How reliable is fact-checking?

This campaign season, when candidates in both parties appear to be frequently "stretching the truth", if not propounding outright lies about each other, the on-line fact checking sites are more important than ever for those of us not just blindly voting for one party or the other.  But how accurate is the fact checking?

Paul Ryan claimed in his convention speech that President Obama promised to keep open the auto factory in his home town, which then subsequently closed. Liberal commentators jumped on that, claiming that in fact the factory closed under the Bush administration. Sounds like good fact checking, EXCEPT that apparently the fact checkers need fact checking themselves.  See the posting Ryan's Fact-Challenged Fact Checkers for more fact checking on the fact checkers.  Actually, it's a bit hard to see how Obama could have been giving his speech at the factory if it was already closed, so one might have been suspicious of the commentator's "fact checking" right from the start..

I'm not inclined to take very seriously any of the negative advertising, from either party, going on right now - it is so obviously partisan that it is essentially meaningless.

Right now one thing matters above all - getting the nation's fiscal house back in order, which means only three things in the short term (1) stimulating more private business activity, (2) eliminating the federal deficit and beginning to reduce the debt load, and (3) reforming the entitlement programs, primarily Medicare and Medicaid, that are currently unsustainable. In the medium term one might add two more related items: (4) improving our failing education system, and (5) upgrading the nation's infrastructure.  All I care about right now is what each party will do for these items.

We already know what the current administration will do, based on what they have done for these items over the last four years -- almost nothing effective.

Will Republicans do any better?  It's hard to know.

Quotation of the week

As I watch Republicans elect narrow-minded religious bigots and Democrats elect self-important head-in-the-clouds idealists, I am reminded of this quote from one of my favorite social observers, journalist and satirist H. L.Menken (1880-1956)

 "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

A plague on both your houses

What is a voter to do?  Our choice this year seems to be between

Democrats, who clearly intend to do nothing about cutting spending and beginning to reduce the deficit, who have an unrealistic faith in the ability of government to fix anything, who are unwilling to consider cutting entitlement programs even though they are bankrupting the country, and who would dearly love to evolve America to a European model cradle-to-grave government-controlled society (notwithstanding how those societies in Europe are even now in the process of imploding from their ballooning social program costs),

and

Republicans, who are locked into an irrational absolutist mentality about not raising taxes to help reduce the deficit, who have an unrealistic faith in free market forces to fix anything, who are unwilling to consider cutting military spending even though we already spend more on our military than the next 20 nations combined, and who are full of loony, small-minded fundamentalist religious beliefs that they would like to foist on everyone else.

Do I exaggerate?  I wish I did, but in truth that is about what I see across the political landscape this year.

What is a voter to do?

This morning's news review

I just finished my morning review of various news and political sites, and I am appalled at the vitriolic nature of the Op Eds and stories. Usually there are a lot of right-wing and left-wing rants, but at least a few moderate, thoughtful, informative pieces as well.  Not this morning. Besides Michael Moore protecting an accused rapist (Julian Assange), there are an unbelievable number of truly scurrilous attacks on Paul Ryan and about an equal number of equally scurrilous attacks on President Obama. (Interesting that Romney seems to be getting a bye this morning).

And what is really telling is that there are hardly any Op Ed pieces or stories dealing with ANY of the real issues we face - the deficit and debt, the economy, crumbling infrastructure, failing educational systems, etc. etc.  There is a lot of noise about Senate candidate Todd Akin's really dumb comment about rape (and Democratic attempts to claim that EVERY Republican thinks that way), and the continuing fact-free non-debate about who is really cutting Medicare.

I guess the point is that the regular on-line news media, and the print media, now appears about as intellectually undisciplined as all the flames and rants on the blogosphere and on talk radio.  That can't be a good sign.

Where did your tax dollars go?

Along the lines of my earlier comment that we need to decide what we are willing to pay for, go to this site to get an idea of what you personally are paying for each government service.

I'm a little unclear how they are handling the deficit in this calculation.  If the estimates are based on federal expenditures, than the numbers are about right, but your total taxes in this calculation are about 37% too high, because in fact the government is having to borrow 37% of its budget to cover its expenditures. If your taxes are correct, then you need to inflate the numbers in each category by a bit more than a third to get the actual cost (the extra third is what was borrowed, and will someday have to be paid back by your children or grandchildren or great grandchildren, or ....)

So now you can look at each category and ask yourself if the services offered in that category are really worth to you what you are paying for them.  If so, we just need to all raise our taxes and pay for it.  If not, then we need to downsize or eliminate that service.

The lost jobs

Several posts ago I asserted that many of the jobs that have been lost in this recession will never come back, and that we had better revise our educational system to prepare the next generation for different, more technological, jobs.   In that respect I found the article in today's New York Times online highly relevant: Skilled Work, Without the Worker.  Watch the embedded video - it will blow you away.

Clearly if robots take over a large proportion of today's factory jobs, it will have substantial impact on the whole world of work. Costs of many goods will drop sharply, because in many industries the largest cost component is the cost of labor along with its benefits.  Robots don't need benefits, only occasional maintenance. Robots can work 24/7 without meals or coffee breaks. Robots don't demand unions, or pay raises.

What do the displaced people do? Well, they had better learn to design, improve, sell, program and maintain robots. Or they had better learn to do creative, intellectual jobs that robots can't do.

Another alternative

I said a couple of posts back that we can't just keep borrowing almost 40% (actually 37% this year) of our federal budget each year, so we needed to cut something like $2 trillion from each year's budget to close the deficit and begin to reduce the debt. Of course people throw up their hands at that -- think of all the poor who won't get food stamps, the underprivileged who won't get health care, all the government workers and contractors who would lose their jobs, etc, etc.

 But of course there is another alternative, if we really don't want to give up all that federal help and all those federal jobs -- we could simply raise everyone's taxes.  At a rough guess, we would need to just about double everyone's taxes to close the gap.  So think of last year's tax bill, and double it. Would you be willing to do that to keep all those government agencies and military adventures and welfare programs and farm subsidies and...and....and?  If so, let's do it.  If not, let's get real about what federal services we are really willing to pay for.

Recommended: Strategic Vision

I have been reading Zbigniew Brzezinski's new (2012) book Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, and I highly recommend it. Brzezinski was President Carter's National Security Adviser, and is now a professor at John Hopkins University. This is his 16th book on global geopolitics, and the other two (Second Chance and The Grand Chessboard)  I have read have also been good.

In this book Brzezinski discusses America's current (tenuous) position as the global superpower, and speculates as to what may happen globally if America can't pull up its socks and get out of its current messes, but instead drifts into a post-empire second class status over the next few decades.  As he says

"Americans must understand that our strength abroad will depend increasingly on our ability to confront problems at home"

He lists six critical dimension among current American liabilities:

• Unsustainable national debt
• Flawed financial system
• Widening income inequality
• decaying national infrastructure
• A public highly ignorant about the world
• Increasingly gridlocked and highly partisan political system

and argues that if we can't, as a nation, begin to address these effectively, we are inevitably drifting into second-class status in the world.  He argues that we still have the assets to get out of these problems, but only if we have the will to face them.

The Congressional problem

As my daughter pointed out to me yesterday, Congress is the real problem in this country, whether Obama or Romney get the presidency in this next election.  And she is right.  Why is this?  What has gone awry with the Congressional system?

The proximal symptom is that Congress is sharply divided between the far right and the far left, with almost no moderates left in between, so it cannot seem to work across the aisle and find compromises as it used to do.  But why is this?

One reason is certainly the gerrymandering of Congressional districts that has gone on for the past decade or two, by both parties, to makes a lot of “safe” seats for their side. Politicians from “safe” districts need only appeal to their party’s base; there is no incentive to appeal to voters of the other party because the politician doesn’t need their votes.  So we tend to get more extreme, more one-sided members of Congress from these “safe” districts. How bad has gerrymandering become?  Look at this map of Illinois Congressional District 4 near Chicago, currently held by a Democrat:

A second reason, coupled to the first, is the lack of term limits. Too often politicians get into the House or Senate and that becomes their lifetime job. Bolstered by the free postage, the free publicity, and the generous campaign donations from those companies and industries they represent, they often become almost invulnerable in re-elections, and have little need to compromise to attract support from voters in the other party.

A third reason, suggested by some writer (I wish I could remember who) is that many politicians don’t live in Washington any more.  In the old days, politicians stayed in Washington while Congress was in session, even owned homes in Washington. So inevitably, even with differing political views, they became friends. I recall my great uncle, who was a Washington news correspondent, telling me that it was not uncommon for Congressmen to assail each other on the House floor all day, and then all adjourn to Sam Rayburn’s office (he was the Speaker of the House) in the afternoon and drink bourbon together.  Like lawyers, they could dispute vigorously on the chamber floor, but be great friends and golfing buddies on the weekends.

But nowadays, apparently, many in Congress are in Washington only 3 or 4 days a week, flying back to their home districts every weekend (on taxpayer dollars, of course). So they aren’t friends, which makes it easier to demonize each other.  And certainly the personal attacks flying between members of Congress seem to me far worse, and far more frequent, than in past decades.

I don’t know that much can be done about the third point, but undoing the outrageous gerrymandering and introducing term limits would certainly begin to attack the problem.

What are the hard truths?

A friend, reading my last post, asked a good question – if a candidate were to decide to risk their political future and actually tell the voters the hard truths, what would those truths be?  Here, I suggest, are a few of them:

1. We can’t keep borrowing 40% of the federal budget each year. In fact, we can’t continue to borrow ANY of the federal budget each year.  We not only have to stop growing the federal debt, we have to begin to pay some of it back, to get it back down at least below 80% of GDP within the next decade or so.  That means we have to cut something like $2 Trillion out of each year’s appx $3.8 Trillion federal budget – more than half. Yes, that means an awful lot of government workers and contractors will lose their jobs, and a lot of federal agencies will have to be downsized or eliminated completely. We might spread the downsizing out over a few years, and do as much as possible with attrition, but the jobs will have to go – we simply can’t afford all of them; we are bankrupt as a nation.

2. There is no way to cut that much out of the budget without reducing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security payments, since these make up close to half (42%) the federal budget right now.  Yes, it will be painful.  Yes, it will require that seniors pay more for their medical care, and that doctors and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies  figure out how to cut their costs substantially and live on lower profits. Yes, it will mean that we can’t all have the very best medical care. That’s the real world – like it or not.  Americans had just better learn to take better care of themselves, lose some weight, stop smoking, eat less junk food, and shop competitively for their medical care. The alternative is to keep going the way we are until the whole system collapse catastrophically, which would be far, far more painful.

3.  Many of the jobs lost in this recession will never come back.  Ignore the glib promises from politicians about restoring American manufacturing. It just isn’t going to happen.  The world has changed. America can prosper, and have a wealth of high-paying jobs, if and only if we train up our young workforce for the technological, innovation-driven, knowledge industries of today’s world.  That means we have to rethink and renovate our educational system from kindergarten to graduate schools, whatever the teacher’s unions think, whatever the state and local educational bureaucracies think, whatever the college faculty councils think.  And we have to do it with about half the money per pupil we currently spend, which means innovation, not more money, has to be the solution.

4. We have to cut our military budget about in half. It can be done, and still leave us with the largest, best-equipped military in the world. But it means less exorbitantly expensive gold-plated weapons systems, fewer manned aircraft, fewer military bases, and smaller ships. It also means politicians (especially Presidents) have to keep a check on their tendency to use the military to try to solve their foreign policy problems. And of course it means Congress has to wean itself from the undue influence (and donations) of the defense industry. Painful, (for a politician) but necessary.

5. We have to revise and drastically simplify the tax code. America companies spend billions each year trying to comply with (and evade) the (currently 13,458 page) tax code. Tax loopholes are so bad that companies like Exxon Mobile and General Electric can legally pay no taxes on BILLIONs of dollars of income. Yes, lots of politicians will get heat from corporations and special interest groups who see their tax loopholes disappearing, but this situation is ludicrous. And yes, we probably will have to raise the real taxes on everyone, at least for a decade or so, to help us out of this hole.

6. We have to stop subsidizing ANYONE.  And that includes the oil and gas industries, farmers, green energy startups, etc, etc. Government is lousy at choosing the right industries to support anyway – it does it on the basis of political influence, not facts.  Market forces do it much better. But more to the point, when we don’t have enough money to do essential things, we can’t afford to keep subsidizing industries that simply aren’t competitive enough to make it on their own in the markets. And guess what?  A lot of those industries will discover they can do just fine without the federal subsidies, once they have the incentive to figure out new, more efficient ways to operate.

That are some of the hard facts an honest politician might tell his/her constituents, and I bet the majority of politicians know this perfectly well – they just lack the political will to be honest with the voting public.

The campaign thus far.....

Thus far the presidential campaign has been wildly disappointing. In a nation faced with a number of serious problems – the economic slowdown, the instability of the financial sector, the Euro crisis, the unsustainable Medicare program, global restructuring that has meant that many of our jobs will never come back, the declining educational standards among our young, etc. etc. – all the two camps can do is throw trivial partisan charges at each other, many of them half-truths or outright lies.

One might have hoped for a spirited substantive debate on how best to handle these national problems. Liberal and conservative thinkers and economists do have differing approaches, and it is not immediately obvious to anyone (including themselves) which of these approaches is best.  A wide-ranging public debate, based on facts rather than just ideological myths, might have helped us all find workable solutions.  It might also have helped educate the America people as to the realities of our problems, and better prepared them for the inevitable adjustments that must come, whether we plan and manage them wisely or they are thrust upon us by crises.  That, apparently is not to be.

Here is my current reading of the two parties:

The Obama administration, and President Obama himself, are certainly smart enough to understand both the nature and the magnitude of the problems we face. The fact that they have, in almost four years in office, failed to address them or make any substantive proposals to address them suggests that they have made the political calculation that beginning to administer the necessary hard medicine would cost Democrats heavily – that the America people are too dumb or too self-centered to reward long-term thinking over short-term hardships.  And of course they may also be blinded by their ideological commitment to larger government involvement in our lives, and restrained by the need to not alienate some of their largest supporters, like the unions.

From a purely short-term political point of view these may be smart tactical moves, and may even win Obama re-election to a second term. Continue to promise to maintain the status quo, continue to kick the can down the road and hope that the other party will be in power when the inevitable crisis arises, so that they get blamed for it.  But it is hardly statesmanship, and it is hardly what we all hoped for when Obama took office. If he is re-elected, I assume he would continue to follow the same policy of ignoring the oncoming problems and leaving the consequences to his successors.

The Republicans have, in the primaries, seen off a series of lightweights and far-right religious extremists, leaving us with a solid, experienced, if uncharismatic, Mitt Romney. Far from worrying about his Mormon background, I find it reassuring, because although Mormons have (from my point of view) some strange religious dogma, they are in general (a) very good at business, and (b) strongly patriotic and committed to the nation and to the frontier “work ethic” values of the nation.

Now Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. Paul Ryan is the only elected official in either party to propose realistic, substantive steps that might begin to get us out of this mess. His proposals are not perfect, and I don’t agree with all of them, but they are a good “first draft” from which to begin a discussion. (The Bowles-Simpson committee proposals were also a good “first draft” to begin the discussion, but Obama pointedly ignored them, even though he chartered the committee in the first place).

My hope (and it is so far only a hope) is that Romney’s choice of Ryan signals that he is serious, if elected, about beginning to take on some of these problems.  He has been reticent, thus far, to be definite about what he would do.  This was probably essential political strategy to get him through the primary battles, because the far right won’t like the necessary medicine any more than the far left will, and if he had been specific about his plans, he probably would never have won the primaries.

What will be revealing in the next few months is whether Romney-Ryan try to swing the public debate toward substantive discussion of the problems and possible solutions, and whether if they try they can succeed. I suspect the Democrats strongly fear such a debate, and will work as hard as they can to keep trivial charges in the news and deflect such a debate.  I notice that several Democratic members of Congress are trying desperately to keep from the upcoming debates any questions to the candidates about the Bowles-Simpson recommendations (see story here).

Romney’s basic political calculation has to be much the same as President Obama’s.  If he tells it like it really is, and proposes realistic and effective steps to address these problems, will voters turn against him.  I’m not sure either what I would do in his place. As H L Menken once said "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”.  He might, on the other hand, continue to be vague in order to get elected, and then once in office begin to do what really needs to be done, especially if he comes into office with a working majority on Congress. Then again, once in office he might still lack the political will to do what is really necessary. It's hard to tell at this point.

It would be an interesting chess match to watch if so much didn’t depend on it.

Biden says Romney, Ryan offer 'stark choice' for voters

News lead this afternoon: "Biden says Romney, Ryan offer "stark choice" for voters."

Vice President Biden is absolutely right -- this election (I hope) is a stark choice, between continuing over the looming fiscal cliff with the Obama administration or (possibly) taking the painful medicine needed to get the nation's fiscal house in order.  Neither route will be pleasant; both will no doubt be painful in the extreme.

To reiterate a few of the key the "inconvenient truths" we face:

The federal debt now stands at just about $16 TRILLION dollars, growing at just under $4 BILLION per day.  That is more that 100% of the nation's gross domestic product ($15 Trillion at the end of 2011). Economists generally think that sovereign debt of more than 80% of GDP is in the danger zone -- we are already well past that.

On the Obama administration's current budgets proposals, this is projected to grow to about $23 TRILLION by the end of his (possible) second term.  This administration has proposed NOTHING to reduce the debt -- in fact they have continued to increase it. 

We currently borrow about 40% of each year's federal budget, which is what is driving the ballooning federal debt.  So far the Euro crisis has kept lenders buying Treasury notes as a safe haven.  When that crisis ends, the bond markets are likely to push the interest rates up sharply, costing us even more to service the debt, which currently costs us about $450 Billion per year.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security currently consume about 42% of the federal budget ($1.6 Trillion out of a federal budget of $3.8 Trillion in 2013) . These programs are contributing more to the ballooning federal debt than any other program.  Current projections show these programs consuming ALL federal income by about 2045.  This is driven in part by the bulge of baby boomers who are now retiring.

So the "stark choice" is between continuing to ignore these facts (the Obama administration) until we hit a Greek-style crisis, or (possibly, if Romney-Ryan have the political will) beginning to make the painful cuts that are essential.

These cuts WILL come.The only choice is whether we wait for the inevitable crisis or we begin to solve the problem before it becomes a crisis. Either route is painful.. Either route will change "Medicare as we know it", as Obama claims in his ads.  But one route will be a lot more chaotic, painful and unfair than the other.

But the question is: are American voters smart enough and willing enough to suffer the painful cuts and withdrawal from Federal handouts, or do we all want the band to keep playing until the Titanic sinks under the waves?

It is indeed a stark choice.

Paul Ryan as VP pick

One hopes that Mitt Romney's pick of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee means that FINALLY we will get a real national debate about what to do with the current unsustainable federal spending.  Ryan is the only figure in Congress (either party) or the administration who has made serious proposals about how to face the looming fiscal crisis this nation faces.  One can argue with the details of his plan, but it is the only plan put forward to date that realistically deals with the federal deficit and the ballooning federal debt. Ryan's current 2013 budget proposal can be found here for those who would like to see how he thinks. Though I disagree with some of his priorities (for example, his continued high defense spending), on the whole it is a reasonable proposal and a good starting place for a national debate about how to face this problem.

President Obama's administration has proposed absolutely nothing realistic yet to deal with these issues. Despite Obama's populist posturing about taxing the rich more, taxing the rich of everything that they own would make a barely noticeable difference in the ballooning debt. In fact, President Obama's budgets have inflated the federal deficit in three years as much as President Bush's administration did in eight years (and Bush's profligate spending was bad enough!!)!

President Obama did charter the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction committee, but then pointedly ignored its (quite reasonable) recommendations. Of course, the Republicans also ignored the recommendations, which is hardly to their credit. But in fact it is President Obama's administration in power now, so he gets the greater part of the blame for doing nothing effective to address the deficit and debt.

The Democrats will of course drag out all sorts of tear-jerking stories about children going hungry and old people dying of neglect if Romney-Ryan are elected. Truth to tell, those children will eventually go hungry and those old people will eventually die of neglect if the current Democratic policies of ignoring the looming deficit crisis continue to be followed.

I think Ryan's accusation that President Obama cares more about the next election than about the next generation is by now obviously correct. Too bad, as I had high hopes for President Obama when he was elected - and I voted for him.  Turns out, however, that he is just another Chicago politician (and a rather inept one at that) instead of the statesman we all hoped for.

Of course, we don't yet know what we would get with Romney as president, but at least he understands business and balance sheets and has demonstrated competence in that world.  If he can manage to bring some fiscal sanity to Washington without also bringing a whole lot of right-wing religious baggage I think the nation will be better off.

A revolution in progress

We all know the world is changing around us at an impressive pace, but every once in a while I get a momentary glimpse of just how fast things are changing, and it stuns me.

This afternoon I read an online article about the free online courses that are being offered by major universities this fall. (I commented on this in a recent post) Last spring MIT offered an introductory electronics course that drew 154,000 sign-ons, of whom 10,000 took the mid-term exam and 7000 passed the course –7000 !!!!!! For a course that the previous semester had a classroom enrollment of perhaps 30. In the past month or so a number of other top-tier schools – Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Univ of Pennsylvania, Univ of Michigan, etc, etc – have suddenly jumped on the bandwagon. Go to EdX  or Coursera and there are 123 free on-line courses being offered this fall from these top-tier schools.

For some years now The Teaching Company has packaged courses from the nation's top university professors and offered them as videos, audiobooks, MP3 files, and most recently as on-line streaming video for very low prices (I think our extended family has bought just about every one of those courses). And I have two granddaughters who have been home schooled using superb on-line advanced placement chemistry, biology and physics textbooks and courses. But this explosion of FREE on-line courses from the top universities in the world will in short order profoundly change the landscape, especially for bright but poor students worldwide.

Then I started a book one of my daughters gave me for my birthday, Michael Saylor’s The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything. After the first few chapters I got curious about what the latest smart phones can do (I still carry a dumb cell phone), so I looked up (Google is another amazing advance) the specs on a few of the current smart phones like the iPhone 4S and the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx – it blew me away! The embedded cameras are as good as my current dedicated pocket camera. Functions like Siri are mind-blowing. Quad-core processors, the ability to act as a mobile wi-fi hotspot, face recognition phone unlocking (it only unlocks if it recognizes your face)…these are light years away from what these phones looked like just a couple of years ago.

And of course the world has thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of eager young programmers inventing new apps for these phones in the hopes of getting rich. As of the end of 2011 there were about a BILLION smart phones in use worldwide. If 1% of those users buy your $1 app you have earned $10 million – no wonder so many people are writing apps. This has profound implications for the future.

Finally I checked into my (online of course) local newspaper, the Los Alamos Daily Post , where an embedded video in the lead article lets me watch in real time the streaming NASA TV live feed from the NASA control room of the Curiosity Rover Mars Mission, which is about to land on Mars in a few hours. Think of it. Embedded in my newspaper is a real-time video relay (shades of Harry Potter’s moving newspaper pictures) of a robot mission landing on Mars!!!!

The whole experience, covering no more than an hour of my time this afternoon, has made me suddenly and profoundly aware of the dizzying pace at which the world is changing.