In Which I disagree with Clive Crook

In this Bloomberg column, Clive Crook criticizes Paul Krugman for 1) smugly being right all the time, and 2) showing insufficient respect for those who are wrong all the time.  Please read it and form your own opinion.

I suppose it's not particularly relevant that PK has been called an idiot, a moron, a communist, a lying political hack, a racist lying hack, and my hands-down favorite, a war monger.  So let's just move along.

To support his point, Crook cites this blog post by PK, and extracts from it this idea:

Krugman was responding to critics who accuse him of seeing everybody who disagrees with him as either a fool or a knave. He says that’s not right: Many of those who disagree with him are sociopaths. 

 “The point is not that I have an uncanny ability to be right; it’s that the other guys have an intense desire to be wrong,” he says. “And they’ve achieved their goal.”

Do you see the problem here?  Crook overstates his case rather dramatically.  PK hasn't called anyone a sociopath, so far as I know, and certainly not in this post.  [Though I have no doubt that a certain congressman, whom PK has criticized loudly and often, qualifies - in spades.]  What he is saying is that they have an agenda, and being wrong means exactly nothing to them, as long as their agenda is promoted.


Crook goes on to say this:

Krugman says his opponents are motivated by politics. “Am I (and others on my side of the issue) that much smarter than everyone else? No. The key to understanding this is that the anti-Keynesian position is, in essence, political. It’s driven by hostility to active government policy and, in many cases, hostility to any intellectual approach that might make room for government policy.” 

 Talk about lack of self-awareness. Does Krugman imagine that he isn’t motivated by politics? 

Crook actually has a point, but not the one he intends.  First off, PK has a valid theoretical and practical basis for his beliefs, while the other side really has been consistently wrong, intellectually nihilistic, and responds by doubling down with more wrong.  More importantly though, if PK had been less polite, and said "rabidly purblind partisan politics motivated by a starkly anti-democratic agenda" he would have been less polite, but far more accurate.  So Crook's quibble with the word "politics" is either a bit vacuuous or the resultant of trying to hard to find something to dispute - an all-too-common feature of PK's would-be critics.

If you've read Krugman's writings from the 90's you know that at that time he was a basically apolitical middle-of-the-road, actually rather conservative writer, making economics accessible to know-nothings like me.  He later became politicized by the persistently willful wrongitude of the Bush administration, which set the stage for the even more wrong and more extreme current Republican party. He doesn't criticize them because of his ideology, he criticizes them for theirs, which is consistently and demonstrably wrong.   And he does this while generally maintaining a high level of politeness.

So, yes, PK is motivated by politics, but it's a politics that strives to reach the truth and promote the common good, rather than some ideological predetermined end point that favors an already privileged overclass. 

Here is Crook's thesis:

Meanwhile, for the side that thinks it has the better arguments, naked contempt for dissenters is plain bad tactics. That isn’t how you change people’s minds.

But there's a problem here, too.  And it's one I understand, since the same criticism has been leveled at me.  There's a truth contained there, it's pure Dale Carnegie, and it would be spot on - if we were contending with rational well-intentioned people.  But there's a deeper truth that Crook reluctantly acknowledges in his final paragraph.

It’s true that the modern Republican Party includes a growing number of extremists who have no interest in the kind of discussion I’m recommending. In their case, attempts at outreach would be so much wasted breath.

That's the reality.  The suggestion that PK needs to get out more is fatuous in the extreme. When you are dealing with liars, the best and most appropriate response is to refute the lies and reveal these fools, knaves and sociopaths for what they are.

Big Illegal Alien Tax Derp

A friend sent me the link to this vid.  It's so full of po' white angst and big scary numbers.




My comment:

Without condoning any kind of tax fraud or other crime, I have to say I'm a lot less troubled about this money going to [what I assume to be] poor people in whatever country than I am about the even greater number of billions of dollars handed LEGALLY as tax rebates to filthy-rich, resource-polluting trans-national mega-corporations in the petroleum industry, and the huge number of other highly profitable corporations that pay little tax, or none at all - in part because of off-shore tax havens.

In all seriousness, 4.2 billion is a big scary number, but if you look at the problems that ought to be addressed by the U.S. in priority order, this probably wouldn't make the top 100.

And I have to suspect that the pasty-faced, oh-so-patriotic southern Indiana news hawks who put this together are more than a little bit influenced by the brownish skin of those who benefit from this situation.  Sorry, that's just ugly reality.   Meanwhile, too-big-to-fail lily-white bankers on Wall Street are robbing us blind every day.

When's the last time you saw a 6 minute news report video on that subject?
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April in the D

The Red Wings finished off a lack-luster season with a few strong games and slouched into the playoffs, garnering the no. 7 seed on the strength of defense, Jimmy Howard's goal-tending, and a few weak opponents.  They lost the first playoff game to the Ducks last night, after going into the 3rd period tied 1-1.  But that was after midnight, my time, and no longer in April, so I'm not going to talk about it.

Meanwhile, the Pistons ended a lack-luster season with a few lack-luster games and have the rest of the Summer off.

Which brings us to the  boys of Summer.

The Tigers have been - and I'll be polite here - a bit erratic.  They fell apart completely on a mid-month road trip, going from 9-5 to 9-9 and then 10-10.  Since coming home, they've had 1 rain out followed by 5 mostly impressive wins, and finished the month at 15-10.

Strengths - starting pitching, scoring early and often.  Starters have routinely gone through 6 innings, and occasionally beyond.  Scoring has been prolific, especially in innings 4 and 5, when the batters are seeing the opposing starter for the 2nd or 3rd time.

Weaknesses - relief pitching, inability to score late.  Valverde has been more than adequate in his three 9th inning appearances, with 2 saves, 1 hold and no runs allowed.  But bringing him back at all smacks of desperation - and rightly so.  The biggest scoring innings for the opponents have been 3rd, 7th, and 8th.  Tigers inability to score late is troublesome.

These differences are stark.  In the first 25 games the Tigers have scored only 20 of their 126 runs (15.9%) in innings 7 and beyond - on average, less than 1 run per game in these frames.  The opponents have scored 40 of their 98 runs (40.8%) in innings 7 and beyond.  

Here it is graphically, where 10 is a proxy for all extra inning.

Graph 1 - Tigers runs scored per inning, accumulated over 25 games

Graph 2 - Tigers runs scored per game in April

Blue line is runs per game, green line is an average to date from the first game, yellow line is average over the last 5 games.  Offense was sadly deficient in games 14-18 against the Mariners and Angels.

Tigers runs allowed per inning, accumulated over 25 games

Here are the win-lose results.




Baseball is a streaky game.  A win streak is a wonderful thing.  A losing streak is abject misery.

Data from the Tigers sortable schedule at this mlb web page.

Quotes of the Day - Pseudo-centrist Hackery and BHO Leadership Nonsense

Wingnut: "2 + 2 is 5!"

Krgthulu: "No, 2 + 2 is 4!"

Brooks: "This is a competition between partial truths, and the True Path to Wisdom, as always and everywhere, is to find the proper balance between them. Therefore, I discern the Deep Truth that 2 + 2 is 4.5."

Krgthulu: "No, you're both wrong, 2 + 2 is neither 5 nor 4.5, it's just 4 and that's all there is to it."

Brooks: "See? See? He's just a partisan!"

------ Slimhazard, commenting on Johnathan Chaits's article

Chait speaks to the role of opinion journalism.  He goes on to point out some guidelines for opinion journalists that are worthwhile for anyone who wants to engage in rational discourse, itemized below.  See the link for elaboration.

1)  Be intellectually consistent.
2)  Don't debate straw men.
3)  Guard against more than one kind of bias.
4)  If you’re going to write something that’s completely self-aggrandizing, you should probably own up to it.

H/T to Scott Lemieux at LGM, who also quotes Charlie Pierce giving MoDo the FJM treatment.

My favorite snippet from that brilliant snark-fest:

From the available evidence (again), and for all the relevance her insights have on what's actually going on in American politics, Dowd once again seems to be writing from an assisted-living facility on the far side of a world Beyond The Planet Of The Ultra-Vixens.

The Great Boston Scarathon

Everyone seems to be gushing over the police work in Boston. I think the whole thing was a massive screw up. The perp escaped on foot, badly injured, dripping blood, and they could neither follow nor find him. Thousands of cops combed the area, but he was marginally outside their perimeter, and only about 1/2 mile from where the preceding fire fight took place. Oops. They lock down a city of over a million because 1 desperate, wounded criminal is on the lam. Meanwhile, in 1 day, there were at least 8 shootings in Chicago, but I digress.

How do they find the guy? Moments after the stay-inside order was lifted, a resident finds the perp hiding in the boat in his yard.

All of this because ordinary citizens were able to identify the two brothers from cell phone pictures and other videos. Other than actually publicizing the pictures and dragging the near-dead guy out of the boat, a law enforcement contingent of thousands accomplished very little, while ordinary citizens were responsible for almost everything that did not involve firing hundreds of rounds of ordnance.

MEH!

Two R's Missing 'Rithmatic

Wow - via Steve Benin at Maddowblog and Jared Berstein we discover that the oft-cited Reinhart and Rogoff study that "indicates" that a country's debt level leads to economic contraction at levels above 90% of GPD has been shown to be totally bogus.

They made an error setting up their Excel spreadsheet for the calculations, and the math came out wrong. [This is really inexcusable sloppiness]

Not only does this matter, it is REALLY important, because their study has been used as the justification for austerity by people like Paul Ryan who want to gut social programs in the U.S., and the economic union authorities in Europe who are destroying themselves with austerity.

It's still true that with correct math the data really does show higher debt *correlating* with lower [but still significantly positive] growth.  Here is Bernsein's graph showing the R&R results along with the corrected results.

However, even if R&R had gotten it right, the austerians are making two other fundamental [and ideologically driven] errors in judgment. First off, when you do a data mash-up like they did, it's easy to get the causation reversed. It's quite likely [and realistically seems very sensible] that slow growth causes the need for high debt, not the other way around.

Second, if a high debt to GDP ratio were really a problem, it would make more sense to grow GDP rather than go into an austerity mode that is likely to shrink GDP. [Exactly what happened in the U.S. to cause the "golden age" after WW II] This is the denominator effect. Make the denominator [here, GDP] larger, and the ratio becomes smaller.

This is really very simple. But it is way beyond the capability of somebody like Paul Ryan.

Critical analysis leads to the truth. But that will not matter to Ryan. His mission is to kill social security, not solve any of the nation's problems, and, as Bernstein points out, "It’s not like facts are driving this debate."

What The Hell ?!? Friday - Dude, Where in the Hell is my Recovery? Edition

Have you wondered why the recovery hasn't felt much like one?  Stagflationary Mark demonstrates why with this custom FRED graph of real wage and salary disbursements per capita (February 2013 dollars).

Mark often superimposes a trend line curve on the underlying data, but didn't this time.  No matter - it's easy to eyeball an exponential trend with an asymptote somewhere around $23,000.

So -- Where IS our recovery?  I've been wondering for a long time.

Another Ridiculous Facebook Thingie

Am I being over-imaginative in seeing a racist subtext in this

image of  BLACK SMOKE coming from THE WHITE HOUSE?

WTH?!? Friday, Ridiculous Facebook Thingie Edition

This is just too rich

The wonderfully hilarious thing about this is THAT THERE IS NO BIBLICAL DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE!   And - even better - in the Old Testament, a man could have multiple wives.

And isn't the point of the New Testament that it rendered the Old Testament obsolete?  Isn't that changing the laws of God?

But if you think not, then well -- as for those immutable laws - spend a little time with Leviticus and tell me how you feel about that.

Meanwhile, marriage is between one man, one woman, plus possibly her sister, and for sure his brother's widow, should such an opportunity arise.
 
Conservatives have no sense of irony, but I am forever wedded to mine.

Another QoD from Ed at G&T

Second, the older I get the more I believe that the real divide in this country (I won't speak for the whole world, although I have my suspicions) is not between liberals and conservatives, the old and young, black and white, or any of the most common tropes. The divide in modern America is between people who think facts and knowledge are based on evidence and those who think that whatever one believes is true. The media is liberal because I think it is. Climate change and evolution are myths because I don't believe them. Tax cuts grow the economy because I think they do. This is what attacks on the NSF, and academia more broadly, are about. It's an easy target because a substantial portion of this country doesn't believe that science is a thing. To them, the scientific method begins with a conclusion and research is the process of manufacturing some kind of evidence to support it. The ice caps aren't melting because I say they aren't, and some oil companies wrote a paper proving it. What do we need the NSF or fancy-pants colleges for?  

                                                -- Ed

This fits pretty much hand in glove with the quote I posted last Thursday.  You can't engage in rational discourse with someone to whom rational thought processes are unknown, or even worse, scorned impediments to scoring points.

Why be rational when you can win by bullying or shouting your opponent down?

And, of course, it is conservatives who operate in this way because they never have been swayed by rationality.  Remember the pillars of conservative mental processes are ignorance, prejudice, magical thinking and denialism.

When first thinking about this, I had "false choice" in place of "denialism" in this quartet, but came to realize that all sort of falsity was used to support conservatism, so I generalized it as denial of reality.

Which is why Steven Colbert reported that reality has a well-known liberal bias.

QoD from Ed at G&T

I mean, modern American politics is basically the Democrats mumbling something quasi-logical while the Republicans scream something that makes no sense whatsoever. What am I supposed to say, "OK class, today we're going to debate de-funding the National Science Foundation. This group will be the 'pro' side…." We'd get more accomplished if we played Candyland. Defending ridiculous viewpoints is going to teach them one of two things. They will learn to make nonsensical arguments unabashedly, or they will learn how to say a bunch of bullshit that sounds like a persuasive argument but isn't. The former is Sean Hannity, the latter, George Will.
                                                         ---- Ed

This is relevant because of a FB conversation I got into yesterday with a stranger commenting on a mutual friend's post. Her approach was to change the subject, move the goal posts, engage in hyperbole, present demonstrable nonsense as fact, and reject facts when presented. This is what you get into with regressives all the time. It's no accident that they don't know how to engage in rational discourse. Down that path lies truth, and truth does not comport with their pre-packaged view of the world.

It's so much more comfortable and convenient to wallow in ideologically approved talking points. It saves all that tedious mucking around with critical thinking, facts and logic.

QoD - From SoBe

Fun fact: remove all of the vowels from Reince Priebus and you get RNC PR BS.
                          ---   Southern Beale