Werthless wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:L.P.D.: LIBERTARIAN POLICE DEPARTMENT - Spoof from the New Yorker. This amused me.

Meh.

This is pretty typical of a writer who doesn't understand libertarianism. Even if libertarians didn't believe in the legitimacy of a publicly funded police force (almost all do), enforcement of laws and contracts is a generally accepted requirement of functioning markets. Property rights without 3rd party enforcement, arbitration, and mechanisms for appeal are not property rights at all. Thus, libertarian utopias -- which is what the author is attempting to parody -- always have courts and police, along with other public goods like national defense.

Libertarian = Anarchism ... produces fairly predictable comedy.

the author of that gently humorous piece sketched a world ordered more rigorously than our own by "the market" - hardly an anarchic place.

But speaking of comedy, please elaborate on your views of Charles Murray's constructive insights on humankind

VA backlog cut by 44%:

The latest VA data, released Monday, shows that the number of claims stuck in the processing system for more than 125 days had dropped to 344,000, compared to a high of about 611,000 a year ago.

The department said in a statement on Monday that it also improved the accuracy of its determinations from 83 percent in 2011 to 91 percent last month and shortened the average wait time for decisions from 282 days to 119 days since March 2013.

The number of backlogged cases — those that have reached the 125-day threshold — skyrocketed during the Obama administration, largely due to new rules that allowed more Agent Orange claims to be filed and an influx of claims from veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

But as the VA trimmed the number of longstanding claims, a new issue began to emerge. The volume of appeals cases has grown by 50 percent to more than 250,000 since Obama took office, and the Board of Veterans Appeals has said the amount could double before 2018.

President Obama vowed in his 2014 State of the Union address to continue the recent progress on trimming the overall backlog. His 2015 budget proposal requests $138.7 million for a “Veterans Claims Intake Program” to reform and speed up processing

another good way to cut down the backlog is to create less demand

The VA has a thankless job and they make it so much more painful on themselves.

There's a big difference of being intolerant of boring cheerleaders like you & Malkin and having policies or books written diminishing the values of entire groups of people. You'd chearlead phrenology if it meant defending the honor of the GOP.

Private Prison in AZ goes straight to Appropriations Chairman for more money:

Nearly $1 million in additional funding for private prisons was removed from the state budget today, following an uproar of criticism from Arizonans.

The Senate Appropriations Committee took out $900,000 in excess funds the House last week had earmarked for GEO Group Inc., which is expected to receive $45 million this fiscal year for providing minimum- and medium-security beds in Phoenix and Florence.

The company has contracts with the state that guarantees at least a 95 percent occupancy rate, virtually ensuring the company a profit for operating its prisons in Arizona.

And giving AZ an incentive to fill it up...may as well if they're paying for it anyway.

House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who has received campaign contributions from GEO executives, sought the increase that was approved by the House.

Kavanagh said Monday that GEO had done the state a "big favor" by providing emergency private-prison beds at a discount rate during the Great Recession, and the company wanted to be financially restored.

"I didn't see a problem in giving them a small increase," Kavanagh said. "If you don't treat people fairly they won't treat you fairly in the future."

Kavanagh said he did not know if he would try to restore the funding taken out of the budget on Monday.

GEO's lobbying firm, Pivotal Policy Consulting, approached Kavanagh directly about getting additional funds even though the company had agreed to contracts with the Arizona Department of Corrections, which did not seek any more money for GEO.

Kavanagh said Monday that Kristen Boilini was the lobbyist who sought the additional money. Boilini did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

State campaign finance records show that six GEO executives, including CEO George Zoley, gave Kavanagh's campaign committee a combined $2,544 in 2012.

I'm surprised that Youseff also finds Bill Clinton to be a racist and GOP cheerleader since he has endorsed Murray's research. I've never thought Clinton to be a secret GOP operative, but I suppose he and I have different ways of looking at the world.

Bill "Fuck Glass Steagal" Clinton? I voted for him versus the alternative but not with any great joy. I have no interest in defending him.

Twitter seems to be freaking out over aggregate campaign donation limits being struck down, but the practical impact of the decision is not much. Few people hit the aggregate totals and those who do would run out of things to give money to in the chunks currently allowed pretty quickly.

jerseyhoya wrote:Twitter seems to be freaking out over aggregate campaign donation limits being struck down, but the practical impact of the decision is not much. Few people hit the aggregate totals and those who do would run out of things to give money to in the chunks currently allowed pretty quickly.

That's my initial thought, I was going to read the opinion at lunch, but it's 40ish pages so I doubt I'll work up the motivation and will watch SHIELD instead.

EDIT: Maybe I'll just read Thomas' concurrence where he calls to overturn Bucky v. Valeo and wait for SCOTUSblog to do a plain English summary... or I could read the synopsis.

TenuredVulture wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:So any chance we can work with the Saudis and our own petroleum reserves to ramp up petroleum production enough to hurt Russia economically, as we did in the 80's? They can barely pay their debts and would certainly be hurt by a lowering of oil prices.

This Russian aggression is just another reason to hate oil companies and their willingness to block any form of alternative energy, imho. NATO is having trouble responding because they need that sweet, sweet oil.

We can certainly hurt their pricing power on the gas side once we get our gas infrastructure up to speed.

But what if Putin takes his shirt off and rides a rhino?

Youseff wrote:Look just cause a guy says IQ correlates to societal worth, and IQ correlates to race, and IQ is based largely on inheritance, and environment is not a provable means of affecting intelligence doesn't make him a racist, ok?

And just cause I quote the aforementioned irrelevant author doesn't mean I ascribe to a similarly deplorable world view, ok?

Too bad Stephen Jay Gould isn't around to rip him a new one as he did with Mismeasure of Man and that Bell Curve idiot.

Werthless wrote:Have you read his stuff?

The people that call him racist often have not read his work itself. It's very hard to prove a negative (X person is *not* racist) without appealing to authority, and referencing people who are ideologically opposed to the viewpoints but respects the person as a scholar. You seem unconvinced by Sullivan's points, nor do you know anything specifically racist that he has said/written.

I've already wasted enough words on this.

I read it in grad school, Werthless, and the guy is a racist ass. Does that help? He can hide behind his G, if he wants, but everyone knows what he's talking about. It's not a serious academic work, and like I said, Gould kicked his ass

Werthless wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:L.P.D.: LIBERTARIAN POLICE DEPARTMENT - Spoof from the New Yorker. This amused me.

Meh.

This is pretty typical of a writer who doesn't understand libertarianism. Even if libertarians didn't believe in the legitimacy of a publicly funded police force (almost all do), enforcement of laws and contracts is a generally accepted requirement of functioning markets. Property rights without 3rd party enforcement, arbitration, and mechanisms for appeal are not property rights at all. Thus, libertarian utopias -- which is what the author is attempting to parody -- always have courts and police, along with other public goods like national defense.

Libertarian = Anarchism ... produces fairly predictable comedy.

who are the writers that understand libertarianism? asking sincerely

One of my more treasured memories is embarrassing Charles Murray when he spoke at my grad school about 15 years ago.

In short, he was talking about the moral code of the "underclass" (read: poor nonwhites)--their present-centeredness, contempt for conventional values, and unwillingness to mimic the demonstrated success behaviors of mainstream society. During the q&a, I pointed out various acts of corporate malfeasance then current and asked if the problem might actually be that "those people" were imitating "successful behaviors" too closely. Loudest cheers I've ever gotten for anything. (Murray called my premise immature and facile, which seemed like a fairly clear tell that he couldn't make a substantive response.)

I haven't read his books but have read several of his articles, and a lot about his work from a wide range of sources. I actually think his views have evolved a little: it seems like most of what he formerly ascribed to race, he now ascribes to class--which to me is tantamount to saying that economic circumstances over generations largely bound people's attitudes and behaviors.

He's also a champion of career and technical education, which until very recently was what I did for a living. We had weird alliances with the likes of the manhattan institute on CTE, which was great.

I had to read The Bell Curve for a Psych and Law class I mistakenly took as an elective in grad school. I had an exchange with the prof that was probably my second best exchange I ever had in school, basically taking apart the prof's ideas on the book. I didn't get any cheers, but I did get two high fives after class. To the prof's credit, he apparently said some very nice things about me in my year end review, which helped me a secure a spot in another prof's lab when the funding in my lab at the time went belly up. It's not as good as your story, Dajafi, but I'll take it. Of course, that was before I smoked about 20 pounds of weed and my mind still worked.

That's not to say that I don't think there's a biological component to intelligence, but his positions on the topic were extreme. I don't know much about his work outside of that book.

dajafi wrote:One of my more treasured memories is embarrassing Charles Murray when he spoke at my grad school about 15 years ago.

In short, he was talking about the moral code of the "underclass" (read: poor nonwhites)--their present-centeredness, contempt for conventional values, and unwillingness to mimic the demonstrated success behaviors of mainstream society. During the q&a, I pointed out various acts of corporate malfeasance then current and asked if the problem might actually be that "those people" were imitating "successful behaviors" too closely. Loudest cheers I've ever gotten for anything. (Murray called my premise immature and facile, which seemed like a fairly clear tell that he couldn't make a substantive response.)

I haven't read his books but have read several of his articles, and a lot about his work from a wide range of sources. I actually think his views have evolved a little: it seems like most of what he formerly ascribed to race, he now ascribes to class--which to me is tantamount to saying that economic circumstances over generations largely bound people's attitudes and behaviors.

He's also a champion of career and technical education, which until very recently was what I did for a living. We had weird alliances with the likes of the manhattan institute on CTE, which was great.

Thank you to dajafi and MB for the responses. I also read some of Murray's stuff a few years ago (I own "Losing Ground", the book that inspired welfare reform, but I also read the Bell Curve), and my reading of his work was different from your comments. He doesn't take the position of James Watson, that races perform differently on intelligence tests because some races just have smarter genetics (he predicted we would be able to find genetic markers on the genome, and suggested they'd be less prevalent in black people). In the Bell Curve, Murray is trying to understand why there are differences in intelligence scores, and how it manifests itself in life outcomes. Unfortunately, too many people get classified as racist simply because they talk about racial differences. This has always been my impression of his works, but then again, I haven't heard him speak off-the-cuff about these issues.

Dajafi, I think it's clear that many poor people have different habits than wealthy people, whether out of necessity or "choice," and that some of these habits are deleterious on wealth. The present-centeredness focus of the poor, which you mentioned, is probably advantageous for their current situation. Social science in this area is not about finding fault, but understanding the aspects of government intervention that can alleviate the conditions that affect this types of re-enforcing behavior. That's what TANF is for!

One issue where the average poor person likely has different values from the average wealthy person is emphasis of educational success. It's hard to argue that there aren't cultural differences between Asian immigrant populations, blacks, latinos, wealthy, poor, etc. Childhood IQ cannot explain the differences in educational attainment that we see. I hope that's not a controversial argument nowadays!

I leave you with this quote from the Bell Curve:

If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not justify an estimate.

It seems that many liberals are mad at either conclusion -- it's environmental or genetic. It's just un-PC to point out differences, and assume that it's due to a racially biased examination.

Werthless wrote: It's hard to argue that there aren't cultural differences between Asian immigrant populations, blacks, latinos, wealthy, poor, etc. Childhood IQ cannot explain the differences in educational attainment that we see. I hope that's not a controversial argument nowadays!

to paraphrase a particularly adamant observer sometimes heard from around here, "educational attainment" is not physics. there's more to be unpacked there than may meet your gaze. perhaps, for example, the segment of the population that especially venerates educational attainment is making too much of it. The kinds of questions increasingly being asked about the economic consequences of that veneration would seem to support that idea; "revelations" that your typical Harvard undergrad gets nothing but As raises its own form of questions about all that "attaining" going on....

Twenty years in higher ed demonstrates to me that if IQ as a measure of some innate quality of intellect exists, it probably doesn't matter much. That is, I don't think there's anything like "innate ability" or "intelligence" or "talent" that underlies achievement. No one achieves much without effort, and what really seems to be a difference maker is understanding the process, that is knowing how to apply that effort. Persistence and engagement--asking for help, learning from mistakes and applying those lessons all matter a great deal, and I don't know if we're really doing a great job on helping students develop those skills and in some cases we're doing the exact opposite, for instance telling kids that they're just not good test takers as if there's some magic ingredient that enables some to perform well on tests and others less so.

I do worry that pushing more high level skills at younger ages is really such a great idea. I know I wasn't expected to learn to read until I was almost 7, and I wonder what might have happened if someone thought I need to learn to read at 5. I don't really see the advantage of pushing reading skills to pre-k, and see tons of disadvantages--specifically, learning to read before the child is ready is likely to establish a negative pattern that's hard to break. In addition, it also means that learning by say playing with blocks and dirt (and I really believe building with blocks does develop important cognitive skills) gets neglected.

On the other hand, I also am intrigued by the idea that the exposure of infants to adults who speak to them often with a sophisticated vocabulary gives them substantial advantages in cognitive development, and there's no remedy if there's a lack of this. There do seem to be cultural differences with how people interact with infants.

I don't know if this is interesting or relevant, but Switzerland was rated at the very top in terms of innovation this past year. One thing that's really struck my wife and I is that they don't push their kids at all at a young age. We kept asking how our daughter was doing in terms of talking and potty training compared to the other kids at day care and they were really puzzled by our questions. They said they just worry about the kids being happy, the rest takes care of itself. Of course, once they start to get into late elementary school, that all changes. Kids are then very rigidly tracked and it's hard to get them out of a track. The difference is that kids in the lower tracks are still seen as successes and are matched up with a trade matching their interests in high school. Even the people who work minimum wage type jobs are paid well enough to have a family, live a good life, etc. It's a very different approach, but one that's successful. I just think it's interesting.