In the debate above between Ted Olson and Tony Perkins, Mr. Olson (an Ellison Bay, WI neighbor of mine, Solicitor General during the Bush II administration, a voice of sanity in the GOP and a great potential candidate for US Attorney General), finally gets to make the point that the Right Wing ban on Gay Marriage is completely equivalent to the earlier Right Wing Ban on interracial marriage. Anti-miscengenation laws in the US were found illegal in 1967 by the US Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia as an obvious matter of civil rights. Mr. Perkins makes all the same arguments about Gay Marriage that were made about interracial marriage. The arguments were bogus in the 1960s and are still bogus today.
Ron Johnson, R-WI, claims that the Social Security Trust Fund (the fund that accepts payroll tax contributions, loans the money back to the government for interest and pays benefit to Social Security recipients) is a "myth" because "the government is essentially writing itself a check." Economist Paul Krugman points out that if Rep. Johnson's assertion was right then the entire Federal Budget is a myth and that "your facts are false". What's going on here?
I actually think everyone understands the facts of how Social Security works (I'm being generous to Rep. Johnson because he's from my home state). What Rep. Johnson is saying is that the Right Wing has no intention of paying the Social Security Administration back the money it has loaned the Federal government. He is right on this "fact". Ever since the Social Security Administration was formed in 1935 by the New Deal, the Right Wing has vowed to destroy it. Refusing to pay the funds back or using a crisis (such as the Subprime Mortgage Crisis created by Right Wing Bush II Administration policies) to argue that the government is broke and cannot pay Social Security back, all of this would be a great way to destroy Social Security.
Think Progress ends their piece with the following factual statement:
The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case that challenges Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 5 requires states, counties and townships with a history of racial discrimination to get pre-approval from the US Justice Department before making changes to their existing voting laws. NY Times columnist and statistician Nate Silver recently wrote a post (here) on the statistical fallacies being offered in court to demonstrate that the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed.
In oral arguments before the court (here), Justice Roberts made some questionable comparisons between percentage of Black voters in Mississippi and Massachusetts to argue that the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed (Black voting percentages are currently higher in Mississippi). Nate Silver points out that selecting two (possibly outlier) States for comparison is basically cherry picking. Silver goes on to conclude:
... the fact that black turnout rates are now roughly as high in states covered by Section 5 might be taken as evidence that the Voting Rights Act has been effective. There were huge regional differences in black turnout rates in the early 1960s, before the Voting Rights Act was passed. (In the 1964 election, for example, nonwhite turnout was about 45 percent in the South, but close to 70 percent elsewhere in the country.) These differences have largely evaporated now.
How much of this is because of the Voting Rights Act, as opposed to other voter protections that have been adopted since that time, or other societal changes? And even if the Voting Rights Act has been important in facilitating the changes, how many of the gains might be lost if the Section 5 requirements were dropped now?
These are difficult questions that the Supreme Court faces. They are questions of causality – and as any good lawyer knows, establishing a chain of causality is often the most difficult chore in a case.
I would like to pick up on the point about causality. From the directed graph above and using Judea Pearl's notation, the Voting Rights Act was an experimental manipulation (Pearl's "do" notation) of voting laws in States with a history of racial discrimination and voter suppression. From the standpoint of causality, the issue does not involve increases in Black Turnout. The important question is whether Right Wing Voter Suppression and racial discrimination has ended. If the forces that have reduced Black Turnout have not changed then removing the Voting Rights Act will suppress Black Turnout again.
Morningstar recently did a review of the US State Pension Funds for their investors (here and in the video above). The review found that the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) was the strongest fund in the country with a funding ratio of 99.8%. This means that Wisconsin's unfunded liability per resident is $23, the lowest of any public pension fund in the US. The results beg a lot of questions: How is Wisconsin able to have a solvent Public Pension Plan? Why can't the other States?
Before answering these questions, there is a simple takeaway from these findings: States can afford to offer solvent Pension Funds for their employees. What is more, States could offer solvent Pension Plans to all their citizens. And, corporations could also offer solvent Pension Plans to their employees. The Right Wing simply does not want to provide pensions (the same Debt Alarmists that would think $23 is too large an unfunded liability) and any other form of social security to workers.
If you want some insight into why the Right Wing opposes solvent Pension Plans (Public or Private) watch the PBS American Experience documentary on Henry Ford (here). Ford is one of the Titans of Industry and had opinions befitting his class: anti-union, anti-worker, anti-Semetic, etc. The Ford River Rouge Complex was run like a police state, a model for Right-Wing US industry. The Ford Pension Plan was the result of UAW labor disputes and bargaining, not enlightened, financially adept management.
Why are the State Pension Plans in trouble? Two reasons: The Subprime Mortgage Crisis and years of underfunding or outright stealing from Pension Plans by politicians. The goal of all this is to wake up one day during a financial crisis and claim that the State can no longer pay its pensions even as the real reason is years of deliberate fund weakening. Why is Wisconsin able to provide its employees a solvent Public Pension Plan? By law, politicians cannot touch the WRS. It's that simple. One more thing, it's not because the Public Sector cannot afford to provide pensions. Wisconsin currently has a $484 million surplus (here) none of which is needed to provide continued Pension Plan support.
As the directed graph above shows, the right wing has now conceded that CO2 emissions increase global temperature. However, Lindzen argues that warming will increase rain at the equator, depriving cirrus clouds of the moisture necessary for their formation. Since cirrus clouds have the effect of warming the Earth by preventing heat from escaping to space, fewer cirrus clouds could mean a cooler Earth as the Iris opens.
Unfortunately, there is no data to support Lindzen's arguments. Although the feedback effect might exist, it is either (1) too weak to deal with the massive amount of CO2 that is being pumped into the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel burning or (2) actually a positive loop.
The good news is that, supposedly, this is the right wing's last best argument. The bad news is that we're probably going back to one of the old irrational arguments.
I use my blogs to make informal comments on policy topics related to my research interests in the World-System, computer simulation of the US Health Care System, the US Economy, the US Stock Market, and the US Financial System. I am retired from the University of Wisconsin -- Madison. I have taught Statistics and Computer Science and also served on the UW's HIPAA Task Force and the Bioterrorism Task Force. I have also been a member of my local planning commission, a jazz guitarist and a golfer, so some of that may find its way into the blogs.
