Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Yes we did.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We can agree to disagree, but I’m right.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Good luck with your asparagus.

The house always wins.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

We have all the best words.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Wetsuit optional.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

This Blog Goes to 11…

Word salad with all caps

No one could have predicted…

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

This is a big f—–g deal.

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Rand Paul, Objectively Pro-Lynching

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… (It’s worth noting that Aqua Buddha’s standard for what constitutes “lynching” is taken almost word-for-word from the Bush Administration’s standard for what constitutes “torture,” and we all know how well that standard worked out.)

This, of course, is precisely the right moment in time to block an anti-lynching bill, given what happened in Minneapolis and subsequent events. And, of course, the Congress has been trying and failing to get its act together on an anti-lynching bill for only over a century. How freaking hard can this be in 2020? Don’t answer that.

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In Search of Zuckerberg’s Spine

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This is insane:

“I know many people are upset that we’ve left the President’s posts up,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.
Trump’s posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter read, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

Within two-and-a-half hours of the post, Twitter had placed a warning label on it saying it glorified violence.

Facebook, by contrast, remained silent on the matter for 18 hours until Zuckerberg’s post appeared.

Justifying leaving the posts on Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg wrote, “We looked very closely at the post that discussed the protests in Minnesota to evaluate whether it violated our policies. Although the post had a troubling historical reference, we decided to leave it up because the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force. Our policy around incitement of violence allows discussion around state use of force, although I think today’s situation raises important questions about what potential limits of that discussion should be.”

Testifying before Congress in October, Zuckerberg said, “If anyone, including a politician, is saying things that can cause, that is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm … we will take that content down.” He was answering questions from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when he made the claim.

In case you need that interpreted, what it means is if you or I say “Kill the Jews,” it’s no bueno. But if we’re talking about a state policy of killing the Jews, well then that’s just a reasonable discussion.

I remembered giggling the first time I played CIV VI and one of the endgame government options was Corporate Libertarianism. I think about that a lot and it scares the hell out of me now.

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Another KY Senator Heard From: Little Prince Rand (Thinks He) Knows Better Than Your ‘Public Health Experts’

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*I* had it already, so I’m safe. Why should I care about what might happen to other people?

Look, if we let Those People get sick, we can harvest their plasma to protect *important* people… (No, really.)

Yes, but there was a black Democrat in the Oval Office, back then…

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Terrible People Behaving Predictably

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“Pro Life” advocate:

TP-USA founder Charlie ‘Wear Your Diaper to Campus’ Kirk:

Dinesh D’Souza will sink to ANY challenge in the Terribleness Sweeps…

And then there’s this guy…

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“Amash for Prez”: Another GOP Jagoff Heard From

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As a former amateur observer of Michigan politics, I’d describe Justin Amash as ‘Rand Paul with a working forebrain.’ Which of course is why, given the recent attention he drew for his ‘principled’ stance against RINO Donald Trump, he couldn’t resist the eternal libertarian impulse to make the most dangerous election of our lifetimes ALL ABOUT HIMSELF. (The deVos family can afford to buy the best jagoffs available on the open market — and they do.)

… Amash, a 40-year-old conservative lawmaker who has been a member of Congress since 2011 and had helped found the House Freedom Caucus, left the Republican Party last July after his criticisms of President Donald Trump alienated him from his former allies.

He joined with Democrats to vote to impeach Trump, but on most policy issues still votes as a straight-line Republican…

Amash has as much chance of becoming president as our beloved Blogmaster, but for the next six months, he’ll have the worshipful attention of every horse-race tout among the Media Village Idiots. Not to mention the teeth-gnashing envy of some hundreds, even thousands, of dedicated large-L Libertarians. The Washington Post‘s Dave Weigel (who used to be a perceptive reporter) is already very excited!

… “Things have really taken a turn for the worse, in terms of the growth of libertarianism in Congress,” Amash told The Washington Post in a 2018 interview. “You have some bright spots here and there. But for the most part, the party’s become more nationalistic, more anti-trade.”

In 2019, Amash became the only Republican to call for Trump’s impeachment. Not long after, he left the party and continued to vote against spending bills, while opposing many White House priorities. He faced a tough reelection in his Grand Rapids, Mich.-based district, with Republicans and Democrats both filing against him…

The Libertarian Party is set to meet in Austin over Memorial Day weekend to pick its presidential nominee, with the convention making its choice on May 25. While the pandemic has canceled many political events, the Libertarian Party had not moved the convention, and earlier this week Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the state would “reopen” on May 1.

I would *never* wish a contagious coronavirus outbreak on anyone. But a nice contained bout of norovirus, maybe?…

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Readership Capture

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Been quite the year, this week, hasn’t it? And in the latest cliffhanger, another ‘libertarian’ Repub has decided to play vandal for the cameras:

… Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Thursday that he opposed the bill, approved unanimously by the Senate on Wednesday, as it would add to the national debt. The libertarian lawmaker also is concerned that voting without a quorum present — the majority of the House chamber — would violate the Constitution. He said he has yet to decide whether to press the issue, which could delay a House vote until late Saturday or Sunday…

Pelosi indicated that any future effort would involve all four leaders in Congress. She intends to hunker down in Washington to work on the next steps, rather than heading back to her home in San Francisco, even though the House is not expected to be in session for weeks to come…

SOMEBODY has to be the grown-up in the room, after all. And the Repubs can’t even keep their own team in line.

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ETA: A Title Would Help

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Here’s a cheery little musical interlude to take our minds off (not really) the horrors around us.

Gallows humor is better than no humor at all, I guess.

In other notes, check out this map of rural hospital closings since 2002–most since 2010, after red states decided they didn’t need no stinking Medicaid expansion. Details here.

And with that, open thread.

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Man in an Armchair, 1652.

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Repubs in Disarray!.. Open Thread: Peter Thiel, Would-Be Supervillain, Resurfaces in Kansas

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I’d seen rumors on multiple sites that the Permanent GOP Party was ‘encouraging’, or at least hoping, Mike Pompeo to run for the Senate in Kansas. Suddenly, a powerful counterinterest emerges… just as Mike Pompeo finds himself under the spotlight in DC. Brian Lowry, at the Kansas City Star:

Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who believes Google should be investigated for treason and once wrote that American democracy has been in decline since women won the right to vote, is investing heavily in two of the Kansas City region’s most ambitious political startups.

Thiel steered six figures into a dark money group that backed Republican Kris Kobach’s failed campaign for Kansas governor, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

And now that Kobach is running for U.S. Senate, the PayPal co-founder is upfront about his financial support. Last week at his New York City apartment, Thiel and conservative pundit Ann Coulter co-hosted a fundraiser for the former Kansas secretary of state…

One of Thiel’s companies, the data mining firm Palantir, has provided software supporting ICE’s case management system since 2014. The company has faced criticism from immigration activists because of the software’s reported use in deportations.

Two sources familiar with the inner workings of Kobach’s 2018 campaign said Thiel gave a contribution worth six figures to Per Aspera Policy, a 501(c)4 organization that paid for digital and television ads.

Both of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Thiel’s previously undisclosed contributions to the dark money group occurred after Kobach and Thiel discussed the race on the phone. One source said Kobach was giddy when Thiel agreed to spend money in the race.

Kobach did not consent to an interview about his relationship with Thiel. His campaign declined to answer any questions, including about whether Thiel and Kobach had discussed the race for governor.

Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, said at a minimum the situation “sounds like an illustration of the problems with dark money. Dark money is often only dark when it comes to the public’s knowledge—the candidates who benefit often know where the money is coming from.”…

It’s impossible to have any sympathy for Pompeo, who’s done his best to earn all the opprobrium now being aimed his way. Another interesting data point, however, that the other rightwing authoritarians see an opening to exploit in the flailing Trump 2020 campaign…

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Mick Mulvaney Gets Caught Telling the Truth

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They’d throw him off the GOP Titanic for this, but Mulvaney’s the Acting Head of Everything They’ve Still Got… and possibly the only one who’s figured out how to work the light switches in the Oval Office.

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Industrial clusters and thick labor markets

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I’m waiting for a huge piece of code to rerun and I should not be working on a cognitively intensive revise and resubmit on a Friday afternoon, so I want to go back to what I originally went to grad school for — urban economics and economic development — for a minute to respond to a seemingly populist and really dumb proposal to strip the federal government of expertise proposed by Andrew Yang.

Let’s think about Washington DC’s primary export industry as government and more specifically federal government leadership and top level analysis and management. The federal government is an industrial cluster in DC much like venture capital fueled technology firms are an industrial cluster in San Francisco-San Jose region, bio-tech is a cluster in Greater Boston and steel was a cluster in Pittsburgh. Clusters are interesting in that they are often positive feedback loops until they run into hard constraints or a massive external shock.

There is a huge literature on the positive feedback loops on economically successful clusters. One of the major drivers is that a cluster creates a rich and thick labor market. This means that at any given point, there are lots of good jobs available to anyone who is qualified to work in the cluster. People aren’t locked into a “good enough” job because that is the only job available that utilizes any specific human capital/education/tacit knowledge available to them, but that people can readily shift between positions to maximize their personal gain. In Washington DC, if someone is a research economist, there are a hundred opportunities within seven Metro stops of their current place of employment. If someone is a research economist in Sault Ste. Marie, there may be one or two within an hour of their current place of employment. The same applies for geneticists who work in Boston vs. geneticists who work in Boise.

Employment concentration creates specialization and optimization. It allows for work to be more productive as the cluster grows and the labor market becomes even thicker and deeper. This is all pretty standard.

There is another labor market point to make; large urban areas have lots of jobs that are not in the primary export industry. This could matter for me at some point in the future as I could easily see myself spending a couple of years working for either the federal government in the DC-Baltimore region or working for an entity that directly services the federal management and analysis industrial cluster. My wife has a skill set that could translate into this industrial sector but her current experience is in a general professional environment. If my options for moving to DC for federal work or Boone, North Carolina, my wife will far more readily find a good enough job in DC.

Dispersing the vast majority of the DC/Baltimore/NOVA government management and analysis cluster that has been built up over four generations is a great way to make the federal government less efficient and less attractive to top tier talent especially if the dispersion would be going to smaller urban clusters with far shallower and thinner labor markets.

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Rand Paul Stays True to His Principle

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He has but the one: What’s in it for Rand Paul?

Rand Paul *and* Mitch McConnell. WHY, Kentucky?

Why now?…

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Shocking news — work requirements don’t work

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Benjamin Sommers** and others published an important study with a completely expected result on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.  They surveyed Arkansas to evaluate what was happening with employment and insurance coverage as a result of the state’s decision to implement work requirements for Medicaid:

We conducted a telephone survey to compare changes in outcomes before and after implementation of the work requirements in Arkansas among persons 30 to 49 years of age, as compared with Arkansans 19 to 29 years of age and those 50 to 64 years of age (who were not subject to the requirement in 2018) and with adults in three comparison states — Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas. ….

Our study had three primary outcomes: the percentage of respondents with Medicaid, the percentage of respondents who were uninsured, and the percentage of respondents reporting any employment. Secondary outcomes were the number of hours worked per week, the percentage of respondents satisfying any category of community engagement requirement (described below), the percentage of respondents with employer-sponsored insurance, and two measures of access to care — the percentages of respondents having a personal physician and reporting any cost-related delays in care….

estimate of changes in the percentage of respondents who were not insured was an increase of 7.1 percentage points (95% CI, 0.5 to 13.6; P=0.04).

Uninsurance rates increased more for the work requirement cohort than other cohorts.  This is not an unexpected result.  Almost every pre-waiver approval analysis projected significant enrollment drops due to increased paperwork friction.  The amount of friction would be a function of how user friendly the roll-out and implementation was; it was not a particularly user friendly process as the reporting system was online only with limited professional office hour availability that made reporting extremely difficult and unlikely for people who did not have reliable internet or worked jobs that did not neatly map to a 9-5 assumption.

Overall, more than 92% of the respondents in all four groups — and nearly 97% of the respondents 30 to 49 years of age in Arkansas — were already meeting the community engagement requirement or should have been exempt before the policy took effect.

Work requirements are targeted at an incredibly small cohort of people who might be able to work but don’t.  This is very wide spread pain to sort out the “deserving” vs “undeserving” working poor.

Employment declined from 42.4% to 38.9% among Arkansans 30 to 49 years of age, a change of −3.5 percentage points. The three comparison groups had similar decreases, ranging from −2.9 to −5.7 percentage points.

And work requirements did absolutely nothing for employment.

None of this is particularly surprising.  It is good that we have very firm evidence of the obvious as this type of evidence raises the bar in future litigation against arbitrary and capricious waiver approvals.  The current federal district court judge who is overseeing lawsuits against work requirements has held that work is not a fundamental purpose of Medicaid.  If the study had shown absolutely minimal to no net coverage loss as people shifted to exchange or employer sponsored insurance and significant income gains, then the administration’s argument that this was an evidence based experiment with plausible real gains could hold some water.  Instead, this study shows that work requirements are fundamentally paperwork requirements that culls enrollment without producing employment effects.

 

 

 

** DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsr1901772

 

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Justin Amash, Libertarian

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Like Dana Houle, I remember Justin Amash as a local (state) nuisance, carrying water for his deVos family patrons in order to help the proud Christianists of Western Michigan stay barefoot and ignorant. But unlike such ‘independent thinkers’ as Mike Lee or Little Prince Rand, he’s not a moron, and he doesn’t assume that everyone not Justin Amash is either lying or a moron or both. If he’s made the decision to cut line on the Squatter-in-Chief, well… He does have his Libertarian principles, but I’m halfway hoping he’s also the first defector before the flood.

For the supposedly well-disciplined and implacable Trump Brigades of the GOP, this is some very weak tea, per the Washington Post:

… Trump privately has vented to associates about the Michigan lawmaker, who on Saturday became the first congressional Republican to raise the possibility of impeachment, citing the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations…

But on Capitol Hill, few Republicans are eager to punish the libertarian, who had a long history of bucking GOP leaders even before Trump was elected. Top Republican lawmakers and aides said Monday that kicking Amash out of the GOP conference or off his committee would only draw more attention to his apostasy. Instead, they have focused on isolating Amash and portraying him as an outlier. The House Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of which Amash is a member, also took a position Monday night “strongly disagreeing” with Amash’s comments…

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Beyond Parody Open Thread: Erik Prince ‘Tutors’ James O’Keefe

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And one can only wish that were a Far Side reference:

Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged for political activist James O’Keefe’s conservative group Project Veritas to receive more than one round of “training in intelligence and elicitation techniques,” The Intercept reports. In 2016, the self-styled “guerrilla journalist” group reportedly got lessons from a retired military intelligence operative… In 2017, Prince next set Project Veritas up with a former British MI6 officer in hopes of turning the organization into “domestic spies,” according to report. At the time, O’Keefe posted social-media photos of the event at Prince’s Wyoming ranch, claiming he was training in “spying and self-defense” and planned to turn Project Veritas into “the next great intelligence agency.”

I’m going with a Thorstein Veblen explanation: Flushing the occasional million down the crapper attempting to educate an O’Keefe is an obvious demonstration, to one’s fellow glibertarian billionaires, that one has millions of dollars to waste.

Although, as Jack Crosbie at Splinter points out, it can reasonably be argued that Betsy deVos’s brother Erik is not, himself, all that bright…

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Today in Great Moments in Senatorial Debate: Senator Mike Lee Edition!

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Senator Lee gave a speech delineating his opposition to the Green New Deal today as part of Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s attempt to put the Senate Democratic caucus in a bind by making them take a stand either for or against one of the House Democratic caucus’s signature issues. Fortunately for us all, Senator Lee is, well, Senator Lee, which is sort of the Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of Senator Ted Cruzes. Or something… Even more fortuitously, Senator Lee posted a YouTube video of his remarks and posted a transcript of them at his Senate website.  He’s so considerate!

Senator Lee’s major proposal for resolving the problem that is climate change is to have more babies*, because one of them might actually come up with a good idea to resolve the problem at some point in the future.

This, Mr. President, is the real solution to climate change: babies.

Climate change is an engineering problem – not social engineering, but the real kind.
It’s a challenge of creativity, ingenuity, and technological invention.

And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans!

More people mean bigger markets for innovation.

More babies mean more forward-looking adults – the sort we need to tackle long-term, large scale problems.

American babies, in particular, are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing regions.

As economist Tyler Cowen recently wrote on this very point, “by having more children, you are making your nation more populous – thus boosting its capacity to solve [climate change].”

Finally, Mr. President, children are a mark of the kind of personal, communal, and societal optimism that is the true pre-requisite for meeting national and global challenges together.

The courage needed to solve climate change is nothing compared with the courage needed to start a family.

The true heroes of this story aren’t politicians or social media activists.

They are moms and dads, and the little boys and girls they are, at this moment, putting down for naps… helping with their homework… building tree houses… and teaching how to tie their shoes.

The planet does not need us to “think globally, and act locally” so much as it needs us to think family, and act personally.

The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution, but the serious business of human flourishing – the solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places: fall in love, get married, and have some kids.

I yield the floor.

This, however, wasn’t the most batshit insane part of Senator Lee’s audio-visual extravaganza. Pride of place for that honor goes to the graphics and images he used to help make his point.

President Reagan on a velociraptor wielding a machine pistol while the velociraptor carries a tattered American flag – this is apparently big on one of the Chan boards/sites:

A still image from The Empire Strikes Back of Luke Skywalker riding on a tauntaun on the ice planet Hoth:

A still image from the Hannah-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon series Superfriends of Aquaman on his seahorse Storm from the early 1970s (in the earlier 1960s Filmation Aquaman-Superman Adventures Storm was white with gold ears – do not ask how I know this…):

A picture of a bunch of babies (awww!):

This is stupidity, disingenuousness, and bad faith on par with Kyle Reese’s description of the Terminator:

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

I don’t care if you’re Senator Booker who is claiming one of his key strengths is that he can, because he has in the past, work effectively across the aisle or Howard Schultz who keeps stating that as an independent centrist that he can work with both sides, THERE IS NOTHING HERE TO WORK WITH!!!!! There’s no difference to split here, there’s no accommodation that can be made here, and there is no compromise that can be reached. Right now, whether you agree, partially agree, or disagree with what the Democrats are proposing, you’ve got one party actually proposing solutions that have been thought through and one party that proposes the same four things no matter what is going on: 1) cut taxes, 2) cut regulations, 3) gut the social safety net and undo the New Deal, 4) and allow unlimited amounts of money in politics because money equals speech and corporations equal people. And, if there’s a crisis involving brown people with funny accents: 5) deploy troops to deal with them. The shame that is the United States in 2019 is that there is one party, the Democratic Party, that is dealing with reality, even if you don’t agree with what they’re proposing and then there’s this insanity being peddled by the Republicans.

At this point I’m about two weeks away from declaring myself Sub-Commandante Citizen-Leftenant Zero and storming a radio station… **

Which leads to one of my favorite political cartoons of all time:

Open thread!

* I’m sure at some point this will be rolled into an argument why Roe V. Wade must be overturned and abortion made illegal so we don’t accidentally abort the baby that will save us from the climate change crisis that Senator Lee doesn’t actually believe exists.

** This is SARCASM, lest someone eventually show up or use this to claim I’m advocating the overthrow of the US government or endorsing the use of low intensity warfare and political violence.

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