Dan Braganca

On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Reihan Salam argued that it’d be better for gay marriage’s “stabilty” if it was passed democratically rather than by court order. In a certain sense, he’s onto something. It’s almost tautological: if a majority of citizens in a democracy support gay marriage, we don’t have to worry about the majority undermining gay marriage.

To bolster his argument Salam and The Economist’s Zanny Minton Beddoes compare gay marriage rights to abortion politics. Salam and Beddoes suggest that without persuading a majority first and passing it democratically, gay marriage rights won’t seem as legitimate and we’ll be left with a tension similar to the one that’s followed Roe v Wade for 40 years.  As you can see, although public opinion waxes and wanes in the short term, support hasn’t changed dramatically.

I don’t fully disagree with their case; it’d certainly be wonderful and especially validating if marriage equally was reached by popular vote. Yet, we don’t need to look at abortion or any other social issue for speculation.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ordered marriage equality in 2003. At the time, “50 percent [of the Mass residents] agreed with the justices’ decision, and 38 percent opposed it.” Nine years later the Massachusetts’ public isn’t unsettled by court-mandated gay marriage, risking its stability; instead, 60% now believe same-sex marriage should be legal. Living with equality has increased support to a 2 to 1 margin over opponents. Now, maybe it will be different in states like South Carolina where 20% of likely Republican primary voters think interracial marriage should be illegal! But the trends in all states seem positive any time marriage rights are expanded for race or sexuality. The most likely reason why?

I hope and am confident public opinion will continue to shift toward equality, yet if the Supreme Court gets there before voters do, there is no need to worry. We’ll just have to celebrate with our fellow citizens a bit earlier.

There is no more important question when evaluating our personal beliefs, public policy, or science than, “What evidence would cause me to change my opinion?” If you can’t answer that question you are being, by definition, unreasonable.

Will Wilkinson on the Democracy in America blog at The Economist plays the game with some hot-button political issues in response to Charles Murray’s argument that says,

Data can bear on policy issues, but many of our opinions about policy are grounded on premises about the nature of human life and human society that are beyond the reach of data. Try to think of any new data that would change your position on abortion, the death penalty, legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage or the inheritance tax. If you cannot, you are not necessarily being unreasonable.

That’s as clear-cut of an admission of irrationality as I’ve seen.

I largely agree with Wilkinson so I won’t cover the topics above, but I think it’d be entertaining to go through some others:

Read more…

On March 20th The Shins new album will be released. Here’s one of their brand new songs:

(via The A.V. Club)

Remember when the big conservative explanation for the lack of recovery was “policy uncertainty?” Funny you don’t hear that as much anymore… I wonder why?

Dow Jones Industrial Average

Anyone that cares about women’s rights and health is rightly upset at the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s break with Planned Parenthood. The decision to stop grants to Planned Parenthood was clearly motivated by anti-abortion politics, but E.G. from the Democracy in America blog wonders why the healthcare provider receives such a high level of aggression:

The bulk of its activities are focused on contraception, STI screening, and cancer screening, and it places a particular emphasis on providing reproductive health care to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access. They also provide abortions, which are controversial, obviously, but legal, obviously. And insofar as access to contraception and other family-planning services reduces the demand for abortion, Planned Parenthood also prevents abortion. In my view, it is an important part of civil society. Even from a pro-life position, I would think it qualifies: being pro-life is a coherent moral position, and not one that necessarily implies a lack of concern for women’s health. So I really don’t understand why Planned Parenthood gets so much grief from the right.

It’s difficult to understand because most of the pro-life right is not anti-abortion because of a reasoned moral opinion, but rather because of religious dogma. So when E.G. looks at a moral calculation based on the consequences of behavior and policy and she notices that contraception services reduce the number of abortions it seems inconsistent to disapprove. However, if you recognize that fundamentalist religious ethics is based on a rule-based system that says abortion, contraception, and church-unapproved sexual activity are all evil in principle it makes “sense.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say the religious consciously don’t care about the effects on actual people, but religious ethical dogma is not concerned about the effects on actual people. It’s not morality. It’s fundamentalism.

A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco investigates “Why is Unemployment Duration So Long?” It turns out, just as mainstream economics predicts, demand for labor is weak.

We use the ratio of the number of unemployed individuals to the total number of job vacancies at the national level to measure labor market tightness or net demand. The higher the ratio, the weaker is the demand for labor relative to available supply.

[...]

The ratio of the total number of unemployed workers to job vacancies accounts for about 11.5 weeks of the 15.7 extra weeks of duration in 2010–11, explaining virtually all the increase in duration when workforce characteristics are also taken into account.

The trend seems to be moving in a positive direction, but it’s clearly still awful. Our July low-point is roughly equal to 1982′s peak. But as if we needed it, we now have more evidence that conservative bugaboos like unemployment insurance are not holding back much job growth. Instead, we need to increase aggregate demand and get people spending money.

A new satellite photo (well, technically a composite of high-def photos) of Earth has been circulating that’s well worth checking out:

It’s a gorgeous image that provides mankind with a perspective rarely seen. Compared to older shots of our pleasant little planet, “Blue Marble 2012″ is the sharpest and most vivid view of Earth without seeing it in person.

What I’ve always appreciated about stunning nature photos is how much I can’t appreciate the beauty through the medium. Any hiker knows that witnessing an expansive landscape on a mountain top dwarfs the print view rotting in his home photo casket. If you only saw a landscape captured by camera, you’d never be able to fully imagine what the moment appears like with total sensation.

Which is why looking at this spectacular photo confirms my desire to go to space and observe our planet for myself. If the satellite’s snapshot is this breathtaking, I can’t imagine its true expression.

Unless you’re a teetotaler, anyone that follows politics regularly probably needs at least a weekly cocktail. As some of you know, in addition to political work, I bartend. So, I’ve decided to post a regular feature to help my readers imbibe properly. Besides, the cocktail and politics have history dating from at least 1806. One of the earliest uses of the term “cock-tail” was political (Harry Crosswell of the Balance and Columbian Repository):

[The cocktail] is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time it fuddles the head. It is said also, to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because, a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.

So everyone get ready to start hearing me spout things like this:

The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) got a lot of attention yesterday – especially the wikipedia blackout. Many outlets oppose the bill because they fear, rightfully, that it will promote censorship and stifle free speech and internet innovation. It seems protest and outrage got to enough congresspeople to keep them from supporting some of the worst aspects of SOPA, but the cornerstone of advocacy is support for strong intellectual property and copyright laws themselves.

Constitutionally, copyright power is designed “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” Industry advocates and their allies consistently rely on a theoretical case that without strong intellectual property protection advances in science and art would be practically nonexistent and entertainers would all starve. It all sounds nice in theory, but the only thing nonexistent for this state of affairs is the evidence for it.

I’m sure printers of the Encyclopedia Britannica may have lost some revenue after the internet and wikipedia started offering information freely, but can anyone seriously claim that information is less available now? As an author of a free blog, maybe I just can’t understand. I suppose it’s possible that we’d descend into an artistic Dark Age if we greatly reduced intellectual property rights… but somehow we got by with Shakespeare, Mozart, and Da Vinci before copyright laws made innovation itself possible.

Matt Yglesias sensibly wonders what problem needs fixing?

There are plenty of books to read, things to watch, and music to listen to. Indeed, the American consumer has never been better-entertained than she is today. The same digital frontier that’s created the piracy pseudo-problem has created whole new companies and made it infinitely easier for small operations to distribute their products. Digital technology has reduced the price we pay for new works and made them cheaper to create. I can watch a feature film on my telephone.

Instead of tightening up IP laws we should be moving in the opposite direction. If we start to create a real problem, we can move back, but cutting into an industry’s profits by failing to provide them total monopolies shouldn’t be a concern for public policy. Only to the extent that lack of profits decisively cramps innovation do we need to interfere with the free market. Even still, copyright isn’t the only option; government, universities, and charity can fund the arts and science or we could modify the tax code to further promote art. I’m usually against more complications to the tax code, but the monopolies copyrights create distort  efficiency far more than a tax credit.

In Dean Baker’s book, The End of Loser Liberalism, he argues for an”artistic freedom voucher:”

A refundable tax credit for a specific amount (e.g., $100) that individuals could contribute to whatever creative worker/organization they choose. The condition of getting this money would be that the recipient individuals/organizations would not be eligible to receive copyrights for some period of time (e.g., three years) after receiving the money. All the work they produce would be in the public domain so that it could be reproduced and circulated around the world.

Entertainers can still make money from concerts, merchandise, advertising, appearances and other creative endeavors so I don’t think we have to worry about Jay-Z ending up back on the streets if IP rights aren’t fully enforced. I know everyone fears that without strong copyright great artists like Angelina Jolie and Channing Tatum will go extinct once they’re unable to afford eating desserts made of real gold at award shows, but something in me guesses we’ll still have movie stars and we’ll still be able to watch movies.

…

*Without intellectual property protection I would have never wrote this blog post.

If you listen to the commentariat you’d probably get the impression that supporting Ron Paul is foolish because he “can’t possibly win”. I don’t know whether Paul himself thinks it’s impossible to win a presidential election, but it appears that electoral results have always been of secondary importance to Paul. Moving policy ideas forward and changing the tactics of the political class motivate the Paul’s candidacy. While studying up on some of chess games and history I came across a fitting parallel.

David Bronstein is a player to whom results have always been of secondary importance; he considers himself a chess artist, to whom originality and beauty are the real goals in chess. Nevertheless, he did achieve some outstanding results, and came within a whisker of winning the world championship.

Bronstein had different levels of success with his novelties. The queen sacrifice in the above image was stunning at the time. As the chess grandmaster explains in his book, Bronstein on the King’s Indian, many considered Nxg3 on move 9 “virtually the move of the century,” yet Bronstein lost the game. But the legacy of the queen sacrifice in the King’s Indian endured and “remains viable to this day.”

Not all chess or policy aberrations work out. Ron Paul’s goldbuggery might be misdirected, but he properly understands monetary policy’s severely undervalued importance.  If Paul’s focus on monetary policy, military anti-interventionism, and the drug reform lead to mainstream acceptance, he’s done his job. Bronstein’s work on the King’s Indian, for example, is the reason the opening eventually enjoyed mainstream popularity.

[One] of the reasons why David Bronstein is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of the King’s Indian Defense was the fact that when he extensively played this opening in 1940-1950-ies, it was practically unknown territory.  [Thanks to the games of Bronstein] it became one of the most popular openings.

The similarities aren’t perfect, of course, Bronstein takes full responsibility for his columns.