I Really Fucking Hate Thomas Friedman

Winner of 57 Pulitzer Prizes,
Philosopher Tom Friedman

Honestly of all the pundits the one I can't stand most is Thomas Friedman. There are actually quite a few reasons not to like him, some can be summerized here by Lionel Beehner:

"Not because he went from globalisation bible-thumper to born-again environmentalist overnight — columnists are chameleons, cheerleading for whatever cause is hip that day. Not because his columns involve lazy journalism (ie quoting cab drivers), sloppy metaphors (pouring water out of broken vases and such), and a scary reliance on Johns Hopkins’ Michael Mandelbaum and an overused quip about how nobody ever washed a rental car … [but rather, because] he is given tremendous access to the world’s business leaders yet he is so utterly pathetic at questioning what they are up to." 

And that's accurate but it's not so much that and it's not his political views. It's how obnoxiously generic and unoriginal his views are and yet he considers himself (and is considered) an intellectual messiah.

Thomas Friedman is the epitome of conventional wisdom, a Frankenstein of every generic opinion put together and then revered as wisdom with his cartoonish three-time Pulitzer Prize victory.

In fact, lets break down how generic his views are:

Globalization 

Friedman loves Globalization™ a whole lot, it's this mind altering, breath taking thing that's completely changed the world in every way imaginable. With the breakthrough of the internet and cell phones, the world is at a completely level playing field ("the world is flat") and countries in massive poverty can perform just as well as the U.S. because of iPhones and Twitter. He literally wrote a book on this, that through the magic of comparative advantage and the internet, a country like Sierra Leone is at a level playing field with the U.S. 
Oh also we need to outsource jobs and get rid of dem unions because we're globalized now what-with the internet and all. 

But really, skip listen to 0:15:39 where he compares himself to Christopher Columbus over and over again:

Terrorism   

We need to get real tough on terrorism and 9/11 happened because the Middle East is poor so all those Arabs are irrationally taking their anger out on the US because their a bunch of crazy people. Also in the 90s there was a "terrorism bubble" and we needed to pop it by invading a random Arab country (Iraq).  

Iraq War

"[T]his war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan."

"[It is] one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad."

"I think there were four reasons for this war, and I identified with three of them: There was the stated reason, the moral reason, the right reason, and the real reason."

These are actual, real quotes. The best part is, of course in a completely unconventional twist of events, Friedman now wants to leave Iraq because it's cost is too high. Someone viciously supporting the war and then thinking it's too costly? Woah. 

Climate Change 

He thinks we really need to start investing green technology and have a market-based solution to climate change and shocker, get ready for this, we need to break the addiction to foreign oil as well. I think this man deserves a fourth Pulitzer.

Popping The Myth of The "College Bubble": College Is Being Privatized, Not Inflated

So just about everyone has gotten this wrong, speculating that there's a "bubble" related to college which of course is caused by big government evil socialism. It's been hyped by right-wing libertarian groups like the National Inflation Association and even by supposed Serious People like Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner (although in his defense he isn't an economist but writes with an economist). 

The theory goes something like this:

• Government has increased subsidies to pay for student loans 
• There is a price distortion since the money is guaranteed to colleges
• Colleges spend more and then increase the price of tuition
• Repeat

At first glance the theory doesn't even make economic sense, subsidies lower prices, the obvious example being corn subsidies and the record low prices of corn in the United States.

The bigger problem is it assumes colleges inherently get paid through tuition which is only a very recent phenomenon. In fact for the first time ever public schools get more money through tuition than state funding.

So what's the actual problem?

Well put simply the burden of college cost is being shifted away from government funding to the students, or even simpler, colleges are being privatized. So yes, it's true that government is subsidizing tution more then ever leaving students with debt, but that wouldn't even exist if colleges weren't being privatized.

A great study (pdf.) that looked at this was done by the Delta Cost Project. As the study points there is a "pattern of cost shifting to student tuition revenues in times of economic downturn" which explains the increase in tuition and decrease in state funding. It's also worth noting that the operational cost of college, outside of private colleges, have not significantly increased, or at least not to the extend tuition has.

Put simply, schools are being privatized and students and parents are feeling the pain.

Research Shows Babies Have Inherent Morality

This guy studied the infants...

I've noticed a series of studies suggesting that infants already have an inherent sense of morality, which corresponds to my Authoritarian Libertarian morality.

Numerous studies have shown that babies as early as 5-months already have an inherent morality understanding the basic tenets of right and wrong. One of the most striking studies has to do with a morality play between a toy trying to climb a hill, and a "hero" toy who helps him up and a "villain" toy who knocks him down. The babies were then asked which toy they wanted to play with the "good" toy or "bad" toy. 

According to Yale professor Paul Bloom,

In the end, we found that 6- and 10-month-old infants overwhelmingly preferred the helpful individual to the hindering individual. This wasn’t a subtle statistical trend; just about all the babies reached for the good guy.    

This of course suggests that babies as young as 6 months old already have a conception of morality and that this is possibly in-born like language.

It has other implications like that the weight of the evidence is towards Libertarian morality since humans are inherently moral.

Panetta Expects Iraq Request for Prolonged Occupation

From Democracy Now,

"It’s clear to me that Iraq is considering the possibility of making a request for some kind of (troop) presence to remain there. And it really is dependent on the prime minister and on the government of Iraq to present to us what—you know, what is it that they need and over what period of time in order to make sure that the gains that we’ve made in Iraq are sustained. I have every confidence that, you know, that a request like that, you know, is something that I think will be forthcoming at some point." 

Leon Panetta announced today that official withdrawal deadline of December 2011 probably won't happen.

In addition to the fact that the deadline for the 48,000 or so troops won't happen, the bigger story is that it's based on the authority of the Iraqi government, not the Iraqi people.

The latest poll of Iraqis (2007) found that 60% thought that attacks on troops was justified, and the latest poll asking about withdrawal (2006) found that 70% want the US to withdraw within a year (5 years ago).

And of course, there's what Americans think...

NPR, the Hare Psychopath test and Authoritarian Morality

Even this 100% Born Evil ™
serial killer was abused as a kid.

Recently on NPR I came across an interesting story called "Can A Test Really Tell Who's A Psychopath?" which looked at the Hare Psychopathy Checklist or PCL-R. The test is used in prison sentencing and criminal parole and when someone is labelled a "psychopath" by the test, it's essentially impossible to pass parole. The test and how NPR interpreted the news story also seems to coincide with my theory of Authoritarian morality. 

Now there are some obvious issues with the test, firstly, it uses a somewhat invented definition of "psychopath", not used by any official body of science, but more importantly, it assumes that personality is completely in-born and "genetic" aka "can never change" when there's no such evidence. There's a great video that looks at this claim and how it's completely false.

In this way, the genetics claim is detrimental to the understanding of crime and violence. In fact, most violent criminals were themselves victims of violence, pointing to a environmental influence. One study points out that a violent repeat offender has a 62% chance of having a parent that abused drugs and a 53% chance of coming from an abusive household. It even went on to cite a different study that pointed out "100% of those violent juveniles needing complete neurological evaluations had been abused by parents or relatives, either physically or sexually." Yes that's a 100% and it's bold-worthy.

If anything, the test is a barometer for how much help someone needs and, chances are, if a study was ever done comparing PCL-R scores with child abuse there would be a huge correlation, throwing aside the idea that criminality is "in-born".

Study of violent female offenders and abuse in Finland. 

So how did NPR cover the story? Well at first glance it would seem like they were skeptical, interviewing a violent offender who has no chance of parole because of the test despite an apparent reform. But by the end, it's obvious NPR is only concerned with bias regarding sentencing, or people "incorrectly" using the test to lock up good people but with the test being legitimate in locking up bad people.   

The article is ends with "When you think about criminals this way — as people who are almost genetically predisposed to crime — you are much less likely to invest in their rehabilitation than if you saw their acts as the product of unfortunate environmental circumstances" and "[t]his is why it's so important to figure out if bias and bad training are affecting Hare's test to the point that it is potentially mislabeling people".

So while it's bad to "think about criminals this way" it's actually completely true but we need to be careful not to lock up good people by mistake?

Some might argue that, in fact, NPR was against using the test, but if that was case then the problem in the article would be using the test in the criminal justice system all together, not "bias and bad training".   

In this way, NPR views some people as inherently born "psychopaths" or criminals, putting it slightly higher in the Authoritarian scale then is typically expected of the liberal station.

Netanyahu’s rejection of the pre-1967 borders is a rejection of international law

Here's a good rebuttal from Democracy Now! 

President Netanyahu made a big impression with what he called the "indefensible" return to the pre-1967 borders. Now, for anyone whose been following the Israel/Palestine conflict, would know that Israel has been legally mandated to go back to it's pre-1967 borders...since 1967.

With the unanimous passage of UN Resolution 242 it very specifically required:


  (i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;


That's not exactly hard to misinterpret but apologists are already trying to justify Israel's blatant rejection. The so-called "liberal" Allen Dershowitz has cited Resolution 242  stating that it "contemplated that Israel would hold on to the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the access roads to Hebrew University, without the need for any land swaps." Now I don't exactly know what "contemplated" is supposed to mean here, but nowhere in the resolution does it mention a "Western Wall" or "Hebrew University". 

The other "argument" Netanyahu announced was that the new settlement has to recognize "demographic changes" since 1967. The "demographic changes" being the blatantly illegal settlements which the UN has long condemned as a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.  

Fox News Viewers Still Misinformed, A Rebuttal

It takes an odd sort of determination to prove watchers of Fox News aren't grossly misinformed and that they're actually more informed than PhD researchers at the University of Maryland. That's what Lee Doren or his moniker HowTheWorldWorks attempts to prove with the video "Fox News Viewers Are Misinformed Study, The Critique" only to crash and burn.

Some background 

The idea of Fox News viewers being misinformed isn't new, the University of Maryland conducted a similar study regarding the Iraq War and found that Fox News viewers were the most likely to believe myths like that Weapons of Mass destruction were found in Iraq. However, one thing that needs to be said is that the election study only found a correlation between Fox News watchers and never claimed claimed to look for a cause. As far as the study is concerned, Fox News simply attracts those that are more misinformed.

Four Random Myths 

Lee Doren begins by cherry-picking the four weakest correlations the study found between Fox News viewers and the myths they believed out of nine. We'll start with the four and work around a few others. 

The four myths he chooses are that:

•   most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses
•   most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit
•   the economy is getting worse
•   when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it  

It's also worth mentioning that between three and four, Lee skipped four myths which he were much more damning and often times more cited as examples of misinformation like how "most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring". 

The Myths Are True?
Stimulus
 Beginning with the stimulus myth, Lee asks for a survey of economists to show most economists believe the stimulus created jobs and attempts to debunk...a survey of economists showing most economists believe the stimulus created jobs (along with a CBO report).

The study uses a survey of WSJ economists to show that most economists thought it had a positive effect on jobs. This doesn't satisfy because "No evidence was offered [the economists] even spent 5 minutes thinking about the question". So apparently now Lee's original criteria of a simple survey isn't enough, we now need a written explanation of each economist as to why they though so. It's worth noting that the survey could be critiqued for having a small sample size of only about 50 economists but criticizing a survey for not going outside its (and Lee's) original mandate is ridiculous. But in case, it seems like that survey was a fluke, there was another survey , this time by USA Today which surveyed about the same number of economists and came with the same results. 


Lee's other criticism is that the study used a CBO report which didn't estimate for the "crowding out" effect. Now, while the crowding out effect is universally agreed to only happen during good economic times, another study by two Dartmouth professors found no such effect and even found that the more stimulus funding states got, the better their job results were. The study states that "We are more confident that the stimulus had at least some positive effect, so perfect crowding out did not occur."

Lee than attempts to prove a crowding out effect did in fact happen by pointing to a Harvard study that "shocked" the researchers. The only problem is that the study deals with earmark spending which is less than half a percent of the budget while actual studies of the stimulus found that it did in fact have a positive effect on jobs. 

Healthcare
 This is probably Lee's strongest point since he first claims that no survey was used to determine what "most economists" thought (although judging by how he criticized a legitimate survey which disproves an earlier point we can assume what he would of thought of a real survey).

Instead it goes by a CBO report which estimated that the healthcare bill will reduce the deficit. So to try and counter this, Lee interjects the completely unrelated issue of the "Doc fix" or Medicare and Medcaid compensation for doctors that supposedly outweighs cost savings from the bill.  

The problem with this argument is that the doc fix has nothing to do with the healthcare bill, it's been updated as a separate piece of legislation since 1997. So while it's an issue that relates to healthcare, the original question only asked about the healthcare bill not "the healthcare bill + other healthcare related issues". 

Economy is getting worse 
 As the study points out, the recession officially ended in 2009 meaning, by any definition, the economy isn't getting worse. To try and counter this claim, Lee goes on to assert that there is a possibility of a double dip recession.

Now, fringe beliefs of a double dip recession aside, lets assume he's correct and a double dip recession is on it's way. Even if it were true, factually speaking, the economy would still be recovering prior to another slump in GDP. 

GOP opposing Bailouts
 In Lee's estimation, "there were arguably too votes for TARP" meaning that the study didn't specify between the final and prior vote since prior to passing, most republicans opposed it. Now, legislation is constalty debated and re-written and stalled etc. all the time, so why it would be relevant to look at an earlier vote is pointless, what matters is the final vote.

Some Other Myths
 Lee also attempts to disprove the "Obama is born outside the United States" myth by asserting that Fox News never actively promoted it. The problem is that the study never tried to assume that Fox News makes it's viewers misinformed, only that the people that watch it are misinformed.

What Lee Didn't Talk About 
   
Fortunalty for Lee, he never discussed issues like the myth of how "most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring" even though a PNAS study put the figure at about 98% of climate scientists. This is significant since Fox News did actively push this myth through the highest levels of management. 

Conclusion

Fox News viewers are still misinformed and it takes a high level of distortions and straw-man arguments to prove it's not the case.