.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Law:  Birthers and Birth Rights

Contributed by Bruce B., March 29, 2011 ...

There is too much legal mumbo jumbo on this birther business.

To clarify things, we should all agree that there are two (and only two) kinds of American Citizens: Natural born American Citizens and Naturalized Americans.

That's it.  Two flavors only.

A natural born citizen enters the world an American citizen.  A naturalized American citizen enters the world with some other citizenship, and then goes through a naturalization process to become an American citizen.  Feel free to read this paragraph a second time, because it is essential to understanding things. 

Most natural born American citizens are born in the United States.  However, not all are born in the United States.

I offer as exhibits A and B my two children, both born on Italian soil.  Their parents (my wife and I) are natural born American citizens born in California and Connecticut, respectively.  Work took us to Italy, where our children were born.  (We are now back in the United States, where they have lived the bulk of their lives). 

When each child was born, we took our passports and the child's local birth certificate down to the United States Consulate in Milan, Italy, and obtained a Consular Report of Birth Abroad and a U.S. passport for our new bundle of joy. Automatically.  Based on our citizenship.

No questions.  No lengthy process.  No naturalization.  I repeat: no naturalization.  Since we are American citizens, they are American citizens.  At birth.  I.e. "natural-born American citizens".  For those who like Latin legal terms, we are talking jus sanguinis (citizenship through the law of bloodline, or lineage).  That's the law and  our children are living proof.  Both are eligible to be President. 

Being born on American soil has importance only in situations where the parents are not American citizens.    

Exhibit C could be Mitt Romney's father, George Romney.  George was born of American parents in Mexico.  His family returned to the United States where he became the CEO of American Motors (remember the old Ramblers?) and governor of the State of Michigan.  He ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1968.  He didn't get the nomination in the end, but that had nothing to do with where he was born. 

Exhibit D could be Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, while his father was serving there in the U.S. armed forces.  This situation is more nuanced, since, at the time, the U.S. controlled the Canal Zone.  This did not stop some people from saying this American hero should have been excluded from running for President.  They were wrong.


Think about it.  Why on earth would we want to exclude the offspring of Americans who are serving abroad in the United States Armed Forces, or the U.S. Diplomatic Corps, or studying or working abroad?  If an American couple from Buffalo happens to be visiting friends in Ontario and the pregnant wife goes into early labor and delivers in Toronto, should the child be excluded from the Presidency because he or she was accidentally born in Canada?  Of course not.

So let's pause here a moment and agree that the children of American citizens are natural born citizens of the United States and therefore eligible to serve as President, due to the operation of jus sanguinis under U.S. law. 

I note as well that only one parent needs to be a U.S. Citizen for all of this to work under the law.  Witness my sister who is married to an Englishman and whose two sons, born in the United Kingdom, are natural born American citizens with Consular Reports of Birth Abroad and U.S. passports.

Now, what of the case of Barack Obama?  This media controversy revolved around citizenship based on place of birth, or jus soli, for those legal Latin lovers.  Was he born in Hawaii or not?  But this misses the point of jus sanguinis, though the media has not picked up on this in any well-reasoned way.  His mother was an American citizen.  That is enough to make him "natural-born American" regardless of where he was born, unless there is a specific disqualifying factor; e.g. if he exclusively took, or was given, the citizenship of his father (who was a British subject colonial citizen) and not the citizenship of his mother.  Or that the place of his birth conferred on him automatic and exclusive citizenship, which he embraced (jus soli).  Nothing like this pertains in his case.

Let me add that someone can be born with two citizenships and still be a natural born American citizen.  Certain countries may confer non-exclusive citizenship on babies born on their soil; others may confer citizenship on the children and even grandchildren of their emigrants.  Hey, that's their business.  It is a separate matter and has no effect on the operation of U.S. law, nor should it.  A natural born American under U.S. law is a natural born U.S. citizen.   Period.

Arguments that try to tease out exceptions to natural born status under either jus soli or jus sanguinis end up sounding ridiculous.  The binary approach is the only one that makes any sense.

The law should be clear and simple on citizens:  natural born or naturalized.  One or the other. 

Let's get this clarity into the media, not just for Barack Obama, but for the sake of children of our loyal service men and women and others who were naturally born as U.S. citizens abroad.  They are fully eligible to become President of our great country.   

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Diversion:  Turtles

From Turtles by Randall Munroe, April 23, 2011 at XKCD.com.

Science:  China Announces It Will Build Its Own Space Station Within 10 Years

China unveiled its plan to build a manned space station in the next decade. This announcement comes from a space program whose development has been, well, skyrocketing; China launched its first astronaut into Earth orbit in 2003 and completed its first spacewalk in 2008. If things go as planned, the station would be the third ever multi-module space station, after Russia's Mir and the International Space Station.

For more, see China Announces It Will Build Its Own Space Station Within 10 Years by Valerie Ross, April 27, 2011 at DISCOVER's Gene Suppression.

Society:  Trust by Nation

For more, see Trust Me, We're Rich by Catherine Rampell, April 18, 2011 at Economix.

Mind:  You Can't Focus on Everything at Once

Contributed by Martha ...

This new research builds on the well-known "Gorillas in Our Midst" experiment, a staple of Psych 101 courses. Researchers say they can now explain why many people fail to see a "gorilla" who unexpectedly appears in a video when their attention is focused on another task -- it's because they have lower "working memory capacity," a measure of the ability to keep your brain tuned into many things at once.

In the study, 197 psychology students (ages 18 to 35) watched a 24-second video of six people playing basketball. They were asked to count the number of bounce passes and aerial passes made by the black-shirted team. Twelve seconds into the video, an actor dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the hoops game, pounds his chest, then leaves. The "gorilla" appears on screen for eight seconds.

After viewing the segment, researchers asked participants for the two different pass counts and whether they noticed anything unusual in the clip. Slightly more than half the participants, or 58%, noticed the ape but 42% did not.

While completing difficult tasks, people with higher working memory capacity can keep more information in their minds. And these folks are more likely to see the gorilla. That's because they "have more attentional resources allowing them to use any 'leftover' resources to monitor the environment and notice the gorilla," explains Seegmiller.

In fact, researchers found that among participants who were most accurate in counting basketball passes in the video -- the original task at hand -- 67% of those with "high working memory capacity" observed the gorilla but only 36% with "low working memory capacity" did.

For more, see You Can't Focus on Everything at Once. Here's Why by Cari Nierenberg, April 21, 2011 at The Body Odd.

Taxes:  Tax Expenditure of the Week: Tax Day Roundup

Some of our largest government programs are structured as tax exclusions or tax deductions. Because marginal tax rates are higher for people who make more money, exclusions or deductions are more valuable for taxpayers in higher tax brackets. Whether the purpose is to promote homeownership, retirement savings, or investment, these programs tend to provide the largest government subsidies to those who need them the least, while providing little or no benefit to those who could use them the most.
But provisions like the mortgage interest deduction, the retirement and education savings incentives, and the charitable deduction are essentially subsidies for the desired activities. And they are upside-down subsidies because they give the biggest rewards to the people who would most likely take the desired action—buy a house, save disposable income—even without the incentive.
In addition to fairness concerns, the upside-down nature of such deductions raises questions about these programs' efficacy. If policymakers were designing a new government program to encourage homeownership, they'd probably target incentives toward people who most need them or who are most likely to respond to them. Giving wealthy taxpayers with incomes of more than $250,000 a housing subsidy 10 times as large as families making $40,000 to $75,000 is clearly not the most cost-effective way of encouraging homeownership.

[Emphasis added].

For more, see Tax Expenditure of the Week: Tax Day Roundup by Seth Hanlon, April 15, 2011 at Center for American Progress.

Healthcare:  What Makes the Us Health Care System So Expensive

For more, see What Makes the Us Health Care System So Expensive — Introduction by Aaron Carrol, September 20, 2010 at The Incidental Economist.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Healthcare:  Us Healthcare vs. the Rest of the World

From Us Healthcare vs. The Rest of the World, April 20, 2011 at Business Pundit.

Politics:  They've Got Birthers in Iowa, Too

  • 48% of Iowa GOPers don't think Obama was born in the U.S.
  • 26% say they aren't sure.
  • Another 26% believe he was born in U.S.

For more, see They've Got Birthers in Iowa, Too, April 19, 2011 at Politico.

Economics:  BRIC Wall

If projections of future growth look rosy for emerging markets, however, history counsels caution. The post-war period is rich in examples of blistering catch-up growth. But at some point growth starts to disappoint. Gaining ground on the leaders is far easier than overtaking them.
[A study says] on average, growth slowdowns occur when per-head GDP reaches around $16,740 at PPP. The average growth rate then drops from 5.6% a year to 2.1%.

This estimate passes the smell test of history (see chart).

Openness to trade appears to be a potent stimulant: the authors attribute the outperformance of Hong Kong and Singapore to this effect. Lifting consumption to just over 60% of GDP is useful, as is a low and stable rate of inflation. Neither financial openness nor changes of political regime seem to matter much, but a large ratio of workers to dependents reduces the odds of a slowdown. An undervalued exchange rate, on the other hand, appears to contribute to a higher probability of a slowdown. The reason for this is not clear but the authors suggest that undervaluation could lead countries to neglect their innovative capacity, or may contribute to imbalances that choke off a boom.

For more, see BRIC Wall, April 14, 2011 at The Economist.

Mind:  Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution

It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40% of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this knowledge gap, newly published research suggests the key factor isn't faith per se but rather a benefit it provides that Darwin does not: A sense that our all-too-short lives have meaning.
Reminders of death tend to evoke enthusiastic adherence to our religious and political belief systems, since they are the mechanisms that promise us either literal or symbolic immortality.
As Tracy and her colleagues note, evolutionary theory, which views human life as the product of a lengthy chain of natural events, seems existentially bleak to many people. In contrast, the relatively new notion of intelligent design theory implies there is a purpose to the human enterprise.

Although there is little evidence to back it up, intelligent design has a strong emotional pull: It may calm existential concerns through the implication of its assertion that human life was intentionally created, rather than resulting from seemingly random and meaningless forces of nature, they write.

In five experiments, the researchers presented participants with a passage arguing for evolutionary theory and/or a passage arguing for intelligent design theory, then assessed their views of the concepts and the author of each statement. For each study, half of the participants were asked at the outset to imagine their own death, while the others were asked to imagine dental pain (a control condition chosen to elicit negative feelings but not life-threatening ones).

Those who had been contemplating their own mortality expressed relatively more positive reactions to intelligent design theory and its proponent, Michael Behe, and significantly greater negativity toward evolutionary theory and its proponent, Richard Dawkins.
In one of their experiments, featuring 269 psychology students, half of the participants read a passage by cosmologist and science writer Carl Sagan.

In it, he argued that humans can attain meaning and purpose by seeking to understand the natural origins of life. Even if we are merely matter, he wrote, we can still find purpose, but it must be one that we work out for ourselves.

Reading that passage produced the opposite result of the earlier studies. Among those who were exposed to Sagan's notions, thoughts of mortality produced a negative reaction to intelligent design theory and a positive one toward evolution.

It seems the study participants were still looking for meaning in response to an existential threat. But after being told by a trusted source that scientific study can satisfy this longing, they found Darwin's concepts surprisingly appealing.

For more, see Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution by Tom Jacobs, March 30, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

California:  Pension Problems: Santa Barbara Projects $2.9 Million Shortfall

Going forward, even as the economy rebounds, [Santa Barbara] city officials expect that rising employee pension costs to be the No. 1 challenge facing the city.

The city's payments to the California Public Employees Retirement System are expected to rise by $1 million next year and another $5 million by 2014.

Police and fire retirement costs will rise from 36% to 43% of the city's entire payroll during that time.

For every dollar the city pays in police and fire departments' employee salaries, the city pays 43 cents to the state's public employee retirement system to cover public safety employee benefits.

For more, see Pension Problems: Santa Barbara Projects $2.9 Million Shortfall; City Looks to Cut Employee Retirement Costs by Joshua Molina, April 20, 2011 at The Daily Sound.

Taxes:  Greenspan Steps up Call to End Bush-Era Tax Cuts

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is stepping up his call for Congress to let the Bush-era tax cuts lapse.

In an appearance Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Mr. Greenspan used his strongest words yet to urge lawmakers to let them expire. The risk of a U.S. debt crisis, he said, is just too big. Mr. Greenspan, who retired from the Federal Reserve in 2006, had endorsed the cuts back in 2001 championed by then-President George W. Bush.

This crisis is so imminent and so difficult that I think we have to allow the so-called Bush tax cuts all to expire. That is a very big number, he said, referring to how much the U.S. government could save from letting income taxes go back up to levels last seen under former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Greenspan was talking about re-imposing the taxes for all Americans. The Treasury has estimated that a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts would cost $3.6 trillion over the next decade. Allowing taxes to increase on those in the top income brackets would take the cost to the government down to $2.9 trillion, according to White House estimates.

... when it came to the tax cuts, he sounded more alarmed than he was in August, when he said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, that he disagreed with conservatives who said tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by causing more economic activity.

They do not, Mr. Greenspan said at the time, adding that the U.S. has been funding spending programs and tax cuts with borrowed money. And at the end of the day that proves disastrous. My view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.

From Greenspan Steps up Call to End Bush-Era Tax Cuts by Luca DI Leo, April 17, 2011 at The Wall Street Journal.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Race:  Can 46% of Mississippi Republicans Favor Banning Interracial Marriage?

From a survey across America:

By 2002 it was a consistent finding that less than 10% of Americans would accede to the proposition that interracial marriage should be legally banned. So the finding that that 46% of Mississippi Republicans agree with that position, and that only 40% reject it outright, is somewhat curious.

For more, see Can 46% of Mississippi Republicans Favor Banning Interracial Marriage? by Razib Khan, April 7, 2011 at DISCOVER's Gene Suppression.

This is a response to the original post, Race: Mississippi GOP's Embarrassing Interracial Fears April 16, 2011 at News and Old.

Society:  Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

The upper 1% of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation's income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1% control 40%. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12% and 33%. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1% have seen their incomes rise 18% over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12% in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called marginal-productivity theory. In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards performance bonuses that they felt compelled to change the name to retention bonuses (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America's—is not likely to do well over the long haul.

The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don't need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good.
Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth.
The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the core labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about.

For much more, see Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% by Joseph E. Stiglitz, May, 2011 at Vanity Fair.

Environment:  Chemicals Were Injected into Wells, Report Says

Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats.

The chemicals were used by companies during a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives into rock formations deep underground. The process, which is being used to tap into large reserves of natural gas around the country, opens fissures in the rock to stimulate the release of oil and gas.

The inquiry over hydrofracking, which was initiated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee when Mr. Waxman led it last year, also found that 14 of the nation's most active hydraulic fracturing companies used 866 million gallons of hydraulic fracturing products — not including water. More than 650 of these products contained chemicals that are known or possible human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, or are listed as hazardous air pollutants, the report said.
Matt Armstrong, an energy attorney from Bracewell & Giuliani that represents several companies involved in natural gas drilling, faulted the methodology of the congressional report released Saturday and an earlier report by the same lawmakers.

"This report uses the same sleight of hand deployed in the last report on diesel use -- it compiles overall product volumes, not the volumes of the hazardous chemicals contained within those products," he said. "This generates big numbers but provides no context for the use of these chemicals over the many thousands of frac jobs that were conducted within the timeframe of the report."

For more, see Chemicals Were Injected into Wells, Report Says by Ian Urbina, April 16, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Gender:  Flowers Make Women More Receptive to Romance

If you want to increase the odds a woman will find you attractive, all you have to do is buy her a beautiful bouquet.
Guéguen conducted two experiments to test the romantic power of flowers. The first featured 46 female college students. One at a time, each was led into a small room featuring a sofa, two arm chairs and a coffee table holding a laptop computer.

They were instructed to watch a five-minute video in which a young man discusses his eating habits. Participants were instructed to observe the target carefully and form an impression of him, the researcher notes.

Two minutes after viewing the video, each woman was led into a second room, where she shared their views on the man in the video. Specifically, she rated extent to which she found him physically and sexually attractive, and the likelihood she would go out with him.

For half the women, the room with the laptop was decorated with three vases of flowers — a mix of 10 roses, 14 marigolds and 15 daisies. For the other half, no flowers were present in the room.

Among those who had shared the room with the flowers (which were not explicitly mentioned or pointed out), the target was perceived to be more physically attractive and sexually attractive, Guéguen writes. The participants also expressed higher willingness to date the target.

For more, see Flowers Make Women More Receptive to Romance by Tom Jacobs, April 7, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Healthcare:  Comparing Drug Coverage in the Two Budget Proposals

Mr. Obama declared, We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare's purchasing power to drive greater efficiency. Meanwhile, Mr. Ryan held up the existing Medicare drug benefit — a program run through private insurance companies, under legislation that specifically prohibits Medicare from using its bargaining power — as an example of the efficiencies that could be gained from privatizing the whole system.

Mr. Obama has it right. Medicare Part D has been less expensive than expected, at least so far, but that's because overall prescription drug spending has fallen short of expectations, largely thanks to a dearth of new drugs and the growing use of generics. The right way to assess Part D is by comparing it with programs where the government is allowed to use its purchasing power. And such comparisons suggest that if there's any magic in privatization, it's the magical way it makes drug companies richer and taxpayers poorer. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs pays about 40% less for drugs than the private plans in Part D.

Did I mention that Medicare Advantage, which closely resembles the privatized system that Republicans want to impose on all seniors, currently costs taxpayers 12% more per recipient than traditional Medicare?

For more, see Who's Serious Now? by Paul Krugman, April 14, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Budget:  Buy Now, Pay Later

Thanks, Dave S. for ...

For more, see Buy Now, Pay Later, April 13, 2011 at The Economist.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Lib/Con:  Cleanliness Cues Activate Conservative Attitudes

... three interesting threads of recent psychological research:
  • The notion that environmental cues can influence political attitudes. One recent study found people who cast ballots in a church were more likely to support an initiative endorsed by social conservatives.
  • The deep symbolic nature of hand washing. Studies have found cleaning our hands helps us emotionally disconnect from past decisions, as well as increase feelings of moral superiority.
  • The strong link between social conservatism and the concept of purity. Studies have found conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals, and that people who feel disgust tend to judge the moral transgressions of others more harshly.

For more, see Cleanliness Cues Activate Conservative Attitudes by Tom Jacobs, April 4, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Diversion:  Frenetic Kinetics!

Martha contributed this clever falling dominos video ...

From Frenetic Kinetics! by Lunatim, March 11, 2010 at YouTube.

Health:  Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?

Attention, programmers (and the rest of you) ...

Why do some people who consume the same amount of food as others gain more weight? After assessing how much food each of his subjects needed to maintain their current weight, Dr. Levine then began to ply them with an extra 1,000 calories per day. [Surprisingly] some of his subjects packed on the pounds, while others gained little to no weight.

We measured everything, thinking we were going to find some magic metabolic factor that would explain why some people didn't gain weight, explains Dr. Michael Jensen, a Mayo Clinic researcher who collaborated with Dr. Levine on the studies. But that wasn't the case. Then six years later, with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, they discovered the answer. The people who didn't gain weight were unconsciously moving around more, Dr. Jensen says. They hadn't started exercising more — that was prohibited by the study. Their bodies simply responded naturally by making more little movements than they had before the overfeeding began, like taking the stairs, trotting down the hall to the office water cooler, bustling about with chores at home or simply fidgeting. On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn't.

Exercise is not a perfect antidote for sitting, says Marc Hamilton, an inactivity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

The posture of sitting itself probably isn't worse than any other type of daytime physical inactivity, like lying on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune. But for most of us, when we're awake and not moving, we're sitting. This is your body on chairs: Electrical activity in the muscles drops — the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse, Hamilton says — leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. Insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes rises. So does the risk of being obese. The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides — for vacuuming up fat out of the bloodstream, as Hamilton puts it — plunge, which in turn causes the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol to fall.

Over a lifetime, the unhealthful effects of sitting add up. Alpa Patel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006. The men in the study who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20% higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40% higher. Patel estimates that on average, people who sit too much shave a few years off of their lives.
Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. Excessive sitting, Dr. Levine says, is a lethal activity.

For more, see Is Sitting a Lethal Activity? by James Vlahos, April 14, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Budget:  Dueling Budgets

Dave S. contributed Dueling Budgets, April, 2011 at The Washington Post which has a nice way to compare the amount of spending in Ryan's and Obama's budgets in various categories.

If you click "Health" or "Defense" or ... in the grid below the first graph, a second graph below the buttons shows how much spending is devoted to that category by each plan. Note that the y-axis of the graph is the same for all categories. Also note that taxes are not covered.

Mind:  The Bias You Didn't Expect

It's not what the judge had for breakfast. It's how recently the judge had breakfast. A new study ... on Israeli judges shows that, when making parole decisions, they grant about 65% after meal breaks, and almost all the way down to 0% right before breaks and at the end of the day (i.e. as far from the last break as possible). There's a relatively linear decline between the two points.

For more, see The Bias You Didn't Expect by Psychohistorian, April 14, 2011 at lesswrong.

California:  Taxing Times

While having some of the highest rates on sales, corporations, and the incomes of wealthy people, California generally ranks near the upper middle of the 50 states in measuring the amount of taxes residents actually pay as a percentage of personal income. For example, the study shows that California ranks as follows:
  • 21st out of 50 in the percentage of income paid as state taxes — 6.37%, compared to the national average of 5.92%. It ranks 29th in local taxes — 3.79%, with the average among all states calculated at 4.45%.
  • 15th in combined state and local taxes, with Californians paying 11.27% of their incomes, compared to 11% nationwide, to nonfederal governments.
  • 9th in state individual income taxes — 2.8% of personal income, compared to 2.04% in all 50 states.
  • 34th in property taxes, which translates to 2.72% of personal income, compared to 3.31% nationally.
  • 18th in combined state and local sales taxes — 2.73%, compared to 2.58% for all states.
  • 4th in corporate income taxes — 0.60% of personal income, nearly twice as much as the 0.33% calculated for all states.

For more, see Taxing Times, April 14, 2011 at Santa Barbara Independent.

Government:  Your 2010 Federal Taxpayer Receipt

If you want to know where your own Federal tax goes, check out the interactive Your 2010 Federal Taxpayer Receipt, April 17, 2011 at The Whitehouse.

Maybe they took the suggestion from Government: A Taxpayer Receipt, October 3, 2010 at News and Old and Government: Tracking Your Federal Tax Dollars, November 8, 2010 at News and Old.

Healthcare:  Medicare Debate Reminds Us: Empowering People Is Great, but Protect Them First

Beware of magical solutions — and one-size-fits-all ideological agendas — like the idea that free markets can solve all our problems. When you think about it, it's just as silly as the idea that government can fix everything. Take the proposal by one of Washington's shining stars, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), to reform Medicare by having recipients pick among insurance company plans rather than having basic benefits and costs set by the government.

Medicare beneficiaries will be able to choose a plan the same way members of Congress do, Ryan says in his 2012 budget proposal. It sure sounds wonderful. But the analogy between members of Congress and Medicare beneficiaries just doesn't compute. And as anyone who's had to deal with health insurance companies will tell you, the average free market Medicare beneficiary would have roughly the same chance against insurers that retail investors have trading against Goldman Sachs. But members of Congress are a lot better equipped to choose a health plan than Medicare recipients are. Congress members are surrounded by helpful staff and have ready access to experts. Most important, Congress members as a group are much more affluent than Medicare beneficiaries and don't feel compelled to pick the lowest-premium, lowest-coverage policy because they can't afford anything better.

By contrast, Medicare recipients tend to be old (the minimum age for coverage is 65) and sick (the older a group is, the sicker its members tend to be). As a group, they don't have much access to people with the time and competence to help them sort through choices. Finally, you can bet that many Medicare beneficiaries, worried about their month-to-month finances, will opt for the lowest-cost plan and hope for the best, rather than buy a higher-cost, higher-coverage plan that might better suit their circumstances. If anything goes wrong — and things tend to go wrong as you get older — they're toast.

For more, see Medicare Debate Reminds Us: Empowering People Is Great, but Protect Them First by Allan Sloan, April 14, 2011 at The Washington Post.

Crime:  In Financial Crisis, a Dearth of Prosecutions Raises Alarms

... several years after the financial crisis, which was caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.

Former prosecutors, lawyers, bankers and mortgage employees say that investigators and regulators ignored past lessons about how to crack financial fraud.

As the crisis was starting to deepen in the spring of 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation scaled back a plan to assign more field agents to investigate mortgage fraud. That summer, the Justice Department also rejected calls to create a task force devoted to mortgage-related investigations, leaving these complex cases understaffed and poorly funded, and only much later established a more general financial crimes task force.

Leading up to the financial crisis, many officials said in interviews, regulators failed in their crucial duty to compile the information that traditionally has helped build criminal cases. In effect, the same dynamic that helped enable the crisis — weak regulation — also made it harder to pursue fraud in its aftermath.

For much more, see In Financial Crisis, a Dearth of Prosecutions Raises Alarms by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, April 14, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Tax:  Taxing the Rich

For the story, see Taxing the Rich by Nancy Folbre, April 11, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Mind:  Political Views Are Reflected in Brain Structure

Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.
There had also been many prior psychological reports showing that conservatives are more sensitive to threat or anxiety in the face of uncertainty, while liberals tend to be more open to new experiences. Kanai's team suspected that such fundamental differences in personality might show up in the brain.
It's possible that brain structure isn't set in early life, but rather can be shaped over time by our experiences. And, of course, some people have been known to change their views over the course of a lifetime.

For more, see Political Views Are Reflected in Brain Structure by Cell Press, April 7, 2011 at Physorg.com.

Also see Mind: Conservatives & Liberals -- M's & W's, March 25, 2010 at NewsAndOld.

Budget:  Federal Workers Tell Us What Should Be Cut from the Budget

With the budget for the rest of the fiscal year finally passed and more cuts to spending on the way, we asked federal workers, contractors and others with in-depth knowledge of the workings of federal government to answer a simple question: What needs to be trimmed from the budget?

Here are some suggestions from online responses....

For some real ideas, see Federal Workers Tell Us What Should Be Cut from the Budget by Lisa Rein, April 14, 2011 at The Washington Post.

Race:  Mississippi GOP's Embarrassing Interracial Fears

Public Policy Polling released a survey last week that should cause stomachs to churn throughout polite society; among Republican primary voters in Mississippi, 46% of respondents believe that interracial marriage should not be legal.

Let's set aside for a moment the question of whether or not this is a uniquely Republican problem, and deduce the basic message: nearly half of the poll's respondents believe a marriage should be criminalized based simply on the skin color of its partners. Combined with 14% of those who said they were not sure, you have an astounding 60% of Mississippi Republicans believing that marriage between members of two different races may be a criminal act.

For more, see Mississippi GOP's Embarrassing Interracial Fears by Corey Chambliss, April 10, 2011 at FrumForum.

Economics:  Why Americans Are Skeptical About Private Social Security Accounts

... a private replacement for Social Security would have to take the form of a fully-inflation-indexed annuity with zero risk of default. Under present circumstances, the private markets cannot offer annuities of this kind, at least not at the scale required to replace Social Security.

Right now, a private entity [which] wished to offer a retirement plan that was directly comparable to Social Security would have to invest its assets in a ladder of TIPS. This is the only investment that could provide inflation and default protection comparable to that provided by Social Security.

While in theory common stocks provide inflation protection, a replay of the 17-year period between 1965 and 1982 (during which the Dow lost more than 68% of its CPI-adjusted real value) would bankrupt a retirement plan that depended upon the stock market. A private retirement plan that aimed to directly replace Social Security could not afford to take such a risk.

Right now, there are not enough TIPS outstanding to support privatization of Social Security. And even if there were enough, right now 30-year TIPS are paying only 1.78% (and 5-year TIPS are yielding -0.61%!). Out of the meager yield from a ladder of such bonds, a private retirement plan would have to pay its administrative costs and generate a profit. Many analysts have criticized the poor returns promised by Social Security, but under current circumstances, it would not be possible for a private plan offering the same risk profile to do any better.

For more, see Why Americans Are Skeptical About Private Social Security Accounts by Louis Woodhill, April 13, 2011 at Forbes.

Society:  Five Myths About Why the South Seceded

An interesting article is Five Myths About Why the South Seceded by James W. Loewen, February 26, 2011 at The Washington Post.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Science:  Bye-Bye Electrons? Circuit Made from Flowing Atoms

In the "atomtronic" circuits pictured [below], it is atoms, not electrons, that flow. Such circuits could form the basis for ultra-sensitive gyroscopes.

For more, see Bye-Bye Electrons? Circuit Made from Flowing Atoms by Macgregor Campbell, April 7, 2011 at New Scientist.

Society:  Economic Views Sag, Obama Rating Slips

Among the many poll results in the article ...

For much more, see Economic Views Sag, Obama Rating Slips, April 7, 2011 at Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Education:  Burden of College Loans on Graduates Grows

In the coming years, a lot of people will still be paying off their student loans when it's time for their kids to go to college, said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com, who has compiled the estimates of student debt, including federal and private loans.

Two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients graduated with debt in 2008, compared with less than half in 1993. Last year, graduates who took out loans left college with an average of $24,000 in debt. Default rates are rising, especially among those who attended for-profit colleges.

The mountain of debt is likely to grow more quickly with the coming round of budget-slashing. Pell grants for low-income students are expected to be cut and tuition at public universities will probably increase as states with pinched budgets cut back on the money they give to colleges.

[Emphasis added].
According to a College Board report issued last fall, median earnings of bachelor's degree recipients working full time year-round in 2008 were $55,700, or $21,900 more than the median earnings of high school graduates. And their unemployment rate was far lower.
In 2009, the Obama administration made it easier for low-earning student borrowers to get out of debt, with income-based repayment that forgives remaining federal student debt for those who pay 15 percent of their income for 25 years — or 10 years, if they work in public service.

For more, see Burden of College Loans on Graduates Grows by Tamar Lewin, April 11, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Economics:  Breakfast with Elizabeth Warren: New Financial Regulation and the Quest to Keep It Simple

A good article about Elizabeth Warren and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is at Breakfast with Elizabeth Warren: New Financial Regulation and the Quest to Keep It Simple, March, 2011 at West Coast Asset Management.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Society:  Divorce's Surprising Effect on Longevity

On average, grown children of divorced parents died almost five years earlier than children from intact families.
Individuals who had experienced the dissolution of their parents' marriage were much more likely to later have their own marriages end in divorce -- and this significantly increased their mortality risk. This pattern was particularly harmful for men, probably because of the very important role that women play as confidantes and social supports for their husbands. Indeed, The Longevity Project found that men who re-married after divorce lowered their mortality risk, and the longer they remained in their second marriage the better their prospects became.

For more, see Divorce's Surprising Effect on Longevity by Katie Hafner, April 8, 2011 at The Huffington Post.

Economics:  Greece, Ireland, and Portugal are Bust. Admit It.

These economies are on an unsustainable course, but not for lack of effort by their governments. Greece and Ireland have made heroic budget cuts. Greece is trying hard to free up its rigid economy. Portugal has lagged in scrapping stifling rules, but its fiscal tightening is bold. In all three places the outlook is darkening in large part because of mistakes made in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin.

At the EU's insistence, the peripherals' priority is to slash their budget deficits regardless of the consequences on growth. But as austerity drags down output, their enormous debts—expected to peak at 160% of GDP for Greece, 125% for Ireland and 100% for Portugal—look ever more unpayable, so bond yields stay high. The result is a downward spiral.

As if that were not enough, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt seems set on raising interest rates on April 7th, which will strengthen the euro and further undermine the peripherals' efforts to become more competitive. Some politicians are still pushing daft demands, such as forcing Ireland to raise its corporate tax rate, which would block its best route to growth. Most pernicious, though, is the perverse logic of the euro zone's rescue mechanisms. Europe's leaders won't hear of debt reduction now, but insist that any country requiring help from 2013 may then need to have its debt restructured and that new official lending will take priority over bondholders. The risk that investors could face a haircut in two years' time keeps yields high today, which in turn blights the rescue plans.

For more, see They're Bust. Admit It., March 31, 2011 at The Economist.

Science:  Laws of Physics May Change Across the Universe

New evidence supports the idea that we live in an area of the universe that is "just right" for our existence. The controversial finding comes from an observation that one of the constants of nature appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos.
Even more surprising is the fact that the change in the constant appears to have an orientation, creating a "preferred direction", or axis, across the cosmos. That idea was dismissed more than 100 years ago with the creation of Einstein's special theory of relativity.
... the team's analysis of around 300 measurements of alpha in light coming from various points in the sky suggests the variation is not random but structured, like a bar magnet. The universe seems to have a large alpha on one side and a smaller alpha on the other.

This "dipole" alignment nearly matches that of a stream of galaxies mysteriously moving towards the edge of the universe. It does not, however, line up with another unexplained dipole, dubbed the axis of evil, in the afterglow of the big bang.

Even if the result is accepted for publication, it is going to be hard to convince other scientists that the laws of physics might need a rewrite. A spatial variation in the fine-structure constant would be "truly transformative", according to Lennox Cowie, who works at the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii. But, he adds, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: "That's way beyond what we have here." He says the statistical significance of the new observations is too small to prove that alpha is changing.

For more, see Laws of Physics May Change Across the Universe by Michael Brooks, September 8, 2010 at New Scientist.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Economics:  The Dependence Economy

The chart below shows "how much more dependent Americans have become on government money, including in many cases Tea Partiers". Note the scales are different but their spans are the same.

These underlying trends are partly because of demographic changes; an aging populace means that an ever-smaller share of Americans are working, and so a larger share are receiving Social Security benefits and Medicare, which is also getting more expensive. Policy changes, more Americans' going on disability and growing inequality, which in some cases may be leaving more Americans on the dole, are also likely contributing to the growing Dependence Economy.

For more, see The Dependence Economy by Catherine Rampell, April 4, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Drugs:  Marijuana Use Hastens Onset of Schizophrenia

Honing in on the risks of cannabis, scientists have found that marijuana use hastens the onset of schizophrenia by nearly three years for those already at risk for the disorder.
Schizophrenia is a disease characterized by severe hallucinations and delusions. Typically, it begins between the ages of 18 and 28 — slightly younger for men and older for women. Between 80 and 85 percent of the time, genes are the cause. The findings of an earlier onset for marijuana users have obvious implications for young people who have a family history of schizophrenia or who are beginning to show signs of the disease — but doctors caution that people may be at risk and not know it. Most schizophrenics don't have relatives who are afflicted.

For more, see Marijuana Use Hastens Onset of Schizophrenia by Melinda Burns, March 26, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Religion:  Protests Against Women's Policy Cripple Bangladesh

Police clashed with demonstrators and arrested dozens in Bangladesh as a hard-line group enforced a paralyzing general strike Monday protesting a new policy giving women equal inheritance rights.
While the strike was called to broadly seek the adoption of Islamic law in the Muslim-majority nation of 150 million people, its specific agenda was to oppose the government's new policy on women's inheritance rights.

Under the government's new rules, every child inherits the same amount.

Despite being governed mostly by secular laws, Bangladesh generally follows Islamic law in family-related matters, including marriage and inheritance.

The Quran's elaborate rules on inheritance are complicated. However, while there are several exceptions, in most cases a daughter inherits half of what is received by a son.

For more, see Protests Against Women's Policy Cripple Bangladesh by The Associated Press, April 4, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Economics:  A Conservative Vision, with Bipartisan Risks

[Paul Ryan's 2012 budget plan] plan rolled out by the Republican majority in the House figures to shake up this year's already contentious budget debate as well as next year's presidential politics. By its mix of deep cuts in taxes and domestic spending, and its shrinkage of the American safety net, the plan sets the conservative parameter of the debate over the nation's budget priorities further to the right than at any time since the modern federal government began taking shape nearly eight decades ago.
Because details remain sparse, the Congressional Budget Office could not estimate precisely the potential savings for Mr. Ryan's plan, which the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee is expected to approve Wednesday. House Republicans say the budget would cut $5.8 trillion from projected spending in the 10 years through the 2021 fiscal year, and $6.2 trillion more than Mr. Obama's budget would. But the Republican projections could not be independently confirmed. Longer term, the budget office said, the plan would allow the government to run a surplus by 2040.
The Ryan plan, [a White House statement] said, “cuts taxes for millionaires and special interests while placing a greater burden on seniors who depend on Medicare or live in nursing homes, families struggling with a child who has serious disabilities, workers who have lost their health care coverage, and students and their families who rely on Pell grants.”

“The president believes there is a more balanced way to put America on a path to prosperity,” the statement said.

Administration officials gave no hint that Mr. Obama planned to spell out that balanced approach. The 10-year budget he outlined in February did not tackle the fast-growing entitlement costs — for Medicare, Medicaid and, to a far lesser extent, Social Security — that are driving long-term projections of the debt. While proposing major changes to Medicaid and Medicare, Mr. Ryan also declined to propose changes to Social Security, reflecting Republicans' wariness of alienating older voters.

Like the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission and other bipartisan groups, Mr. Ryan would eliminate many, though unspecified, income tax breaks to generate greater federal income. But unlike the other groups, he would use the new revenues only to lower tax rates to a maximum 25 percent for individuals and corporations, down from 35 percent. Again, details would be left to the appropriate legislative committees. The other deficit study groups would devote some revenues to reducing deficits.

For more, see A Conservative Vision, with Bipartisan Risks by Jackie Calmes, April 5, 2011 at NYTimes.com.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Politics:  Defund EPA's Enablers

That darn American Lung Association ...

Since 1990, EPA and ALA have had a symbiotic relationship. EPA shovels money out to ALA and, in return, ALA agitates for expanded EPA air-pollution regulation.

In addition to ads and polls, ALA lobbies Congress for more EPA regulation, has sued to expand EPA's authority and regularly issues reports that lament supposedly poor air quality in the United States and tout the purported benefits of EPA actions.

We're not talking chump change. In the past 10 years, EPA has paid ALA more than $20 million - perhaps double the payments that EPA made to ALA in the 1990s. ALA also received another $3.7 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

From For the story, see For much more, see For more, see Milloy: Defund EPA's Enablers by Steve Milloy, March 31, 2011 at The Washington Times.

Mind:  Breastfeeding Women Viewed as Less Competent

A study emerged out of Oxford University last week suggesting babies who are breastfed end up doing better in school.
Research just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Spoiled Milk: An Experimental Examination of Bias Against Mothers Who Breastfeed) reports mothers who breastfeed are widely viewed as less competent than otherwise identical females.
Importantly, we did not find evidence that gender of the participant influenced perceptions of the breastfeeding mother, notes the research team led by Montana State University psychologist Jessi L. Smith. Women, it seems, are just as likely as men to hold this bias.
In one experiment, 30 students told they were engaging in an impression formation study were given biographical information on actress Brooke Shields, including the fact she had just written a book about motherhood. Half were told the volume included information on her experiences with breastfeeding, bathing and overall care of a newborn; for the other half, the word bottle-feeding was exchanged for breastfeeding.

Afterward, the participants answered a series of questions gauging their overall assessment of the actress. Those who read she was breastfeeding her baby viewed her as significantly more warm and friendly compared to the bottle-feeding mother, but significantly less competent in general, and less competent in math specifically, the researchers report.

In another experiment, 55 students were told they were participating in a study of how people form impressions of others in the face of limited information. They were asked to judge a woman they got to know by listening to her telephone answering machine.

Specifically, they heard a message in which a man talks about changing the time of their dinner date. The rest of the message varied: Some participants heard a neutral conclusion, while others heard a reference to breastfeeding (I figured you would want to go home and breastfeed the baby), motherhood (I figured you would want to go home and give the baby a bath), or sexuality (I figured you would want to go home and change into your strapless bra).

The breastfeeding woman was viewed significantly more negatively compared to the neutral voicemail on all measures of competence, Smith and her colleagues found. The woman in the strapless bra was also labeled as less competent, suggesting that the bias faced by breastfeeding woman is similar to the once experienced by a woman for whom the breast is sexually objectified, the researchers add.

Asked if they would hire this woman for a job, the participants gave the lowest ratings to the breastfeeding woman — even below that of the woman with sexualized breasts. Interestingly, the woman giving her baby a bath was not penalized in this respect, suggesting it isn't parenthood per se that makes her less desirable as an employee.

For more, see Breastfeeding Women Viewed as Less Competent by Tom Jacobs, March 22, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Economics:  Why Tarp Has Been a Success Story

It isn't often that the government launches a major program that achieves its main goals at a tiny fraction of its estimated costs. That's the story of TARP — the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Created in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, it helped stabilize the economy, using only $410 billion of its authorized $700 billion. And most of that will be repaid. The Congressional Budget Office, which once projected TARP's ultimate cost at $356 billion, now says $19 billion. This could go lower.

You would hardly know.

Almost everyone loves to hate TARP. It's a favorite political sport of liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats — and the public. A Bloomberg poll last October asked how TARP had affected the economy. Forty-three percent of respondents said it weakened the economy; 21 percent said it made no difference; only 24 percent said it helped, with 12 percent unsure one way or another. Commentators in newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times disparage TARP.

Wrong.

One lesson of the financial crisis is this: When the entire financial system succumbs to panic, only the government is powerful enough to prevent a complete collapse. Panics signify the triumph of fear. TARP was part of the process by which fear was overcome. It wasn't the only part, but it was an essential part. Without TARP, we'd be worse off today. No one can say whether unemployment would be 11 percent or 14 percent; it certainly wouldn't be 8.9 percent.

One common allegation is that TARP will encourage more reckless risk-taking because big financial firms know they'll be bailed out if their gambles backfire — a problem economists call moral hazard. Bankers keep profits but are protected against losses, which are assumed by the public.

This is a serious issue, but TARP's legacy is actually the opposite. During the crisis, investors in banks and financial institutions suffered huge losses. It wasn't predictable which institutions would survive and which wouldn't — or on what terms. The same would be true in the future. Indeed,

For more, see Why Tarp Has Been a Success Story by Robert J. Samuelson, March 27, 2011 at The Washington Post.