Comments, observations and thoughts from two bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is an associate professor. Mark is a professional statistician and former math teacher.
Things have gotten a little better with prescribed burns, but not nearly enough.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Megafires, incentives and the inactivity bias
One of the recurring themes of my conversations with Joseph is this
country's growing disinterest, bordering on antipathy, in getting things
done. (If you think I'm bad, you ought to get him started.) From
building a badly needed piece of infrastructure to addressing global
warming, we seem to focus most of our energy on finding reasons for
inactivity.
NPR's excellent series on wildfires has a good example.
If you weigh the costs and risks of prescribed burns against the costs
and risks of letting current trends continue, the case for action is
overwhelming, but we continued to let the situation get worse.
Add climate change to the mix (another situation we've shown lots of interest in discussing and little in solving), and we may have reached the point where there are no good solutions, only less terrible ones.
I remark just how lush his forest is, how the Ponderosa pines almost
reach out and touch one another. He doesn't take it as a compliment.
"They're a plague," he says. "On this forest, it's averaging about 900
trees per acre. Historically it was probably about 40. Here in the
national forest, what we're facing is a tree epidemic."
Armstrong has rubbed some people the wrong way with talk like that. But
he says forest this dense is dangerous. "We're standing here on the edge
of what is known as the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed," he explains.
"Imagine a huge bathtub" — a natural bathtub sitting in the mountains
around Santa Fe. When it rains, the water flows down into reservoirs.
That's where the state capital gets most of its water.
Trees help slow down the flow, but big wildfires take out the trees.
They even burn the soils. "They convert from something that's like a
sponge to Saran Wrap," Armstrong says. "In the aftermath of a wildfire
within this watershed, that would flood like the Rio Grande, for
heaven's sakes; that would come down a wall of water, and debris and ash
and tree trunks, and create devastation in downtown Santa Fe. Suddenly,
they find that the entire mountain is in their backyard."
Armstrong supports trimming smaller trees with machines and chain saws.
But that costs hundreds of dollars per acre. The service now lets some
natural fires — ones started by lightning, for example — burn within
prescribed limits. Or they start "prescribed" burns when conditions are
safe. These clear out smaller trees and undergrowth to keep them from
fueling megafires. Armstrong has done that here.
But people didn't like the smoke, and when an intentional fire gets out
of control, people sue. And there's been widespread drought in recent
years. These are some of the reasons the Forest Service has reduced the
use of prescribed fires.
_________________________
PS A couple of days earlier, we ran a link to another All Things Considered story which included this truly disturbing graphic.
[This project appears to have stalled, but don't worry, there are plenty of other plans for badly placed, car-dependent exurbs waiting in the wings.]
Don't get me wrong. This document has lots of ideas, some impractical, some with a horrible real-life track record, some silly, and yes, some genuinely good, but when it comes to the primary obstacles to achieving the various high sounding goals, it has nothing. At least nothing with a snowball's chance in hell of working.
I may take a deeper dive one of these days, but for now let's focus on the exurb problem (there are others but that's the big one). The proposed city is perfectly situated for car dependence, lacking any rail service and far enough from major population and employment centers (San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Stockton) to rule out any form of transportation other than automobiles, but close enough that almost everyone will be willing to make the drive.
The fundamental contradiction of a green exurb is never really addressed, but the way the author skirts the issues suggests that it's on their mind; they just don't want to talk about it.
We realize that the California Forever proposal is a big change in the thinking of many urbanists, who equate ”greenfield” with ”sprawl” - low-density, auto-oriented development. We know, most greenfield development is sprawl, even when developers use words like walkable. But there are exceptions. Seaside, FL was a greenfield development, but it’s not sprawl [Remind me to talk about Seaside, Florida as an example of planned urban development. We'll have a lot of fun with that one. – – MP] . And the plan we have put forward is not ”sprawl” either - it’s medium-density, high-quality urbanism. And again, the plan even has a legally binding minimum density standard to make sure we hold ourselves accountable to our walkability goals. We are literally prohibiting ourselves from building sprawl.
We are dealing with a narrow and rather interesting definition sprawl here, and one that doesn't apply to some fairly notable examples. When we talk about a city like Alpharetta being a case of urban sprawl, we are referring to the distance between it and Atlanta. The fact that Alpharetta's downtown is fairly dense isn't all that relevant. Whenever someone use the word walkable, it begs the question walk to where? If the vast majority of jobs, shops, universities, restaurants, bars and entertainment venues are accessible only by car, the fact that you can stroll down to the neighborhood Coffee Bean doesn't actually mean a hell of a lot.
Another place where the author almost hits on the issue of car dependency is in the section on parking. [Emphasis in the original.]
A smart parking strategy. Parking minimums for new buildings in this community are set at zero. While homeowners can build parking garages if they wish, we will provide shared community parking garages - some located at the edge of the community, some located at carefully selected locations throughout the city. We have given careful thought to the design of the garages, with seamless transfers to public transit at each location. We will also operate a robust car-sharing program, providing access to a car without the hassle and expense of having to own one. All of this translates into some important objectives for us: reduced cost of construction so we can deliver homes more people can afford; reduced cost of transportation for households; reduced urban footprint devoted to storing cars. We understand that people are going to need to drive sometimes, as they do in the rest of the region. The mode split for external trips will probably mirror infill development in the Bay Area. [Remember, unlike the Bay Area, this development has no rail whatsoever. -- MP] But the California Forever city plan will encourage less car use for internal trips, with all the benefits this creates for people’s health, social connections, and the environment.
If you want to keep your bearings during this discussion, here's the one fact you have to keep your eye on: while you may (and the "may" is doing a great deal of work there) have lots of appealing options for internal trips, most of those will be under 5 miles. You basically have one option external trips and most of those will be more than 50 miles, and as mentioned before, the vast majority of jobs, stores, restaurants, colleges, museums, nightclubs, and entertainment venues will require external trips, at least for years to come.
The virtues of car sharing have been greatly overhyped, but you can at least make a case for the approach in major urban areas. In an exurb, it is completely unworkable. It's difficult to imagine bus lines running frequently and for long enough hours for people to get by on them solely. Rail service would require entirely new track to be laid and is, at a bare minimum, more than a decade away. Even if things go exactly as planned (and there are any number of reasons to think that they won't) it is difficult to imagine a substantial number of people choosing to live in a place like this without a car.
There are rules-based approaches that might reduce car ownership and force people to make use of other options. You could limit households to only one car. You could ban private garages. You could move all public garages to the outskirts of town. You could greatly increase parking fees. You could make not having a car at all a condition for subsidized housing. I'm not saying any of those would be good ideas, but they represent the kind of thing you would need to do to get people to go without cars in this situation. Unfortunately, there is a strong recurring libertarian thread running through these proposals. If you give people living in an exurb the freedom to choose their mode of transportation, you're not going to like their choices.
Hey look everybody! The paper that told us that Trump crushing DeSantis in the polls was actually good news for DeSantis, Dobbs wouldn't be that big of a deal, and that it was a mistake for the Democrats to go all in on Harris has some political advice for us.
It's important to note that the convention going this well makes the NYT editorial board look really bad and it's possible this might have colored the deputy opinion editor's take.
Flash-forward to this week. If the Democratic convention’s message for America had to fit on a bumper sticker, it would read, “Harris is joy.” The word has gone from being a nice descriptor of Democratic energy to being a rhetorical two-by-four thumped on voters’ heads. Don’t get me wrong — there are many worse things than joy — but I cringed a little in the convention hall Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Kamala Harris would be “the president of joy.” “Joy” is the new “fetch” from “Mean Girls”: Democrats are bent on making the word happen.
As for Democrats being "bent on making the word happen," it seems like Patrick may be using the wrong tense, at least if we believe the New York Times.
Lots to comment on here, starting with that wheezing old reporter's cliché of a first sentence, and ending with that equally hackneyed last one.
This is a winnable race for Harris, but she hasn’t won it yet. Far from it. She hasn’t been tested — really tested — since Biden stepped aside. She hasn’t given a single interview or news conference to face hard questions. But it’s really the debates that will be her test. Her advisers think she might get away with doing just one against Trump. I think they underestimate her challenge in earning voters’ trust. She needs to start proving herself outside her comfort zone.
That part about talking to reporters isn't quite true (if it were a DNC quote being fact checked by the NYT or WP, it would've been labeled a falsehood, but that's a subject for a different thread). Worse yet (and more than a little sexist) is the "comfort zone" framing, suggesting that she's acting out of fear rather than focusing on the strategy that has succeeded beyond anyone's expectations.
I shouldn't have to say this but, the former Atty. Gen. of the largest state in the union (not to mention former district attorney of San Francisco and successful candidate for the U.S. Senate) has faced lots of tough questions from the press. As for debates being outside of Harris's comfort zone, go back and read what was written at the time about her performance in the primary debates.
Harris's performance in the debate received praise from many in the
media, with some journalists referring to her as the unofficial winner. Morning Consult and FiveThirtyEight
worked together on polling that reported that Harris's support among
Democrats went from about 8% before the debate to almost 17% after the
debate. Harris raised $2million
in donations in the first 24 hours after the debate, which is the
highest amount of money that her campaign had raised in a 24-hour period
to that date. President Donald Trump criticized Harris, saying she was given "too much credit" for her debate with Biden.
When you also take into account Harris's years as a prosecutor and as a senator (particularly in Senate hearings), Healy's advice comes off as embarrassingly patronizing at best and grossly misogynistic at worst.
I am watching Harris talking to reporters in Pennsylvania. A question about policy, including the child tax credit and homeowner credit is answered masterfully, the contrast with Trump‘s babble could not be greater. Of course, half the questions were about the horse race.
Just as a reminder, Harris is doing remarkably well on pretty much every front. Her polls are trending upwards. Fundraising is going great. Crowd size and other measures of enthusiasm are exceptional. Her running mate is crushing the other guy. So far, her execution has been close to flawless.
By comparison, the New York Times' approved narrative that the Democrats needed to dump Kamala and tear the party apart with a ThunderDome convention looks even more stupid in retrospect than it did at the time. It takes an extraordinary level of clueless arrogance to give advice under those circumstances, but that's pretty much on brand for the paper of record.
P.S. In case the name sounds familiar...
You'll be
shocked to learn the same guy who wrote "Joy Is Not A Strategy"
ridiculed Hillary Clinton's laugh. Apparently, such misogyny is
tolerated at the Paper of Record™ b/c this guy went from being a beat
reporter to Deputy Opinion Page Editor 🙃 pic.twitter.com/7z2h1U84Nb
"That
is why today I am repeating my pledge to establish a panel of top
experts, working with Bobby, to investigate what is causing the
decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases,
including auto-immune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and
more."
Coming at this from a conspiracy theorist/pseudoscience crank worldview, the one word that should set off immediate alarm bells is "autism." The headline pretty much writes itself: "Trump announces autism committee headed by Robert F Kennedy Junior."
If you had to list the remaining terms in order of tinfoil hat appeal, they would be infertility, autoimmune disorders, and at a distant fourth, obesity. A reporter covering the speech might also feel compelled to add that the causes which RFK Junior has proposed in the past include not just vaccines but also chemtrails, Wi-Fi, and 5G.
If you've been following our thread on the New York Times you can probably guess what's coming. Here's how the NYT covered that quote in the third paragraph from the end of the article on Kennedy endorsing Trump:
Earlier in the day in Phoenix, at his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign, Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Trump had offered him a role in a second Trump administration, dealing with health care and food and drug policy. In Glendale, Mr. Trump said that, if elected to a second term, a panel of experts “working with Bobby” would investigate obesity rates and other chronic health issues in the United States.
We know from countless memoirs and internal accounts not to mention the evidence of our own eyes that the New York Times is terrified of the appearance of liberal bias and that the paper's culture is one of never admitting you're wrong. Unfortunately, the NYT has been wrong a lot over the past nine years and there's no way of owning up without appearing to side with the Democrats against the Republicans.
To get around this, either consciously or as some form of coping with cognitive dissonance, the journalists (or at least the editors) of the paper have repeatedly misrepresented the news. Their coverage has largely consisted of misleading headlines, buried stories, groundless speculation, and deceptively selective editing of quotes. The result has sometimes significantly overlapped what we're getting from Fox news, albeit stuffier and more pretentious.
For very different reasons, both conservative media and the establishment press are both trying to downplay the craziness of the Trump campaign. That's a very dangerous alliance for democracy.
[This appeared in a slightly more skeletal form as a Twitter thread early Sunday morning.]
The “All Else Equal” Fallacy: Assuming that everything else is held constant, even when it’s not gonna be.
We will see how this pans out, but I think most of the mainstream media is badly misreading the implications of RFK Junior's announcement. Josh Marshall and some other outsiders get it, but the NYT et al. are likely to be at least one step behind on this yet again. The standard analyses we've been seeing are based on some big (and I suspect unlikely) assumptions. If these assumptions are wrong, and we are already seeing some indications that they are, then their conclusions, while not necessarily wrong, have no support.
What we have here is a variant or perhaps a first cousin of the all other things being equal fallacy. Specifically in this case it is the idea that you can gauge the impact (or even most of the impact) on the race just by looking at the 4% currently supporting Kennedy.
If Kennedy had quietly dropped out of the race, privately informing all of his supporters (no, I don't know how that would work either) rather than making a high-profile announcement and if no one other than those supporters had noticed, then the straightforward analysis being done by political analysts would make sense, but that had already not happened by the time these analyses were being performed. Kennedy and Trump made sure that this was big news, The remaining 96% of voters are watching this show and paying close attention, particularly in tho GOP. This changes messaging and strategy on both sides and (as you'll see in a minute) policy on the Republican side. All other things are never equal.
Both MAGA and the Trump campaign are making a very big deal of this.
From a story I had to go looking for on the NYT (they are definitely pushing this as another "no big deal" story):
Conservative
sites, more than a dozen of which prominently featured the news on
their home pages, saw the news as a win for Mr. Trump. They argued that
Mr. Kennedy’s decision could reshape the race by turning Mr. Kennedy’s
supporters into Mr. Trump’s, and by shifting the attention of Americans
away from this week’s Democratic National Convention.
...
Though polling suggests Mr. Kennedy’s decision is unlikely to significantly shift
the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Mr. Trump, many
conservative commentators said the decision could swing the contest. Ben
Shapiro, the editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said in a livestream
after Mr. Kennedy suspended his campaign that the announcement, which
was made during a speech in Phoenix, could “dwarf” the positive impact
of the Democratic National Convention for Ms. Harris.
The
Washington Examiner, a conservative news site, published multiple news
articles on Friday that argued an endorsement from Mr. Kennedy would
boost Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Haisten Willis, the site’s White
House reporter, wrote that the decision “eliminates the third-party
threat to the G.O.P. and could push momentum back in Trump’s favor as
polls show a tight race against Harris.”
In an opinion essay
titled “R.F.K. Jr. and Trump Offer a Good Fit” published on the site on
Friday, the writer Brady Leonard said that Mr. Kennedy’s endorsement
offered an alliance that not only helped Mr. Trump’s odds in the
election, but also made sense ideologically.
The article was very he said/she said. Notably, it only cited two organizations on the left and one of those was Slate.
As far as I can tell, other than a brief reference to Trump "embracing" Kennedy, the NYT hasn't published anything about how this is already affecting the campaign and Trump's platform, which is pretty big news to sleep on.
"That is why today I am repeating my pledge to establish a panel of top experts, working with Bobby, to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including auto-immune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and more."
And this.
RFK
“hinted in his speech that his portfolio in a Trump White House could
focus on public health” 70% of Americans back vaccine mandates in public
schools per @pewresearch; Trump has pledged to end federal $ for all schools w/them; a top RFK role makes that threat more credible https://t.co/facU30A5kX
To understand the impact this announcement is having on MAGA, you have to imagine the emotional roller coaster they have been on the past couple of months. After the debate, they thought they had the election sewn up. After the assassination attempt they thought they had a divinely ordained landslide on their hands. From their perspective, the past month has been an absolute gut punch. Just as they were about to hit their post-convention peak, the world turned upside down on them. Suddenly everything was breaking for the Democrats and against them. Fox news people were clearly getting worried. Supporters were starting to panic.
Then comes RFK Jr. and suddenly Trump world has someone to pin their hopes on.
Lara Trump: I think the American people were probably left feeling hollowed and empty after watching that DNC. pic.twitter.com/NCQDcVEtX6
Ms. Trump was being accurate if you replace "American people" with "Republicans." From their viewpoint, it was an enormous party thrown by the popular kids mainly to make fun of the losers. Now everything was about to change.
Lara Trump: I
think the Democrats are very upset about RFK Jr.. I think it will give
Trump a huge percentage bump in the swing states. I think you’ll see
that in the next round of polling pic.twitter.com/vM1RITLsPP
It didn't actually suggest a Trump/Kennedy ticket, but it got people thinking. The idea of Kennedy replacing Vance was met mockery from non-MAGA Twitter.
I hear rumors
that Donald Trump may replace JD Vance with Robert Kennedy Jr. Wow! That
would be the first time they were on the same ticket since their Lolita
Express days
As far as I can tell, no one of any standing in Trump world explicitly suggested the switch, but the way they talked about Kennedy had to make Vance a bit nervous or at least unappreciated. It didn't help that JD Vance seemed to disappear into another dimension the moment he stepped out of that doughnut shop.
I was thinking
about the scene in Minority Report where they kept the Tom Cruise
character in suspended animation. And I was wondering if that's why they
did with JD. Where is he?
I’m getting the
sense that JD is still Trumps running mate in the sense that Melania is
still his wife. Just kind of a we shan’t speak of it again kind of
thing.
While Trump is promising to make RFK Jr a central figure in the campaign and in his promised administration.
PRESIDENT
TRUMP: "I also want to salute Bobby’s decades of work as an advocate for
the health of our families and children. Millions of Americans who want
clean air, clean water, and a healthy nation have concerns about toxins
in our environment and pesticides in our food.… pic.twitter.com/01oRPhx6aR
Lots of talk about a cabinet position and some of the calls are coming from inside the house.
How will this play out for the Trump campaign? I'm inclined to say badly but, of course, I don't really know. I do know that the messaging and the policy stances of the Trump campaign have changed radically over the past seventy-two hours and those changes are likely to have a substantial impact (in some direction) considerably greater than whatever fraction of 4% the analysts at the NYT, 538 and the rest are talking about.
One last note. It's after midnight on Monday. I just checked the NYT.
They are already late to this story, but based on past history, when they catch up, they'll claim they were the first ones here.
This seems like a good time to remind ourselves that for the past four years the standard narrative has been that Kamala Harris is hopelessly inept both as a politician and as an office holder, not to mention being a little weird (what is it about the wired earbuds?). Lots of very famous and successful members of the media told us this again and again and are now looking for ways to distance themselves from statements that have become comically absurd. (Ezra Klein already busy at work on his revisionism tour.)
In a more sane world, reputations would take a hit and publications would publish mea culpas. In the world we live in, the best that we can hope for is that most of these journalists will move on and not bear too much of a grudge against the people who made them look bad.
Ease and confidence have not been the prevailing themes of Harris’s vice
presidency. Her first year on the job was defined by rhetorical
blunders, staff turnover, political missteps, and a poor sense among
even her allies of what, exactly, constituted her portfolio. Within
months of taking office, President Joe Biden was forced to confront a
public perception that Harris didn’t measure up; ultimately, the White House issued a statement
insisting that Biden did, in fact, rely on his vice president as a
governing partner. But Harris’s reputation has never quite recovered.
Now
I wrote a book on campaign speeches and this speech was one of the best I’ve ever heard. An absolute tour de force
— Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) August 23, 2024
That was a tour de force. One of the best convention speeches I have heard. Couldn’t be more fired up for @KamalaHarris
Ross Douthat: It’s a mistake to go all in on Harris, obviously, because she’s still the exceptionally weak candidate whose weaknesses made President Biden so loath to quit the field for her.
[Anyone who thinks Ross Douthat has special insights into these
decision making processes please raise your hand and slap yourself with
it. -- MP] Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are
throwing
away an unusual opportunity because they imagine some future opening for
themselves — in 2028 and beyond — that may never materialize. And the
party clearly has an interest in having a better-situated nominee: A
swing-state governor who isn’t tied directly to an unpopular
administration would be a much, much better choice for a high-stakes but
still winnable race than a liberal Californian machine politician with zero track record of winning over moderate to conservative voters.
Now
Being a good
orator is not necessarily the most important thing in politics. But I
did not fully appreciate how much better Kamala is at speaking than
Whitmer or Shapiro. She is more charismatic than the other imagined
Biden alternatives, for whatever that's worth
The contrast between that convention speech - crisp, clear, straight - and Trump's hour-long stream-of -consciousness rant would be amazing if we could be amazed by Trump anymore.
Incredible convention. Biden endorsed Harris a month ago yesterday. Putting this whole thing together for a new candidate in under a month--a herculean effort perfectly executed.
Then [Follow the link to see Stevens clean Silver's clock.]
LOL Harris winning the California AG race by <1 point isn't a sign that it was a tough race, it's a sign she was a bad candidate. Here are winning margins for statewide Ds in CA that year. She's a huge negative outlier.
First, on the speech … rock solid. I doubt her advisors and press people
thought it could have gone much better. At the beginning I thought it
might be understated somehow. Not bad at all, but understated, a bit
quieter than we expect from these speeches. But as it progressed I
realized she was developing an emotional audience, in person and on
television. This came through later in the speech when she ranged from
intense to boisterous to categorical. It worked with a mixture of
intensity and authenticity. There’s no point in my doing more
interpreting of the speech. It hit every point and hit every one well.
The most telling comments were those from Republican commentators who
couldn’t find their way around saying that it was a strong speech
before, of course, reassuring listeners that Harris is obviously
terrible and they agree with her about nothing.
The final part of the story is rooted in official Washington’s view
of Harris. To put it baldly, most elite DC journalists treated Harris
with a kind of breezy disdain that could scarcely rise to the level of
contempt. For the first year of her vice presidency there was an ongoing
series of critical reports about issues in the Office of the Vice
President, staff drama, mean bossism, general turmoil. I don’t know how
much reality there was to those reports. But they set a dismal tone.
You’ll remember that when Ezra Klein and others got together the calls
for a Thunderdome convention, Klein referred delicately and painedly to
“the Kamala Harris problem,” a problem so obvious that it scarcely
required explanation: how to usher her out of the way for others from
the vaunted Democratic bench.
I’m not trying to pick on Klein here. I’ve done enough of that. I
note this simply because it was such a deep conventional wisdom that it
hardly required explanation. Everyone in that world knew what he meant.
That certainly figures into this, and in both directions. It is not only
that there is this great appetite to find out just what it is Harris
must be doing wrong. That backstory must have left Harris just utterly
uninterested in what these folks have to say. They treated her as
something between a punchline and a nonentity and now she’s the odds-on
favorite, if only by a small margin, to be the next President. Why
should she care?
Kamala Harris has been succeeding in spite of the press, and I guarantee you it's driving some of them crazy.
Distorted headline stories were so last Thursday. The hot new trend with the cool kids today is seeing who can come up with the most ludicrous fact check from the DNC.
There’s a notable insistence—common to all major media fact checkers, it seems—that Trump was MERELY MUSING about the potential utility of bleach injections from the WH briefing room on national television during a time of profound crisis, and this cannot be construed as advice.
"Fact-checking"
operations have become nit-pick/both-sides parodies of themselves. Time
to disband. Just write about what's true and not. https://t.co/cM3Fp3co3T
This kind of "fact-checking" is an artifact of the collision between Trump's politics of lying and elite media's business-model-driven bothsidesism. The two things are obviously categorically different. But the need to jam them into one model creates nonsense like this.
CNN's Daniel Dale was probably the only journalist on the fact-checking
beat who is likely to come out of this week with his reputation
enhanced.
Here's how you do a "fact check" when one party is steeped in lies and the other is not: "There were few false or misleading claims on the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday." Thank you @ddale8! https://t.co/y89FQeRniE
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) August 21, 2024
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) August 21, 2024
One of the best takes came from Judd Legum, available in either tweet thread or post form.
1. Fact-checking is important but the problem with the modern fact-checking industrial complex is that fact-checking is not viewed simply as a mechanism to scrutinize false claims but has a vehicle to demonstrate a media outlet's "objectivity" and proof it treats "both sides"…
But the Washington Post and other major media outlets do not view
fact-checking only as a vehicle to scrutinize false claims. They also
view it as an opportunity to demonstrate that they are unbiased and
treat both sides — Republicans and Democrats — equally. This is where
the trouble starts.
Last night, President Joe Biden and
many other speakers addressed the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Without a doubt, Biden and other Democrats said some misleading things.
For example, Biden claimed that he was "removing every lead pipe from
schools and homes so every child can drink clean water." Biden did
secure $15 billion for that task through the Inflation Reduction Act,
but removing all lead pipes will likely cost a total of $45 billion.
But,
from a factual standpoint, there is no comparison between Trump and
Biden's speeches. Trump is completely unmoored from the facts. Biden
gets things wrong but much less frequently than Trump.
Nevertheless,
the fact-checking industry has attempted to prove its objectivity by
producing similar pieces for the Democratic and Republican National
Conventions. This requires some sleight of hand. Kessler's fact check on
the night Trump spoke to the RNC was limited exclusively to Trump.
Other noted fabulists on the agenda, including Tucker Carlson, Franklin Graham, Alina Habba, and Eric Trump, were ignored. Kessler's fact check of Biden's speech to the DNC included all other speakers on Monday evening.
Even
so, Kessler was required to stretch the concept of fact-checking to
absurdity — sometimes mangling facts himself — to fill out his fact
check for the first night of the DNC. For example, former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton's claim that Vice President Kamala Harris "won’t
be sending love letters to dictators." As Kessler notes, Clinton was
referring to 2018 comments by Trump claiming that he "fell in love" with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un through letters. "We fell in love,
okay?" Trump said. "No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and
they’re great letters. We fell in love.” Kessler, however, dings
Clinton. He says that "[t]here is no evidence that Trump sent such
letters" and "Clinton is making a bit of a leap to suggest that Trump
has written 'love letters' to dictators." According to Kessler, "[w]e do
not know what Trump wrote to Kim — or other dictators, for that
matter."
Kessler's fact-check is not only pedantic, it is
false. Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who still
holds the title of "associate editor" at the paper, reported on 27
letters exchanged between Trump and Kim in his book "Rage" — including letters sent from Trump to Kim.
"Like you, I have no doubt that a great result will be accomplished
between our two countries, and that the only two leaders who can do it
are you and me," Trump wrote to Kim on December 28, 2018. On June 30,
2019, Trump told Kim in a letter that "[b]eing with you today was truly
amazing." Trump included a copy of the front page of the New York Times,
which featured images of Trump with Kim, adding, "[t]hese images are
great memories for me and capture the unique friendship that you and I
have developed."
...
There were additional fact-checks in the Washington Post's live blog of the DNC. It included this analysis from national reporter Amy Gardner:
But Gardner's own logic, Biden's assertion is absolutely true. Trump has said he will accept the results if it is a "fair and legal and good election."
And, as Gardner notes, he also has said that Democrats can only beat
him by cheating. Therefore, if he loses, Trump will not accept the
result, just as Biden said.
I went back and forth over posting this. It is one of those topics where pundits and their poor relations, bloggers, tend to read in too much. I was also concerned that, since the establishment press seem to be ignoring the story, the smaller and more partisan sources I was left with might not be giving me a true picture. As more data points came in, however, I came around to the idea that there is something worth paying attention to hear.
Unserious people spend too much time focused on spectacle and anecdote, but I think serious people sometimes spend too little. Something can be a good show and also an important story. As for the latter, the vast majority of the information we have to work with consists of anecdotes. If you can't get a handle on anecdotal reasoning, about the best you can shoot for is overeducated idiot.
Now let's cautiously talk about campaign events and crowd sizes.
I've never paid a lot of attention to political conventions so maybe I'm missing an obvious counterexample, but the Harris campaign is doing something that would seem to be highly unusual, and they are doing so in a way deliberately designed to get into Donald Trump's head.
Walz: Not only do we have massive energy in our convention, we've got a lot more energy where they had their convention right here. *Accordion hands* That one guy is going to be so sad tonight. So sad, so sad. pic.twitter.com/6p8p0iV3p3
Large crowd in Milwaukee ahead of Harris-Walz rally, just about 90 miles from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This is the same venue where Trump held the Republican National Convention last month pic.twitter.com/GZLSwFoczB
Just so there is no confusion, the Milwaukee rally is going on during the DNC roll call.
Atlanta rapper and producer Lil Jon makes a surprise appearance at the DNC performing “Turn Down for What" during the Georgia delegation's roll call vote. pic.twitter.com/ceTrCH3FR8
Donald Trump had originally announced that he would largely step back from campaigning until after the end of the Democratic convention. He then did a 180 and announced a series of appearances in swing states. They have not been getting good notices.
Donald Trump delivered a strangely low-energy speech on Monday at a factory in York, Pennsylvania.
While
the crowd at Precision Custom Components started off cheering at the
former president’s compliments about Pennsylvania and promises to
bolster American manufacturing, any initial enthusiasm appeared to wane
as Trump proceeded through his remarks in a monotone reading voice.
“Kamala puts America last, I put America first,” Trump said, sounding completely dejected. He frowned as the crowd cheered.
Trump clearly
had a script for this speech he was trying to stick to at first but he
drifted off it right away and then just delivered his full rally rant,
quaaludes version
The Harris
campaign says more than 15,000 people showed up to this Harris-Walz
rally in Milwaukee. Here’s the 360 view of the cheering, enthusiastic
crowd. pic.twitter.com/0rZH5xz4Bp
... was not the main show for the Democrats Tuesday.
Like I said, we don't want to read too much into this, but we shouldn't read too little into it either. While crowd size and candidate affect are not reliable measures, they can be leading indicators, particularly when paired with things like voter registration, small dollar donations, and trends in polling. Perhaps more importantly, in politics perceptions have a way of becoming reality, or at least of pushing reality aside. For the past month, perception has been far kinder to Harris then to Trump.
In case you don't keep up with these things, for the past couple of weeks, there have been various theories floating around MAGA social media about the Democratic national convention, specifically about Harris or Walz being forced off the ticket.
As is often the case, the most over-the-top version came from Trump himself
Of course, this didn't help.
Uh, no. "Parties picking their nominee after some rough internal wrangling" is not a coup. "An armed mob trying to stop the electoral process and install the losing candidate" is a coup. pic.twitter.com/LxlbUX4DqV
Most aren't sure what's going to happen but they know it'll be big.
Yes, very likely!
Shall we bet, say, one million dollars on whether this will occur?— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) August 18, 2024
("Newsmax Host, bestselling author and host of The Todd Starnes Radio Show - weekdays at noon. http://ToddStarnes.com. Fox News alum" -- we don't just quote any rando off the street here at West Coast Stat Views.)
Wait, I thought
this guy was deposed in a coup and was really angry and the delegates
were all deprived of their democratic rights or some damn thing pic.twitter.com/icBU8yd43d
All of this is happening against a background of conservative media news reports about how frightened and desperate the Democrats are.
Watters: I just got back from vacation and noticed Kamala Harris has surged ahead of Trump in the polls. I had my team look into it. Turns out these polls are dramatically oversampling Democrats and burying the samples so you can’t see it pic.twitter.com/19DURQHfWN
Technically, we can't say for certain these theories are wrong until the end of the convention, but assuming that Joe doesn't force his way onto the stage on the last day of the convention and that the buildup were seen for coach Tim is not some incredibly elaborate head fake, this will join the long list of failed prophecies that have popped up in MAGA world since November 2024. (Who can forget the second coming of JFK jr.?) I don't think there's any way of knowing how many Trump supporters actually believe all of the craziness. I suspect it's a small but nontrivial minority, but that's just a guess.
From what I've observed (and from the experience of growing up and still having contacts in rural Arkansas), most Trump supporters have consciously or unconsciously made a bargain with themselves. There are certain aspects of the man that trouble them but they have pushed these to the back of the minds and think about them as little as possible. Though a few may enjoy going along with the cosplay, these people are not part of the cult. There is a point where they will stop supporting Trump. Whether or not a significant number reach that point in the next seventy-seven days is a question for the social scientists in the audience.
[I wrote this about a month ago. It fits nicely with our ogoing thread, but the fact that JD Vance was a far right extremist on abortion is not quite the breaking news it was a few weeks ago.]
Here's the full quote, where Vance clearly calls for a national ban. This is journalistic malpractice. pic.twitter.com/hRiOuZNGoY
The New York Times was one of the news organizations that committed themselves to the Dobbs-won't-matter narrativeover two years ago and they've been pushing it ever since. This got more difficult when Trump named one of congress's most extreme anti-abortion members to be his running mate.
But to enforce these laws or know when there’s something to enforce
you really need access to medical records. You need to know and be able
to prove when a woman was pregnant and then, before the end of normal
gestation, stopped being pregnant. So if you live in Texas and you’re
pregnant, can you go to your OB-GYN or will that be held against you if
you’re found to have ceased being pregnant after a visit to Kansas? Does
your OB have to report you to law enforcement if they believe there’s a
real and present risk that you’ll go out of state to get an abortion or
seek a prescription from an out of state doctor for mifepristone? And
what about contraception, which some states are now also making moves to
limit? Or how about IVF? This was the context of the HHS rule which was
proposed in spring of 2023 and came into effect this spring. It applies
to all of those questions.
Now when this rule was first proposed back in 2023, a group of 28 members of Congress wrote to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra demanding he withdraw the proposed rule “immediately.” (I was reminded of this letter when I saw this write up
this morning.) They argued that the proposed rule “unlawfully thwarts
the enforcement of compassionate laws” and “creates special protections
for abortion that limit cooperation with law enforcement, undermine the
ability to report abuse, restrict the provision of public health
information … erase the humanity of unborn children” and “interfere with
valid state laws protecting life.”
Now, I said 28 members of Congress. That’s not very many. You’ll
remember there are 535 of them, or which 100 are senators. Vance was one
of only eight Republican senators willing to go this hard for menstrual
surveillance by state law enforcement agencies. The other 20
signatories are members of the House and a quick review of the names
shows they are mostly hardcore Freedom Caucus types.
But think about it: even in the House GOP caucus, they could only get
20 people to sign this thing. That’s how extreme it is. But JD Vance
signed.
Of course, the NYT has a long history of using creative reporting to make Republicans sound more reasonable.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Following up the follow-up
Following up on Joseph's latest,
I actually think the problem here is more James Stewart than Paul Ryan.
Ryan's budgets have been fairly obvious attempts to form a more Randian
union. That's not surprising coming from an avowed follower of Ayn
Rand. Ryan also comes from a Straussian tradition so I'm not exactly
shocked that he would try to sell proposals that are likely to increase
the deficit as a path to fiscal responsibility.
But that's OK.
The Ryan plan is exactly the kind of bad idea that our national immune
system ought to be able to handle. Liberals should savage its underlying
values (Rand is always a hard sell); centrists and independents should
spend their time pointing out the endless ways that the numbers don't
add up and the evidence contradicts the basic arguments; respectable
conservatives should damn it with faint praise or simply avoid the
topic. The Republicans would then come back with a new budget, hopefully
a proposal based on valid numbers and defensible assumptions, but at
the very least one that obscures its flaws and makes a cosmetic effort
at advancing its stated goals.
For Ryan's proposals to maintain
their standing as serious and viable, the system has to have broken
down in an extraordinary way. Specifically, the centrists such as James
Stewart have had to go to amazing lengths to make the budget look
reasonable, up to and including claiming that Ryan intends to take steps
that Ryan explicitly rules out (from James Kwak):
Stewart
is at least smart enough to realize that a 25 percent rate is only a
tax increase if you eliminate preferences for investment income
(capital gains and dividends, currently taxed at a maximum rate of 15
percent):
“Despite Mr. Ryan’s reluctance to specify which
tax preferences might have to be curtailed or eliminated, there’s no
mystery as to what they would have to be. Looking only at the returns
of the top 400 taxpayers, the biggest loophole they exploit by far is
the preferential tax rate on capital gains, carried interest and
dividend income.”
So give Stewart credit for
knowing the basics of tax policy. But he is basically assuming that
Ryan must be proposing to eliminate those preferences: “there’s no
mystery as to what they would have to be.”
Only they aren’t. Stewart quotes directly from the FY 2012 budget resolution authored by Ryan’s Budget Committee. But apparently he didn’t notice this passage:
“Raising
taxes on capital is another idea that purports to affect the wealthy
but actually hurts all participants in the economy. Mainstream
economics, not to mention common sense, teaches that raising taxes on
any activity generally results in less of it. Economics and common
sense also teach that the size of a nation’s capital stock – the pool
of saved money available for investment and job creation – has an
effect on employment, productivity, and wages. Tax reform should
promote savings and investment because more savings and more investment
mean a larger stock of capital available for job creation.”
In other words, taxes on capital gains should not be increased, but if anything should be lowered.
These
distortions aren't just journalistic laziness or rhetorically overkill
on Stewart's part; it's essential to a narrative that writers like
Stewart have built their careers on.
But
the “centrists” who weigh in on policy debates are playing a different
game. Their self-image, and to a large extent their professional
selling point, depends on posing as high-minded types standing between
the partisan extremes, bringing together reasonable people from both
parties — even if these reasonable people don’t actually exist. And
this leaves them unable either to admit how moderate Mr. Obama is or to
acknowledge the more or less universal extremism of his opponents on
the right.
The point about self-image and
professional selling points is remarkably astute and when you combine
those with the decline in fact-checking, diminishing penalties for
errors, and a growing trend toward group-think, you get a journalistic
system that loses much of its ability to evaluate policy ideas.
For at least a couple of years now, we've been talking about the politics of abortion and critiquing the narrative much of the establishment press, particularly Politico and the New York Times, have viewed the issue through. Though the framing and supporting arguments have evolved, the one constant has been the insistence that, while abortion may have been a big deal in previous elections, it won't be one going forward. I have always been skeptical of these arguments, partially because they felt like they were designed to avoid angry Republicans, but in more because, from the very beginning, they seemed overly static and constrained.
I've been trying to wrap my head around the bigger story, one with all sorts of related elements and moving parts and synergistic relationships involving reproductive rights, women's medical care, misogyny, violence against women, the gender gap, attitudes toward women in politics, and what it all means for this and upcoming elections. I'm still at the data gathering stage. With that in mind, your are some recent anecdotal and disorganized tweets. We won't even get into childless cat ladies.
We'll start with something trivial but telling.
I don’t know one woman, no matter her political bent, who will be angry that a governor made period products free to students.
My goodness. For a journalist that nobody has ever heard of (her words not mine), I sure managed to get under @megynkelly's skin. Here's the editorial with the facts that made her so gosh darn mad. She's still wrong, FYI. https://t.co/wCGSJJQQXN
Walz wants your daughter to have access to tampons at her school if she needs them. Vance wants to know your daughter’s menstrual cycle to see if she was up to any aborting. Let’s check the weird meter…
Is the ad excessive? Perhaps, but Vance has supported the basic principle of menstrual surveillance, which is one of the reasons that 'weird' has gotten so much traction.
FACT: JD Vance was one of only eight Republican senators to sign onto a letter in support of menstrual surveillance by state law enforcement agencies.
The other 20 signatories are members of the House and a quick review of the names shows they are mostly hardcore Freedom Caucus… pic.twitter.com/JsL3iEQtlI
Along with the post-menopausal women quote, this also came to light recently.
Under his pseudonym, Murphy once stated in a now-deleted blog post — which has been quoted
in multiple outlets — that “behind even the most ardent feminist facade
is a deep desire to be dominated and even degraded,” and that “rape is
the best therapy for the problem. Feminists need rape.”
These embarrassing Vance clips are emerging every few days now. He may be the worst vetted VP I've seen, and, yes, that includes Palin.
Attacking sexual assault victims is not a great way to address the ticket's gender gap.
Side note: If you want to play the "no, you're weird" game, you have to
do more than just stick the word in anywhere you're trying to be
negative.
An Idaho law
banning minors from receiving healthcare without parent approval has
created a legal problem. If a child is raped by their parent, medics now
require that parent’s permission to administer the rape kit that would
prove their own guilt.https://t.co/NL7lbETCz6
JD Vance speaks
to group that calls for a “total ban” on abortion, even for teenage
survivors of rape and women who will otherwise die: “[You have] a seat
at this table, and you always will... Trump agrees” pic.twitter.com/mMJwXExLkI
Note this:
Trump has the advantage on immigration and the economy, but it's not at
all overwhelming, only in single digits. Harris might be on her way to
neutralizing these issues.
One woman's ectopic pregnancy grew too large and ruptured. "She nearly bled to death and had to have her right fallopian tube removed."
The other woman had to undergo emergency surgery to remove the ectopic pregnancy. Her right fallopian tube was removed, along with 75% of her… https://t.co/SRb4MWRGKf
Breaking: Two women have filed federal complaints against Texas hospitals they say refused to treat their ectopic pregnancies, leading both women to lose their fallopian tubes and endanger their future fertility. https://t.co/UrkUyFhnfy
Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy. https://t.co/Zi3PsWfS4w
Jim Jordan: We spent the last 50 years working to overturn Roe. Trump is the only president to show up for the anti-abortion movement. He put three anti-abortion rights justices on the Supreme Court. Let’s make sure we talk that way and stay that way pic.twitter.com/c23TlXxHHD
Vice President Harris: Just yesterday, we got a fresh reminder of what Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda would do. He said he wants to ban medication abortion in every state. We are not going to let that happen pic.twitter.com/SBhiWCUJjr
Mike Johnson on the day Roe was overturned said he agrees with Clarence Thomas that the Supreme Court should look at overturning the the legalization of birth control and same-sex marriage: There’s been some really bad law made... It needs to be cleaned up pic.twitter.com/EfFBoIlJEo
Rep. Dean: After Trump said he is open to banning the abortion medication Mifepristone, I decided to look at my copy of his Project 2025. Sure enough, it says they will reverse approval of medication abortion and ‘stop the mail order use’ of it. This is their plan pic.twitter.com/Vhhi2RxuLw
Kamala Harris’s campaign has worked with more than a dozen women, called abortion storytellers, who are giving their own testimonies at her events—and training others to do the same—in the hope of highlighting the stakes in November. https://t.co/uXVIqu1lL0
And while this last point is minor by comparison, it is certainly not going to help.
AXIOS: “..
Trump advisers privately concede his misogynistic language is deeply
problematic, and something they worry he will unload in a public debate
to his detriment.”@axioshttps://t.co/jr8MjMzzuVpic.twitter.com/oUVsI908tZ
Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying ears?
(“That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala, and
it’s not how the campaign would characterize her,” Mr. Cheung said.) https://t.co/jNKUS0gCf1
