Mini-Snopes: yet another congressional pay edition

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about this one. It's back. If you see it, help kill it.

Let's be clear. Neither members of Congress, nor the President, nor the Vice President get their pay for life. That is bullshit. Think about it for a minute. Do you really think some one-term, House member is going to get his pay for life after only "working" for two years? Even if you're going to be extra cynical and say "they would if they could," the correct answer is, they couldn't and they never will.

Members of Congress get a civil service pension just like the person delivering your mail, processing Social Security checks, or sending you your tax return. It's a formula based on the number of years they worked for the government times their highest pay grade times a fractional multiplier. The total cannot equal their final pay, even if they were boyhood friends with Jefferson Davis, like Strom Thurmond was. Ever since they began to pay for Social Security and Medicare in 1984, members of Congress been part of the civil service pension program.

I'm all for economic populism, but let's focus on the right things. How much pay Congress makes is not important. How much pay you make is. How much Social Security and Medicare your parents, grandparents, or you collect is. How much food, rent, and medical support other vulnerable Americans get is. These are the issues and people that are important. You should care more about what they aren't getting than you should about what a few hundred congress members get. If you've fallen into the the trap of hating the poor, then do it for the veterans. Many of them are poor, old, hungry, and sick. Everyone loves the veterans, in theory. It's too bad they don't care as much for the civilians that the veterans were protecting.

There are good reasons to cast a jaundiced eye on the benefits package congress gets. A lying internet meme is not one of them.

Mini-Snopes: executive orders edition

This is only marginally a Mini-Snopes. The meme below doesn't really come out and claim BS, so much as imply it on multiple levels.

Since this is being passed around in anti-Obama circles, let's start with that. Is the executive order something Obama made up? No. Not even close. Executive orders have been around since the founding of the republic. George Washington issued executive orders. With the exception of William Henry Harrison, who spent most of his 32 days as president dying of pneumonia, every president has issued executive orders during their tenure. Before the Civil War, executive orders were fairly rare. Even Lincoln only saw fit to issue forty-eight. In the Twentieth Century, that number dramatically increased with most presidents issuing that many every year. 

That said, has Obama used executive orders more than others? Again, the answer is no, not even close. FDR, who had the Depression and Hitler to deal with, comes in first with almost 300 per year. Small government Republican Herbert Hoover is number two with almost 250 per year. Is Obama number three? Still no. Reagan's favorite president, Calvin Coolidge comes in third and Harry Truman comes in fourth. After that four, the number per year dropped dramatically with no president issuing over 100 per year. 

Well, where does Obama fit into this? Surely he has the biggest count of executive orders since then. No, no, and further no. Let's look at the last five presidents. During his first term, St. Reagan issued 213, in his second 168. GHW Bush issued 166 during his only term, Clinton, 200 and 164, and GW Bush, 173 and 118. Obama's first term saw 147, except for W's second term, the smallest number of executive orders since Truman. Last year saw 21 executive orders, which is a number not seen since Lincoln.

So, the implication that Obama has depended on executive orders more than other presidents is flat out dishonest. The exact opposite is closer to the truth. What about the less subtle implication that this somehow is tyrannical or unconstitutional? Executive orders have been used constantly since the Constitution was written. The people who actually fought against a monarchy thought executive orders were compatible with American democracy and used them.

Well, what's the problem? Do I even need to say it? The problem is Obama. The people who spread these memes think anything Obama does is unconstitutional and tyrannical. If Obama made a statement in favor of oxygen, we'd see a mile long line of blue-faced Republicans, Fox pundits, and right-wing bloggers clamoring to be the first to point out that Hitler also breathed oxygen.

Aside from an irrational hatred of anything Obama does and a willingness to misrepresent anything he does, a meme like this shows the overwhelming ignorance of the author and anyone who reposts it of history and the Constitution. As I showed above, issuing executive orders is a normal part of the job of the President. The President is the head of the executive branch. He is the boss of almost all of the civil servants employed by the American people. He would be derelict in his duty if he did not issue orders. Like it or not, the size and complexity of the federal government is greater than it was in Washington's time and therefore needs more direction. Issuing executive orders does not undermine, circumvent, or otherwise ruffle the Constitution. Every executive order is subject to the same judicial review as laws passed by Congress. As to tyranny, making such a claim, like Nazi and Holocaust analogies, makes light of the experience of people who have suffered the real thing. 

Using the powers of the presidency to do something you disagree with is not tyrannical, not illegal, not unconstitutional, not un-American, and not hypocritical. Not getting your way everyday is the price you pay for living in a democracy. Crying persecution, kicking over the board, threatening secession, coup, and assassination is childish, dangerous, and, frankly, bad for America. In summary, this meme is not just wrong, it's dangerously wrong.

Glaucoma and GOP health solutions

This morning my glasses disintegrated beyond even the ability of paperclips to repair. Fortunately, when I packed up, I made sure to put a few pairs of old glasses in the box of desk things. I picked out the pair that is best for driving and went to the nearest optometrist (about twelve miles away). The receptionist asked if I just wanted the glasses replaced or if I wanted a check-up. The old lenses are over five years old and I'm going through the middle-aged phase of my close-up vision changing, so I cringed over the cost and said yes to a checkup. Glaucoma runs in my family. I really should have a full exam every year and it's been two years since my last exam. That means I'm getting the full exam, which means I'll have to wait a few extra days to replace my glasses. Meanwhile, none of the old glasses I have any any good for reading or computering. This means I'm trying out the handicapped settings on the computer. Right now, I have the browser set at 200%. I can't take three or more days off from writing. I'm typing this on Notepad in 28 point font. Those modifications are good enough for reading and writing, though the keyboard is a bit fuzzy.

This is more than an inconvenience for me. It's a solid reminder of the problems of being unemployed and uninsured. Skipping my glaucoma check is Russian roulette. My grandmother, my mom, and my late little sister all had serious glaucoma. Bonnie lost half the vision in one eye because of it. If my glasses had held together, I would have continued to put off the exam. Having to make cost/benefit calculations over something as important as my vision is a terrible thing to do. And it pisses me off. While I sat here trying to figure out how to tape, glue, or wire my glasses back together, I kept thinking of two particular conservative arguments about healthcare and how they relate to my risk of glaucoma.

The first was their mantra that no one lacks medical care in the US because there are emergency rooms. That argument is disingenuous and laughable from several different perspectives. The primary purpose of the argument is to deny that there is a healthcare crisis. Not long ago I had it thrown at me by a relative when I mentioned that an old friend of mine with cancer had died from a lack of insurance. Emergency rooms are for emergencies. They are for accidents and victims of violent crime. They are not a place for me to go for a routine eye exam. And, if I do get glaucoma they will not be the place for me to get my medications or monitoring any more than they are for diabetics. And when Chuck had his cancer, at what point, exactly, did his pain become an emergency? Would an ER have performed the surgery to remove his tumors or supplied the chemotherapy he needed? Emergency rooms are the most expensive way to acquire healthcare. They drive up costs for all of us, and they don't give it away. Hospitals bill patients for ER visits. If the patient can't pay that bill, the cost gets passed on to everyone else who uses the hospital.

The second argument builds on the problem of delay and cost. Even the most rabid conservatives can't deny that healthcare costs have been rising much faster than the rate of inflation or people's incomes. They have three explanations for this problem, all of which are lame. First, people get too much in malpractice settlements. Malpractice insurance is a tiny part of the cost of doing business for doctors and hospitals and hasn't gone up anywhere nearly as much as medical costs. In may states it has gone down. Second, regulations. It's always regulations with these guys. Can they point to the specific new regulations over the last ten or twenty years that have driven the rise in costs? No. When medical professionals complain about paperwork, most of it comes from insurance companies. Third, people using too much healthcare. What? People ("those" people, not us) going to the doctor too often. The first two are so old and worn out that it's not worth spending any more time on them than I already have. It's that third one that I want to beat up on.

Like the ER mantra, this an argument that someone came up with not long ago that has now been repeated enough that it has become accepted wisdom on the right, even though it's completely stupid. The way it is usually described is: insurance pays for too much; because insurance pays for going to the doctor, people go to the doctor too often; if insurance paid for less, people would not go to the doctor and make the insurance companies pay as often; this would lead to more profit for the insurance companies; when the insurance companies feel they are making enough profit, they'll stop raising prices. This, my friends, is how the magic of the free market brings prices down.

Aside from its utter ridiculousness, this argument is also mean-spirited and irresponsible. It's mean-spirited in that it's victim blaming. In saying too many people go to the doctor too often, conservative pundits are not telling their audiences that they go to the doctor too often. No. They are saying that "those people" go to the doctor too often. Who are "those people"? Illogically, "those people" are the undeserving people who want the government to step in and help them with their health costs. That is to say, the people who use too much health insurance are the people without health insurance: the poor, minorities, and older people who aren't quite old enough for Medicare.

If the plan embodied in this argument was actually enacted, it would have almost the exact same negative effect as the current ER situation. Make it more expensive to go to the doctor and people will go to the doctor less often, even if they should. People will get less preventative care and catch fewer problems early on when they are cheaper to treat and when the prospects of total recovery are much higher. The actual effect of this plan, like the ER plan, is that total costs are actually higher and more people die, are permanently disabled, or, in my own example, go blind.

I hope, that when I finally get my glaucoma check on Wednesday, nothing will be wrong. I would be a lot more confident if I were able to have this check-up every year like the doctor recommends. As for the rest of my body, I haven't had a full check-up in three years and don't expect to have one anytime soon unless I get that insurance that the Republican Party is determined to make sure I do not get.

Just how badly do we treat our teachers

This chart just showed up on my Facebook feed.

It's an odd chart, with no explanations. I think most of my friends will have the same reaction as I did, a resigned sigh over how badly we treat teachers in this country. Unfortunately, there were other reactions. Of the twenty or so comments I read, this is the stupidest.

Ryan Kaiser Lol just goes to show that all those extra hours they work do nothing for the outcome of our students and if they turned out more students with better skills I would opt to pay them more but until then keep slaving on teachers that are not producing and thank you to all those who are.

Mr. Kaiser's English and logic teachers need to hang their heads in shame, though perhaps there were extenuating circumstances, such as--oh, I don't know--overwork. I suppose he's one of those who think we need to kill their unions,raise the price of their insurance, take their pensions, and give them guns (logic teacher hangs head in shame second time).

The countries are selected from the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but several have been left out, Canada (if you want to comment on social metrics in the US, our slightly poorer, but culturally highly similar neighbor is usually a good data point to include), Sweden, Israel, and most East European countries. Why were those excluded? What's the deal with Sweden and Turkey? Is GDP per capita the best metric for pay? Why not compared to average or median income or some kind of cost of living index? We would do a little better on either of those measures. How did they determine hours worked? The 1500 hours they credit the US teachers as working is apparently based on nine months of 40 hour weeks. Most teaches I know would have a hearty laugh at the idea they only work 40 hours. Then they would reach for a glass of box wine and break down weeping. Is the hours estimate as unrealistic for other countries?

Who cares? As Mr. Kaiser says, "the floggings will continue until morale improves!

The worst possible example

The Washington pundit class is in love with the idea of bipartisanship and compromise for their own sake. That is, they don't really care what actual laws are passed or policies adopted as long as they represent bipartisanship. If you were going to argue for this, you would probably look for good examples from the past of both sides giving a little to move forward on an important issue. But, what if you were looking for a bad example? What if you wanted an example of compromise that brought shame on the American form of government? What would be your choice as the worst possible example of compromise and bipartisanship in American history? It might be this one:

One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted to count the whole slave population, which would have given the South greater influence over national policy. Northern delegates argued that slaves should not be counted at all, because they had no vote. As the price for achieving the ultimate aim of the Constitution—"to form a more perfect union"—the two sides compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together. 

Some might suggest that the constitutional compromise reached for the lowest common denominator—for the barest minimum value on which both sides could agree. I rather think something different happened. Both sides found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union. They set their sights higher, not lower, in order to identify their common goal and keep moving toward it.

James Wagner, the President of Emory University in Atlanta, wrote those words in an editorial entitled "As American as … Compromise" for the university's alumni magazine. I'm not sure when the winter issue of Emory Magazine began hitting people's mailboxes, it could have been months ago because no one ever reads these Letter from the President columns. But it began getting attention yesterday, including attention from the Black Student Alliance.

For those who aren't sure what he's talking about, this is what is usually called the "Three-Fifths Compromise" in the US Constitution. The Constitution requires the federal government to take a census every ten years and to use the census numbers to apportion seats in the House of Representatives. Each state is told how many seats they get and the states draw their own congressional districts according to their own processes. That sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Well it wasn't. The Southern states had, within their boundaries, a huge number of people who were not allowed to vote, who weren't really citizens, African slaves. The Northern states had a much larger population of real citizens than the South. The Southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention assumed that the main divisions in the new congress would be regional and wanted more power for their region. They demanded that slaves be counted in the apportioning of House seats, giving them more power in Congress and in the Electoral College. Northern delegated argued that the apportioning of House seats should reflect the number of voters in each state. Eventually, a compromise was reached allowing the Southern states to claim three-fifths of the number of slaves in each state for the purpose of apportioning of House seats. Wagner was holding up one of the most shameful examples of compromise in American history as a shining example of doing things right.

There is one popular misconception about the "Three-Fifths Compromise" and that is that it implied that African slaves were three-fifths of a person. This is often brought up as a grave injustice against the ancestors of African-Americans. That would have been an improvement of their lot or, at least, a concession that they were entitled to a certain amount of human dignity. Prior to the Civil War, slaves were not people at all; they were property; they were zero-fifths of a person. The only concessions that African slaves were even marginally human was their forced conversion to Christianity and the fact that laws were eventually passed making it illegal to kill a slave without first conducting a sham trial.

I imagine that when President Wagner arrives in his office Tuesday morning he will find several unpleasant message waiting for him including requests for interviews from local and even national media. Someone from the University's press office is probably already spoiling his three-day weekend. What will happen next is that he will issue a standard non-apology apology. He's sorry IF anyone took offense. He won't admit he was wrong to say it; he's just sorry he created a shit-storm. He'll call it a "misstatement," meaning his argument is valid, he just chose a bad example.

So, what was his point? It's hard to tell because, even without that horrifying example, its a really badly written column. He starts out saying some "distinguished public servant," speaking on a forum last Fall, mentioned political polarization, the Constitution, and compromise. He them pulls out the three-fifth compromise as a shining example that we should try to emulate. Then he mentions the fiscal debate. He's halfway through the column now. This, he says is just like trying to consider different view points in a university. Then something about teaching liberal arts classes at a research university. Maybe he's arguing for creationism in the biology classes. It's impossible to tell what compromise he's talking about.

I cannot imagine anyone defending this mess except those who think every word in the constitution was dictated by God and white supremacists (just to be clear, I'm not saying the two are the same). In any case, It's not going to be fun to be James Wagner for the next week or so. He'll be lucky to get out of this with his job.

Update: And he's already issued the non-apology apology: " Certainly, I do not consider slavery anything but heinous, repulsive, repugnant, and inhuman. I should have stated that fact clearly in my essay. I am sorry for the hurt caused by not communicating more clearly my own beliefs. To those hurt or confused by my clumsiness and insensitivity, please forgive me."

Mini-Snopes vs. British crime statistics

Yesterday, a conservative friend of mine posted on Facebook that gun crime numbers in the UK have gone through the roof since the government banned guns. Of course they didn't ban all guns, but that's beside the point. It took some pushing to find out his source. It came from Jim Hoft's blog on the site of the libertarian magazine Human Events. The Human Events blog post was, in turn, a block quote of a column on the far right site Townhall by News Editor Katie Pavlich. The quote my friend gave began with this:

Since NBC sportscaster Bob Costas gave us an anti-gun lecture two weeks ago during Sunday Night Football, we've heard a lot from progressives like Juan Williams, Bob Beckel and anti-gun advocacy groups about how countries in Europe with strict gun control laws don’t have problems with gun crime. We've also heard the reason the United States has a "gun crime problem" is because we allow citizens to own handguns however, the numbers on violent crime committed using a gun tell a different story.

That's Pavlich's introduction to a block quote from the British conservative tabloid, The Daily Mail. Here's the key part of the Mail's article:

 The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.

Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.

It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.

Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.

That sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? That sure blows a hole in the liberals' argument that fewer guns make us safer. Not only does it not make us safer, it makes us less safe. When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns! And, for some reason, fewer guns seems to make criminals more likely to use theirs. So, why aren't we hearing about this on the news? Yes, I know the mainstream media is run by anti-American liberals, but why aren't we hearing about on Fox or talk radio? Could it be that it's complete BS? Yes, it could. If Pavlich had bothered to look at the top of the page on the Mail article, she would have noticed that the article was published on January 10, 2003, Those "Government's latest crime figures" refer to the 2001/2 reporting year. The figures are over ten years old.

Locating the correct figures and making sense of them took some work. When I did find them, this is what my crunching revealed. The British reporting figures are for England and Wales only. Northern Ireland is omitted because they are a special problem. Scotland has a different legal system, so the the definitions of crimes don't match up with those of its two southern neighbors. In the England and Wales statistics, total gun crimes includes air guns and fake guns. I eliminated air guns, which made up about half of the total gun crimes statistic. For the first two years below, fake guns were not separated out. The real gun figure should be a couple hundred smaller. The Daily Mail article includes fake guns in its figures.

In 1996, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton entered the grade school in Dunblane, Scotland, a town of less than 8000. He carried four handguns. Over the next few minutes, he killed sixteen five and six year-olds and one teacher who tried to shield the kids with her body. He wounded ten other children and three adults before killing himself. The next year, the government passed laws banning almost all handguns manufactured after 1917.

In 1996, the year of the Dunblane massacre, there were 6063 gun crimes in the UK (that includes fake guns).

In 1997, the year they phased in the new law outlawing handguns, the number went down to 4904, a 17% drop in one year.

In 1998, they separated fake guns from the real gun statistics.

In 2000/1, the number of gun crimes was up to 6683. That's the first number the Daily Mail article mentions. It's a huge increase. The UK was in the midst of an epidemic of drug-gang violence at the time.

In 2001/2, the second year in the Daily Mail article, the number had gone up to 8778, however, this number was inflated by some changes in definitions and reporting. In any case, everyone agrees that it was an increase over the year before.

Beginning in 2003, the numbers started going down and have continued ever since.

In 2010/1, the last year for which figures are available, the number had dropped to 5411. That's about ten percent lower than in the year of the Dunblane massacre. For comparison, in that year, the US had over 300,000 gun crimes.

These figures do not support the popular conservative argument that more guns equals less crime. Even if there was a rough correlation, it's naive to think that that one variable is the only factor determining how much crime we have. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

There are rational arguments that can be made on both sides of the gun control debate. Naturally, I find some more convincing than others. Your mileage may vary. No one is helped by using lies and BS to push their agenda.

PS: At some some point, Pavlich did find out that the Mail article is extremely out of date and admitted it (Hoft has not). Rather than simply say "oops" and move on, she went hunting for different statistics to support her argument. The Mail came to her rescue with a 2009 article referencing the 2007/8 figures. I guess five year-old figures are better than ten year-old figures.

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year--a rise of 89 per cent. 

I went back to my sources to figure out what the hell they're talking about. Both Mail articles used figures that included fake guns. My figures for real guns are 4643 in 1998/99 and 7403 for 2007/8. That's a 62% increase--big, but it's not 89%. That increase needs to be taken in the context of a six year trend of gun crimes decreasing and that the newer number uses methods that result in higher numbers than the earlier figure.

That's all fine and dandy, but what explains the difference between 89% and 62%. Here's something I missed my first time through. After the handgun ban went into effect, fake gun crime increased. In 1998/99 there were 566 fake gun crimes and in 2007/8 there were 2562, well over four times as many. The lesson here is that when guns are outlawed, outlaws will use toys.

Bonus fun fact: In her original article, Pavlich did not just rely on the Mail article to argue that more guns make us safer.

On top of these figures, the notoriously violent city of Washington D.C. just saw its murder rate fall below triple digits for the first time since 1963 and just four years after the Supreme Court overturned the city's handgun ban in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Boo yah! Who needs foreign statistics when we have genuine American anecdotes we can use. Okay, it's not really American, its a liberal, east-coast, big city. But that's even better since it shows the failure of nanny-state, socialist elites. Except it doesn't. Pavlich was good enough to provide us with a chart to make her point. It only covers murders, but that's a good stand-in for crime, especially violent crime.

Let's see, the gun ban was overturned in 2008. If her argument is valid, we should see a dramatic downturn in murders as soon as that happened. And look, there is a dramatic downturn in murders--starting in 1992 while the gun ban was in effect. In fact, the number of murders went down about 60% while the gun ban was in effect. After the gun ban was repealed, the decrease in murders continued at about the same pace. That does not support the argument that more guns means less crime. It does, however, support the argument that there might be some other factors that need to be considered along with the numbers of guns in our society if we really want to reduce violent crime.

I, mini-Snopes

In all the time I've been blogging, I've often checked out where people come from when they visit archy, but I've never looked their entrance page. That's the one  that tells me what they were looking for. About two weeks ago I started doing that and was amazed to see that most people were coming to look at an old Snopes-style debunking posts I'd written. Because there is a real Snopes out there, it had never occurred to me that my debunking had anymore value than just me blowing off steam. It just drives me crazy that people I know and like get taken in by chain letter like things on Facebook. The specific one that has been getting the most attention is this one playing on resentment towards the supposed cornucopia of benefits that undocumented immigrants get for coming to America.

When I mentioned this on Facebook, I suggested maybe I should open my own mini-Snopes. A couple friends said maybe I should. Thinking about it, I wish I could. The post I'm working on right now is a perfect example of the problem with this sort of rumor-mongering. There is an anti-gun control piece spreading across the internet today. A very little bit of research (really, less than a minute) revealed that it's BS. By the time I started looking into it, the lie had been picked up by two very big right wing sites. From there over 6000 blogs, fora, and what-have-yous had picked it up and were spreading it. Those who were brave enough to leave the right wing bubble were using it to troll left wing and moderate sites.

After hours of research and writing, I'll put my debunking up on my blog. I will. But, about seventy-five people a day visit my blog. I have no idea how many actually look at my front page or just determine that I have no nude pictures of Ann Coulter and move on. If people Google around trying to find out if something like this is true, where will my little blog rank on the six hundred pages of results? If Snopes picks it up--they might or they might not--they'll rank several hundred pages above me. I wish there were hundreds of mini-Snopses out there, even if they are just people who copy/paste our debunkings into fora after the right wing bubble children copy/paste their unsubstantiated propaganda there.

Moving back a couple paragraphs, for me, what is the cost-benefit analysis for doing this? On the plus side: 1) it allows me to blow off steam when I see my friends being manipulated, 2) I might educate them, and 3) they might be a little less credulous in the future. Okay, I put that last one in there for humorous purposes; no one escapes their bubble. Which leads us to 4) I'm funnier than Scopes. That helps.

On the minus side: 1) comprehensively researching these things takes a lot of time. Look at my debunking of the 90-foot plum tree. This is something I've been pondering for years. I own many of the sources I needed to research it. I spent well over a week writing that piece, off and on with my serious writing. For each of these Scopes things, I need to bring myself up to speed in a new field, track down the origin of the rumor, compose and write a response. And, it's best if I do it in a couple of news cycles. 2) There is more to number 1), but we needed a break here. Okay; are we all rested up? Good. 3) We were talking about how long this takes. Writing one of these things within news cycle time can take all of my time for a full day. For reasons I have mentioned before, I have very little free time. I must finish the book. Short breaks to write these things is good for clearing my mind for more mammoth writing; longer breaks fall into the minus side of the cost-benefit analysis.

So, four small things for, and one very, very large thing against. The objections really come down to two: 1) no one will notice (lots of linky-love will help there (PZ, I'm looking at you)) and 2) Time is money and I can't afford either. Is it worth trying to monetize such a small blog? The mighty and majestic Bora Zivkovic seems to think it is. I've always been shy of this because getting a 33 cent check each month would just be an insult I don't need to invite. However, if I had some money coming in from the blog, it might justify the time spent giving the rubes what they want (that's a literary reference and not an insult. Okay?).

Apropos of nothing, I wonder if blogging has hurt the business of talk therapists. Read the debunking I linked to. Read the one I'll probably finish tomorrow (depending on your timezone). Now that the comments are working again, give me your advice. Or just anonymously send me your money. I'm sure we can make that work.

Racist scumbag embarrasses my home state

Alaska can't get a break. For most of its existence, Alaskans have had to put up with silly stereotypes of igloos, prospectors, and a polar bear in every kitchen. Then along came the Palins, money grubbing publicity hounds who made the Alaskan electorate look like a bunch of idiots. Now we get this guy, who makes Alaskans look like ignorant racists.

COMES NOW Gordon Warren Epperly, Pro Se, challenging the Nomination Petition of Barack Hussein Obama II, Aka Barack Hussein Obama, Aka Barack H. Obama or his Electors to appear on the Primary and General Election Ballots of the State of Alaska as a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States of America.

[...]

As stated above, for an Individual to be a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States, the Candidate must meet the qualifications as set forth in the United States Constitution and one of those qualifications is that the Candidate shall be a "natural born Citizen" of the United States. As Barack Hussein Obama II is of the "Mulatto" race, his status of citizenship is founded upon the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before the [purported] ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the race of "Negro" or "Mulatto" had no standing to be citizens of the United States under the United States Constitution.

After this, he goes off into that branch of birtherism that says Obama cannot be a citizen unless both of his parents were citizens. But that's just gravy. The real meat of argument is that only white males are allowed to hold office. In a footnote to his document, he claims Dred Scott is still the law, meaning no one of African ancestry can be a citizen.

Epperly is some sort of crank who writes letters to the Juneau newspaper and files legal documents that reflect the bizzare sovereign citizen legal teachings so popular with the militia crowd. In the past he has harrassed the National Archivist with demands for proof that the Fourteenth Amendment is really the law of the land. For the last few years he has called Lisa Murkowski a usurper because women, white or not, are not allowed to hold political office.

What did Alaska do to deserve this?

Why would a conservative be against that?

The often confused Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) thinks President Obama's jobs plan is a secret plot to keep gays from getting married, or something like that.

This may be, uh-uh, something nice he’s throwing out for uh gay folks that are living together so he can tell them actually you’re better off not getting married, uh because there’s a marriage penalty here.

Or maybe it's an attack on straight marriage.

If you’re the head of a single household, you have an exemptions at $225,000. If you're all other cases $200,000. So it really penalizes married individuals ... But if you want to get divorced it is good news for you

No, it's definitely about the gays.

Now, of course, the founders, uh they all understood marriage to be between a man and a woman and um that's the way the history of the country's been.

Or, whatever.

This president, according to the power to, as the old saying goes, the power to tax, the power to destroy, takes a shot at uh conven-- traditional, conventional marriage.

Since Gohmert has so much trouble keeping even one thought clear in his head, I suppose it would be futile to point out that it is congress--specifically, his branch of congress--that has the power to tax (and destroy) and not the president.

So much propaganda in such a little piece

Here's another one of those chain mail style statuses floating around Facebook. As far as I can tell, it's been around since early summer.

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT ... If you cross the North Korean border illegally, you get 12 yrs. hard labor. If you cross the Afghanistan border illegally, you get shot. Two Americans just got eight years for crossing the Iranian border. If you cross the U. S. border illegally you get a job, a drivers license, food stamps, a place to live, health care, housing & child benefits, education, & a tax free business for 7 yrs ...No wonder we are a country in debt. Re-post if you agree

Where to start... where to start? Lets start at the bottom.

"No wonder we are a country in debt." The implication here is that our national debt is caused by giving goodies to illegal immigrants, not by running two wars while reducing revenue or from any other cause. For over a year now, politicians and pundits have been telling us that the debt and deficit are the single worst problems facing the country, that they are a threat to the very existence of our country. In that context, this little note is is saying that "they," the illegal immigrants, are destroying America. It is only self-defense to fear and hate them. That is, as our high-school English teachers tried to teach us, the thesis statement of this particular essay.

Now lets go to the top. "If you cross the North Korean border illegally..." Why are we talking about North Korea, Afghanistan, and Iran? Two of these countries are the surviving members of the Axis of Evil and the third is one of the worst places on Earth to live. Is the writer saying that we should view them as role models and try to be more like them? Even though many of the intended readers of the note will say "hell, yeah!" at the idea of killing people who try to cross our borders without the proper papers, that's not really the point of mentioning these three countries. The point is a matter of contrast. The brutal punishments handed out by the Axis of Evil are strong. Handing out goodies is weak and that weakness is destroying us.

Who is it that is creating that weakness? Is it the writer? No. Is it the reader? Presumably, also no. Since the writer and the reader would never do anything to destroy America, it must be someone more powerful. The policies that are destroying America must come from an elite internal enemy, a second "they" aligned with the external enemy to bring about our destruction.

Let's look at that list of goodies. At a casual glance, it would be easy to say, "yeah, if you pretend to be a citizen, you can get the same things citizens get. So what?" But the response this kind of letter is trying get isn't a shrug. It's phrased so that the implication is not that illegal immigrants can get these things, it's they will automatically be given these things.

To make that implication, the writer has engaged in an intellectual bait-and-switch. The US example comes forth in a list, which makes it appear that all four are talking about the same thing. If you enter North Korea illegally you get prison; Afghanistan, shot; Iran, prison; America, presents! But, the four are not the same. If you enter North Korea illegally and get caught, the government sends you to prison. If you enter the US illegally and get caught, the government does not give you presents; it puts you in jail for a while, then deports you. Maybe that's more lenient than shooting you on the spot, but it is not a basket full of goodies.

The list of goodies itself isn't just dishonest; it's calculated to create a strong sense of resentment. The reader sees that illegal immigrants automatically are given a job, health care, child benefits, a place to live (and housing!), and a tax free business for seven years and the reader's expected reaction is, "no one gave me those things. I have to work hard for what I get." A sense of personal injustice is created. Before the reader has a chance to think about anything, their mostly emotional response is further provoked by the sneering conclusion, "No wonder we are a country in debt." Not only is the reader being screwed, but our children and the whole country are being screwed by these foreign invaders and the enemy within.

If the reader had paused long enough to look closely at the list and think about it, they would have seen how laughably absurd it is. A tax free business for seven years? Just for being an illegal immigrant? How do you get these things? Is there a government office that you go to to apply for them? If I go to that office and tell them I'm an illegal immigrant, can I get health care and a seven year tax exemption?

The whole piece would be laughable if it, and others like it, weren't resonating with so many good people. Americans are hurting. The working poor are seeing their hopes of rising into the middle class dashed. Millions in the middle class are facing the real possibility of sliding downward. Additional millions are unemployed, using up their last resources, and facing a national leadership that is indifferent to plight when it isn't openly hostile to them. We're scared, we're hurting, and we want to know how we got into this mess. We want someone to blame. Propaganda like this little note distract us from finding real answers.

Propaganda like this is calculated to bring out the bully in people. We feel powerless in the face of an increasingly cold and hostile world. Rather than confront the forces that are hemming us in and taking away our sense of control over our lives, this kind of propaganda encourages to find someone even more powerless than we are and to take our our frustrations on them. As long as we are fighting each other down here, the people at the top of the food chain have nothing to fear from us.

The person who wrote this little note almost certainly did not have all of this in mind when they wrote it. Many of the elements in the note have been circulating for years. This particular version dates back to the beginning of the summer. A longer email blaming the debt on immigrants was circulating two years ago. It was based on a piece published on a conservative web site two years before that. Scopes traces the seven tax-free years claim back at least to the sixties. In a more generalized form, this kind of politics of resentment is as old as propaganda. And that's old.

So much propaganda in such a little piece.

• Scapegoating. Check.
  
• Conspiratorial paranoia. Check.
  
• False equivalency. Check.
  
• politics of resentment. Check.
  
• Bald-faced lies. Check.
  
• Divide and conquer. Check and check.

98% of the people who read this post won't send it on to their crazy uncle...

They are not the same

Yesterday, disgusted over Boehner telling Obama that the time he requested to address Congress just wasn't convenient, I posted on Facebook:

I have never seen a president treated with as much disrespect by the other party as Obama by the Republicans. Not Nixon by the Democrats. Not Bush by the Democrats. Not even Clinton by the Republicans. It seems there is no bottom to how low the modern Republican Party will go.

I received some "likes" from the usual liberal suspects. I also received some surprisingly tough pushback from friends who I think would all call themselves independent. All of them forcefully argue that Democrats are just as bad a Republicans. One says Bush had it tougher. Another said " The bile ... oozes out about equally from both sides of the aisle." I tried to clarify several times that I'm not talking about pundits, talk radio, or some guy with a blog. I'm talking office holding politicians and republican Party officials. I offered this as evidence:

• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a Republican mayor and party official sending around pictures of a watermelon patch replacing the White House lawn?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress shouting "you lie" during a presidential address?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress calling the president "God's punishment on us" as leo Berman did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of members of Congress questioning the president's citizenship or encouraging those that do?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress calling the president "an enemy of humanity" as Trent Franks did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress saying of the president that they are "very concerned that he may have anti-American views” as Michele Bachmann did or un-American as Trent Franks did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of members of Congress saying the President leads a “gangster government” as Steve King and Bachmann did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a governor saying a presidential contender "pals around with terrorists?"
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress saying the president should be impeached even though he can't think of a reason why as Michael Burgess did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress comparing the president to Hitler as Paul Broun has done? For decades that has been the hallmark of extremist political commentary.

You might have noticed that I have no patience with arguments based on a false equivalency. The behavior of the two parties is not the same and hasn't even been close since the early nineties. Again, there have always been nuts in the streets, but before about '92 both parties kept them at an arm's length. For the last two decades, the Republicans have been embracing their worst extremists and legitimizing them and the Democrats have not.

I'm going to throw this open to a new audience. Understand, I'm not looking for people to gang up on my friends, I really want to know how equal you think it is. If you know someone with a good argument for equal nastiness from the Democrats, I'd like to hear it. Give me examples. Are there equivalent cases of Democratic Party officials and office holders treating a Republican President the way Republicans are treating this Democratic President? Feel free to go back through both Bush's, Reagan and even Nixon.