Outrage culture is to blame for boring politics

Politicians give terrible pre-scripted interviews not merely because focus-group testing works so well, but because speaking off the cuff is too risky with partisan opponents ready to twist everything they say.

That's Matthew Yglesias's point in his recent piece about the response to his interview with President Obama. When they talked, the president said:

It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.

Opportunists on the right claimed the president was denying a Kosher deli was targeting Jews, even though his administration had outright declared it before. This turned into a mini-scandal that has since fizzled. Yglesias believes those critics were sincere, but blinded by their politics. I think he's being generous, while the president's critics were not.

Two years ago Steve Novella wrote:

Before you set out to criticize someone’s claim or position, you should endeavor to grant that position its best possible case. Don’t assume the worst about your opponent, assume the best. Give them any benefit of the doubt. At the very least this will avoid creating a straw man to attack, or opening yourself up to charges that you are being unfair.

And that's the problem isn't it? Politics is dominated by the uncharitable interpretation of one's opponents? Todd Akin simply must have meant by "legitimate rape" that some rapes are acceptable or John Kerry must have been mocking the troops, not George W. Bush, when he said people who don't study in school get stuck in Iraq.

Having a low threshold for outrage is very popular in politics today, but like a leech is sucks the potential for anything interesting to come from the mouths of elected officials.
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Dear person who shared a Daily Show link

Perhaps you are reading this post because you shared a Daily Show segment in an attempt to win an argument, and saw this link shared in response. Here's what you don't seem to understand.

The Daily Show exists as a comedy show. It is not a news program. But wait, you say, the quote-unquote comedy segments on the show are more real than the legit journalism you see elsewhere.

Nonsense, and I will prove it to you.

The tactics used by The Daily Show to produce its segments fail the most basic media ethics guidelines. Its producers lie and ambush peoples to trick them into getting on the show. Its editors surgically remove sentences from the middle of paragraphs to create foolish statements. Its reporters sit guests down to marathon four-hour interviews to produce gaffes,

If Fox News was doing this, you would be outraged.

Let me share some specific examples. Peter Schiff appeared in a segment last year on the minimum wage. The Daily Show gave a softball interview to pro-minimum wage advocate Barry Ritholtz, where they allowed him to do re-takes on answers they liked but he messed up.

Anti-minimum wage advocate Schiff cited specific examples where they edited out his smartest response, such as showing that The Daily Show doesn't pay its own interns a minimum wage, and instead focused on something they could smear him with, which was when he said someone with severe mental disabilities would probably be unable to sell their labor for the minimum wage.

Schiff was foolish to expect a fair treatment, despite being promised one, but that still doesn't let the show off the hook for misrepresenting people and turning serious arguments into cartoons.

Back in 2008, Conservative author Jonah Goldberg had his interview with Jon Stewart chopped up haphazardly as Stewart attempted relentlessly to win the argument.

But if you think this is just about conservative causes, look what happened this year with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the segment about their criticism of a diner that gave a discount to people who pray before they eat. This was one of their own sponsors and generally a left-wing group. Here's how they describe the treatment:

As the terms of being interviewed, Dan and other "Daily Show" interviewees sign away any rights, including giving the "The Daily Show" the right to edit the interview any way they want, such as showing Dan answering one actual question with another answer. It's comedy, not news. Dan was interviewed by an in-your-face host for almost two hours. The spin on the segment, aired last night, was not just unsympathetic, but this time, frankly, not very funny. The punchline to Dan was: "You're a dick." 

Dan's point, made repeatedly during the interview, but not used, was: "If you think the Civil Rights Act is petty, then our complaint was petty." 

It's time for a quick reminder about why FFRF does not consider such illegal promotions as petty, and why, on behalf of complainants around the country, we contact restaurants, recreational facilities and ballparks that illegally reward believers with discounts in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

So once again, the actual thrust of their argument was cut out in order to present a goofy narrative.

Think of Daily Show segments as comedic propaganda, made to amuse people and assure them that their existing viewpoint is correct. If you are so desperate to prove your point that you have to turn to these kinds of tactics to find support, you have pretty much shown the opposite is true.


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Legislative noisemakers can never be satisfied

Some protesters like to go to house and senate sessions to make a ruckus, either to draw attention to their cause or to make it impossible for the elected officials to vote. I find them obnoxious in all contexts, but this new one on the Keystone Pipeline has me confused.





The American Indian singing and childish chanting were from people who approved of the vote, so why make a negative spectacle and force Elizabeth Warren to get you ejected? Did they think the pipeline was going to pass so they prepared sore loser antics, but loved them so much that they didn't want them to go to waste? This is like sports fans rioting whether their team wins or loses.
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Looks like the Satanists won

I've been trying to figure out exactly what the Satanic Temple is, and as far as I can tell it started from left-wing atheists who donned the mantle of a fictional Satanic church to push Christian displays out of government buildings and public institutions, but its members stay in character and won't admit it is satire. To complicate it further, the organization has attracted real satanists, who were allowed to join.

Village Voice writer Anna Merlan did a great investigation on the organization. She reveals that the group started as a film project where actors pretending to be satanists gave a public demonstration in January 2013 to thank Florida Governor Rick Scott for allowing students to lead prayers in school assemblies. This idea was to make christians wince and realize it opened the door for satanic prayers as well.

This May the group unveiled a statue of a goat-headed figure it threatened to install in the Oklahoma Statehouse to accompany a Ten Commandments sculpture. Satanic Temple spokesman Doug Mesner, under the assumed name of Lucien Greaves, said they didn't really want to put it there, but if there's going to be a Christian statue than the law demands all religions be able to place their own statue there.

Get it? They are forcing Christian lawmakers to chose between having Satanic images in public, or banning all religious displays.

So enter a school district in Florida that allowed people to pass out Bible. The Satanic Temple created a coloring book to pass out in the same school district, and Mesner/Greaves spelled out their motivation clearly in a press release.

We would never seek to establish a precedent of disseminating our religious materials in public schools because we believe our constitutional values are better served by respecting a strong separation of Church and State. However, if a public school board is going to allow religious pamphlets and full Bibles to be distributed to students – as is the case in Orange County, Florida – we think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions, as opposed to standing idly by while one religious voice dominates the discourse and delivers propaganda to our youth.

Well, the school board just caved and declared that they won't let anyone on campus to distribute religious materials. I do have to hand it to them, the Satanic Temple set it up so they win either way. If they get to install their religious statue or pass out satanic coloring books, christians who support the Ten Commandment sculpture or Bible  distribution will be exposed as hypocrites and forced to comply by a court. Their only alternative is to prevent the religious materials altogether, like the Florida school district just did.

I think their parody church is being dishonest when they deny being a farce and feign sincerity as a secular satanist group, but then again, they pretty much have to. If they revealed that they are only pretending to be Satanists, opponents could use that against them when they try to pull their next stunt and argue that they aren't espousing actual religious views.


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Bernie Sanders logic

Here's a real argument Vermont's socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is making. See if you can follow along with his creative interpretation of logic. From his official Facebook page.

If you're not able to view the imagine, it reads:

Here is the defnition of greed: The Koch brothers - worth $85 billion - now want the Republican candidates they funded to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.

I wasn't sure where he was getting these specific claims that the Koch brothers want to cut Medicare in particular. I couldn't see a confirming link anywhere, but looking through other statements from Sanders turned up a similar social media graphic created by Sanders' office: It read:

Want to know why the Koch brothers are spending hundreds of millions to elect right-wing candidates? Read David Koch's 1980 Libeterarian Party platform. It calls for the elimination of of Social Security Medicare, Medicaid, public eduation and the EPA. Surprise, it also calls for more tax breaks for the rich

There are more related images made by his office to share on social media from his office, but you get the idea. In addition, his official website has a post on this topic detailing his position. Sanders' basic argument is that in 1980 the Libertarian Party as a whole drafted a set of policy positions and chose David Koch as their vice-president candidate, so he much agree with each and everyone one of those views 34 years later, and by extension, so must his older brother.

If that were true, that we should assume all people never change their political views over the course of several decades and political candidates agree 100 percent with their party's stated platforms, than how does he explain his separation Liberty Union Party? That is the Vermont socialist anti-war party Sanders belonged to when he ran for governor in 1976 and in several other elections.

Today members of that part consider Sanders a traitor to their views and refer to him as Bernie the Bomber for his votes to mobilizing the American military on multiple occasion. Clearly, he has changed some of his positions over time and is not in tune with his party's old platform. Fair enough, but why does he wants us to think that David Koch can't change his mind too?

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Odd, I checked and I'm not homeless

For years I've seen left-wing advocates share maps claiming that there are no places in America where someone can afford to live in an apartment on minimum wage. Well, it turns out their logic is grossly misleading.

Click on the blue map above and to the left for the actual numbers of the claim.

I always mistakenly rejected this on the assumption that they simply mean that's what is costs for a person living without roommates must earn. As Bryan Caplan wrote on the social safety net and roommates:

To put it more concretely: Before anyone starts collecting welfare, it is more than fair to ask them - for starters - to try to solve their own problem by taking on some roommates. Is it beneath their dignity to live like college students? I think not.

That always seemed to satisfy me, and refute a lot of the Nickel and Dimed crowd bellyaching about it being impossible to live on minimum wage. These were people who weren't willing to make lifestyle sacrifices and wanted the government to subsidize their Starbucks and beer.

Well, it turns out I was giving the activists too much credit. A piece I stumbled across this week showed the numbers being used are dishonestly mislabeled:

It’s conventional wisdom in personal finance that housing costs shouldn’t exceed 30% of your income. What this chart is actually measuring isn’t how many hours you would have to work at minimum wage to afford a two bedroom apartment, it’s measuring how many hours an individual would have to work for an apartment meant to house two people – and have it only consume 30% of their income. 

The chart thus doesn’t measure how many hours of work it takes to pay for rent, it measures the amount of hours it takes to earn rent – times three!

Hmm, sometimes figures are presented misleadingly and we gloss over the fine points when we read a chart or graph. However, in this case the chart merely states "Hours needed to afford apartment" and later on says this is in a week, not a month. That's a completely dishonest way to say one needs to keep the rent in the 30 percent bracket.

Notice another detail that was left out - this is for a two-bedroom apartment, not a single apartment. That's an easy way to inflate figures, but not relevant when most minimum wage workers aren't the sole earner in a household.

But wait, there's more.

Politifact didn't respond to this map, but last month it did respond to a related viral image that claims "There is no state in the U.S. where a 40-hour minimum wage work week is enough to afford a two-bedroom apartment," While it rated this "mostly true," it went into the 30 percent detail that was glossed over and exposed another crucial detail: This is the average Fair Market Rent, not the average rent people pay.

The group left out a key distinction from the study they cite: Minimum wage workers can’t afford a two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent, a number determined by the federal government for each region set at the 40th percentile of all rents in that area. 

That means that in some areas, minimum wage earners would be able to find and afford housing that is cheaper than the Fair Market Rent. Though, in states where rent is more expensive, minimum wage earners would not be able to afford apartments even well below the Fair Market Rent.

I'm a little confused why they generously rated this as "mostly true" when Megan Bolton of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a spokesperson for the activist group that crunched the numbers for this claim, admitted that someone can live alone for minium wage. Using their 30 percent figure, that gives a full-time minimum wage worker $377 to spend on rent in a month.

"Absolutely, certainly there are places with rents at $377, especially if you’re in smaller areas, and they may be of okay quality," Bolton said. "If a minimum wage earner can get an apartment at that price, it would be affordable for them."

So there are indeed places where in American where someone can afford an apartment on minimum wage. Sounds like "mostly false" to me.

The above chart being passed around represents 2012 numbers. Click here for the 2014 numbers from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Notice that the chart starts by saying, "In no state can a minimum wage worker afford a two-bedroom rental unit at Fair Market Rent, working a standard 40-hour work week, without paying more than 30% of their income." That lakes the bite of the popular claim that no one can afford to live in an apartment on minimum wage, but at least they are being upfront about what the numbers represent.

However, I'm still not convinced it's accurate. Matt, Palumbo, showed that the numbers don't make sense in New Jersey where he lives. Looking at their related chart of what a full-time worker needs to make to pay rent, I can see that in my apartment in Massachusetts I must make $24.08 to be able to pay my rent.

When I first moved here in 2011, I was making $13.50 an hour, hardly minimum wage but still below what they say is needed to live. I was also living in a one-bedroom apartment. With what I'm making now, this chart says I'm still only making five-eighths, or about 62.5 percent, of what it would cost to have a second bedroom, despite the difference in rents between single-and-double apartments being rather small.

So how come I'm not homeless? I'll admit, I'm still on my parents cell phone plan, but I'm not getting any government assistance or regular outside source of income. Perhaps these numbers are horribly skewed by the high rents in Boston. Either way, I've been living below what they say is possible for a long time.

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Affirmtive consent is the new Patriot Act

I've been writing against "consent" campaigns for years, as they promote the idea that all sex is assumed to be rape unless any female participants blatantly declare they want to partake. I even wrote about this when I was a college student myself.

Last month it become an actual law in California, although it strangely only applies to college students. In my conversations with supporters of the law, I was constantly told that it will not be used against innocent people, that it sets a reasonable standard for bedroom behavior and absolutely will not declare loving couples to be mutual rapists.

In short, I was told that the law is well-written and there will not be any negative side effects.

Well, Ezra Klein completely threw that narrative out the window this week. He confirmed that all of my fears would come true, called the law "terrible" but then he went ahead and said it's worth it.

For example, Klein wrote:

It tries to change, through brute legislative force, the most private and intimate of adult acts. It is sweeping in its redefinition of acceptable consent; two college seniors who've been in a loving relationship since they met during the first week of their freshman years, and who, with the ease of the committed, slip naturally from cuddling to sex, could fail its test.

But, Klein claims, it's all worth it because there is an ongoing epidemic of rape on college campuses. That's a dubious claim, but suppose it were true. He's saying that since we're in the middle of a crisis we need to sacrifice civil liberties and due process to protect people.

Does it sound like the Patriot Act yet?

If the Yes Means Yes law is taken even remotely seriously it will settle like a cold winter on college campuses, throwing everyday sexual practice into doubt and creating a haze of fear and confusion over what counts as consent. This is the case against it, and also the case for it. Because for one in five women to report an attempted or completed sexual assault means that everyday sexual practices on college campuses need to be upended, and men need to feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.

Okay, now he just sounds like a supervillain talking to a chained-up hero.

Klein's remarks drew a lot of criticism, prompting a second post where he doubled down and argued even louder that there's an ongoing crisis, then made some bogus claims about the legal system, which drew even more criticism.

This same week, 28 Harvard law professors, including Alan Dershowitz, penned a joint statement criticizing efforts to bring affirmative consent laws to Harvard. The New York Times put the law professors head to head with social justice undergrads in an article featuring non-insightful comments like, “It just seems like they’re defending those who are accused of sexual assault."

Guilty as charged on this accusation, among other things. I completely confess that opponents of these witch hunts are indeed motivated by wanting people accused of terrible crimes to have a fair legal defense.

I want to live in a free country, and you can't have a free country where loving couples are labeled rapists if they refuse to follow a seduction checklist provided by puritanical busybodies.
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Whiny humor isn't funny

I'm a consistent Buzzfeed.com hater, as inspired by the website's bad science fearmongering, unexamined superficial politics and "articles" that are just a collection of stupid GIFs.

One of the other trends I've noticed is Buzzfeed's collection of social justice complaints presented as comedy videos. Examples include If Black Women Said The Stuff White Guys Say, If Lesbians Said The Stuff Straight People Say and If Asians Said The Stuff White People Say.

They feature quick cuts of minority actors and actresses saying stupid, offensive things to other people ad nauseam. Somehow, it manages to get old and repetitive in less than two minutes

Satire and humor have long been tools used to advance ideas and political positions, but in this case the execution is too hamfisted and preachy to be funny. Go on, watch one. Are we really supposed to believe that white people in conversations with Asians regularly say "Look at me, I'm Asian" and slant their eyes with their fingers? Are we supposed to knowingly laugh in response, saying to ourselves how true and insightful this is?

Whining isn't funny, and the prevalence of these videos suggest that social justice humor isn't really about humor.




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Take Mitch McConnell with you

Please oh please let Mike Huckabee's follow through on the threat he made on a radio station Tuesday, where he criticized the GOP for not fighting hard enough against gay marriage, and potentially giving up on the issue.

If the the Republicans want to lose guys like me and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people, go ahead and just abdicate on this issue and while you're at it, go ahead and say abortion doesn't matter either. At that point, you lose me. I'll become an independent. I'll start finding people that have guts to stand.

Does he mean it? If so, not only would the Republicans lose a major social conservative leader, but he could potentially siphon off a large portion of similar party members. Imagine that, we could potentially have Republican leaders who focus on economic issues and don't get bogged down holding back science and human rights.

Who knows, some of them might even try to cut spending, instead of merely cutting taxes. 

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Reclaiming social liberalism from the jerks

Freddie deBoer at the Daily Dish has written the most important short essay on the thorny transformation of social liberalism of this year, from the perspective of someone in the trenches.

It's hard not to share the entire thing, but here's the two paragraphs that stab the heart of the matter

I guess what it all comes down to, for me, is that social liberalism was once an alternative that enabled people to pursue whatever types of consensual personal behavior they wanted, and thus was a movement that increased individual freedom and happiness. It was the antidote to Jerry Fallwell telling you that you were going to hell, to Nancy Reagan saying “just say no,” to your conservative parents telling you not to be gay, to Pat Robertson saying don’t have sex, to Tipper Gore telling you that you couldn’t listen to the music you like, to don’t have sex, don’t do drugs, don’t wear those clothes, don’t walk that way, don’t have fun, don’t be yourself. So of course that movement won. It was a positive, joyful, human, freeing alternative to an exhausted, ugly, narrow vision of how human beings should behave.

DeBoer is still a proud supporter of social justice causes and beliefs, but sees the actions of the modern activists as alienating and puritanical.

Suppose you’re a young college student inclined towards liberal or left-wing ideas. And suppose, like a lot of such college students, you enjoy Stephen Colbert and find him a political inspiration. Now imagine that, during the #CancelColbert fiasco, you defended Colbert on Twitter. If your defense was noticed by the people who police that forum, the consequences were likely to be brutal. People would not have said “here, let me talk you through this.” It wouldn’t have been a matter of friendly and inviting disagreement. Instead, as we all saw, it would have been immediate and unequivocal attack. That’s how the loudest voices on Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook act. The culture is one of attack, rather than of education. And the claims, typically, are existential: not “this thing you said is problematic from the standpoint of race,” but rather “you’re a racist.” Not “I think there’s some gender issues going here that you should think about,” but “you’re a misogynist.” Always. I know that there are kinder voices out there in socially liberal circles on social media, but unfortunately, when these cyclical storms get going, those voices are constantly drowned out.

Exactly. There is no complexity or room for growth with modern social justice warriors. One is either completely on their side and uses every pre-approved term and label, or they are a racist, misogynist, homophobe etc.

The anecdote to these simplistic black and white thinking was well-articulated by Jay Smooth, a young modern activist himself, who said it's important to make the distinction between saying someone is a racist, or something particular that they said was racist.

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New evil with the face of old victims

Ross Douthat has written an excellent column on the Rotherham rape crisis, where a Pakistani community in England contained about 1,400 rapes because authorities failed to respond to reports.

In a somewhat similar way, what happened in Rotherham was rooted both in left-wing multiculturalism and in much more old-fashioned prejudices about race and sex and class. The local bureaucracy was, indeed, too fearful of being labeled “racist,” too unwilling, as a former member of Parliament put it, to “rock the multicultural community boat.” But the rapes also went unpunished because of racially inflected misogyny among police officers, who seemed to think that white girls exploited by immigrant men were “tarts” who deserved roughly what they got.

Well said, Douthat, but he went on to make a point that I think speaks well of the harm and vileness  that comes from hyper-aggressive social justice crusaders:

The point is that as a society changes, as what’s held sacred and who’s empowered shifts, so do the paths through which evil enters in, the prejudices and blind spots it exploits. 

So don’t expect tomorrow’s predators to look like yesterday’s. Don’t expect them to look like the figures your ideology or philosophy or faith would lead you to associate with exploitation. 

Expect them, instead, to look like the people whom you yourself would be most likely to respect, most afraid to challenge publicly, or least eager to vilify and hate. 

Because your assumptions and pieties are evil’s best opportunity, and your conventional wisdom is what’s most likely to condemn victims to their fate.

In many cases, the counterculture is now the establishment, and former victims are forming lynch mobs.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for the link.


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Great journalism on the men's rights movement

VICE reporter Alex Brook Lynn has just done a multimedia piece on both the women of the men's rights movement, and the entire movement itself.

It is phenomenal. I endorse it with every clinging scrap out clout I have.

The full video and article are here. The following embedded video is a one-minute trailer:





What really stands out to me here is that we get to see both the valid points the men's rights movement cares about as well as the scumbag tactics the activists use. Issues like domestic violence against men and the new definition of rape need to be discussed and addressed, and I'm glad people are out there fighting for this cause, but as I wrote last April I absolutely loathe the tactics they are using.

In the video, you see one of the activists proudly states that they are using the Malcom X approach, which is contrasted with the always reasonable and soft-spoken Warren Farrell who uses a peaceful, MLK approach. The movement is dominated with hyperbole and bomb throwers and they acknowledge this openly. Like CancelColbert social justice warrior Suey Park stated in March, they admit they are purposely saying outrageous things to get attention.

Bad journalism serves to advance an agenda or glosses over nuances in search of a good story. Good journalism informs and enlightens. It would have been very easy for Lynn to create yet another hit piece focusing on the bad tactics and dismissing men's issues, but instead Lynn has done the modern world a service by framing this subject in a way that is both fair and moving.

Bravo.
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Smoking up state's rights

A friend recently posed this question to me:

I am wondering what you think of the inconsistency of Democrats and liberals claiming that marijuana policy "should be left to the states" while simultaneously criticizing arguments for "states' rights" as coded racist/discriminatory" language? This strikes me as a sort of wanting to have the cake and eat it too situation.

That's easy. I never saw that as a sincere criticism of states rights.

Like most accusations of modern racism, it seems to be an emotionally-satisfying way some members of the left can dismiss their opponents without having to have a real debate. I think coded words and dog whistles are largely delusional.

 I very much believe in states rights for the old laboratories of democracy reason and I think everyone should embrace them. For example, Card and Krueger's revolutionary (and still controversial) 1992 paper on small increases in the minimum wage failing to hurt employment was only possible because of the laws being different in different states.

I think liberals who support letting the states decide have figured out it's better to get some smaller victories now instead of waiting for the whole country to come around. For example, here in Massachusetts we've had legal gay marriage for 10 years. While today 19 states recognize gay marriage, 31 don't. If not for states rights we would have zero states without gay marriage today.

I do have one qualm with my friend's premise: Despite being a liberal himself, he is accusing Democrats and progressives of categorical hypocrisy. While I'm sure there's some overlap, I don't know for a fact that there are specific individuals that hold those two opposing views. He is treating a diverse group as if it was homogeneous.

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Accounting vs. Economics

I've never been a big Scott Sumner follower, but I read something he wrote earlier this month and I haven't been able to get it out of my head.

Here's a common theme I see. Most liberals prefer to think like accountants, not economists. The dismal science focuses too much on the "no free lunch" concept. The idea that there are trade-offs, that incentives affect behavior. The idea that making failure less costly, also makes it more likely to occur.

That was a huge eureka moment for me. A few days after I read that I attended a left-wing anti poverty conference for work. I wasn't impressed with the framing most of the issues received, and I felt like Scott Sumner was yelling in my ear the whole time. The policies they advocated assumed a static world, where people will keep doing what they're doing now ever after new policies are introduced that will change their incentives.

For example, the minimum wage was introduced as a way to help the impoverished. It came up over and over again as a basic transfer of wealth from the business owners to workers. There was zero pushback, such as concerns about jobs being cut, people with more impressive resumes taking the jobs away from unskilled poor workers or price increases that will harm poor consumers. They simply assumed a static world, except with money moving from one pile to another.

Frédéric Bastiat famously wrote:

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

Sumner did not call liberal economists bad economists. In fact, he praised them for coming around in the 1990s and championing market-based policies - something left wing economists still embrace. Instead, he was talking about the left in general.

It's normal for non-economists to have terrible, warped view on economic matters. It is the default, sadly. But what's troubling here is the way progressives attempt to mettle with economic matters by treating it as a series of accounting issues. They don't seem to realize that their attempts at moving money around changes the way people behave, and it explains why so many of their policies don't work as planned.

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The obnoxiousness of open carry

I'm a gun owner and I have a concealed weapons permit that I use occasionally. I generally support gun rights and oppose many gun control measures.

That being said, I don't understand the activists who insist on openly carrying long guns, such as magazine-fed rifles and shot guns.

Recently an NRA staffer penned an online post criticizing the practice, calling it "weird" and adding, "Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners."

I agree, but the NRA officially does not. After a Texas open carry group got upset the NRA retracted the statement. They said was only one person's opinion and the organization disagrees with it.

Look, I can understand open carry for a handgun, as sometimes it's cumbersome to try to cover up my weapon with a loose shirt or jacket, such as during the summertime. It makes sense to have holstered handguns available as an option.

But what doesn't make sense is carrying an AR-15 across one's back and pretending to go about one's day as if it's perfectly normal.

The ability to posses a weapon for one's own protection is a human right that I believe strongly in, but this is just showboating. What happens when you try to sit down somewhere or drive? This is not a casual item one throws on loosely.

Open carry long gunners are the gun rights equivalent of gay pride parade dudes in speedos and platform shoes. Yes, they have a right to do so, but must they do that in public?

It's revolting to see police punish people for actions that are legal, and it's also revolting to see political fanboys giggle with evil glee as Americans are illegally arrested because the police fail to understand the law. But as Ken's Law states, just because one group is obnoxious doesn't mean the other side is clean. Open carry advocates are being unfairly targeted by the police AND they are inconsiderate freaks.
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At least there's still Bill Maher

People are sometimes confused that I'm a Bill Maher fan. This weekend he reminded me why I admire him with a segment telling liberals to halt the outrage and to stop trying to blacklist everyone.

I've long been a critic against efforts to yank someone's speaking platform away because of something they said, a scenario that happened to Maher a decade ago, and Maher nailed it:

A few weeks ago, the CEO of Mozilla was forced to resign because it was revealed in 2008, he supported Prop 8, California's ban on gay marriage. A bad law, yes, but 52 percent of Californians voted for it. Did they have to resign? Obama was against gay marriage in 2008, does he have to resign? Hillary came around just last year, can she be president?

The transcript is here, and the video is below.

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Bundyonomics

I have one more thing to say about Cliven Bundy before I let him fall into obscurity.

Bundy's entire case was about being able to graze his cattle on public land. The federal government wanted to restrict grazing on their land for conservation efforts.

This case is so close to the hypothetical example in the tragedy of the commons that it sounds almost made-up. The entire lesson, which libertarians and capitalists should understand, is why it matters that we have private property and the ability to exclude the use of resources by the public.

I know it's now the default to oppose Bundy because he said some obnoxious racially-insensitive things, but can't we also call him out for being something of a socialist?
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Props

I'm a little late to the Cliven Bundy party, but I want to give credit to two different entities for their handling of the Cliven Bundy situation with the Bureau of Land Management.

The first one is to Glenn Beck for being the voice of reason. Like Beck, I have a big concern with our ever-expanding federal government, and going into this story it looked like a federal agency was over responding with a thuggish display of force. Beck unraveled that narrative and revealed Bundy as a violence-monger who the government treated with patience for years.

Beck was confronted with someone who agreed with many of his politics, but had disturbing violent desires. To his credit, Beck did exactly what the socialist George Orwell did when he encountered Joseph Stalin: He dedicated himself to destroying him as an enemy.

Beck's framing of the split among liberty-seekers over Bundy is the definitive way to look at this situation, as the peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr. approach versus the violence Malcom X approach.

I like Beck, but he makes himself a whipping boy of the left with his support for the gold standard, declaring America a Christian nation and general  alarmism. It's risky to embrace Beck, but I don't care. Adults can see that Beck has been brilliant on this issue and it reflects well on his character and intelligence.

The other entity that needs credit here is the federal government and President Obama.

Bundy and his militia supporters probably don't want to die, but if they do die they want to become martyrs. The strategy they chose was to put the women in the front so if either side starts a shootout, the cameras will show the women being shot. That's some Occupy Wall Street-style propagandizing, and sadly fools fall for it.

I don't like seeing police forces back down from protesters who are essentially holding themselves hostage, but it was a smart move the government played here by ending the standoff and slinking away. Bundy was trying to make another Ruby Ridge or Waco here, and the Obama administration denied him that play.



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The worst argument against anything

People don't like to change their views, even when confronted with good evidence or arguments against their positions. Our minds are skilled at using various tricks to comfort us when we resist the urge to change with new information.

Of course, it's extremely aggravating when other people use those tricks in front of us to shrug off our brilliant opinions. The one I find most frustrating is the idea that yes, my complaint is legitimate, but I shouldn't bother talking about it because there's another issue that is more important.

For example, I recently wrote about a false story that Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson was trying to block fracking near his home, or block water extraction intended for fracking near his home, and a far-left friend responded on social media that I should ignore this topic and only talk about Exxon receiving tax breaks.

So pointing out lies and disproving bad arguments is only something we should do when it hurts things we care about? Does anyone actually believe that?

I hear it when someone criticizes police and prosecutors for letting false rape accusers escape criminal charges (We should be talking about real rapes!) or wants to stop welfare abuse (Corporate Welfare is a bigger issue so let's not talk about that!)

This isn't a liberal vs. conservative thing; it's a universal bogus tactic. One could be arguing against the abuse of American prisoners and be told that that they should instead focus on the treatment of crime victims. We can care about feminist issues in America and the treatment of women in backwards poor countries, and not pick one over another.

Talk is cheap, and having a conversation about a topic doesn't have to pass a cost-benefit analysis. We can all make an infinite number of complaints. Prioritizing is for solutions, and when you want to actually focus resources on solving a problem that's when the cost-benefit analysis comes into play.

Until then, gripe away.


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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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