Category: Rants

From my perspective the most prominent downside to the "Climate-gate" nontroversy is the fact that every jackass internet commenter and talk radio lemming in the world will resort even more rapidly to "LOL we all know the 'data' on global warming is FAAKE!" What is more interesting to me, though, is the broader public reaction to this "news." No amount of evidence or argumentation can convince Americans to think twice about starting a war, that universal access to health insurance will actually cost less in the long run, or that cutting taxes will not solve all their problems. Yet these same people are ready to believe at the drop of a hat that climate change is a hoax, an elaborate global conspiracy, based on out-of-context quotes extracted from emails among four inconsequential scientists.
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First, let's look at the words causing all the pant-shitting. This juicy quote has redneck America reaching for its revolver:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

The "decline" in question is not in temperature – it refers to measurements of tree rings. I have no idea what that means, but it seems worth noting that this is explicitly not referring to temperature. That's kinda relevant. As for the word "trick," among my circle of social scientists that term is commonly used to describe statistical techniques, especially techniques one poorly understands. But for all I know, these "tricks" and tree ring measurements could actually contradict the global warming hypothesis. I am not exactly qualified to draw conclusions about this data. That doesn't stop most people.

Second, there is this gem:

"I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

Half of the editorial board of the journal in question resigned in protest of the decision to publish a global warming denialist article, about which Climate Research itself stated: "(The paper's findings) cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. We should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication." Hmm. An editor also claimed that global warming denialists "had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common." In other words, this is a shit journal, a grease trap that catches all of the detritus from the real journals in the field. Every academic discipline has a few and they are routinely denigrated as we see in this email – especially if it is known for blatantly ideology-driven editorial practices.

Third, we have:

"The other paper by MM is just garbage. […] I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Folks, welcome to academia. Seriously. This has always happened and happens today in every field with a peer-review process. Academics are elitist, catty little bitches. Find me a field – I beg you, any field – where this scenario does not play out. Smith doesn't like Wong's work (no doubt over some petty, irrelevant methodological issue) so Smith calls Davis and Martinez and all three collude to reject Wong's paper from the conference, journal, seminar, or whatever. Being able to identify the petty assholes, narcissists, and would-be gatekeepers is half of being a successful academic…and dealing with their neuroses is the other. Whoever MM is, he/she has challenged the consensus in the field and his/her colleagues, all of whom are ready to defend their decades of published work to the death. Not exactly man bites dog in terms of newsworthiness.

Not terribly impressive "evidence" of a vast global warming conspiracy. So why are people so eager to buy it? Because Westerners, and car-centric Americans in particular, are desperate to avoid having to alter their behavior. Like a terminal cancer patient who chooses to believe in ridiculous miracle cures offered in spam emails, the average American intuitively understands that fossil fuels and habitat destruction must be having some kind of impact on the planet. Warming, cooling, whatever – all that burning coal and hazardous chemicals dumped into rivers have to be doing something. But the problem either seems too large to confront, a situation highly conducive to denialism, or this "evidence" of a hoax is the excuse people need to morally justify driving an empty Durango to the office every day.

These emails are spectacularly unspectacular. It undermines the credibility of about four scientists at a university no one in the US has ever heard of.
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It specifically does not undermine the entire body of climate research. There is no evidence of a hoax, no conspiracy to fabricate data, and no directives from the cabal of liberal professors and militant vegans who control the entire planet in the minds of paranoid Glenn Beck fans. Yet I'd be willing to bet that a majority of Americans will decide that the emails are in fact evidence of all of that and more. What was that line from the X-Files? Not "The truth is out there." The other one: "I want to believe."

Mike has an interesting thing up on Atlantic about the contribution of credit cards to income inequality. It is not really debatable that credit card issuers make very little money off of the wealthy. For people with ample resources who pay their balance monthly, the only way a credit card company is making money is from an annual fee (which is a drop in the bucket to the wealthy) and merchant fees for purchases, usually 3%. There's no reason to give a rich person a credit card beyond the hope that they will buy a lot of expensive things and rack up fees at the point of sale – fees that are paid by retailers and are invisible to consumers. No, rich people with 0,000 credit limits aren't of much use.
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Giving a bunch of poor people a $2,000 limit and then assholing them with late fees and 28% APRs is where it's at. This is common knowledge.

What is not as widely recognized is the redistributive effect Mike points out. Exorbitant interest rates on high-risk borrowers effectively subsidize the prime interest rates paid by the more affluent (not to mention the benefits to wealthy consumers' stock portfolios when the financial industry rakes in profits). Perhaps that is why we are starting to see stories in the Wall Street Journal about how 90s-style conspicuous consumption is returning to Wall Street – albeit a bit more quietly than before, lest the people who provided the bailout/handout six months ago take offense – alongside New York Times stories about how one in four children in America is receiving food stamps. One in four. Don't worry, though, the right wasted no time reminding us that this is merely evidence of how food stamps are too easy to get.

Yes, our financial industry does a hell of a job of extracting money from plebeians and passing it up the food chain to their social betters. It's not limited to banks and credit card companies, of course. Here in Georgia we have a particularly egregious legislative "fuck you" to the poor called the HOPE Scholarship program. It essentially provides any Georgia high school student who graduates with a 3.0 (which, if I recall high school correctly, is real hard to get) with four years of free tuition at state universities.
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It is contingent upon maintaining a 3.0 in college, but the vast majority of students I see are paying no tuition. So where does the money come from? A Harvard-sized endowment? Hardly. A generous state legislature? Perish the thought. No, it comes from Lotto tickets.

I'm sure there are some legitimately poor students for whom the HOPE program is the determinative factor in going to college. Overall, though, the program sends a phenomenal number of white kids from the suburbs and from middle- to upper-middle class households to college on the backs of people buying Lotto tickets. In other words, on the backs or poor people, including a disproportionate number of black people, with little to no formal education. Yes, in Georgia as in every other state the vast majority of Lotto sales – thanks in no small part to aggressive targeted marketing – are among low income minority consumers. What is ostensibly a magnanimous scholarship program is a weakly disguised plan to suck money from the poor and give it to suburbanites by paying for Billy's four years at Tech.
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You have to admire the sheer amount of balls required to propose such a scheme let alone to pass it.

It will be nice if the broader discussion about credit and debt addresses income inequality.
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What would be really nice, however, would be a passing nod in recognition of the structural and institutional causes of inequality rather than a simple descent into a patronizing moral argument about personal responsibility and meritocracy. These people get screwed because our social, financial, and political institutions are carefully designed to screw them. It's all remarkably effective.

This video, courtesy loyal reader Evan, floored me.

I am generally wary of mash-up videos of this type, as they are obviously edited to achieve hilarity and prove one's point. Take those Jay Leno "Jaywalking" segments, for example. They are often the basis for broad conclusions about how stupid we are. But they probably ask 100 people and edit it down to the three dumbest responses. We all know this, right? That might be what is going on in the Palin video. Or maybe there wasn't a lot of editing required.

We really should be well past the point at which the stupidity of Sarah Palin devotees can surprise us. And I do expect damn close to nothing from them. But when the person conducting the interviews asks them to name a policy or issue position they find appealing in Palin, they stare at him like he asked them to do Chinese algebra. Perhaps they are imitating their idol's response to difficult questions like "Name a Supreme Court case" or "What newspapers do you read?" For christ's sake, how hard would it be for these people to say "She's pro-life!" or "Tax cuts!" in response to such a basic question?

I shouldn't be surprised but I am. Can people really get this excited about a political figure without knowing a single thing about her? It would seem that one would not waste time going to Teabagging rallies without being able to say something – anything – beyond "I'm mad" and "Duh president is a Negro and it's makin' me crazy." To devote one's time to the Palin/Beck/Teabagging universe without having even the bare minimum of political awareness would be like me spending time and money to see Twilight movies.

I'll say one thing for these mouthbreathers: their anger respects no ideology and knows no loyalty. It doesn't take long for them to turn on Palin, does it? It is almost as if they are shocked to learn that Palin does not in fact give a flying fuck about them beyond taking their money and bolstering her ego with their presence.

The Federal budget is nearly always discussed in abstract terms – it is "too large" or whatever – or with precision but bereft of context, as billions and trillions and numbers with decimal points are thrown around by people who haven't the faintest idea what portion of our budget those figures represent. The 3.99 trillion dollar FY09 budget, for example, makes almost any individual program look like a drop in the ocean. But I digress.

Where does all of that money get spent? Popular wisdom says Congressmen fight over it and eventually divide it up among the 435 districts in vaguely similar amounts. In reality Federal spending overwhelmingly favors just a few patches of real estate in this country. Note that the figures I am about to discuss are raw dollars, not dollars per capita, and exclude entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Between 2004 and 2009, 11% (10.88% to be exact) of all non-entitlement Federal spending went to six districts, or 1.4% of Congressional districts. Quite logically, four of these six districts include the District of Columbia, two bordering districts in northern Virginia, and one bordering district in Maryland. These districts receive copious Federal dollars because the Federal government itself resides in them. The remaining two, however, are quite a way from Washington D.C.

Over the last five years no Congressional district outside of Washington D.C. itself has received more Federal cash than Texas 12, ably represented by fiscal conservative Kay Granger (R). Since 2004, $32.6 billion tax dollars have been shoveled into this vast, empty swath of land west of the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington agglomeration. It is with rich irony, then, that I read tripe on her website like "Granger Decries Healthcare Bill." It mixes cheap regurgitation of Contract With America-era nonsense ("It should include tort reform.") with non-stop whining about the costs. Rep. Granger sure is vigilant about looking out for our tax dollars, no doubt making sure that the encroaching threat won't siphon off her district's gravy train. I mean, that $13.9 billion in 2008 for "Construction of Structures and Facilities – Miscellaneous Buildings" doesn't just grow on trees!

The disconnect between fiscal conservative rhetoric and the reality of Congressional spending is considerable but rarely cast in high relief. Being "opposed to government spending" essentially means being opposed to spending that benefits individuals, and specifically individuals who live outside of one's district. Opposing spending means opposing "welfare" and unemployment benefits (which I believe are about $5000 per month in the minds of Glenn Beck and the idiots who attach themselves to his doughy hide like barnacles). Today it also means opposing healthcare reform, which like welfare and unemployment exists only to suck money out of the pockets of white hard-working people and give it to black shiftless people. The inability or plain unwillingness of voters and elected officials to recognize just how heavily they depend on a steady flow of cash from Washington D.C. is almost impressive. But when that money is threatened we find that their attitude quickly changes. Anti-spending attitudes are meaningful and deeply held only until one's own ox is being gored.