fossil fuels."

"The new data, which appeared recently in an energy statistics yearbook published without fanfare by China’s statistical agency, show that coal consumption has been underestimated since 2000, and particularly in recent years. The revisions were based on a census of the economy in 2013 that exposed gaps in data collection, especially from small companies and factories."

The sidebar graphic with a scale of billions of tons shows a steep slope either way, but now steeper. Twelve years ago this month when we visited, they were just passing 2 billion tons a year. Now, as revised, the usage in 2013 was twice that. More than 4 billion tons. 12 years ago, when it wasn't raining, and before the last three days after a Mongolian cold front momentarily swept Beijing clean, it was the worst air pollution I'd seen anywhere in the world other than perhaps the worst days of fire season here in the Rocky Mountains.

The Times story includes an interesting video, with some disparate views from locals, one of whom provided the quote of the day (in the translated subtitle):

"There's no need to worry. We have a nice environment."

3.Nov.2015

So long, Joe

Joe Nocera's hanging up his Op-Ed beat, in favor of the Sports page. Did not see that coming. He's got some good ideas for his farewell column. Michael Bloomberg should buy a gun company. We should build new schools to show we value education. Supreme Court Justices should serve one 18-year term, with terms staggered to have one end every two years. We should vote on the weekend, not Tuesday. The Metropolitan Opera should do "Porgy and Bess" again. And e-cigarettes are better than toxic, tar-filled tobacco.

While I read his columns frequently, there are plenty I missed and I guess I can enjoy them retrospectively. Some from this month: Aaron Sorkin's 'Steve Jobs' Con, saving me the trouble of watching that movie. (Darn it, I'd hoped to learn more about Jobs' life, but who wants to see a movie about fake Steve Jobs?)

The Patent Troll Smokescreen, about yet another economic distortion in patent law and practice: “efficient infringing,” as attorney Robert Taylor called it. Nocera:

"...the relatively new practice of using a technology that infringes on someone’s patent, while ignoring the patent holder entirely. And when the patent holder discovers the infringement and seeks recompense, the infringer responds by challenging the patent’s validity."

It used to be that willful infringement, which that description certainly sounds like, ran you the risk of having to pay treble damages. Wonder what happened to that penalty?

On incoherence

In the little Twitter snit that ensued when I responded to the Idaho Freedom Foundation's touting Peter Crabb "deliver[ing] the truth about the minimum wage," my observation that Crabb's writing has been incoherent for some time was derided as a "personal attack," and for not debating the issue at hand. That was while I was composing yesterday's blog post, and just before I provided the link to it. Responding to that, there were... crickets. I'd already been dismissed:

@fortboise Ah. You definitely know a lot about incoherence. Have a great day.

— Idaho Freedom (@idahofreedom) November 3, 2015

After 30 or 40 years of shooting my mouth and keyboard off, advanced education and a career in engineering, I do, in fact, know quite a bit about coherence and its absence. I'm not obsessed about it, but I was following Crabb's published opinions when we were getting the Idaho Statesman and its Business Insider periodical which long gave space to Crabb and the laissez faire, free market, anti-government messages that are the IFF's stock in trade.

For the current topic, my February, 2013 blog post on Idaho's low wages is perhaps most relevant, although Crabb was only mentioned in passing in the report from Bill Roberts. The datagraphic from the Idaho Department of Labor shows what the anti-union "Right to Work" legislation and the "free market" have done for this state's workers, as compared to the rest of the country. In 1970, Idaho was 82% of the national average, peaked at 87% through the late 1970s, and has since slid to 76%. Crabb's contribution was to observe that wages aren't as low as they seem because the 3.4% increase over inflation in the last three decades "doesn't reflect factors such as the cost of health insurance premiums paid by companies, which are effectively an increase in pay that doesn't show up in wages." That might be relevant if very many of Idaho's low wage jobs actually included employer-paid health insurance. But it isn't relevant to the state-to-state comparison, with no reason to believe Idaho's workers have better benefits.

In September, 2013, I remarked upon Crabb's assessment of his own dismal "science" and his vague explanation of why going back to the gold standard would be a good idea, and then another response to his tireless criticism of the Federal Reserve for their sins of omission and comission alike.

Most recently, December of last year, I responded to his extolling the virtues of "incentives" to solve the problems of access to health care, and making excuses for denying Idaho's refusal to expand Medicaid. (People would just consume more health services without getting healthier.) We all can free market our way to better health.

Crabb is a firm and unwavering ideologue, making no useful predictions that I have seen, and spending his effort justifying his (and the Idaho Freedom Foundation's) ideology, with arguments that are simply not very good, and not very well delivered. Seeing him deliver one in person affirmed what I'd already observed from his published work.

Tough questions, tough job

Ezra Klein considers whether CNBC's questions were more hostile, less hostile, or about the same as the other three networks that have hosted debates so far. You might not be shocked, shocked to see that when compared side-by-side, the opening half-dozen questions from the moderators at Fox, CNN (one debate for each party so far), and CNBC were more alike than different, generally in the form of "[perfectly reasonable question] + [weirdly ungenerous kicker]." The one notable disparity that the Fox and CNN questions were

"implicitly framed as if they came from a concerned member of the sponsoring party; CNBC asked questions about policies and records that were framed as if they came from a critic of the sponsoring party."

If you can't deal with criticism, POTUS probably isn't the right job for you. Were CNBC's questions uniquely hostile? No. There were none as pointed as Megyn Kelly's challenge to Donald Trump, the "attack ad wrapped in a question" that caused a Trump v. Fox News feud.

"But as hostile as [that] question was, it didn’t elicit any anger from the Republican Party more broadly, nor any pushback from the other candidates on stage. Elite Republicans didn’t mind the question, I think, because elite Republicans loathe Donald Trump and wanted to see his campaign ended. Fox was hostile here, but it was acting as an agent of the Republican Party, not an enemy of it."

In other words, if Donald Trump is mad, the network has provided a service to the Party, while if RNC Chair Reince Priebus is hopping mad, the network has provided a public service, even if it cost them some future business. With my emphasis:

"The controversy ... reflects a tension buried deep inside presidential debates: They are organized by political parties, not news organizations. ... And the parties want the debates to help their best candidates. The result is that debate moderators try to walk a line of being tough questioners without overly offending the organizing party ...

"CNBC, in focusing on policy concerns, picked a more journalistically important line of questioning, but one that the organizing party found much more offensive. The resulting backlash is the organizing party's effort to remind CNBC and all other networks that, ultimately, it controls these debates, and media organizations that want to host a debate and benefit from the accompanying ratings and the prestige need to remember that they are meant to act as the party's partner in these debates, not as its critic."

2.Nov.2015

Down with the minimum wage

Voters in the Idaho resort town of McCall will decide on whether to raise their local minimum wage to $8.75 on January 1, and $10.25 the year after ($6.56 and $7.68 for tipped workers, whose minimum is $3.35/hour now). KBOI reports that the City Council had the power to pass the initiative on its own, but decided to put it to the voters, while it stayed neutral. The anti-government Idaho Freedom Foundation dispatched its man, Professor Peter Crabb to argue against, and hosted a video of the voters' forum on its "news" website.

Crabb—speaking for himself, and not Northwest Nazarene University where he's a professor of Finance and Economics—took a three-pronged approach, based on economic theory, political economy and "correct moral reasoning," as he put it. First of all, research cited by proponents that talks about no significant loss of jobs from raising the minimum wage is "far from conclusive," which he demonstrated by quoting a caveat from one paper, and three-years after publication criticism of its methodology.

Assuming that economics is always a zero-sum game, he argued that employers will subsitute capital for more expensive labor, or reduce benefits, or hours to avoid having their costs go up. He cited a statistic from the hospitality industry about average hours per week worked going down from 1965 to today, "all the time the minimum wage has been going up."

That's true if you don't adjust for inflation, but as you can see in CNN's interactive chart, after the increase from $1.25 to $1.60 an hour in 1968, it's been mostly a sawtooth ride downhill. In real terms, the wage is where it was in the mid-1980s, or mid-1950s, take your pick. Crabb knows better, I'm sure. He was either sloppily hand-waving, or deliberately misleading. But he had the temerity to accuse others of "dubious reading" of research.

His political argument is that tradeoffs are always required in politics, so if we're going to raise the minimum wage, we should also have to lower taxes on employers, or increase the eligibility threshold for government programs. The implication is that since we're not doing those things, we have no business raising the minimum wage.

Finally the "correct" moral arguments, such as they are. Raising the minimum wage decreases opportunity for younger workers, and thus constitutes a transfer from younger workers to older ones. Immoral! And the government has "questionable moral authority" to regulate anything.

"So it begs the question. [sic] Do we have a moral right to burden this segment of the labor force when we have already done so with other unfunded liabilities in government social programs?"

That's the very nut of the argument of Crabb's (and the IFF's) indefatigable arguments for libertarianism and the free market as a solution to all problems. The ideology is clear and perfect; if the arguments have to be elliptical, obfuscated or specious, so be it.

Turn that fork upside down!

Marc Johnson forecasts the rebound of Jeb! Stranger things have happened I guess. One piece of the puzzle just yesterday was that leaked PowerPoint slide deck, and here's Simon Maloy figuring the campaign leaked its own strategy for what it hoped would be a better attack on Rubio than the pathetically foiled try at the last debate, and to provide we're-not-coordinating coordination with the Right to Rise SuperPAC in case it wasn't sure how, when, and where to best spend the $100 million it's raised on Jeb!'s behalf. (Maloy's not in the Comeback Kid camp.)

Anyway, Johnson's conclusion:

"In the enormously fractured modern Republican Party anything is now possible. The favored son of the dynasty may not have what father and brother possessed, including the instinct to Swift Boat opponents, but a guy with a $100 million Super PAC and 100 percent name ID may yet have the staying power to outlast this completely crazy cast of contenders.

"Jeb Bush has been a perfectly awful candidate so far, but even the Mets, dead at mid-season, made it to the World Series. When everything is crazy anything is possible."

Signage

What's not to like about a graphic designer taking on the task (obsession?) to "document every subway station sign in New York, whether embedded in mosaic or painted on steel girders"? Featured in New York Today this morning, and of course, turned into a luscious website, whose hit counter must be squealing like a steel wheel on a tight curve right now: NY Train Project.

On the N train, the sign for Atlantic Avenue says "PACIFIC STREET," that could be a little confusing. On the B train, Newkirk Plaza says "ATLANTIC AVE."

"Project" details tallies up a mere 43 hours riding and waiting, 19 subway swipes and 276 stops covered. Doesn't say how much time he spent editing the images into pixel-perfect orthogonality, as tilework demands, and designing the photogallery to feel like you're riding a subway (albeit one filled with white light around the signs at each station).

I didn't ride the whole thing, but of what I saw, I would recommend the 3 train for the best variety and most interesting stuff, until it gets above ground (?) at the far end.

1.Nov.2016

Inside baseball

No, not the World Series (although here it is November and that's still going on), it's the 112 slide deck from the JEB! campaign that somebody leaked to U.S. News & World Report and now everybody can be briefed. The 5 things you need to know right now:

1. Press obsession with process will not determine primary outcome
2. Race will remain fluid for some time because… voters have A.D.D.
3. Fundamentals matter
4. Cash matters
5. Discipline matters

I like that little hitch in the gitalong in item #2 about Attention Deficit Disorder. Are we not paying enough attention? Can't remember what happened last week? The average number of candidates being considered has been six all summer, according to TargetPoint Consulting's 829 autodialed phone phone interviews with "likely GOP primary voters" a month ago, and up from 5 in February. (Going by the graphic, 5 candidates to 6 is a like a 3x increase?)

As for "Discipline matters," someone needs to explain that slide to me, because they pre-empted the original text (about how JEB! is the most grown-up person and going to be fine, and how the "proactive measure" of cutting expenses is "real good budgeting and leadership") with a quote from the Washington Post on Oct. 23:

But one Bush fundraiser who requested anonymity to speak freely said: “It feels very much like a death spiral, and it breaks my heart. I don’t know anyone who wants to reinvest now.” The campaign, this person added, has been “head-­‐scratchingly bad in every element. I wouldn’t be shocked in 60 days from now if he wasn’t in the race.”

The lead for the news is that Marco Is A Risky Bet (slide 19) and 7 bullet points why. The briefing says that "Marco is a GOP Obama," how's that for an attack? Rubio and Obama "have strikingly similar profiles," not to put too fine a point on it.

And not to coordinate expenditures too much, but the bar charts detailing "Advanced Placed Media" show how much the "Right to Rise PAC (Pro-Bush)" will be "future spending." $33M in the coming 4 months, more than half of that in New Hampshire.

The embedded campaign videos weren't included in the downloadable document, but there's plenty of interesting viewing, especially when it gets to the wonky Data & Analytics section, describing their database with 260 million individuals in it, 3,000 data points per individual. That's 780 billion points of light if you do the math.

"This data is being used to provide detailed MicroTargeting [sic] profiles of voters in key primary states," and "We know exactly which Republicans are the most likely to vote and what issues matter to them."

There is a strategic dashboard from Ackbar (is that... Admiral Ackbar?!), details of the microtargeting in New Hampshire, state of the art poll sampling, Sybill campaign simulations, advanced TV tracking, conquest (!) advertising, targeted media buying efficiencies, social media monitoring, and all things digital (tracking, more analytics, advertising, and of course, fundraising).

raveling

Tom von Alten