Category: Politics

Silicon Valley is the best reason to vote Republican next week?

by philg

As technology takes over American lives, literally in the case of Facebook, I wonder if voting Republican tomorrow isn’t the best way for Americans to #Resist total domination by their smug rich Silicon Valley overlords. The titans of Silicon Valley often seem to infer from their wealth that they have special insight into how a society should be organized and how non-wealthy, non-important people should conduct their lives (see Lean In for example, and “Guy with a ‘Whites Only’ sign in his conference room tells others not to discriminate”). Having created one of the nation’s highest tax states (#6 in percent of residents’ income devoted to state and local government) that operates perhaps the worst-performing school system (nytimes) in an environment of racial inequality (“California is the center of American racism?“), these folks feel confident in preaching proper government organization to the ignorant non-Silicon Valley masses. While presiding over enterprises whose employees overwhelmingly identify as white or Asian men, the CEOs prate in the media about how other companies should hire and promote employees who identify as non-white/non-Asian women. If they think not enough reporters are listening, they simply buy the media (see below).

Even on business subjects, these folks have essentially no useful experience to relate. If you’re manufacturing car parts or providing landscaping services or running a restaurant, how is it useful to hear from the CEO of a company that has had, essentially, a monopoly for 5-15 years? The regulated Bell System monopoly had its drawbacks, but at least Americans were spared from having to purchase and read books by its managers offering purported secrets of their success. Nobody who ran a business exposed to competition was forced to watch a Bell System executive being interviewed on TV with fawning questions about how he or she had made the company so profitable.

Anecdote at the lower end of the wealth spectrum: a (white) friend who studied at Stanford and lives in Berkeley traveled to Ohio to canvas African-Americans in Cleveland to encourage them to go to the polls and vote for Hillary (Trump ultimately won). The majority of people who opened their doors told him that they didn’t expect a Hillary presidency to make them better off than would a Trump presidency. He might have concluded from this that black Americans rationally evaluate their interests and vote accordingly. Instead he concluded that black Americans were dumber than he had anticipated.

The election of Donald Trump was helpful in deflating some of these sermonizing billionaires, but the Insufferability Index seems likely to rise if Democrats win a lot of mid-term seats. Could it be that the best reason to vote Republican, therefore, is to quiet down the Blowhards of the Bay for a couple of years? Trump makes them angry, but a hate-filled Silicon Valley Master of the Universe might be less annoying than a self-sastified one?

[This advice is purely for readers. My own ballot here in Massachusetts is dominated by Democrats running unopposed. There are essentially no options for incorrect voting.]

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Massachusetts ballot questions

by philg

This year we voters in the Land of Righteousness (i.e., Massachusetts) get to decide…

Question 3: whether the government should continue to be able to imprison people for up to 1 year and/or fine them up to $50,000 for failing to keep up with proper thinking regarding transgender bathroom and locker room access. (boston.com)

Question 1: whether the government should set the maximum number of patients a nurse can take care of (varies by type of facility, e.g., 3 patients/nurse in “step-down” and 1 patient per nurse for ICU; see boston.com)

Question 2: creates a commission to study ways to work around the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. Decries the “corporate takeover of the First Amendment”

Can we infer from the above that citizens are more or less happy with everything else that goes on in our state?

Question 3 is the most interesting one. The current law is from 2016 and provides for correct bathroom thinking. Anyone who identifies as a woman can use a women’s locker room, for example. Folks in Massachusetts pride themselves on not being racist, sexist, and stupid, like the Trump supporters in other states. And yet tens of thousands of seemingly righteous Massachusetts voters signed a petition to put a “restore hatred and improper thinking” question on the ballot.

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Coastal elites decide on fair wages for blue collar Americans in the interior

by philg

From a coastal elite venture capitalist friend on Facebook:

When these 5,000+ migrants inevitably arrive at the US / Mexico border and begin to force their way across, what if we rallied 10,000 Americans who value refugees to stand peacefully at the border between them and whichever armed military division Trump brings out to stop them, as an act of civil disobedience?

His virtuous friends cheer him on:

Count me in if you organize people/dates/locations. Or if you need a $$ contribution to help make it work.

I highly recommend supporting Al Otro Lado. They helped with previous refugee caravans and do exactly this work fighting for the right to seek asylum. They particularly fight border patrol at the Tijuana crossing refusing to let people even present themselves for asylum. … Basically, the administration is trying to eliminate asylum entirely.

I’ll go

I gave my standard reply

The good news for these able-bodied ambulatory folks is that they are entitled to free housing, free food, free health care, and a free smartphone as soon as they arrive (“The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals” — Article 23 of the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees). But how is it fair to those who are too sick, too old, or too disabled to make the trip? If we are truly good-hearted, shouldn’t we put an Airbus A380 on the Honduras/Boston route to bring in 1,000 elderly wheelchair-bound refugees daily? Surely folks in Massachusetts will do a better job caring for these unfortunate souls than will the cold-hearted Trump voters of Texas.

The elite post-gooder (not really a “do-gooder” since he hasn’t done anything to help the migrants yet):

in my opinion it’s only their human right to be able to enter when someone here does have housing or work to offer them.

Me:

Your notion of rights of refuge conditional on “work to offer them” is at odds with the UN convention to which the U.S. is a signatory. There is no requirement for a refugee to work, any more than there is a requirement for a native-born American to work. And if you want to make this conditional on housing, then you would accept no immigrants at all. The U.S. needs 7.2 million more apartments and houses just for the lower-income residents who are already here. See https://nlihc.org/press/releases/9493

Him:

there’s tremendous demand for labor and plenty of housing availability if you just look beyond major metro areas. Why else do you think they all want to come here? No one really becomes happy by living on welfare or in shelters for long. People generally want pride of providing for themselves. And this is where there are plentiful jobs, especially if we get rid of the misguided minimum wage laws.

I pointed out that, regardless of wanting “pride of providing for themselves,” roughly 73 percent of immigrants from the countries that are contributing to the current caravan actually were collecting welfare in 2012 (source). Also that there does not seem to be a tremendous demand for unskilled since states raising minimum wage results in a reduced number of employed low-skill workers (2015 economic study).

Him:

I don’t understand your last point at all. Of course increasing the minimum wage drops employment levels, that’s basic economics. I personally want to see a repeal or at least a major rollback of minimum wage laws, less welfare, and more immigration which will keep wages low, and therefore further decrease the cost of locally produced goods and services and make their local consumers better off. I also generally want to see lower wages in the US and higher wages in places like Honduras. That would make the world better in my opinion and would ultimately reduce the need for caravans. More open borders is consistent with more free markets, in addition to being more just. I do however see the short term dilemma this philosophy poses for democracy. The ultimate answer is less power in the nation, more at the very local level, and also more at the world level, but this is a very long term ambition.

So the Bostonian’s plan for helping Hondurans requires only that the 50+ million Americans currently on welfare (Census 2015) make a huge financial sacrifice and also that blue collar workers in the Midwest accept reduced wages.

It is tough to understand why a blue collar Midwestern might be skeptical of the coastal elite’s commitment to his or her interests…

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The modernity of the Bolshevik Revolution

by philg

One interesting aspect of Understanding Russia: A Cultural History (course by Lynne Ann Hartnett, a professor at Villanova) is how modern and familiar the ideas of the Bolsheviks are. After the October Revolution, for example, Prof. Hartnett talks about women gaining the rights to on-demand abortion and on-demand divorce (what today is called “unilateral” or “no-fault” divorce). The rate of abortion quickly grew to exceed the rate of live births. The divorce rate in the Soviet Union became the highest in Europe. Unlike in the U.S., no-fault divorce did not come with the need to hire a lawyer and litigate in a courtroom (see Real World Divorce). The wife could go to City Hall, fill out a form, and her now-ex-husband would be informed of the divorce via mail (“postcard divorce”). [Unlike in the U.S., though, there was no possibility of an alimony revenue stream following a no-fault divorce; women in the early Soviet system were considered capable of working to support themselves and if they wanted extra spending power from a man’s income they had to get it through a voluntary arrangement.]

The professor also cites paid maternity leave and state-run day care as early Soviet programs.

Radical thinkers today like to talk about reconceiving state-run education as a lifelong process rather than merely K-12. The Soviets were there 100 years ago! Prof. Hartnett talks about how lifelong education was an explicit goal and the Soviets quickly organized programs for both peasants and factory workers.

I wonder what percent of the positions taken by a modern American politician might have been anticipated 100 years ago by the Bolsheviks. It would be an interesting exercise to line up what our current leaders say and promise to what the Bolsheviks were saying and promising.

Separately, the lecture series adds a data point to how present-day academics think about capitalism and the market. Prof. Hartnett does not seem to be a fan of Marxism-Leninism due to its reliance on violence to keep the population in line. However, when talking about pre-revolutionary Russia, with its 7 percent annual economic growth (like China today), she describes factory workers as “underpaid.” There does not seem to be any evidence of collusion among employers and state intervention in the economy was minimal compared to modern welfare states. Thus, it seems likely that the workers were earning a market wage. Due to the ample supply of labor this might have resulted in “low paid” workers, but to the modern American academic “low paid” seems necessarily to imply “underpaid” (unfairly low wage).

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Why would North Dakotans want to re-elect Heidi Heitkamp?

by philg

Heidi Heitkamp, a senator from North Dakota, reached me on Facebook with a sponsored listing (i.e., an ad):

I’m in the fight of my life right now … We have another $12,500 to raise, but luckily, a group of fired-up donors has offered to match all gifts, but only until midnight. Time’s running out, and whether or not we hit this goal before midnight could determine senate control. Please, will you give now and get every dollar DOUBLED?

Maybe there is a way on Facebook to target ads to “Coastal Elites” and I was mistakenly flagged as “elite” while correctly identified as living in Massachusetts?

Suppose that raising money from folks in Massachusetts is successful. Why would voters in North Dakota want to be represented by someone who has to answer to East Coast funders? Is the regional nature of U.S. politics breaking down?

[Heitkamp voted to keep the convicted-by-Facebook rapist Brett Kavanaugh on the appeals court:

She also credited the “heartfelt, credible and persuasive testimony” given by Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party during high school.

“She had nothing to gain and everything to lose,” Heitkamp said. “When I listened to Dr. Ford testify, I heard the voices of women I have known throughout my life who have similar stories of sexual assault and abuse.”

So I responded to the sponsored listing with

Will you celebrate your victory by flying to French Polynesia with Christine Blasey Ford as your experienced guide? (maybe you can help Dr. Ford with her fear of flying in case the new B787 with fainting couch is not ready?)

This was not well-received by the Heitkamp faithful:

Brenda Torres Your are a moron hope you have a female in your family that get assaulted and is not believed let’s see how you feel about that idiot!! Making fun of a sexual assault victim typical male pig protecting a rapist!

So the person with a traditionally female name (Brenda might be a “woman”) who is passionate about ensuring that survivors are believed wants to see more women assaulted, so long as those women have the misfortune to be related to “a male pig.” Where is the solidarity among the sisterhood? (assuming that “Brenda” actually does identify as a sister)]

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How did Christine Blasey Ford make it back and forth to Hawaii?

by philg

One of the obstacles to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testifying before the Senate yesterday was an inability to suffer the “confinement” of being in an airliner (see “Why won’t Claire McCaskill pick up Christine Blasey Ford in her Pilatus PC-12?”). She needed a few extra days to make the trip from California by car.

“Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough.” (Washington Post):

To many, Kavanaugh was a respected jurist. To her, he was the teenager who had attacked her when they were in high school.

Ford had already moved 3,000 miles away from the affluent Maryland suburbs where she says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a house party — a charge he would emphatically deny. Suddenly, living in California didn’t seem far enough. Maybe another hemisphere would be. She went online to research other democracies where her family might settle, including New Zealand.

“She was like, ‘I can’t deal with this. If he becomes the nominee, then I’m moving to another country. I cannot live in this country if he’s in the Supreme Court,’ ” her husband said. “She wanted out.”

To avoid 4.5-hours of confinement from SFO to IAD, she had planned to spend five days in a car, which was why she wouldn’t be available to testify on Monday, but she was planning on the transpacific flight to New Zealand? And then to fly for far longer than 4.5 hours any time she needed to go somewhere from NZ?

How about when the University of Southern California student who could not handle commercial airline travel was looking for a place to get some practical training?

When she moved to Hawaii for a one-year internship to complete her PhD — taking a cheap studio apartment within board-carrying distance of Sans Souci Beach — the conversion seemed complete.

She rejected all of the programs within the 49 states to which she could travel by land and selected one on the most isolated population center on Planet Earth? Could it be that she traveled back and forth to Hawaii as a passenger on a freighter? Came back for Thanksgiving with the parents in Maryland via the Panama Canal?

[Separately, though I find it interesting that so many Americans think that they can know the “truth” about a 36-year-old event that occurred in private (maybe with some help from the same FBI team who investigated (and cleared) Tamerlan Tsarnaev), I was never a supporter of Judge Kavanaugh for any job. His August 15, 1998 letter filled with moral indignation about Bill Clinton “having sex with a 22-year-old intern” was a deal-killer for me right from the start. I never thought that investigating the sexual opportunities that were available to a president was a good use of taxpayer funds (it wouldn’t have made sense even as a political ploy; success in getting Bill Clinton impeached would have ensured a victory for Al Gore, running as an incumbent, in 2000). And moral indignation seems like hypocrisy to me when it comes from people who didn’t have those opportunities. I periodically see posts on Facebook from a guy who used his position as a professor to obtain sex from a variety of comely undergraduates. Now he is outraged about Trump. But if you’d given this guy a personal Boeing 757, billions in cash, and a vast Manhattan apartment, it is quite possible that he would have tapped into a much larger array of women than Donald Trump ever did. Anyone other than a movie star or sports hero who criticizes Bill Clinton is pretty much in the same category as this Facebook blowhard. Of the people who were mentioned as possible nominess, Amy Coney Barrett is my personal favorite (see “Amy Coney Barrett nomination would stop working parents from demanding more help?“), though, since I’m not a senator, I haven’t educated myself on her record as a judge.]

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Andrew Cuomo will use a $12.5 million Sikorsky S-76 to place a glass ceiling over Cynthia Nixon?

by philg

“Cuomo Often Takes Taxpayer-Funded Planes and Helicopters, Far More Than Other Big State Governors” (nytimes):

Much of the governor’s recent state-funded helicopter travel has been on a used Sikorsky 76-D, which cost New York taxpayers $12.5 million last year. The state comptroller initially rejected the request, which was made by the State Police through a noncompetitive bid.

The comptroller’s office cited the discrepancy between how Sikorsky described the helicopter’s configuration — “for a deluxe executive mission” — and how the police described its purpose.

(Note that Donald Trump also operated the Sikorsky S-76, but, prior to becoming president/dictator he flew in an older model that can do more or less the same mission at a capital cost of $750,000.)

It’s primary day in New York. If Mr. Cuomo prevails over Cynthia Nixon I wonder if the two will agree to a glass ceiling ceremony in which the incumbent governor, and champion of women, calls in the S-76 to place the ceiling over Ms. Nixon’s head. That would dominate YouTube!

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Privatization of Air Traffic Control

by philg

Measured objectively, the government sector of the United States runs some of the developed world’s worst-performing schools and the best-performing aviation system.  Yet oddly enough it is the air traffic control system that politicians propose to privatize.


Privatization is currently underway for flight service stations.  These are FAA employees who don’t separate airplanes from each other but instead provide varied forms of assistance.  You can call Flight Service on the telephone to ask about the weather before departing.  You can call Flight Service on the radio to ask where the thunderstorms are along your route or what the closest airport with good weather is.  You can call Flight Service in an emergency.  These folks are incredibly resourceful and helpful by and large and often go far beyond their job description in an effort to help pilots.


The folks at www.naats.org are trying to save their jobs and they’ve put together a very interesting audio clip that is worth hearing whether or not you care about this issue:  http://www.naats.org/docs/flightassist.mp3 (you may decide not to fly with beginner private pilots after listening to these emergency calls).


Plan for today… fly to Republic Airport on Long Island and swim in Bob’s pool, then back to Bedford and over to the Weston Town Green for a 7 pm concert by Not the Beatles (the infamous Luke, of Harvard Square fame, is lead guitar).  The concert is free but bring your own blanket and picnic.  Alex will be there!

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An armed society is a polite society… (Israel and guns)

by philg

Something I learned here in Israel…  it is virtually impossible for most Israelis to own a gun.  Aside from air rifles and .22 target guns you must be either an active duty soldier in the army or meet some very stringent requirements in order to pack heat.  The average Israeli household cannot own a shotgun or hunting rifle (there is nowhere to hunt in the maze of concrete high-rises that dominates the landscape of the Mediterranean’s most densely populated country).  A fully automatic weapon is completely out of the question for civilians.


[Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza can and do own weapons, of course, and in fact most of them were supplied by the Israeli government.  Yes, that’s right.  The Labor government supplied the Palestinians with thousands of rifles and pistols so that they could set up a police force.  These weapons have now found their way into the hands of Palestinian civilians.  Thus when a Palestinian shoots an Israeli civilian or soldier it is very likely done with a gun paid for by that Israeli’s taxes.]


I used to be amazed that Israelis showed such restraint.  They are crammed in like sardines.  They have world-class traffic jams and a disregard for traffic laws (more Israelis are killed in car accidents than by terrorism or war).  Just walking around on the street you hear a lot of people shouting at each other.  I figured “it is amazing that more people don’t pull the M-16 off the top of the fridge and fill the air with lead”.  It turns out that they don’t have M-16s or any of the other toys that give meaning to life as an American.


An Israeli asked me whether it was true that Americans could own serious guns privately and expressed amazement that this was indeed possible.  He said “We read about this in the newspaper but the Americans that I’ve met seem quiet and non-aggressive.”  My reply:  “An armed society is a polite society” 🙂

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When $57 million of weapons isn’t enough protection….

by philg

Back around 1970, Monty Python did a skit in which a mafioso visits a British Army base to shake down the commander for protection money:  “Would be a shame if anything bad happened to all of these tanks.”  Eventually, apparently, life imitates art.


Last week we witnessed the spectacle of George W. Bush being afraid for his security while encased in $57 million of weaponry.  From http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/01/bush.carrier.landing/ :



Bush wanted to swoop onto the deck of the Lincoln aboard an F-18 Hornet, but the Secret Service nixed the idea — they didn’t like leaving the president unguarded in a fighter jet that only has space for the president and a pilot.


(specs on the F-18: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/aircraft/air-fa18.html)


Thus there is apparently some common ground for George W. and the Iraqi people:  they are both afraid of F-18 pilots.


A deeper issue is when did U.S. voters become so tolerance of cowardice?  Western military leaders traditionally lead from the front and try to demonstrate that they are sharing the hazards of battle with the common soldiers.  Eastern commanders, such as Genghis Khan, thought that this was stupid.  Why put yourself at risk when you can send the rabble up to the front?


It would have been tough to imagine Winston Churchill slipping out of London during the Blitz and yet George W. spent September 11th “at a secure location”.  The risks of being in a big American city were apparently bearable for his subjects but not for his royal personage.  Americans have twice voted, or at least sort of, for men who escaped combat service (Bill Clinton famously dodging the draft, George W. in a slightly less obvious manner).


If present trends continue it would seem that whoever gets elected in 2012 will spend his or her Presidency in an MX Missile-style racetrack silo out in Wyoming (unless the winner is William Bennett, in which case perhaps he’ll command the U.S. Empire from a suite at the Bellagio).

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