Author: wrongologist

“A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada”

Yesterday we talked about US vs. Texas, the Supreme Court case brought by 26 Republican-controlled states saying that President Obama exceeded his powers by using an executive order to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. In thinking about what Republicans have (not) done in the last seven years, “A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada”, the song from the Texas Tornados came to mind.

And a very little bit is all the legislation that we have gotten from a Republican-controlled House and Senate. Here’s how Ed Kilgore described it:

If you look back at Obama’s record on big executive actions — on guns, climate change, and immigration — you see the same situation. It’s not that he’s fought for “liberal” as opposed to “conservative” policies in these areas. It’s that congressional Republicans, pressured by conservative opinion-leaders and interest groups, have refused to do anything at all…

And as Nancy LeTourneau adds, the agenda that is being articulated by today’s Republican presidential candidates should have been easy for them to enact, given that they control both houses of Congress, but they have done nothing to advance their agenda:

• They say that we need to fight ISIS more aggressively…But President Obama has been asking Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS for months now.
• They say that we need to secure our borders. Most of them think we should build an impenetrable wall on our border with Mexico. Some of them even say that we should deport all 10 million undocumented immigrants. Have we seen a bill on any of that in Congress?
• They say that they want to repeal Obamacare. OK, they actually passed a bill to do that. But they’ve also said that they want to replace it. Anyone seen that plan floating around anywhere?
• They say that the problem with gun violence is that we don’t do enough to provide mental health treatment…Have they? No.
• We’ve heard a lot about criminal justice reform. And some bills even passed out of committees. But nothing has actually come up for a vote.

And we are still waiting for the jobs bill promised by John Boehner.

All of the campaign issues Republicans have identified are going nowhere legislatively, and choosing to do nothing has consequences.

We are here because there is a faction in Congress that has deliberately pushed our system of governance to the breaking point. Their latest threat to our system of governance is a refusal to legislate. This has ground our system almost to a halt. Couple that with their refusal to fund the agencies responsible for executing laws on the books, and you have a willful effort to overthrow the government.

If you look back at our Declaration of Independence, one of its 5 sections is called the indictment. It is a series of complaints levied against England’s King George III. The indictment contains 25 charges, of which the first nine, with very little editing, could be levied against Republicans today:

• Refusal to enact laws. (Complaints 1 – 3, 6)
• Obstruction of elected Representation at both the State and Central Government level. (Complaints 3 – 6)
• Interference with and failure to facilitate migration. (Complaint 7)
• Refusal to fill vacancies in the Judiciary. (Complaints 8, 9)

So, we are in unprecedented territory: How do we govern when the Legislative Branch refuses?

Republican shouting, doing nothing, and then blaming it on Obama has worked for seven years and could continue to work forever, in part because the media loves the “both parties do it” narrative.

It is also true that Democrats have failed utterly to make a convincing counter-argument (placing blame where it belongs) and have instead bet that the repellent personalities of the GOP would limit the popularity of Republicans as a national party.

It was a losing bet. For the GOP, the strategy has worked: Why do anything, if when you can say you’re against everything, you are reelected to do nothing again?

Republicans can shout all they want about how President Obama is by-passing Congress with his executive actions, but a little bit is better than nada.

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Hispanic Millennials Could Hold Key to 2016

Two of yesterday’s news stories may work together to provide a key to the 2016 election. First, from Pew Research: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Hispanic millennials will account for nearly half (44%) of the record 27.3million Hispanic eligible voters projected for 2016—a share greater than any other racial or ethnic group of voters…

The median age among the nation’s 35 million US -born Latinos is only 19, and Latino youth will be the main driver of growth among Latino eligible voters for the next two decades.

Latinos made up 17.4% (55 million) of the nation’s population in 2014. They were 11.4% of eligible voters, but only 7.3% of actual US voters. But percentages are not the full story. In 2016, a projected 11.9 million Hispanic millennials will be eligible to vote. Pew gives some perspective on Hispanic voters, who vote at lower levels than other groups:

Pew Hisp Voters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chart above shows that in 2012, fewer than half (48%) of Hispanic eligible voters cast a ballot. By comparison, 64.1% of whites and 66.6% of blacks voted.

Can that be turned around? Part of the answer is that Hispanic millennials register to vote at a lower rate than other millennial groups. 50% of Hispanic millennial eligible voters said they were registered to vote in 2012, compared with 61% of white millennials and 64% among black millennials. And only 37.8% of them actually turned out to vote in 2012.

Although they are the largest cohort of Hispanics, they vote less often. The voter turnout rate among Latino millennials also trails that of other millennial groups. 47.5% of white millennials and 55% of black millennials voted in 2012.

Given that Hispanic millennials are the largest bloc of Hispanic voters, and since they are less likely to cast a ballot than older voters, there is an opportunity for either party if they can turn out Hispanic millennials.

The second piece of news bears on the turnout discussion. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) took up the case US vs. Texas. This case, brought by 26 Republican-controlled states, addresses whether President Obama exceeded his powers by using an executive order to try to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. Mr. Obama’s immigration program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), is currently blocked by adverse decisions in several lower courts.

DAPA is very popular among Hispanics, particularly with millennials.

Mr. Obama’s executive order has become one of the most contentious topics in the nation’s political debate. Every Republican candidate for the party’s presidential nomination is against Obama’s plan. The Democratic candidates all say they would keep it in place.

If SCOTUS sides with Texas, eliminating the DAPA program, Hispanics will have a reason to register and to vote in the 2016 election, since, should a Republican become president, there is no possibility that a DAPA-like program would be passed.

If SCOTUS sides with the president, Hispanics should turn out to elect a new Democrat president, who will ensure this executive order remains in place.
It is expected that the Court will take up the case in April, and there will be a decision in June, right in the middle of the 2016 election cycle, so this issue may energize Hispanic millennials and Hispanics generally to turn out in 2016.

We all know that turnout matters. Pew used the Cook Political Report’s analysis of toss-up states that projects nine states as tossups: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin; and looked at the Hispanic voter demographics in those states:

Pew Tossup states

 

Hispanic turnout will clearly matter in Florida, Nevada and Colorado, and possibly in Virginia and Pennsylvania. They add up to 67 electoral votes and could be a key to the 2016 elections. And despite the immigration controversy, nearly all of these voters are US born. According to Pew, the second-largest group of eligible voters is adult Hispanic immigrants who are in the US legally, and are naturalized citizens. Between 2012 and 2016, 1.2 million became citizens.

The Hispanic vote could make it an interesting fall.

 

 

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Millennial Women Back Bernie

Today we continue our focus on the demographics of the 2016 presidential elections. We covered American millennials in December, and return to them again because a new USA Today/Ipsos poll finds that a third say they’re likely to vote in the Republican primaries, while 40% say they’re likely to vote in the Democratic primaries; 60% said they are likely to vote in November.

That means that 70% overall say they will vote in the primaries, but 10% fewer say they will vote in the general election. But that may be good news, since only about 50% voted in 2012, the same as in 2008.

The poll was taken just prior to the SOTU. From USA Today:

The top issue by far for millennials is the economy, including concerns about jobs, the minimum wage and paid leave. On that, millennials have the same pocketbook focus as baby boomers and Gen Xers.

An interesting finding was that voters age 18-35 are most likely to support outsider candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump:

Donald Trump easily leads the field among younger Republicans and independents, at 26%, but that is a lower level of support than the billionaire businessman now holds in the overall electorate. He is backed by 34% of GOP voters in the RealClearPolitics average of recent national surveys.

But among Democrats, there’s something of a surprise: (editing and brackets by the Wrongologist)

On the Democratic side, among the overall electorate in national polls, Clinton now leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by close to 20 percentage points. But Sanders [in our poll]…has captured the allegiance of younger voters. [He]…is leading Clinton, 46%-35%, among millennial Democrats and independents.

Taking a closer look at the Democratic millennial voter preferences, Sanders’s support breaks young: Among the 18 to 25 year-olds, Sanders has a big lead. Among those 26 to 34, Clinton has a small edge.

There are gender gaps. We know from other polls that Clinton leads among baby boomer women. In this poll, men under 35 support Sanders by 4 percentage points. But, millennial women back Sanders by almost 20 points. The possibility of electing the first female president apparently has less persuasive power among younger women than their mothers’ generation.

A big question is whether or not Democratic millennials will show up to vote for the party’s nominee in the general election, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.

Other findings:

• By 80%-10%, those surveyed say the US should transition to mostly clean or renewable energy by 2030.
• By 82%-12%, millennials support background checks for all gun purchasers, and there was no partisan divide on the issue: 89% of millennial Democrats and 83% of millennial Republicans support gun background checks.
• By 66%-33%, millennials see police violence against African Americans as a problem, and 75% say the government should require police officers to wear body cameras.
• 47% say the US should commit ground troops to combat ISIS, while 37% disagree. But there is a partisan divide: 69% of Republicans support deploying ground forces; while a plurality of Democrats (45%) oppose the idea.
• 57% say they are optimistic about the future of the US; 34% are pessimistic.

The U.S. Census Bureau says millennials surpassed baby boomers as the largest group in the US voting-age population. Millennials do not peak in the US population until 2036, so they are going to be in charge of our politics for the next 25 years, assuming they turn out to vote.

As the Wrongologist noted in December:

In 2012, young voters were decisive in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio…Obama won at least 61% of the youth vote in those four states, and if Romney had achieved a 50-50 split, he could have flipped those states…

And been elected president.

(The survey was conducted online by Ipsos in conjunction with Rock the Vote last Monday through Thursday, of 1,141 adults between the ages 18 through 34. The credibility interval, akin to a margin of error, is plus or minus 3.5 %.)

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 2016

Dr. King is one of Wrongo’s few heroes. He set an example for activism and success in the political arena that few other activists have matched, except for the founders of our Republic. Maybe that is why he is one of only two individuals (George Washington is the other) who have their names attached to a federal holiday.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, MLK transformed America. In the ‘50’s , America was a place where you didn’t question why we did things the way we did, you just followed your parents. By the end of the ‘60’s we were questioning everything. We changed a few things, and by the 1970s, many of us were living under a very different set of social mores than those of our parents.

MLK, along with others in our churches and a courageous few politicians created a real “moral majority” (not the phony ideal espoused by Jerry Falwell 25 years later), comprised of people of all races, educational and economic strata who came together to support the Big Idea that Separate was not Equal. MLK gave voice to that Big Idea.

His presence, power and persuasiveness drove our political process to a place and to an outcome in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These ideas were completely unthinkable 10 years earlier in 1954, when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided by the Supreme Court.

Wrongo participated in the Civil Rights movement from 1958 to 1962. That participation changed my viewpoint on race, religion and politics. Sadly, and wrongly, Wrongo left active participation in the movement, thinking that Dr. King’s Big Idea had taken hold, and that it permanently altered our political landscape.

Yet here we are in 2016, with all of the New Deal and Great Society reforms under attack.

Here is something Wrongo guarantees you have never heard. It is a 1986 recording by Eartha Kitt detailing Dr. King’s activism, his many, many arrests, and the few attempts on his life before he was killed in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Kitt made an album called “My Way: Musical Tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.” with The Black Academy of Arts & Letters (TBAAL), the nation’s largest African-American cultural arts institution. Here is Ms. Kitt, not singing, but speaking about MLK:

Those of you who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

It is clear from that recitation that MLK paid a high price for his beliefs. Ms. Kitt also paid a price for hers. In 1968, during LBJ’s administration, Kitt made anti-war statements at a White House luncheon. When Lady Bird Johnson asked her about Vietnam, Eartha replied:

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.

She had trouble finding work after that. Whatever you may think of her talents, it is contemptible that she was branded “a sadistic nymphomaniac” by the CIA. This was in the late 1960s, not the 1940s.

Today, the mass movement type of activism is dead. In our current political climate, holding large rallies rarely results in political change. Most people just send a tweet, and think they’ve accomplished something. The failure of demonstrations today is a symptom of a failure in our democracy. And the way the Occupy Movement was forcibly removed from American cities makes it difficult for anyone to want to engage in civil disobedience.

Consider how quick the police are to shoot unarmed black men today. How long would MLK be able to demonstrate, or drive his car, or march to Montgomery before being shot, not by an assassin, but by the police on the streets of America today?

Our founders wrote the Constitution in a way that explicitly provides for “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. Despite that protection, legislation in cities across America has chipped away at those rights in the name of public safety. Along with this erosion of rights, comes the military-style weapons and tactics, the pepper spray and temporary suspension of civil rights that we saw in NYC, Ferguson. MO, and Oakland CA.

Today America urgently needs a political movement with a forceful, charismatic leader.

Someone who can tie together the various threads of what is wrong in our society. Someone who can show us how these things are interrelated, and who can point us in a direction that could restore our now-fading civil rights and our middle class.

MLK remains the hero of a generation of Americans for whom activism was a building block of their personal journey to adulthood.

In most ways, our nation has never recovered that sense of can-do, or that all things are possible for your Big Idea. Today there is no one like MLK who can rally us to drive Big Ideas to reality.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 17, 2016

Another jam-packed news week: David Bowie stepped through the door, the Dow fell through the floor, the SOTU had the lowest ratings ever, the Republicans debated, and you didn’t win Powerball.

So, something to cheer you up at the start your week:

COW Foxes

Gonna miss ol’ Ziggy:

COW Bowie2

Wall Street longs for yesterday:

COW Lost Pet

The GOP debate followed the usual script:

COW Big Tent

Republicans are beginning to rationalize about the probable primary winner:

COW Satan for Prez

In this primary season it has become clear that facts don’t matter. How you feel matters. Other people don’t matter. How you relate to your tribe matters. Irresponsible tax policies, silly monetary policies (gold!), destructive foreign policy, no climate policy, no healthcare policy, no infrastructure policy, charter schools as an education policy, these all matter. Except for militarism, do they have any public policy positions?

The Clintons begin to understand the threat:

COW First Word

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Evangelical Voters Have Big Influence on Primaries

As we continue our deep dive into American demographics and its impact on politics, today, let’s consider the role of evangelical Christians in our primaries. In Iowa, evangelical and born-again Christians account for 60% of those who attend Republican caucuses. Last fall, The Economist published a chart showing the percentage of evangelicals by state, and each state’s power at the Republican Party convention:

Evangical Voters

The Republican candidates are trying hard to court evangelicals. Nationally, Ted Cruz has a 64% favorable rating among evangelicals, according to Public Policy Polling (PPP), behind Ben Carson, who has a 69% rating. Marco Rubio and The Donald are at 54%.

Blog readers may remember our review of “One Nation Under God” by Kevin Kruse. In that book, Kruse shows how Rev. Billy Graham influenced our politics for 50 years. He believed that our way of life and our economic system were ordained not just by God, but by the Christian God.

Billy Graham said during the 1952 presidential campaign:

The Christian people of America will not sit idly by…They are going to vote as a bloc for the man with the strongest moral and spiritual platform, regardless of his views on other matters.

Well, Billy’s son, Franklin Graham, has a group called Decision America that is conducting a 50-state tour to energize Christians to vote. From his website:

I’m going to every state in our country to challenge Christians to live out their faith at home, in public and at the ballot box…

Franklin Graham has been involved in politics before. He supported Romney. He has backed ballot initiatives opposing gay marriage; he led prayers at the first inauguration of President George W. Bush.

Like many evangelicals, he sees a pattern of bullying by secular forces and their allies in government. He worries about Christian employers having to fund health insurance that covers birth-control, and wonders if religious colleges will one day have to admit gay students (like they don’t already!).

As Kevin Kruse shows, the history of American Christianity is full of prayer meetings in which the faithful bewail a nation adrift, and vow—like the tribes of Israel before them—to stand fast in the face of tyrannical rulers. At his kick-off meeting in Des Moines, IA, Franklin noted that:

…an estimated 20 to 30 million Christians stayed home in the 2012 election.

He wondered what our country would look like if city councils, school boards and mayor seats were filled by believers in the next two or three elections. And he urged Christians to not only vote in next year’s elections but to run for office at every level of public office. Franklin Graham will not be supporting any specific candidates or parties. He says that he left the Republican Party in late 2015 in favor of an independent status.

Gee, political enlightenment came just a few months ago.

But today, most American politicians are already believers. HuffPo says that 92% of 114th Congress are Christian. Compare that to the 73% of American adults who are Christian, according to Pew Forum. A full 99% of Republicans in Congress are Christian, compared to (only) 81% of the Democrats.

And Graham’s not being a member of a political party is a fiction. His agenda is supported by just one party, the one that his 97 year-old father affiliated with back in 1952. The party that already has 99% of its Congress people affiliated with the Christian religions. And it takes a fair amount of cognitive dissonance for a religious group that already has a supermajority of Congress and takes an absolutely important part in our politics to claim persecution at the hands of the government.

Franklin Graham may be a bit more subtle in 2016 than he was in 2012, but you have to wonder if his ultimate goal is to impose his own version of Christianity on the entire nation.

The Old Time Religion of both Billy and Franklin Graham has a deep, visceral attachment to the Republican Party from the marriage of capitalism to Christianity in the 1930’s that promoted religious hostility to the New Deal, to convincing Eisenhower to add “In God We Trust” to our currency, and “Under God” to our pledge of allegiance.

That Old Time Religion is still at work for the GOP, even if Franklin Graham says he is non-partisan.

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Angry Men Now a Political Force

The spin after the SOTU was about how angry voters are, and the political opening that creates, despite the genuine good news on the economy. Here is Mr. Obama from the SOTU:

Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

We can’t change the fact that some people are angry, but this article from the Washington Monthly by Andrew Yarrow points to some stunning facts about how men in particular have been left by the wayside of American life:

At least 20% of the nation’s 90 million white men have been pushed to the sidelines, either retreating or storming out of the mainstream of American life. They are not the men you see at work, who play with their children, go out with their wives or partners, are involved in their communities, and earn a living to save for their children’s education and their own retirement. What they do doesn’t register in…the gross domestic product…

Yarrow continues:

We know that they are out there. But they don’t fit old stereotypes of failure, so we’ve had trouble coming to grips with who they are or naming the problem. Parts of their stories have garnered significant attention, but we don’t see that what have been treated as separate problems are closely related.

Here are a few statistics from the article that merit your attention:

• Today, fewer than seven out of ten American men work; in the 1950s, nine out of ten worked.
• Since the 1970s, inflation-adjusted incomes for the bottom 80% of men have fallen, with the most dramatic declines occurring among the bottom 40%, most of whom do not have a college education.
• Today, just half of men are husbands; in 1960, three-fourths of men were married.
• As Barack Obama leaves office, only two out of three children live with their fathers; when John Kennedy was elected President, nine out of ten children lived with their fathers.
• Today, 43% of 18-to-34-year-old American men live with their parents (compared to 36% of millennial women); in 1960, about 28% lived at home.
• There are 36% more women in college than men, whereas in 1970, there were about 35% more men than women in college.
• Men are 50% less likely to trust government than women.
• In recent years, there has been a roughly 20-point gender voting gap, with white men being much more likely not only to vote for Republicans but to express disillusionment and anger toward government; until about 1980, men and women voted roughly evenly for Democrats and Republicans.

The point is that a lot has gone wrong for many white men, a demographic that once was the epitome of privilege and high expectations. And while politicians discuss stagnant wages, broken families and inequality, few notice, much less talk about the probable linkages between these issues and the impact of angry males on our politics.

Some may be thinking that this is a manufactured issue. After all, men still out-earn women, and they still hold most of the CEO and board–level jobs. And none of this white male angst should obscure the continuing struggles of women and people of color, including men of color. African-American and Latino men have had it worse than white men for a very long time.

But we ignore any group’s anger at our peril. The Bundy Brigade’s antics in Utah and Oregon is just one recent example. Many men are mad as hell, and their anger is often turned on scapegoats: Government in the case of the Bundys; Muslims, immigrants, African Americans, and Latinos in the case of others.

In 2016 we are seeing several presidential candidates feeding from the trough of this anger. Playing to the inchoate anger of a sizable minority of white men who have been benched economically, or who simply left the field, is a dangerous demagoguery, one that only benefits the demagogues.

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Can You Trust Your Local Government?

Citizens are supposed to be able to trust their elected governments, local, state and national. But, surveys show that Americans have very little trust in government. In fact, an October 2015 Pew Study shows that only 19% trust the federal government “all or most” of the time.

This brings us to Flint Michigan. Flint’s citizens have been drinking, cooking and bathing in poisonous water.

The decision to expose Flint residents to known risks of lead poisoning were made by an unaccountable “emergency manager” who was installed by the governor, Republican Rick Snyder, in order to solve the fiscal problems created by the city’s declining tax base.

In April 2014, Flint’s emergency manager, in order to save money, directed the water company to begin drawing water from the Flint River rather than from Detroit’s water system, which was deemed too costly ($1.5 million/month). But the river’s water was high in salt, which helped corrode Flint’s aging lead water pipes, leaching lead into the water supply.

Problems were apparent almost immediately: The water started to smell like rotten eggs. Engineers responded to that problem by increasing the chlorine level. GM discovered that city water was corroding engines at their Flint factory and switched sources.

Then children and others started getting rashes and falling sick. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech environmental-engineering professor, found that the water had nearly 900 times the recommend EPA limit for lead particles. Yet as late as February 2015, even after tests showed dangerous lead levels, officials were telling residents there was no threat.

But in September 2015, two independent studies found that the lead levels in Flint’s water were absurdly high, and in October, 2015, Flint once again began buying water from Detroit.

On January 5th, 2016, Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency due to lead in the water supply. The same day, the US Department of Justice announced that it is investigating what went wrong in the city. Several top officials have resigned, and Snyder apologized. But that’s cold comfort for Flint residents, particularly children, who are being poisoned by lead, which can cause irreversible brain damage and affect physical health.

And it could cost $1.5 billion to fix the problem, a staggering sum for a city struggling financially like Flint. Worse, six months ago, Rick Snyder’s Chief of Staff knew about it and expressed concern:

These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we’re just not sympathizing with their plight).

So, the Flint story is hands down one of the worst abuses of government power in a long time. Money took precedence over people’s health. An unaccountable emergency manager who in a possibly well-intended effort to save the city $1.5 million a month in water fees, changes the source to the Flint River. In December 2014, a city employee tested the water of a woman whose son had gotten a rash after swimming in a pool.

He found that the lead level in her water was 104 parts per billion, about seven times greater than the lead level the EPA deems “actionable.”

BTW, Michigan voters repealed the Emergency Manager Law in 2012, but the Republican-controlled state legislature then passed a more far-reaching, emergency-manager law, one that could not be repealed.

So, what conclusions can we draw? Could the failure in Flint be used by conservatives to say?

See? You can’t even trust government to provide you with clean water anymore. We need to privatize the water company right now!

Or, the really damning take away is the emergency manager tried to save some money in a way that actually requires more money be spent, but did it anyway, apparently after being told about the problem, which poisoned people!.

OTOH, the fine citizens of Michigan re-elected Mr. Snyder, who took away the democratically elected team in Flint, and granted power to his appointed Publican. But the voters are not to blame. It is one thing to accept some right-wing economic BS, or to be too lazy to vote.

The penalty for either of those shouldn’t be that your government poisons you and your children.

St. Ronnie told us government was the problem, not the solution. And Rick Snyder’s cost-cutting steps seem to prove Ronnie was right (at least if government is run by the GOP).

It is hard to care about “Islamic terrorism” when your government knowingly poisons your city’s water supply in order to save money (in the short term).

And what is the criminal penalty for 10,000 cases of child endangerment?

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Misinformed vs. Uninformed (Cont.)

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Mark Twain)

Yesterday, we linked to an article describing the difference between being misinformed and being uninformed. Uninformed people have no information about a subject, while those who are misinformed have information that conflicts with the best evidence and expert opinion.

How are so many people getting misinformed, and staying that way? Why does it work?

You probably have never heard of Robert Proctor, from Stanford, who wrote a book about ignorance, in which he tries to answer the question: What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? He calls this “Agnotology” (the study of ignorance). Proctor’s point is that ignorance has a political geography, and there are things people will work hard to keep you from knowing.

Apparently, his work started with the tobacco industry, who at some point used the slogan: “Doubt is our product“.

Proctor explains that ignorance can be propagated under the guise of balanced debate. For example, the common media approach that there are two opposing views does not always result in a rational conclusion to readers or viewers. This was how tobacco firms used science to make their products look harmless. It is still used today by climate change deniers to argue against the scientific evidence.

Procter, from the BBC:

This ‘balance routine’ has allowed the cigarette men, or climate deniers today, to claim that there are two sides to every story, that ‘experts disagree’ – creating a false picture of the truth, hence ignorance…We live in a world of radical ignorance, and the marvel is that any kind of truth cuts through the noise…Even though knowledge is ‘accessible’, it does not mean it is accessed.

Sound familiar?

In a December focus group with Trump supporters, David Frum, long-time Republican pollster, found that when negative information about Trump was presented, it strengthened the group’s support for him. Participants in the group held on more confidently to their misinformation as the session progressed.

We know that this is a symptom of the culture of American anti-intellectualism. Conspiracy theories have the same clout as legitimate science; the opinions of non-experts are just as credible as those of the experts; and ideology takes precedence over the cold hard facts. In this world, Trump is merely a symptom of that ethos and an industry dedicated to propagating doubt.

We all remember Stephen Colbert saying: “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

And consider a 2012 study that found when people are prompted to use their critical faculties, they become less likely to affirm religious statements. They found that there’s a causal link between “analytical thinking” and religious disbelief.

Perhaps the worst (best?) example was the Republican Party of Texas rejecting critical thinking in its 2012 platform:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs [that] have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs.

Hmmm. Teaching HOTS can give you the HOTS? Doubtful.

Perhaps it’s a better thing to not know the facts, instead of knowing a few pretend facts. At least, the uninformed person is persuadable by evidence.

The right-wing noise machine has fed hatred, bigotry, fear and loathing to its base supporters for decades, and Trump is the logical outcome. Most people aren’t all that logical when it comes to politics or political issues, since most of us tend to be ruled more by emotions. But the right-wing propaganda juggernaut has brainwashed some of its followers to the point that they are completely impervious to facts.

The Republicans are not going to laugh the Donald off their stage. They are not going to dissuade his core supporters, the only question is will his supporters vote in the Republican primaries.

If they do turn out, it will be The Donald vs. The Hill in 2016.

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News you can’t use – January 11, 2016

Powerball vs. Trump’o Rama:

COW Powerball

“They say the odds of winning are one in two-hundred and ninety-two million,just slightly better than the chance Donald Trump makes America great again.”

More political news you can’t use:

Trump supporters appear to be misinformed, not uninformed. (538) Americans who have incorrect information can be divided into two groups: the misinformed and the uninformed. Trump’s backers show signs of being misinformed. The difference between the two is stark. Uninformed citizens don’t have any information at all, while those who are misinformed have information that conflicts with the best evidence and expert opinion. Political science research has shown that the behavior of misinformed citizens is different from those who are uninformed, and this difference may explain Trump’s staying power. 538 quotes political researchers as saying the most misinformed citizens tend to be the most confident in their views and are also the strongest partisans.

The towns that love Donald Trump the most. (WaPo) Trump is increasingly holding rallies in cities that rarely see presidential candidates in the primary season. They are also often places that are struggling. They lag behind the country (and their home states) on a number of economic measures. Their median household incomes are lower, and they often have lower rates of home ownership or residents with college degrees. Even though most of these cities have sizable minority populations, the crowds at Trump’s rallies are nearly entirely white. Is Trump planning a third-party run?

Sanders outperforming Clinton in general-election match-ups. (NBC News) Sanders outperforms Clinton in hypothetical general-election match-ups in NH and Iowa. In Iowa:

• Clinton leads Trump by eight points among registered voters (48% to 40%), but Sanders is ahead of him by 13 (51% to 38%)
• Cruz tops Clinton by four points (47% to 43%), while Sanders beats him by five (47% to 42%)
• Rubio is up by five points over Clinton (47% to 42%), but he’s tied with Sanders (44% each)

In New Hampshire:

• Clinton leads Trump by one point (45% to 44%), but Sanders tops him by 19 points (56% to 37%)
• Cruz beats Clinton by four points (48% to 44%), but Sanders leads him by another 19 points (55% to 36%)
• Rubio bests Clinton by 12 points (52% to 40%), while Sanders leads him by nine points (50% to 41%)

The primary reason why Sanders tests better in these general-election match-ups is due to his stronger performance with independent voters.

Other news you can’t use:

Who owns US business? How much tax do they pay? (NEBR) Pass-through entities, partnerships, tax code subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships, are not subject to corporate income tax. Their income passes directly to their owners and is taxed under whatever tax rules those owners face. In 1980, pass-through entities accounted for 20.7% of US business income; by 2011, they represented 54.2%. Over the same period, the income share of the top 1% of income earners doubled. The growth of income from pass-through entities accounted for 41% of the rise in the income of the top 1%. By linking 2011 partnership and S corporation tax returns with federal individual income tax returns researchers find that over 66% of pass-through business income received by individuals goes to the top 1%.

Last fall, a 7-inch well pipe ruptured 500 feet below the surface of Los Angeles. It was 60 years old. The resulting methane leak is now being called one of the largest environmental disasters since the BP oil spill has pushed thousands of people out of their homes. (Vox) But it’s not the first time this well sprang a leak, and Southern California Gas Company (So Cal Gas), which owns and operates the well, knew it. Will heads roll?

Licensed gun owners can now bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state psychiatric hospitals. (American-Statesman) Until this year, guns were banned at Texas’s state-run psychiatric facilities. The new Texas open carry law allows gun license holders to openly carry their firearms, including inside the psych hospitals. A second Texas law fines state agencies for wrongly hanging “no guns” signs. Yet hospital employees are prohibited from bringing guns to work.

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