"Women Don't Care About Contraception"

The Republican governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, does not seem to think that women care about contraception.  If that is a mainstream view among Republican leaders, I am willing to bet they are a bit out of touch with the concerns of American women.

Slouching Towards America's "Lost Decade"

I am re-posting the following article by Mark Weisbrot, with permission, because I think it speaks to one of the major issues facing the US -- as well as many other nations.

As you may know, the focus of the politicians has been on austerity -- cutting the budget -- despite that jobs are what most people want the politicians to focus on. Consequently, some folks are now predicting that, if the current focus continues, full employment will wait years to be achieved.

Such an outcome would be morally obscene and result in massive suffering.

The original article was first published on January 10th, in The Guardian (UK), under the heading, The Economic Idiocy of Economists.  Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change", when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits".

The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn.

But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to horrific". True, that. He asked and answered four questions.

First, is there any urgency (to reduce the deficit or debt)? No. The government can borrow short term at negative real interest rates, and long-term at about zero. The world is paying us to hold their money. That is anything but a debt crisis. The Fed is out of bullets, he said – referring to the fact that the US Federal Reserve had lowered short-term rates to zero and had used quantitative easing to help keep long-term rates low. So we need more fiscal stimulus, preferably spending that focuses on actually creating jobs. Amen.

Second, should we focus on the next decade? No, he said, and noted that the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) budget deficit projections over the next decade are about 3.6% of GDP, which is not much to get agitated about. Also true.

Third, is government spending the problem? No, he said, it's healthcare costs, and mainly the rising price of healthcare (that is, not the ageing of the population). Most important truth yet! (More on this below.)

Fourth, is the public really up in arms about the deficit? No, actually, they care more about the economy and jobs. As they should.

Blinder concluded that since this is an election year, we can forget about having any fact-based discussion of these issues in 2012. Happy New Year, he said, and the audience laughed. Well, that was refreshing, I thought – an economist telling the unvarnished truth to hundreds of his people at the annual meetings.

But a rapid descent into hell was imminent. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin was next, talking about the need to "repair" social security and Medicare. The United States has all the characteristics of countries that run into trouble, he said. Then he warned that the US is going to end up like Greece. This is one of the dumbest things that anyone with an economics degree can say.

Hello, Mr Holtz-Eakin! Have you ever heard of the US dollar, the world's key reserve currency?

The United States is not going to end up like Greece, any sooner than it will end up like Haiti or Burkina Faso. A country that can pay its foreign public debt in its own currency and runs its own central bank does not end up like Greece.

In fact, even Japan is not going to end up like Greece, and Japan has a gross public debt of about 220% of its GDP, more than twice the size of ours and vastly larger – again, relative to its economy – than that of Greece. And the yen is nowhere near the dollar in its importance as an international reserve currency. But the Japanese government is still borrowing at just 1% interest rates for its ten-year bonds.

At this point, it was clear that this panel, other than Blinder, was living in a dystopian fantasy world. Next up was Rudy Penner of the Urban Institute, another former CBO director. His perspective was not much different from that of Auerbach or Holtz-Eakin. He complained about the polarisation of the political process, which prevents the two major parties from reaching an agreement. It's not partisanship, he said: House speaker Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan knew how to be partisan, but they were able to reach agreement on the 1983 social security package and the 1986 tax reforms. And yada yada.

He might have added that we have had 25 years of lying about social security since then, and even Reagan didn't dare try to privatise social security. And, of course, social security can currently pay all promised benefits for the next 24 years without any changes.

These arguments about polarisation really pose the key issue: from the viewpoint of the 99%, it's not polarisation, but weakness in defending our interests that is the problem. President Obama compromised much more than he should have last year, offering cuts to social security and Medicare, in exchange for a long-term budget deal. The 99% are just lucky that the Republicans were too extremist to make this kind of a "grand bargain" with Obama.

The last panelist was Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, another former CBO budget director and Fed vice-chair, as well as a member of the president's (2010) National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She agreed with Blinder that we need more stimulus. But we can only get this if we agree to long-run spending cuts – including social security, of course. Yuck. This is a political strategy that is sure to end in disaster, given the prevailing state of misinformation and disinformation.

During the discussion, Blinder – who identified himself as a Democrat – expressed his frustration in not being able to convince fellow Democrats to cut social security. Double yuck. The average social security check is about $1,177 a month, and a majority of senior citizens are getting most of their meager income from social security. Why these people insist on creating more poverty among the elderly, especially when the program is solvent for decades to come, is beyond me.

I got to ask the first question for the panel. I called attention to Blinder's presentation of the long-term budget problem as almost completely a problem of the rising price of healthcare. I pointed out that you could take any country with a life expectancy greater than ours – including the other high-income countries – and put their per capita healthcare costs into our budget, and the long-term budget deficit would turn into a surplus.

My question was simple: are Americans so inherently different from other nationalities that we can't have similar healthcare costs? And if not, then why are we talking about long-term budget problems – instead of how to fix our healthcare system?

None of the panelists offered a serious answer to this question. Auerbach, the moderator, said that other countries have rising healthcare costs, too. And some of the others said or implied that healthcare costs were rising at an unsustainable pace worldwide.

But this is nonsense. The United States pays about twice as much per person for healthcare as other high-income countries – and still leaves 50 million people uninsured. This is a result of a dysfunctional healthcare system that has had healthcare prices rising much faster than those of other high-income countries for decades.

What the budget hawks are basically telling us is that we must assume that insurance and pharmaceutical companies will have a veto over the provisions of healthcare reform for decades to come. And that, therefore, we must find other ways to make up for these excessive costs, including cutting social security and other government spending, and pushing us into higher rates of poverty and inequality than we already have.

And even worse in the short run, all this crap about the deficit and the debt will be used to block the necessary stimulus measures – "stimulus" has already become a dirty word that Democratic politicians are afraid to utter. This means high unemployment and a lot of unnecessary misery in the world's richest country for the foreseeable future.

A dismal performance for the dismal science, on some of the most important issues of the day. Of course, there are other economists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz and Robert Solow (full disclosure: the latter two are members of CEPR's advisory board), who would offer more sensible views. But this panel was, sadly, representative of economists with the most influence on public policy.

With a brain trust like this, a lost decade for America looks likely – unless the citizenry can steer a different course.

Sexism in the Skeptic Community

"Unfortunately, it [sexism] is [rampant within the skeptic community].  I say this from my own experiences within it, hearing stories from friends, etc."  -- Hemant Mehta, aka "The Friendly Atheist".

Hermant Mehta is in a position to know better than most people whether sexism is rampant within the skeptic community. So, I'm guessing he might be right, despite that the relative handful of skeptics I myself know are overwhelmingly non-sexists.  But, if Mehta is right, why are there so many sexists among skeptics? That seems to be a real puzzler.

Any ideas?

Are Misogynists Wimps at Heart?

"The same broadcast featured a religious eight-year-old girl terrified to walk the short distance between her home and school, since she is subject to verbal abuse of ultra-Orthodox men who claim her attire is not sufficiently 'modest'." -- Source.

They must be very macho men to verbally abuse an eight year old girl.  I would like to meet them in person so I could personally congratulate these men on their macho.  I would also like to ask them what they think of Yocheved Horowitz.

Horowitz, you see, is an Orthodox woman who does not buy into the bullshit of these Orthodox men.  And apparently, because she is not a (understandably) frightened eight year old girl, she is sometimes able to shut them up.

Horowitz was on a public bus one day when one of these macho men told her to move to the back of the bus:

"Women to the back," he called out like a conductor. "To the back, to the back." He trembled with anger. A man sitting in the first row whose appearance revealed him to be a Gur Hasid, shushed him, with a finger to his lip. But the shouter paid no attention to him. "Men's area," he continued to shout. "Women to the back."

Now Horowitz turned around and said loudly and clearly: "What do you mean by 'men's area'? A geographical area?" she wondered. "What is mehadrin? Are you talking about an etrog, a lulav?" she queried, referring to two of the principal symbols used during the festival of Sukkot. "Nowhere in rabbinical law does it say that it is forbidden to sit behind a woman, not in the Shulchan Arukh and not in the Yoreh De'ah [two classical compilations of Jewish law]. What is written in the Torah and in rabbinical law is that it is forbidden to humiliate sons and daughters of Israel."

Like a deflated balloon, the man became quiet, and maintained his silence for the rest of the bus ride.

What do you think?  Do you think maybe these macho misogynists are not really so macho unless they outnumber their victims?

I have often wondered what relationship there might be, if any, between a man being a misogynist and a man being a wimp?

_________________
(H/T: Hoyden About Town)

My High School Math Teacher Was A Space Alien!

I am fascinated -- I have long been fascinated -- that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.

If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.)  How can the same person be both smart and stupid?

I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others.  And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.

I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways.  Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence.  Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.

Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.

No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician.  I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.


I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s.  William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man.  He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party.  That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party.  The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.

The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party.  The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense.  For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America.  Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism.  Perhaps he was right.

My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.

I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone".  "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different."  "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now."  "Women don't need equal rights.  Men do!  Women are smarter than men."  "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."

I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal.  Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence.  Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit.  Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect.  I disagree.  Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.

Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer.  How can we account for that?

Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”

I think it sometimes happens that way.  But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field.  We will always need the help of others.  Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes.  That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.

Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic".  To some extent, those two things go together.  A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas.  Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy.  That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.

But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors.  It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.

The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do.  Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".

Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases.  By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary.  The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false.  Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.

Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.  That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.

That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution.  It might come in the form of  whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again.  Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.

Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions.  Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go.  Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.

I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others.  It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth.  He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic.  And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions.  Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.

Jennfier Keeton: Playing the Christ Card

Jennifer Keeton was until recently a graduate student in counseling at Augusta State University in Georgia. About 18 months ago, she sued the University, saying that it had violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of her Christian faith. 

Among other things, Keeton claimed University officials had told her that, in order to stay in the University's school counseling program, she would have to change her beliefs about homosexuality.  According to Court documents (.pdf pp.5-6):

[Keeton] holds several beliefs about homosexuality that she views as arising from her Christian faith. She believes that “sexual behavior is the result of personal choice for which individuals are accountable, not inevitable deterministic forces; that gender is fixed and binary (i.e., male or female), not a social construct
or personal choice subject to individual change; and that homosexuality is a ‘lifestyle,’ not a ‘state of being.’” ASU’s officials became aware that Keeton held these beliefs when she expressed to professors in class and fellow classmates in and out of class that she believed that the GLBTQ population suffers from identity confusion, and that she intended to attempt to convert students from being homosexual to heterosexual. Keeton also said that it would be difficult for her to work with GLBTQ clients and to separate her views about homosexuality from her clients’ views. Further, in answering a hypothetical posed by a faculty member, Keeton responded that as a high school counselor confronted by a sophomore student in crisis, questioning his sexual orientation, she would tell the student that it was not okay to be gay. Similarly, Keeton told a fellow classmate that, if a client discloses that he is gay, it was her intention to tell the client that his behavior is morally wrong and then try to change the client’s behavior, and if she were unable to help the client change his behavior, she would refer him to someone practicing conversion therapy.

In Keeton's view, the University was asking her to change her beliefs, and thus violating both her right to free speech and her right to freely practice her religion.

As it happened, though, a three judge panel for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal found Keeton was mistaken to claim the University had asked her to change her beliefs.  Instead, the University had only asked her to adhere to a certain professional code of ethics.  

The school counseling program at Augusta State University is accredited by an organization with the exciting name of,  "The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)"  As part of the accreditation deal, the University agreed to teach its counseling students to professionally conduct themselves according to the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) Code of Ethics.  The Code includes ethical principles such as (.pdf pp. 6-7):

“Counselors are aware of their own values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and avoid imposing values that are inconsistent with counseling goals. Counselors respect the diversity of clients, trainees, and research participants”

and:

“Counselors do not condone or engage in discrimination based on age, culture, disability, ethnicity, race, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status/partnership, language preference, socioeconomic status, or any basis proscribed by law.”

There are quite a few details to the case, but in effect, the University asked Jennifer Keeton to professionally conduct herself according to the ACA Code of Ethics and she refused to so.

Some years ago, I paid for my college room and board by working as a fire fighter.  I do not now recall that we ever -- even once -- asked someone about their sexual orientation before knocking down their fire or extracting them from their wrecked car.  More to the point: Had I decided back then that I would only provide my services to heterosexuals, I would have been (justifiably) fired. But the judges of the 11th Circuit said it best (.pdf pp. 30):

Every profession has its own ethical codes and dictates. When someone voluntarily chooses to enter a profession, he or she must comply with its rules and ethical requirements. Lawyers must present legal arguments on behalf of their clients, notwithstanding their personal views. Judges must apply the law, even when they disagree with it. So too counselors must refrain from imposing their moral and religious values on their clients.

Of course, what Keeton was attempting to do with her lawsuit should be transparent to anyone: She was trying to force the University to make her an exception to the rule that counseling students must be taught to professionally conduct themselves according to the ACA Code of Ethics.  In short, she was looking for preferential treatment.

In order to secure preferential treatment, she cynically tried to play the Christ Card. That is, she deceitfully tried to fob herself off as -- not some jerk seeking preferential treatment -- but someone wrongfully oppressed because she is a Christian.

Of course, some folks are now tripping over themselves in their rush to buy into Jennifer Keeton's notion of herself as a martyr.  Here is what they have been saying...

Ramona Hicks Willis thinks, "This is not a questions of ethics, it is a power play by the homosexuals. They want to destroy anyone that does not agree with their lifestyle. Plain and simple."

The Court's ruling in the case seems to have traumatized Diana Shugar, who is suddenly ready to give up on life: "God is not the god of this world; Satan is. Satan is the invisible god of this world. He is the author of its organization, its basic philosophies, its systems of government, business, society—yes, AND RELIGIONS! It's best to just tell people of the new upcoming world ruled by our Lord and Savior. This one is beyond redemption."

Michael Galvin fully agrees with Diana that requiring Jennifer Keeton to live up to a professional code of ethics is so traumatizing the end of the world must be near: "You are right. We cannot save this world and the people in it. God desires that none would perish, but they have rejected Him and His Gospel. The date it set, the orchestra is in tune, the curtain is soon to be lifted."

Adrienne Elizabeth Crawford cannot believe Keeton did anything wrong.  Apparently, she just doesn't get what the case was all about. Nevertheless, she's sure it has something to do with the way Christians are always being persecuted: "It’s just really sad that this woman is being reprimanded (so to speak) for her beliefs. We ALL have a right to our own beliefs. I don’t believe she did anything wrong. But we as Christians should not be surprised by this persecution. After all, we live in Satan’s world. He’s the Prince of this world but only temporarily."

Tolfe Lee Albert thinks working with gay kids is a lot like risking your life -- or at least your health (he's not sure which):  "What if the student had AIDS, or a very bad cold...would she not have the right to refuse that student? Where are HER rights. Another victory for the ACLU and loss of our personal rights and dignity."

Last, Jack Oliver thinks he knows the sacred duty of a true Christian: "As a christan [sic] she is bound to speak up against queres [sic]." 

Jennifer Keeton played the Christ Card by demanding special privileges for herself while shouting that she was being discriminated against.  Naturally -- inevitably -- some folks bought her story.  But it would be a mistake to assume -- simply because some Christians have uncritically bought Keeton's story -- that the majority of Christians in America agree with them, for there is no evidence that the majority do in fact agree with the poor fools among us.

(H/T: Chappie at An Apostate's Chapel)