Everyone gets death threats online

What exactly is newsworthy about Anita Sarkeesian receiving death threats on Twitter? Is it that she chose to move out of her home over them, even if that seemed to be an unreasonable response?

Death threats are a cowardly, thuggish tactic employed by crude imbeciles incapable of drafting an intelligent response. They are also, sadly, common online.

So when you see news articles about someone receiving death threats online, its often a good indicator that the writers want you to be more sympathetic to the threat victim or that the threat was made by a member of a group the writer already hates.

Like this one about her, or this one here.

That's not to say that it's never justified to write about someone getting death threats, but there has to be something unusual about it, like this one about death threats sent to the girlfriend of a then-missing airplane passenger, or this one because a conference was almost canceled over the threats.

But to suggest death threats are rare or novel is not true. Death threats have been sent to a Republican governor for surviving a recall election, Rush Limbaugh for not having his show canceled, a video game app developer for taking his product off the market, a radio DJ for criticizing a pop star, a comic book writer for his Spider-Man plot decisions, a video game designer for tweaking multiplayer online game rules or a cartoonist for making a political cartoon.

In short, who hasn't received online death threats?

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Rick Perry used, not misused, power

I was just in the car and heard a 30 second NPR national story about Rick Perry's indictment for abuse of power, and it left out a crucial detail that seems to be left out a lot in coverage of this story.

Here is a good summary from the Associated Press:

After Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested for drunken driving in April 2013, Perry threatened to veto $7.5 million in funding for the state's ethics watchdog unit in her office unless she resigned. Lehmberg is an elected Democrat and Republicans have long accused her public corruption prosecutors of targeting conservatives.

The shallow coverage has simply said that Perry vetoed funding to force a public official from office, and then moves on to other details of the case. Leaving the drunk driving out of it changes the whole ball game. It makes Perry's actions sound reasonable, although with Lehmberg's reputation for targeting conservatives it's likely his motivations are less pure.

I'm not saying this crucial detail is being left out on purpose to tilt the coverage or singling out NPR. NPR is far from the only news source to leave out that detail, and other NPR stories have included it. With our old friend Hanlon's Razor it's fair to chalk this up to incompetence and not malice, but it does mean members of the public are getting the wrong idea about the subject.

Even serial conservative-basher Jonathan Chait thinks this is a political witch hunt. He makes reference to the old joke that grand juries are so loose with indictments that they would indict a ham sandwich:

The theory behind the indictment is flexible enough that almost any kind of political conflict could be defined as a “misuse” of power or “coercion” of one’s opponents. To describe the indictment as “frivolous” gives it far more credence than it deserves. Perry may not be much smarter than a ham sandwich, but he is exactly as guilty as one.

When you've lost Jonathan Chait, you've lost the case.

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Derringer crime is serious business

I try to avoid piling on when mobs on the Internet poke fun at the same fool, but this one is so off the wall I couldn't resist.

Kristen Gwynne's article-like list, formatted to splash across six different pages and maximize page views, is titled The 5 Most Dangerous Guns in America. The folly of the piece isn't outrageous claims; besides the sneering tone it doesn't really make any. It's not the clueless writing about firearms; those are so common today that it's hard to get worked up about another "assault weapon" mistake. It's not even the conclusions.

That's because it had none. Reading it was like eating a salad made entirely out of lettuce with no dressing. It stated nothing. It's like opening the front door to a house, stepping through, and finding oneself in the backyard. It's groping in the wrong spot for the pull switch of a ceiling light.

The piece promises the reader that Gwynne combed FBI and ATF data to find out which kinds of guns are used in crimes. A reasonable person would expect specific models or even brands to be the result.

Nope. Instead, Gwyenne told us that pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns and, wait for it, derringers are the types of guns most commonly used in crimes or found at crime scenes.

What?

That's like asking advice for what kind of car to get and being told "sedan."

The actual entries read like a lazy 6th grader who copied the encyclopedia word for word. This is from the "revolver" entry:

Some grenade launchers, shotguns, and rifles also have rotating barrels, but the term "revolver" is generally used to describe handguns. Revolver types include single and double-action firing mechanisms, the latter of which does not require a cocking action separate from the trigger pull.

Yeah, that's true, but was there a point here? There is no one in the world who knows about revolver shotguns who fails to understand what an "assault rifle" it, yet she started off this absurdity with the lede:

Contrary to what those who defend the right to own high-powered assault rifles believe, not all guns are created equal. Due to a combination of availability, portability and criminal usage the following five types of guns are the country's most dangerous.

Look, I appreciate how hard it can be to come up with a good lede, but that was phoned-in. If we thought all guns are equally useful in all situations why would we care about efforts to ban or restrict AR-15s?

I know entertainment media like Rolling Stone dip left and will print progressive claptrap with little thought, but this article's real problems are quality-control, not politics. Sure, Gwynne is a lazy hack who rewrote a few technical descriptions and likes to pretend she can do data analysis, but she had to submit her work to an editor who approved it. They even got stock photos to flesh it out. This is a total catastrophe on a quality level and it's frankly embarrassing to see a national media company publish something that isn't even suitable for LiveJournal.

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If you don't like being laughed at, don't be a Marxist

Boston Globe, what are you doing?

This week the Globe printed a ridiculous one-sided crybaby piece from someone who chose to become a public figure but didn't like having her own words used against her.

Wellesley College economics professor Julie Matthaei was one of 600 academic economists who signed a letter of support for raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. A right wing group called the "Employment Policies Institute" printed this critical ad in the New York Times quoting Mattaei and seven other people who signed the letter of support that shows those people saying radical things that expose them as Marxists, socialists, Stalinists or 9-11 conspirators.

In Matthaei's example, they took a quotation from her Wellesley webpage where she described herself as a “Marxist-feminist-anti-racist-ecological-economist.”

In short, the Employment Policies Institute (which is not a real institute) is saying that the "600 economists" who lined up to support raising the minimum wage has some crushed drywall mixed in with its cocaine for bulk.

Matthaei didn't express any disagreement with that conclusion, but tried to play it off as persecution for her beliefs. The Boston Globe reporter and headline writer sprinkled in scare terms like "echoes of the cold war" and "This flashback to the Cold War..." It also said:

The Times ad, taken out by the nonprofit Employment Policies Institute in Washington, had a distinctly 1950s flavor, employing excerpts from quotes that used derivatives of “Marx” four times, praised Soviet-style socialism, and questioned official accounts of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Keep in mind that it was the reporter declaring the ad had a "distinctly 1950s flavor" and not Matthaei. There is no issue with the Globe quoting Matthaei as saying things like “I felt I was being red-baited” because that's a statement attributed to her, the focus of the piece. The problem is when the reporter used similar opinionated language to paint a picture, and the reporter here most definitely did.

The Employment Policies Institute did not prove that all 600 economists who signed the letter are batty. It instead said what people who lack supporting data always do and hid behind vague wording. It said "Many" of the 600 economists are radical researchers. That's not a slam dunk, and it ignores people like Kenneth Arrow, one of six Nobel Prize winning economists who signed on.

But what's completely fair game is holding people responsible for their actual words and beliefs. Matthaei really is an anti-capitalism Marxist who lives in a commune. Just like alternative medicine nonsense has infiltrated higher education despite being completely at odds with reality, so has Marxist economics. Matthaei is part of that sect of academic Marxist economics, and they should be seen as a separate group, like we see doctors and witch doctors as separate groups.

For what it's worth, economists now have a lot of debate on the minimum wage, and as Greg Mankiw said, there are hundreds on both sides of the argument.

One of the radicals quoted in the ad actually said something true about Marxist economics. That was Renee Toback, who said “Marxist analysis is as useful today as it ever was.”

I couldn't agree more.

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Speech has consequence

While in traffic yesterday NPR stole nearly half an hour of my life with a polemic against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

It wouldn't be so bad if NPR would just acknowledge that it has a slant in its coverage. That would be one thing. Instead, it pretends to be neutral while airing obviously biased pieces like yesterday's 28 minute one from Ben Calhoun. It starts at the 30 minute mark at this link.

More than 900,000 people signed a petition in 2011 and 2012 to hold a recall election intended to remove Walker from office when he took several measures against public unions. Walker ended up winning that election with 53.1 percent of the vote, higher than his 52.25 percent win in 2010 against the same opponent.

NPR followed the story of Josh Inglett, a college student who was vying for a seat on the state college's board of regents. There are 18 seats, two of which goes to students, and all are nominated by the governor's office and approved by the state senate. Board members appoint university administration members and give money to student groups collected from student activity fees.

After Inglett was nominated by one of Walker's cabinet members but before the senate confirmed him, conservative bloggers matched Inglett's name to one of the people who signed the recall petition. Walker's office took back the nomination.

Calhoun played interview clips from four other people in the piece: Inglett, a state senator who supported Inglett, a judge who lost an election after bloggers revealed that he also signed the petition and one of the conservative bloggers. In all cases, he selected clips to say that Walker was using the petition signatures as an "enemies list" and weaved a narrative that said the GOP is using that list to destroy people.

This is, of course, ridiculous. As demonstrated in Calhoun's own narrative, it was bloggers who combed through the list and put Walker on the spot asking why he nominated someone. It was only after that that the offer for a ceremonial position on a board was taken away.

Signing the recall position was a pretty extreme act, and while people have the right to do it, they need to remember that publicly stating political positions has consequences. That's Free Speech 101.

If I was so inclined I could write a foolish, angry post calling president Obama a socialist. I'm not going to do it, but technically, I could. If I chose to do that and was later set to appear in a White House photo op, shouldn't I expect trouble when the post comes to light?

Calhoun makes a big deal that Inglett is a registered Republican and says that he supports Walker, but only signed the petition on a whim because he thought it would save his mom from being fired from her substitute teaching job. He later added that he doesn't regret signing it. That's a major contradiction and I don't buy it. I also noticed that since Walker got what he wanted there was no mention about Inglett's mom losing her  job after all.

There was also a part where Calhoun said he spoke to Joe Voiland, the new judge who outed petition-signing Tom Wolfgram, but we never hear Voiland himself speak. I imagine it's because he made too many good points when he spoke and it might turn out like this:

When Voiland announced his candidacy in January and called Wolfgram out for signing the petition, the judge said his signature was "not a political statement" in opposition to the governor. 

Voiland described the explanation as "misleading hogwash." 

Wolfgram got to talk on the program, but was paraded out like his signature was meaningless. We're told that he is a loyal Republican who signed it because Walker's anti-union actions happened too fast for the public to weigh in.

"Misleading hogwash" sounds about right. Can't any of these people own their actions?

Speech has consequences, and despite this report's attempts to act like signing a recall petition is a trivial affair, no one here should be surprised what happened. People were held accountable for taking sides, nothing more.
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NPR loves this stupid idea

I get a lot of my news NPR and it's blatantly clear that their reporters and producers want to give as much attention to the activists who are demanding that McDonald's pays their low-skill workers $15 an hour. That's more than many reporters make, but the good people at NPR like to present this lunacy like it should be taken seriously and considered.

Come on guys, don't you have friends from journalism school who are limping along in the low wages of the field who would jump for joy to receive $15 an hour? Do NPR reporters secretly plan to become fry-cooks to boost their income if this impossible suggestion is met?

One of the many forms of media bias is story selection and NPR has put a lot of resources into bringing this story up over and over again. The latest example is an activist crashed a corporate event and yelled a bunch
of slogans, saying she's worked there for a decade and makes $8.25 an hour and "that's just not fair."

Not fair? That's what a whiner says when they're out of compelling arguments. I imagine she has been a part-time employee for that decade, and seeing as how she couldn't get a raise or another job years before the recession hit I imagine that she's simply not a capable or reliable employee.

I've already written about how obnoxiously ignorant these mathematically-challenged arguments are, where we are told that the employees are paid little while the company itself is rich, so therefor the company can afford to pay limitless sums to more than a million employees. Tom Blumer has already done the math - something the activists skip over in their talking points.

Yelling and making public spectacles to demand that notoriously unskilled jobs should have some of the best starting wages is a fringe cause, and NPR's shallow coverage of these ridiculous idea reveals the organization has an agenda. That's more than fair to say.
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Robin Young, Zimmerman and Tsarnaev

I wish Robin Young, host of Here & Now on NPR of Boston station WBUR, would treat George Zimmerman with the same courtesy, compassion and tolerance she gave Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Here & Now pounced on Zimmerman last March when the video of him at the police station surfaced because it called into question his side of the story. When that angle was refuted  few days later she lost interest. I searched the program's web archive in vein and can't find any follow-up coverage. Please inform me if I am wrong.

Zimmerman famously followed Trayvon, hoping to spot him for police, when he was attacked and killed Trayvon in what appears to be self defense. Tsarnaev, on the other hand, committed premeditated murder on strangers and Young wanted to find the external factors that lead him to his crime. She was kind to him, but not to Zimmerman.

Once the Zimmerman trial picked up her program was happy to cover it, and when he was found "not guilty" the program started a parade of losers and hustlers who "do not accept" the verdict. Perhaps those calls for a new trial could have been tempered with some legal analysis about the double jeopardy concerns of a new trial, or the myth that Trayvon's family can appeal the verdict.

Today's program had a segment on a Zimmerman juror who is getting death threats and wanted people to know she thought he killed Trayvon but couldn't convicted him because of those pesky evidence standards.Slate's William Saletan showed that selective editing and leading questions put words in her mouth to get her to say that Zimmerman got away with murder. NPR has done no better than cable news.

Robin Young is using the program to express her outrage against Zimmerman's refusal to let someone beat him to death. She's not the only one who works there and the decisions aren't just hers, but it's her voice and her words. The contrast in treatment between Zimmerman and Tsarnaev is striking.


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No national abortion regulation debate

For the last few years my favorite example of politically-opportunistic regulation has been safety regulation legislature for abortion clinics, which are always promoted by pro-life Republicans.

It never occurred to me that they might be worth doing.

Now that the Dr. Kermitt Gosnell case has become a national story and he has been sentenced to prison for illegally killing just-born children with scissors at his abortion clinic, a reasonable person might consider supporting some of those regulations.

Yet, that option isn't on the table the same way gun control was on the table following the Sandy Hook shooting.

Plenty has already been written about the media's reluctance to cover this story, and how much of the subsequent focus has been on the media itself and not the actual case. I found Megan McArdle's explanation for the lack of coverage to be the most compelling:

...I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective—of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by "our side."

...If I think about it for a moment, there are obviously lots of policy implications of Gosnell's baby charnel house. How the hell did this clinic operate for seventeen years without health inspectors discovering his brutal crimes? Are there major holes in our medical regulatory system? More to the point, are those holes created, in part, by the pressure to go easy on abortion clinics, or more charitably, the fear of getting tangled in a hot-button political issue? These have clear implications for abortion access, and abortion politics.

After all, when ostensibly neutral local regulations threaten to restrict abortion access--as with Virginia's recent moves to require stricter regulatory standards for abortion clinics, and ultrasounds for women seeking abortions--the national media thinks that this is worthy of remark. If local governments are being too lax on abortion clinics, surely that is also worthy of note.

Moreover, surely those of us who are pro-choice must worry that this will restrict access to abortion: that a crackdown on abortion clinics will follow, with onerous white-glove inspections; that a revolted public will demand more restrictions on late-term abortions; or that women will be too afraid of Gosnell-style crimes to seek a medically necessary abortion.

I have never considered that abortion clinics actually need more regulation before this, but as McArdle said 17 years of Gosnell's unsanitary, brutal practice implies it should be considered.

While we should expect the pro-choice crowd to have this conversation in their own sphere, shouldn't we also have a national conversation about increasing health standards for abortion clinics? Why isn't the media leading that charge now that they cat is out of the bag? I submit it is because they are afraid of where it would lead.
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A pox on both your houses

Maine elected officials had a recent dust-up with the Bangor Daily News over concealed weapons holder data and both sides displayed armor-piercing grade arrogance.

Disclosure time: I was an intern for the BDN and I have friends that work there. As a result, I witnessed a more shrill tone from private communications than what Maine's second largest newspaper presented publicly.

The BDN made a legal request this month for the personal information of concealed weapons permit holders in the state. This includes names, ages and addresses. Under a Maine law passed in 1985, the state was required to hand the information over.

However, it didn't. Officials and critics referenced the time in December when a New York newspaper posted an interactive map of concealed weapon permit holders; presumably to capture more of the criminal reader demographic by "casing the joint" for them. This put a lot of people at risk, especially people without concealed weapons who were labeled easy targets.

I believe the BDN editors when they say they had no intention to produce such a map, a move they called "irresponsible." They wanted to use it in an analysis. Sadly, this is where they went wrong.

The attitude of BDN staff was that it was blindly irrational for the public to criticize their request because they honestly, truly weren't going to print it. One of my BDN friends posted on Facebook that the point of newspapers was always to "gather" information.

No it isn't, the point is to publish information, not hold secret data banks for our own records.

What irks me is the naive way the BDN expects trust to work. Trust must be earned, it can not be commanded or expected automatically. As a reporter I constantly have to earn the trust of people I wish to interview. Many of them have been burned by a reckless reporter in the past and they will hold that grudge forever.

Wasn't "Just trust us" the mentality of the Bush administration? The public is right to be distrustful of such attitudes.

The BDN editorials skew left and it's no surprise that gun lovers would take issue with the BDN obtaining their personal information. Just look what the BDN did intend to do with the data:

The BDN requested the records of concealed weapons permits as part of long-term reporting projects on domestic violence, sexual assault and drug abuse... We intend to use this information about permits, along with other information sets we are gathering, to analyze possible correlations relevant to our reporting projects.

With that sort of framing there's no way this could look good for concealed weapons holders. Newsrooms contain very few mathematicians and even newspapers as big as the New York Times make absurd Naomi Klein-style errors in their attempts at breaking down data. If the BDN analysis made concealed weapons holders look bad, it would run on the front page. If it didn't, the story could be "killed" or buried inside the paper.

Emergency legislation went too far

I can't blame law-abiding members of the public for objecting when a corporation wants their personal information. I can, however, blame Gov. Paul LePage, the house and senate for passing unethical legislation in response.

Even though the BDN caved to pressure and withdrew the data request, LePage pushed emergency legislation to make concealed weapons permit data private. I don't have a problem with that, but the legislation was applied retroactively and was stated as such before the BDN withdrew. I have a serious problem with that.

The BDN made a completely legal request and state law required public officials to hand it over. Retroactive legislation is sinister as it takes legal actions performed by members of the public and makes them illegal, inviting unpredictable results. I would like to see the data in question made private, but that should have been done decades ago and it was too late once the request was filed.

The state also got an e-mail request for the data when the issue got big and the retroactive rule impacted that request. It's plausible that the BDN would not have withdrawn the request if the insidious retroactive portion was not announced the day before.

By the way, the Democrats have a slight majority in both the house and senate The senate voted 33 in favor of LD 576 and 0 opposed. The house voted 129 in favor and 11 opposed. This is not just an issue of LePage and his pistol-packing GOP posse behaving badly. This is almost everyone in Augusta acting out.
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Fringe feminists oppose free speech

I had to stop myself from titling this entry "Feminism isn't a religion, it's a cult" because I started writing immediately after I watched the following video from the University of Toronto:




Feminist activists tried to stop men's rights and gender equality author Warren Farrall from speaking at the school defaced and removed promotional posters and blocked audience members from entering the venue until police forcibly removed them. They also assaulted police and harassed people who tried to enter.

I realize that the brutes who staged this violent protest do not represent all of feminism. That's why I wouldn't let myself use that pointed title I first came up with. However, the protesters who blocked the doors did behave like cultists. One of the hallmarks of cults is shutting out the influence of outside messages. That's exactly what they did here, try to block other students from hearing a message they don't like.

The target of these protests wasn't just Farrell, it was also the public. In a summary of the fundamentals of freedom of speech, Christopher Hitchens said:

It’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear. And every time you silence someone you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view.

Hitchens went on to ask who would the listener entrust the great responsibility to decide what they should be allowed to listen to or read. The implied answer was no one.

Watching that video, I can't say that I would appoint a group of ignorant, self-righteous, close-minded angry fanatics to decide what I can hear.

I find it frustrating when someone tries to dismiss a thinker based on something tangential they said that is separate from the important ideas they contributed. Last week I tried reading what progressive writer Corey Robin had to say about Friedrich Hayek, but he was more interested in alerting people to Hayek's embarrassing support of Augustus Pinochet than to address any of his major ideas. This is a sign of a hack, and it's telling that the Toronto protesters focused on a single line Farrell wrote in 1993's The Myth of Male Power.

Farrell had criticized watering down the definition of "date rape" to include cases where women say "no," then change their mind and engage in sexual activity without verbally declaring "yes." Farrell was critical of labeling this as "rape" because no unwanted sexual activity occurred. Instead, the sexual partners did not follow a protocol established by certain activists. He then wrote "We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting."

That's where the out-of-context quotes of saying Farrell supports date rape come from. They have no interest in understanding his message, they just want an excuse to shut him down.

It is customary to blame media bias when stories like this fails to capture much media attention, even though reporters where there when it happened. I try not to make jump to those conclusions when a story like this fails to spread, but I would bet money that if this was a Christian group shutting down Dan Savage from trying to speak using the same forceful tactics it would be all over the news.

Is there anyone who would find tactics like this acceptable when used against a speaker they agree with?

These activists are brutes. They are so absolutely sure that their world view is correct that they are willing to stomp all over the rights of others to silence their opponents. This is fanaticism and it has no place in a civilized society.
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What is it you don't understand about journalistic neutrality?

As a practicing journalist, there are strict rules I must follow for the purpose of neutrality. I can not publicly endorse political candidates, parties or movements. I can't march in a protest or place campaign bumper stickers on my car.

It's not just politics. Earlier this year I was invited to join Rotary International, and I knew I had to turn it down. My editor confirmed this; it would be a public endorsement of the group and I wouldn't be able to cover its events with what appears to be a fair viewpoint.

Like all conflict of interest issues, it's not a matter of if I could remain neutral. It's a matter of the mere appearance of neutrality.

I don't like labor unions at all. I interviewed the fire fighter's union rep in a recent story then saw him at a scene a few days after it was printed. I asked him how it came out and if I represented his side fairly, and it felt genuinely good when he said I nailed it. Clearly, I have some ability to set my views aside.

But how would he have read it if he knew I think his organization is a labor cartel that conspires to take advantage of the public with oligarchy power, fearmongering and flawed reasoning? His interpretation of my wording may have changed and the same story would have angered him. My paper's reputation would have been damaged.

That's why we have rules, you see. It's easy to understand. As a journalist, I give up certain rights in order to do my job correctly. It's not a legal requirement, it's a performance requirement, and I agreed to it when I chose this line of work.

But Caitlin Curran, activist and freelancer for a show broadcast on NPR, doesn't understand this basic journalistic rule. She got caught protesting in Occupy Wall Street, tried to turn it into a story and got fired for it. She did not, however, learn anything from the experience, as can be demonstrated by her dishonest statements in an interview with Bob Garfield from On The Media.

Curran's silly defense, which Garfield did not let her get away with, was that:

*She just wanted to check it out.

*She wasn't really participating.

*She only held the sign for a little while.

*Her political sign wasn't political.

*Occupy Wall Street isn't political.

*This happened in her personal time.

*The rule is wrong and journalists should be able to express their views in public.

Curran just doesn't get it, and from the comments section in the liberal blogosphere, a lot of other people don't get it either. I can see a minor defense against a similar incident when the host of an opera show was eighty-sixed for being an anti-war spokeswoman. It's not as blatantly wrong as what Curran did, but once again, the sympathetic far left Internet squad just doesn't get it.

I have to walk a fine line. I was a newspaper editor in 2008 and the beginning of 2009 and some of my editorials are online. I was also the op/ed editor of my college newspaper my senior year and some of my political articles from that time are still online. My political views can be tracked down.

But I still make an effort. I was the president of a skeptics group when I was between journalism jobs and now that I'm working again, I'm not a member of any of them. I told my editor when I was offered a position to speak at TAM 9 and he gave me his blessing. Even still, I follow a strict policy about what I do, what I say and what I post here on YH&C.

I fully believe that I can write fairly on topics despite having a lot of strong views. The trouble is convincing my readers that I can pull it off. That's beyond my control, and that's why the proper thing to do is to keep them guessing.

As a journalist, I keep a single allegiance in mind. It's not to the politicians I interview. It's not to the publication that prints my words, nor is it to the public that reads what I wrote. My loyalty is to the truth; the actual events that occur in the world. It's not to any other idea or entity. Anything less is a betrayal of reality.
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Spontaneous order creates things we don't like too

Why can't we accept that some powerful forces create both good and bad things?

It's popular to draw lines between free market economics and Darwinian evolution. Both systems depend on a competitive environment that allows helpful traits to survive, whereas critics of these systems claim that higher levels of order and function need to be planned by an intelligent source.

The meeting points of evolution and free markets is spontaneous order, where order emerges through the actions of self-interested participants and creates something that looks like it was designed. Adam Smith's invisible hand is the typical example.

While I see people are willing to accept spontaneous order created the things they like, such as butterflies and iPods, there is a tendency to attribute wicked things to a devilish planner, such as the AIDS virus, racial tension and rival political movements.

Media Bias

Most conservatives express views that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, and I generally agree with them. Where we disagree is that cause of that bias. I typically hear that the bias is a conscious effort to distort events to sway the public into taking a political position. Instead, I see it as a natural result of an industry that has more lefties than righties.

The individual reporters have a left wing worldview, which we can expect to cause the news product they create to lean to the left. It's difficult to create a study that reflects the bias of the reporting, but it's somewhat simple to find out the bias of the news team. We already understand why researchers who believe in astrology can create dubious scientific studies on the matter. The same principal applies to summarizing current events.

But what I typically hear from the right is not a media bias created by unintentional wordings and gatekeeping, but instead a nefarious plot.

That doesn't mean that all news groups attempt to be unbiased - it's a successful marketing niche for MSNBC, Fox News and The Nation magazine. One minor form it takes is with wordings. All news agencies strive to use consistent wording, so what do you do when a partisan issue like illegal immigrant comes up? One answer is to select partisan wording that will please the audience. The left has been chewing on weird phrases like "undocumented workers" - as if documentation was the issue instead of immigration status. "Illegal visitors" caused a firestorm recently, because the story was on illegal aliens who were not workers or planning to live here, and the news agency forbid the term "alien." Fox does the same thing using terms like "illegals," which always struck me as an jagged and ugly expression.

Racist plots

A few months ago I had to stop watching Crips and Bloods: Made in America on Netflix because it wasn't labeled a mockumentary. The film kept drawing lines that weren't there, such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as a government plot.

I thought it's well-understood that the racist organization that conspired to kill Malcolm X was the Nation of Islam. Government plots have been blamed for a host of terrible things that have devastated black communities, such as the crack-cocaine epidemic, the AIDS virus and even conflict with other minorities.

In reality, crack-cocaine was an innovate drug that stretched expensive cocaine so it could be smoked quickly and cheaply. AIDS was created by nature, not a plot by the government against blacks or a lance from God to destroy gays. As for racism between minority groups, this is simply how racism forms - one group develops contempt, blame and distrust for another. It doesn't matter if it's Korean shopkeepers in black neighborhoods being called "blood suckers," that's the neomercantalism of "buy local" and "buy black" at work. No one thinks the Anti-Chinese Mongolian neo-Nazi's were concocted by a white power organization, so why should conflicts between blacks and Hispanics?

That's not to dismiss all claims of institutional racism - episodes like the Jim Crow laws had a very big impact on the world. Those certainly existed, but there is a huge difference between Black History Month being February, the shortest month, and the very real Stolen Generations where Australian Aboriginal children were forced into adoption.

Obsolescence doesn't need to be planned

Obsolescence, where older technologies need to be replaced, is a natural part of creative destruction. It was not a plot to sell wagons wheels for thousands of years and then to replace them with rubber tires, nor were record players created with eight-tracks, cassettes, CDs and mp3s in mind.

Yet if you watch The Story of Stuff - and I'm not suggesting you should - you'll hear that bulky computer monitors were a scheme until flat screen computer monitors arrived. The idea of planned obsolescence - where companies time the release of products and make things break early in order to cheat customers into buying the same items over and over again - is no less of a wild conspiracy theory than the moon landing hoax or the mafia assassinating JFK.

I remember in my fourth grade public school class being handed a propaganda magazine printed on recycled paper about a fictitious handheld video game system that is designed to break after three months to make kids buy more. It was a fairy tale then, and it's a fairy tale now. That's costly to arrange and it would give the products a bad name. Imagine what a PR disaster that would be if it was revealed to the public.

All opposition as astroturfing

I've written about this before, the idea that anyone who disagrees with you is a front for your opponent, but it could use more focus on rival political groups.

First off, astroturfing - fake grassroots movements - happen. For example, there are pro-Walmart groups that have been faked by the company, and the same has happened with anti-Walmart groups funded by their competitors. After the revelation of a few of these groups, I have seen wanton and reckless accusations that everything hostile is astroturf. This begins and ends with the small-government, low tax "Tea Party" movement.

I have seen so many accusations that the Tea Party is a front group by corporations, billionaires and the Republican party that I don't need to link a single one - they are out there in droves. But if they weren't centrally-planned, then what created this movement in 2009?

There are a few theories. One is a campaign to mail tea bags to politicians, another is a blogger who put together a tax protest in Seattle. The origin I find compelling is the Rick Santelli CNBC viral video that drew immediate attention and pitched the idea of a "Chicago Tea Party" in July. The first protests were April 15 of that year - a little early - but I think that's because once Santelli planted the idea, a collection of individuals planned tax day without being lead by anyone.

The important thing is some of the opposition to this group can't grasp the idea that people would so strongly disagree with them that they'd organize a movement. The nerve!

Inside the tea party is no refuge from conspiracy mongering either. Having been to gatherings of both the Tea Party and overlapping 9-12 Project, I've heard accusations of astroturfing abound. Here's an example:

There was a rally for the nationalization of health care in Portland, I heard there would be a counter-protest nearby, which I attended solely for networking. While there I witnessed a full-grown man from "our side" yelling slogans at "their side" and behaving childish.

Weeks later I mentioned him at a 9-12 Project meeting and the people in charge nodded and said he was a plant from the opposition. I asked how they knew, and was told "they do that sort of thing."

My obvious follow-up was, perhaps they do but how do we know this was an example of that, and not just some jerk?

I was again told, because they do that sort of thing.

People, that is not evidence. There's nothing to prevent a loose-cannon right-winger from showing up at a public protest and being obnoxious. It sounds a lot more likely than an actor was employed to disrupt things, and by disrupt I mean got on my nerves and very few others. They didn't think this could just be some idiot - it had to be planned.
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Did we just win this one?

The media has latched onto an old story this week - that Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study in The Lancet that reported a link between vaccines and autism was deliberate fraud, that Wakefield was funded by lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers and was trying to create a market for an alternative vaccine he held the patent to.

Still, better late than never. This could be the tipping point that undermines the entire anti-science vaccine denial movement. It's not time to break out the party hats, and some of the media is downplaying how damning this is. But we really couldn't expect a better event for this issue. The other side is scrambling to say this study was anything less than the foundation they built their crusade on. With all the enlargement they made in the 00's, victory will be a major shrinking of their numbers but not a vanishing act.
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A better survey for media ratings

A reader wrote a reply about the flawed study that proposed to show Fox News misinforms the public. Because Blogger is having some comment section problems right now, the reply was emailed and I have reproduced it in its entirety:

It is irrelevant to the Obama-tax question whether or not deficits are future taxes. The fact is taxes have not gone up under President Obama; that was the question and most people got it wrong.

That said, the study takes a small correlation and goes much too far with it, especially since its entire methodology sucks. Of course, we always have other studies to show how misinformed FOX News viewers are. And is there any question about that? Does anyone doubt that those who watch FOX News as their primary news source - and especially if it's their only news source - are getting bad information or highly selective information? Nobody goes to that channel to actually see anything fair and/or balanced.

(Also, I find Klein saying that to agree to the statement that "American companies exploit workers overseas" is to be unenlightened rather...cute. It's such an ambiguous question. Does it mean all companies? Most? Just some? At least 2? Are we talking about American companies taking advantage of cheap goods from China where workers and especially child workers are not treated well? And what does "exploit" mean? Surely it can be argued that most companies exploit most workers, especially young ones. Should we be applying some ethical theories to this question in order to derive an answer? The others parts of the survey seem reasonable, but this question is just doltish.)

While I still insist that the tax question was worded poor enough to attract wrong answers, like the Palm Beach butterfly ballots were designed poor enough to fetch incorrect votes, I think Michael is right - people who want biased news get it, and Fox News is one of those outlets. The study he linked was exactly what I insisted would show a misinformed public; general questions about the news, such as who is the president of Russia.

Interesting to note that the study showed Fox News viewers a little bit behind CNN viewers, but it showed the most informed were fans of The Daily Show, PBS, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

As an occasional Limbaugh listener, I think it's clear why - he dissects the news stories of the day, often in great detail. It'd be hard to listen and not pick up who Nancy Pelosi is. I imagine the same is true for Daily Show and O'Reilly viewers. I suspect the PBS watchers are a self-selected group who happen to follow things closer, but that's conjecture.

Unfortunately, MSNBC viewers were not listed for comparison. I'd be curious to see how they panned out, as I wonder if self-selected political extremists bring down the numbers for both sets of viewers. It's also possible that some of these viewers only tune in for commentary shows, and miss some of the questions asked, such as the name of their state governor.

Even if it does, that effect may be small and I think this study makes a real case for biased new stations like Fox concentrating too much on following a political narrative then on informing the public.
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FBI: Blacks more likely to commit hate crimes than whites

CNN offered a quick summary of a new FBI hate crime report. Of course, CNN was quick to point out that 62.4 percent of the offenders were white, while 18.5 percent were black.

What they forgot to include was a population comparison. Whites make up 74.8 percent of the population, while blacks are only 12.4 percent. That means that an average black person is 78.9 percent more likely to commit a hate crime than a white person. That's not a shame all people of a race should be burdened with, but it should dispel some of the popular views in our culture.

In addition, Jews were victims of 71.9 percent of the religiously-motivated hate crimes, while Muslims were 8.4 percent. Between 1.2 and 2.2 percent of the population is Jewish, and between 0.6 and 1.6 percent is Muslim.

Every hate crime is a problem, but it's good there were only 6,600 in the whole country in 2009. The crimes against gays lined up with the popular opinion, but the idea of the white hate monger and the anti-Islamic bully did not. The public underestimates the problem of Antisemitism and minority hate mongers, and how can we stop a problem if we don't understand it?
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Not hearing much about LePage's innocence

Maine gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage was cleared on any wrongdoings this week. Earlier this summer his wife was investigated for applying for dual residency in Florida and Maine so her son could get lower tuition rates in Florida. LePage also drew a lot of negative attention after loudly storming out of a press conference after an obnoxious reporter kept pestering him about it.

From the Portland Press Herald this week:

Though an initial investigation by Florida tax officials determined that she was ineligible for the dual homestead exemptions, the Florida exemption was deemed legal on Monday.

My big problem is this story appeared on the front of the Local and State section - not the front page of the paper. But before I jump to the conclusions of liberal media bias, I also have to wonder about another type of bias: The guilty bias.

If a person if accused of a crime, it's front page news - often for a long time. However, if they are revealed to be innocent it's a mid-paper story and usually it's only news for a day before it's forgotten and the press moves on. Innocence just isn't newsworthy enough. A lot more people hear about the accusation than the clearly of the accusation, and thus the person's reputation is damaged.

I didn't hear this story once on the Maine news radio station I listen to. It's possible I just missed it when it was on, but they did play several weeks of accusations.

It doesn't even make sense as a scandal - sure the candidate and his wife are assumed to do their taxes together so if it was unjust he would have been in on it, but the point of giving lower tuition rates to residences is that their tax dollars go into the university system, while the taxes of a student from another state does not, so therefor the cost should be different. The LePage's own a house in Florida so they have put money into the college system and deserve the instate

With less than a week to election day, you'd think this story would be bigger news. The latest polls imply it won't matter - LePage has 40 percent of the vote while his two rivals are tied at 26 percent.

Whatever kind of bias is keeping LePage's innocence out of the news, I think it's clear that political bias is keeping it silent off the lefties I see on social media sites. They were so triumphant in posting the accusations, but they've been quiet this week.
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Can't we treat Islam the same as other religions?

There's a lot of attention going to a Florida church that plans to burn a copy of the Quran on Sept. 11.

I realize there is a lot of talk about how Americans treat Muslims today, and for good reason - there is a lot of anger being directed at innocent Muslims. However, Christians have been in that boat for as long as I can remember. Bible burning never gets this much attention, and a quick google search churns up tons of photographs and videos of the act.

When trendy artists showed off a crucifix soaked in urine and a painting of the Virgin Mary stained with elephant dung, Christians were angry. They wrote letters to the editor, made lengthy speeches and boycotted art galleries.

Compare that to the rather tepid form of blasphemy that Muslims usually endure, such as the Danish cartoons in 2005 which lead to more than 100 deaths, or the murder of Theo van Gogh after he made a film about the violence women face in Islamic cultures. The creators of South Park were bullied into changing an episode earlier this year. From the New York Times:

Cognizant that Islam forbids the depiction of its holiest prophet, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker showed their “South Park” characters agonizing over how to bring Muhammad to their fictional Colorado town. At first the character said to be Muhammad is confined to a U-Haul trailer, and is heard speaking but is not shown. Later in the episode the character is let out of the trailer, dressed in a bear costume.

The next day the “South Park” episode was criticized by the group Revolution Muslim in a post at its Web site, revolutionmuslim.com. The post, written by a member named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said the episode “outright insulted” the prophet, adding: “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

It's true that the anti-Muslim fervor in New York City recently lead a young man to stab a Muslim cab driver with the intention of murdering him simply for his faith. Mosques have also been the target of vandals. This is a terrible wave of hate crimes.

But in fairness, so are the attacks on Mormon churches. Some members of the religion organized an anti-gay marriage campaign in California, so all Mormons are being held responsible by the vandals. A Mormon bishop was murdered a week ago, but it wasn't worthy of national news.

Muslims deserve to be treated fairly in America. They are not below the other faiths, but they're not above them either. All I ask is that we treat them the same as any other religious group.

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Why is insurance such a difficult concept?

Do people not understand what insurance is?

With all this talk about health insurance costs, I find it hard to believe that most of public grasps the idea of spreading out risk - which is the entire idea of insurance.

Everyone knows the argument to force health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, but there is no push to get car insurance to cover accidents that occurred before the policy was signed.

How many people are upset that their health insurance only covers catastrophes, and not routine checkups? Meanwhile, no car insurance company covers oil changes. If they did, you would see mechanics raise the price of an oil change. They know the customers won't shop around as carefully if they are shielded from the price.

The idea of insurance is simple. If there's a group of 100 people that are afraid a Very Bad Thing will happen to them, and the Very Bad Thing will take $1,000 to fix, but it will only happen to one percent of the people in the pool, than everyone can pay $10 into a pool, and the unlucky person will use that money to fix the Very Bad Thing. The risk is spread out to everyone, so no one individual bears the full cost.

It's a little more complicated than that in practice- there are operating costs to pay for the insurance program and profits to justify running it. Those profits are a lot lower than people realize. Some people are riskier to insure than others and plans don't cover just one Very Bad Thing, they cover different combination of problems. There's a lot of math, but the reductionist model still gets the basic idea down.

With health insurance, women tend to use more money from the pool. Insurance companies balanced that out by charging them more. It's the opposite with auto insurance, as men have more accidents than women, and insurance companies charge them more as a result.

But one of those is about to change. The New York Times reported this week, when it reported that health insurance companies can no longer charge men and women different amounts.

Or as the article put it, discriminate:

"In the broadest sense, the new health care law forbids sex discrimination in health insurance. Previously, there was no such ban, and insurance companies took full advantage of the void."

The article goes on to say that while a lot of changes in the new health care law won't happen until 2014;

"...some changes should actually happen much sooner, because the law’s overarching ban on sex discrimination takes effect immediately. The legalese outlawing sex discrimination is not easy to find or to parse, but it refers to existing laws, like the Civil Rights Act and Title IX, to say that the same protections apply to people seeking health care and insurance."

This is not discrimination, this is mathematics. Do health insurance companies discriminate when they charge smokers more? Do life insurance companies discriminate when they charge older people more? Do car insurance companies discriminate when they charge more to people with bad driving records?

Without a trace of surprise, the New York Times article does not mention if car insurance companies should charge men the same as women. It even acknowledges "women used the health care system more than men," which means women use more health insurance dollars than men do. Instead of challenging this decision with any opposition sources, the article repeats the activist slogan, "Being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition."

I've seen a lot of anti-science on both the left and the right this decade, but this is the first case of an anti-math bias I've ever seen.

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