With the recent US government shutdown, there has been a lot of talk on the nature of majority rule and the way our system works in comparison to others. I want to go over some of the things I've been hearing and my thoughts on them.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Reflections on Political Correctness and Israel
In my previous post, I briefly referenced not liking a meme rather unfortunately popular among the American right. In brief, it claims that the liberal media, in kowtowing to the desires of minority groups, left-wing causes (such as, for example, illegal immigration, gay rights, and the like) are mired in an atmosphere of "stifling political correctness" that prevents anybody who does not share the liberal views of said media from expressing themselves. Although the view is appealing to those with unpopular views, it has several problems.
The first problem is that in order for the thesis to be true, you would have to see editorial policy actively discouraging the publication of conservative viewpoints. Instead, conservative views are regularly aired in so-called liberal media.
Second, the entire idea of an atmosphere of political correctness as "stifling" implies that the media themselves are to blame, when in fact the media are simply covering their bases in response to criticism. This criticism comes not from the management of the media itself, but from the audience. In other words, crying foul at "stifling political correctness" smacks of whining about receiving criticism because one's words offend. It confuses the negative right to free speech - i.e., that no entity can stop one's words from being heard - with the positive right of preventing others from judging your words. It's not a cry for "freedom to," but for "freedom from."
I suppose it's been easy for me to hew to this opinion for much of my life because by and large, I've never been on the receiving end of such feelings of persecution. Recently, however, the incident with the BDS and Brooklyn college (and yes, I know I'm 2 months late) made me nuance this view.
The first problem is that in order for the thesis to be true, you would have to see editorial policy actively discouraging the publication of conservative viewpoints. Instead, conservative views are regularly aired in so-called liberal media.
Second, the entire idea of an atmosphere of political correctness as "stifling" implies that the media themselves are to blame, when in fact the media are simply covering their bases in response to criticism. This criticism comes not from the management of the media itself, but from the audience. In other words, crying foul at "stifling political correctness" smacks of whining about receiving criticism because one's words offend. It confuses the negative right to free speech - i.e., that no entity can stop one's words from being heard - with the positive right of preventing others from judging your words. It's not a cry for "freedom to," but for "freedom from."
I suppose it's been easy for me to hew to this opinion for much of my life because by and large, I've never been on the receiving end of such feelings of persecution. Recently, however, the incident with the BDS and Brooklyn college (and yes, I know I'm 2 months late) made me nuance this view.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Thoughts on Feminism
There was a recent comment thread in Marginal Revolution (original post here) in which a guy (who goes by the handle Tom West) gave a very illuminating perspective on modern feminism and feminist politics that I felt compelled to share. I've reproduced the thread at the end of this post, so you can read it there first or find it on MR first. It's one of the first few comments. Either way, I really want to just jump into discussion here.
Let me preface all of this by saying that as the proud carrier of a Y chromosome with an expressed SRY region, I've never fully understood the underlying drivers for the modern feminist movement - nor will I. My introduction to modern feminist politics was the furor over Larry Summers' resignation in the early spring of 2006. Summers' speech didn't seem at all inflammatory to my eyes. To me, the budding scientist and researcher, what Summers suggested was (among other things) an extraordinarily simple, plausible testable hypothesis: that there exists some innate aspect women and men's intellectual capabilities that, statistically, predisposes either gender to have some level of over-representation in certain fields. Other things Summers mentioned were also proven statistical correlations, including that women with a certain level of education in the United States tend to marry men of an equal or greater level of education.
Yet, all of my feminist friends - even ones that were normally lukewarm about advocacy - seemed up in arms about the speech. I wondered why, and didn't understand, not least because I felt that the statements were very properly given with caveats and an emphasis that the correlations were a necessary but not sufficient condition for causation. Worse still, when I tried to defend Larry Summers' propositions as reasonable*, I was attacked - not criticized, but full-on ad hominem attacked - by people I considered my friends. In later years, in the rare instances the topic was brought up, the same situation repeated itself; eventually I learned to avoid the topic altogether.
All this, and other instances, led me to negatively categorize the behavior of the modern feminist movement as hypersensitive and too willing to allow ideology to trump any empirical evidence, especially if the hypothesis in question suggested any innate differences between men and women (beyond the physical, of course).
None of it quite made any sense until I read the refreshing explanation from the MR comment thread. "Tom West" sums it up quite succinctly;
That, in a sense, explains the visceral reaction that "nature" arguments tend to get, even from people like me that acknowledge the problems that the feminist agenda wants to solve. One of two misunderstandings will happen when someone with a well-grounded, empirically valid understanding of innate gender differences pitches an argument to a feminist: either a subtle distinction or clarification is lost in conversation, or, more likely, the argument will be functionally identical to one made by some clod who thinks that the underlying relative correlations with ability are closer to 0.9 to 0.1 than 0.5 to 0.5. Either way, the feminist assumes (not unjustifiably) that the underlying assumptions are sexist, and then proceeds to chew the other guy out.
The case of a cautious and well-versed proposer being chewed out is a good example of a type I error, in which the feminist response assumes that the proposer has wrongheaded biases where they do not exist. Unfortunately, the reason that it's so hard to dissuade people from making the assumptions that lead to type I errors in my case, and probably Larry Summers' case as well, is that most of the time the assumption is valid. Most people who make the innate differences argument are drawing fantastically wrongheaded conclusions from equally fantastically wrongheaded estimates of what the true statistical differences in ability are. These estimates are informed not by familiarity with the literature but by cultural and social biases. In other words, the type I error occurs because most people who propose this position just use the possibility of natural variation in intelligence between genders as a vehicle for their own preconceived notions of gender roles. A good portion of these people will also deny the existence of outliers who can perform just as well in non-traditional gender roles as they could in ones seen as the preserve of the other. Either way, it's disgusting and all-too-frequently the case.
As Tom West put it in a later response:
* I have to emphasize here that my working assumption is that intellectual ability is roughly equal until proven otherwise. The values suggested by literature - even with statistically significant results - all point to differences that are too small in most categories of intelligence to justifiably change that assumption.
Full source thread after the jump:
Let me preface all of this by saying that as the proud carrier of a Y chromosome with an expressed SRY region, I've never fully understood the underlying drivers for the modern feminist movement - nor will I. My introduction to modern feminist politics was the furor over Larry Summers' resignation in the early spring of 2006. Summers' speech didn't seem at all inflammatory to my eyes. To me, the budding scientist and researcher, what Summers suggested was (among other things) an extraordinarily simple, plausible testable hypothesis: that there exists some innate aspect women and men's intellectual capabilities that, statistically, predisposes either gender to have some level of over-representation in certain fields. Other things Summers mentioned were also proven statistical correlations, including that women with a certain level of education in the United States tend to marry men of an equal or greater level of education.
Yet, all of my feminist friends - even ones that were normally lukewarm about advocacy - seemed up in arms about the speech. I wondered why, and didn't understand, not least because I felt that the statements were very properly given with caveats and an emphasis that the correlations were a necessary but not sufficient condition for causation. Worse still, when I tried to defend Larry Summers' propositions as reasonable*, I was attacked - not criticized, but full-on ad hominem attacked - by people I considered my friends. In later years, in the rare instances the topic was brought up, the same situation repeated itself; eventually I learned to avoid the topic altogether.
All this, and other instances, led me to negatively categorize the behavior of the modern feminist movement as hypersensitive and too willing to allow ideology to trump any empirical evidence, especially if the hypothesis in question suggested any innate differences between men and women (beyond the physical, of course).
None of it quite made any sense until I read the refreshing explanation from the MR comment thread. "Tom West" sums it up quite succinctly;
Feminism, in general, seems aghast at even acknowledging a lot of innate gender differences.Suddenly, a lot of things started to make sense. It makes sense, for example, that if I start talking about innate gender differences, I am suddenly mistaken for one of the gender-roles-are-hardwired crowd. I am aware that statistical differences in the intellectual ability of genders are smaller than is commonly believed, and that even these statistical likelihoods does not change the likelihood of extraordinary individuals existing from a group that might have a lower aptitude on average. In fact, I have firsthand experience (by virtue of my college) of extraordinarily talented individuals of both genders in roles seen as the preserve of the other. But my arguments largely appear the same as those who don't have this understanding, and routinely use "nature" arguments to pigeonhole women into their traditional roles.
Perhaps. But lets face reality. The fight for equality is a political battle on both sides. And most of us realize that acknowledging that ‘nature’ has any part in current inequality has historically and will continue to be used as a weapon to go *far* beyond that nature to try and force all women (and men) into roles that they might only statistically tend towards. Man likes to categorize, and we are continually insisting that any statistical correlation above 0 must be 1.
So, if you know that acknowledging that a given ratio might actually be 0.4 and 0.6 will be turned into a very politically effective argument that the ratios must be mandated as 0 and 1, you can be forgiven for claiming the ratio is 0.5 and 0.5 despite some evidence to the contrary. It also doesn’t help that in quite a number of cases, it turns out the accepted wisdom is pretty much wrong, and once we conduct experiments to eliminate the cultural component, results between genders are far closer than original experiments indicated.
That, in a sense, explains the visceral reaction that "nature" arguments tend to get, even from people like me that acknowledge the problems that the feminist agenda wants to solve. One of two misunderstandings will happen when someone with a well-grounded, empirically valid understanding of innate gender differences pitches an argument to a feminist: either a subtle distinction or clarification is lost in conversation, or, more likely, the argument will be functionally identical to one made by some clod who thinks that the underlying relative correlations with ability are closer to 0.9 to 0.1 than 0.5 to 0.5. Either way, the feminist assumes (not unjustifiably) that the underlying assumptions are sexist, and then proceeds to chew the other guy out.
The case of a cautious and well-versed proposer being chewed out is a good example of a type I error, in which the feminist response assumes that the proposer has wrongheaded biases where they do not exist. Unfortunately, the reason that it's so hard to dissuade people from making the assumptions that lead to type I errors in my case, and probably Larry Summers' case as well, is that most of the time the assumption is valid. Most people who make the innate differences argument are drawing fantastically wrongheaded conclusions from equally fantastically wrongheaded estimates of what the true statistical differences in ability are. These estimates are informed not by familiarity with the literature but by cultural and social biases. In other words, the type I error occurs because most people who propose this position just use the possibility of natural variation in intelligence between genders as a vehicle for their own preconceived notions of gender roles. A good portion of these people will also deny the existence of outliers who can perform just as well in non-traditional gender roles as they could in ones seen as the preserve of the other. Either way, it's disgusting and all-too-frequently the case.
As Tom West put it in a later response:
... my personal experience with teachers (teachers!) who took a certain Harvard president’s words as “proof” that women can’t do math made me pretty sensitive to the reality that people work hard to misinterpret tiny factoids to make them into giant edifices that can have profound effects on many, many others. It’s certainly left me sympathetic to those who want to err on the side of assuming more equality of nature, especially given the uncertainty in any claims as to what’s nature and what’s culture.)So like Tom West, I'm now much more sympathetic to feminist movement's tendency to discredit or attack gender-based intellectual ability claims. I have personally been hurt by the calculus that goes into making that decision, and at least partially because of that I disagree with the strategy. But I also recognize that introducing subtlety into arguments allows the opposition to claim that feminists actually agree with them, and agitate for the hell of it, or some other bullshit argument. Refuting that claim takes careful presentation of facts, and sound bytes count for far more than facts in politics.
* I have to emphasize here that my working assumption is that intellectual ability is roughly equal until proven otherwise. The values suggested by literature - even with statistically significant results - all point to differences that are too small in most categories of intelligence to justifiably change that assumption.
Full source thread after the jump:
Friday, August 17, 2012
Falling Out of Love with the RFS
Believe it or not, I actually do fun and engaging things at work, so forgive me if posting has been light.
An item of discussion around the office lately has been the current drought in the American Midwest. This drought is likely to push wholesale prices of corn to levels that have never been seen before in the US. Jim Hilker of Michigan State University has a good overview here. The upshot of this is that there have never been more voices calling for the repeal of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).
As usual, most of the political storm has left people swimming in misconceptions. For one thing, the magnitude of the American drought is often couched in relative terms or in absolute differences. For context, the 2012/2013 corn crop season is still expected by the USDA to be the 8th largest US corn harvest in history, easily beating out those at the start of the last decade. Despite the hit to yields, corn in the US will still be cheaper than almost anywhere else in the world, unrelated sweet corn prices will of course stay decoupled from field corn, and meat price increases may be delayed due to the early slaughter of many livestock herds in anticipation of higher prices. But the drought has now put agricultural and energy policy directly in the public's eyes, for better or for worse.
I figure it's now an appropriate time to ramble on a bit about the RFS, who's challenging it and why, whether or not it's good policy, and what ought to be done about it in the end.
An item of discussion around the office lately has been the current drought in the American Midwest. This drought is likely to push wholesale prices of corn to levels that have never been seen before in the US. Jim Hilker of Michigan State University has a good overview here. The upshot of this is that there have never been more voices calling for the repeal of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).
As usual, most of the political storm has left people swimming in misconceptions. For one thing, the magnitude of the American drought is often couched in relative terms or in absolute differences. For context, the 2012/2013 corn crop season is still expected by the USDA to be the 8th largest US corn harvest in history, easily beating out those at the start of the last decade. Despite the hit to yields, corn in the US will still be cheaper than almost anywhere else in the world, unrelated sweet corn prices will of course stay decoupled from field corn, and meat price increases may be delayed due to the early slaughter of many livestock herds in anticipation of higher prices. But the drought has now put agricultural and energy policy directly in the public's eyes, for better or for worse.
I figure it's now an appropriate time to ramble on a bit about the RFS, who's challenging it and why, whether or not it's good policy, and what ought to be done about it in the end.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The Conversations We're Not Having on Fossil Fuel Subsidies
On The Energy Collective, Robert Rapier recently wrote an article examining many of the misconceptions in the ongoing (largely political theater) debate over oil company subsidies. It is a good article, and well worth the read. I say that the debate it centers on is political theater, though, because no one is talking about the largest and most egregious oil subsidy in the US at all.
According to the NHTSA, 193 billion dollars was spent in 2007 on highway construction and maintenance, of which only 51 percent was funded from user fees - user fees being, of course, the gasoline tax and tolls. Rapier's article goes over a good accounting of the fossil fuel subsidies in the US, but his top spot goes to purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, amounting to $1 billion annually. This might seem like a lot, but I find it difficult to believe that the national conversation has focused only on such explicit subsidies to manufacturing and some minor tax exemptions, and have consistently failed at fingering the largest tax expenditure of all: the effective subsidy from the general taxpayer pool was 94.6 billion dollars in 2007, and undoubtedly more now.
The explicit subsidies from the general taxpayer pool for unfunded road maintenance are nearly two orders of magnitude larger than the SPR purchases Rapier noted, and we need to bring them into the conversation. In case it isn't obvious, from an economist's perspective, general taxpayer subsidies are less efficient than levying a full surcharge because the costs of driving should be borne proportionate to the amount of maintenance one incurs on roads - that is, on heavy drivers - and a fuel surcharge is a reasonable proxy for taxing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or, alternatively, some combination of VMT and vehicle weight. An increase in the fuel tax would not be a Pigouvian tax, because the purpose is not to achieve some change but to internalize the cost of a negative externality. It would contribute to overall efficiency.
It should be obvious why the Obama administration is pushing for these small but controversial subsidies to end while ignoring the elephant in the room: gas price rises are political suicide, for him and for anyone else. Even if you accompany gas price rises with a tax cut amounting to an average of $315 a year for every man, woman, and child in America (simple division of $95 billion by 300 million, forgive me), people won't put two and two together. But if we are to have an honest talk about subsidies, then highway subsidies need to be on the table, and in line for the chopping block.
According to the NHTSA, 193 billion dollars was spent in 2007 on highway construction and maintenance, of which only 51 percent was funded from user fees - user fees being, of course, the gasoline tax and tolls. Rapier's article goes over a good accounting of the fossil fuel subsidies in the US, but his top spot goes to purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, amounting to $1 billion annually. This might seem like a lot, but I find it difficult to believe that the national conversation has focused only on such explicit subsidies to manufacturing and some minor tax exemptions, and have consistently failed at fingering the largest tax expenditure of all: the effective subsidy from the general taxpayer pool was 94.6 billion dollars in 2007, and undoubtedly more now.
The explicit subsidies from the general taxpayer pool for unfunded road maintenance are nearly two orders of magnitude larger than the SPR purchases Rapier noted, and we need to bring them into the conversation. In case it isn't obvious, from an economist's perspective, general taxpayer subsidies are less efficient than levying a full surcharge because the costs of driving should be borne proportionate to the amount of maintenance one incurs on roads - that is, on heavy drivers - and a fuel surcharge is a reasonable proxy for taxing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or, alternatively, some combination of VMT and vehicle weight. An increase in the fuel tax would not be a Pigouvian tax, because the purpose is not to achieve some change but to internalize the cost of a negative externality. It would contribute to overall efficiency.
It should be obvious why the Obama administration is pushing for these small but controversial subsidies to end while ignoring the elephant in the room: gas price rises are political suicide, for him and for anyone else. Even if you accompany gas price rises with a tax cut amounting to an average of $315 a year for every man, woman, and child in America (simple division of $95 billion by 300 million, forgive me), people won't put two and two together. But if we are to have an honest talk about subsidies, then highway subsidies need to be on the table, and in line for the chopping block.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Dangers of Imperial Thinking
It takes a special brand of self-flagellating bastard to go through the comments section of any article on China in any respected international publication. Filtering through the toxic dross formed by mixing xenophobic bile and the fifty cent party (not that those are mutually exclusive) is a task best accomplished with a plate of saltine crackers and tums. Simply tuning out, however, is something that I have not yet brought myself to do. Any way you look at it, reading what the other side puts out gives you some inkling of their thought process.
In this case, the "other side" means "anyone who is willing to spew vitriol on China," one way or another. One surprising observation I have taken from either side of the debate (pro- or anti-China) is the prevalence of a mode of thought that I'd believed extinct. Harking back to the international relations of the 19th century, many people - the pro-Chinese especially, but others as well - couch their debates in terms of Great Power clashes and Imperialism. This type of thinking is not only simplistic, it is outright bad for international discourse.
In this case, the "other side" means "anyone who is willing to spew vitriol on China," one way or another. One surprising observation I have taken from either side of the debate (pro- or anti-China) is the prevalence of a mode of thought that I'd believed extinct. Harking back to the international relations of the 19th century, many people - the pro-Chinese especially, but others as well - couch their debates in terms of Great Power clashes and Imperialism. This type of thinking is not only simplistic, it is outright bad for international discourse.
Monday, January 9, 2012
The absurdity of trade retaliation
My posting has been light of late, mainly due to the holidays, but news in the new year has not stopped rolling in. As we ended the year, the US has been proceeding on its investigation of Chinese products, deciding whether or not to impose antidumping duties on, among other things, solar panels. You might argue that all an investigation has to do is read back issues of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, but there are some rules that go with this.
Antidumping tariffs can be unilaterally imposed under WTO rules by the aggrieved country provided there is a formal investigation; however, there is no external monitoring of each country's process. While one can be reasonably certain that most antidumping duties have at least some justification behind them, more often than not they are the ammunition of tit-for-tat trade wars, since most products that receive some form of subsidy are not covered by these duties. In less democratic countries, the process is also likely to be less transparent and more politically motivated.
China has responded, predictably, by launching retaliatory proceedings on the US' main export to China: foodstuffs and agricultural feedstocks, like DDG (used to feed livestock). However, I'd argue that Chinese trade retaliation of this type is not only petty and silly, but also actively harmful to Chinese goals.
Antidumping tariffs can be unilaterally imposed under WTO rules by the aggrieved country provided there is a formal investigation; however, there is no external monitoring of each country's process. While one can be reasonably certain that most antidumping duties have at least some justification behind them, more often than not they are the ammunition of tit-for-tat trade wars, since most products that receive some form of subsidy are not covered by these duties. In less democratic countries, the process is also likely to be less transparent and more politically motivated.
China has responded, predictably, by launching retaliatory proceedings on the US' main export to China: foodstuffs and agricultural feedstocks, like DDG (used to feed livestock). However, I'd argue that Chinese trade retaliation of this type is not only petty and silly, but also actively harmful to Chinese goals.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thought, and the lack thereof, in the dialogue
Immersion in the contentious world of energy policy and politics is, at times, profoundly depressing. When I first decided to specialize in energy and energy policy as my field of study, some 7 years ago, there were only a few grumblings in the English-speaking world that energy might be a problem at some point in the future. As I've studied and worked my way up into the field, I have been confronted with the reality that while the general level of knowledge of the population has gone up, the tone of the conversation has gone down.
Friday, November 11, 2011
The articles about Keystone XL you aren't reading
Obama's delay of Keystone XL is a move to mend bridges with his environmentalist base before the election. Well, that's transparent.
Canadian Finance minister Jim Flaherty says that the delay of Keystone XL will accelerate Canada's efforts to build a pipeline to its west coast to ship to Asia. So, um, again about how delaying the pipeline does nothing to stop extraction or stop oil from going to China.
Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime minister, is still hopeful. Good for him. I am frankly surprised that he doesn't feel emasculated, given that American environmentalists are attempting to dictate the environmental policy of the country he nominally governs.
I know the tone of this post is more opinionated and angry than usual, but I just have trouble grappling with how the environmentalist movement has been taken over by people with no knowledge of how ineffective their goals are at accomplishing anything.
Canadian Finance minister Jim Flaherty says that the delay of Keystone XL will accelerate Canada's efforts to build a pipeline to its west coast to ship to Asia. So, um, again about how delaying the pipeline does nothing to stop extraction or stop oil from going to China.
Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime minister, is still hopeful. Good for him. I am frankly surprised that he doesn't feel emasculated, given that American environmentalists are attempting to dictate the environmental policy of the country he nominally governs.
I know the tone of this post is more opinionated and angry than usual, but I just have trouble grappling with how the environmentalist movement has been taken over by people with no knowledge of how ineffective their goals are at accomplishing anything.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Climate Skepticism and Epistemic Closure
For some time now I've been regularly reading the postings of a blog called Bit Tooth Energy, run by a former professor at the University of Missouri. While I initially read for excellent descriptions of energy technology, I was also impressed by the way the guy has systematically gone through temperature data for different states in the US and investigated trends - running a weekly, independent analysis of temperature trends, which in the continental US are quite varied. What impressed me more was that it was (and still is) done in a very data-oriented, neutral and technocratic manner.
It's both a confirmation of my own biases and of my ignorance that I was surprised to recently find that he places himself in the camp of climate change "skeptics." I had simply assumed someone running the data on his own would at least feel that the jury is out, if not be leaning towards the climate change-is-real-wake-up crowd. I stand corrected.
But that's not really what this entry is about. Bit Tooth Energy's writer may be a climate change skeptic, but he has thankfully kept any hint of confirmation bias out of his analysis and (most of) his writing. Hell, in order to try and find a broader perspective, I've been trying to find an honest skeptic out there whose interests lie with data analysis, and who values civility and not ad homoniem attacks. Stephen McIntyre may have started out that way, but now he's a jerkwad. Anyway, upon reading this entry, it appears that I've found what I've been looking for, someone who deserves the title of skeptic - even though that post is one that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, it's at the very least reasonable. That's why my visit to the website of a book he recommended, a supposed expose of the IPCC in its relationship with the WWF, was all the more jarring.
It's both a confirmation of my own biases and of my ignorance that I was surprised to recently find that he places himself in the camp of climate change "skeptics." I had simply assumed someone running the data on his own would at least feel that the jury is out, if not be leaning towards the climate change-is-real-wake-up crowd. I stand corrected.
But that's not really what this entry is about. Bit Tooth Energy's writer may be a climate change skeptic, but he has thankfully kept any hint of confirmation bias out of his analysis and (most of) his writing. Hell, in order to try and find a broader perspective, I've been trying to find an honest skeptic out there whose interests lie with data analysis, and who values civility and not ad homoniem attacks. Stephen McIntyre may have started out that way, but now he's a jerkwad. Anyway, upon reading this entry, it appears that I've found what I've been looking for, someone who deserves the title of skeptic - even though that post is one that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, it's at the very least reasonable. That's why my visit to the website of a book he recommended, a supposed expose of the IPCC in its relationship with the WWF, was all the more jarring.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
A new salvo in the fracking debate
Some time ago the town of Dryden, which is a few short miles from Ithaca, banned fracking on the town's land. Their concern about environmental contamination was less significant than in other towns - Dryden is significantly more conservative than Ithaca - and was more or less focused on their rural zoning laws. I can sympathize; besides a section connected to Rt 17 that has some strip malls, Dryden is a quiet rural town, complete with a historic town center and church, and its own speed trap. Ultimately, they decided to class fracking as heavy industry and banned it from their land due to zoning regulations.
That comes into conflict with NYS DEC rulings and with a state law, from the 1970s, that explicitly assigned mineral and energy rights management to the state. The result is an interesting mix, since article IX of the New York State constitution enshrines the local municipality's right to regulate and control its land. There's now a lawsuit in progress over the rights to drill, since a company has apparently invested $5 million in the belief that the town had no jurisdiction. The conflict is probably going to head straight to the state supreme court.
Honestly, while Federal or State land is one issue, my opinion tends towards the town of Dryden here. The people who live there own the land, if not individually then through the town. Regardless of their motivation for the decision, it's up to them whether they want to partake of an opportunity or not. Doubtlessly, though, it will almost certainly come down to the most arcane of points in the judicial ruling. Yet another reason I won't become a lawyer any time soon.
That comes into conflict with NYS DEC rulings and with a state law, from the 1970s, that explicitly assigned mineral and energy rights management to the state. The result is an interesting mix, since article IX of the New York State constitution enshrines the local municipality's right to regulate and control its land. There's now a lawsuit in progress over the rights to drill, since a company has apparently invested $5 million in the belief that the town had no jurisdiction. The conflict is probably going to head straight to the state supreme court.
Honestly, while Federal or State land is one issue, my opinion tends towards the town of Dryden here. The people who live there own the land, if not individually then through the town. Regardless of their motivation for the decision, it's up to them whether they want to partake of an opportunity or not. Doubtlessly, though, it will almost certainly come down to the most arcane of points in the judicial ruling. Yet another reason I won't become a lawyer any time soon.
Indian Points
One of the biggest issues coming around in New York these days is the relicensure of the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor by the NRC. Indian Point is coming under attack by the environmental movement in NYC, and they haven't been afraid to raise the Specter of Fukushima over and over again. The very fact that this license renewal is coming at a low-water mark for nuclear energy makes it one of the more hotly contested fights in recent years.
As part of the opening salvos, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection commissioned a study by Charles River Associates, an economics and management consulting firm, and the NRDC and Riverkeeper Inc. fired back with another by Synapse Energy Economics, an energy economics consulting firm, both of Cambridge, MA. Not trusting the news reports, whose science and economics journalism pretty much sucks, I went ahead and read both of them.
As part of the opening salvos, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection commissioned a study by Charles River Associates, an economics and management consulting firm, and the NRDC and Riverkeeper Inc. fired back with another by Synapse Energy Economics, an energy economics consulting firm, both of Cambridge, MA. Not trusting the news reports, whose science and economics journalism pretty much sucks, I went ahead and read both of them.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Day of Defeat
Everyone remembers their own story about September 11. How couldn't we? For a boy just in his teenage years, not quite reaching the point where world events were at least as important as video games, it was a jarring and sudden wake-up call.
I was in Singapore. It was shortly after 8 p.m. I was upstairs, on the internet as was my wont. I'd just moved overseas, and school had started only a few weeks prior. My dad called me downstairs. Like the rest of the Americans overseas, young and old, my family and I were glued to the television for the rest of our night - what would be for most Americans a long, agonizing day.
You'll often hear that 9/11 changed the character of Americans, fundamentally. I'm told that in the first few days in the country, solidarity was the word of the day, but that the ugly elements of a changed national mood reared their head soon enough.
Looking back, anything America as a whole experienced, I think the overseas community reacted even faster.
Of course there was the solidarity. You didn't have to watch the candlelight vigils on the television when there were four happening in my school alone. What was for me the morning after September 11, I remember everyone in school silent, ignoring the class bells, watching President Bush deliver his address following the attack. It had produced psychological blows that could turn 8th graders somber and brooding.
But in retrospect what I remember most was the fear. At first, the famously tolerant overseas community seemed to be a beacon for the wider national solidarity in Singapore. But then, what seems like a short time afterwards, dark-skinned men with jaunty hats, huge sickle-shaped knives and automatic weaponry showed up outside of my school. I remember the stares that came from the kids on my bus. Then we heard: there'd been a Jemaah Islamiyah plot to bomb the US embassy, The American Club, our school, an MRT station. The reaction to the security was one of relief. It was also a microcosm of what had happened to America: the sudden realization that we were vulnerable. Instead of it taking months in America, for us it was only a few days.
Our buses, which previously had had a huge Singapore American School logo on them, suddenly had them crudely painted over. We were encouraged by our parents to avoid going out with our friends in our school uniforms. People in Little America stood on their porches, keeping vigil over their neighborhood.
I remember when people started cancelling all of their trips to Muslim countries, most from mistaken paranoia. All it brought on was suffering, and in many cases, resentment. It was this fear that doomed Bali to ten years of recession, Eat Pray Love notwithstanding. The first time I visited, in 2003, the tour guide assured us he was Hindu, without any prompting. Why, I thought, should that matter?
For those who lived in cosmopolitan Singapore, with its large Muslim minority, the general attitude continued to be tolerance - at least of Singapore's citizens. But in a lot of other ways, Americans withdrew. My mother wasn't sure if it was safe for me to go to a main shopping street alone. We all banded together in this little bubble of social groups around the American club, a golf resort in Bintan, the American School, and locals went into the background.
Perhaps what was most jarring was the attitude of the newcomers to our little group. After American popularity took a turn for the worse in 2003, the reaction of any newcomer was to circle the wagons. These were kids who thought of Muslims with fear, who assumed anyone foreign might be threatening, and sailed into the life of privilege afforded to most expatriates with a sense of entitlement rivalled only by their desire to be haughtily judgmental. One day I saw a kid trying to tease a building worker, who was a Muslim, with food. It was Ramadan. He was two years older than I. Another time, I had to shout at four stupid kids who thought that our bus driver was a Nazi because he had a red swastika on his bus. They couldn't understand that it was a Buddhist, Hindu and Daoist symbol, but most importantly refused to acknowledge the difference between any of those and a terrorist.
September 11 was a defining moment for my entire generation. I've taken recently, however, to calling it the day of defeat. We lost. Al-Qaeda won. From my vantage point in Singapore, through most of the years of the Bush presidency, I saw how insular and violent America became, the inchoate anger of the rest of the world as they beheld us lashing out at real or imagined demons. I watched how slowly, America enacted laws that made it seem closer to Singapore, still only a slightly relaxed police state, than I was comfortable with. And most of all, I felt like I was one of the only ones mature enough - even among the adults - to stop and say, "what are we becoming?" I didn't like what I saw. It is especially telling that for three years while I was in high school, I told people that I wasn't an American. A silly sentiment perhaps, but the truth was I found it difficult to identify with the country I had come from.
Osama bin Laden was a twisted sonofabitch, and wanted Muslims to unify against an aggressive America that could be branded a great Satan. He imagined us as petty, insular, drunk on our own power, vicious, uncaring, and utterly intolerant of Muslims, or anyone else for that matter.
Osama bin Laden imagined a caricature of America, and he made it, in many ways, truth.
I was in Singapore. It was shortly after 8 p.m. I was upstairs, on the internet as was my wont. I'd just moved overseas, and school had started only a few weeks prior. My dad called me downstairs. Like the rest of the Americans overseas, young and old, my family and I were glued to the television for the rest of our night - what would be for most Americans a long, agonizing day.
You'll often hear that 9/11 changed the character of Americans, fundamentally. I'm told that in the first few days in the country, solidarity was the word of the day, but that the ugly elements of a changed national mood reared their head soon enough.
Looking back, anything America as a whole experienced, I think the overseas community reacted even faster.
Of course there was the solidarity. You didn't have to watch the candlelight vigils on the television when there were four happening in my school alone. What was for me the morning after September 11, I remember everyone in school silent, ignoring the class bells, watching President Bush deliver his address following the attack. It had produced psychological blows that could turn 8th graders somber and brooding.
But in retrospect what I remember most was the fear. At first, the famously tolerant overseas community seemed to be a beacon for the wider national solidarity in Singapore. But then, what seems like a short time afterwards, dark-skinned men with jaunty hats, huge sickle-shaped knives and automatic weaponry showed up outside of my school. I remember the stares that came from the kids on my bus. Then we heard: there'd been a Jemaah Islamiyah plot to bomb the US embassy, The American Club, our school, an MRT station. The reaction to the security was one of relief. It was also a microcosm of what had happened to America: the sudden realization that we were vulnerable. Instead of it taking months in America, for us it was only a few days.
Our buses, which previously had had a huge Singapore American School logo on them, suddenly had them crudely painted over. We were encouraged by our parents to avoid going out with our friends in our school uniforms. People in Little America stood on their porches, keeping vigil over their neighborhood.
I remember when people started cancelling all of their trips to Muslim countries, most from mistaken paranoia. All it brought on was suffering, and in many cases, resentment. It was this fear that doomed Bali to ten years of recession, Eat Pray Love notwithstanding. The first time I visited, in 2003, the tour guide assured us he was Hindu, without any prompting. Why, I thought, should that matter?
For those who lived in cosmopolitan Singapore, with its large Muslim minority, the general attitude continued to be tolerance - at least of Singapore's citizens. But in a lot of other ways, Americans withdrew. My mother wasn't sure if it was safe for me to go to a main shopping street alone. We all banded together in this little bubble of social groups around the American club, a golf resort in Bintan, the American School, and locals went into the background.
Perhaps what was most jarring was the attitude of the newcomers to our little group. After American popularity took a turn for the worse in 2003, the reaction of any newcomer was to circle the wagons. These were kids who thought of Muslims with fear, who assumed anyone foreign might be threatening, and sailed into the life of privilege afforded to most expatriates with a sense of entitlement rivalled only by their desire to be haughtily judgmental. One day I saw a kid trying to tease a building worker, who was a Muslim, with food. It was Ramadan. He was two years older than I. Another time, I had to shout at four stupid kids who thought that our bus driver was a Nazi because he had a red swastika on his bus. They couldn't understand that it was a Buddhist, Hindu and Daoist symbol, but most importantly refused to acknowledge the difference between any of those and a terrorist.
September 11 was a defining moment for my entire generation. I've taken recently, however, to calling it the day of defeat. We lost. Al-Qaeda won. From my vantage point in Singapore, through most of the years of the Bush presidency, I saw how insular and violent America became, the inchoate anger of the rest of the world as they beheld us lashing out at real or imagined demons. I watched how slowly, America enacted laws that made it seem closer to Singapore, still only a slightly relaxed police state, than I was comfortable with. And most of all, I felt like I was one of the only ones mature enough - even among the adults - to stop and say, "what are we becoming?" I didn't like what I saw. It is especially telling that for three years while I was in high school, I told people that I wasn't an American. A silly sentiment perhaps, but the truth was I found it difficult to identify with the country I had come from.
Osama bin Laden was a twisted sonofabitch, and wanted Muslims to unify against an aggressive America that could be branded a great Satan. He imagined us as petty, insular, drunk on our own power, vicious, uncaring, and utterly intolerant of Muslims, or anyone else for that matter.
Osama bin Laden imagined a caricature of America, and he made it, in many ways, truth.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Solar Industry Dynamics and Solyndra
The solar cell company Solyndra failed last week, taking with it a $535 million DOE loan guarantee and triggering a press blitz in which every single anti-government pundit attacked solar energy as something that "doesn't work" and putting up Solyndra as everything that's wrong with government intervention. There's a much more subtle picture going on here, however, and the media storm glosses over many of the aspects that made Solyndra's failure inevitable well before the current slump in the solar industry hit.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Lee Kuan Yew Resigns
Singapore has a special place in my heart. I spent a significant amount of time growing up there, and have a lot of fond memories. It also is the reason why I take all of my civil liberties very seriously. Five years in a place that doesn't have them is enough to make you appreciate what you have, a lot. But for the sake of my fond memories, I will always find the time to criticize Singapore because, to paraphrase Baldwin, I love the place.
And inevitably this means that I've got to talk about LKY's resignation from government. On the one hand, I'm not surprised that the grand old man of Singapore is retiring. He said for many years that there was a definite point where he realized that the younger generation needed to take over, and he reiterated that on his farewell. On the other hand, I'm wondering what his departure signals.
Anyone with half a brain knows Singapore isn't a true democracy. Sure it counts its votes fairly, but all credible opposition is sued for defamation into a smoking hole. Vicious self-censorship follows. Candidates that dare run against the old statesmen are ruthlessly attacked by the local media in the name of journalistic integrity while the excesses and failures of the party stalwarts are ignored.
The PAP's support has dropped to 60% of the electorate (despite this, their system of voting rules makes it so that there are maybe 6 opposition candidates that got elected out of 90 voting members). LKY resigned after this relative electoral drubbing (considering that support for the PAP reached 90% in the 80s).
So does LKY's resignation signal that his brand of authoritarianism is coming to a slow and gradual end? Is Singapore moving towards actual accountable democracy? Or is it simply a convenient time for an octogenarian widower statesman to retire and live a quiet life?
I don't know. It's entirely unclear to me what the move symbolizes, even if it is the last of the old guard leaving power. Telling is that LKY is leaving power to his son, the face of the present political dynasty, albeit one that is nominally democratically elected. Additionally, what the PAP has done in the past in response to electoral signals like this is use its formidable majority in parliament to strong-arm through popular programs - not really democratic accountability, but some accountability nonetheless. On the other hand, Singapore has gone through a relatively slow trend of media and electoral liberalization, but whether this is from the aforementioned tendency to placate the plebs is unclear.
Time will tell.
---
In other news, I finished my thesis this past weekend, and am now going to spend my remaining time in Ithaca with my brother, who is currently passed out on the futon. Our contract is that I cook tasty foods and he stays amusing. It works out well.
And inevitably this means that I've got to talk about LKY's resignation from government. On the one hand, I'm not surprised that the grand old man of Singapore is retiring. He said for many years that there was a definite point where he realized that the younger generation needed to take over, and he reiterated that on his farewell. On the other hand, I'm wondering what his departure signals.
Anyone with half a brain knows Singapore isn't a true democracy. Sure it counts its votes fairly, but all credible opposition is sued for defamation into a smoking hole. Vicious self-censorship follows. Candidates that dare run against the old statesmen are ruthlessly attacked by the local media in the name of journalistic integrity while the excesses and failures of the party stalwarts are ignored.
The PAP's support has dropped to 60% of the electorate (despite this, their system of voting rules makes it so that there are maybe 6 opposition candidates that got elected out of 90 voting members). LKY resigned after this relative electoral drubbing (considering that support for the PAP reached 90% in the 80s).
So does LKY's resignation signal that his brand of authoritarianism is coming to a slow and gradual end? Is Singapore moving towards actual accountable democracy? Or is it simply a convenient time for an octogenarian widower statesman to retire and live a quiet life?
I don't know. It's entirely unclear to me what the move symbolizes, even if it is the last of the old guard leaving power. Telling is that LKY is leaving power to his son, the face of the present political dynasty, albeit one that is nominally democratically elected. Additionally, what the PAP has done in the past in response to electoral signals like this is use its formidable majority in parliament to strong-arm through popular programs - not really democratic accountability, but some accountability nonetheless. On the other hand, Singapore has gone through a relatively slow trend of media and electoral liberalization, but whether this is from the aforementioned tendency to placate the plebs is unclear.
Time will tell.
---
In other news, I finished my thesis this past weekend, and am now going to spend my remaining time in Ithaca with my brother, who is currently passed out on the futon. Our contract is that I cook tasty foods and he stays amusing. It works out well.
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