Denialism Isn’t Right

8
17 hours ago
by Michael Weiss in

Today marks the end of an elec­tion in Port­land, Ore­gon. For those of you unfa­mil­iar with Ore­gon elec­tions, they are con­ducted entirely by mail; today is the dead­line for bal­lots. This is an off time of an off year, but turnout is likely to be high for this elec­tion any­way. On the bal­lot is an ini­tia­tive to flu­o­ri­date Portland’s water supply.

Wait…what? Yes, Port­land is the last hold­out of major cities in the United States when it comes to flu­o­ri­dat­ing the drink­ing water sup­ply. It’s a bat­tle that has raged for 57 years in this city. Amer­i­can pub­lic water sup­plies began to be flu­o­ri­dated 68 years ago, and over time have been fine-​​tuned to lev­els high enough to improve den­tal health while min­i­miz­ing side effects.

But that hasn’t mat­tered to Port­landers, who have repeat­edly voted against flu­o­ri­da­tion of their water. Until recently, the clos­est the city came to flu­o­ri­da­tion was in 1978, when they voted to start it…and then changed their minds in a 1980 vote. Last sum­mer, before a cham­ber flooded with flu­o­ri­da­tion oppo­nents, the city coun­cil unan­i­mously voted in favor of adding flu­o­ride to the city’s water sup­ply begin­ning next March. Those oppo­nents gath­ered more than twice the num­ber of sig­na­tures nec­es­sary to bring the issue to a pop­u­lar vote, which is why I am post­ing this very arti­cle today.

But flu­o­ri­da­tion isn’t what this arti­cle is really about. Rather, it’s about a num­ber of per­cep­tions, some of which are clearly false.  (more…)

One Swallow Doesn’t Make an Indictment

4
1 day ago
by Monotreme in
Utah Attorney General John Swallow has some 'splainin' to do. Source: Jeffrey Allred, Deseret News

Utah Attor­ney Gen­eral John Swal­low has some ’splainin’ to do. Source: Jef­frey Allred, Deseret News

Back in Feb­ru­ary, I told you about the woes of newly-​​inaugurated Utah Attor­ney Gen­eral John Swallow.

At the time, he was accused by con­victed swindler Jeremy John­son. In 2010, John­son claims he paid Swal­low, then the Assis­tant AG, money to be used to bribe Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid. In return, Reid was sup­posed to get the Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion to lay off Johnson’s for­mer Inter­net mar­ket­ing company.

The most incrim­i­nat­ing thing for Swal­low in this whole far­rago of non­sense is his voice on tape appear­ing to humor John­son and even col­lect some money from him, which Swal­low says was a cam­paign donation.

Now, another three months have passed and three more inves­ti­ga­tions of Swal­low are under­way. (more…)

Congress, not Progress

11
2 days ago
by dcpetterson in

There are a num­ber of press­ing issues on America’s plate these days, and many that, while they may not be the topic of com­mon con­ver­sa­tion, are nev­er­the­less of immense and imme­di­ate con­cern to the health of our nation. Taxes. Jobs. Immi­gra­tion reform. Gun safety. Edu­ca­tion. Infra­struc­ture. The Sequester cuts. Vot­ing rights. DOMA. Energy and gaso­line prices. The debt limit. Just to name a few.

Is Con­gress address­ing these issues? Not really. The House has spent over 80 hours try­ing to repeal Oba­macare, and has held at least 37 votes to repeal. It’s uncer­tain why the House lead­er­ship — or even any of its junior mem­bers — believed the 37th vote would have a bet­ter chance of being taken up by the Sen­ate, or being signed by the Pres­i­dent, than the first dozen or so did.

But surely that waste of time is an excep­tion. With all the vital issues in the hop­per, surely Con­gress has spent the major­ity of its time deal­ing with them, no? (more…)

Free At Last

1
3 days ago
by Michael Weiss in

I’ve been kind of hard on the Pres­i­dent lately. Well, it looks like I have been, any­way. Really, it’s been about exec­u­tive branch activ­i­ties. Inso­far as the buck stops with the Pres­i­dent, that means I’m being hard on him, too. I haven’t seen any evi­dence that he’s been directly involved in any of those activ­i­ties, though, so it’s not the same as with Pres­i­dent Nixon, who was directly involved in Water­gate. Yet another rea­son I get irri­tated when politi­cians and the media hyper­vent­ingly “gate” the lat­est news.

But Pres­i­dent Obama did some­thing par­tic­u­larly good last week, and I haven’t yet called atten­tion to it. He signed an exec­u­tive order man­dat­ing that

going for­ward, newly gen­er­ated gov­ern­ment data shall be made freely avail­able in open, machine-​​readable for­mats, while appro­pri­ately safe­guard­ing pri­vacy, con­fi­den­tial­ity, and security.

This is a big deal, par­tic­u­larly to me. There’s an obvi­ous rea­son for this, but also a hand­ful of less obvi­ous ones that are worth explor­ing, too.

(more…)

Open Mic May 17

174
4 days ago
by Logarchism.com in
If you think this is the Biggest Scandal in American History, then this map is for you.

If you think this is the Biggest Scan­dal in Amer­i­can His­tory, then this map is for you.

The Exec­u­tive Cab­ins in the Ship of State sprung mul­ti­ple leaks, and O Cap­tain, My Cap­tain got around to plug­ging them Wednes­day, but not before Wide­spread Panic broke out.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dar­rell Issa (R-​​Vista, CA) and Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder (D-on’t Get All Up in My Grill) exchanged words. Whether or not you think Holder is right that Issa’s snarky ques­tion­ing of the Attor­ney Gen­eral is “too con­sis­tent with the way [he] conduct[s him]self as a mem­ber of Con­gress[, and that it] is unac­cept­able and it is shame­ful” prob­a­bly depends on which side of the aisle you call home.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann (R-​​Stillwater, MN) kicked off her 2014 cam­paign, but the 2016 cam­paign is already under­way. Con­fused? So is she.

Are Repub­li­cans going to Wide­spread Panic also? Can they get Bach­mann and Issa to shut up?

Not when 41 per­cent of Repub­li­cans think that Beng­hazi is the Biggest Scan­dal in Amer­i­can His­tory. Of course, if you feel that way, you should be able to find it on a map, don’t you think?

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Time for a Little More R and R

26
6 days ago
by Reed Davis in

Rogoff and Rinehart Excel errorA cou­ple of weeks ago, DC wrote about “The Error Heard ‘Round the World”, about Rein­hart and Rogoff (here­after called RR) and their cal­cu­la­tion errors that became the basis for aus­ter­ity mea­sures in sev­eral countries.

I have posted an Excel spread­sheet which is an exten­sion of one included in a zip file posted by Hern­don, Ash and Pollin (here­after called HAP). I will use data from that spread­sheet to look at the HAP crit­i­cisms of the RR paper.

A good start­ing point is the now infa­mous Excel spread­sheet shown to the right.

After not­ing the cod­ing error by which five rows were excluded, the first ques­tion that occurred to me was “where’s the beef?”. The num­ber of coun­tries on which the 90 per­cent thresh­old is based is a mere seven (Bel­gium hav­ing been left out by RR). The HAP cri­tique points out that RR is using only 71 data points (110 after Bel­gium and 14 other excluded data points are added). Since there were rel­a­tively few data points, my first incli­na­tion was to try to look at that data so see how it was dis­trib­uted. (more…)

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