Census bureau changes critical survey in the year of Obamacare implementation

Usually when confronted with this type of situation I descend quickly in anglo saxonisms and sarcastic rhetoric.  I choose not to do so this time. I will only say that a government that gets to choose how it is measured cannot be held accountable and a nation so deceived cannot be ruled with the people's consent.  An important point to note is that in 2009 the Administration made the unprecedented decision to bring the Census Bureau directly under White House control.  Megan McCardle of Bloomberg is a critic of the ACA but by no means a 'right winger' she explains the tragic situation:

For several months now, whenever the topic of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act came up, I’ve been saying that it was too soon to tell its ultimate effects. We don’t know how many people have paid for their new insurance policies, or how many of those who bought policies were previously uninsured. For that, I said, we will have to wait for Census Bureau data, which offer the best assessment of the insurance status of the whole population. Other surveys are available, but the samples are smaller, so they’re not as good; the census is the gold standard. Unfortunately, as I invariably noted, these data won’t be available until 2015.

I stand corrected: These data won’t be available at all. Ever.

No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was. The New York Times reports that the Barack Obama administration has changed the survey so that we cannot directly compare the numbers on the uninsured over time.
The changes are intended to improve the accuracy of the survey, being conducted this month in interviews with tens of thousands of households around the country. But the new questions are so different that the findings will not be comparable, the officials said.

An internal Census Bureau document said that the new questionnaire included a “total revision to health insurance questions” and, in a test last year, produced lower estimates of the uninsured. Thus, officials said, it will be difficult to say how much of any change is attributable to the Affordable Care Act and how much to the use of a new survey instrument.

“We are expecting much lower numbers just because of the questions and how they are asked,” said Brett J. O’Hara, chief of the health statistics branch at the Census Bureau.

I’m speechless. Shocked. Stunned. Horrified. Befuddled. Aghast, appalled, thunderstruck, perplexed, baffled, bewildered and dumbfounded. It’s not that I am opposed to the changes: Everyone understands that the census reports probably overstate the true number of the uninsured, because the number they report is supposed to be “people who lacked insurance for the entire previous year,” but people tend to answer with their insurance status right now.

But why, dear God, oh, why, would you change it in the one year in the entire history of the republic that it is most important for policy makers, researchers and voters to be able to compare the number of uninsured to those in prior years? The answers would seem to range from “total incompetence on the part of every level of this administration” to something worse.

Yes, that’s right, I said “every level.” Because guess who was involved in this decision, besides the wonks at Census?
The White House is always looking for evidence to show the benefits of the health law, which is an issue in many of this year’s midterm elections. The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Council of Economic Advisers requested several of the new questions, and the White House Office of Management and Budget approved the new questionnaire. But the decision to make fundamental changes in the survey was driven by technical experts at the Census Bureau, and members of Congress have not focused on it or suggested political motives.

Sarah Kliff of Vox says we shouldn’t freak out, because these are the numbers that the census collects for 2013, so the change is actually giving us a good baseline. But I’m afraid I’m not so sanguine. AsAaron Carroll says: “It’s actually helpful to have a trend to measure, not a pre-post 2013/2014. This still sucks.”

The new numbers will suffer, to some extent, from the same bias that the old questions suffered from: People are better at remembering recent events than later ones. Quick: On what day did you last get your oil changed? What month was the wedding you attended last summer? If it was in the last few months, you probably know. If it was someone you’re not that close to … well, the summer months kind of blend into each other now that you’re a grownup, don’t they?

And what has been happening in the most recent months? A whole lot of change! Policies were canceled, benefits changed, people shifted around their coverage in anticipation of the new law. That doesn’t make for a very good baseline. It will be a very good measure of who has insurance right now, in 2014, but it’s not where I’d want to start my 2013 baseline for our new law. That’s why they should have done this for 2012 -- or waited until 2016 -- to give us actual comparable data for the transition period. So by your leave, I think I’ll continue to freak out for a bit.

I find it completely and totally impossible to believe that this problem didn’t occur to anyone at Census, or in the White House. It would be like arguing that the George W. Bush administration might have inadvertently overlooked the possibility that when the U.S. invaded Iraq, there would be shooting. This is the biggest policy debate of the last 10 years, and these data are at the heart of that debate. It is implausible that everyone involved somehow failed to notice that they were making it much harder to know the effect of this law on the population it was supposed to serve. Especially because the administration seems to have had a ready excuse as soon as people reacted to the news.

Even if the administration genuinely believes this is defensible, why would they give anyone reason to believe that it is cooking the books? Because those charges are being made, and they’re a lot harder to dismiss than the complaints about birth certificates or dark intimations that the administration has simply made up its enrollment figures out of whole cloth.

I just don’t get it.

I mean, I can certainly think of explanations, but I can’t quite bring myself to believe the worst of them. Which leaves me with the only slightly-less-utterly-appalling conclusion: At some point, very early on in the process, folks noticed that asking the new questions would make it difficult to compare Obamacare’s implementation year to prior years, and decided that assessing the effects of the transition wasn’t nearly as important as making urgent changes to … questions we’ve been asking basically the same way for a decade and a half.

No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense, either. Let’s go back to inexplicable, shall we?

If the administration is really serious about transparency and data-driven policy, as I’ve been told for a year now, then it will immediately rectify this appalling mistake and put the old questions back into circulation double-quick. But we’re more likely going to hear the most transparent and data-driven administration in history citing these data -- without an asterisk -- to tout the amazing impact of its policies.


To contact the writer of this article:
Megan McArdle at mmcardle3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this article:
James Gibney at +1-202-624-1863 or jgibney5@bloomberg.net.

If this is what English educators are doing to our kids, imagine what our sainted educators are doing.

Hattip samizdata.net

So relentless is this brainwashing that it percolates throughout the curriculum, so that even exam papers in French, English or religious studies can ask students to explain why the world is dangerously warming up, or why we must build more wind turbines. In 2012, I described an A-level general studies paper set by our leading exam board, AQA, asking for comment on 11 pages of propagandist “source materials”, riddled with basic errors. A mother wrote to tell me how her intelligent son, after getting straight As on all his science papers, used his extensive knowledge of climate science to point out all their absurd distortions.

He was given the lowest possible mark, a fail. When his mother paid to have his paper independently assessed, the new examiner conceded that it was “articulate, well-structured” and well-informed. But because it did not parrot the party line, it was still given a fail. I fear this corruption of everything that education and science should stand for has become a much more serious scandal than Mr Gove yet realises.

- Christopher Booker

The new social democratic normal in America

Well BHO is a success.  He set out to fundamentally transform the nation and with the help of a recession he has succeeded.  We used to be different than Europe in that we had a less activist government that spent a lot less as a percentage of GDP.  The result was higher economic productivity, employment and wealth with more inequality.  Well we no longer spend less on social welfare and we no longer have very much economic growth nor do we have very many people employed anymore.  But the good news is that we've kept the inequality.  Plus we have a government that in many respects is domestically more violent, draconian and arbitrary than that of any other advanced country. All in all, unless you have assets or a rent seeker's sinecure, it's becoming harder and harder to keep up.  Gee, I guess all we need now is a 'lightbringer' to bring us some hope 'n change.  But wait! Didn't we just have one of those 'cats?

Here are three charts to tell the tale.  Hattip Zerohedge.com (remember, use their charts, take their opinions with a block of salt).

As the economy continues to run down, burdened by more and more rent seeking and lawyerization.

Employment has shifted to a social democrat norm with the Dems rationalizing lower unemployment as (In Nancy "Pelociraptor" Pelosi's words) 'allowing people to pursue their dreams, to become an artist'. Boy, there's going to be a shitload of art...

Social benefits have risen by 6% of disposable income - before O'care really gets going!  And this country was utterly bankrupt back before the increase. 

And after five years this looks like the new normal rather than 'muddling through'.

So with our gracious Federal and in many big blue states, state governments size 13 wingtips planted firmly on the nation's trachea strangling growth, more and more people fall out of the labor force and social welfare spending keep rising.  And pretty soon the baby boomers will be pounding the public fisc for another 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 percent of GDP.  And at about that time confidence in the dollar will collapse and we'll turn to our kids and tell them:  "hey, you fucked up, you got born to us".  And they'll say back to us:  "no, Dad, we didn't fuck up, you and Grandad fucked us up".

And that distinction will make all the difference in how the country evolves from there.  And I doubt if it will be particularly progressive. I mean, who could blame our kids after the screwing that they are getting from us if they look upon us with a tad less, shall we say 'charity'?

Happy tax day

Sigh.

Small useless colleges taking on water

Couldn't happen to a more craven group of rent seekers.  Some predict half of all colleges will close in the next 15 years.  It will result in a massive increase in wealth and productivity as these tenured toffs are forced to go out and do something productive - anything.  And all of their greed in raising prices massively just guarantees that the collapse is going to happen much faster and the crash be much more painful.

Get your popcorn because never will creative destruction be more entertaining.

Hattip Instapundit.com

Elite college students are the beneficiaries of oppression not its victims.

Victor David Hanson sayswhat the rest of us are thinking:  who in the hell do these whiny, entitled Ivy league shits think they are?  They have every advantage in the book but they shriek as if they're victims.  They only can get away with it because the people who run our elite universities are a disturbing combination of progressive pusillanimity and piety.

"Self righteous and whiny is no way to go through life, son."

HUD and IRS employees promoted the passage of O'Care

That's OK because given their kick ass performance on healthcare.gov it's clear (at least in Marxist terms) that HHS is an objective enemy of the law.  If stupidity and incompetence are counterrevolutionary then our Federal government is a reactionary institution.  God bless their useless souls.  The story here.

As helicopter parents have proliferated and hysteria over 'risk' gone through the roof, kids have turned to social media to get away from the 'dolts.

One of the problems with the therapeutic left and nanny right is their obsession on controlling and manipulating children, the better to use them as stepping stones to get to their particular version of heaven.  This has guilted parents into obsessive overparenting and manipulation.  The result is that the kids, like every generation needing to escape from the oldsters are turning more and more to social media for their private spaces.

Constantly chased around by the shrieking nannies of the left and right whose idea of a 'good time' is listening to their arrogant preaching, what kids really need is not more 'guidance' or 'education' but to be left alone - they're a lot better people than you are.  You self righteous creeps.

Great story on the topic here.

Why every Federal Agency needs it's own private army

In the olden days Federal agencies had very little involvement in local affairs.  If they needed to enforce something they went to local law enforcement. This had the benefit of making sure their actions were perceived as legitimate and reasonable because the Sheriff was accountable locally.  In cases like desegregation where local law enforcement was tainted, the next step was calling out the National Guard - something that required the President to make sure the enforcement was legitimate.

But as the Federal Stupor state grew more oppressive it began to struggle with enforcement.  The local gendarmes became reluctant to screw their neighbors just because unelected bureaucrats a thousand miles away said so.  So now they have their own SWAT teams.  BLM even has trained snipers for goodness sakes.

So as we saw in the Bundy ranch standoff we have state and local armed agents on the one side and the Feds on the other.  Perhaps the Feds should step back and ask why their actions increasingly lack legitimacy.   I mean if they're not sunk too deep into their Stupor state to do so.

Break it up break it all up.  Kirsanow at the link with more.

http://m.nationalreview.com/corner

Restricting E cigarettes - because saving lives is secondary to getting to heaven (left or right)

The problem with progressivism is that there is no limit to the state's manipulation as long as someone can frame their coercion as either delivering a positive no matter how speculative or avoiding harm, no matter how small. Progressivism is simply fascism for the "right" reasons. Law based social conservatism tends to be same when it tries to impose national legal standards on personal choices.  Both ideologies aren't interested in liberty or pluralism.  Instead they seek in Buckley's famous phrase to "Immanetize the eschaton". And they don't care who gets hurt on their way to their particular heaven. After all, they're doing God's or History's work.

E cigs are safe and the best news ever for those trying to save their health and prolong their lives. The left and nanny-bitches don't invent anything or create any wealth.  They just lurk like buzzards, feeding on other people's achievements and lives.  And if that isn't fascism, I don't know what is.  More at the link.

http://m.nationalreview.com/corner

Ira Stoll is right but wrong in defending Brandeis for disinviting Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Yes Ira, Brandeis doesn't have to give her a platform.  They are well within their rights to change their mind. But there is a big difference between recognizing a right to do something and finding it admirable.

Firstly, for a choice to be admirable it must be consistently applied - all those who are hostile to a revealed religion should be denied this platform. My guess is that Brandeis honorary degrees to those who are hostile to Catholicism or Conservative Christianity have flown as thick as a Waltham blizzard.

Secondly, it is a profound insult to publicly invite someone then disinvite them while berating their views. This is not the behavior io civilized people and it violates standards of behavior that conservatives hold dear.

Thirdly, the responsible conservative doesn't conflate two very different people in very different circumstances for the purpose of justifying the mistreatment of one. Ms Hirsi has never supported violence and her supporters don't either. Rashid Khalidi is an apologist for movements that murder thousands every year. Disinviting Hirsi - a victim of Islamic terrorism is not the same thing as disinviting it's apologist.

We all have rights. The question is who has honor. In this case Brandeis has none.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/14/a-conservative-defense-of-brandeis-unive

A particularly "clownish" example of shoddy AGW science

Anthony Watts takes a couple seconds to identify the many ways the latest piece of AGW 'science' is shoddy beyond belief.  It really is clownish.  Like shooting fish in a barrel, really.  They really are fishing for the answer.

Well, Danielle Dixon and Philip Munday are at it again.  This PR claim from the Georgia Institute of Technology  Fish from acidic ocean waters less able to smell predators smells fishy to me. Just ask any salt-water aquariaist how hard it is to simulate the ocean in a fish tank and keep the fish from being stressed.

The failure of this claim is clear when you watch the video below, showing natural CO2 bubbles coming off the sea floor in Milne Bay, in Papua New Guinea. They use this as the “control” for the experiment, according to the caption, when they should be using a normal reef and doing the experiments in situ. Instead, they transport these fish back to the the mobile lab (on a boat), perform experiments, and assume there is no difference in the environment that may contribute to behavioral differences. They apparently don’t stop to consider that BOTH groups of fish in the mobile lab might be stressed the same way. Worse, there’s no mention of transporting fish caught at a non-bubbling reef back to the mobile lab so that they can perform the same test on them and compare differences if any. Instead they say:  “The results do show that what Dixson and colleagues found in the lab matches with what is seen in the field.”

They simply ignored the most obvious control group test and did no actual in situexperiment.

Sigh.  Here.

Those poor greenies - it looks like their God died again

The Politicos of the IPCC are realizing that a smokin' buttload of money can be made off of 'mitigation' efforts.  And since the 'prevention bandwagon' busted down in Copenhagen, they need a new source of jack to keep them in multinational conference-wear. And if that means they need to throw a few smelly, fly ridden enviro-wackos underneath the bus then squish away.  Pretty damn funny watching the loons shriek.  They really aren't well adapted to reality from an evolutionary perspective, are they?

Vox is just another lefty pox on a nation already riddled with it.

I thought Vox was supposed to be "different". If economically illiterate shilling for O'Care is different then I'm Lisa Minelli. The fruits of running a continental scale empire from a snotty little provincial burg is that you get these pathetic provincials like Ezra Klein who think they know something when they demonstrate so clearly that they don't. 

So let me explain this to you Ezzy:  when you sell services to people, the test of 'success' isn't implementation, no matter how shoddy or sales, no matter how frightening in their import.  The test is whether the service works in the long run.  This is doubly true of insurance which needs to stay (and I know this is a quaint term for you DC Gliteratis) solvent.  The fact that little Bammy finally hit the t-ball off the Tee after 17 swings is irrelevant except insofar as it demonstrates that you 'cats have absolutelyfucking no idea what you're doing.  

Ezra, it's as if  you raped a woman and it got her pregnant so you say you won when what you really need is for this woman to love you, be your wife and bear and care for your children and for you when you get old.  That's not a 'win' Ezzy, that's a successful implantation of both a fetus and eternal hatred.  It is astounding that you can't tell the difference between the two.  Maybe you should get a new career - PR maven for the left would suit you better.  Because there you don't have to think. Just bleat rhetoric.  

Gee, sort of like Vox.

"Climate Change" exists as an existential crisis because of the secular left's existential crisis

Let's face it, the grand narrative of the left which began with the French Revolution, got it's muse in Marx and has ere long trod on the rest of us is out of gas.  The 'revolution' is as busted as a Soviet Lada on the side of the road.  Socialism didn't save anyone - murdered a lot of people, exiled a bunch more, damn near sunk a bunch of rich countries before they turned away and was the Pied Piper that led the world's poor on a half century march into the slough of despond.

The 'we shall overcome, the people united can never be defeated' crap has become just that.  No salvation, no bright and sunny uplands of socialist joy.  Just rent seekers and ward heelers and incompetence and chaos.  So it is no coincidence that as the Great Left God died for liberal secularists a new more powerful God emerged.  Gaia or Mother Earth isn't simply a political persuasion seeking to reorder human relations, she is the bitch Goddess of life.  And anything Mummy wants Mummy gets because she says so.  So the little leftist lambikins that were abandoned by their Marxist Leninist and Socialist sheperds glommed on to an absolutely iron clad cert of a bet:  greenhouse gases causes the earth to warm up, people emit all the greenhouse gases, ergo people must be controlled.  And who better to manipulate the masses than those old hoofers of coercion:  Left/Liberals?

So the rent seekers and ward heelers got a new spring in their step and a song on their lips because once again it's "Do what I say or you'll destroy the world".  Which is what every religious nut wants:  an apocalypse that makes everyone do what you tell them.

Can't we get these leftist nutters a cheaper hobby?  Something like popsicle stick collecting or macrame? Macrame!  That's the ticket - lefties love macrame.

"Sluggish Cognitive Tempo" the new ADD?

6 million mostly boys are drugged each day largely because so called educators find it makes their jobs easier. But since classroom size has fallen by half while learning has not increased it is is difficult to explain precisely why we have to drug the kids too. Now some docs say we should drug another two millon.

It's easier than busting the public school monopoly

.

The Alphas find it's easier if everyone takes their Soma.

Progressivism gone mad: State Department pressuring other nations to ban texting while driving

Aside from the actually unproven assumption that texting while driving results in more deaths and injuries, the notion that what our failing foreign policy really needs is a big dose of nanny state bossery is just insane.  One of the problems with the progressive lefts seems to be an utter lack of proportion - it's all part of the great migration to progressive heaven so failing to implement any of the salvationist agenda is a mortal sin.

Putting ignorant, condescending crazies like this in power is...crazy.

Italy spends 98% of its tourism promotion budget on salaries

Not giving a damn is one of the core elements of Italian culture that makes it worth visiting.

It'd be a bitch to make a living there, though.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/italy-fact-of-the-day-7.html

Rancher wins range war against Feds? Fat chance.

Farmer Bundy has won this round only because the Federales were stupid, attacking at his strongest point.

It's tough for Federal agents to confiscate a cow.  But give the job to lawyers and debt collectors an Mr. Bundy will remove cattle one by one to cover his escalating forfeiture and legal expenses.

The Superstate already has most of the marbles and now they're coming for the rest.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/nevada-cattle-rancher-wins-range-war-federal-government/story?id=23302610

The 2009 Fort Hood murder of dozens by an Arab American Muslim screaming Allah akbar was classified as ' workplace violence'

Which according the Nation magazine resulted in its survivors being treated by the government as inconvenient evidence to be swept under a rug.

Say what you want about this President but he sure doesn't led concerns for the little people interfere with what he has to get done for his career.  You see, they're props not people.

Details at the link.

http://www.steynonline.com/6257/the-national-disgrace-of-fort-hood

The racist roots of zoning.

Research indicates that half of the difference between heavily segregated Boston and much more racially  integrated Houston is due to Boston ' extreme zoning rules.   But zoning got its start as a segregation tool. What used to directly keep blacks from whites is now used to keep the lower orders away from the affluent. Which somehow is considered progressive.

To call something "public" generally means shoddy, ruinous expensive and most likely insolvent.

Which is why we need so much more of it.  The tapeworms  need fresh hosts before these are completely drained.  Which since the tapeworms are now the size of giant pythons is getting trickier by the day. But hey! No one ever said social .'justice' was going to be pretty.

"85 percent of all public pension plans insolvent." 

Federal bureaucrat's idea of 'free speech'

I say put the bureauweenies inside the fence and make the rest of the nation a Free speech and bureaucrat - Free zone.  Prats.

Is Brandeis a Jewish university that hates Jews?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali the Somali human rights champion has fought Islamism a bit too hard and praised Israel a bit too much so the totalitarian campus left have forced its objectively limp dicked President to curl into a fetal ball and withdraw the offer of an honorary degree.

Of course most Jews are just secular leftists these days so they're supposed to hate Israel and those that fight for liberty.

http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/note-supporters-brandeis_786708.html

USAID Director Rajiv Shah is ticking off the Washington contractors who have been feeding at the USAID trough for years

Good for him.    Hattip marginalrevolution.com

Dr. Shah, who will face tough questions about his $20 billion budget in testimony to Congress on Tuesday, has set off a fierce debate over the way the agency operates and the usefulness of traditional foreign aid. Rather than pouring billions of public dollars into programs to fight poverty, the agency is increasingly using loan guarantees to get local banks to finance big projects, giving its money directly to foreign development groups and embracing projects like the “Cuban Twitter” account, which deliberately hid American involvement and shut down in failure in 2012.

To Dr. Shah, a former officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who believes that technology and private business should be marshalled to fight poverty and encourage democracy abroad, the changes are crucial to the future of the agency. The Cuban social media project, which started in 2008, nearly two years before he arrived, was similar to U.S.A.I.D. programs, he said, which help nonprofit groups monitor elections using text messages in Senegal and Kenya.

“It’s part of our mandate to support civil society groups with modern communications and access to the Internet,” Dr. Shah said in an interview.
And he's supported by a strange coalition: from Tony Blair to Jim Inhofe. Which aside from the retention of Bush SecDef Robert Gates, makes him the first Obama appointment that I can enthusiastically approve of. He's trying to change the aid game for the better.

But Dr. Shah has influential defenders.

“Rajiv is a visionary, but deeply practical,” said Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and the founder of the Africa Governance Initiative, a foundation that works with African governments. “He realizes that the purpose of aid is for long-term development, not short-term projects that you can point to as successes.”

Senator James M. Inhofe, a conservative Oklahoma Republican who has traveled with Dr. Shah to Ethiopia, is another supporter. “I’m a huge fan of Rajiv Shah,” Mr. Inhofe said. “I’m not a fan of U.S.A.I.D., which has all these contractors waiting around at the trough. I love this guy because he is willing to take on these contractors. ”

Dr. Shah, a Detroit native and the son of Indian immigrants — his father was an engineer at Ford — held a number of jobs at the powerful Gates Foundation, including director of agricultural programs and director of financial services for the poor. He has a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and served only briefly in government, as an undersecretary at the Agriculture Department, before moving to U.S.A.I.D. Colleagues think that he will run for Congress someday and that his criticism of big contractors, pleasing to Democrats as well as Republicans, is at the very least politically shrewd.

Sports fields are surprisingly tuned to the sport's underlying physics

This chart actually surprises me.  I simply assumed that sports rules and playing fields were arbitrary anachronisms.  But it turns out that there is a strong correlation between field size and physics.  The two sports where there isn't:  jai alai and squash are designed around the smallness of the court relative to physics so they really are the exceptions that prove the rule.  Hattip Marginalrevolution.com

Like a lot of what passes for liberalism these days the battle against the 'gender gap' is a war against human nature in the service of the cynical quest for power

Megan McCardle does a good 'feminist' job of dismantling the Obami profoundly dishonest 77 cent argument. But IMHO she abuses the word 'sexism' to explain the small residual that remains when one adjusts wages for all known factors.

Isn't it enough that women make almost as much as men, live longer, have effective ownership of their children unless they don't want to and have many protections - under law and culture that men don't?

The question isn't why women are so oppressed it's why some women are so greedy. McCardle at the link.

NYT: Men living longer. Women and minorities hardest hit.

What do you call a parody of a parody? Double parody? Isn't that unconstitutional? Reading the Times is a window into a form of elite dementia. Over imbibing causes cirrhosis of the brain. Friends don't let friends read the Times too much.

The rapidly decaying travesty that is the Times at the link.

http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2011/08/men-living-longer-women-and-minorities.html?m=1

Ghetto bitcoin?

Tide laundry detergent as an alternative currency.   In Appalachia they use cases of coke.

Why wouldn't they use something with a higher value to weight ratio? Is it the high level of recognition? Is All a substitute?

More money laundering or should I say laundry money at the link.

://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/markets-in-everything-tide-laundry-soap-as-street-currency/comment-page-1/#comment-412260

How much more should men be compensated for their 12 X death and dismemberment

Men do hard dangerous things that women choose not to do.  How much more should they be paid for their higher chance of death and dismemberment?  To judge from the comments of the Pelosiraptor of the Hillary! Their answer is none.  Of course P & H had to compensate their husbands handsomely for the risks inherent to marrying them.  

"Nobody seems that interested in equal occupational fatalities, equal prison time, equal reproductive rights, or equal life or car insurance rates."

Well those are problems that affect men.  And according to feminist doctrine, men are the 'other' - the oppressor - and virtually all occupational fatalities, disproportionate prison time for the same crimes, minimal reproductive rights and separate but unequal insurance rates are just the price men pay to be men, the bastards.  "Now lets go back to talking about how people are mean to me."

Nobody seems that interested in equal occupational fatalities, equal prison time, equal reproductive rights, or equal life or car insurance rates.

Hattip instapundit.com

It's just like a woman to tell the truth.

And it's just like a Democrat to punish her for her thoughtcrime.  House Democratic women take on White House economist who said wage gap isn’t caused by discrimination.  The 'women make 77 cents for every dollar men makes' lie just won't work anymore.  And when you can no longer blame the 'other' for your situation then you, well....see the post directly below this one.

Hattip Instapundit.com

"There is no way out of this for Democrats. Once you believe that the pie is fixed and has to be divvied up by the state, eventually you’ll have to turn on one another."

California: the Balkans of the Democratic party?  When one has run out of 'the other's' money and desires remain limitless, the next step is consuming the weaker members of your coalition.  Steve Hayward:

But the better evidence of how the Democratic Party could come to blows comes from California, which right now rivals China for one-party control.  Never mind the three Democratic state senators all heading for the hoosegow for corruption: the bigger story is how Democratic ethnic factions are viciously turning on one another:

Weeks after some Asian-American lawmakers killed a measure to restore affirmative action in California’s public colleges by withdrawing their support, backlash from Democrats who supported the effort is surfacing in the Capitol and on the campaign trail.

Repercussions of the Legislature’s decision last month to shelve Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 appear to be pitting some African American and Latino Democrats against their Asian American colleagues. Asian American Democrats were the subject of an intense advocacy campaign by opponents of affirmative action, and their decision not to support the measure caused it to fail last month.

Today, several members of the Legislature’s black and Latino caucuses withheld their votes on a non-controversial bill, killing the measure by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi. Last week, six black and Latino Democrats sent Sen. Ted Lieu a letter withdrawing their endorsement in his race for Congress. Muratsuchi and Lieu are both Asian Americans and Democrats from Torrance.

There is no way out of this for Democrats.  Once you believe that the pie is fixed and has to be divvied up by the state, eventually you’ll have to turn on one another.

We are one Democrat away from a sweeping truncation of freedom of speech

When it comes to free speech the progressive side of our politics is going all Marcusian after Herbert Marcuse, the famous post-modern political theorist who argued that free speech was not an end but a means to the end of a fairer more 'socially just' society. And of course they know acceptable "free" speech when they see who it comes from.  Four of nine Supremes agree - Steve Breyer - who in 2006 wrote a serious book on the topic and his 'Be nice or Mummy will smack harem' of Ginsberg, Sotomayor and Kagan. One more 'social justice' true believer on the court and free speech no longer reigns but instead becomes a contingent tool in support of whatever a 'progressive' court majority consider to be useful to achieving 'progressive' ends. ACLU old timers are appalled - the pathetic neanderthals.  As Josh Blackman explains:

In my post describing the odd turn of the left from speech viewed in terms of liberty, towards speech viewed in terms of equality, what I have dubbed “collective liberty,” I noted that “I imagine many in the ACLU from the Floyd Abrams generation can’t stomach this position.”

Now Floyd Abrams has weighed in. And I was right.

What seems to me most surprising and disturbing about the ruling, though, is not to be found in the predictably much assaulted (and I believe sound) majority opinion but in the dissent.  For there, for the first time, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan join with Justice Stephen Breyer’s minimization of long-recognized  and well-established First Amendment interests by maintaining that, after all, the side seeking to overcome those interests had at least as strong a First Amendment argument on its side.

I similarly noted this bizarre reversal of burdens, which puts strict scrutiny on its head:

 What determines if speech is protected is whether it “preserve[s] a democratic order” for the “collective” good.  That is a very troubling vision of free expression. There is a lot of speech that may serve individualistic ends, and under strict scrutiny, it is the government’s burden to show why a compelling interest exists to limit that speech. It is not the individual’s burden to show that his expression is made in pursuance of some nebulously defined common good. Whether or not you agree with the majority’s (narrow) definition of corruption, Breyer’s discussion of free speech on pages 5-6 is troubling.

Abrams also surveys Active Liberty, which I noted in my previous post articulates a collective, rather than individual notion of free speech.

In his book Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution (2006), Justice Breyer offered an overview of the First Amendment which posited that its primary purpose was not to protect speech from government control or limitation but “to encourage the exchange of information and ideas necessary for citizens themselves to shape that ‘public opinion which is the final source of government in a democratic state.’”  A statute limiting independent spending on political speech is thus defensible against a First Amendment challenge and indeed serves First Amendment interests since it “facilitate[s] a conversation among ordinary citizens that will encourage their informed participation.”   In his dissenting opinion in McCutcheon, Breyer takes that a step further, concluding that “the First Amendment advances not only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters.”  (emphasis in original).  The First Amendment, he maintains, must be understood as promoting “a government where the laws reflect the very thoughts, views, ideas and sentiments, the expression of which the First Amendment protects.”

Abrams finds these positions, joined by all 4 liberals on the court, “disquieting.”

These statements are not totally at odds with the First Amendment. But they are deeply disquieting.  It is true that by restricting the ability of the government to control, let alone limit, speech, the First Amendment surely assists in preserving “democratic order.”  But giving the government, in the name of advancing democracy, significant power to limit the amount of speech about who to vote for risks much that the First Amendment was adopted to protect.  And what, after all, does Justice Breyer mean by “collective speech?” In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts persuasively objects to relying on the “generalized conception of the public good” set forth in the Breyer dissent, taking issue with the very notion of “collective speech” as being contrary to “the whole point of the First Amendment” of not permitting the will of the majority to carry the day by preventing speech of which it disapproved.

And this helpful article from The Nation traces some of the origins of this “anti-liberal” view of speech.

Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression. “[I]t is possible to define the direction in which prevailing institutions, policies, opinions would have to be changed in order to improve the chance of a peace which is not identical with cold war and a little hot war, and a satisfaction of needs which does not feed on poverty, oppression, and exploitation,” he wrote. “Consequently, it is also possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance, and those which would do the opposite. Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.”

And more from Joel Gora, a long-time member of the ACLU and defender of free speech:

Secondly, the current Court clearly continues to put the burden of proof on government to justify restrictions on the funding of campaign and electoral speech, which is clearly as it should be under the First Amendment. To this Court, the benefit of the doubt clearly goes to the speaker, not the censor, in campaign finance cases and across the First Amendment spectrum.

Marcuse called his concept "Repressive Tolerance" which is simply an updating of the old 'war is peace, hate is love and we've ways been at war with East Asia' language that Orwell warned us about.  So long as proggos think that those 'truths' will yield a 'socially just' outcome, that is.  And social justice is nothing more than a morally empty weapon for me to coerce what I want out of you.  Don't think so?  Just ask Brendan Eich former CEO and co-founder of Mozilla, or the former Development Director of the Sacramento Musical Theater company who was fired for contributing money to the wrong cause, or the New Mexico bakers or Colorado photographers who are being prosecuted for declining to participate in the celebration of an event they disagree with.  Each of them has gotten their 'socially just' desserts.  Just don't call it plain or true justice - it's 'justice' only for those who have the power to impose it. 

And an America where the progressives have finished their 'long march' through the institutions and have seated the God of post-modernism on His throne, the powerful get to decide what us 'right' and 'true' and who can punish those who by their words or actions say otherwise.  And that America is no longer a constitutional republic.  Just another grubby little tyranny that dresses up its crimes as 'social justice' rather than 'the will of the people'.

And saying that isn't banned.  Yet.

More at the link.

The federal state giveth and taketh away - the case of Intrade

The Commodity and Futures Trading Commission - one of an octet of irrational and destructive Federal financial Quangos recently 'banned' Intrade, the Ireland based global prediction marketplace, leading to its rapid closure.  How a prediction marketplace that was widely recognized as a useful source of information on consensus crowd sourced expectations of future events came to be regulated by the CFTC is an example of how 'sensible' regulations can be made lunatic when the 'right' people get control of the immense and increasingly opaque Federal apparatus.

Which makes it doubly ironic that another part of the Federales are funding a massive study of mass prediction to 'prove' what Intrade had already proven for free.  Dumber and dumberer is no way to go through history, Uncle Sam. Details from AEI at the link.

The power of ideology to overcome reality - Feminism as know nothing-ism

The Know-Nothings were a notorious anti-immigrant political party in the United States during the period of mass Irish immigration before the Civil War.  Their name came from their response when questioned about crimes against immigrants that they "Knew Nothing" when in fact they did.  And of course they were full of information if it was a crime that could be laid at the feet of immigrants.

Today's mainstream feminist movement is a twenty first century "Know Nothing" party.  Like its namesake, it is quick to call foul on any incident or condition that disfavors women.  Women earn fewer STEM degrees, are 'underrepresented' in math and engineering faculties, earn '72 cents for every dollar men earn' and so on.  Yet they apparently "Know Nothing" about the massive, disproportionate and growing disadvantages facing men and boys relative to women.  Here's an abstract from a recent legal paper submitted* (courageously IMHO) to a legal conference dedicated to eradicating discrimination against women.

Implicit in the materials for this conference is the assumption that any gap that exists between men and women in the workplace (at least if the gap seems to disfavor women) should be eliminated. The question is asked, “how can this gap be explained and rectified?,” implying that “rectification” should follow irrespective of how the gap is explained. 

There are many statistical disparities between the sexes in our world, but only some become the subject of widespread concern. Ones that are perceived as favoring men are labeled “gaps,” while those that favor women are simply facts. Outside the workplace, men are arguably disadvantaged in a variety of arenas, whether in terms of health and longevity, crime and violence, domestic relations, or education. In the workplace, men are far more likely than women to be killed and to work long hours. None of these disparities is generally viewed as a “gap” deserving of intervention, however. Men earn a disproportionate number of Ph.Ds in some fields, while women earn a disproportionate number in others. Only the former set of disparities, however, is typically viewed as a “gap.”

Many of the statistical disparities between the sexes in the workplace are a consequence of average sex differences in the choices that men and women make about education, the workplace, and the family. Many of these choices are products, in part, of biologically influenced sex differences in talents, temperament, and tastes (all of which appear to be influenced by testosterone), and they all involve trade-offs.

The Know Nothings were never more than a fringe group, justly held in contempt as the ignoramuses that they claimed to be.  Modern Feminists by contrast hold a privileged position in today's progressive power elite, their wild and hypocritical inconsistencies never broached in polite progressive company.  Imagine just how cruel they will be if they get one of their own in the White House.

"Tin harpies and Hillary's coming, we're finally on our own" 

"Men 'dead' in O-hi-o?"

*I don't think Mr. Browne was actually allowed to present it, given that it would have resulted in his being lynched to the ecstatic shrieks of the mob.

Financial regulators regulate what they can see, not what drives fundamental risk

The result is a whole bunch of picayune regulations and interventions in the market that reduce efficiency, serve to obscure the real issues, and radically increase both complexity and unpredictability.  And because rules are made to be transcended, the more rules, the more opportunities for the well connected to rent seek at the expense of the ultimate consumers. Indeed the byzantine regulatory framework that we have with 8 different major regulators makes it even worse than that because it diffuses responsibility and leads to a cacaphony of confusing and conflicting messages.

It's hard to think of a system less capable of managing real systemic risk.  Because real systemic risk is really not visible to regulators because the risk only becomes evident when a crisis comes.  That is of course, the reason why bank collapses are called 'collapses' - no one in the market or regulatory apparat is expecting them until one day 'boom' the sucker goes down.  To think that regulators can figure out how to predict failure so that they can a priori ban or limit 'unsafe' practices presumes that the regulators understand the financial markets better than the full time players do and understand the institutions they regulate better than their managements do.

The best regulation is passive - banks will behave differently if they know they won't be rescued.  Or if they know that if the bank is rescued all of the Banks equity, preferred and deferred bonus pool owners will be liquidated with clawbacks for top management based upon spurious profits.  That type of regulation better aligns the real risks with the rewards - you behave in a foolish manner and you personally will suffer mightily.   But that is simple and doesn't meet with the modern 'progressive' bias for 'doing something, anything' to 'fix' the problem.  It also would severely limit the  opportunities for rent seeking, manipulation and power politics.  So we have 8 irrational and expensive regulatory agencies blundering around the body politic busily achieving nothing, lulling the people into an utterly unjustified sense of security.

So since they really can't achieve what they are tasked with doing they either do rather anodyne things like focus on risk capital 'adequacy' with adequacy not defined by what what will be 'adequate' for the next crisis because nobody has a freaking clue what that will be.  They also screw with functioning markets at the behest of rent seekers and activists with axes to grind.  High frequency trading is the latest example:  It is a 'consumer' activist bugbear and has cramped the trading anonymity of big institutional investors.  So the activists and rent seekers got together in Canada to get it effectively banned, leading to higher spreads for small traders.  Here's the details from Marginal Revolution:

These advantages were demonstrated in a recent natural experiment set off by Canada’s stock market regulators. In April 2012 they limited the activity of high-frequency traders by increasing the fees on market messages sent by all broker-dealers, such as trades, order submissions and cancellations. This affected high-frequency traders the most, since they issue many more messages than other traders.

The effect, as measured by a group of Canadian academics, was swift and startling. The number of messages sent to the Toronto Stock Exchange dropped by 30 percent, and the bid-ask spread rose by 9 percent, an indicator of lower liquidity and higher transaction costs.

But the effects were not evenly distributed among investors. Retail investors, who tend to place more limit orders — i.e., orders to buy or sell stocks at fixed prices — experienced lower intraday returns. Institutional investors, who placed more market orders, buying and selling at whatever the market price happened to be, did better. In other words, the less high-frequency trading, the worse the small investors did.

…In a paper published last year, Terry Hendershott of Berkeley, Jonathan Brogaard of the University of Washington and Ryan Riordan of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology concluded that, “Over all, HFTs facilitate price efficiency by trading in the direction of permanent price changes and in the opposite direction of transitory price errors, both on average and on the highest volatility days.”

The pdf of the paper is here. Here is the conclusion of a Charles M. Jones survey paper on HFT (pdf):
Based on the vast majority of the empirical work to date, HFT and automated, competing markets improve market liquidity, reduce trading costs, and make stock prices more efficient. Better liquidity lowers the cost of equity capital for firms, which is an important positive for the real economy. Minor regulatory tweaks may be in order, but those formulating policy should be especially careful not to reverse the liquidity improvements of thelast twenty years.

And now the usually level headed Michael Lewis of "Liars Poker" fame is evidently on a crusade against HFT, despite the hard evidence that it makes markets more efficient and therefore is good for consumers.  Here's a good review of his new 'expose'.  Indeed, it's hard to see how HFT can be bad when it has driven so much cost from the system.  The average cost of a trade in both transactions costs and spreads are lower since HFT's advent and when you take it away, they go back up.  This reminds me of the Feds accusing Rockerfeller's Standard Oil of monopolistic practices because the cost of refined products had fallen 90%.

Once again, regulators regulate what they can see, understand and benefit professionally from, not where the risk comes from - because disaster comes from what no one can see and and no one can understand........until it happens.

All in all another example of progressive 'logic' in action at our immensely wasteful and futile Federal Stupor State.

The hard left is back on campus at Dartmouth and once again an impeccably liberal administration has no idea how to cope with them

The leftist kiddies occupy the administration building, throw tantrum, beat rattle against their high chair tray and ask for truly ludicrous and totalitarian changes. How novel.  No one's ever thought to do that before.  Meet the new loons, same as the old loons.

The good news is that this type of extremist tantrum drives normal people rightwards.

"Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own. Tantrum in Ha-no-ver."

"How many more?"

Details at the link.

Because they're not interested in justice just winning

JUSTICE: DOJ Flips Out That Evidence Gathered Via FISA Orders Might Be Made Available To Defendants.

The Federal thugocracy is first and foremost a vehicle to advance the careers of Federal thugs. 

I would prefer that attractive women in my age range not use OKCupid

Because they're thuggish, intolerant prats and I won't use their fascist service.  Intolerance of our freedom of conscience -the first and most important freedom - must be severely punished any time it's vile, hate filled head slimes above ground.

OKCupid led the charge to fire Mozilla's President for thoughtcrime.  No, it's not OK you Orwellian bastards.

Andrew Sullivan worries that LGBTQ movement is becoming like religious right

Sorry Andy, but for the LGBTQ movement to be like the religious right it would need to become far more tolerant of difference in belief ( it included Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Pentacostals and Evangelicals) and far less Leninist in its cruel retribution for deviation.

The LGBTQ is just the sharp, vicious end of the left fascist spear.  And as a failed consrevative, Andy, you know that.

How does it feel to be on the wrong side? More at the link.  If you dare risk your job.

Boycott Mozilla: Intolerant LGBTQ thugs and their bootlicks need to be schooled on what a tolerant society looks like

Brendan Eich just happens to be someone that disagrees with of the tenets of LGBTQ Leninism, therefore he must be destroyed.  The pathetic careerist coward piece of furniture (Chair) that runs Mozilla duly shat her dainties and fired him while squealing about her commitment:

In a blog post Thursday, Mozilla's executive chairwoman, Mitchell Baker, apologized for Mr. Eich's appointment, writing, "We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. . . . But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community."

May she sit in her shit forever, the pathetic lying coward.

We need to become completely intolerant of people and institutions that do not have the moral decency or courage to stand resolutely for freedom of conscience.  Which, of course is the first freedom.  These Northern California Nazis can not win.  Now if you're LGBTQ and have respect for our constitution and for the rights of people to disagree with you on issues important to you then I'm happy to work with you.

But the Mozilla weasels don't.  I am uninstalling what is a good piece of software.  Produced by nauseating, bigoted cowards.  Never again.  

Hattip Best of the Web

In its assault on heterodox beliefs the modern university would make fascists proud

Steven Hayward's experience with 'freedom of conscience at U Colorado.  The student 'leaders' there will make great SS flunkies because they clearly rely on someone else to think for them.

More dumbassery at the link.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/scenes-from-the-culture-war-front-line.php

University administration thugs pay 101,000 taxpayers dollars for their casual thuggery

For the life of me I cannot reconcile the world "liberal" with anything (sanctioned by the powers that be) that goes on at a major college campus today. Short of the state penitentiary they are perhaps the most illiberal places in America.

That's because they are so progressive. Story at the link.

James Lovelock, the Gaia guru reverses his 20 year view on Climate Change: "The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing"

Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’. Lovelock, on BBC TV, slams the global warming claims including those of of the United Nations climate panel. 'They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses.'

Lovelock was once one of the leading voices of climate alarm. See: 2006 Climate Shocker: Lovelock Predicted Global Warming Doom: 'Billions of us will die; few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in Arctic'

Fast Forward to April 2012: ‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock reverses himself: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change & so was Gore! ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago’


"The times they are a chaaaannnnging!"

Finally, the Hun of Wall Street does something constructive with his money

SOROS SPENDS $80 MILLION TO LEGALIZE POT IN USA... Hattip Drudge.com

Government are in the business of creating criminals

Don't know what revenge porn is but I can guess that it's not my bag, baby. But I assume it's done by consenting adults and watched by the same.  So now we have some vicious ferret of a legislator that wants to fuck up people who do things that she doesn't like.

Which is why the state needs to be severely constrained in advance.  Because when handed power we are all tempted to remake others in our image.

Pride goeth before a fall. More at the link.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140330/08413326735/federal-revenge-porn-bill-will-look-to-criminalize-websites.shtml

Lord save us from useless academic biomedical research

SUNSHINE, ON MY SHOULDER, MAKES ME SLIMMER: People exposed to earlier sunlight are leaner than those who get afternoon light. “The influence of morning light exposure on body weight was independent of an individual’s physical activity level, caloric intake, sleep timing, age or season. It accounted for about 20 percent of a person’s BMI.”

This is a good example of the correlation is causation fallacy.  In all likelihood lower BMI and getting up early are correlated with a third unmeasured factor like metabolism.  Without controlling for genetic inheritance these kinds of studies don't really provide much insight. And there are hundreds of variables so when you throw one set against another, you're bound to correlate somewhere. Which just confuses the hoi polloi - they spin from one thing to another:  lowfat! high protein! exercise a lot! don't exercise too much!  no booze! regular booze! get up early! get enough sleep!  And there's always someone with an axe to grind or a product to sell to pitch the latest correlation.

The real problem is that the government provides academics with so much money to do this stuff.  No capitalist would fund such an obviously non-actionable study.  This type of dreck is only valued in the academic world because they need to make their publishing quota.  The NIH's incentives are all screwed up.  It encourages stupid research like this, it promotes lowest common denominator 'consensus' research over higher risk, higher return paths and it is immune to change from the outside because it gets its money from the Fed magic money machine.

One more way the Feds are screwing us on behalf of rent seekers.

On jelly donuts, Jim Crow and invidious comparisons. Is it invidious if the comparison is true?

I wrote a rather flavorful post on "Blue" cities entitled: Jelly Donut Progress - Why are trendy places so poor and unequal? And as is my wont, I finished the post with a flourish:

But who would have guessed that Smart Growth spells Jim Crow? Only worse because say what you will about post-bellum southern racism, by and large the Jim Crow racists weren't screwing their own children.

The point being that the forces driving people to flee our 'great', 'progressive' and 'hip' blue metropolises today are more similar to those that drove the poor whites and blacks that fled the post-bellum south than we'd like to believe. My friend and best port side critic called me on it, saying:

  "I like the first 2 phases best (referring to my tamer, more boring rhetoric) , and think articles like this could be persuasive… until you get to the over-the-top Jim Crow comparison stuff."  

Ok, so he hates the hot stuff.  That being said, he has a point that must be addressed.  How could I possible compare the migrations driven by the brutally stupid, hate filled Southern States at the peak of their Jim Crow tyranny to the migration of people from some of the leading cities of the 21st century, cities known for their sophistication, compassion and progressivism? On one hand you have the huddled masses fleeing Uncle Tom's cabin across the ice while the slave hunters' dogs bay in the background (so to speak) while on the other hand you have really cool places where lots of the really cool people live and where, by the way, I love to visit.  There can't be any comparison between the rates of migration from the south and these cities.  It must have been orders of magnitude greater than from the large metropolitan areas of the United States.

So I investigated the migration literature and found Professor of History James N. Gregory of the University of Washington who is an acclaimed expert on southern migration who wrote a definitive book on the subject.  I was able to get excerpts from this work that gave me estimates for the rate of out migration from the South to the rest of the nation in the 1900s, the teens and the 1940s. I was also able to retrieve the good professor's estimates of the racial breakdown of that out-migration which contrary to popular belief was largely white.  Indeed, when I began analyzing the decadal census results by race, I noticed that the black populations in these states, while shrinking relative to the white (blacks were 33% of their populations in 1900, by 1950 they were down to 22%) had grown in absolute terms by 27% by 1950.  This surprised me because like many people who took 'history' in the 70s I conceived of Jim Crow as sort of a southern fried holocaust without the killing or camps and expected the out-migration to approximate that of German Jews roughly 60% of whom fled Germany between Hitler's accession to power in 1933 and 1939 when the war started.

Actually, it turns out that the emigration from Southern States in 1901-1910, 1911-1920, and 1941-1950 were all lower per thousand residents than the current twenty first century emigrations from our best, most fashionable blue metropolises.  Here's how it breaks down:

Southern Emigration Estimates**:
1901-1910:  6.16 people per thousand per year
1911-1920:  6.84
1941-1950: 10.40  (inflated by wartime migrations)
Overall annual emigration per thousand in the three periods:  7.5

Emigration rates for major US metropolitan areas 2000-2008***:
Los Angeles-Long Beach MSA: 12.2 people per thousand per year*
New York - New Jersey MSA: 12.0
San Francisco - Oakland MSA: 10.5
Detroit, Michigan MSA: 9.1
Cleveland, Ohio MSA:  7.5
Boston, Massachusetts MSA: 7.1
Chicago, Illinois MSA: 6.8

"Well" - my progressive interlocutor responds "that's the overall migration rate, I bet you the African American rate was way, way higher".  Nope.  As my impeccably leftist credentialed Vice President of the Labor and Working Class History Association wrote (a bolshier sounding group there can not be) the rates of migration were rather similar:

Estimated rate of African American emigration from the south**:
1901-1910:  6.1 people per thousand per year
1911-1920:  7.9
1941-1950:  11.5  (wartime migration)
Overall migration in the three periods:  8.5.

So what does this all mean?  First of all I do not believe that those fleeing LA, New York or Boston today feel persecution the way that black southerners did.  But I don't think the primary driver of black emigration was racial oppression.  The scale of black emigration from the south - similar to that of their white neighbors - is consistent with a people seeking better economic opportunities, not a people being driven out like Germany's Jews were - Professor Gregory says that a significant proportion of blacks emigres actually returned to their southern homes.  This isn't to minimize the moral crimes of that time and place but to put them into context:  there was no place in America in those days where blacks were really welcome - there were places - all in the North or West that offered higher wages, more opportunities and better public services for those enterprising enough to seize them. And millions of black and white southerners derided by their hosts as "Niggers", "Hillbillies" and "Okies" made the jump.

But why weren't there opportunities in the south for blacks and whites back then?  The standard explanation is that the South's enforced racist regime subordinated the rights of both blacks and whites to trade and live as they saw fit to a state diktat which impaired property rights as well as personal rights. This lack of secure property rights led investors to shun the south until the Federal government (or in some cases the state governments) acting to ensure equal protection under the law gave them the confidence to invest. The same phenomenon is occurring today in big progressive cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco.  These cities have seen major investments that they used to get as a matter of course pass them by for places that offer.....more secure property rights and and more personal economic freedom.  The progressive governance model is one that takes massive value from private property without compensation, either in terms of land use restrictions, massive delays, regulations or taxes and mandates which reduce returns to investors and drives up the cost of living leading millions of mostly younger residents to flee to where the jobs have fled and the cost of living is reasonable.

It's interesting that while the underlying drivers and rates of emigration are similar in both eras, the 'official' explanation and positioning of what happened is so different.  The south is rightly derided for its racist, authoritarian and anti-liberty and property policies which stunted investment and drove millions to seek a better life elsewhere.  The big northern cities don't get beaten up for essentially reprising the South's failings.  For example, there weren't hundreds if not thousands of 'puff pieces' in the establishment press and scholarly journals lauding Jim Crow and the South's economic stagnation the way that there are today praising the progressive cities and smart growth and their economic and social policies (while often avoiding talking about the underlying economic stagnation).

I also don't recall any history that has the leading lights of Richmond or New Orleans beaming and preening about how 'progressive' their race and economic policies were. Indeed they knew the 'respectable' world disapproved - they called it their 'peculiar' institution when it was slavery and then called it 'separate but equal' later - neither indicates pride.  On the other hand everybody in the big blue city establishment (Mayor Bloomberg "New York is a luxury good") is proud and certain of the rightness of their policies even as real standards of living sink and emigration goes through the roof.  Part of this lack of self awareness is attributable to the status of the big blue cities as cornerstones of the establishment and centers for the intelligentsia and media.  They make so much noise, they can't hear anything but themselves so they miss the rot going on all around them.  Helping them to avoid reality is  the fact that big blue cities are able to replace their American emigres with foreign immigrants - NYC might look like a lousy deal to a Missourian like me but to a Gujarati, NYC is heaven.  At least until he gets established and starts looking around.

So the shorthand of 'Jim Crow' which includes both racist policies and their impairment of property rights and liberties resulting in low investment, explains why southerners of both races emigrated in such large numbers.  And the emigration from blue cities is remarkably similar to 'Jim Crow' without the hostility towards a minority (although it is increasingly being substituted for an anti-white focus in these cities).  But I guess you can't really conflate 'smart growth' and the blue policy mix with Jim Crow.  It's more Pinch Sulzberger.  Yeah, that's the ticket: the Great Migration from the Pinch Sulzberger Northern and Western Cities.

The only question is how many of our erstwhile great metropolises will see past the cant and pull off the environmentally responsible bicycle lane before they Detroit themselves.  It should be interesting.

*LA's out-migration rates may be inflated because the Inland Empire which abuts the LA MSA has immigration of 16.1 per thousand or the equivalent on an LA MSA scale of 5.4 per thousand which would net out the two areas at emigration of 7.0 per thousand.  But Phoenix has even more immigration - most of it coming from Southern California so the truth is probably somewhere between 12.4 and 7.0.

**My estimates based upon the commentary in his book.  I calculated the rates of southern migration based upon his decadal totals against the US Censuses for 1900, 10, 20, 40 and 50.  I took the midpoint average of the two censuses to calculate the population denominator for any decade.  You could make different assumptions and get slightly different numbers but it wouldn't change the overall conclusions.  The fact is that it is hard to get definitive emigration numbers anytime from anywhere - people register when they cross into a new country, not when they move to a new town.

***Source:  Praxis Consulting Group, Professor Joel Kotkin, Newgeography.com

"The notion that climate change poses an existential threat is laughable" - Richard Tol, AGW economics expert

According to the "authoritative" IPCC climate change over the next century won't even cost the global economy half of one year's economic growth.

Professor Richard Tol, AGW
economics expert and aging hipster.

"Save me br'er Environmentalist,  but whatever you do don't throw me in that there AGW briar patch!"

More at the link.

The Federal Stupor State is increasingly useless when it's not actively destructive.

They can't even sit on their ass and let other people produce oil for them.  Utterly useless, wildly destructive and insanely expensive.  Explain to me again why it's so great to be subject to the US government? Because I got nothing.

Break it up, break it all up.

Hattip Carpe Diem

The torment of the damned

Roger Simon notices that liberals have gotten very quiet. Which is not the prolix persuasion's normal state. It turns out that the man they placed such hopes in is turning out to be one of the worst, most inept Presidents of all time.  From civil liberties to economics to foreign and social policy their hero has feet of clay and he's tracking them all over the body politic. From time to time politicians fail us all but because the left looks upon politics, policy and the state as a substitute for religious devotion, when their leaders fail it's as if their God has died.  It is supremely disorienting , even terrifying to lose your center.

I predicted that my leftward friends would experience such torment before BHO was gone but even I didn't think it would be this bad.  And I take no pleasure in my friends' consternation for their despair is the nation's.  When a President fails he fails all of us.  Here's to better focus and fortune for BHO from this point on. And for better candidates in 2016.

Simon's comments at the link.

Getting the one percent wrong

The Atlantic has finally figured out the obvious about income inequality statistics:  the people at any income percentile change from year to year and this churning is particularly true at the very top.  People make a bunch of money one year and lose money the next. they get fired and get an equity payout, they sell their business and take a gain.  The truth is that the one percent is actually composed of many percents.  It's funny that this is just occurring to the bien pensants.  It's not because they're stupid, rather I believe it's because that detail isn't useful ideologically - it lowers the impact and force of the 'income unfairness' argument that is all the range among port siders.

Here's the article - if you're like me you won't learn anything except that what we know is heavily determined by what we believe, not the other way round.  Which makes it hard to get anything done.

Finance wants the truth? Finance can't handle the truth.

Companies are just looking for a  few good CPAs.  Hat tip Eric Nelson

Oh, the battle I face in Finance

Sales: “You want answers?”
Finance: “I think we are entitled to them!”
Sales: “You want answers?!”
Finance: “I want the truth!”
Sales: “You can’t handle the truth!!!”
Sales (continuing): “Son, we live in a world that requires revenue. And that revenue must be brought in by people with elite skills. Who’s going to find it? You? You, Mr. Operations? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.
You scoff at sales division and you curse our lucrative incentives. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: that while the cost of business results are excessive, it drives in revenue.
And my very existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, drives REVENUE! You don’t want to know the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at staff meetings … you want me on that call. You NEED me on that call!
We use words like comps, migration, discounts, flex licensing, global purchase agreements, butt-fusion. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent negotiating something. You use them as a punch line!
I have neither the time nor inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the very blanket of revenue I provide and then question the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said “thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a phone and make some sales calls. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!”
Finance: “Did you expense the lap dances?”
Sales: “I did the job I was hired to do.”
Finance: “Did you expense the lap dances!?”
Sales: “You’re goddamn right I did!”