Bipartisanship should be an effect, not a cause

Matt Yglesias got me thinking about this fascination with "bipartisanship".

Apparently, Congress and pundits favor "bipartisan" legislation, that is, bills you can get members of both parties to sign on to. Rhetorically I ask, but why? Surely we can all dispense with the naïve notion that the best solution, or the one most desired by the people, lies at the mean between the party positions. There are at least three reasons off the top of my head proving the preposterousness of that notion, and you can probably come up with more than me.

Really, bipartisanship is supposed to be a reflection of the value of a bill. The bill's not good because it's bipartisan; rather, the bill's inherently good, so good that people want to publicly support it, even if it's not what their party came up with. A bill might be bipartisan because a priori it's good.

Lack of bipartisanship is generally framed as a negative for the bill's originator: "Obama has failed to deliver on the promise of bipartisanship for his agenda." But there's a perfectly good converse view. If a bill's good, or popular -- the health care public option, for example -- opponents of the bill would be right to fear the lack of bipartisanship. If they're too dumb or stubborn to back what's good, then they're useless to their constituents.

An agenda setter should put good legislation out there, with no compromises solely to garner support from across the aisle. If it's good enough, and popular enough, then all the Congresscritters in vulnerable seats are under pressure to back it. Bipartisanship is an indicator that the bill was good in the first place; but it is only a correlated side-effect, not a necessary (or sufficient) condition for good legislation.

Mystery photo entertainment

From Picasa

What's going on here?

Field Trip Friday

Katherine came for a visit and so I took Friday off from work and we went to see the butterfly exhibit at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. It was awesome. So many cool butterflies. The day was stiflingly hot, but the gardens were still pretty.

TNC cannot stop talking about slavery

If you read only 200 things Ta-Nehisi Coates writes this year, this should be one of them. Also, you will only have read about a fifth of the great stuff he writes.

Insightful, as always, but I don't think TNC is quite right here. Or perhaps he is overall, but some nuance is in order.

Specifically, I think there's a historical line that goes like TNC says "We tend to think", namely that slavery was kind of this regrettable cruelty that the world in general was tolerant of, until we got civilized and disavowed it.

But there is at least an acknowledgment, in the historical line I was taught, that America (like always) was exceptional. That line says, what with the explosion of cotton (which Eli Whitney's invention contributed to), the economy of the South became completely dependent on slavery as an economic fuel, kind of like we talk about being dependent on oil today. And that dependence shifted the culture, both toward a vigorous defense of the economic interests in slavery and toward dehumanization of slaves on a scale and to a degree beyond whatever the barbaric practices of yesteryear had been.

But that's just my impression from my history classes. I'm not sure there's a shared "American" conventional point of view on this.

Where I feel TNC has it right is that "we have never grappled with this," `this' being that most of the culture of America is formed from the fractious and unresolved shards that remain from centuries of dehumanizing black people, and the struggles both violent and nonviolent to erode and destroy them.

Again, referring to my own education, the mythology of America is the "melting pot" notion of disparate cultures coming together and peacefully sharing the opportunities of a new land. But this, it seems to me, is a gloss, a "and they all lived happily ever after" resolution of the unresolved issue that defines America. We (which of course is not really "we", since we weren't there, but the imagined "we" of this country) invented a new kind of racism, and have never been able to put that dire genie back into the bottle.

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Opinion and Policy on Gay Rights

There's a great chart displayed over at fivethirtyeight.com with public opinion on various gay rights questions by state, including whether those policies are actually adopted as law in those states. The original PDF is available here.

I'm struck by how consistent the popularity ranking of the issues is across states. With a few quibbly exceptions, from most popular support to least the issues are:

1. housing antidiscrimination


2. hate crimes protection


3. job antidiscrimination


4. health benefits for same-sex partners


5. civil unions


6. 2nd parent adoption for same-sex couples


7. same-sex marriage

It's also interesting, but not surprising, to see that adoption of these policies is not nearly as widespread as their popularity. The most widespread policy by far is hate crimes protection, which is the unsurprising one. But there is no state that offers housing antidiscrimination (super-popular) that does not also offer jobs antidiscrimination (third most popular) AND the far less popular 2nd parent adoption -- 20 states have all three of those. Seven of those 20 states that provide those three do NOT provide health benefits for same-sex partners, even though it's much more popular than 2nd parent adoption.

I wonder if adoption policy has sort of gone "under the radar" and the decisions have been made based on what's best for adopted children, rather than traditional family stereotypes. I also wonder if partner health benefits might have a lot of "bang for the buck" in the sense of being politically achievable in the short term, and really improving the lives of many couples.

Provoke your thoughts -- about health care

This has been recommended by a bunch of bloggy people and eventually I broke down and read it:

Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: newyorker.com
(Shared via AddThis)

It is definitely worth reading and thinking about. And analogizing to, say, education.

The question it provoked most in me is, well, the question of capitalism. Go read it, and tell me if you think he's sort of saying "to get good, cheap health care, we need to reward doctors for acting in non-profit-seeking ways." How does that work, exactly? Do you reward them with money? Is he saying that we need doctors to not act in their own self-interest -- to be suckers? Or that the free market is not a good system for health care?

Secret Compartments

These are a couple of pictures of our most recent basement demolition. The wall at the front of the house was actually wood paneling over a rather nicer paneling, which had some built-in shelves. The open area at ground level is the access to the main water line. The open area next to the small shelf is -- I dunno. Maybe a window to the view of the brick wall?

Animation: Why Americans Need Health Reform

Short, cute, educational! Go watch this!

Animation: Why Americans Need Health Reform

Note: "health reform" isn't about changing health care practices; they mean changing how health care gets paid for.

Cucumber Festival

It was a muggy day, but the Farmers Market was packed. There was a cucumber festival today. We didn't hang around for the cucumber eating contest, but I will stage my own at home. I planning on making some bread and butter pickles today.

In other news, my tomato seedlings had survived and are finally starting to flower. I may get a tomato yet. Note to self: start seeds in January next year!



UPDATE: Amy's cucumber won the costume contest! Very exciting.

Click-throughs guaranteed!

How agency will protect consumers | Marketplace From American Public Media:

"HOBSON: Well, one administration official I spoke to today said there will still be fine print. But it'll be the kind of thing like on the Internet when you click the box that says, 'I agree to the terms and conditions,' and you click 'OK.' It will actually be OK, you won't have to worry that something in the fine print will trap you down the road."

I think (and hope) that Jeremy Hobson of Marketplace didn't intend this to mean what it sounds like. To me, it sounds like he's asserting that click-through agreements are nothing to worry about, that clicking the "OK" button will actually be OK. If there's a consumer protection agency vetting the click-through agreements, please let me know!

California Adventure

Bob and I just returned from visiting Sarah and David in Fullerton. We had a great time. Highlights include a scavenger hunt on Hollywood Boulevard, dinner at Lance and Gordon's (forgot to take pictures), trip to the Getty Center, and a trip to San Diego to visit the Wildlife Park and the zoo. I separated out the pictures from the zoo.

Back from the Great Virginia Race

Bob, Rebecca, and David (Chan, not Kelman) went on a Ravenchase across Virginia. Our first day time was, um, not so good. Our second day we did quite well, however, so we award ourselves the "Most Improved" trophy.

George Will: innumerate

I'm late to this, but Matt Yglesias called out George Will for throwing out ".01 percent" as a ridiculously high proportion of Americans to bike to work.

The actual fraction of Americans who bike to work is .4 percent. Which is a lot bigger.

You know, if someone just makes up words and/or applies random words to a situation without considering their meaning, that person is either illiterate or lying or both. And not even the socially acceptable lying or illiteracy. If you wrote a column for a newspaper and misdescribed a situation because you didn't know what the words you used meant, or because you picked words at random that you thought sounded vaguely like what you were reporting, you wouldn't keep a job writing columns for very long. Because literacy is a prerequisite for the job.

Shouldn't innumeracy preclude you from spouting numbers? George Will should perhaps leave the percentages to the staff of the local middle school newsletter, who are more qualified to handle them.

Ethics

I've been reading Pat Kane's The Play Ethic: a Manifesto for a Different Way of Living and he spends a chapter describing the work ethic, its role in the "new economy" (global corporations, erosion of pensions, rarity of lifelong careers in one company, etc.), and how people have tried to recast it or modify it for the post-industrial world. And he spends the book describing an alternative "play ethic", as the title suggests.

My question(s) for you is this: what is your work ethic? What is your play ethic? What is your learning ethic? How are these related, if at all? Would you say you have a "strong work ethic"? How about the others?

Don't plumb the depths here -- just answer what occurs to you. You can answer one, some, or all of the above. You can answer a question I haven't come up with. I just want to hear what you think about these terms and what they mean to you.

"before"

What have you been doing over your summer vacation, Bob?

Ripping up the basement.

Here's some pictures of the destruction, with some opportunities for forensic electricianship, if you're interested. Any comments about the state of the basement and our plans for future furnishing are welcome.

Those plans currently include: ripping out the furring strips that have been driven into the brick wall, as well as the strips on the ceiling; painting the brick walls with drylok, and putting a stud wall up to replace the strips; putting drywall up on the walls and ceiling, after putting canister lights or other recessed lighting up between the joists.

Our end goal is to have a nice-looking furnished basement room with >6'6" height just about everywhere (floor-to-joist height is 6'8"), and with soffits as small and high as possible (I can walk under the radiator pipes, but not under the soffit around them with ceiling tile and trim as it was.)

Thoughts? Suggestions? Dire warnings of homeowner doom?

Flowers in the Sun

We went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens yesterday. It was our first visit and we were impressed. I took a lot of pictures. I will spare you most of them. Here are some of my favorites. The pitcher plants were really amazing. They are native to North Carolina, but I had never seen a display this large and healthy.

Innumeracy Footnote

One would have thought that Judd Gregg would have a clearer grasp of the significance of 0.479%, which is the proportion of Obama's proposed budget cut to the size of the budget.

I'd think he might think that'd be a significant proportion, since the state he represents (NH) is comprised of... 0.43% of the US population.

Apparently, he thinks his constituency are a "few pieces of sand" compared to the "Gobi desert".


Perhaps you feel like I've singled out Judd Gregg unfairly. In which case, I've got two responses.

First: hey, I'm lazy. I'm not monitoring all the politicians for their ridiculous innumeracies. But if you let me know about it, I _will_ post what analysis I can muster -- it's obvious I can't help it. (And yes, feel free to replace "analysis" with "smackdown".)

Second: maybe I do hold Mr. Gregg to a higher standard. I met him, I shook his hand, he said he'd do his best to serve New Hampshire, and he went to my high school. When he's intellectually lazy, it reflects on me. Step up or sit down, sir.

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Swimming in Produce.

Summer vacation! I'm forced to stay home while they move our offices to a different building. Not only has the weather been great, but I got to go to two farmers' markets today.

Innumeracy followup

It's remarkably annoying to try to count out 200 grains of anything. So I played it safe -- I counted out 50 grains, what I'd spilled was over twice that, so I threw two more sprinkles on top. So that's definitely over 200 grains, probably around 300.

In other words, one of those grains is in proportion to that pile at the same ratio as Obama's budget cut is to the budget. That pile, in proportion to the Gobi Desert, is how inaccurate Judd Gregg's statement was.

Mr. Gregg's my first casualty -- take notice, politicos. You bring up the sand, you're in MY HOUSE.

Not a drop in the bucket, not a few "pieces" of sand.

So, Obama's proposed some cuts in government spending. Because it's only $17 billion, and the 2010 proposed budget is $3.55 trillion, this is described as a "modest" cut. On NPR, it is described as "less than one-half of one percent." Which is slightly misleading ("less than" is pretty broad -- a lot less, or a little less?) NPR characterizes criticism "that his cuts were but a drop in a $3.4 trillion spending bucket". (The $3.55 trillion number comes from VOA News. I don't know why there's a disparity.)

Or, here's some actual criticism from NH Republican Judd Gregg:

"It is as if this was the Gobi Desert or the Sahara Desert, and you came along and took a few pieces of sand off the desert"

This innumeracy I cannot abide.

$17 billion out of $3.55 trillion is 0.479 %. If I used NPR's $3.4 trillion figure, it'd be exactly 0.5 % (not less). "Less than one-half of one percent" sounds small. Even the fraction - 1/200 - looks pretty small. (That's for 0.5%. The fraction for 0.479% is 17/3550, which looks, well, not obviously smaller than 1/200.)

A drop is one sixtieth of a teaspoon, and a typical bucket is 10 quarts, which is 320 fluid ounces. And there's six teaspoons in a fluid ounce. So "a drop in a bucket" is .00000868 %, or 1/115200. Which IS A WHOLE LOT SMALLER.

Yes, I KNOW it's just an expression. If NPR is using "just an expression" to REPORT NEWS, they must be using it to give people a concrete idea of the proportion between the ($17Bn) budget cut and the ($3.55Tn) budget. And they're giving them the WRONG CONCRETE IDEA.

And we haven't even gotten to the understandably biased but nonetheless unacceptably hyperbolic Gregg. Let's assume that Gregg's an idiot (because it makes him look BETTER) and that by "pieces of sand" he means handfuls (if he meant grains of sand, he's just lying. Or so thoughtless about what he says that he hasn't even considered whether it's remotely true or not, which is about the same thing.) So, what's the proportion of a few handfuls of sand to the Gobi Desert? Making some more assumptions about Gregg's inadequate understanding of deserts, suppose he thinks the Gobi desert is uniformly one handful of sand thick. The Gobi Desert is 500,000 square miles. If we round up a few handfuls to a square foot, a square mile is 27,878,400 square feet, so Gregg's proportion is 1/13939200000000, or .00000000000717 %.

You want to know what would be like a drop in the bucket? A cut of $31 million. With all the generous assumptions we gave Gregg's assessment, his comparison would accurately correspond to a cut of...25 cents.

Maybe Gregg can afford to overlook the difference between $17 billion and 25 cents. After all, he's only off by 10 orders of magnitude. That's one drop out of 579,437 buckets, by the way.