Last updated:
8:17 PM, 19 June 2013



Jim Miller on Politics

  Email:
jimxc1 at gmail.com



What's he reading? Francis Parkman.

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<pudge/*>
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Media Blogs:
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R-Rated:
Horse's A**
Huffington Post

*new



Pseudo-Random Thoughts


On A Light Note, A Case Of Confessed Adultery:  A light note?  Yes, once you learn who the supposed correspondent is.
But now a councillor in Whitby, North Yorkshire, has made one that really is - Labour's Simon Parkes says he fathered a child with an alien.

The married father-of-three, who represents Stakesby, said his wife had rowed with him after revealing he had a child called Zarka with an alien he refers to as the Cat Queen.
I'd love to know whether the "row" went something like this:  "How could you?  And with an alien!"  Or, as seems more likely, like this:  "Have you gone out of your mind?"

In either case, I do sympathize with Mrs. Parkes.

(Judging by the duties described in this Wikipedia article, as a councillor he probably can't do much harm.  On the other hand, his day job is as driving instructor, and that does make me worry, a little.)
- 8:17 PM, 19 June 2013   [link]


Are You An American-American?  Many of us are, in spite of the efforts, official and otherwise, to divide us.
In the 2000 census and since, more than 20 million people said their origin was American.   Those who so answered are heavily concentrated in greater Appalachia, Florida and Texas, have a strong populist streak and share cultural ties that frighten outsiders: “To be perfectly blunt,” wrote Nate Silver, identifying your origin as American is “a pretty good proxy for folks that a lot of us elitists would usually describe as ‘rednecks.’ ”

Yet it would be a mistake to confuse the self-declared ethnically American (call them American-Americans?) with the Confederacy.  The areas where American ethnicity is claimed are also the ones that rebelled against the rebels, such as West Virginia, which was so pro-Union that it seceded from Virginia in 1863.
Kyle Smith is getting that data from a book by James Robbins, Native Americans, which definitely sounds worth reading.

By way of Orrin Judd, another American-American.
- 6:41 PM, 19 June 2013   [link]


If You Like Babies, you'll love this picture.  (Link fixed now.  Sorry about that.)
- 1:56 PM, 19 June 2013   [link]


President Obama Is A Failure As A Diplomat:  Who says so?  Many people, but it is news when the New York Times says that in a front page article.

Here's how Mark Landler and Peter Baker begin:
Over porterhouse steak and cherry pie at a desert estate in California earlier this month, President Obama delivered a stern lecture to President Xi Jinping about China’s disputes with its neighbors.  If it is going to be a rising power, he scolded, it needs to behave like one.

The next morning, Mr. Xi punched back, accusing the United States of the same computer hacking tactics it attributed to China.  It was, Mr. Obama acknowledged, "a very blunt conversation."
(Michelle Obama didn't help, by not taking time to meet with Xi's wife, Peng Liyuan, while she was visiting the United States.  Some Chinese saw that as a deliberate insult.)

In the rest of the article you'll learn how Obama failed with Putin — which is understandable — and with François Hollande — which is not.  (Obama and his team thought they could use former president Dimitri Medvedev to work around Putin.  You don't have to be Machiavelli to understand why that probably wouldn't work, but would certainly anger Putin.  French President Hollande wanted, among other things, more help in suppressing terrorists in Mali.  We should have given it to him promptly and gladly.)

The strongest relationship that Obama has with a foreign leader, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan, does not seem to have yielded any benefits to the United States.

Near the end, Landler and Baker make this devastating comparison to three Obama predecessors:
The first George Bush moved gracefully in foreign capitals, while Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush related to leaders as politicians, trying to understand their pressures and constituencies.
In short, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43, all tried to understand the other leaders, before negotiating with them.

Obama has, it is only fair to add, been handicapped by his secretaries of state, first Hillary Clinton and now John Kerry.  But Obama could have chosen someone better for that position, twice.

As you would expect, the reporters interviewed several supporters of Obama, who attempted to make excuses for him.  But none of them mentioned any Obama successes, not a single one.

(Professor Althouse, who is two time zones ahead of me, wrote her post first, and came to similar conclusions, earlier than I did.  Incidentally, some of the comments after the post are quite funny.)
- 1:45 AM, 19 June 2013   [link]


According To An Anonymous Source, Kim Jong-un has ordered his top people to read Mein Kampf.
The magniloquent wrath of North Korea rained down on a group of 'scum' defectors today after they published a report claiming copies of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' were handed to its officials as a leadership guide.

The defectors claimed in the report that leader Kim Jong-un had handed out copies of the Nazi dictator's manifesto to top officials for inspiration.
This story is almost too good to check, but I did find it in a Korean newspaper.

Nor is there anything inherently implausible about the story.  Stalin, before the German invasion, was something of an admirer of Hitler.  (It wasn't mutual.)  And the ideas about "racial purity" common in the North Korea regime fit better with fascism, than with communism, which has almost always claimed to be international.

(Here's the original web post.)
- 10:28 AM, 19 June 2013   [link]


James Taranto Provides The Dots:  The biggest supplier of Lifeline phones (often called "Obama phones") is TracFone.  A big chunk of TracFone is owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who also owns a big chunk of the New York Times.

And then suggests, slyly, that our newspaper of record might want to try to connect those dots.
Just some interesting dots.  We'll leave it to our friends at the Times to tell us if and how they're connected.
Ever since Slim bought into the Times, I have been wondering about his motives.   You wouldn't think that a shrewd businessman like Slim would invest in the Times expecting substantial profits.  And I can't help noticing that he comes from Mexico, where businessmen sometimes attempt to buy influence, in any number of ways.

(Slim's family came from Lebanon, and, as I understand it, businessmen in Lebanon also sometimes attempt to buy influence.)
- 7:33 AM, 19 June 2013   [link]


"Redmond, Seattle"  This sad story did have an amusing mistake.
A woman trying to live on nothing but water for up to six months is calling it quits after 47 days.

Naveena Shine, 65, from Redmond, Seattle, stopped eating on May 3 in a bid to explore breatharianism - the concept that food is not necessary and sunlight provides all of the nourishment the body needs.
That should remind us that even British journalists, who should know more about the United States than most Europeans, don't always understand the basics.  And we should recognize that American journalists are often equally clueless about the foreign countries they write about.

I'm glad she stopped this dangerous stunt before she killed herself.

(There's more on breatharians here.)
- 6:43 AM, 19 June 2013   [link]


Need A Joke?  I do, so here's Andrew Malcolm's usual weekly collection.

Two I especially liked:
Fallon: Last week Obama asked China's president to stop spying on Americans.  And the Chinese leader responded, "You first."

Leno: The good news is Tim Tebow got a job playing for Boston.  The bad news is, it's the Patriots.  So now the IRS is investigating him.
- 1:38 PM, 18 June 2013   [link]


Anonymous Man Convicted In The Netherlands:  This BBC story describes the conviction of the killers of a volunteer soccer official — but doesn't name any of the killers.
Six teenagers and the father of one of them have been found guilty of kicking a volunteer linesman to death in the Netherlands.

The court in Lelystad sentenced the 50-year-old father to six years in prison.

Five teenagers were sentenced to two years in youth detention and another was sentenced to one year.  All seven are expected to appeal.
Rules, either in Britain or the Netherlands, might prevent the BBC from naming the teenagers, but the missing name of the father automatically made me suspicious.

So I did a quick search and found a likely explanation for that strange omission.
Judges in Lelystad sentenced the 50-year-old father, identified only as El-Hasan D, to six years in prison.  Five teenage players drew two-year sentences in youth detention for their roles in the December attack and another was sentenced to a year.  A seventh player, age 15, was sentenced to 30 days detention for assault.
. . .
The attack took place Dec. 2 in the Dutch city of Almere after the home team, Buitenboys, drew 2-2 with Nieuw Sloten, which is based in a mostly immigrant neighborhood of Amsterdam.
I think we can all guess why the BBC story didn't include the name, or that helpful background.  The version published by the Guardian did include the name and that background information, so it seems almost certain that British laws did not force the BBC to be so mysterious.

(For the record:  All seven insist they are innocent.)
- 1:09 PM, 18 June 2013   [link]


Wire Tapping Teddy Roosevelt (II):  A few days ago, I quoted William Safire quoting William Roscoe Thayer on how enemies of Roosevelt had tapped his phone before the 1912 Republican convention.

Shortly after that, I took my own advice and downloaded Thayer's biography of Roosevelt, in order to get the context.  Here's the full paragraph that I quoted, in part, before.
Roosevelt had not intended to appear at the Convention, but when he discovered that the long distance telephone from Chicago to Oyster Bay, by which his managers conferred with him, was being tapped, he changed his mind.  He perceived, also, that there was a lack of vigorous leadership among those managers which demanded his presence.  By going, he would call down much adverse criticism, even from some of those persons whose support he needed.  On the other hand, he would immensely strengthen his cause in Chicago, where the mere sight of him would stimulate enthusiasm.
It doesn't appear that either Roosevelt or Thayer thought that the tapping was a horrible invasion of privacy, or even very wrong.  After I read that paragraph, I naturally wondered whether Thayer had said anything more about his friend being tapped.  A search on the word found only that one example.

But when I scrolled down a little, I found this:
A still more extraordinary piece of news came from Hooker to the effect that he had in some way intercepted a telegram "from Murray Crane to his nephew saying that Crane and Barnes would 'fight or ruin' and that it was now 'use any means and sacrifice the Republican Party.'  Had it not been for the way he told us, I couldn't have believed such a thing possible."
From the context, I concluded that Hooker was a "Roosevelt scout" at the convention, a man who was trying to win delegates for Roosevelt — or perhaps foil the Taft forces in other ways.

So Roosevelt's people were reading some of their opponents' electronic communications.   If Thayer disapproved, he does not say so.  And I think we can conclude, at least tentatively, that Roosevelt did not see the tapping of his phone, or the interception of the telegram, as anything especially unusual, or even very wrong.

(Just for fun, imagine the reaction to similar incidents, today.)
- 9:33 AM, 18 June 2013   [link]


French Cartoonist Plantu's Cartoon on President Obama's indecision on Syria is pretty funny.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a peaceful citizen of that war-torn country.

(Plantu works for Le Monde, which is roughly equivalent to our New York Times in ideology and influence.  Since he is a French leftist, he is routinely anti-American, sometimes obnoxiously so — but he can be very funny.)
- 7:15 AM, 18 June 2013   [link]


Egypt Needs Tourists:  But the new governor of Luxor may not be the best person to attract them.
The Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has appointed a member of the hardline Islamist group Gamaa Islamiya to the governorship of Luxor – a tourist city in which militants associated with the group killed 58 tourists in 1997.

The symbolism of the appointment has enraged Egypt's sidelined non-Islamist opposition, who see it as further evidence that Morsi is unconcerned about the country's increasing polarisation.

Tourism is the lifeblood of Luxor, home to some of Egypt's most dramatic ancient temples and pharaonic tombs, including that of Tutankhamun.  The city has been hit hard by the downtown in foreign visitors during the past two years of turmoil.
Salafists like the new governor, Adel Asaad al-Khayyat, aren't big fans of alcohol, sunbathing, gambling, and the other things that you will find in most tourist destinations.  They aren't even big fans of the main tourist attractions in Luxor.

(I'm using the New York Times version of his name, as I do for consistency.  The Guardian spells it "Adel el-Khayat", and you can find other spellings of his name, without much effort.)
- 5:17 AM, 18 June 2013   [link]


The Poor Fast Food Service Indicator Is Showing Improvement:  In this area.

Yesterday, because of the power outage, I went out for breakfast at fast food place, and then had lunch at another.  Both places got my orders wrong.

Which I see as a good indicator for jobs, in this area.

Over the years I have found that poor service at fast food places is more common when the economy is growing briskly, than when it is stagnant, or losing jobs.

When jobs are scarce, the fast food places — which are at the bottom of the legal job ladder — find it harder to hire good workers, and harder to keep the ones they have.  In a bad economy, that reverses.

And the economy here in metropolitan Seattle is better than in most of the nation, thanks mainly to monopolists like Microsoft, and duopolist Boeing..
- 4:37 PM, 17 June 2013   [link]


Obama's Approval Rating Is Down, but probably not by 8 points.  Here's the CNN story.
President Barack Obama's approval rating dropped eight percentage points over the past month, to 45%, the president's lowest rating in more than a year and a half, according to a new national poll.

The CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning comes as the White House has been reacting to controversies over a massive U.S. government surveillance program; the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of tea party and other conservative groups who applied for tax-exempt status; the administration's handling of last September's attack in Benghazi that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead; and the Justice Department's secret collection of journalists' phone records as part of a government investigation into classified leaks.
And here's Mark Blumenthal's discussion
Obama's job approval ratings have been drifting steadily downward since January, eliminating the gains that occurred during the fall reelection campaign and just before the inauguration.  The Pollster chart's estimate of Obama's approval rating, based on all public polls, stands at 46.7 percent as of this writing, just slightly higher than the 46.4 percent recorded in early July 2012.

. . . But other polls do not show as steep a decline as CNN - The issue is mostly that CNN's prior survey, showing Obama's approval at 53 percent, was something of an outlier. Of 36 other polls logged in May, none except CNN had Obama's approval higher than 51 percent.
Three other polls (Gallup, Rasmussen, and Economist/YouGov) found a decline for the last month of 2 points, and one (Fox) found a decline of 1 point.

Which, if you are a Republican looking forward to 2014, or even 2016, is just fine.  One or two points decline in every month between now and the November 2014 election takes Obama into the please-don't-come-and-campaign-for-me territory.  (But not quite into the please-endorse-my-opponent-if-you-really-want-to-help territory.)

(I expect Obama's approval ratings will continue to decline before the 2014 election, though at a slower rate, if he gets below 40 percent.  And I think that CNN was putting too much weight on the scandal stories, and not enough on the sluggish economy.)
- 4:19 PM, 17 June 2013   [link]


Fake Villages for the G8.
When the G8 world leaders fly into Northern Ireland for their major summit there on June 17, they will see a vista of progress that has been created to deceive them.

According to Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, local councils have hired workers to paint fake shop fronts stocked with attractive but illusory produce.

They have also been contracted to cover derelict buildings with colorful billboards, the better to hide the real economic hardship being felt in towns and villages close to the five star golf resort where G8 leaders will meet this month.
. . .
In the one-street town of Belcoo, the changes haven't just been cosmetic.  A grand deception has been crafted to fool the eye of any passing stranger.  At a former well known butcher's shop, colored stickers applied to the windows show a packed meat counter and suggest that business is booming.

Across the street another empty shop has been set up to look like a supply store.  From the window of a speeding limousine it's sure to make a favorable impression.
By way of the Wall Street Journal.

(The article makes the obvious comparison to Potemkin villages, but, if this Wikipedia article is correct, that's unfair to Grigory Potemkin, who decorated villages, but didn't create fake ones.)
- 12:28 PM, 17 June 2013   [link]


Phelim McAleer Had The Best Lines in this New York Times article on "Pandora's Promise", a documentary supporting nuclear energy.
"I hate film festivals," Mr. McAleer said.  "There is not one film shown that anyone would disagree with at a Manhattan dinner party."

"Pandora's Promise" is not an exception, Mr. McAleer said, adding: "Nuclear power has become semi-respectable among environmentalists.  It's now a way of attacking coal and gas."
Even though he had nothing to do with the film.

McAleer is making a serious point, vividly.  Film festivals, as the reporter, Tom Rostom, more or less admits, do discriminate against documentary films with the "wrong" messages, regardless of the truth of those films, or even their artistic quality.

(I haven't seen "FrackNation", the latest film from McAleer and his wife, Ann McElhinney, but hope to soon.

Here's the "Pandora's Promise" site.)
- 11:03 AM, 17 June 2013   [link]


"Give Me Your Spouse Beaters . . . ."  Mickey Kaus identifies another group of immigrants that might be welcome in the United States, if the "Gang of Eight" amnesty bill passes, in its present form.
But the most controversial part of the bill might be the specific actual misdemeanors that won’t stop an undocumented immigrant from being more or less instantly legalized: They include, not just DUI offenses, but also domestic violence and child abuse.
Well, perhaps not welcome, exactly, but not necessarily excluded, either.  (There is a limit —the illegals must have fewer than three misdemeanor convictions — but the Secretary of Homeland Security — currently Janet Napolitano — can override that limit, if it's in the "national interest" to let that illegal in.)

Kaus links to Byron York, who in turn links to Heather MacDonald:
The bill’s authors apparently think that staying on the right side of the law is an insuperable burden and that having a criminal record is an ordinary part of being an American.
In some neighborhoods it is, but not in most of the United States.
- 8:32 AM, 17 June 2013   [link]


If You Think President Obama's Plan To Arm Rebels In Syria Makes Sense, Keith Koffler has a very generous prize for you.

And eleven reasons why you are unlikely to collect that Porsche Boxter, beginning with this one:
1. We are aiding the rebels now that they are losing, instead of when they might have won.  Go figyah!
Nor are the weapons we will be sending likely to make a difference, except to prolong the war.

Of our post-World War II presidents, Obama is by far the worst as a strategic thinker, worse even than Lyndon B. Johnson.

Obama, like Johnson, tends to see foreign problems as an unwelcome distractions from domestic concerns.  But Obama has, in my opinion, a disadvantage that Johnson did not.

Presidents generally try to promote American values and interests.  Our presidents helped the British suppress the Atlantic slave trade, and sent warships to protect our own commerce against pirates.  For Obama, promoting our values and interests both pose problems.

Like most in our academic communities, Obama has been infected by the almost incurable disease of "multiculturalism".  Those suffering from this affliction find it hard to even think about American values as special, as worth spreading around the world.  Obama can, from time to time, make speeches in which he says that American values are worth sharing, but, like Shelby Steele, I doubt that Obama believes in what he says in those speeches.

Similarly, Obama finds it hard to defend American interests — unless they are directly connected to his political power.  Like many others on the left (and some on the Ron Paul right), he sees this nation as guilty of many sins, as undeserving the rewards that our preeminence in the world has given us.

Whatever else you may say about Johnson, he did want to promote our values and interests, unlike Obama.

If he can't, or won't, devise a foreign policy that spreads our values and promotes our interests, what's left for Obama?  Mostly posing on the world stage for political gains at home.  And from time to time making gestures that please the politically correct here and at home.

(If you are interested in the academic debates over American exceptionalism, try this Wikipedia article, with the usual caveats about their political articles.)
- 7:30 AM, 17 June 2013   [link]


Edward Snowden And Tyler Kent:  Edward Snowden reminds me of another young man, Tyler Kent, who thought that exposing our secrets before we got into World War II was the right thing to do.

Kent was caught at a key time, and in a key place: May 1940, London.
The worst of the leaks took place in London, where Tyler Kent, a bright, handsome, but twisted young man, worked in the code room of the American Embassy.  Convinced that a vast Jewish conspiracy was pushing the United States into an unwanted war, and that to help the enemy of the Jews was to help his own country, Kent took telegrams from the embassy and passed them to a pro-Nazi group.  By various channels, they reached Germany.  The German ambassador in Italy wired home a report of Roosevelt's reply to Churchill's request for 50 destroyers only seven days after it was received in London.  On May 20, however, Scotland Yard plugged the leak.  It arrested members of the pro-Nazi group for espionage and, with State Department approval, searched Kent's rooms. (p. 494)
The roughly 1,500 secret documents they found there made his guilt obvious.  We turned him over to the British.  They gave him a secret trial, and kept him in prison during the war years.

Kent claimed to be working for the best interests of the United States, just as Snowden does now.  I am inclined to think that Kent was being mostly honest when he made that claim.  Similarly, I wouldn't automatically reject Snowden's claim that he, too, is acting in what he sees as this country's best interests.

(For much more on Kent, consult this Wikipedia article, where you will learn, among other things, that he may have begun his spying in Moscow.)
- 4:19 PM, 16 June 2013   [link]


The New York Times Needs A Copy Editor With A Basic Understanding of Christianity.

Their mistakes, first on Easter, and now on 1st Corinthians, would be funny in a small town newspaper; in our newspaper of record, they are pathetic.
- 3:45 PM, 16 June 2013   [link]


This Morning A Suicidal Squirrel Took Down The Power To My Block For Several Hours:  I heard the bang, and knew what it was a few seconds later, when I tried to turn on a light.
- 3:07 PM, 16 June 2013   [link]


The Hawaii Facility Where Edward Snowden Worked Didn't Take Ordinary Security Precautions:  In particular, they didn't protect the USB ports.
Questions were raised Friday about security procedures at the ultra-secret National Security Agency, after it emerged that Edward Snowden, the contract employee who leaked details of the agency’s broad-scale data gathering on Americans, exceeded his authorized access to computer systems and smuggled out Top Secret documents on a USB drive — a thumb-sized data storage device banned from use on secret military networks.
. . . .
NSA officials “were laying down on their job if they didn’t disable the USB port,” the specialist said, referring to the small socket on the side of a computer where thumb drives are plugged in.
. . .
“There is easily available software to do that,” said the security specialist, noting that there were also low-tech, more permanent means available.

“I have seen places where they used a hot glue gun to block it,” he said of the USB port.
This is not a difficult vulnerability to understand.  An ordinary computer security expert should be able to recognize the vulnerabilities in the USB ports after just a few minutes of thought.  And if simple thought doesn't work, that expert has examples that demonstrate the problem.  As I have mentioned before (here and here), experience shows that having working USB ports (or CD writers) imposes unnecessary risks with secured computers.

(Oh, and a reminder:  If you see a USB drive lying on the ground, do not pick it up and stick it in your computer.)

The other problem mentioned, Snowden's ability to get unauthorized access to secret files does not have obvious fixes.  In principle, the operating system should have set off an immediate alarm, but it either didn't, or no one paid attention to the alarm.

(I can think of a number of ways Snowden might have gotten around access controls, most involving human failures, but I don't know enough about current procedures to guess which way or ways are most likely.)
- 1:57 PM, 15 June 2013   [link]


It Took Me A While To Figure Out this New Yorker cartoon — but I liked it when I did.

(The calendar version doesn't have explanatory title, if you are wondering why it took me so long.)
- 10:45 AM, 14 June 2013   [link]


Worth Reading:  Bruce Thornton's "Brief History of Media Bias".

Sample:
Once reporters started coming out of colleges and universities, however, they were shaped by the leftist perspective of those institutions.  These perspectives, once marginal in American public discourse, became increasingly prominent in the press and television news shows.  Now the old progressive view that the press should not just report facts, but mold public opinion to achieve certain political ends, served an ideology fundamentally adverse to the free-market, liberal-democratic foundations of the American Republic.
One of the other consequences of this "professionalization" is that our "mainstream" journalists have lost touch with many ordinary Americans, notably most of the white working class, and even much of the middle class.

For example, it would never occur to most of the journalists in the Seattle area to go talk to the guys actually building the roads — even though they could learn a lot, if they did.
- 10:34 AM, 14 June 2013   [link]


Paul Krugman Is Still At It:  In his farewell column, Daniel Okrent, the first, and best, of the New York Times public editors, said that Krugman has "the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults".

Krugman has not changed since 2005.  in fact, if anything, he has gotten worse.   (Perhaps partly because no one at the Times has been willing to challenge Krugman, since Okrent left.)

A few days ago, I ran across a remarkable example of Krugman getting the facts wrong, making nasty blanket accusations, and — so far — not correcting the record, or apologizing.

If you are interested in the facts, Steven Landsburg has them.  The post is titled "Lies and Lying Liars" and ends with this harsh afterword:
Edited to add: It’s possible, of course, that Krugman simply made a rash mistake and posted before he’d realized what the facts were.  That happens to everyone from time to time.  But this is the same Paul Krugman who has urged us repeatedly not to give anyone else the benefit of this kind of doubt, so a decent respect for Krugman’s worldview really demands that we dismiss out of hand any temptation to cut him some slack.
(Incidentally, you don't need to know any economic theory to follow Landsburg's argument.)

It is hard to disagree with this summary judgment (in a comment) from "Douglas6":
Krugman’s problem is that he long ago decided to monetize his Nobel Prize.  Every Nobel Prize winner in Economics has lots of opportunities to do so.  Most decline.   Krugman decided to convert his Nobel into the currency of political power, exercised through his platform at the Times.  That meant discarding all the attributes that got him the Nobel in the first place: careful research, a scrupulous regard for details, honesty in responding to opposing arguments, and so on.  That’s why there is so little respect for Krugman-the-pundit (versus the old academic Krugman) among economists these days.
Though I think Krugman had gone over to the dark side long before he actually received the Nobel Prize in 2008.

But that judgment has not reached many newspaper editors, who continue to carry his column.

By way of Greg Mankiw.
- 9:41 AM, 14 June 2013   [link]


Paying Whistle Blowers To Go Away:  Apparently, it's a common practice in Britain.
When is a bribe not a bribe?  Apparently, it’s when taxpayers’ money is used to stop NHS staff blowing the whistle on clinical malpractice and criminal negligence in hospitals.

This week it was revealed that the health service has spent more than £2 million on 52 secret severance deals containing strict gagging clauses to prevent disgruntled ex-employees speaking out.
. . .
NHS employees who think that the public have a right to know what is going on in our hospitals are first being intimidated into silence and then, if all else fails, given a fat cheque to go away and keep quiet.
There have been similar payoffs in other parts of the British government — though I suspect some of those are payoffs, not for silence, but to get a problem employee to go away, quietly.

In general, governments should not offer payments for silence, with some exceptions for the security services.  Bureaucrats will always be tempted to bury problems, or pay them to go away, so we shouldn't make it easy for them to do so.

(And not just government bureaucrats.  Some years ago, I read a story about a remarkably productive researcher, who would not leave the women around him alone.   His company decided, very pragmatically, to pay off the women who complained, but to keep him, despite his little quirk.)
- 8:08 AM, 14 June 2013   [link]


Archives

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January 2013, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4
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Coming Soon
  • FDR and Waterboarding
  • How Long Do Wars Last?
  • Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, and Crescent Wrenches
  • De-Lawyering and Attorney General McKenna


Coming Eventually
  • JFK and Wiretaps
  • Green Republicans
  • The Rise and Fall and Rise of Black Voting
  • Abortion, Cleft Palates, and Europe
  • Kweisi Mfume's Children
  • Public Opinion During Other US Wars
  • Dual Loyalties
  • The Power Index
  • Baby Dancing
  • Jocks, but no Nerds
  • The Four Caliphs




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