Obama didn’t like Ronald Reagan

Paul Krugman makes some correct points but…

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House. [...]

It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?

Watch the first minute of this video:

Mano Singham’s Web Journal: Stephen Colbert on Bill O’Reilly’s latest argument for god

Mano Singham’s Web Journal: Stephen Colbert on …, posted with vodpod

5 February 2011

Workout notes shoveled a path to the alley. Then I “ran” 5 miles on the track (10:04, 9:48, 9:52, 9:49, 8:58 (48:33)) then walked 1 more (outer lane) 15:10 for 1:03:45 for “not quite 10K”.
Then stretching, sit ups (4 x 25 on various incline)
rows: 10 x 190, 10 x 200, 6 x 200, 10 x 190
curls: 3 sets of 15 x 20 lb. dumbbells
incline press: 10 x 115, 10 x 115, 10 x 125
lat pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 120 strict
rotator cuff
That about finished me off.

Hey: it is better than nothing. Note: my lower back (right side) was stiff and I had a hard time loosening it up.

I saw my running buddy Tracy there and we chatted a bit.

Note: it appears that training at my age (early 50′s) consists of injury management; one has to keep those little aches and pains from becoming big ones. Hence one must balance pushing hard enough to meet a performance goal with staying healthy enough to make it to the starting line to begin with. Start lines at races are good; doctor’s offices are bad.

5 February 2011: More Snow on the Way

But nothing like last week.

(O’Mahoney at The Patriot Ledger)

So, I need some cheering up…..

This blog is often a place for cheer:

Warmer days are coming. But days are still cold, but all isn’t lost:

(click to see the shot at the original website)

And of course Kim Kardashian always makes me smile:

(click to see the larger photo)

5 February 2011

Woke up this morning; my right knee was slightly achy which means that, yes, more snow is on the way.

But today, I’ll make it to the gym and do something; probably a quick short run and upper body weights.

Stuff

A Right Wing Group is caught in Deception
A right wing group called Live Action is trying to stir up trouble for planned parenthood; the idea is that they sent in some people who are posing as pimps for underage girls. They were caught doctoring the video:

The Young Turks talks about more about their scheme:

Some science
Sam Harris is attempting to, well, perhaps move morality into the scientific realm. I understand why he wants to do that; it appears that many automatically assign to religion things that science doesn’t cover. I don’t quite understand that. But Cosmic Variance weighs in:

The problem of measuring well-being is not simply one of practice, it’s very much one of principle. I know what a breath is; I don’t know what a “unit of well-being is.” The point of these critiques is that there is no such thing as a unit of well-being that we can look inside the brain and measure. I’m pretty sure that’s a problem of principle. Of course, Russell and Jerry and I (and David Hume, and a large number of professional moral philosophers) may be wrong about this. The way to provide a counter-argument would be to say “Here is a precise and unambiguous definition of how to measure well-being, at least in principle.” That doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.

Latter Harris says this:

The case I make in the book is that morality entirely depends on the existence of conscious minds; minds are natural phenomena; and, therefore, moral truths exist (and can be determined by science in principle, if not always in practice).

Taken at face value, this implies that truths about the best TV shows or most delicious flavors of ice cream also exist. My opinion that The Wire is the best TV show of all time is a natural phenomenon — it reflects the state of certain neurons in my brain. That doesn’t imply, in any meaningful sense, that the state of my brain provides evidence that The Wire “really is” the best TV show of all time. Nor, more programmatically and importantly, does it provide unambiguous guidance concerning which new programs should be green-lit by studio executives. The real problem — how do you balance the interests of different people against each other? — is completely ignored.

At heart I think the problem is that Sam and some other atheists are really concerned about the idea that, without objective moral truths based on science, the field of morality becomes either the exclusive domain of religion, or simply collapses into nihilism. Happily for reality, that’s an extremely false dichotomy. Morality isn’t out there to be measured like some empirical property of the physical world, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be moral or to speak about morality in a rational, thoughtful way. Pretending that morality is a subset of science is, in its own way, just as much an example of wishful thinking as pretending that morality is handed down by God. We have to face up to that temptation and accept the world as it is.

Later, Cosmic Variance mentions the concept of health is similar. Sure, science is heavily used in medicine, and should be. But what does “healthy” mean anyway?

On more technical matters, Cosmic Variance has our back on the recent bit of crackpot attack on mathematics that I talked about recently.

And finally, here is an article about the physics of detecting and measuring dark matter. Upshot: things that don’t interact easily are hard to detect, and there are different ways that these particles can interact. Those with a physics background will understand this better than I do. Still, I am glad that they are putting this stuff out there. When I first took a college physics course, I was most surprised by the fact that the text books explained how some of the experimental apparatus worked; my naive view was that these things were black boxes that…well…worked by….??? Much of experimental science is finding the right way to detect what you are hoping to detect.

4 February 2011 pm

Ronald Reagan Well, his economic record was a bit more complex than modern day conservatives remember. This is what they remember:

Soon after taking office in 1981, Reagan signed into law one of the largest tax cuts in the postwar period.

That legislation — phased in over three years — pushed through a 23% across-the-board cut of individual income tax rates. It also called for tax brackets, the standard deduction and personal exemptions to be adjusted for inflation starting in 1984. That would reduce “bracket creep” since the high inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s meant incomes rose very fast, pushing taxpayers into ever higher brackets even though the real value of their income hadn’t changed.

The 1981 bill also made certain business deductions more generous.

In 1986, Reagan lowered individual income tax rates again, this time in landmark tax reform legislation.

As a result of the 1981 and 1986 bills, the top income tax rate was slashed from 70% to 28%.

This is what they forget:

So, despite his public opposition to higher taxes, Reagan ended up signing off on several measures intended to raise more revenue.

“Reagan was certainly a tax cutter legislatively, emotionally and ideologically. But for a variety of political reasons, it was hard for him to ignore the cost of his tax cuts,” said tax historian Joseph Thorndike.

Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together “constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime,” Thorndike said.

The bills didn’t raise more revenue by hiking individual income tax rates though. Instead they did it largely through making it tougher to evade taxes, and through “base broadening” — that is, reducing various federal tax breaks and closing tax loopholes.

For instance, more asset sales became taxable and tax-advantaged contributions and benefits under pension plans were further limited.

“What people forget about Ronald Reagan was that he very much converted to base broadening as a means of reducing deficits and as a means of tax reform,” said Eugene Steuerle, an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute who had helped lay the groundwork for tax reform in 1986 and served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary during Reagan’s second term.

There were other notable tax increases under Reagan.

In 1983, for example, he signed off on Social Security reform legislation that, among other things, accelerated an increase in the payroll tax rate, required that higher-income beneficiaries pay income tax on part of their benefits, and required the self-employed to pay the full payroll tax rate, rather than just the portion normally paid by employees.

The tax reform of 1986, meanwhile, wasn’t designed to increase federal tax revenue. But that didn’t mean that no one’s taxes went up. Because the reform bill eliminated or reduced many tax breaks and shelters, high-income tax filers who previously paid little ended up with bigger tax bills.

Yes, he went against some in his party to do this.

President Obama: this clip is funny:

Personal Stuff
Mano Singham has a thought provoking post about social issues. He noticed that many are openly hostile toward vegans. He hypothesizes why and, IMHO, has a point.

Jerry Coyne talks about something that irritates him:

Driving back from the grocery store last weekend, I suddenly remembered my dumb “rules for life” book, which I hadn’t thought of in at least two decades. And immediately a new “rule” struck me, something that I’d been subconsciously chewing on for a while:

A large number of the people who call themselves “geeks” and “nerds” don’t use the term in a winsome, self-deprecating way. Rather, they use it to imply that “I’m smarter than you are.”

Let me hasten to add that I don’t think everyone who calls themselves geeks or nerds are intellectually arrogant. Just some of them—but not an insignificant number. When I was young, people who fit the “geek” stereotype of somebody interested in things scientific, and also socially inept, would rarely apply these terms to themselves. “Geek” and “nerd” were derogatory terms applied to you by others. But increasingly I see them used as self-branding signs of intellectual superiority. And when people apply these terms to themselves, the words grate on me, precisely as the word “brights”—meaning “atheists”—grates on me.

I had to think about this. After all, I made this photo as a joke:

What’s the joke? Well, I suppose that in some ways, I feel a bit embattled, perhaps in ways that someone who has earned tenure at the University of Chicago might not. Many of those around me have open contempt for nuanced, detailed knowledge; they feel as if their “common sense” (the collection of their preconceptions) somehow trumps that. If something doesn’t make sense to them, it must be BS; for many that includes evolution, climate science, etc. And frankly, the vast majority have never mastered anything remotely intellectually challenging.
Of course many simply aren’t interested in such things either.

So, to me, it feels good to push back at that a bit; I am certainly not a successful mathematician (my publication record is modest) but I am intellectually interested in things. And I’ll let Richard Dawkins finish for me (when he quotes the person who revived New Scientist magazine:

Listen to a Liberal Caller Crush Limbaugh’s Ronald Reagan Delusions

Rush Limbaugh’s Ronald Reagan delusions meet reality courtesy of a liberal caller who takes Rush to school on Reagan’s legacy.

Listen to a Liberal Caller Crush Limbaugh’s Ron…, posted with vodpod