Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Gossip | We’re more likely to believe political untruths forwarded by email

Published on May 3, 2011 in Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Stephen Weitzman's 1992 Sculpture photo © 2007 takomabibelot | more info (via: Wylio)Even though we’re well between major elections in this country I still get the occasional fear-mongering email forward that is so blatantly inaccurate that I almost don’t bother to fact check it. But I force myself to seek out reality and forward the corrections and evidence to the contrary back to the sender — I have yet to see such an individual issue a retraction or update their audience after getting my helpful response.

People continue to hit send on these missives with long e-mail header trains, as if, somehow, the tales within must be true for it to have mushroom clouded across the the internet.

Researchers from Ohio State University contacted 600 people after the 2008 election to discuss their exposure to rumors about the candidates on the websites, blogs and by email. The publishing findings indicate that fibbing on the internet itself is  to some degree checked because the facts are out there with a quick google search.  Email was more pernicious:

The more political e-mails that participants received from friends and family during the 2008 election, the more rumors they were likely to believe. And the more rumors they believed, the more political e-mails they sent.

In addition, receiving e-mails only promoted belief in rumors about the candidate whom the person opposed, the study found. And people were more likely to share e-mails as belief in rumors about the opposed candidate increased.

The filter effect at work, again.  You’re more likely to believe, seek out and forward media content that parrots your own opinions; facts be damned.

GOP representing a minority of their constituents

Published on January 21, 2011 in Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Here’s a chart that illlustrating the number of unemployed constituents versus wealthy households in districts represented by a Republican Senator.

Unemployed V. Rich Households By State with Republican Senator

Wonk Room uses this char to point out that GOP senators represent 4 times as many unemployed people as wealthy households, yet the GOP practically started a war of words against the unemployed when the Democrats were busy capitulating on the Bush tax cuts.

The attacks on the those collecting unemployment would have you believe that the unemployed are relaxing at home collecting 50% less in earnings and doing nothing to return to full time employment status.  They’re just lazy folks who won’t go out and get a job.   Unproductive stigma and stereotyping is not getting a country to work.

While I’d like to hope that come November 2012, residents of those states will remember the rhetoric used to dismiss the concerns of the unemployed, it’s probably not going to happen.  There wasn’t much of an uproar from constituents when the verbal attacks on the employment-challenged were actively taking place.

And I have to wonder in part if it’s a matter of self-identification.  With more than 15 million people unemployed (a very conservative estimate), is an element of “I can’t believe it happened to me” in play? Joe/Jane Average has been dutifully reporting to work for X years and gets laid off after a round of budget cuts that couldn’t be avoided.

When listening to your representative going off on a tangent about the employed, you’re not considering yourself a part of THAT group; afterall, you were a hardworking, tax paying citizen that fell victim to the economy.

Relying on love of country to buoy life satisfaction

Published on January 18, 2011 in Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Old Glory, Patriotic Rustic Peeling American Flag, The Stars & Stripes, Red, White, Blue, on Woodphoto © 2009 Beverly | more info (via: WylioIn a recently published study in Psychological Science, University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign researchers Morrison, Tay and Diener examined data from over 132,000 respondents in 128 countries to consider the relationship between personal life (subjective well-being, aka SWB) and country satisfaction.

We found that the relationship between national satisfaction and
life satisfaction was stronger in the poorest countries of the world, for those with less income, and those with fewer household conveniences. The moderating role of GDP, income, and conveniences reveals that when individuals have greater trouble meeting their basic needs, external factors such as group evaluations come to have a stronger influence on SWB. . .

Those in poverty may elevate nationhood to a more central component of their social identity, thus making it more relevant in judging their quality of life. This might explain why ratings of  national satisfaction are higher on average than ratings of life satisfaction among relatively poorer individuals and those living in the poorer countries.

When faced with financial and material struggles in your own life, you’re more apt to look for that glimmer of hope in less immediate aspects of life. The current economic slump has a far reaching impact as working Americans face employment uncertainty, the mortgage crisis and financial challenges.

The personal experience of the recession makes a wavering American dream unacceptable. Accordingly, politicians pitch their policies as a way to prolong America’s greatness in the world and challenge fellow candidates who would deign to impugn the reputation of our country during campaign season. We’re going to have success and happiness with our lives any way we can, even if we’re trying to live vicariously through the very idea of greatness.

As important as it is take comfort and pride in your national identity, relying on it to buoy spirits means ignoring growing threats to the long term to health and vitality of the US.

The longer the recession, the longer it may take to face some hard truths for our country.

Take the health care reform debate, if it could even be called a debate. Serious shortcomings in our health delivery and insurance mechanisms were overlooked, if not completely ignored. America’s best cheerleaders plugged the ignorant, but carefully formulated, messaging that the US has the best health care system in the world.

Factually, it does not. Despite spending more on health care per person than anywhere else in the world, we rank 49th in life expectancy. As  much as health care reform oppositions liked to cite surveys of dissatisfaction with the waits for treatment in Canada or the UK, they rank 10th and 28th, respectively. We rank a lowly 33rd in infant mortality, against bested by the UK (22) and Canada (23). But those facts didn’t matter.

Or we could look at our students’ performance up against those of other OECD nations: in 2009 we ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, 25th in math. Are those the scores of the next generation of leaders of industry and innovators in technology?

We could go on and on from failing infrastructure to our disproportionate incarceration rates, etc.

Even sadder, these challenges could give us a rallying point around which we could further strengthen our love of country and its performance for its people.

No helping hand to people perceived at fault

Published on January 11, 2011 in Blogging, Community and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Homeless. Hungry. But at least I got a new coffee can. Please help, okay?photo © 2009 Ed Yourdon | more info (via: Wylio)Fundraisers have long seen that natural disasters are more compelling reasons for making a situational charitable donation than tragedies sourced to some sort of human incompetence or malfeasance.  Hurricane Katrina, the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti and the Indian Ocean tsunami on 2004 had donors breaking out their checkbooks and credits cards to give what they could to those whose homes had been obliterated.

But giving during last summer’s Gulf Oil spill didn’t see an outpouring of financial support.  BP and friends were quickly tagged as responsible by spectators and the government, which left Gulf Coast Residents on their own.

A recently published study in the European Journal of Social Psychology shows this bias in play. Holloway University researchers found subjects more willing to provide assistance to those suffering from natural disasters than man-made ones in 4 different scenarios.

“People perceive victims of humanly caused events in more negative terms, even when there is no information available about the victims’ blameworthiness,” Zagefka and her colleagues conclude. “This amounts to a systemic bias against people suffering from humanly caused disasters.”

The researchers attribute this unfortunate tendency to the Just World Hypothesis, which asserts that humans are strongly inclined to view the world as fundamentally fair, orderly and predictable. To defend this belief, “Potential donors are motivated to blame the victims when given the slightest chance,” they write.

That same attitude seems to apply to the social safety net that politicians argue endlessly about.  Post welfare reform in the 90s,  Americans who struggle to make ends meet are more likely to be demonized by politicians looking to score a quick rhetorical point or to save money via safety net budget cuts than they are to receive a helping hand in their community.

More than 15 million Americans are unemployed. 1 in 8 Americans is on food stamps.   One in 5 children lives below the poverty level. And roughly 1 percent of Americans will spend part of any given year homeless.

Some would have us believe those numbers are because a segment of the population hasn’t been making the effort to succeed, so it’s not my problem.

But how do we appropriately assign responsibility for poor life outcomes and provide the necessary support to break the cycles of poverty and crime, when we instinctively blame the person stuck in the cycle?  How do we acknowledge the contribution of the circumstances that led to a person becoming a sad statistic, so that we can begin to correct those common injustices for the next generation?

Voters unlikely to get the compromise they want to see in DC

Published on November 4, 2010 in Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader McConnell insisted the American people voted Republican because they stand behind the party of “no”.

“I get the impression that [the Democratic Party's] view is that we haven’t cooperated enough. I think what the American people were saying yesterday is they appreciated us saying ‘no’ to things that the American people indicated that they were not in agreement with.”

To the contrary, according to a series of polls inquiring about partisan behavior post election, voters hoped for collaboration and compromise after the election,  In a Bloomberg poll, 80 percent of respondents wanted both parties to “work together even if it means compromising.” Seventy-eight percent of respondents thought Republicans in Congress should “compromise some of their positions in order to get things done” and 69 percent say the same about Obama per a CBS/NYT poll.

Doesn’t look like the GOP got the message:

In an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, RNC Chairman Michael Steele made clear that compromise is not on the table:

Well, I think that, to be very clear here, when we talk about not compromising, not compromising away on the principles that our party have run on and have stood for, for a long time. For example, we’re not going to compromise on creating more debt. We’re not going to compromise on raising the debt ceiling. We’re not going to compromise on increasing the burdens on the backs of small-business owners and families.

Shortly before the election, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana also shot down any hope of compromise:

Look, the time to go along and get along is over. . .there will be no compromise on stopping runaway spending, deficits and debt. There will be no compromise on repealing Obamacare. There will be no compromise on stopping Democrats from growing government and raising taxes. And if I haven’t been clear enough yet, let me say again: No compromise.

At a Heritage Foundation talk today, McConnell reiterated his goal of making Obama a one-term President because his agenda does not fall in line with that of the in-coming Republican majority in the House.

But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.

At least voters are more aware of the reality than they’re given credit for.  In that same CBS/NYT poll, “72 percent thought that Obama would try to work with Republicans—but only 46 percent thought that the Republicans would try to work with Obama.”

It’s going to be a rocky road to 2012.

Could dissenting punditry (on the same network) have a mitigating effect on political polarization?

Published on October 31, 2010 in Politics. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The filter bubble phenomena has been on my mind for the last few weeks as I’ve contemplated its reach beyond our individual web footprints and considered media production and consumption overall.

There’s a constant tug of war for media outlets, between making money by giving consumers what they want versus providing what we need at an acceptable cost. Amazon knows I’m apt to buy more books if it recommends reads similar (in content and in style) to ones I’ve already read, though I’d be more well-rounded if I read outside my comfort zone now and again. Print, online and television news sources develop their own framework for reporting based on the audience demographics being targeted: Fox News reports to the right of mainstream; MSNBC embraces the left. And their framework is typically meant to fire up their viewers to keep them coming back for more. As Jon Stewart pointed out this weekend at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear:

The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

Does ignorance of the full spectrum of information and interpretation available to the public, threaten our ability to exchange ideas and shake up the status quo to reach amenable compromises on urgent issues? Groupthink experiments point to the greater cost. Living in a media bubble, as conflict- free  and as comforting as it may seem to be, takes a toll on our ability to think as independent actors, which, may in turn, amp polarization in this country. It becomes increasingly difficult to express sentiment that falls outside the echo chamber that makes up our preferred media channels.

In The Element, Ken Robinson reviews the Solomon Asch conformity experiments of the 1950s. Subjects were placed with groups of fellow college students whose answers to a set of questions had been coached to be wrong the majority of the time; the experimental subject had no idea as to the preparation of fellow group members.  With planted group members repeatedly responding incorrectly to questions, the experimental subject answered incorrectly, as well, the majority of the time. Test respondents readily admitted that they responded contrary to  answers they believed to be true out of fear of being called out for straying from the majority opinion.  Subjects wanted to fit in and self-censored accordingly.

Our ability to voice opinions contrary to the majority, let alone consider alternatives to popular sentiment is limited in a media vacuum that constantly regurgitates the talking points we want or — worse — expect to hear.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Lately, the Daily Dish’s Andrew Sullivan has been posting reader comments about whether liberals should do interviews on FOX News. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Rachel Maddow regularly implores conservatives to be guests on her show for a fact-based discussion of trending issues.

There is tremendous value in even hearing varied opinions, whether or not they are your own. In Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, the Brafman brothers noted the power of dissent in another Asch study.  Repeating the same scenario, one of the control subjects in the group was directed to answer independently, while the others continued to respond with wrong answers.

The dissenting actor didn’t even need to give the right answer to inspire the real participant to speak up with the correct response; all it took to break the sway was for someone to give an answer that was different from the majority. (p.155)

If the mere presence of a differing opinion can change the participation choices of an experimental subject, what would hearty debate of the issues do for viewers at home? As it stands, we’re mostly standing in an echo chamber of reiterated talking points. Could it bring more voices into the fray?

And if we create space where we can be open to disagreement about the solutions, can we create space that allows us to more completely expose the range of options, including those in our worldview periphery, in such a manner that we could find the common ground we need to move forward on urgent issues?

Hubris getting ahead of technology

Published on May 9, 2010 in Environment and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

You’d think that the felling of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf would be cause for rethinking off shore drilling.

Seafood is a $1.8 billion industry in Louisiana, with another $1 billion in retail sales  driven by recreational fishing.  If the estimates about possible environmental damage are proven conservative, Gulf Coast states are in for a world of financial pain, up to $4.3 billion in losses according to BBVA Compass Bank economist Nathaniel Karp:

Karp said Florida has the most at stake, facing potential losses of $3 billion alone, including $2.8 billion in tourism, $18 million in commercial fishing and $138 million in recreational fishing…

Louisiana could face economic losses of $948 million, including $880 million in tourism, according to Karp’s estimates. Louisiana’s commercial fishing business stands to lose $31 million, while its recreational fishing industry could lose $37 million, he projects.

And if the drip, drip, drip of information about this spill is anything to go by, the numbers may turn out to be much worse.  Christian Science Monitor reporting suggests upwards of 25,000 barrels of oil per day are spewing into the Gulf instead of the 5,000 barrel estimate being used in data crunching, a number which could skew upwards even further if the damaged piping is further compromised by the flow of gritty oil.   With that oil pocket rumored to be tens of millions of gallons full, an unplugged flow could spread for months.

Such projections take on more significance now that the first attempt to dome the spill failed this weekend.   It also still remains to be seen if the mushroom cloud of oil will reach the current that could pull the oil up the southeastern seaboard.

Our nation’s top experts are now suggesting “stuffing shredded tires, golf balls and other debris into the well’s failed blowout preventer,” while they work on a differently-shaped dome to repeat their attempts at sealing the leak.   Can we really justify offshore drilling if we aren’t truly capable of foreseeing and planning for the consequences that could cause permanent damage to delicate coastal ecosystems and our food chain? Can’t we admit that some technology is still beyond the scope of our knowledge?

Coastal citizens are realizing the stakes of such acts.   Support for offshore drilling in Florida (35%) has dropped precipitously (from 61% in 2008).

And yet politicians seem to be doubling down on their efforts to fill oil coffers, instead of promoting alternative energy sources that could yield new job sectors to partially replace the lost manufacturing jobs of this recession.  For instance, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, who seems to continue jerking further and further right since his election, is pushing to drill off the coast of his state as soon as possible.

Then there are the conservative talk heads like Bill Kristol, who suggests drilling CLOSER to shore would limit the danger of offshore drilling, and Sarah Palin who still considers drill, baby, drill to be prudent and necessary for energy independence.

Indeed, we need to create a platform for home grown energy, independent of the Middle East, but real leadership on energy would take us to the next generation of energy creation: one that demonstrates that those who grace the top of the food chain have the awareness that environmental stewardship is a necessary factor in moving society and the human race forward in a sustainable manner.

We’re not particularly good stewards of anything when we can’t even acknowledge the boundaries of what we know before aggressively drilling in the abyss.

Americans warm on buzzwords “progressive” and “civil liberties”

Published on May 5, 2010 in Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press recently surveyed a sampling of American folks on their reactions to a variety of popular buzzwords in the political space of late.

Which came first, the disdain for socialism or the Republican campaign to brand everything Obama proposes as socialist?  It’s a bit re-assuring, though, to see that the term “progressive” so well received.

But how strange that Republicans have such a positive opinion of the phrase “civil liberties,” given that Republican leadership is up in arms  that alleged, attempted terrorist Faisal Shahzad was read his Miranda Rights, and Faux-publican Joe Lieberman is trying to strip citizenship from people found to be palling around with foreign terrorist organizations.  Civil liberties are an all or nothing proposition; you can’t grant them to some but not all.

Why I Don't Like Politicians

Published on March 9, 2009 in Politics. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

The Republicans are engaged in a pseud0-scorched earth policy because they’re  sore losers, making it a lose-lose scenario for us.  When Republicans are in charge, their policies aren’t particularly helpful to MOST Americans, and when they’re not in charge, they’re trying to eliminate the possibility that Democratic policy could make up lost ground.

Hilary Clinton at least had the maturity to suck it up and take on a constructive, proactive role under the Obama Presidency.

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WTF: Bush administration considered suspending first amendment rights

Published on March 3, 2009 in Politics. 1 Comment

While I’m not entirely satisfied with Obama thus far, you’d think I’d be done with being infuriated by the Bush administration.

Then I get word that wunderkind John Yoo wrote a memo clearing the suspension of first amendment rights after 9/11 because you can’t have those pesky reporters asking awkward questions when you’re trying to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 under the ruse that it did. ARGH!

From Newsweek:

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday. . .

In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”

As a consolation, a lot of former Bush officials haven’t exactly seen the red carpet rolled out for them now that they are out of DC.  Only about a quarter of those seeking employment have been placed.

UC Berkeley had to take Yoo back because he’d just been on leave; he never officially left.  But one would hope that after whatever truth commission takes place, someone will see that man disbarred, limiting his influence over young legal minds.

Way to go protecting the Constitution and our Bill of Rights!  Clearly, some people need to read up on why the Bill of Rights was drafted.  Paging John Yoo!

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