"All I Want is a Good Plain American Meal"

Here's a clip about "Good Plain American Food" from the movie Prince of Tides. This early scene from the movie sets up the struggle that Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) has overcoming the psychological damage inflicted by his parents. The father, Henry Wingo (Brad Sullivan) is a shrimp boat captain fishing off South Carolina tide waters. He works hard all day and wants dinner on the table when he comes home. His neurotic wife, Lila Wingo (Kate Nelligan), dreams of a better life for herself preparing "elegant food". She prepares him a dinner of Shrimp Newburg which he spits out, gets angry and starts ruffing up the kids, especially young Tom.

Mom intervenes and prepares dad a good American meal of Red Heart Dog Food which dad, and the dog, stick their faces into. The scene is played as a flashback brought on by Tom Wingo preparing a meal after a session with his suicidal sister's psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein (Barbra Steisand).

We recently picked up a three video set of Streisand Movies (Prince of Tides, The Way We Were, and The Mirror Has Two Faces) for $6.95 at Sentry Foods. I had never seen The Mirror Has Two Faces (it was OK) but I have seen the Prince of Tides many times and it seems to wear very well. The extended love scene between Tom Wingo and Susan Lowenstein at a cabin in upstate New York is the only part that seems a little slow given that we viewers know it isn't going to work. We are waiting to watch The Way We Were since I've always found the movie way too sentimental. Maybe the longer we wait and the older I get, the more I'll like the movie! In any event, the "Dad Gets Dog Food" clip from Prince of Tides is one of my favorite movie scenes.

Decoding the Right Wing's Social Security "Facts"

In the video above (edited by Think Progress here), 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 Social Security trust fund is solvent through 2038, and the program would almost certainly have long-term solvency were it not for the Republican-backed cap on payroll taxes for income above a certain level.

Causality and the Voting Rights Act

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.

What evidence do we have about Right Wing Voter Suppression? We have the last presidential election when the Republican party actively attempted to suppress minority voting in an attempt to win the election for Mitt Romney. Does anyone think this will be obvious to the Right Wing Justices on the Supreme Court?

Austerity Hits the US! Really?

On March 1, 2013 President Obama signed the Budget Sequestration order that cuts federal government spending. The video clip above, from Russia Today (really), takes a good look at what the effects might be on the World Economy (not good).

Sequestration is essentially a great natural experiment in which Keynesian arguments about the role of countercyclical government spending could be tested. My best guess is that the experiment will never be run. You can read my full analysis here. The role of government spending is the great macroeconomic question of the 20th Century and it won't be resolved in 2013.  We will certainly still be arguing about it 100 years from now.