Tag Archives: politics

PENSACOLA, FLORIDA (The Borowitz Report)—Backtracking from his earlier suggestion that the military should fire upon migrants if they throw rocks, Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he was ordering the military to respond to rocks with either paper or scissors. Speaking at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, Trump said that the decision about whether to use paper or scissors to retaliate against rocks would ultimately be left up to military commanders at...

Trump Says Dems Support Venezuelan “High Taxes And Open Borders” The  average tax rate in Venezuela is 25%. The average tax rate in the US is 26%.  Sorry, Trump, this is yet another lie by Trump, but what else is new on this? I do not know the details of Venezuelan of immigration policies, but at this point in time the issue  in Venezuela is not immigrants freely arriving and causing economic problems, but just the opposite: people leaving in massive...

Three weeks ago, in response to the IPCC report warning that CO2 emissions had to be reduced to 45% of their 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid the possibility of global temperature rising above 1.5°C, I posted “The IPCC 1.5° C Report and the Ten-Hour Week,” (also posted at Angry Bear) which offered the sketch of a plan for how to do that. I have no illusions that the IPCC or any other prestigious organization will latch on to this idea and seek to flesh it out...

Recently, I claimed that fivethirtyeight.com is too cautious when correcting polls for house effects. Multiplying their correction by 4/3 gives lower volatility of generic congressional ballot polls (and for the past 100 days multiplying by 3/2 works even better). I think the are conservative, because adjusting or correcting polls is bound to be controversal and so they impose a pseudo prior that all pollsters are unbiased. In any case, I would like to...

Ian Millhouser correctly denounces not only Trump’s assault on the 14th amendment but also reporters who print absolutely false assertions. The issue is Trump’s clearly false claim that he can eliminate birthright citizenship by executive order. In fact “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States … ” – US Constitution Amendment 14. Millhouser’s post is too good to...

A little over a year ago, Robert Watson, former chair of the IPCC, and two co-authors published a report titled “The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States.” Based on trends over the past few decades, the authors estimated the current total annual cost in the U.S. of losses from weather events intensified by climate change and health damage from fossil fuel pollution to be $240 billion, which they described as “about 40 percent of current...

Failed Perceptions Of Economic Reality It is long  viewed that what the electoral populace thinks of the state of the economy is an important factor in how they vote and electoral outcomes.  Prior to 2000 the state of the economy as measured by real per capita  GDP growth explained presidential election outcomes except in cases where there was a war (!940) or there was a party split (1912).  Personal scandals also played roles, with Ford’s defeat in...

Michigan 8th District Congressman Mike Bishop’s ad: “Additionally, under the American Health Care Act (AHCA), insurance companies cannot deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions – yet Elissa Slotkin continues to lie about Mike Bishop’s record. Sec. 137 of H.R. 1628 of the AHCA states: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions.” Under...

When the stock market headlines the political blogs . . . Here is a graph I saw on Digby’s blog this morning: There was also a highly-recommended, heavily-commented piece at Daily Kos. Here’s a pro tip: when you see a daily stock market move leading the political blogs, it’s a sign of a bottom, not a  top. That’s because it’s a sign of emotion, and it means that amateurs are paying close attention. By the time that happens, the big move is over,...

“The Opportunity Cost of Socialism” Why is the Council of Economic Advisers producing party political propaganda for the GOP? As many folks have pointed out, the “report” is rather bizarre. My favorite part is Figure 1, which summarizes Milton Friedman’s argument that people spending “their own money” are “more careful how much to spend and on what the money is spent.” This, of course begs the question of how that money came to be defined as “their...