Why Sandy was special

For those interested in some of the mechanics for why Sandy wound up being such a (comparatively) violent storm and some suggestions as to how likely it is to happen in the future…

How the Frankenstorm came to life
Sandy holds lessons for forecasters
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346130/title/How_the_Frankenstorm_came_to_life

As I talk about earlier, there really isn’t that much special or shocking about the storm, just its path. Storms like Sandy form all the time, but few make it so far north along the east coast, thus the part of the country that got whacked isn’t used to being targeted. To me the most interesting question (to which I feel certain I know the answer: “well, of course”) is how likely are people to repeat the exact same mistake by rebuilding in the exact same location. Much like the levees along the Mississippi have caused the bed of the river to rise above the lands to either side (partly due to sedimentation of the river itself and partly due to subsidence of the land to either side), when the inevitable happens the disaster will be entirely man made no matter how ‘natural’ the storm was that triggered the final collapse. Holland, which has a long history of dealing with strong ocean storms and land below sea level, realized that you must give rivers a place to flood and rebuilt their levees a half mile (or more) away from the river. For 99% (or more) of the time it is beautiful parkland, but when the storm rages it gets flooded, but it is no ‘disaster’ because there isn’t anything that gets destroyed (though I am sure there needs to be some cleaning once the waters have receded). However, here in the US, we don’t like to go with obvious solutions that work _with_ nature, but instead prefer to stubbornly insist that the tide stay out. Hasn’t worked in the past, tain’t likely to work in the future either.

Why bullet-proof materials work

Plastic fantastic seals in speeding projectiles
Layered polymer nanomaterial wraps around penetrating particles
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346099/title/Plastic_fantastic_seals_in_speeding_projectiles

To me this is really interesting, beyond the raw science, as a way to potentially build better shields for spacecraft. My understanding of current space craft shields (to protect from the faster-than-a-speeding-bullet material flying about in space) is to have several layers of metal (aluminum is popular because of its weight) each fairly thin (eighth inch or so) spaced a few inches apart such that the particle is vaporized when it hits the first shield and the debris is caught on the second (or subsequent, in the case of the larger objects) shield. It does seem, though, that debris shields will remain something that needs regular replacement as it would basically be designed to wear out over time (sort of like the heat shield on the early Apollo capsules). However, it would take additional experimentation to identify if using plastics would result in lighter-weight shields that give the same (or better) protection.

Evidence that the economy shrinks as the rich get richer

I have babbled about how the rich actually have a negative incentive to bolster the economy; well at Jared Bernstein’s blog (I am a regular reader) he provides a graph that I think seals the case (from this post: “Data Notes Part 2: A Bit of Sandy Economics and Net Vs. Gross“):

Net Domestic Product Declining

I had not been aware of the term ‘net domestic product’ in any meaningful way before seeing his post (we hear about GDP (gross domestic product) all the time) and the wiki page (and Jared’s post) make it clear that GDP is largely meaningless without also showing stats on NDP. Looking at the NDP/GDP ratio on the graph above it is clear to me that our nation as a whole is growing less wealthy, yet it is clear from other reports that the wealthy (1%) are doing very well, thank you. So, if our NDP is shrinking (as a proportion of the GDP) and the wealthy are getting more wealthy still, what can that mean? To me it is inescapable: the poor and middle class (see here for my take on the ‘shrinking‘ (shrunken!) middle class) are getting poorer at a much higher rate than the rich are getting richer.

Not that I have any ideas on how to remedy the situation…

For the crime of being Muslim

US Muslim placed on no-fly list is unable to see his ailing mother
Despite never having been charged with any crime, an Air Force veteran is effectively exiled from his own country
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/05/muslim-no-fly-qatar

I know I talked about easing up on police state posts, but it will probably be a while before my outrage has diminished to the point where stuff like this can be ignored. A US citizen, who is also a 10 year US military veteran, is mysteriously put on the no-fly list (but, as the article points out, he is still OK to be on a cruise ship and is ‘welcome’ to enter the US at any time as long as he doesn’t fly (and the legal fine point that I am quite sure is how the government keeps it from being overturned)) and now can’t return to his own country. How idiotic is that? Of course, our government won’t allow anyone to challenge the list because if there were any rational decision making regarding names on the list then clearly the bad guys could use that rational process to get themselves off the list and then, gasp! fly on a plane. Clearly that would be less effort than getting forged travel documents under another name, right? Fucking morons!

“Nobel” prize in economics

Actually, it is the “Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economic Sciences” that was created “in memory” of Alfred Nobel…

The Nobel Prize in Economics? There Is No Nobel Prize in Economics
http://exiledonline.com/the-nobel-prize-in-economics-there-is-no-nobel-prize-in-economics/

Any of this sound familiar?

Promoters of central bank independence made their arguments in the language of neoclassical market efficiency. The problem was that few people in Sweden took their neoclassical babble very seriously, and saw their plan for central bank independence for what it was: an attempt to transfer control over economic matters from democratically elected government and place into the hands of big business interests, giving them a free hand in running Sweden’s economy without pesky interference from labor unions, voters and elected officials.

Of course, we already have an ‘independent’ central bank that is operated “without pesky interference from labor unions, voters and elected officials”. The whole article is interesting reading, though the author weakens his case mightily with this bit: “As of 2011, 10 out of the 69 economists who’ve won the fake Nobel prize are Koch-connected libertarians.” So, if the other 59 (or 85%) of the economists were mainstream and recognized by the community as strong, 15% of the prizes going to people who are losers isn’t that big a deal. Of course, of the bulk of the other 85% are also right-wing extremists then the author should provide some sort of documentation.

As for the validity of the prize, I am not deep enough into economics to know if the majority of the awardees are not worthy of the appellation. I am reasonably confident, though, that the field of economics lacks the sort of rigor that is associated with the standard STEM areas; generally the very first assumption that any economic model makes is that there is free and open knowledge and high levels of competition. That is almost never the case and that models ignore that hugely important element speaks volumes to me.

Doing my small part

I don’t have that many reader(s), but felt that I would do my tiny part in promgulating yet another instance of partisian involvement in the operation of supposed non-partisan arms of the government…

Republican Pressure Leads to Withdrawal of Fact-Based Report by Nonpartisan CRS
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/republican-pressure-leads-to-withdrawal-of-fact-based-report-by-nonpartisan-crs/

I don’t pretend to understand the entirety of the discussion, I am barely an arm-chair economist, but based on my regular reading of Jared’s blog, he, while a committed liberal and democrat, is still honest and forthright, so this seems like a legitimate thing to be upset about.

Tain’t the global warming, stupid!

I wasn’t going to comment on Sandy and its depredations along the coast but after seeing article after article (or perhaps the exact same article hawked at many places, I never actually read any of it) babbling about how Sandy was all about global warming (stupid!) I felt compelled to toss my few cents into the mix. One of the main reasons that there was such extensive flooding in Manhattan was because of the power outage due to the lost of a major transformer. Had the power stayed on the pumps would have stayed on and the water would have been removed purt near as fast as it flowed in. It is no different than the sump pump in your basement, the power goes off during a rain storm and you wind up with a lake in your basement. There really isn’t anything amazing about it; when you dig a hole in the ground below the water table you are obligated to run pumps 24/7 _forever_ to keep it dry. You can’t make the hole water proof or what you get instead is a boat and it will pop right out of the ground!

Hurricanes don’t often run right up the east coast, generally they dog-leg to the east into the Atlantic or they come ashore further south and fizzle out into a more mundane storm (hurricanes _require_ large, very warm bodies of water to sustain their winds and rains). Had we had the same sort of weird weather regularly in the past (meaning a stalled cold front in the north-central part of the country and a “nor’easter” pushing in from the mid Atlantic) then we would have regularly had hurricanes run up the coast and would be rather bored by all the flooding (why is it that no one babbles about the exact same sort of problems in Miami?). The flooding was exacerbated by the monthly timing with the moon’s orbit (another thing that is _totally_ independent of any ‘global warming’) with extra high tides swelling the expected storm surge (the center of a hurricane is of low pressure which causes the ocean to ‘hump up’ underneath, sometimes as much as 10-15 feet above normal sea level). Again, nothing special to make note of.

And, of course, it is a tragedy that 80 houses burned down in Queens, but that also has diddly to do with ‘global warming’ and all to do with the same sorts of electricity problems that lead to pumps not working.

So, all this blather about the ‘storm of the century’ that was ’caused’ by ‘global warming’ is nonsense on the highest level. ‘Normal’ weather is highly variable and there is a _huge_ amount of reporting bias in historical weather information (see the link below), so making these absurd comments with certainty that our current weather ‘angst’ is in anyway related to long-term changes in weather patterns does nothing more than highlight the stupidity of the reporter.

As I posted earlier, hurricanes really haven’t got any stronger over the last century, there is a huge bias in reporting and a rather idiotic insistence in measuring the ‘strength’ of a hurricane by its damage, something that is totally irrelevant to the actually wind speeds or rain measurements.

Third-party candidates

I wasn’t able to work on this yesterday (I stayed home) because ever since I upgraded my machine to Ubuntu 12 I have had random freezes when I surf the web (not always associated with web surfing, once it hung at the log-in screen). Anyway, today I aim to look at the third-party candidates (I am using as my jumping-off point the Wiki page on 2012 third-party candidates (for better or worse)) and will provide a link to where I got my information and then my comments regarding what I found. BTW, for your reference, I outlined my views the other day so you can see from which angle I am evaluating the candidates. Also for background might be my idea for the greatest good for the greatest number.

These two candidates have ballot access to enough states that they could, in principle, win the required 270 electoral votes. BTW, the silly Americans Elect party didn’t even select a candidate.

Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson

Overall, I am not unhappy with his stated positions. I am most concerned about his interest in austerity as a way of resolving our debt situation (which is a very big deal, and one that needs addressing, but I think _after_ our recover has solidified), I think that approach is likely to further stall our economic recovery. Still, given that he would have to work extensively with Congress which has demonstrated it isn’t pro austerity (all GOP blather to the contrary, though they seem to want austerity for the poor, handouts for the rich), he doesn’t seem like a poor choice overall.

Green Party, Jill Stein

Stein’s positions overall appear to be rather unrealistic given that, if elected, she would have to work with a Congress that is vastly more mainstream and conservative than the Green Party. It is almost as if they have usurped the most progressive of progressive positions and added the rather unrealistic goal of making alternative energy our nation’s mainstay. Indeed, it might be more fair to characterize her platform as ‘socialist’ rather than ‘progressive’. On the whole I like the drift of the platform, but I find it exceedingly unrealistic and not just for sociopolitical reasons. While I discuss elements of her platform, overall I would say that I would expect her to be unable to reach accommodations with Congress and likely would get nothing of consequence done (Obama got _exactly_ what he wanted done, all blather to the contrary).

These candidates lack direct ballot access to at least 270 electoral votes, but have write-in potential so could make a meaningful showing but reasonably there is no chance, even theoretically, for these people to get elected.

Constitution Party, Virgil Goode

Virgil Goode’s positions are, for the most part, the exact same talking points as the GOP, so one has to wonder what, exactly, he feels he is offering the voter that Romney isn’t. There are some tiny differences, in my view, but for the most part he is against anything the Green Party (Jill Stein) is for. Pro life, anti-gay marriage, anti-immigration, pro military, against ‘Obamacare’, etc. The only thing really novel is his insistence on term limits and his claim that, if elected, he will be a one-term President. He also clearly doesn’t understand the economics of fossil fuels (much like the Greens) and thinks that somehow the US can eliminate its dependence on foreign sources without also driving our economy into the toilet. Of course, in my mind, he has so little other reasons for my support that this is just nit picking, this guy has almost no differences from the standard GOP positions. Why vote for him and take away a vote for Romney if you support the same positions that he does? Sure, Romney might not follow through with his conservative promises (since he promises to be all things to all people someone is going to get lied to!), but that doesn’t seem to be a reason to cast a vote for this third-party candidate.

Party for Socialism and Liberation, Peta Lindsay

Peta isn’t even old enough to hold the office of President, so I won’t consider her further.

American Independent Party, Tom Hoefling

This guy seems really anti-government (one has to wonder why anyone so rabidly anti-government is so intent on becoming head of it, but such was Reagan, given his rhetoric) and is totally a bible thumping God fearing GOP standard bearer of the exact same stripe that Goode above is. I only browsed over his ‘platform’ as it is the hugely wordy style that I tend to bloviate (yes, I understand it is a challenge to read, but bullet points are boring) and it isn’t organized in a way that makes it feasible to browse anyway. He is rabidly (yes, I repeated myself, but I believe it is an important adjective for this guy) anti-abortion/pro-life. This guy might attract a few fringe voters not happy with the ‘wishy washy’ GOP platform (which is about as pro-life as you can get), but I won’t spend any more time on him because I feel quite sure that there is no way a vote for him is a vote for change in our status quo.

Peace and Freedom Party, Roseanne Barr

I got some prejudices to overcome here as I reflexively think that actors make bad politicians. Still, when Roseanne failed to get the Green nomination she turned to the Peace and Freedom Party, which makes her even more suspect to me. Her platform, though, is notable in that she is the first one that I noticed that has support for the Palestinians and wasn’t just the same old support for Israel. Not shockingly, her platform is quite similar to the Green platform, though theirs is better developed. Though her chance for success is vanishingly small, I do see a vote for her as a vote for a better tomorrow, presuming one accepts my adopted thesis that support for third-party candidates is not throwing your vote away.

Socialist Workers Party, James Harris

I didn’t see a link to Harris’ web site, so don’t have anything to comment on.

Socialist Party USA, Stewart Alexander

So, Alexander failed to make it with the Greens, then failed at the Peace and Freedom Party, so I guess wound up with the Socialist Party by default. His platform is certainly socialist, even more so than the Green platform, and it is mercifully brief. Given my ‘socialist’ leanings (certainly socialist given how far to the extreme right our country has gone), I am quite sympathetic with his platform, though, much like Stein, I doubt he could get any cooperation from Congress if he tried to enact his platform. Still, as a vote for change goes, I think it would be worthy to cast one for him.

There are quite a few other candidates but they get even more fringe (yes, I know that is saying a lot). I am sure that there are a few that would be worth ‘change’ votes but for my own situation I am not very interested in voting for someone who I feel convinced won’t get enough attention to impact the system.

Conclusion

As far as ‘viable’ third-party candidates, there really are only the two, Libertarian Johnson and Green Stein. Johnson is the more conservative and Stein is the more liberal/progressive. I think that Johnson is a more realistic candidate, as I think that Stein’s platform is too pie in the sky, but of course neither has a chance of actually being elected. However, if there is a strong enough showing in total votes for third-party candidates then it is plausible (in my mind) that would start to generate more serious candidates for third parties going forward. Perhaps it will help to elect more Representatives, and possible Senators, breaking up the monolithic hold that the GOP and Dems have on our system now. More important would be the third-party candidates in local politics and as I rather embarrassingly admitted to a friend this morning, I have no idea who are the local and state candidates or what the issues are. Perhaps my change in attitude at the national level will enable me to get more interested in local politics since, as pointed out in a CNN opinion post, much of what actually impacts us on a daily basis is controlled at the local level, not the national level.

If you don’t support either mainstream candidates, consider investing in the future by casting a vote for some third-party candidate instead. Doing this across the board (meaning down-ticket to state and local candidates) would have a much bigger impact as third-parties almost certainly have to bubble up from the bottom rather than being imposed from above (think Nader and Perot).

Green Party, Jill Stein

This is one post in a series looking at the various third-party candidates. For a summary, please see here

Jill Stein’s positions overall appear to be rather unrealistic given that, if elected, she would have to work with a Congress that is vastly more mainstream and conservative than the Green Party. It is almost as if they have usurped the most progressive of progressive positions and added the rather unrealistic goal of making alternative energy our nation’s mainstay. Indeed, it might be more fair to characterize her platform as ‘socialist’ rather than ‘progressive’. On the whole I like the drift of the platform, but I find it exceedingly unrealistic and not just for sociopolitical reasons. While I will discuss elements of her platform below, overall I would say that I would expect her to be unable to reach accommodations with Congress and likely would get nothing of consequence done (Obama got _exactly_ what he wanted done, all blather to the contrary).

I like the positions on the environment: she wants to bolster the EPA, promote conservation and recycling and minimize our current energy use. I agree that lots of jobs are there to be had by working to make our energy/environment infrastructure a lot more sustainable and long-term. I also believe that many of these approaches will pay for society’s investment many times over. However, the idea of eliminating coal and nuclear power plants while “Build[ing] a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, terrorist-proof energy.” tells me that she (presuming she fully supports the party platform, something I am assuming to be the case) is totally unrealistic about what is possible or likely even feasible given the constraints of physics (see Do The Math for details if you are curious).

The idea of cutting the military by 50% (really, I think we could go to 90% cuts and lose none of our defensive ability (and realistically, very little of our offensive ability either)) makes a lot of sense, as does getting out of Iran and Afghanistan, but then the platform calls for “Create a nuclear free zone in the Middle East region and require all nations in area to join.” How the hell can we do that if we have no military presence? So progressive in all other military/foreign policy issues, but then wants to go around forcing sovereign governments to give up the only tool to help balance the US’s massive military advantage (not to mention a counterweight to Israel’s well known, but denied nuclear weapon program).

I used to consider the idea of abolishing the electoral college system, but haven’t for a long time. To me the idea of going with a popular vote system is not only totally unrealistic (it would take a Constitutional Amendment, what chance of getting the small states to say yes?), but is counter productive with the intent of making votes count. To me this sort of pie in the sky idea speaks volumes toward how realistically Ms. Stein would govern, and not in a good way. Granted party platforms are more about wishful thinking than anything else, but still, the platform seems likely to trigger so much resistance that even proposals that ought to engender backing would still be met with resistance.

There are other issues I could detail, but felt that cherry picking a few would give my impression and I have provided a link to where I got my information you can peruse if you would like more details.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson

This is one post in a series looking at the various third-party candidates. For a summary, please see here

Gary Johnson started out as a GOP candidate but when he failed to get any traction in the primaries he decided to strike out as a third-party candidate. Over the years I have turned away from the Libertarian concept of “the government which governs best, governs least”, so am not totally sure that I would want to support the Libertarian party on principle, but am evaluating the candidate independent of the party since it is clear the party lacks enough fire power to implement its platform. Johnson seems intent on balancing the budget (clearly he is not a fan of counter cyclic programming) and seems more intent on cutting outlays rather than increasing revenues. To me that is a substantial strike against him. He also appears to favor our current market-based approach to health care which, in my mind, has clearly failed our society (we spend more per capita than any other nation, yet do not have the best health, why is that?) and is against the idea of universal health care. He supports privatizing social security, something I think is a dangerous gimme to Wall Street (which is already rolling in the bucks that the 401K has provided, something that also should be criminal). He also has the rather quaint idea that, like the 401K, people should be able to manage their SS contributions. Clearly doesn’t understand psychology of investors and how massive the yawning ignorance is on the part of the average populous. Probably wants us all to pay a Wall Street guy to manage our money for us.

On the plus side (for me) is his stated desire to cut military funding by 43% (where does such a number come from?) and focus on defense rather than offense. He favors dialog with Iran and while he is opposed to the Citizens United ruling, he is OK with the amount of money in elections, just wants 100% transparency (which is surely an excellent start). While he supports a woman’s right to choose, he thinks it should be up to each state to decide rather than the federal government. In my view that is not support for abortion, but is a back-door way of eroding women’s rights. He supports the end of the war on drugs and wants to shift resources to focus on ‘crimes “committed online,” including “fraud and child pornography,” “should be investigated and treated identically as crimes committed offline.”‘.

He wants to ‘increase choice’ in schools, something I consider quite problematic since based on my reading the ‘problem’ with our education system is actually a problem with poverty. His views on immigration are reasonable to me, given the current social-political environment, he suggests giving current ‘illegals’ work visas and allowing the normal immigration process to provide them a path to citizenship. He favors civil unions to give same-sex couples the same legal rights as marriage does, but wants to leave ‘marriage’ to religions. I have no objections to that, what is in a name?

Overall, I am not unhappy with his stated positions. I am most concerned about his interest in austerity as a way of resolving our debt situation (which is a very big deal, I am sure, and one that needs addressing), I think that approach is likely to further stall our economic recovery. Still, given that he would have to work extensively with Congress which has demonstrated it isn’t pro austerity (all GOP blather to the contrary, though they seem to want austerity for the poor, handouts for the rich), he doesn’t seem like a poor choice overall.