Category: Journal

Persistence Does Not Always Pay, or Even Make Sense

My cell phone is a busi­ness phone. Since we recent­ly moved to a dif­fer­ent city, I have avoid­ed tak­ing on new cus­tomers in my pre­vi­ous loca­tion. That, com­bined with the exces­sive sales calls that busi­ness lines often get, leads me to screen my calls. If I do not rec­og­nize the num­ber (cur­rent cus­tomer or friend), I do not answer the phone.

It is the time of year that the local Yel­low Pages (or some vari­ant) is sell­ing ads. I have 14 calls that I have not answered from them. Now, I appre­ci­ate that good sales peo­ple have to be per­sis­tent, but how does one sell yel­low page adver­tis­ing to a busi­ness that does not answer its phone and has no loca­tion for cus­tomers to go to?

It will be inter­est­ing to see if the calls con­tin­ue on Monday.

Government Shutdown Avoided and Guaranteed

As I write, the news is that an agree­ment has been reached for the bud­get for the fis­cal year (or what’s left of it). This is good news, though it was pur­chased by the Democ­rats giv­ing up far more than they should have.

Appar­ent­ly, the House will not be able to pass the com­pro­mise with­out Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes as the Tea Par­ty mem­bers feel House Speak­er John Boehn­er gave up too much (he got more than his open­ing bid!). Which brings up the ques­tion, is Boehn­er an his­tor­i­cal­ly weak Speak­er, or an excep­tion­al­ly clever one?

I can not decide if the Democ­rats should give just enough votes for it to pass or if they should vote for it unan­i­mous­ly (or as unan­i­mous­ly as they can).

Now comes the hard part: next year’s bud­get. I see just two pos­si­bil­i­ties. One, no agree­ment is reach­able and the gov­ern­ment shuts down. I think this out­come is guar­an­teed. There is one alter­na­tive. Boehn­er could pass a bud­get with the 192 Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes and 25 Repub­li­can votes (includ­ing his own). This requires Boehn­er to be will­ing to lose his job as Speak­er. It also requires that he and the oth­er 24 Repub­li­cans face a Tea Par­ty oppo­nent in his pri­ma­ry. I see this as the only hope of avoid­ing a shutdown.

If we get through this fall, with or with­out a shut­down, then we have just one bud­get left for this con­gress, and that would be on the table dur­ing the elec­tion! That will be interesting!!

I Guess Sports Are Not So Important After All

The Fort Wayne Jour­nal Gazette ran an arti­cle recent­ly not­ing that Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty ranks in the top ten among all U.S. col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in pri­vate-sec­tor gifts and grants in fis­cal year 2010 (who’s fis­cal year is not clear, seem like there could be sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ones involved).

Giv­en that I attend­ed I.U., I think this is pret­ty cool. I must admit I find it a bit hard to believe, but hey, who am I to say.

The real­ly inter­est­ing part of this is that I.U. has achieved this lev­el of gifts while both the foot­ball and the bas­ket­ball teams suck (there is no oth­er way to say it).

I Just Do Not Understand Percentages

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press ran a sto­ry a few days ago on the lat­est unem­ploy­ment num­bers.

The nation’s unem­ploy­ment rate dropped to its low­est lev­el in two years in March

Yea!!! That’s good news.

But…

Few­er than two-thirds of Amer­i­can adults are either work­ing or look­ing for work — the low­est par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in 25 years.

So the news is mixed.

But the point of my blog post that is wast­ing your time is here:

Econ­o­mists expect the stronger hir­ing to endure through­out the year, pro­duc­ing a net gain of about 2.5 mil­lion jobs for 2011. Even so, that would make up for only a small por­tion of the 7.5 mil­lion jobs wiped out dur­ing the recession.

So if we have lost 7.5 mil­lion jobs and we gain 2.5 mil­lion jobs in 2011, that 2.5 mil­lion is just a small por­tion of the 7.5 mil­lion. You see, to me it looks like 33% of the lost jobs.

OK, it is not quite that simple.

Let me try and fig­ure this out. The arti­cle says that the pri­vate sec­tor added 216,000 jobs in March (I think it means March, but it is kind of impres­sive that we know this on April 1). If we annu­al­ize that num­ber, we get the 2.5 mil­lion jobs for 2011 (more or less).

But the arti­cle also says that

The econ­o­my must aver­age up to 300,000 new jobs a month to sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er unemployment.

I take it this is a ref­er­ence to the fact that so many new jobs are need­ed every month just to tread water. I believe that num­ber is 127,ooo or so. Anu­al­ized, we need 1,524,000 new jobs to break even.

But in March, we gained at an annu­al­ized rate 2.5 mil­lion, or 976,000 more than need­ed to break even. So, by my cal­cu­la­tions, the annu­al­ized pro­jec­tion of 976,000 new jobs above the break even point rep­re­sents 13% of the 7.5 mil­lion jobs wiped out dur­ing the recession.

Now the arti­cle said 300,000 month­ly new jobs would “sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er unem­ploy­ment.” That annu­al­izes out to 3.6 mil­lion new jobs. That is 2.1 mil­lion more than is need­ed to break even. That would be 28% of the 7.5 mil­lion lost jobs.

So 28% is sig­nif­i­cant while 13% is a small por­tion. Maybe.

Must be that lib­er­al press.

Seventy Three Billion

On this morn­ing’s Face The Nation, Sen­a­tor Har­ry Reid says that a num­ber has been reached for the amount of cuts to make in nego­ti­a­tions to pre­vent a gov­ern­ment shut­down. The num­ber he gives is $73 bil­lion. This is the first time I’ve heard that num­ber. I’ve been read­ing all week that the num­ber is $33 bil­lion. This num­ber would make the Repub­li­cans very hap­py since they’ve been want­i­ng $61 bil­lion. Of course, they would still want the cuts to be where they want them to be!

My guess is that Reid mis­spoke. I am dis­ap­point­ed that Bob Schi­ef­fer let that num­ber pass with­out ask­ing about it. In the blogs I read I do not see any imme­di­ate reac­tions to that number.

Reid comes up with the num­ber at the 5:55 mark of the video.

UPDATE:

A com­menter, Joe Fri­day, at Steve Benen’s blog at The Wash­ing­ton Month­ly explains that Reid was sim­ply using a dif­fer­ent base­line and the $78 bil­lion and $38 bil­lion dol­lars are the same.

Assum­ing this is cor­rect, this then is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the seem­ing­ly eter­nal prob­lem the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has with mes­sag­ing. I pay a rea­son­able amount of atten­tion and Rei­d’s num­ber con­fused me. I guess I could be the only one who was (is?) confused…but if the same base­line was used con­sis­tent­ly, maybe more peo­ple would understand.….

Maybe.…

??????

Where Would It End?

I have been think­ing about a post pon­der­ing just how far today’s Repub­li­cans would go if allowed. What year of the cal­en­dar they would like this to be? 1950? 1920? Maybe 1890?

Crush the unions, erect bar­ri­ers to vot­ing, deeply cut the reg­u­la­to­ry “bur­den”, elim­i­nate pub­lic schools…

But to get to 1920 they would have to dis­en­fran­chise women. Sure­ly THAT would be a bridge too far…

And maybe it is.

But I would have thought that the weak­en­ing of and/​or elim­i­na­tion of child labor laws would be a bridge too far. Wrong! Among oth­er fun ideas at the link is this:

Mis­souri State Sen. Jane Cun­ning­ham ® intro­duced a bill which would “elim­i­nate[] the pro­hi­bi­tion on employ­ment of chil­dren under age four­teen. Restric­tions on the num­ber of hours and restric­tions on when a child may work dur­ing the day are also removed.

It is a bit unfair to lay the blame for all of these pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives at the feet of ALL Repub­li­cans. But at the same time, when is the last time you heard a Repub­li­can leader or nation­al fig­ure stand up against any of these ideas.

More or Less Than Human

The oth­er day NPR’s Talk of the Nation did a seg­ment on David Liv­ing­stone Smith’s book Less Than Human. The book

argues that it’s impor­tant to define and describe dehu­man­iza­tion, because it’s what opens the door for cru­el­ty and genocide.

There have been plen­ty of such episodes.

While lis­ten­ing to the dis­cus­sion, it occurred to me that there is a flip side here. There are mil­lions of peo­ple who human­ize their pet and so treat the ani­mal as a human (or better!).

I won­der if these two phe­nom­e­na occur because we con­tin­ue to be unable to nail down just what it is that makes us human.

In my opin­ion, we will not deter­mine what makes us human until we fig­ure out consciousness.

TV Is Educational??

The tv pro­gram The Mid­dle is on right now and while I play on the web I am pay­ing a bit of atten­tion to it. The two teenagers were haul­ing box­es of stuff to the local thrift store. It was after hours and the gate was closed and locked with a sign that said no drop offs after hours. The kids did not care and start­ed unload­ing the boxes.

A voice comes over a speak­er and explains that they were vio­lat­ing the law. The spe­cif­ic Indi­ana code is cit­ed: penal code 35 – 45‑3. Since I am at the com­put­er I imme­di­ate­ly Google Indi­ana Penal Code. I fol­low the first link and then click on Title 35, then on Arti­cle 45, then on Chap­ter 3:

Lit­ter­ing a Class B infraction…
 Sec. 2. (a) A per­son who reck­less­ly, know­ing­ly, or inten­tion­al­ly places or leaves refuse on prop­er­ty of anoth­er per­son, except in a con­tain­er pro­vid­ed for refuse, com­mits lit­ter­ing, a Class B infraction

The writ­ers actu­al­ly researched the line!!! I am impressed.

Maybe It Is Infectious

Sen­a­tor Ron John­son has an op-ed in the Wall Street Jour­nal and tells the touch­ing sto­ry of the med­ical care that saved his daugh­ter’s life and goes on to claim that under the Afford­able Care Act this med­ical care might not have been there for his daugh­ter. He offers no evi­dence of this, but what need is there of evi­dence when one has a touch­ing anec­dote regard­less of how rel­e­vant it is. He also man­ages to cher­ry pick a bunch of sta­tis­tics to show the US is good and Europe is bad

So, of course, lib­er­al blog­gers are jump­ing all over his absurd claims.

One such blog­ger is Igor Vlosky writ­ing in the Wonkroom blog at Think Progress. Mr. Vlosky makes the case for why Sen­a­tor John­son’s op ed most­ly dis­plays Sen­a­tor John­son’s lack of under­stand­ing of heath care and the Afford­able Care Act. He fin­ish­es up with some com­par­isons of the US to Europe, end­ing with

The Unit­ed States is also “ranked 29th in the world in infant mor­tal­i­ty, tied with Poland and Slo­va­kia.” And so, John­son gets it wrong. The ACA wouldn’t have killed Johnson’s daugh­ter, but thou­sands of oth­er unin­sured babies would have died with­out it.

I did a quick Google and I am pret­ty sure the infant mor­tal­i­ty stats for 2010 are not yet avail­able, though the rate did go down in Milwaukee.

Giv­en that the US has been expe­ri­enc­ing over four mil­lion births a year and that the mor­tal­i­ty rate has been over six per 1000, there are cer­tain­ly thou­sands of babies to be saved. But I do not believe there is as yet any evi­dence that the Afford­able Care Act has in fact done so.

Sen­a­tor John­son makes claims based on no evi­dence and Mr. Vlosky does the same after read­ing John­son’s claims.* Is it infectious?

I can tell you that the Afford­able Care Act has not just saved tens of thou­sands of lives already, but is large­ly respon­si­ble for the eco­nom­ic recov­ery as well as the free­dom move­ments in north­ern Africa and the mid-east.

*and Steve Benen at the Wash­ing­ton Mon­thy blithe­ly quotes Mr. Vlosky’s absurd claim.

Libya

I am ambiva­lent about the impo­si­tion of the no fly zone over Libya.

The big neg­a­tive I see here is if the rebel­lion fails to over­throw Gaddafi any­time soon. At what point would we be able to lift the no fly zone. I’m guess­ing nev­er. There is the addi­tion­al prob­lem of the world see­ing us stick our nose into issues that are not our con­cern. Right now, few see it that way, but over time.…

It strikes me that there were/​are no good choic­es here. And giv­en that, I think Oba­ma has done pret­ty good.

Tunisia and Egypt man­aged to have essen­tial­ly blood­less rev­o­lu­tions. Big props to the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary for refus­ing to fire on peace­ful demon­stra­tors. But Gaddafi’s remain­ing mil­i­tary is large­ly (all?) mer­ce­nary. They are ready to fire on who­ev­er Gaddafi tells them to fire upon.

If no inter­ven­tion had tak­en place, Gaddafi guns down untold num­bers of his people.

Notice the dif­fer­ence between Libya, where an active rev­o­lu­tion is in progress and Iraq, where no rev­o­lu­tion was in progress at the time we invaded.

If Gaddafi was allowed to gun down his own peo­ple and put the rev­o­lu­tion down, how would that have effect­ed Libya’s neigh­bors Tunisia and Egypt? If Gaddafi was allowed, how would that effect events in Yemen?

In Yemen, gov­ern­ment snipers shot down more than 50 peo­ple. A few hours lat­er, the no fly zone was put into place. Today, the sit­u­a­tion in Yemen still hangs in the bal­ance, but the gov­ern­ment has shown restraint. Coin­ci­dence? Maybe, maybe not.

I am appre­cia­tive of Oba­ma wait­ing until the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty endorsed the no fly zone. If things stretch out, I am sure many will be crit­i­cal of what they once sup­port­ed, but at least the record of sup­port is there. I have already seen or heard some­thing about Italy begin­ning to make nois­es of pulling its sup­port (which means air bases).

It would have been nice if Oba­ma had got­ten some kind of approval from Con­gress in the days lead­ing up to the action. But I guess there was the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Con­gress would have refused to give it to him. Bet­ter to ask for­give­ness than per­mis­sion. Besides, at this point there is the long estab­lished his­to­ry of Pres­i­dents ignor­ing that bit of con­sti­tu­tion­al require­ment, so I find it dif­fi­cult to get too worked up over this.

Final­ly, there is the prob­lem of what hap­pens after Gaddafi is over­thrown. Will the Libyans move towards democ­ra­cy? Civ­il war? A new dic­ta­tor­ship? No guar­an­tees here.